Cancelado

Cancelado

Al Sim

1

August brought heavy storms that pelted the great valley. With the earth already full from the rains that came in the final days of July, the arroyos and washes ran every time the clouds opened and the Río Huérfano rose up into the brush along its banks. A canopy of green spread across the bosque, floating atop the old forest near and along the river. Green engulfed the long rows of fruit trees in the narrow orchards of the old village. Green flooded the village fields and yards, where the stands of cottonwoods rose like green clouds floating atop crooked brown pillars. And green lines of scrub framed the village lanes and the arroyos and washes and the acequia.

When the clouds parted late on the first Friday afternoon in that stormy August, as evening crept over the rim of the great valley, all the wet green leaves glistened in the low slanting sunlight. And through the low golden light and the dewy green verdancy of that rich monsoon season in the old village of Los Huertos del Río Huérfano slid a cream-colored Lexus that rolled into Rico’s parking lot and brought a Spanish man and an Anglo woman to the bar.

They were both middle aged but the man was a few years older. He was heavyset and thick-featured, gray at the temples and behind his fleshy ears. He wore a light gray suit of good cloth and a pale blue tie. The woman stood a few inches taller in her high heels. She had small sharp eyes and a long sharp nose and wore a coral-colored silk dress cut tight at the waist and carried a glossy tan leather purse. She hesitated in the doorway while the fat man started across the room. He sat in the middle of the bar and did not look at Rico. The rest of the stools along the bar stood empty. One table out on the floor was occupied by three working Spanish men, their clothes and faces and hands still dirty from a long day on a construction site. Their voices fell silent as the Anglo woman came across the room. Another table held two Anglos, one in dirty work clothes and the other in clean blue jeans and a tee shirt for a rock band. The man in the tee shirt pretended to play guitar along with the twanging lead that came from the county music on the stereo. He and his friend laughed together. Then they fell silent too as the woman in the silk dress sat next to the fat man at the bar.

“Bacardi Solera,” the fat man said. “Straight double.”

His voice was deep and rough. Rico had seen the man a few times before and didn’t need to be told what he drank. In the past the man had come alone and drank by himself, not wanting any conversation from Rico or the other drinkers and not getting any. The woman sat down beside him. Rico put the man’s drink down on the bar and turned to the woman.

“Club soda,” she said.

Rico filled a highball glass with ice and soda, set a wedge of lime on the rim, and placed the drink before the woman in the coral dress. He went down the bar to his usual station and bent over his newspaper.

“I’ll have a drink if I want to,” the heavyset man said.

Rico let his eyes drift up the bar. The Spanish man glared straight ahead and the Anglo woman held her head tilted down. She pitched her voice soft but the acoustics of the big empty room worked against her.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t make a scene.”

“Who’s making a scene? I’m just having a drink.”

He lifted his glass to prove his point. He brought the glass down and said—

“That’s all. Just a drink to take the edge off. So I can stand all those assholes.”

“Those assholes are my sister and her family.”

The man lifted his glass and studied the rum’s color. Rico’s eyes went back to his newspaper. A moment passed with just the sound of the country music on the stereo and the men out on the floor talking quietly. Then the woman leaned close to the fat man and spoke into his ear. Only his deep rough voice carried down the bar.

“Just one drink and we go,” he said.

The woman whispered at him again.

“Yeah, okay,” the man said. “I hear you. Just let me have my drink in peace.”

He sipped his rum.

“It’s the only pleasure I’ll have all evening.”

He sipped again.

“No one will care if we’re a few minutes late. They’ll be happy if we don’t come at all.”

This time the woman raised her voice.

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“Oh-kay. Can you just be quiet already?”

The woman turned away and muttered to herself. The man ignored her and sipped his rum.

Rico put his eyes across the big room and stared at his black metal door while he considered what he had avoided by never marrying. He was grateful for never being part of a scene like the one playing out before him. He had witnessed too many of these from behind the bar and knew that only married couples resented each other with such ferocity. Not even the rings on their fingers said this couple was married as clearly as the displeasure they felt with each other. There is something unique to the seething hostility that can swell up between husband and wife.

A truck pulled up outside, the sound of its diesel engine rattling in through the open windows. The engine died as boots hit gravel and doors banged shut. The black metal front door of Rico’s bar swung open and five work-stained Spanish drywallers straggled in. They were brothers and cousins and they all looked alike, the same height and build and similar features. They smiled and nodded and waved at Rico and took in the well-groomed couple at the bar. At this time of day, finding the Spanish man in his expensive gray suit and the Anglo woman dolled up in her orange silk dress here in Rico’s bar was like coming on a pair of flamingoes surrounded by crows out on the mesa lands. The drywallers took seats around a table in the middle of the room and one of them held up two fingers to Rico.

“Dos cántaros[1],” the man said.

Rico nodded and went up to the taps and pulled two pitchers. He avoided looking at the couple sitting across from him. The man who ordered the pitchers met Rico at the bar, handed over his money, and took the beer back to his table. A second one of the drywallers appeared as Rico was loading glasses onto a tray and indicated he would take them. Rico slid the tray across the bar and the man took it away. Rico glanced at the fighting couple before he went back down the bar and rang up the drywallers’ order. He called across the room to them.

“Tu vuelta[2],” Rico said.

The man who ordered the beer waved their change away and Rico slipped it into his tip jar. Rico moved a step over and stood before his newspaper again. The table of drywallers talked and laughed over their glasses of beer.

The fat man upended his glass and downed the last of his rum. He smacked his glass onto the bar, pulled his wallet from inside his suit jacket, removed a ten dollar bill and slapped it down next to his empty glass, then returned his wallet to his jacket and slid his bulk off his stool and lumbered away across the room. He did not speak to his wife or hold the door open for her exit. She caught the heavy door as it swung shut and stumbled before she slipped out behind him.

“Bastard,” Rico said.

He looked at his black metal door and wondered what event in the family of the woman’s sister brought the sour couple to the old village in dress clothes. A christening? A wake? A wedding? Was anyone married on a Friday night? Rico stared hard across the barroom while he tried to crush the feeling that swelled inside. Thinking about family had become harder as the years added up. Lately Rico felt there must be something wrong with him that he had left the family he was born into behind when he was young and never started a family of his own. He had come to feel that his lifelong bachelorhood meant he was somehow lower and smaller than even this fat man who mistreated his wife before strangers. When the intensity of his feeling had passed, Rico took a deep breath and looked around his barroom and wished the night would come and be gone and all his customers would be gone and he could lock the door and shut off his sign.

And do what? he asked himself. Lie in the darkness and wallow in your sorrow? You have done too much of that already.

Then Rico remembered the photograph from the advertisement for the mariachi group that was lurking within the pages of his waiting newspaper.

She’s just a girl, Rico told himself. Just another beautiful girl who has slipped away.

But this lie made him feel no better. Rico felt heat rise up from his belly. He looked down at the newspaper before him and his face was red and drawn. His heart thudded hard and slow deep within his chest. He had been putting off this decision he must make for too long. Not taking action didn’t mean a decision had been made, no matter how many times he told himself otherwise. He could just be paralyzed with cowardice.

So what will it be, old man?

Rico drew air deep into his lungs and pushed it out hard into the big room. His heart continued to knock against his ribs. He reached out and turned the pages of his newspaper till he found the advertisement and once again that face jumped out at him from the newsprint. He filled his lungs again.

“Time to find out,” Rico said.

He raised his head and his voice rang out in the quiet room—

“Listen up, everybody. I’m closing early tonight. Like right now. Time to settle up and move along.”

Heads swung around in the big room. Men looked at Rico and at each other. No one moved. Rico went down the bar and snapped off the stereo. The room was silent.

“I’m not joking,” Rico said. “Time to go.”

The two Anglo men got to their feet and started for the door. They stopped when one of the Spanish drywallers said—

“What the hell, Rico.”

The drywaller pointed at the half-empty pitcher on the table before him.

“We just got here.”

Rico shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I gotta go.”

He nodded at the sweating pitcher.

“Chug it or lose it.”

He pointed at the door.

“I need everyone out of here in two minutes.”

And in two minutes the room was empty. All that could be heard inside of Rico’s bar was the sound of his key snicking the big deadbolt into place at the black front door.

2

Rain was falling hard when Rico started down Los Huertos Road in his little blue pickup. He wanted to drive his long red convertible but the top leaked when the rain came from the wrong direction. He was dressed in his best suit of a deep charcoal gray, with a crisp white shirt and a garnet red tie. His sharp-toed black boots were freshly polished. His black hair was still wet from the shower when it was wetted again by the pouring rain as he dashed to his truck.

He kept off the highways and took Los Ranchos Boulevard into the city, then side streets down through the University. His destination was a new restaurant in a part of town he hadn’t visited in a number of years. The neighborhood had gentrified as the University spread across the city and now Rico drove slowly down a street lined with shops and restaurants and cafés and bars in the ground floors of the old buildings. Rico remembered news stands and launderettes and luncheonettes, the occasional storefront that somehow said bookie joint, and dark bars that only men went into. Upstairs were apartments, some with black iron railings along narrow balconies that fronted French doors. Rico had been in some of those apartments years ago, at parties and visiting girls. Back then this neighborhood belonged to working people, young adults and new families. Now students and faculty streamed along the sidewalks, ducking under the balconies and awnings to avoid the rain, which fell straight down and steady. Rico wondered what all these students were doing here in the summer. Things had definitely changed. Now the students never left.

The restaurant that advertised the mariachi group occupied the ground floor of a three story building in the middle of a long block. Rico stopped one car back from a delivery truck that was having trouble turning into a narrow alley next to the restaurant. While he waited Rico studied the building’s façade. It was dressed in pale pink stucco and a neon sign spelled out La Fuente Azul in a long blue curve over the arched entranceway. The entranceway was framed in red brick and about twenty feet deep, with red tile on the floor and blue tile up the walls and across the arched ceiling. Black iron gates, pulled back against the blue tile walls, could be closed to shut the entranceway from the street. At the back of the entranceway were wide double doors, glass panels in wood frames. And beyond the doors gleamed an expansive dining room.

Rico wondered if the building had been designed as a hotel, back in the late nineteenth century when this neighborhood was a commercial district. He could picture a uniformed doorman greeting guests as they stepped into the arched vestibule, bowing slightly as the doorman pulled open the glass paneled doors. Rico looked up at the top two stories and could imagine apartments formed by cutting through walls to link hotel rooms together. Maybe he had even been in one of those apartments years ago, when he ran around town as a young man.

And here he was running around town again.

“This is a fool’s errand,” Rico said.

And hoped it wasn’t true. He started drumming on his steering wheel. Finally the truck made its turn and Rico continued down the block. He found an empty parking spot a few doors past the restaurant, locked his cab and dashed through the rain to the sidewalk. He joined the pedestrian throng skirting under the balconies and awnings. A young man jostled him and girls laughed. A professor’s wife let her eyes follow Rico down the street. Rico ducked into the restaurant’s entranceway and used his fingers to push the rain through his hair. He shook the rain from his fingers and stepped through the glass paneled doors and into the thrumming room.

The crowd was lively. Laughter came often and danced along the top of a hundred voices. The red tile from the vestibule continued inside and spread across the wide deep room in all directions. The walls and linens were white. White columns rose to a high tinned ceiling, restored to its original near-silver sheen. The captain’s station, a simple dark wood podium, was centered between the first pair of columns, about ten feet inside the doors. Along the back wall of the sizable room, a stage rose about two feet from the floor.

Next to the captain’s station was a poster on an easel. And on the poster was the same photograph of the mariachi group that appeared in the newspaper advertisement, the photograph that brought Rico to this restaurant on this monsoon-soaked evening. But here, on the easel, the photograph of the group that called itself Los Corchos Rojos[3] was enormous and in color. And looking at this enormous color photograph, Rico was finally and absolutely certain that the girl standing on the left side, slightly behind the principal members of the group, was the same beautiful girl that had come to his bar and left with his heart and soul.

Rico’s eyes kept going back to the poster while he waited in line to be seated. His throat was tight and dry and his belly felt hollow. Then the line before him was gone and he was standing in front of the captain, a small fine-boned young Spanish man with piercing black eyes.

“Good evening, sir,” the captain said.

Rico swallowed hard.

“Good evening,” Rico croaked.

“Do you have a reservation this evening, sir?”

Rico swallowed hard again.

“No.”

The captain flashed a look that was not lost on Rico. A single diner costs you money when your restaurant is full. You lose half a deuce, half the check from a table for two. Which makes the waiter you stick with the single diner unhappy. Waiters can be a petulant and troublesome lot. An unhappy waiter can make a captain’s shift miserable. The captain looked past Rico to the diners waiting behind him.

“Will you be meeting someone this evening, sir?”

“Not exactly,” Rico said.

Rico put on his game smile. The captain noticed.

This one is good, Rico thought.

“There is a young lady performing here tonight.”

He had the captain’s full attention now.

“Yes sir. One of the mariachis.”

“Could you possibly seat me near the stage?”

Rico put a hand on the edge of the podium. A folded twenty dollar bill was tucked between his knuckles. The captain’s eyes went down to the bill, then across to his seating book.

“Preferably at a table where she will see me,” Rico said.

The captain smiled down at his book, then he looked up and smiled at Rico.

“She is very beautiful,” the captain said. “She took a solo last night—”

The captain smiled and shook his head.

“Incredible.”

Rico felt heat in his cheeks. He nodded slowly. The captain looked down at his book again.

“I am strong believer in romance,” the captain said. “It’s an honor to assist you.”

Rico nodded once, then he removed his hand from the podium. The captain made a mark in his book, then he stepped away from his station and escorted Rico across the big room. Rico had noted that the captain remained at his station till now, sending the diners to their tables with one of his two assistants. A waiter noted the captain walking past and took a long look at Rico.

I’m getting the treatment, Rico thought. And he didn’t even take the money.

This seemed a good omen and Rico’s heart and spirits lifted. At the table he shook the captain’s hand and pushed the bill into the young man’s palm.

“Take it,” Rico said. “Spend it on some romance of your own.”

The captain smiled broadly. He bowed his head at Rico.

“In that spirit, sir, I will. Thank you.”

Then the captain stepped away and Rico took his seat at the edge of the stage. A Spanish waiter arrived and Rico ordered a drink. When the drink came he ordered dinner. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the mariachi to begin.

3

A half hour passed. Now the room was completely full and roaringly loud. A plate of fish cooled before Rico. He was unable to eat. No one watching him would have known what Rico felt. He sat at his table and sipped his drink as if he had no troubles in all the world.

Another fifteen minutes passed. The waiter appeared at Rico’s elbow.

“Is your dinner not to your liking, sir?”

Rico smiled and shook his head.

“No, it’s fine. Delicious. I’m just not hungry. Do you know when the mariachi will begin?”

The waiter looked at the stage.

“You are here to see the mariachi, sir?”

“Yes.”

The waiter frowned.

“Usually they have started by now.”

He turned back to Rico and raised a finger.

“One moment sir and I will find out.”

He left. A few minutes later he was back. He was frowning again.

“I am sorry, sir. Tonight there will be no mariachi.”

Rico was silent. His expression was remote. The waiter hovered for a moment, then gestured toward Rico’s plate.

“Would you like to take your dinner home, sir?”

Rico looked at his food, then shook his head.

“No. Thank you.”

The waiter bowed and left. Rico slowly reached for his drink, lifted the glass and drained it. He put the glass down but clutched it for a moment longer. Then he stood, sending his chair rattling across the red tile, and took out his wallet. He counted a few bills and left them on the table. He put his wallet away and ambled across the big room, looking from side to side, surveying the crowd, holding his chin up. More than a few women watched his progress. So did a few men.

The captain called to Rico as he passed the dark wood podium.

“My apologies, sir.”

Rico stopped and turned. He pushed a smile onto his face.

“Two of the mariachis live in Luna Heights,” the captain said. “One of them is the band leader. The road up there’s washed out. I’m sorry. We just got the call a few minutes ago.”

Rico kept his smile going and made his shoulders form a shrug. The captain placed his hand on the edge of the podium and Rico saw the folded twenty between the young man’s fingers.

“I cannot accept this, sir,” the captain said. “We failed to deliver what you asked of us.”

Rico shook his head.

“Through no fault of yours. You don’t make the weather.”

“Please.”

Rico looked at the young man’s face and saw distress in the sharp black eyes.

“My mother would kill me if I took this,” the captain said.

“So give it to charity.”

“She would say that wasn’t good enough.”

Rico saw the depth of feeling in those black eyes and took back his money.

“I hope we’ll see you again, sir,” the captain said.

Rico nodded.

“Sure.”

He looked around at the big room and felt the energy of the crowd.

“You have a great place here,” he said.

“Thank you, sir. We’re very pleased with how the place came together.”

Rico nodded.

“You should be.”

Rico saw there was no line waiting to be seated. The young captain seemed open to conversation and Rico wasn’t sure what waited for him outside alone in the rain and the dark.

“So the rain is bad?” Rico said.

The captain looked out the glass doors toward the street.

“Across the valley, apparently. Up against the mountains.”

Rico looked out at the street.

“Where are you going, sir?” the captain said.

Rico turned back to the captain and canted his head toward Los Huertos.

“Up the valley.”

“I think you should be fine then.”

Rico nodded and took another look around at the big white room.

“Are the investors local?” he said.

He wondered if the owners were anyone he knew.

“No sir. The investors are from Los Angeles.”

California money, Rico thought. They have more than they know what to do with.

He looked at the captain.

“And you?”

“San Diego, sir. I worked for the investors there.”

Rico nodded and looked around the room again.

“How do you like Corchojo?” he said.

“Very much. I’ve always liked the desert.”

“How do you like the monsoons?”

The captain grinned.

“I love it, sir.”

Rico smiled and nodded.

“You’ll do all right here then.”

The captain allowed himself to laugh.

“Thanks. I’m glad to hear you think so.”

Rico’s smile widened.

“You had doubts?”

The captain shook his head.

“Oh no, sir. I feel at home here. But I do miss my family.”

“Where you born in San Diego?”

The captain shook his head.

“Honduras. We moved to the States when I was two.”

Rico nodded. He had run out of questions. He waited to see if the captain had anything to say.

“Where you born in Corchojo, sir?” the captain said.

Rico shook his head.

“Las Tumbas.”

The captain made a polite frown.

“It’s down south,” Rico said. “At the far end of the valley.”

The captain nodded. His frown faded away.

“May I ask your name, sir?”

“Rico Lupe.”

“Señor Lupe, if I can ever be of service.”

The captain reached under the top of the podium and brought out a business card. He handed the card to Rico and Rico looked down at the name printed across it. He smiled at the captain.

“Thank you, Carlos,” Rico said.

“My pleasure.”

Rico tilted his head toward the north.

“If you’re ever up in Los Huertos, stop in at my place. You can’t miss it. It says ‘Rico’s’ in big red neon.”

The captain smiled.

“You have a place of your own.”

Rico nodded.

“It’s a neighborhood bar. Nothing fancy.”

The captain bowed toward Rico.

“Thank you for the invitation, Señor Lupe. If my employers ever let me leave, I’ll make a point of coming up to Los Huertos.”

Rico laughed and offered his hand and the captain shook it. Then fresh wet diners came in through the glass doors and the captain was busy again. Before he left, Rico turned for a last look at the poster on the easel. A piece of white paper was taped over the photograph of the mariachi group. The beautiful young woman was hidden. Scrawled across the paper in black magic marker was a single word:

CANCELADO[4]

Rico blinked at this message and felt all his years pressing against him.

You’re running out of time, he told himself.

Rico stepped through the glass doors and went out through the arched vestibule into the rain. He didn’t bother with the awnings and balconies. He found his little blue truck and tumbled into the driver’s seat. He wrestled his key ring from his pants pocket and stabbed the key for the truck into the ignition. Then Rico sat hunched forward, staring at the figures passing by, their forms blurred by the rain flooding against his windshield, the sound of his keys swinging from the ignition marking a steady tinkling beat against the deeper rhythm of the rain.

“Almost out of time,” Rico said.

Then he reached out and turned the key.

4

A traffic light stopped Rico at the end of the next block. He looked around the intersection and realized he had once dated a waitress who lived in the building to his left. She had long slinky brown legs and when she was happy she liked to lay on her back and kick those long legs up in the air. Rico wondered if she ever married, if she ever had kids, if she was still kicking those long slinky legs. He tried to remember her name and couldn’t. He tried to remember her face and couldn’t do that either. He could only remember her legs dancing in the air.

“Damn,” Rico said. “That’s not right.”

He brought his eyes forward again and looked out across the intersection. The light turned green and he moved his foot from the brake to the gas. The quickest way home was to the right. Rico turned left. He realized the rain had stopped when his wipers started to squeak. He turned them off, turned off the defogger, and rolled down his window. When he pulled up at the next traffic light, he reached across the cab and rolled down the other window too. He looked around this intersection and realized that he had dated another waitress who lived here, in the building at the far corner. He couldn’t remember her name or face either, just that she was small and buxom and had wavy hair and that he found her scent displeasing. He shook his head and frowned.

“Damn,” he said again.

Again the light changed and again he was moving. Rico drove across the city and remembered when he was a young man with time and money to waste. The women and girls had been numerous and willing. Rico had believed that somewhere and somehow in that endless party he would meet a good and wonderful woman, fall deeply in love, marry harmoniously, and have happy beautiful children. Now many years had come and gone and a few good women had found their way into his life but love had never followed. And he had loved a few women who were not good. His years were chasing him down but he still lived the same life he started all those years ago. He was still tall and handsome and charming and still had money in his pocket. The women and girls, some good and some bad, still came and went. His life was still a party without end and now he felt there was nothing in his life to celebrate. The party went on and on for no reason.

And Rico was tired. He was tired of opening and closing his bar. He was tired of waking up next to strange women. He was tired of searching new faces for the one that would unlock his heart. He had seen that face and seen it vanish. He had chased that face down here into the city and sat alone in a crowd at the edge of an empty stage and that face had left him waiting. That face had left him feeling old and broken and useless.

Blocks came and went. Wet streets slid under his tires. Rico drove more through the past than the present. He saw the beautiful young woman in his bar and imagined her there in the mariachi outfit she wore in the photograph. She opened her mouth to sing and nothing came out. He saw old faces he hadn’t remembered in years and suddenly there was the face of the waitress with the long slinky brown legs. A long face with a wide happy mouth and far apart eyes. Then the face was gone and he wasn’t sure if he had really remembered it or just made up a new one.

“Damn, you’re losing it,” Rico said.

He leaned his head toward his open window and hoped the cool wet air would restore his senses. And he drove on and the memories flooded through him again.

Rico wasn’t aware of his destination till he was almost there. He had driven across the city to the east side of the University and was pointed north on a side street. Then he saw the mouth of the little alleyway up ahead and his heart shuddered at where his impulses had brought him.

Okay, he thought. You came here for some reason.

He parked out on the street and spent a moment debating the wisdom of walking down that alleyway and into his past. Then he rolled up his windows, climbed out onto the pavement that was glossy black from the rain, locked his doors and started up the block. When he turned into the alleyway, Rico stopped to absorb how little had changed in thirty years. Fresh paint and fresh stucco, plastic trash cans instead of metal. The two rows of garages, three apiece, still faced each other. There was still a light with a tin crown mounted high on the eaves of the second garage on the left, a wooden building that was still painted gray. At the end, the short alleyway still opened into a cul-de-sac.

And when he stepped into that cul-de-sac, Rico saw that on the left there was still a little adobe cottage. And just like all those years before, a small table lamp with a red shade glowed in one of the two front windows along the shallow porch. The flesh on the back of Rico’s neck rose and prickled. He stopped in the middle of the cul-de-sac and stared at the glowing lamp.

Thirty years had gone where? Thirty years since the impossibly vital Alma Galván lived in this adobe cottage and grabbed hold of Rico’s spirit and sex and twisted him and his life into a painful knot. Followed by thirty years of other women and other women’s dramas. And now the powerful Alma—the godhead of all his female troubles—was dead. Dead and gone and in all those thirty years he had never seen anyone like her again. She was an original in a world of fakes. Cold and cruel and perhaps even demonic. But she imitated no one and obeyed only her own rules.

A door creaked open behind Rico. He turned at the sound and as he turned stepped from a pool of light into shadow. A wooden cottage sat across the cul-de-sac from the adobe where Alma had lived. The front door of this cottage stood open and Rico heard voices inside. A moment later a young couple stepped out onto the porch and into the light cast by a lamp next to the door. The young man was Anglo and the young woman was Asian. The young woman locked the door behind them and the two came across the porch and made their out between two bushes and turned down the alleyway, talking quietly as they went. They did not see Rico standing in the shadows at the center of the cul-de-sac.

“It’s like, I don’t know,” the young woman said. “It’s like we never even knew him.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“How could he do that to her?”

“I have no idea.”

The young man put his arm around the young woman’s shoulders.

“I really liked him,” the young woman said.

“Yeah. Me too. I thought he was a good guy.”

The timbre of their voices changed as the moved into the channel between the two rows of opposing garages. The young woman looked up at the night sky and her black hair shimmered in the yellow light cast by the tin-crowned lamp on the eaves of the garage that was still painted gray.

“It’s a strange night,” the young woman said. “Things that happened years ago seem like yesterday.”

The young man looked up, then he kissed the young woman on the cheek.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said.

Rico watched the young couple till they reached the mouth of the alley and turned north and were gone. He kept his eyes down the alleyway for a moment longer, staring out at the street, at the rectangle of gleaming wet asphalt that he could see beyond the sidewalk. A streetlamp off to one side, out of sight, cast a spectrum across the oily surface of the black pavement. Then Rico blinked and turned slowly back to the adobe cottage and its lamp glowing in the window under a red shade. He looked at the cottage and the lamp and tried to convince himself that the young Asian woman had told him the true source of his disturbed mood, that all which plagued him were simply the effects of a strange night upon his troubled heart and mind, a night that made distant events and feelings seem impossibly close and real. Then Rico sighed and shook his head slowly in the dark wet night.

“Bullshit,” Rico said. “It’s all bullshit.”

5

The rain started again, softly now, while Rico idled at the first traffic light he met going north across the city. He turned his wipers on low and left his windows down. Rico looked up at the red lamp glowing over the intersection and noted that this traffic light didn’t exist thirty years ago. He brought his eyes back down and looked to his left and saw a young Spanish couple appear at the street corner. They stopped and turned to face each other, holding hands and swinging their arms together between them. Then the boy took his girl in a deep romantic kiss. Rico was grateful they didn’t engage in the pornographic mauling today’s kids seemed to favor. As they kissed, the boy slowly bent the girl back into a deep dip, till finally their lips parted and the girl’s laughter came across the gleaming wet night and into the cab of Rico’s truck. He watched and smiled when the boy joined his girl in laughing. The boy pulled his girl back onto her feet, then they put their arms around each other and crossed in front of Rico’s truck. The boy was talking and the girl had a broad smile on her pretty young face.

The light changed and Rico continued north. He saw the mariachi poster mounted on the easel in his mind, then saw himself seated next to the empty stage, saw those long slinky brown legs from long ago kicking in the air, saw the lamp in Alma’s old window, saw the young couple walking away down the alley, saw the young Spanish couple kissing in the sweet light rain on the glistening wet street corner. Rico turned left at the next intersection, toward the raised highway that ran north and south through the city. He pointed his car along the shining black streets and resolved to let fate run its course. He asked himself why he thought he deserved the love of the beautiful young mariachi. And he told himself that if she was even half the woman she seemed to be, she deserved far better than a broken-down old barkeep.

If I was meant to be with this woman, Rico thought, then we would be together already.

Up on the raised highway, Rico reached to the center of his dashboard and switched on the radio. The tuner was set to a classic rock station and when power hit the circuits the Zombies sang out—

¯ …she’s not there!¯

Rico wished he could laugh.

“Yeah, she wasn’t there all right,” Rico said.

He didn’t wait for The Zombies to sing their title phrase again. He reached out and pushed the next button on the tuner and mariachi came spilling out of the speakers and filled the cab of the little truck. Rico shook his head as trumpets built up a fanfare and the guitarrón thumped. When the guitars and violins joined in, Rico snapped the radio off. He leaned his head toward the open window of his little blue truck and filled his lungs with the damp air and remembered when he could enjoy the good smell of the desert night after the rain.

The highway went fast and soon Rico exited and turned west across the great valley. Then the river went beneath him, under the concrete and steel bridge on Route 418, and Rico turned his little truck into Los Huertos Road. Rico felt fully defeated by the events of the night when he saw his darkened sign over his empty parking lot. He had thrown good customers out and more good customers had come to find his door locked and nothing good had come of it. The rain started hard again as Rico turned into Carril Canario. He swung his little truck into his lot and went past the bar and around back and parked before his old wooden garage with the big swinging double doors, a carriage house built a century before. He stepped out into the pouring rain and walked with his head down to the back door of the bar. He pulled out his keys and let himself into the storeroom. He moved through the dark and pushed through the door that led out into his barroom. He went down along the bar and found the lights and switched them on.

Everything was as he left it. The pitchers and glasses left by the paying customers he had thrown out still sat on the tables. On the bar in front of the taps were the empty tumblers he had filled for the fat man and his wife. A crushed wedge of lime floated in the melted ice that filled the bottom third of the woman’s glass. Rico wondered when she had emptied her drink. Between their bickering and their quick exit, it didn’t seem she had time. He remembered how the fat man had insulted his wife’s family and wondered how the rest of their evening went, after they left Rico’s bar for the event that had them in dress clothes. He couldn’t imagine that terms improved between them. Rico looked at their dirty glasses and recalled that the unhappy couple and their ugliness where what sent him into the city chasing after the beautiful mariachi. If the fat man hadn’t dragged his sharp-nosed wife into Rico’s bar for a quick and bitter drink, Rico would have been saved his fool’s errand.

“What a bitched-up night,” Rico said.

He looked at the glassware out on the tables and resolved to give the men he had chased away a free round when he saw them next. Then he stepped down the bar and found his newspaper still spread out across the bar top. He folded it carefully and took it with him as he made his way back out of the bar, flicking off the lights as he went, moving through the dark again. He tucked the newspaper under his damp suit jacket and pinned it against his ribs with one arm and locked the back door behind him. Then he angled across his property to his little adobe house waiting back in the corner under the tall cottonwoods.

Rico brought his keys out again and let himself in. He stepped into his house and pushed the door shut, then brought the newspaper out from under his jacket as he moved to a set of bookshelves in the living room. He reached to a high shelf and brought down a boxed volume an old resident of Los Huertos had given him years before, when the aged gentleman knew he was dying. Rico carried the boxed book and the newspaper into his kitchen and placed both on the table. He slipped out of his damp jacket and draped it over the back of one of his tall wooden chairs. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his long white shirtsleeves and rolled them up to his elbows. He slipped the book from its box and looked at the cover—Tales from the Spanish by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. He had read the book over a long weekend once, when he was off fishing up in Los Pilares del Cielo, savoring each page and remembering the fine old gentleman who had given him the book.

Rico opened it now midway and laid the open book on the table. He stepped to the counter and opened a drawer next to the sink and brought out an old pair of long gray shears with handles that were painted black. He stepped back to the table and put the shears down and opened the newspaper and turned the pages till he found the photograph of the mariachi group. Then he slowly and carefully clipped the photograph from the newspaper. He put the shears down on the table and stood over the open book and edged the clipping into the seam where the open pages met. He closed the book gently and slipped it back inside its box. Then he carried the boxed book with the piece of newsprint between its pages into his living room and returned the book to its place high on his shelves. He stood with his fingers along the spine of the book for a moment, then Rico turned and crossed his living room and stepped out the front door and into the pouring rain. He looked up through the cottonwoods at the gray clouds piled high above the dark valley. A fat cold drop of rain plunged into his eye. Rico blinked and wiped the rain away. He opened his mouth and let the cold rain wet his tongue.

“Tonight I am done,” Rico said.

Lightning blazed off to the south and thunder came crashing up the valley. The rain poured down, rattling off the leaves of the cottonwoods and across the roof of the adobe cottage. Soon Rico Lupe’s drenched white shirt clung to his broad shoulders, glowing oddly in the darkness of the storm.