Call If You Need Me (20 page)

He worked at it with his tongue for a while then sat up in bed and began picking at it with his fingers. Outside it was going to be a nice day and some birds were singing. He tore off a corner of the matchbook and scraped in between his teeth. Nothing. He could still feel it. He ran his tongue over his teeth again from back to front, stopping when he got to the hair. He touched all around it then stroked it with his tongue where it threaded in between two of the front teeth, followed it in an inch or so to the end and smoothed it against the roof of his mouth. He touched it with his finger.

“Uuuk—Christ!”

“What’s the matter?” his wife asked, sitting up. “We oversleep? What time is it?”

“I’ve got something in my teeth. Can’t get it out. I don’t know … feels like a hair.”

He went into the bathroom and glanced at the mirror, then washed his hands and face with cold water. He turned on the shaving lamp over the mirror.

“I can’t see it but I know it’s there. If I could just get hold of it maybe I could pull it out.”

His wife came into the bathroom, scratching her head and yawning. “You get it, honey?”

He ground his teeth together, squeezed his lips down against his teeth until his fingernails broke the skin.

“Just a minute. Let me see it,” she said, moving closer. He stood under the light, mouth open, twisting his head back and forth, wiping his pajama sleeve over the glass as it fogged up.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“Well, I can feel it.” He turned off the light and started running water in the tub. “The hell with it! Forget it. I’ve got to get ready for work.”

He decided to walk downtown since he didn’t want any breakfast and still had plenty of time to get to work. Nobody had a key except the boss and if he got there too early he’d only have to wait. He walked by the empty corner where he usually caught the bus. A dog he’d seen around the neighborhood before had his leg cocked, pissing on the bus stop sign.

“Hey!”

The dog quit pissing and came running over to him. Another dog that he didn’t recognize came trotting up, sniffed at the sign, and pissed. Golden, slightly steaming as it ran down the sidewalk.

“Hey—get out of here!” The dog squirted a few more drops then both dogs crossed the street. They almost looked like they were laughing. He threaded the hair back and forth through his teeth.

“Nice day now, isn’t it, huh?” the boss asked. He opened the front door, raised the shade.

Everyone turned to look back outside and nodded, smiling.

“Yes it is, sir, just a beautiful day,” someone said.

“Too nice to be working,” someone else said, laughed with the others.

“Yes it is. It is at that,” the boss said. He went on up the stairs to open up Boys Clothing, whistling, jingling his keys.

Later on when he came up from the basement and was taking his break in the lounge, smoking a cigarette, the boss came in wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

“Hot today, isn’t it, huh?”

“Yes it is, sir.” He’d never noticed before that the boss had such hairy arms. He sat picking his teeth, staring at the thick tufts of black hair that grew in between the boss’s fingers.

“Sir, I was wondering—if you don’t think I can, that’s all right,
naturally, but if you think so, without putting anybody in a bind, I mean—I’d like to go home. I don’t feel so well.”

“Mmm. Well, we can make it all right, of course. That’s not the point, of course.” He took a long drink of his Coke, kept looking at him.

“Well then, that’s all right then, sir. I’ll make it. I was just wondering.”

“No, no, that’s all right now. You go on home. Call me up tonight, let me know how you are.” He looked at his watch, finished his Coke. “Ten twenty-five. Say 10:30. Go on home now, we’ll call it 10:30.”

Out in the street he loosened his collar and began to walk. He felt strange walking around town with a hair in his mouth. He kept touching it with his tongue. He didn’t look at any of the people he met. In a little while he began to sweat under his arms and could feel it dripping through the hair into his undershirt. Sometimes he stopped in front of the showroom windows and stared at the glass, opening and closing his mouth, fishing around with his finger. He took the long way home, down through the Lions Club park where he watched the kids play in the wading pool and paid fifteen cents to an old lady to go through the little zoo and see the birds and animals. Once after he had stood for a long time looking through the glass at the giant Gila monster, the creature opened one of its eyes and looked at him. He backed away from the glass and went on walking around the park until it was time to go home.

He wasn’t very hungry and only drank some coffee for supper. After a few swallows he rolled his tongue over the hair again. He got up from the table.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” his wife asked. “Where you going?”

“I think I’m going to go to bed. I don’t feel so well.”

She followed him into the bedroom, watched while he undressed. “Can I get you something? Maybe I should call the doctor? I wish I knew what was the matter.”

“That’s all right. I’ll be all right.” He pulled up the covers over his shoulders and turned over, closing his eyes.

She pulled the shade. “I’ll straighten up the kitchen a little, then I’ll be back.”

It felt better just to stretch out. He touched his face and thought he might have a fever. He licked his lips and touched the end of the hair with his tongue. He shivered. After a few minutes, he began to doze but woke suddenly and remembered about calling the boss. He got slowly out of bed and went out to the kitchen.

His wife was at the draining board doing dishes. “I thought you were asleep. Honey? You feel better now?”

He nodded, picked up the phone and got Information. He had a kind of bad taste in his mouth as he dialed.

“Hello. Yes, sir, I think I feel better. Just wanted you to know I’ll be at work tomorrow. Right. Eight thirty, sharp.”

After he got back in bed he smoothed his tongue over his teeth again. Maybe it was just something he could get used to. He didn’t know. Just before he went to sleep, he’d almost stopped thinking about it. He remembered what a warm day it had been and those kids out wading—how the birds were singing that morning. But once during the night he yelled out and woke up sweating, almost choking. No, no, he kept saying, kicking his feet against the covers. It scared his wife and she didn’t know what was the matter.

They are sitting in the shade at a small iron patio table drinking wine out of heavy metal cups.

“Why should you feel this way now?” he asks her.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It always makes me sad when it comes. It’s been such a short year, and I don’t even know any of the others.” She leans forward and reaches for his hand, but he is too quick for her. “They seem so, so unprofessional.” From her lap she takes her napkin and wipes her lips in a way that has become detestable to him this last month. “We won’t talk about it anymore,” she says. “We still have three hours yet. We won’t even think about it.”

He shrugs and looks past her towards the open windows with their blanket-like squares of white sky, out into the street, taking it all in. Dust covers the low, powdery buildings and fills the street.

“What will you wear?” he asks, not turning around.

“How can you talk about it so?” She slumps back in her chair, interlacing her fingers, twisting the lead ring around her index finger.

There are no other patrons on the patio and in the street nothing moves.

“I’ll probably wear white, as usual. But, I might not. I won’t!”

He smiles, then drains his cup, tasting, at the bottom, the almost bitter pieces of soft leaves that touch against his lips. “Should we go?”

He pays for the wine and counts out an additional five thousand pesos to the shopkeeper. “This is for you.”

The old woman hesitates, looks at the younger woman and then with a birdlike frightened movement scrabbles up the bills and pushes them, crinkling, into a front pocket. “
Gracias
.” She bows stiffly, and respectfully touches her forehead.

The patio is dark and has a smell like rotting wood. There are squat black arches encircling it and one of these opens onto the street. It is noon. The pallid dead brilliance makes him dizzy for a minute. Heat ripples rise from the adobe walls that close in the narrow street. His eyes water and the air is dry and hot on his face.

“Are you all right?” She takes his arm.

“Yes. Just a minute.” From a street very close to them, a band is playing. The music streams up and over the roofless buildings, melting against the heat over his head. “We should see this.”

She frowns. It is the same frown she makes when someone tells her there are few young men interested in the Arena nowadays. “If you wish, darling.”

“I do. Come on, aren’t you going to indulge me on my last afternoon?”

She clutches his arm tighter and they go slowly down the street in the shade of a low wall, the music moving closer as they near the end of the street. When he was a child the band used to play several times a year, then twice a year for a long time, and now they play and march only one time in the year. Suddenly the soft, fluffed dust in front of his feet spouts, and he kicks up a brown spider that clings to the toe of his huarache before he kicks it away.

“Should we pretend?” he asks.

Her eyes have followed the spider and now they turn to him, flat and gray-filmed, motionless under her damp forehead. Her lips purse: “Pretend?”

On an impulse, he kisses her. Her lips are dry and cracked and he kisses her hard and presses her against the hot brick wall. The band shrieks and clangs and passes across at the end of the street, pauses, and moves on. Fainter now as it tramps along then turns off onto another street.

“Like it was when we first met and I was a struggling young disciple. You remember?” He remembers, anyway. Long, hot afternoons at the Arena; practicing, practicing, perfecting—every action, every thought, every grace. The blood thrill and rush of excitement as his compadres finished, one by one. He was one of the lucky ones and the dedicated. Then he’d moved up at last among the few eligibles, then above them even.

“I remember,” she says.

This last year as his wife she might remember and perhaps she might remember this afternoon. For a moment he lets himself think about the afternoon.

“It was good—it was,” she says. Her eyes are cold and clouded, flat into her face like the eyes of a snake he’d killed once in the mountains in the blind season.

They come to the end of the street and stop. It is quiet and the only sound that reaches them is a dry rattling, gagging cough coming from somewhere down the street in the direction of the band. He looks at her and she shrugs before they turn down the street. They walk by some old men sitting in doorways, the doors boarded up behind them, their big dusty sombreros pulled down over their faces, legs drawn up tight and folded against their chests or sticking out into the street. The coughing starts again, dry and thick as if it comes from under the ground, the throat tubed full of dirt. He listens and looks closely at the men.

She points into a narrow passageway at a bareheaded small gray man squeezed in between the two buildings. The man opens his mouth … and makes a cough.

He turns her around to him. “How many of us have you lived with?”

“Why … five or six. I’d have to think. Why do you ask?”

He shakes his head. “Do you remember Luis?”

She pulls her arm out of his, her heavy bracelet making a dull chinking sound. “He was my first. I loved him.”

“He taught me almost everything … I needed to know.” He
chews on his lip and the sun presses like a hot flat stone on his neck. “Do you remember Jorge?”

“Yes.” They are walking again and she takes his arm once more. “A good man. Like you a little, but I didn’t love him. Please, let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“All right. I think I’d like to walk down to the plaza.”

Vacant-eyed men and women stare at them as they pass. They sag against the doors or crouch in the dark alcoves and some gaze dully at them from low windows. They walk farther, away from the town and out onto the plain. All around them are mortar blocks and chunks of old limed white cement and broken, grainy bits and pieces that crush under their feet. Over everything a thick coat of dust. The plated sun shimmers white and blinding above their heads, burning the garments into their sticky backs.

“We should go back,” she says, squeezing his arm a little.

“Pretty soon.” He points at the thin, wash-yellow flowers stretching up in the dark crack of a broken block of cement roadway. They are standing in the Zocalo, the Great Square, facing the ruins of the Metropolitan Cathedral. Bordering the square is a line of powdery brown mounds with a single hole in the side of each, facing them. Beyond the mounds, brown rows of adobe houses that run and spread toward the hills until only the tops of the tallest houses are visible. Then a long up-and-down line of gray humped hills that stretch as far as he can see down the valley. The hills have always reminded him of great-breasted reclining women but it all seems strange now, and dirty.

“Please, love,” she says, “let’s go back now and drink a little wine while there’s time.”

From the Arena the band has struck up, a few strains jagging over and across the plain to them. He listens. “Yes. We mustn’t be late.” He looks at the ground and stirs the dust with his heel. “All right, yes, let’s go and have a little wine.” He bends and picks the small cluster of yellow flowers for her.

They go to Manuel’s and when Manuel sees them sit down
at one of his tables he first salutes and then goes to the cellar and brings out their last bottle of dark wine.

“You will be at the Arena this afternoon, Manuel?”

Manuel studies a crack that runs down the length of the wall behind the table. “
Si
.”

“Don’t feel that way, my friend. It’s not so bad. Look.” He tilts his cup and lets the warm wine run down his throat. “I’m happy? What would be the sense of it if I were not happy? That the moment should be perfect, there should be joy and consent on the part of all persons concerned.” He smiles at him; no hard feelings. “This is the way it has always been, so you see—I must be happy. And so should you, my friend. We’re all in this together.” He finishes another cup and wipes his sweaty palms on his pants. Then he gets up and shakes hands with Manuel. “We must go. Good-bye, Manuel.”