Part 5

You Will Hear From Me


Valentine's Day is the worst day of the year for anyone who is single. It's cruel torture, and it's difficult to avoid the commercials on TV, the ads on every window, the jewelry, the flowers, the chocolates, etc. The time was coming close and it was getting harder to protect myself from the onslaught.
But I was feeling better about it. Jenny was single again, and she had basically thrown herself at me. I was proud of myself for not taking advantage of her while she was drunk, and I was certain she would appreciate me for that.
We had a mutual friend who was hosting a party and I knew she would be there. I had assumed I would skip the party until a few nights before when Jenny and I spoke. Now I couldn't wait for it. Why I hadn't called her since then is somewhat beyond me. Maybe it was out of fear, or perhaps I hoped she would call me. But whatever the reason I waited until the party and looked forward to seeing her again. I pictured her jumping into my arms the way Nina had. She would scream so loud with joy the room would stop, the way it had in Mexico, only this time it would be real emotions, real love, not paid for.
It didn't work out quite the way I had pictured it. We found each other through the crowd of people who were all talking to one person and looking at another. But our eyes were fixed solely on each other. A wide smile crossed her lips as soon as she saw me. There was a wickedness to that smile, a slant to it I always enjoyed, like there was a private joke between us. I took in a deep breath.
“Hi,” we both said almost simultaneously.
I thought quickly about what to say. We both shuffled a bit, thinking.
BT provided the break, but not in the way I had hoped. “There's my ho!” he proclaimed as he broke out of the crowd, grabbed Jenny, and kissed her deeply. I was ready to pounce until I saw she wasn't pushing him away. She embraced him and kissed him passionately. I watched, stunned.
At last she pulled away laughing. “BT, I think you know Jake.”
He threw his hand out to me proudly. “Yeah! What up, bro?”
I took a moment. I looked over at Jenny. She was smiling obliviously. I offered my hand and he shook it firmly. “So you're, uh...” I began.
“He came over after you left the other night,” Jenny said.
“She was out like a light,” he said, smiling slyly. “But I woke her up.” He nudged her, she nudged back, trying to suppress a smile. “Woke her up and made up! Whoo! And there ain't nothin' like makin' up that way!” He grasped her and rocked her. She pushed at him, but he held on, and she relented laughing.
“Yeah, well...” I said.
“I'm glad we can be friends,” Jenny said to me. I tried to read her face. There wasn't so much as a hint of irony in it. I wondered if she was hiding something, or was truly that emotionally blind.
“Yeah,” her reunited boyfriend said, “you two should be friends. Too much history. Right, bro. I'm out.” He held up his hand to give me five.
“Aight!” Jenny called to him.
I looked at Jenny. 'Aight?' That wasn't something she would be caught saying if her life depended on it. BT's hand was still up, waiting for mine. Still staring at Jenny, I held out my hand and he slapped it, grasped it, shook it like we were the best of friends, then stumbled away.
My eyes remained on Jenny. I knew her better than anyone in the room. “Aight?” I asked.
She knew what I was getting at. She squirmed a moment before straightening herself out of her hip hop sideways lean. “It's just something we say. It doesn't mean anything.”
I stared at her knowingly. I hoped my eyes were getting through to her. It was hard to tell. She cleared her throat, patted me on the shoulder and told me I should have a drink. “Just don't get too drunk to drive,” she said as she started to walk away.
“Yeah. Guess there's no room in you and BT's car,” I said. I think she heard me, but she didn't respond.
Later that night I was sitting on the roof of the house surrounded by empty beers. I spotted Jenny jumping into BT's Jaguar. They didn't notice the beer can hit the cement and bounce behind them.
I lay back and looked up at the stars. You can see them moving ever so slightly when you stare long enough. It's the whole universe in its ever moving ballet. Nothing is the way it was the day before, why should our lives?
But I couldn't accept that. I wanted a firm foundation, a place I could say, 'here is my home.' I closed my eyes and tried to make up such a place in my mind.
Instead I saw the face of Nina. I saw her eyes dancing. She was staring at me, trying to find the words. There was something written on her face. Something sad.
I opened my eyes and was back on the roof again, my curiosity peaked. “She's a whore that used you,” I told myself, but I couldn't shake the look on her face from my mind. What happens inside of any person is a mystery whose clues are written in our body language, and the words are merely translators doing the best to express our realities.
I tried to shake her from my mind for the next couple days, but I could only wonder what those eyes were trying to say.
At last Valentine’s day came; the worst day of the year. I was surrounded by advertisements of kisses, the marketing of sex and joy, the “celebrations of love.” I had to escape, and a Tijuana brothel was as good as any place.
I was nervous crossing the border. I felt like every eye was on me, judging me. As if they all knew of my pathetic pilgrimage. At the town square someone played music that matched my mood; the kind of song that plays at the climax of a western, just before the big showdown.
As I crossed over the bridge the sun set over the dying river in the west. A single tire sat half buried, as though the rest of the car had been stolen and it alone was left behind.
The vendors were putting away their wears, watching me as I passed to see if they had one last sale. It still felt more to me like judgment.
I planted myself at one of the bars and watched Nina from across the room as she sat in a booth with one of the men. I tried to ignore that familiar pang of jealousy.
A truck driver kept engaging me in conversation. He had been coming for the past twenty years, and he told me the history of how this place went through generation after generation of girls. I told him I was there to find one person, and when I pointed her out at a table with a bunch of guys, he tried to remember if he had “done” her or not. That was the history for him. Who had he done, and was it with a condom or not.
When Nina was finished she walked toward the women's room. I stood up in front of her near the main door; the exact place we had met. There was no joy in her expression upon recognizing me, nor was there anger or sadness. Her face hung low, red lines coursed through her swollen eyes. She swayed, barely able to stand. Nodding, she said hello.
I said with a shrug. “Hi… Happy Valentine’s day.”
A look crossed her face as if to say, ‘where are my manners?’ and she hugged me. The muscles in her arms were drained of effort.
“It’s good to see you,” I said. Then we released and I continued, “But I’m not coming back.”
She looked at me curiously, a little hurt, and asked why.
I opened my mouth to explain, but I found that now I was the one without words. I removed a Valentine's Day card from my pocket and handed it to her. It had sparkles all over it, like the ones that winked through her make-up. I had written everything I wanted to say in there, about how I had wanted a friend, not a prostitute. How I was curious about her, and wanted to get to know her, but I didn't want to make the long drive simply to be blown off.
There were no words from her. She just sat at the bar, placed the card down, staring at it, and shook her head slowly.
“You’re welcome to call any time,” I said, “or write, or anything.” She didn’t respond, so I continued, “It’s not that I mind visiting you here. I just have to know it’s real. And if you won’t see me, won’t even call me on your day off…”
She continued to look downward toward the card as she said something so low I couldn’t understand, but it was something about Sunday.
“What about Sunday?” I asked. It came out a bit more impatient than I had intended.
She visibly switched gears. She straightened up and looked at me. “You have your life, I have mine, you know? Maybe you shouldn’t come down.”
I realized as she spoke that she had said something about working on Sunday, and something about her father. I asked her, “You worked on Sunday?”
She said, “Yes. I have to work. I worked every day. I’m still gonna work all this week and, fuck, probably all next weekend. You have your life and your world up in California. I have mine, and we all have our own troubles, and, fuck. I no call ‘cause that’s your life, and you no need to have mine come to you, you know?”
“What happened with your father?”
“Diasis, dia, um…” She started pointing at her liver.
“Dialysis?” I asked.
“Yes. He went to hospital. He no recognize me when I come. But machine cost 500 dollar every day. I make 500 dollar on Saturday, and have to come back Sunday to work, to make the bill. But, you no need to be part of all this…”
A waiter came by. She waved him off, and after a moment continued, “What I feel for you, all this,” she pointed at the card, “I thank you so much. No one treat me so nice. You’re so special to me. I have your picture up next to my bed. I see it first thing every morning I wake up. It give me hope. I have you up there with my whole family, and I look at you every day. I think of you every day, but I no call because you have your life. No need my troubles. I no want you to buy me drink, I no want you to know me from here, but I have to work. I have to be here. I have to take as much drinking, as much upstairs as I can. You no have to see me, but you always know I think about you.”
I ordered us two more Red Bulls. She shook her head and her hands aggressively. “No! You get me this!” She pointed at the card. “This more than anyone else ever give me!”
I said, “Now I trust you. I can buy the drinks. I just wanted to know it’s real.”
She looked tentatively relieved and sat down.
It was the most humbling moment of my life. I had seen my troubles as so overwhelming that I couldn’t conquer them. But my life had never reached anything close to the troubles she had on a regular basis.
I tried to shake the overwhelming emotions and to change the subject. “I’ve got another question for you,” I said.
“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head, smiling.
“Oh yeah. What’s one of your most pleasant memories?”
She looked up at the ceiling and thought hard. Then, certain of her answer, she told me about a time she sat in a room surrounded by musicians, friends of her father, and he was playing the guitar. She remembered swaying with the music, enjoying every note. “There was food, too,” she said excitedly. “It was all about music and food.” Her eyes glazed into a memorial stare as she thought back. “When music that good, you feel it. You no just hear it; you feel it vibrate through you. They were all around me, and I felt it.”
She sat transfixed a few moments longer, then she snapped out of it and looked at me. “Thank you for helping me remember that.” I nodded. Then she asked, “What’s yours?”
I told her about a time when there was an eclipse over New York City when I lived there. Greenwich Village fell silent, people walked at half speed, and the shadows of leaves turned into crescents.
“New York?”
“Yes, I used to live there,” I said proudly. There’s something about having lived in New York, you feel like you earned something, and people look at you differently.
“What is New York? You mention this thing to me before but I no understand. What is it? A city? You live there?”
“You don’t know what New York City is?”
She shook her head as though it was no big deal; as though she had asked about a certain exotic food from the middle of the rainforest, and it was no wonder she hadn’t heard of it. It was another humbling moment. These things we take for granted, that we assume are important to the world because they’re important to us, are sometimes not even known to others who have their own lives, their own troubles, and suddenly what we have been so self-aggrandizing about is nothing more than just another city.
“It's not important,” I said. “Have you read the book?”
“Oh yes,” she said excitedly. “I start it. He right about men. I’ve studied men. He right.”
“Well, tell me what you think about his views of women when you get to that, okay?”
“Yeah, I will!” She thought for a moment, then said, “I work here while I have to. But… I think I want to do something else. I know someone might hire me somewhere. I not sure. But I may be gone in a month.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah,” she said.
The conversation fell silent again. We finished our drinks. She looked down at the card, then up at me regretfully.
She didn’t have to say anything. I could tell what she was thinking. “You have to work, don’t you?”
She looked down at the card again, then back at me. “Fuck, man. I can’t believe this.”
We hopped off the bar stools.
“I won’t say I’m gonna call,” she said. “But you are going to hear from me. Maybe call. Maybe something. But I always think of you.”
It had been a long time since I really trusted anyone. But when I looked into her eyes, I saw truth. “I believe you,” I said.
We hugged. When we released, she took in a breath, looked at me one last moment, then walked away.
The last time I saw her, she was walking to the stairs with a man who looked like a rat. The music she typically danced to, 'Crazy in Love', was playing. “Uh, oh, uh, oh, uh, oh, uh, oh,” it went.
She walked out of sight. Just at that moment the bartender took her empty Red Bull can away. She was truly gone.
I listened to the song a moment. “Got me looking so crazy, I'm not myself lately, I'm foolish, I don't do this. I've been playing myself, baby I don't care, 'cause your love's got the best of me... Your touch got me looking so crazy right now, got me hoping you'll page me right now, your kiss got me hoping you'll save me right now. Looking so crazy in love.”
I finished my drink, then walked into the bright light of day, and into my own future.