Despite his gnawing fears and doubts, he clung stubbornly to his belief that if they lived in the same town, he would have no choice but to see her every day, rendering himself unable to achieve his academic goals. As he washed the dishes he had loaded with his own culinary creations at Buzzy’s, he convinced himself that he’d forced the right decision, that he trusted her, that she would come to see the wisdom of his ways and not harbor any resentment toward him, and that they would survive as a couple.
She drove a 1957 banana-yellow Thunderbird convertible with white vinyl seats, two-tone trim, and white sidewall tires. Her golden curls tossed in the wind with the laughter of her sorority sisters. A couple of times, she drove to Austin to surprise him as he slaved over the grill at Buzzy’s. He tried his hardest not to feel embarrassed, but the truth was, he did not enjoy her seeing him laboring like this while she lived in the lap of collegiate luxury. For some reason he could not quite articulate, it felt different than it had back in La Frontera at her father’s drugstore. He imagined her sorority sisters’ comments behind his back. “Why are you with that fry cook? What do you see in him? Why don’t you date one of the frat brothers at Trinity, someone with money, not just a poor Mexican working his way through pharmacy school?”
Still, he’d serve her vanilla milkshakes while she waited at the counter for him to close down. Then they’d drive around the abandoned streets of the slumbering city, her head on his shoulder as he steered her car beneath flickering streetlights keeping time. Later, as the sky was lightening, he’d drive her back to San Antonio as she slept beside him in the car. Dropping her off at her dorm, he’d catch the bus or hitchhike home with the sunrise. Never would he let her stay with him in Austin, despite her insisting. No, no señor. He didn’t think that would be proper, her sleeping with him in that little cot at Buzzy’s. Not proper for a lady like her. Not respectful to Mr. and Mrs. Mendelssohn either. Upon his insistence on those heated nights on the backseat vinyl of her convertible, they would wait until their wedding night to consummate their love. He could not disrespect her, this angel he had placed squarely on a pedestal.
The summer following Carolina’s first year in college, she returned home to spend time with her dying mother while Fulgencio continued working and attending summer school. Both of the young lovers yearned across the vast expanse of miles that separated them yet again, straining for each other’s warmth and embrace, urgently missing their occasional weekend romps.
At the height of their desperation, they placed their trust in a mutual friend to ferry their love notes and gifts. Miguel Rodriguez Esparza was now attending summer school at UT, driving home to visit his parents every other weekend. He was one of those silly boys the girls all loved to talk to, slight and unassuming. His preppy sweaters hung two sizes too big on his slender shoulders. At San Juan del Atole, he had languished in others’ shadows as a backup quarterback that never got his shot at glory. Feeling sorry for him, Fulgencio had taken him under his wing, bailing him out of a few scraps brought on by his tendency to drink one too many and talk way too much.
While in Austin, Miguel frequented Buzzy’s Diner, where Fulgencio served him steaming flour tortillas as they reminisced about life in La Frontera.
Fulgencio never felt threatened by Miguel. How could he? Miguel seemed like a weak sliver of a boy. He liked having a friend around, someone who understood where he came from, someone who also found Austin foreign and new.
With every delivery Miguel made that summer, however, he peppered in a comment or two that stuck in Fulgencio’s mind long after his departure.
“I didn’t get to see Carolina this weekend when I dropped your flowers, Fulgencio,” Miguel mentioned, hunched over his coffee at Buzzy’s counter.
“Oh?” Fulgencio cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Miguel ventured nonchalantly, “I heard she was out with the old crew, dancing across the border or something.”
“Dancing across the border?” Fulgencio scowled. “That doesn’t sound like Carolina.”
“I know,” Miguel replied, “I didn’t think it could be true. You know how these rumors are, Fulgencio,” he muttered chewing on his potato and egg taco. “You just can’t buy ’em. You’ve gotta have faith, right? Love is blind, no?”
Fulgencio sat alone on his cot in the back room, glowering at Carolina’s yearbook photo. “Just rumors,” he assured himself. “You can’t believe in gossip. You have to keep the faith.” He prayed for her love, her loyalty, and her honor. But still, he felt sick to his stomach as he waited impatiently to succumb to sleep, wondering if she was out, dancing with other guys, meeting new people, partying like a decadent rich girl across the border. No, no, no señor. It simply couldn’t be. He rubbed his eyes in the darkness until he was sick of seeing nonexistent stars. Not his Carolina. She would never stray. She would never let him down.
In his troubled sleep, he saw the serpentine train roaring over the railroad bridge from Mexico, the white letters scrambling and zooming by, and heard the chants of an ancient woman speaking in an unrecognizable but familiar tongue. Cemmauizcui. Aco. Axcualli.
He woke to the blaring of a hundred horns ringing in his ears, bathed in a cold sweat. Turning on the light, he stared at her photo and prayed to the image of Jesus, prayed for protection from whatever demons insisted on haunting him, pleaded for protection from losing Carolina.
In their letters they remained affectionate, but doubt crept between the lines, tempering their passion with the fear of betrayal, the apprehension of letting go and lowering one’s defenses at a time of danger.
In his increasingly insecure letters, fed by Miguel’s comments, Fulgencio urged Carolina to not go out on the town without him, to not speak or flirt with other men, to spend all her time with her sickly mother.
Swept up in the changing values of the new decade, Carolina chafed at his overly traditional ways, writing back:
Fully,
This is America! It’s the ’60s now! Don’t you get it? You can’t own and control me. I can’t believe I let you determine what college I would attend! I should be there with you, in Austin. We could have already been married. And then we wouldn’t have all of these self-created problems.
Carolina
Stunned, Fulgencio shared the contents of the letter with Miguel, hoping for some reassurance and support from him. “Can you believe it?” he beseeched his friend. “All I asked was that she act the way a girlfriend should act!”
Miguel shook his head disapprovingly. “Fulgencio, the truth is that she’s a college-educated Anglo woman. She probably thinks you’re too macho, stuck in the ways of la raza south of the border.”
His temper curdling, for days Fulgencio could not stop thinking about Miguel’s response. But his anger was not directed at his friend, it was aimed at Carolina. Their phone calls became less frequent, often turning into tortured arguments driven by Fulgencio’s jealousy and exacerbated by Carolina’s increasingly independent attitude. He sent fewer letters for fear of making matters worse. And as his writing slowed, so did hers. If only he could see her, talk in person, he told himself. Then everything would be okay. But he simply had too much work on his hands and could not break away for a weekend in La Frontera like Miguel.