Rust (24 page)

Rico watched her, happy to be in the same room with her. “For better or for worse,” she had said. Somehow, since she had shown up at his door, his life had gotten better and worse at the exact same time. Just a few hours ago, he had made love to his wife for the second time in two days, a fine thing after a four-year dry spell; but now he wanted to make love to Margaret, just pull the blinds and go at it on the cool concrete floor, though she had made it more than clear that that was not going to happen, and he supposed she meant what she said.

“Last night after we got home, I went to Fernando’s grave,” Rico blurted out, surprising himself. “First time I ever went.”

Margaret had just seated herself on the folding chair. “You did? That’s big.” She was leaning slightly toward him and her green eyes, so intent upon his, made him feel for a moment that everything in the whole world had an emerald green tint. “How was it?”

“I got shook up,” Rico said. “Started crying and everything.” Why was it so easy to talk to this woman? To admit things to her that he would normally keep to himself?

“Crying is good,” she said with conviction. “I’ll bet you’ve both needed that for a long time.”

“Both?”

“You and Fernando,” she said. “Both.” She was quiet for a few moments, and so was Rico. Then she added, “My grandfather used to say that when you cried for somebody, your tears found their way to them no matter where they were, and they suddenly thought of you and a little firecracker of love went off and the sparks found you, wherever you were. He said that’s why you always feel better after you cry.”

Rico considered this. He had a sudden image of a wise old white guy, somebody big like John Wayne, sitting in a rocking chair with a miniature Margaret on his knee. “And when did he tell you this?” he asked, with a smile just beginning to form.

“Oh . . .” Margaret hesitated for just a second and then said, “when my parents dumped me off with him when I was five and then disappeared. In the beginning, I cried all the time. He came up with a lot of stories about why crying was good, and I still remember them and I still believe them, every one.”

Rico noticed that she had shifted in her chair and averted her eyes from his when she spoke. He knew instinctively that it wasn’t the original event, but the telling of it that put her on the spot. Margaret has trouble opening up to me, he thought, and I have trouble closing down.

“Where did they go?” he asked.

“India. They never came back.”

“Something happened to them. Something bad.” He said this with authority.

Margaret turned her green gaze on him. “Donny—that’s my grandfather—he tried to find them for a long time, a couple of years or more, but he never got anywhere. After a while, he gave up.” She stood up suddenly. “It’s okay, Rico. I’m over it. Let’s weld.” She turned and headed into the work bay before Rico had even gotten up out of his seat.

“What are we doing today?” Margaret asked as she pulled her hair back in a burgundy scrunchie and slipped a pair of goggles around her head like a hairband. “Another axle? Or the bodywork?”

“I got you set up over here,” he said.

“You mean I’m going to start?” He could hear the excitement in her voice. “Wow!” she added, taking a protective leather apron off a hook and slipping it over her head. Then she began to dig through her big bag and came out with a few charts, obviously copied from one of her how-to books, that provided information on melting temperatures and the like. She had pasted them onto cardboard, and now she propped them up against the wall at the back of the workbench. She hooked a pen onto one. “In case I need to make notes,” she said.

Rico found this all very amusing, her enthusiasm. Watching her get organized, he could see the little girl she had been, listening to her
abuelo
’s stories about how tears work, soaking them up. She was a person who soaked things up. All you had to do was watch her to see it happening. She had soaked up the story of Fernando, and somehow, by giving it to her, he had freed himself to visit his brother’s grave. It was so mysterious, so unexpected.

It was not lost on him that he had now heard the first and only tidbit of truly personal information about her, this woman he felt he knew inside out for no good reason. She had been abandoned by her parents. As a father himself, Rico could not imagine such a thing. He had not been separated from his daughters for more than three days in their whole lives. Even on those three overnights—in Las Vegas, Nevada, to be specific—he suffered so much, missed them so thoroughly, that he was tempted to suggest to Rosalita that they pack up and go home. The neon lights of the Sin City were no match for the sparkle in his daughters’ eyes. Even now he lived in dread that one of them would take it into her head to move out on her own. Rosalita said it was inevitable, while Rico stood in his backyard and imagined three more
casitas
on it.

Margaret had read enough and watched Rico enough to know the steps, and he had already told her, just last night, that the first order of business was to learn to control the temperature of the base metal. He had already set up his smallest oxyacetylene torch, bolted a steel plate to the edge of the workbench, and collected bits and pieces of mild steel, forged steel, cast brass, and cast iron for her to practice on. She used a clamp to secure her first piece of mild steel and then turned to Rico. “Should I just have at it?”

He nodded.

“What should I make?” she asked as she studied the array of small shapes stacked up on the workbench.

“Don’t make anything. Just try to get the feel of it for a while,” said Rico. “
Y ten cuidado
.”

Margaret lowered her goggles over her eyes and slipped her hands into a pair of leather work gloves—size small—that she had bought for this purpose. “Bombs away,” she said, and then she began to weld in earnest. She did not speak at all, as if silence were required of a welding apprentice. Rico stood by and watched, ready to step in to protect her, not to mention himself and his garage, if she was headed for something dangerous. But Margaret took it slowly, adjusting the oxygen, testing the flame, watching the metal puddle as she heated it. She tiptoed into her project like a guerrilla soldier and, before long, she had attached two pieces of mild steel together. She shut off the torch and held it up like a trophy.

“I know it’s raggedy,” she said, “but look, Rico! I actually welded something!” The rusty parts back in her yard were already crowding into the periphery of her vision, lining up, waiting to be welded, too.

“Not bad,” Rico said. Her smile was so wide and he was so close to her that for the first time he noticed that she had a tiny chip off her right front tooth, just the tiniest chip, and he was consumed with a desire to know how it had happened. He realized in that instant, with Margaret holding up her welded piece of metal like a winning Bingo card, that, no matter what happened between them in the long run, he simply had to know everything there was to know about this woman.

It had occurred to him that he would not see her again after today until Monday, five days away. That was their deal: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. It was probably a good thing because, while she was a beautiful monkey wrench, she was still a monkey wrench that he personally had thrown into the day-to-day operations of his garage. He needed to keep his mind on his business, which was impossible when she was around. But he already missed her, even if she was standing just a few feet from him, her acetylene torch flaming steadily and her eyes barely blinking, so focused was she on what she was doing. Rico had a tall stool, and he went and got it for her.

“Try sitting down,” he said. “Relax.” He could see the cords in her neck and clenched jaw, as if she, personally, had to weld the whole universe back together in the next five minutes. Margaret rested her rear on the edge of the stool and kept right on working. Rico saw that she was lost to him for the moment, concentrating with such intensity that she had probably forgotten he was there. It was good to see a woman in that state. The women around his own house were easily distracted, particularly by the ringing of the phone. When the phone rang, a stampede started. This annoyed Rico, who had instituted a policy of no phone calls during dinner as a way of restoring balance.

Just thinking of his home, his three girls, his wife, and his mother, took Rico’s breath away for a few seconds. Why? Because in increasingly bigger waves, it had occurred to him that he might chuck it all for a chance to be with Margaret. He had already imagined moving into her old adobe house, fixing it up bit by bit until it could hold up its head in the neighborhood. He’d already imagined big kettles of
posole
on the stove, which he would make for her, and a gravel driveway instead of a dirt one, which would cut down on the dust that blew around the yard in the wind. He’d already imagined a small bed, maybe just a single, in which they would sleep, so wrapped up in each other that it would take several seconds in the morning to figure out which arms and legs were whose.

At the same time, he felt sick at the possibility that any of it might actually happen, for if it did, it would mean personal wreckage beyond anything nature could serve up. How in the world could a simple man like Rico, for he thought of himself as a basic, nuts-and-bolts kind of
hombre,
reconcile such opposing desires? How could he walk away from everything and keep it, too? And if he did walk away, how long would it take for regret to consume him?

He glanced at Margaret, whose only interest as he did mental back flips all around her was the square of steel plate she was currently attempting to stitch via fire onto another one. It made him chuckle suddenly, his predicament. There was not a thing he could do about any of it. So he raised the Chevy Impala on the hydraulic lift and went to work. He kept half his mind on his job, while the other half noticed, with pleasure, the core of heat he experienced in his heart just having Margaret at work fifteen feet away.

Meanwhile, Margaret put each little bit of metal through its transformation from solid to liquefying, from cold to molten, from inflexible to hot putty. It was dizzying to her, the way everything could change, given the right circumstances, such as relentless heat, oxygen, and a determined welder. The idea that these little pieces of steel and iron and brass—so complete in themselves—were about to meld together forever, was somewhat shocking to her. It seemed so random.

She glanced up at Rico, who had his back to her as he used a monkey wrench to adjust something under the chassis of the Chevy on the lift. She knew he was falling in love with her, though she couldn’t understand why. She could feel love in the air all around her, as if it seeped out of Rico’s pores to form a little invisible cloud that made the dry desert air seem moist whenever he came near her. Today she had told him a family secret, a rare event for Margaret, who normally hoarded the story of her parents’ disappearance, as if by sharing it she would be giving away the last of what she had of them.

She had to admit, he was sexy, with his beautiful teeth, his long dimples, and his arms that looked carved from something far sturdier than muscle and flesh. He had a way about him, a suggestion that he had endured and would endure, come what may. Margaret, who felt her whole life had been, until recently, one long endurance test, could not help but respond to that. She recognized it in Rico because she herself had so often had to carry on when she really would much rather have crawled away and hid.

So, despite her determination and her words, such as “I never get involved with married men—never,” which left no room for interpretation, Margaret was not completely immune, and it bothered her. Even in this moment, as she rested on her stool preparing to fire up the torch once more, she could imagine Rico standing behind her, closing his arms around her to demonstrate how to handle the flames and the fire, teaching her how to weld in a risky hands-on way instead of the current hands-off one they had chosen. She could imagine his lips on the back of her neck, kissing her along the hairline, behind her ear, perhaps, until she couldn’t stop herself from turning around, offering her mouth. It had been a long time since it had even occurred to her to imagine such things.

Margaret let out a breath that she didn’t even know she had been holding and returned to work. And the moment she ignited the torch, all her ideas about Rico disappeared into the flames, and all she could think was, Be careful. Be careful when you play with fire.

By the end of the morning, Margaret had a lopsided cylinder to show for all her efforts. It was wider at the top, perhaps eighteen inches across, and narrower at the bottom, perhaps six inches. It suggested a conch shell, rolled and welded into a permanent spiral, or a cocoon. It took her hours, and she felt exhausted. When noon came, she carefully put the tools back in their assigned places.

Rico, in just three days, had begun to look forward to the moment when she released her hair, shook it out, and ran her fingers through it. Then she would carry her bag to the chair in the office, sit down, and dig through it until she found her wallet. She’d extract thirty or thirty-five dollars, depending on how long she stayed, and hand it to him.

“Thanks a lot, Rico,” she would say, looking straight into his eyes. After she left, he would open the back of the frame and add it to the rest of the money she had given him. It was already a hundred dollars, no small amount for Rico. He still had no plan for what to do with it.

“So how’d it go?” he asked.

“Good, I think. I see what you mean about keeping the temperature even. I burned up five or six pieces before I began to get the feel of it.”

He leaned back in the folding chair until the front feet were well off the ground. “What? Your charts didn’t help?” he asked with a challenging little smile.

“Not really,” she answered, and then laughed. “I didn’t even look at them. But you knew I wouldn’t, right?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “Everybody’s different.”

“You really think so?” Margaret asked, and Rico could feel them lifting off, when suddenly whatever they were talking about shifted shape and he felt he had to hang on to keep up.