Читать книгу Perdido - Rick Collignon - Страница 8

WILL WALKED THROUGH the door of Felix’s Café at seven A.M. and the place looked to him as it did every other morning. The same group of regulars was crowded noisily at one table in the middle of the room, and off to the far side, by himself and as still as stone, was Felix García. Felix had suffered a stroke two years earlier, severe enough to prevent his ever again flipping an egg or spitting in the beans, which is what he used to say gave his frijoles their special flavor.

Will had heard that on the morning of Felix’s stroke, he and his son, Pepe, were preparing beans with garlic and cilantro when Felix turned to Pepe and, without any expression on his face, said, “Your mother’s breasts, hijo, are the reason I cook so well.” As Felix had always been a quiet man with little sense of humor and his wife, who had been dead for nine years, had not seemed to possess especially remarkable breasts, what Felix said startled not only Pepe but everyone in Guadalupe when they were told. After saying this, Felix’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the kitchen floor, where he lay on his side with his face pressed against the linoleum.

Pepe now cooked alone in the kitchen. Each morning, he would dress his father and they would walk together to the café, where the old man would sit all day by himself. Will no longer came to the café as often as he once did, but when he did, he would glance over at Felix, whose eyes were always open and staring, his shoulders now frail and hunched, and Will would wonder about the last words he had spoken and what was going on now inside the old man’s mind.

The conversation at the large table quieted when Will came through the door. About half the men had just come off their shift at the copper mine. The other half were there to talk until the coffee drove them outside to work. Will nodded and then went to their table when Lloyd Romero waved him over. Lloyd took Will’s hand and pulled it close to his chest. The man sitting next to Lloyd said good morning and moved his chair over to give Will room.

“Qué pasa, Will?” Lloyd said. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” The table was littered with coffee cups. Cigarette butts smoldered in the ashtray. “Where’ve you been?”

Will knelt down beside the chair, his hand still in Lloyd’s. “We’ve been busy, Lloyd.” He looked toward the kitchen. “Did Lisa come in this morning?”

“You get that job across the valley?” Lloyd asked, pulling Will’s hand closer to his chest.

“No. It didn’t work out. It’s too far, anyway. Five hours on the road.”

Lloyd looked across the table. In a loud voice he said, “I remember Will the first day he came here. He stops me out on the highway and asks, ‘Is this Albuquerque?’” The guys across the table smiled. One of them said, “How’s it going, Will?” Will shrugged okay.

“I tell him, ‘Yes, this is the outskirts of Albuquerque,’” Lloyd went on, “’the rest of the city is over the hill.’” Lloyd looked back at Will and squeezed his hand. “You remember, no?”

“Yes, Lloyd,” Will said and smiled. “I remember.”

What he remembered was driving down the highway nearly twenty years ago and running into Lloyd Romero at a gas station. When he asked how far it was to the next town, Lloyd told him to get his ass out of here, that Guadalupe didn’t want people like him around. A couple of miles down the road, the engine in Will’s truck blew. He had sat on the side of the highway wondering what to do next until finally he walked back to Guadalupe. Eighteen years later, he was still in this village and had come to think he would never leave.

“You know, Lloyd,” Will said, pulling his hand free and standing up, “you haven’t changed since that first day we met.”

Lloyd laughed and put his hand on Will’s arm. “You’re okay, Will, you know. Come by my house later. We’ll drink a few beers.” He scraped his chair back and stood up, rattling off a string of Spanish Will didn’t understand. The men at the table laughed and then gathered up their cigarettes and hats. They threw some coins on the table, nodded good-bye to Will, and headed out the door.

Will sat down at a table by the window. The sun had not yet risen above the mountains. He looked out on the highway and, beyond that, on most of the village of Guadalupe. The town sat in a small valley, the road rimming it on the west and the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east. Houses and sheds and old corrals were scattered throughout, and fields of alfalfa were everywhere. The creek ran thick with juniper and cottonwoods through the center of the valley. Smaller ditches branched off it that fed water to the fields. Up close to the foothills, he could make out the flat ground of the baseball field, but the trees just beyond grew too tall for Will to see his house. The town was quiet. There was no breeze to stir up the dust, not much traffic on the highway.

Will heard the kitchen door swing open, and when he looked over he saw Lisa. She was wearing blue jeans and a white blouse tied at the waist instead of tucked in. She began cleaning up the mess at the center table.

“We’re closed,” she said.

“Lisa,” Will said, “I didn’t know you’d be at the field. You should have driven over.”

She straightened up, a dishrag in her hand. Will could see skin between her shirt and her jeans. “Shit you didn’t,” she said, pointing the dishrag at him. “I see you there every week. You think I don’t have better things to do than sit and smile at a bunch of borrachos with baseball mitts?” She glared at him and then bent over and wiped some more at the table.

Will lit a cigarette. He thought it was good that everyone had left the café. He knew Lisa was not one to be quiet even in a crowd. “Come on,” he said. “Sit down. We’ll drink some coffee.”

Lisa didn’t answer. She was throwing cups into a plastic container as if they were made of steel. She gave a final swipe at the table and kicked the chairs back in place. Then she straightened up and stared at Will. “Who needs it?” she said and turned and went back into the kitchen.

Will smoked most of his cigarette before she came back out with a pot of coffee and two cups. She sat down across from him, filled both cups, and slid the pot off to the side.

“I mean it, Will,” she said, leaning toward him. “It makes me crazy. All my life I watched my mother. Cooking and cleaning forever. Raising children by herself with my father always gone. And even when he was home, none of us wanted him there. So don’t even think this is just a little thing.” She leaned back in her chair and picked up her cup, cradling it in her hands. She smiled. “If you do it again, Will, I’ll have Mundo shoot you.”

Will had met Lisa in the middle of January, the past winter. He had asked her how it was that in a place so small he had never seen her before, and she told him it was just his bad luck. She and her family had lived in Guadalupe forever, and she was not one to hide herself. She told him that she had one brother and that his given name was Joaquin, but everyone in Guadalupe called him Mundo. Will knew who her brother was, and he also knew that he was someone to stay away from. He had heard the stories about Mundo. About the fights that would always start for no reason. The time Mundo had shot at someone for talking wrong and the bullet had ricocheted off a car bumper and struck Mundo in the shoulder. The untold number of truck accidents from which Mundo would crawl away, abandoning the vehicle, and walk back home to Guadalupe. Will had run into him a few times in the years he’d lived here. Even before Will began seeing Lisa, he had always felt a meanness in the air about her brother and also a madness that made Will feel that anything could happen and whatever it was would be unpleasant. He didn’t say anything to Lisa when she told him who her brother was. He couldn’t see Mundo in her face or in the way she moved. But he had come to find something in her that she shared with her brother, a part that looked at the world one way, and if it was askew, it didn’t matter.

It was snowing the morning Will met Lisa, and the roads had not been plowed. He was driving and came across her as she walked home from the café. No one was out but the two of them. He slowed the truck alongside her and rolled down the window to ask if she wanted a ride. Without looking at him, she said, “I know you.”

Snow was snaking across the road, and everything was white. Will, who had no idea what this girl was talking about, asked again if she wanted a ride home. She stopped walking and faced him. Her arms were wrapped around her body, and beneath the large wool hat she was wearing, her face was burnt a dark red from the wind. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked him.

“Do what?”

She climbed into the truck, and just a little way down the road she took his hand and brought it to her face. He could feel how cold her skin was. “Take me somewhere,” she said to him.

Now, she reached forward and put her cup back on the table. “Mundo gets mad when people mess with the family.”

“Lisa,” Will said, “you’d shoot me yourself before you’d ask your brother.”

She laughed and then rose from her chair, leaned across the table, and placed her mouth against his. Will could taste chile and syrup on her breath. “That’s right, Will,” she said. “I would. So don’t do this again.” She pulled away and sat back down.

“All right. I’ll be careful.”

“Good,” she said and looked out the window, a half smile on her face. The sun was pushing over the mountains and sunlight was beginning to crowd into the café, snaking its way between the tables and chairs.

“I’ve got to get going,” Will said, sliding his chair back. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Maybe,” Lisa said, without looking at him. “I’ll have to think.” She took in a breath of air and let it out slowly. “Okay, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Good.”

“You don’t want to eat?”

Will stood up slowly. “I already ate,” he said. “Besides, Felipe’s waiting for me.”

“So go, then. Felipe will complain all day if you’re late. If you see Elena, tell her I got the stuff she wanted.”

“What stuff?”

“Stuff,” she said. “Drugstore stuff. You need to know everything?” She raised her eyebrows. “Where are you working today?”

“We’re not. I’m going to pick Felipe up, and then we’re going to see a friend of his father’s.”

Lisa raised her hand, shielding her face from the sun. “You might get a job in town?”

“No,” he said. Felipe and Will hadn’t done any work in Guadalupe for three years. Everyone in town did things for themselves. When someone did ask for an estimate to fix an old roof or shore up a portal that was leaning too far, Will figured it must be out of curiosity because they never got the job. They’d talk to somebody on Monday about work, and the next weekend Will would drive through town and see the guy with his family and neighbors having what looked like a party with hammers and saws.

“No,” he said again. “It’s not about a job. Felipe told me about a girl his father’s neighbor found dead out at Las Manos Bridge a long time ago. We thought since we weren’t doing anything, we’d go talk to him.”

“We?” Lisa said. “Felipe likes to work. He likes to drink beer. He likes to mess around with Elena and fish with his kids. You don’t mean ‘we.’ You mean ‘you.’”

Will suddenly felt uncomfortable. The sun coming in the window seemed too warm. He sat back down. “You know this bridge?” he asked. “It’s in nowhere. There’s nothing out there, and one morning there’s a girl hanging from it like she fell from the sky.” Lisa stared at him for a few seconds. “So what?” she said.

“What do you mean, so what? I heard the first part of the story and now I want to hear the end. That’s all.”

“Let me guess,” Lisa said. “She was a white girl, wasn’t she?”

Will didn’t say anything. He looked at her and thought, Yes, she was white. So where’s this going? He leaned back in his chair.

“Felipe said she was white,” he said. “Why?”

Lisa stood up. She grabbed the cups and the pot. “Why don’t you figure that out?” she said.