Yeah, he had, like the ass he’d been. In his defense, Cristina had been real pretty and she’d also seemed interested in him. Not like Elvis had been interested—he’d been neck-deep—but he also hadn’t imagined the whole thing. The problem was she’d gone hot and cold and then hot again. Sometimes she wanted to leave Tlaquepaque, sometimes she wanted to stay forever.
She fucked Elvis, sometimes, yeah. But it always felt like a favor, and he didn’t like it when he saw her with their leader or some of the other men around the complex. Complex! A rickety building with a few sad chickens and goats. Elvis working under the searing sun, Elvis feeding the damn chickens or trying to fix a piece of furniture. The others were lazy and assigned most chores to him. Every time he thought about quitting, though, she’d soothe him with a couple of kisses.
He liked that and he also didn’t like it. It reminded him of the older American woman who’d kept him as her lover. In her eyes he read a definite indifference. He knew he was replaceable.
When Elvis left, it was because he couldn’t stomach any more of that merry-go-round of emotions. In the months after, he’d thought of writing to Cristina, and then he’d figure it was pointless. But sometimes he still got the urge to go back. To see what she was up to.
He didn’t want to live like a hippie, much less with that idiotic cult. But the money could be enough to rent an apartment, and they could install themselves somewhere nice and cozy.
Though God knew if Cristina was still in Tlaquepaque. And he hadn’t spoken to her in years. It was stupid. He didn’t even know why he was thinking of her. He supposed it was because Justo was making him nervous, talking about that man Anaya.
Elvis tried to force himself to imagine a different life from the one he led, maybe a life with Cristina. Or maybe he’d try to be an agent, like Justo had suggested. It couldn’t be that hard. Maybe they’d throw him in cells with activists so he could pose as a fellow revolutionary and inform on them. Sometimes they used former real activists for this. People who had been hauled to Lecumberri and decided to become collaborators and squeal. Áyax Segura Garrido had squealed, and that’s how the courts had found him innocent. He was now in the pocket of the DFS.
But none of that was what he really wanted. It was all a bit seedy. None of it resembled El Mago’s life. He wanted El Mago’s place, with his bookshelves and his car and his suits. It wasn’t the things El Mago owned. It wasn’t the silver cufflinks on his shirts or the fine cigarettes. It was the way El Mago spoke, the way he looked.
He worried that he’d never have that now. Not only that, but El Mago would disappear from his life. Just like El Gazpacho had disappeared. It was crazy to think people could be gone with a snap of the fingers.
God damn Gazpacho. Where’d he headed?
Elvis finished eating, gave the Hawaiian girl one last, longing look, and went back to the apartment. It was empty. El Güero was supposed to be completing his first shift. He supposed the Antelope had gone to relieve him.
Elvis opened the door to El Gazpacho’s room and stood in the doorway, looking at the bed, the closet, the little desk in the corner. El Gazpacho kept his room neat and tidy, with a minimum of things. In a corner he had a poster of Yojimbo, a movie that Elvis had never seen but El Gazpacho had described in detail. Elvis stood in front of the narrow closet and looked at the shirts and trousers and what El Gazpacho jokingly called his “civilian” jacket: an avocado-green jacket with yellow patches.
It’s what El Gazpacho wore to the movies. Elvis didn’t know why he liked that ridiculous outfit, but he did. Then again, El Gazpacho didn’t complain when Elvis put on his sunglasses at night or tried to comb his hair like James Dean or Presley, and when Elvis didn’t know how to say a word in the dictionary El Gazpacho never laughed.
Although he didn’t like either El Güero or the Antelope, he suddenly felt very lonely and wished they were in the apartment with him.
Elvis went into his room and rummaged among his records. He found his copy of “Blue Velvet” and held the record up to the light, looking at the grooves. Elvis had the version by Bennett. He put the record on and sat down on his bed.
He thought about the woman who owned the Prysock cover, Maite Jaramillo, and as the record began to spin he felt a little less alone. She was probably playing the same song now. And if she was, if they were both repeating the same motion in two different places, somehow it felt like they were doing it together. Which meant he wasn’t really alone.
He pictured two dust motes spinning in concentric circles. Maybe it was like that everywhere, for everyone. There was always someone doing the exact same thing. Like a shadow or a mirror image, like the doppelgängers El Mago talked about. People simply didn’t know it. Could be you were cutting vegetables with your left hand while it rained in Japan and a woman in Puebla was doing the same thing, and you both looked up at the sky at the same time and saw a bird fly by.
Elvis lay back on the bed, stretching up his arms until he got hold of the headboard, and he hummed to the music. He didn’t know what the words meant, but he knew what they sounded like: it was the sound of sadness.
13
SHE DECIDED TO wear the yellow print dress with the bow at the neck. The color was vibrant and brightened her face, but it looked a little young. When she’d bought it, the dress had been perfect on the rack, but as often happened with Maite, when she put it on at home she had an entirely different opinion of the garment. It was garish, it exposed her knees, and no matter how hard she rubbed a pumice stone against her knees they always looked dirty.
She hadn’t worn it, stuffing it into the back of her closet. But it really was the nicest dress she owned and the most modern one. The rest of her wardrobe consisted of her drab office outfits, and her scant weekend wear was nondescript.
She clipped the tag off the dress, ruefully noting the price—my, she had spent too much on that. Then again it was a special-occasion dress. The problem was she didn’t have enough special occasions to wear it.
She carefully ironed the dress and hung it up while she busied herself with her makeup and her hair. Again the fear of artificial youthfulness assailed her. She didn’t want to look like a sad matriarch who rubs too much blush on her cheeks. Not that she looked exactly like a matriarch.
Thirty is not fifty, she told herself firmly, but in the back of her mind she remembered bits of conversation from some of the other office workers in her building, conversations she caught while seated at the counter of the nearby lonchería. Young men complaining a certain bar was filled with hags with saggy tits. Where could the trim, young cuts be found? And Maite, sinking in her seat, staring at her reflection in the mirrors behind the counter.
Thirty is not fifty, she repeated as she did her hair. At least she had good hair, even if her aunts had both gone partially bald at an early age. Would she face the same fate? Maite inspected her hairline.