On a Saturday evening before the start of the fall semester of ’61, Miguel pranced into the diner and said, “Fulgencio, I hear there’s a big dance at Incarnate Word this weekend. Why don’t we drive down there? Maybe Carolina’s already come up for the start of the semester? Maybe you could see her!”
His heart racing to San Antonio faster than his body could, Fulgencio asked for Buzzy’s reprieve, threw on his black suit, and jumped into Miguel’s car. He couldn’t wait to see her, to erase the distance between them.
By the time Fulgencio and Miguel arrived at Incarnate Word, it was dark. They could hear the distorted clamor of music blaring from the school gymnasium. Vehicles crammed the narrow driveways of the campus thick with trees. Couples strolled along the moonlit paths, leaning on the sides of cars, flirting behind the shrubs, and sitting by gurgling fountains.
Fulgencio could hear the pounding of his heart in his eardrums as he threw the doors open and strode into the sock hop with Miguelito scurrying in his shadow. In his black suit and black tie, and his wavy black mane and furrowed brow, Fulgencio Ramirez looked like a villain who had just stepped off the silver screen, ready to pull a gun out from his jacket at any moment and smoke anyone who made the mistake of looking at him in the wrong way. His throat ached. She better not be here dancing. Dancing like he’d heard she did all summer long in La Frontera, while he slaved over a sweltering stove to pay his way through school so he could afford to keep her in the manner she had grown accustomed to as a pharmacist’s daughter. He felt a tentative tap on his shoulder. It was Miguel.
“Whatever you do,” he quivered, “don’t look over there . . .” Miguel raised a trembling finger toward the back-right corner of the dimly lit hall.
Fulgencio’s eyes caught the fire in his heart as he stormed toward the scene he’d dreaded in his dreams. Her shoes off, her curls flinging wildly in the air, her lips curled in laughter, Carolina was dancing with not one, not two, but three men at once. Frat boys from Trinity, no doubt. Untethered, a tide of rage propelled him toward her as familiar, foaming words surged through his mind . . . aco . . . calactihuetz . . . nacaxaqualoa . . . flinging bodies aside in an unleashed fury, as Miguel stumbled and climbed over them to catch a glimpse.
Carolina gaped in shock and terror as Fulgencio’s fists flew into the jaws and chins of her dance partners. He felled them each swiftly and with a single blow, their bodies sliding out of sight on the smooth floor. His accusing eyes burned into her flesh, seared into her soul as he glowered at her, shaking his head.
“How could you?” he growled, his face contorted and unrecognizable, a macabre Aztec mask. For a fleeting instant, he resembled a dangerous demon looming over her fragile form as she cowered fearfully in the corner, whimpering.
He spit on the floor, the maddening chants ringing between his ears, and then he spit the words into her face like venom sucked from a serpent’s wound and spewed out in disgust: “You’re not worthy of my efforts.”
He spun on his heel and stormed toward the door amidst the throng’s horrified glares. As he left a shattered Carolina sobbing in his wake, he heard Miguel consoling her.
“Don’t worry, Carolina, I’m here for you. Everything’s gonna be alright,” Miguel said.
Disgusted, Fulgencio never turned back. He walked all the way downtown to the bus station and took the 3:00 a.m. Greyhound to Austin, fuming in fury all of the way.
Nineteen
The months that followed were anguished and seemingly interminable for Fulgencio.
A couple days after that fateful fight at the Incarnate Word dance, Miguel had relayed a final message from Carolina.
“I’m sorry, Fulgencio,” he said ruefully, “Carolina says she’s had enough of you. She’s moving on. She said you’re too macho. That she wants no more.”
Fulgencio nodded stoically before Miguel’s scrutinizing gaze, but later—in the storeroom where he slept, he fell to his knees before the pictures of Jesus and Carolina.
“Why?” he cried. “Is this all my fault? Or was it Carolina’s? Did she bring this on, or did I?” Fulgencio yearned for simpler days, his early days working at Mendelssohn’s Drugstore when all had seemed so clear-cut. He had known what he wanted and he had worked tirelessly to reach for it. Why was it so much harder to hang on to things than it was to attain them? Why did people have to be so complicated? He alternated between feeling justified in his jealousy and rage and ashamed for his insecurity and violence. Had he been right or wrong? Should he move on with his life and try to forget Carolina or crawl back to her and apologize for his actions? As he struggled to think through his quandary, the arcane chants and waves of sorrow he had now grown accustomed to battled his mental faculties, drowning out his ability to reason.
Unable to find a clear path through his dilemma, Fulgencio worked and studied with a rabid fervor. He’d spend his free moments at a gym down the street, pounding the body bag until he could do little more than hang on to it to avoid collapsing onto the floor, his chest heaving in exhaustion. No one dared look him in the eye, and he ruled Buzzy’s Diner like a tyrant.
“I’m worried about you, Fulgencio,” Buzzy admitted. “Our customers might be showing up simply for fear if they don’t, you might hunt them down, drag them here, and force-feed them.”
Finally, the night before the schools all shut down for Christmas break, everything changed. The diner was emptied and cleaned. Buzzy had gone home for the night. Fulgencio sat on his cot, the wrinkled and tattered picture of Carolina in his hand, faded by the flow of his tears. His leather suitcase was half-
heartedly packed as he weighed whether to bother going to La Frontera. He was at his wit’s end and he figured a couple of weeks on El Dos de Copas with his dead grandfather, the Virgencita, and Brother William might help him get his feet back on solid ground. As he finished packing, a delicate shadow slanted across the floor. He turned, looking upward. And he saw her. Hovering in the doorway, an angel dressed in winter white. He could barely find the strength in his legs to stand and greet her. The words refused to fall from his lips as he gaped at her. They both began to weep in shame.
“I love you, Fulgencio,” Carolina cried, her voice shaking. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you for a moment. I never meant to hurt your feelings.”
“I’m so sorry for how I acted,” Fulgencio said, shaking his head in shame.
“I’m sorry for making you feel that way. I promise I’ll never do it again,” she sobbed, edging closer to him. “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
“I believed the same thing! I . . . he . . .” Fulgencio’s thoughts disintegrated into unintelligible fragments as he took a step toward her.
She reached out and tenderly caressed his cheek as their bodies met, a shudder rippling through his body as she touched him. Swept together by a surging tide of emotion—the undertow pulling soul to soul, body to body—they embraced beneath the bare lightbulb in the center of the cramped room lined with canned goods. Their lips melded into each other like magnets made of flesh. His hands kneaded her skin and her aching muscles and her inner thighs melted with desire as they poured into each other. The meager cot could not support their passion as they crashed onto the floor, the faded fabric a muddled rug beneath them. Pieces of discarded metal flung aside. Bald bulb burning. Her white dress in a ball at the foot of the collapsed bed. Her soft breasts gently pressed against his firm chest. Her delicate hands groped his taut muscles. The smell of saliva on burning skin. Gasps. Her screams sent chills up his spine. Exclamations of pain and pleasure fused as one. She was his. And he was hers. For once and for all. She swore like she never had before at the letting go, her hair tumbling all around them, the only shelter from the midnight chill in the air. And he wept upon her chest. All the love. All the anger. All the confusion exploded into the love of his life. Their eyes riveted to each other, they moaned and shouted and laughed and cried and all they could say was “I love you” until they fell to pieces. Her naked body covering his. Her head upon his shoulder. His arms nestling her closely. They slept. And they didn’t dream in the black of night. They lay in silence amidst the receding chaos.