This terrific story feels both timely and timeless, laying bare a range of human desires—for connection, for love and purpose, for a future brighter than the past—and what characters will do and sacrifice in an attempt to satisfy them. There’s a powerful confidence in the prose, a conviction that the characters and their plights matter, which is such a pleasure to read. It’s an authentic and nuanced depiction of the border, a story that is poignant, profound, and necessary. — Guest Judge Bret Anthony Johnston
When Juan Antonio woke, he was lying only feet below a pecan canopy in the bucket of a front-end loader. Diesel engines rumbled in the loading bay and the sun-warmed steel cradled him and quivered underneath him. Sunlight filtered through the leaves. The sounds of the lumberyard surrounded him—the forklift beeps and the solid clack of wood on wood and the hollow clank of wood on metal flatbed trailers. He sat up and stretched his legs. His head was throbbing less now, and the vomit on his steel-toe boots had dried. He wiped at it with his thumbs. There was a rustle in the lower branches of the tree. It was a grackle. It had black-rainbow feathers on his head and a piece of stale tortilla in its beak. They had had these birds back home; the shimmery ones were boys. The father bird stood tall above his nestlings. They were little feathered orbs with even smaller orbs for eyes, their bills pointed high, squeaking, needing. The grackle’s tail feathers ruffled in the wind, his beak was angled low, and he spit tortilla grounds into his babies’ mouths.
Juan Antonio climbed out the bucket, hands gripping the metal. His feet hung above the ground. He let himself drop and the impact traveled up his legs, into his head, and back down to his throat, but he willed away the need to barf again. Underneath the bile, he still could taste Manuela on his lips.
Walking toward the lumber stacks he passed el Míster who was driving a forklift, a load of decking in the tines. “Vamos al Gallo,” Juan Antonio said.
“Again?” el Míster asked.
“One last time.”
* * *
El Gallo de Oro was a cinderblock warehouse painted a brownish green. The bar name was stenciled on both corner walls and next to the words was a gold-feathered gamecock with a crimson comb, a gleaming black eye, one foot on the ground and a spur in the air. Sitting in the passenger seat of el Míster’s car, Juan Antonio cleaned the last of the vomit off his boots with his reflective yellow vest. He pulled out a bottle of Oso Negro from the glove box and crumpled the vest at his feet. A keyboard-heavy cumbia played on the radio. “These guys are from a town nearby Villaseca,” Juan Antonio said.
El Míster nodded, pulled a miniature tin of Vicks from his black guayabera, and dabbed some on his upper lip. “You smell that smell coming off the port?” he asked. “Something strange I never smelled before.”
Juan Antonio shook his head. “You look old in that shirt,” he said as he opened the door and stepped out of the car. His own black undershirt was streaked with sweat lines, and his long-sleeve was infused with the green sawdust of arsenic-treated lumber as was the hair on his head. He leaned on the trunk of el Míster’s car, opened the nearly empty vodka bottle. “Órale, Míster,” he said, banging on the trunk.
“I wanna finish out the song,” he said.
Juan Antonio and Valeria had danced that cumbia in the plaza on their wedding night. He remembered most her awkward feet, the way that she apologized every time she stepped on him, pressing her face into his chest to hide her flushing cheeks. That was fourteen years ago, and as far as he could remember they hadn’t danced since then. Juan Antonio took a drink of Oso Negro. The liquor fell hard into his empty stomach, and a nausea rose into his chest. If everything went as planned, next week they would be together again.
El Míster opened his door, careful not to hit the car beside him. It was a shiny thing. Silver paint with a sunroof. Chrome wheels and chrome accents running along the doors. He whistled admiringly. He put his hands around his eyes and pressed his face up to the passenger window. “Can’t see nothing,” he said. “Is that tint legal? Aw shit, Juan.” He stared into the dark glass, moving a curly strand from one side of his head to the other. “Why didn’t you tell me my hair was outta place?”
Juan Antonio passed him the bottle. “Pa la cruda,” he said.
“I ain’t ever been hungover in my life.” El Míster stood next to him and took a sip. “I just drink until I’m feeling good.” He drummed his hands against his thighs and laughed. “You’re lucky nobody saw me scoop you into the loader. Boss would’ve been pissed.”
Juan Antonio scowled. “I would be the boss if I could get forklift certified.”
There was a discarded cigarette burning near the trunk of the fancy car. “Looks like we just missed the guy.” El Míster snuffed it with the tip of his boot.
In the street, a yellow cab u-turned around the grassy median and idled at the curb in front of the bar. Beyond the road was a freight line that ran along the ship channel. Where the channel curved north, was a bright-yellow car baler, flattened vehicles stacked like toy blocks beside it.
“You’re not looking very sharp.” El Míster swept the sawdust off Juan Antonio’s shoulder with his palm.
“I’m not here for that today.” Across the street, a mechanical lift pushed a burgundy car shell into the baler’s maw. Juan Antonio yawned, stretching his arms high above his head, cracking his neck. His t-shirt rode up, and his belly was pale like burnt grass. “Valeria’s never had a drink, you know. You think she might have a drink with me someday?” He took the comb out of his back pocket and ran its fine-tooth end through his black hair. He tapped it against his thigh, shaking out the sawdust.
“I’m proud of you, jefe,” el Míster said. “You’re gonna be a family man again.”
The sun was going down and gray clouds had crowded into the empty sky. The yellow cab still idled in the street.
“Did you ever hear that story,” el Míster said, nodding toward the car baler, “about that mafioso who crushed the bodies with the cars?”
The cantina was nearly as dark as out. The red and blue lights mixed into a purplish glow. There were two blue-felt pool tables, tattered booths along the wall, Mexican icons postered above—Marco Antonio Solís, Lola Beltrán, Cantinflas, and Juan Gabriel. A few tables and chairs were scattered through the inside. The service counter was old wood, gouged like a chopping block. The jukebox lit up bright between the bathroom and the red, metal door leading to the back rooms. That’s where Manuela was—behind that heavy door.
Six months ago, Juan Antonio went back home. A few weeks before Christmas, he rode a bus from Houston to McAllen to Reynosa to Monterrey to Matehuala to, finally, San Luis, and then he’d waited half a day before he found a cab to drive him down to Villaseca. All along that ride, he thought about the desert—the cracked, dry land beneath his feet, the bright, bald sun above, and then the moon glowing cold against him in the night. He would soon be home, and he wasn’t sure if he had in him another desert crossing back to Texas. He imagined what it would be like make his family his again. He thought about his son Juanito and his suegra, but mostly he thought about Valeria. She would take him in her slender arms and pull him in to her the way Manuela did.
The night that he arrived, Valeria wore lipstick. The fiery red was an invitation he accepted eagerly. It was their first night together in so many years. Their movement was familiar but when they kissed in bed, her lips felt like a stranger’s skin. They had had to be quiet—his son, Juanito and his suegra were sleeping in the next room behind the curtain. Valeria didn’t make a sound at all. When he finished, she patted him on his shoulder and guided him off her body.
Nights back home were the kind of quiet he’d forgotten could exist. Not a shred of light crept over the horizon. No roaring diesel trucks, or thumping speakers, or metal clanking in the shops across the street, or trains rumbling on the tracks. He breathed the dry, fresh air, and he told Valeria, “I don’t think I can go back again.”
Valeria sighed. “We can’t be here anymore, Juan Antonio.”
“But you don’t know what it’s like. I can’t go back again.”
She turned away from him, facing the wall, one arm extending back to hold his hand.
He had thought that once he’d made it back to his wife, that his feelings for Manuela would fade, but he found that he still thought of her even as he lied beside Valeria. “I can’t go back again,” he said.
Over the next few weeks, he found a door to replace the curtain that separated the bedroom from the rest of the house. He nailed down the corrugated roof above to keep it from rattling when the wind blew across the hillside. He sealed the gap beneath the window, through which the cold desert air seeped in at night.
It was harvest season. Juan Antonio and Juanito walked down to the neighboring ranches to do some work. After a week of twisting ears of corn off their stalks, the farmer paid them. Juan Antonio held the measly pesos in his hand. That’s when he remembered why he’d left in the first place and why he couldn’t stay.
* * *
The woman who tended bar at el Gallo was named Chucky. “Quíonda, Míster?” she said as they walked in, and then she dipped her double chin at Juan Antonio.
Juan Antonio sat at the bar stool. “Oye, Chucky. Una beer nomás.”
She bent and grabbed a Bud Light from the cooler at her feet. Her heavy breasts sagged the collar of her black tank top, and she pulled the fabric to cover up again.
“Que me miras, cabrón?”
“Nada, nada.” Juan Antonio set his feet on the stool’s rail. “Who’s here?”
“Maria and Manuela tonight.”
“Good,” he said. “Manuela’s the one I want to see.”
“I know,” Chucky said. “Pero mira, Juan. I didn’t wanna say at first. But I hear the ladies talking. Every one of them used to say, A mí me gusta ese Juan. Because he’s nice y cause he always shows up clean, y blah blah blah. They’re not saying that no more. You don’t got the kind of money where you can show up tracking dirt on the floor and getting sawdust on the girls. Ubícate vato, or you’ll have to find someplace else.”
Juan Antonio started to speak. To tell her he was only here to say goodbye, but before he could, Chucky aimed her bottle opener at el Míster who stood behind him and said, “Y tú?”
“Una musiquita, primero, Chucky.” He drummed his fingers on the counter. “It’s dead in here.”
“Put a quarter in the jukebox.”
“Ya está jalando?”
“Repairman came this morning.”
“All right.” He tapped his finger to his chin. “I got a feeling for something sweet.”
“Nah ah,” she said. “Quieres una beer or quieres una whiskey coke?”
El Míster put his hands up. “Un momento, güey. The night is young.”
She rolled her eyes. “Pinche Míster’s gonna ask me for a cranberry drink again. Look,” she said. “Your friend keeps it simple.” She pointed at Juan Antonio. “He sits down, se toma sus beers and he keeps quiet till his girls come around. But your business isn’t worth the work to make your silly cocktails.”
“What if I said I’m only here for your conversation, Chucky,” el Míster said. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and winked, kissing the air. “Échame una tequila Sprite con limón.”
She smiled, the dimples on her cheeks softening her tomcat jaw. “What kinda tequila?”
“The cheap kind,” he said.
She turned and stooped for a bottle of Jose Cuervo. Juan Antonio had never really looked at Chucky much. He had seen her arm tattoo—a bare-breasted Aztec princess in a headdress, but when she pushed his drink toward him, he noticed the tattoo on her wrist for the first time. It said “Lupe” in cursive letters with “1989” below.
El Míster took a seat beside Juan Antonio and swiveled in his stool. “Oye, de quién es ese fancy car afuera?”
“A client,” she said.
“Manuela’s moving up in this world, Juan.”
Juan Antonio waved him off. He pictured Manuela behind the thick metal door in the back, doing whatever she was doing with whoever she was doing it with, but he knew, even if the man was rich, that she favored him anyway. He knew it by the way she gently ran her hand through his hair and across his back. He tried to shake away all that desire. Next week, if everything went as planned, Valeria would be here with him. Juan Antonio spoke because maybe any words would loose the knot tightening inside of him. “Lupe was your vato?” he asked Chucky.
“Huh?” she said.
El Míster stared at him, his head cocked sideways like a dog.
Juan Antonio shook his head and drank.
“Looky here,” Chucky said, her eyes squinting, as she tilted her head toward the front door.
A woman walked in. Her black heels clacked against the concrete floor. She wore a tan overcoat covering a black skirt suit. Her long legs bare beneath the hem of the jacket. She was tall and she was white, but when she came up to the bar, her elbows propped on the counter next to Juan Antonio, she said with hardly an accent, “Un menú por favor.” She pulled a handkerchief from her coat pocket and dabbed the beads of sweat gathering at her dark-brown hairline.
Chucky pulled the collar of her tank top to cover up her cleavage. “Perdón,” she said. “We don’t got no menu. We got beers, y te puedo hacer un drink.”
“Que vinos tintos tienen?” the woman asked.
“We don’t got no wines.”
Juan Antonio drank his Bud Light and tried to keep his eyes fixed forward, but he couldn’t help but sneak a sideways glance. Her hair was in a tight ponytail. Her perfume was subtle and sweet. It reminded him of the scent Valeria used to wear when they first met, and he felt something close to guilt beating in his chest.
“Chucky makes a good tequila Sprite,” el Míster said. “Échale una de éstas, güey.” He clinked his cocktail with his fingernail.
Chucky rolled her eyes and scooped some ice into a glass.
Juan Antonio raised his voice to speak above them. “Chucky,” he said. “I’m here to say goodbye tonight.”
Chucky looked at el Míster and raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word.
El Míster looked at Chucky, and then he craned his head and talked past Juan Antonio to the white lady at the bar. His breath was warm and the Vicks coming off his mustache was strong. He said to the woman, “It’s nice to see new people here from time to time.”
She hooked her heels on the stool’s footrest and set her leather bag in her lap.
“Aquí estás,” Chucky said, setting the drink on the counter in front of the woman.
She dipped her head toward the glass and sipped the liquid through the straw. She leaned into the backrest, closed her eyes, and sighed.
“Oye, Chucky,” Juan Antonio said. “You’re not gonna see me around no more.”
“I heard you the first time, cabrón.”
“My family’s finally coming.” He made himself smile, hoping the gesture could ease him on the inside.
El Míster craned his neck again and talked past Juan Antonio. “Sandalwood?” he said to the lady.
“Chingado, Míster. Why don’t you just move seats?” Juan Antonio said.
The woman smiled. “Good nose.”
Juan Antonio stood and slapped a couple dollars on the counter. “Tienes feria pa la pianola?”
Chucky opened the register and put eight quarters in his hand.
“You got Bryndis?”
“Go look.” She shrugged.
He pushed the buttons on the jukebox and flipped through the heavy pages of the track list. He caught el Míster’s voice in the corner of his ear: “I’m like a dog,” he said. “When I was a kid, a curandero told me it was a gift from God, but that sometimes it would feel like a curse from hell.”
Juan Antonio rolled his eyes. He’d heard el Míster use that line before. The jukebox didn’t have Bryndis, so he pressed the button for a song by Los Bukis, but a Bronco song played instead. The guitar set the gloomy cumbia pattern through the Rock-Ola’s speakers, then the rhythm section tumbled out and rumbled the floor before the dreamy synths took over.
El Míster, who was sitting in the chair next to the woman now, turned to Juan Antonio. “I love the words to this one,” he said.
“Chucky, otra beer.” Juan Antonio took the seat beside el Míster. The voice coming through the jukebox was sad, muddied by the scratchy speakers then washed in the warmth of synthesizers.
El Míster turned to the woman. “Huella means trace but also fingerprints.” He rubbed his thumb against his other digits.
“I know,” the woman said. “That’s why it’s such a good line.”
El Míster laughed. He nodded his head to the thump and tapped his shoes on the footrest.
The woman took a drink of her tequila Sprite and smiled.
“When I was in Monterrey a long time ago,” Juan Antonio said, pointing at the Rock-Ola. “I got hired on a crew to build Bronco’s house. Well, not the house. It was the concrete wall they build before they even start the house. I was with them for a pair of days before I found someone to help me cross. My job was to smash glass bottles on the ground and cement the shards to the top of the wall.” He shook his head. “It’s ugly. A guy like Bronco with broken bottles on his gate.”
“Bronco is a band, Juan,” el Míster said. “Lupe Esparza is the singer.” Then he turned to the woman. “I’ll tell you another thing about you.”
“Pinche Míster,” Juan Antonio muttered under his breath before taking a chug of his beer.
“About me?” The woman asked with a suspicious smile.
Chucky leaned against the liquor shelf and eyed the woman.
“If I’m right, you can return the favor and buy me a drink.”
“If you’re wrong, you can buy me another.” She lifted the glass to her lips and sipped.
The chorus hit. Juan Antonio shut his eyes and took in the words. “Tengo que arrancarla de mi alma y mi ser.” It was like the song was speaking right at him. He would have to forget Manuela. To release the grip she had on him. To make space for his family again.
“You’ll owe me a drink in a second,” el Míster said to the woman. He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and started coughing. “Ey, Chucky, gimme a bar towel.”
“This better be good.” She pulled a folded rag from under the counter. “How many ladies let you get this far in your little game?”
He wiped the Vicks off his upper lip, breathed in deep, and moved his head from side to side. “You have a Mexican maid.” He laughed.
The woman scoffed. “What world do you live in?” she said. “All the maids are Mexican.”
“Pero, don’t you want to know how I know? It’s the bit of Pine Sol on your clothes. You probably told her to calm down with it, but she doesn’t think the house is clean until the whole place smells like it.”
“Okay,” the woman said, mulling it over. “That’s true, but it’s a strong smell. Lots of people could’ve guessed it.”
El Míster took a sip of his drink. The ice clinked in the nearly empty glass. “I’m almost ready for another.” He rubbed his hands together and swallowed up the air around her. “Hm,” he said, turning it over in his mouth.
“Está medio loco,” Juan Antonio said to the woman. “But he was being modest. His nose is better than a dog’s.” He had seen el Míster work this trick on other women. Usually, they made an ugly face when he stuck his nose in the air around them, but he always tried it anyway. “Cómo aprendiste español?” Juan Antonio asked.
“My stepmom is from Juárez.”
“Dangerous place for ladies,” Chucky said. She kept her eyes on the woman.
El Míster exhaled, and the words spilled from his mouth. “You don’t live in the city. You live out in the suburbs,” he said. “The Pine Sol was confusing, cause there’s real pine somewhere there, something green and spicy. You live up north—the Woodlands. Maybe Cypress. There’s a little bit of cigarette in there but not too much. You either used to smoke and the smell still lives with you, or you live with somebody who smokes.”
The suspicious smile that she had worn faded, and her face drooped. The frown lines around her mouth ran deep. “Are you fucking with me?” She switched to English.
El Míster took another gulp of air.
The woman looked at Juan Antonio and then at Chucky. “Is this a joke.”
“There’s some spicy food in there, too. Maybe Indian. Maybe African,” el Míster said. “But I don’t smell it when you talk and it’s nowhere on your breath.” He thought for a second. Then he snapped his fingers. “That was you in the yellow cab!”
“Why would you take a cab out to el Gallo?” Juan Antonio said.
El Míster pulled the Vicks out from his pocket and reapplied it on his upper lip. “Did I get it right, o qué?”
She stood from the stool, folded her arms around herself, and looked all around the bar. “Did he put you up to this?” she asked.
“What?” el Míster said.
“Don’t act like you don’t know. That’s his car out there.” She pointed toward the front door.
Juan Antonio’s eyes went wide, and he felt a jolt of exhilaration course through him like he was watching a freight train derail. It was a mix he felt—of sadness for her and for himself and for her husband and for Valeria.
“Is there a secret room somewhere in the back?” she asked.
Chucky was calm. There was no surprise at all in her face, in her narrow eyes.
“Are you his buddies? Do you sit here all together and drink and smoke and laugh at how stupid your wives must be?”
“I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” Juan Antonio said.
El Míster put his hands up. “And I ain’t even married.”
Chucky stepped out from behind the counter.
The woman walked toward jukebox and put one hand on the metal door beside it.
Chucky walked fast from behind the bar and wedged herself between the woman and the door. “Cálmate, muchacha. Or we’re going to have a problem.”
“Why should I be calm? I could call the cops and shut you down.”
“Look,” Chucky said, flattening her back against the door. When she straightened, she was tall. She loomed over the woman. Her square jaw was tight. “I could tell you fuera, or I could grab you by your greñas and drag you through the door. But I won’t do that. Some good girls make their living here.”
The woman’s fists were clenched and her eyes, unblinking, bore through Chucky’s mass and watched the big red door.
“If you followed your man because you had to know,” Chucky said. “I can tell you it’s exactly what you think it is. But you’re not gonna make no scene. Your viejo sometimes talks. I know what kind of work y’all do. If somebody shows up trying to shut us down, you got just as much to lose as him.”
She tried to sidestep Chucky, reaching her arm around her, swiping at the doorknob, but Chucky put her hands on the woman’s shoulders, moving her aside and holding her in place. The woman tensed and tried to pull away.
“Look,” Chucky said, holding her. “His time is almost up. I’ll have him leave around the back. He won’t ever know that you were here, and you can deal with it however you’re gonna deal with it away from this place. If you so much as knock on this door, you’ll have trouble. Stay here for a while. Drink your drink and cry your tears. And when you leave tonight, I don’t ever want to see you here again.”
Chucky’s strength overwhelmed her and finally, the woman gave in under the weight of Chucky’s arms.
“Better you find out while you’re still pretty.” Chucky turned the knob and disappeared behind the slam of the metal door.
The woman walked back to the bar and leaned forward on the counter next to Juan Antonio and breathed in long and deep.
El Míster stood and walked over to the jukebox.
Juan Antonio snuck a sideways look at the woman and saw the tears running down her cheeks. He couldn’t put Valeria through a thing like this. She would never know about Manuela. He had to end it here tonight. He stood from his chair, walked around the bar, opened two Bud Lights, and sat back down. “Chucky won’t be mad about the beer,” he said, sliding a bottle in front of the woman.
She spread her palms out and tensed her hands. “I’d like to squeeze my hands around his fat neck,” she said.
“Cómo te llamas?”
She relaxed back in her chair and took a drink. “Linda,” she said.
He laughed. “Bueno, Linda. My strange friend over there’s got a name like yours—Lindolfo, but everybody calls him Míster.”
“Por que Míster?”
“I don’t know,” Juan Antonio said. “Maybe cause he knows a lot of things.”
She crossed her leg over her knee. “Why do men do this?” she asked, waving her hand to take in the bar. “I’ve been a good woman,” she said. “Is your wife a good woman, too?”
Juan Antonio didn’t ask her how she knew that he was married. A piece of him was glad that she could see it, though—that he looked the type. “I’m here to say goodbye,” he said. “It’s been so long, and if everything goes to plan, my family’s finally going to come.”
“Where are they now?”
“The other side. A little rancho by the desert.”
“If you were really going to end it, you wouldn’t be here now,” she said.
Juan Antonio pulled at the Bud Light’s decal with his thumbnail and flicked the moistened paper on the bar. “It’s the right thing to let her know.”
“Why?” she said. “If you pay your money, what else do you owe anybody here?”
Accordion came over the speakers and el Míster sauntered over, his hand stretched toward the woman. “Don’t tell me your norteña stepmom never taught you how to polka.”
Her upper lip quivered. She pressed the bottle to her mouth. Then she took a sip. “You’re a fucking weirdo,” she said. But she took him by the hand, and he led her to the middle of the room, spinning her once between two tables. Her tan coat flared around her thighs. As they danced, the back door opened, and Chucky walked into the bar again. Behind her came Manuela in a rhinestone blouse reflecting purple in the red and blue light.
El Míster led the woman up and down the aisle, turning her, making space between them, and then pulling her close.
Manuela smiled and locked eyes with Juan Antonio. “Cómo está mi Juan?” She wrapped her arms around him as he stood from his chair. She pushed her body into him, her palms spread flat against his back, and she held him. She cradled his head and pulled him down so his chin rested on her shoulder. The crook between her ear and neck was damp, stray hairs matted to her chest. Her smell was sweat—a mix of hers and he didn’t want to think who else’s, but he could not ignore the fancy cologne dripping from her skin. Her blouse was open from the back. There was a grit on her that he could hold onto and grip, a grime that would stick in his fingernails until he washed it out.
Linda’s words pushed their way into Juan Antonio’s brain. Had he really come to say goodbye?
The woman polkaed with el Míster, and with every turn, Juan Antonio caught her eyes. She was looking at Manuela and wondering if Manuela was the one. Of course, she was. She had to be. They looked stiff as they moved around the floor, el Míster trying to lead the woman, and she—trying to crane her neck to catch a glimpse of them pressed up against each other at the bar.
“Why don’t we get outta here?” Manuela said.
Juan Antonio took her hand. All her heat slipped into his body through her palm. El Míster turned the woman, and for a fraction of a second, she locked her eyes on Juan Antonio’s. He thought about Valeria. Maybe he could feel his way back to her again. He put a hand between him and Manuela. “I can’t come here anymore,” he said.
“Ay, Juan.”
“My family’s going to be here soon. El Míster’s going to drive them up for me. I even have a daughter on the way.”
Manuela put her hand on him, caressing his face.
“You’re not upset?” As he spoke the words, he realized that he’d hoped she would be. That she would be angry. That she would shout and cry and pound her fists against his chest.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said.
“That’s all?”
“I like you, Juan. But when my viejo gets out of jail, I’m his again, too. You see?”
Manuela gripped and squeezed his hands and kissed him on the mouth, the minty funk of menthols on her breath. She walked toward the blinking jukebox. It played a country song. She opened the back door, and she was gone.
Juan Antonio sat, finishing his beer.
Chucky tapped the counter in front of him with her knuckle. “We’ll be here when you come back.”
El Míster and the woman two-stepped now. The steel guitar mewled. The woman had relaxed, and she let el Míster dance her. She spun, her shoes gliding on the shiny concrete.
When he caught el Míster ’s eyes, Juan Antonio held up his hand. “I’m walking,” he said.
El Míster nodded.
“Oye, Juan,” Chucky started to say.
He waved her off. “Just put my drinks on el Míster’s tab.”
Outside, rain drizzled on the concrete and splashed into a hazy mist, blurring out the image of the golden rooster on the wall. Juan Antonio wished he’d gotten drunker than he was. The train was rumbling across the street. Behind it was the same clunker from earlier lying, crushed, inside the baler’s jaw. The snuffed-out cigarette was still in the parking spot next to el Míster’s car and the Oso Negro right behind it. He picked up the bottle and walked home down Navigation. Behind the boarded-up cantinas and the closed-down storehouses, the freighter sliced through the empty fields along the water. In the channel, there were ships with flags from all around the world. There was a storage facility where they sucked cement from barges and sent it into round containers. In the night they were all lit up, and the metal gleamed, pregnant with the gray adhesive dust. In just three months, Juan Antonio’s daughter, Magda, would be born.
Juan Antonio didn’t know Manuela had a husband. He had known hardly anything about her, but now he knew that she was only at el Gallo because her man had got locked away and left her all alone. It occurred to him that all these years Valeria had also been alone, and Juan Antonio knew what that could do. The things that loneliness could justify. He pictured Magdalena, growing in Valeria’s stomach. Was she even his? He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath in to calm his nerves and push the thought out of his head. The air tasted something strange. Is that what el Míster was talking about earlier? Could Juan Antonio smell it too? He breathed in again, but all he got this time was the cool, sprinkling rain.
The thought plowed into him again, punched him in the gut. It nauseated him. Could it be? He put the Oso Negro bottle to his lips and tried to coax another drop of liquor onto his tongue, but whatever little had pooled at the bottom just spread across the length of glass and no drops came. The freighter trudged beside him, and he chucked the bottle by its neck across the road and it shattered against a boxcar wall.
When he got home, his clothes were soaked with rain. He washed his face at the kitchen sink and, with a warm damp towel, scrubbed Manuela’s scent from around his neck. The house was still so empty. He imagined Valeria lying at the edge of their king-size bed. She’d be sleeping there next week, her belly rising with every breath. Juanito would sleep in the front room. His radio would be whispering at night.
Juan Antonio went back outside and sat in a wicker chair at the edge of the porch, raindrops ticking on the metal awning, and he reached his hand to catch the rain. The streetlamp shone through the Magnolia tree up front. The warm breeze ruffled the leaves, and something shifted in the canopy. Perhaps it was a grackle sleeping in the middle branches of the tree. Metal pipes clanked in the machine shops across the street. Trucks revved up the Navigation overpass. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned. The streetlight’s orange glow caught against his rain-slicked skin, and until he nodded off, he watched himself shine.
Juan Fernando Villagómez is a writer from Houston, TX. His work has appeared in Texas Monthly, American Short Fiction, The Cincinnati Review, and Desperate Literature’s Eleven Stories. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has received support from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the Community of Writers, the Willapa Bay Artist Residency, the Macondo Workshop, the Community of Writers at Olympic Valley and the Sewanee Writers Conference. He holds an MFA in fiction from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas in Austin. He lives with his dog, Abba, and two cats, Brick and Ghost.