The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (47 page)

“What about the poor husbands?” someone said.

“They should thank me,” he said. “After all, I'm doing them a service, returning their wives to them satisfied and in a good mood. …”

Antonio slammed the off button on his machine and tore off his goggles. The compressor whirred to a stop. He headed toward the rest room. Miguel followed him.

“What is it,
hombre?
” he said. “Something's gotten into you today.”

“You shouldn't talk that way,” Antonio said.

“I wasn't serious,” he said. “I just make these things up. You know, to make the time go faster.”

“But you have cheated with married women, haven't you?”

“Well, sure. And Carmela used to cheat on me too. Everybody does it.”

Antonio said nothing, only stared at his shoes.

“Listen,” Miguel said. “You're my best friend. I don't want to offend you. If it will make you feel better, I'll try to tone things down a little.”

Antonio thought for a moment. “Tell me, is there a way to tell if a woman is cheating on you?”

“Ah,” Miguel said. “It's in the touch. Like when your chuck isn't tightened right. You can't tell by looking, but you can feel it in your hands.”

That night Antonio came up behind Pilar in the bathroom and as carefully as if he were conducting the most delicate of experiments, put his arms around her. The curves of her body yielded into his, like molten metal filling its cast. Surely she couldn't have responded this way if she had recently been with another.

But moments later she was on her way out to the dry cleaners to pick up something that she said she'd forgotten there earlier.

“Do you know where the
TV Guide
is?” he said to get her attention.

She stopped in the door frame, with one foot in the living room, one foot out in the hall. “It probably fell between the cushions,” she said, but she did not come back in to help him find it. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder—not at him, but at the clock above his head.

Antonio felt his heart cool to a solid. He could not move, as his suspicions swirled up around him. He imagined a man waiting for her—in a parked car, a hotel room, an office. He pictured him looking at his watch, wondering
what was keeping her. Pictured Pilar's nervous, bird-like stride as she hurried to be on time.

Antonio sat for a long time after Pilar was gone, watching his own distorted reflection in the curved TV tube which was not on—the face of an imbecile, a fool. Then he left the house and started to walk. He walked west of the commercial district and under the freeway, then out past the train tracks to where a stale wind was sweeping over barren fields. He walked quickly to keep the images from overtaking him, spiky cattails catching in his pant cuffs. Something painful and watery rose in his throat. He wanted to be where no one would see him should he start to cry. But no sooner was he alone than he felt a desperate need to be among the living. He turned back. Perhaps if he wandered long enough he would find her, catch her coming out of an unknown apartment, see
him
waving goodbye from an unfamiliar doorstep. Is that what he was hoping for? What would he do then? To her? To him?

His mind was beginning to grow numb when he passed the Bal Theater, where Spanish-language movies played along with American films dubbed into Spanish. He had passed it once already. But now fear spilled out of him, leaving him a clear, quivering, embarrassed shell. He knew exactly where she was.

He bought a ticket without looking to see what was playing and went into the theater. The girl in the tubular box office window called out that the next showing was not for another hour, but Antonio kept walking. There was no one in the lobby to take his ticket, so he walked into the theater.

He found Pilar in the back row where she usually liked to sit, her coat drawn over her lap against the theater chill. He sat down next to her, but she did not notice him. The border of the screen trembled unevenly, but at its center a smartly-dressed man and woman held each other firmly. Was that Claudia Beltrán, the star of their teen years that they had gone to see when they'd first been dating? He couldn't remember, but he thought so. Antonio felt his own heart blossom against the inside of his rib cage. Or was it only the orchestra's swelling violins that were making him feel this way?

He touched Pilar's hand and she jumped. “
¡Ay!
Antonio! Why are you here?” In a rushed whisper she began to explain, but he stopped her by pressing his lips to the back of her hand. His penitent tears dripped onto her wrist. He threaded his fingers through hers, marveling at the fit, a fist in his throat blocking words.

He did not let her talk as they walked home. It was dark by now. In the clear and glittering sky he saw reflected the state of his own heart. “I'll take you to the Spanish movies any time you want,” he said. “I don't know what I was thinking. I never meant to be so harsh, Pilar.”

That night sweet guilt fueled his lovemaking with her. He did for her all the things she liked, poured favorite words into her ears, the ones that made her arch her back and strain her toes as if trying to touch something just the
other side of this world. Maybe it was a mistake to concede so completely, but … there was no “but.” There was only this, only Pilar, only now.

The English class took place in the gymnasium at the local high school. The teacher, a boy-faced man of about twenty-five with James Dean sideburns, arrived to class in a knitted sweater with the print of a parrot spreading its wings against a sunrise. Immediately Antonio did not like him. He was too young and obviously spent too much time caring for his appearance. He moved about the room too energetically and taught with elaborate gestures that Antonio thought were unnecessary and effeminate. Antonio sat silently through the first class, gnawing his pen cap into a gnarled lump.

“I think the teacher's a fag,” he told Pilar afterwards. She was sitting on the living room floor starting their first assignment, legs tucked under the glass coffee table.

“He's a good teacher,” she said. She adjusted her black-framed reading glasses, but didn't look up.

“How can you say that? It's only the first class. He hasn't had a chance to teach us anything.”

“I can tell, that's all.”

“You like him because he's attractive,” he said.

“I like him because he's interesting.” She took Antonio's hand and pulled him down to the floor with her. “Come sit. We can do the first assignment together.”

He scooted close to her, flipped through the first few pages. “Admit you think he's attractive,” he said after a few minutes.

“I think
you're
attractive,” she said. She took off her glasses and circled her fingers around the back of his neck, but he resisted her kiss. He hated it whenever Pilar condescended to him. With his broad flat nose and pocked moon face, he often wondered what Pilar had ever seen in him. Since his childhood, his father had constantly reminded him that he was both dense and ugly. “Plan on making your living with your hands rather than your brains,” he used to advise. “And don't be picky when it comes to choosing a wife. A face like yours is more likely to attract flies than women.”

The next week the teacher went up and down the rows asking each student to read a few sentences aloud, stopping each person every few minutes to correct pronunciation. But when he got to Pilar, he did not stop her. He let her read for several minutes. Then he broke out into slow, deliberate applause. “Thank you, Pilar. You pronounce beautifully.”

Pilar sucked in her lower lip and blushed behind her curtain of black hair. Antonio thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. Others were looking at her as well, and some of the guys continued to gaze at her long after the teacher's attention had turned elsewhere. During the break, Antonio
moved his desk flush against hers and held her hand throughout the rest of the class.

But as the hour came to an end, Antonio could tell the class was going to be more difficult for him. Trying to speak English had always been like trying to tie a cherry stem into a knot with his tongue. His mistakes seemed to echo louder and reverberate longer in the huge building than anyone else's. He left class with a burning face, his insides knotted with humiliation.

“Don't you see he's after you?” he said to Pilar later. “The way he looks at you, they way he leans against your desk.”

“I thought you said he was a fag,” Pilar said.

“Even a fag has to notice someone like you,” he said.

She started piling up her books.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“Someplace where I can concentrate. You're being ridiculous, and I'm not listening to you anymore.”

He followed her to the bedroom. “He likes you,” he said.

“Because I'm a good student,” she said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you want.”

“You think I'm stupid.”

“I think it wouldn't hurt if you studied a little instead of making up fantasies.”

At the bathroom door she laid a hand on his chest and pushed him back, then shut the door and locked it. “I'm not stupid,” he said, rattling the doorknob. “And I'm telling you, he is after you.”

At the shop, Miguel pulled him aside just as Antonio was breaking for lunch. “There are going to be layoffs soon,” he said.

“Everybody knows about that,” Antonio said. “Why are you whispering?”

Miguel looked over his shoulder. He waddled over to the far side of the silver food truck, gesturing for Antonio to follow him. “I know you're starting your own business. I want to be a part of it.”

Antonio shrugged. “I only have two accounts so far. Anyway, you have nothing to worry about. You've been here longer than anyone else.”

“And you think I want to be popping out bolts and nuts for the rest of my life?” He pulled Antonio closer by his sleeve. “When the layoffs come, I want to be first in line. You're going to need someone to drive for you and weld boxes and load scrap. And I may be short, but I'm strong as a horse and I have stamina.”

“I wouldn't be able to pay you anything until I got a few more accounts.”

“In the long run it will be worth it.”

“What about your alimony payments?”

“I can barely pay them now.”

Antonio thought for a moment. “Are you willing to take that kind of chance?”

“I've always said you're the only Mexican around here with any vision,” he said. “I have a lot of faith in you.”

On the last day of class, Antonio hurried through the final test. He did not care how he did on it, just as long as he could get out of that classroom once and for all. He turned in his test without looking at the teacher, then rushed out to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette while he waited for Pilar.

A night breeze rushed over them as they walked to dinner that evening to celebrate. “Thank you for taking the class,” he said.

He took her hand and tried to go on. There was much more to tell her, but the words struggled against each other, canceling each other in his throat. At the Italian restaurant near their apartment, the waiter seated them outside at one of the patio tables. Insects buzzed about their heads. Antonio tried again. “You made quite an impression on the class.”

Pilar bit thoughtfully into a piece of garlic bread. “I was surprised myself. I wasn't expecting it to be that easy.”

“Then you're glad I suggested it?”

“I can admit when I'm wrong.”

“Yes,” he said, “I appreciate that.”

He opened his menu, but Pilar didn't open hers. Instead, she took a course catalogue out of her straw bag. “Should we do Wednesday nights again next semester?” she said.

“I thought we would wait a while before we took another class,” he said.

“Why shouldn't we keep going?”

“I don't have time now. The layoffs are coming, and I want to have the business built up.”

“I thought you needed it for the business.”

“I know enough to get by,” he said, fumbling his napkin.

“You'll forget everything if you don't practice.”

“We can practice at home. We can practice right now.”

Pilar looked up.

“We'll take the class in the summer,” he said.

“Never mind. I'll just take it myself.”

“I'd rather you didn't take it without me.”

“Fine.” She took up her menu, glared relentlessly into the fold. Over the top of it, the line in her brow darkened.

Antonio picked at the knobby corners of his napkin. Pilar looked around the restaurant, but not at him. She waved the waiter over.

She was silent on the way home. She went into the building while he walked to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. It was always best to give her time to cool off. But when he came in, she was pacing intensely.

“Pilar, please don't be this way.”

She turned to him with arms locked in a fold. “I've put up with a lot since we got married,” she said. “I've agreed to give up a lot of my time and rearranged my life to learn this stupid language, and now that you see how much I like it, you want to take it away from me. How much more do I have to give up, Antonio? And when do I get to see something in return?”

“It's just that we're married and I think we should do things together.”

As she paced, the very air she walked through seemed to boil up around her.

“Pilar, calm down, you're behaving like a child …”

Then she did something that she had never before done in their three years of marriage. She picked up a casserole dish and threw it. It glanced off the counter between the kitchen and the dining area and crashed into the glass coffee table. Glass shards spewed everywhere, dispersing the light into a brief, angry rainbow.