Seeing Off the Johns (12 page)

“I guess you're right,” Chon said. “If we couldn't win when the Monsevais brothers ‘dominated the line on both offense and defense,' there's no hope.”

“Oh my god, has my uncle told you that story?” Araceli shouted, then gave Chon a playful slap on the arm. Chon laughed.

“No, but that's what this one always says when they're at the house cracking beers and reliving the old glory days.” Chon pointed at Henry with his thumb, and Henry missed a beat. But composure and expectation and the existence he'd cut out for himself won the day, and Henry got back in the game.

“‘We overpowered 'em, flipped people over and smashed them in the ground,'” Henry said in the voice Chon knew to be an imitation of his drunk father. “Never mind the fact that they won three games in four years.”

They all laughed. The addition of Araceli to their end-of-the-bleachers clique made Chon almost happier than being close to what he'd coveted for so long. He felt like he had friends. A group. Not just him and the other guy picked last at recess being friends by default. That's not what he and Henry actually were, but it was hard not to feel that way on a Friday night when Greenton's teenagers partied and rode around together in cars and made out and fucked and he was stuck in the Monsevais' dirty living room or, even worse, parked in the Dodge-nasty on the side of the road somewhere, drinking warm beers with the only person, outside his family, who would even realize he was missing if he disappeared.

This was the verification of something that Chon had thought to be an artificial construct of the storytellers of the generation before his—the idea of high school as the best time of their lives. Because how could that have been anything but a lie when Chon was so miserable and—as near as he could tell and despite how hard they tried to hide it—nearly everyone around him was too? But being there, at Greenton stadium on a Friday night for the opening kickoff of the season, Chon could see that there was some truth to the lies he had felt so let down and cheated by. It was in the shared
laughter of Henry, Araceli, and himself. It wasn't anything more than that. Years down the line they would all forget who Greenton played that night and what the score ended up being and even what they talked about, but they would remember, if not that very instance of laughter, that they had friends. They were young, they were innocent, and, on that night, they had fun.

Chon let his thoughts drift. He realized that if the Johns were alive, he would not be where he was right now, with Araceli at his side and a smile on his face. He was grateful, in a way he could never say out loud, for things having transpired this way. It was a fleeting thought, predicated by Chon never having really felt like he did just then. He would have chastised himself in the form of a silent head shake and stuffed the ugliness back to the recesses of his subconscious where it belonged if the crowd hadn't hushed right then and Arn Robison and his wife walked out of the tunnel to take center field, to give a speech that no one could hear.

“So the poor bastard gave a speech to a stadium full of people and the microphone was off?” Ana said. “And not one person in the place bothered to help him?”

Chon shook his head.

Ana was sitting in her usual seat on the ice machine. “That's pretty fucked up, man.” She took a pull off her cigarette. She closed her eyes. The smoke issued slowly out of her nostrils. It was all Chon could do not to swat the smoke away from his face.

“How've you been, Ana?” he asked. “We haven't talked in a long time.”

She opened her left eye and looked down at Chon. Her eyebrow was raised like she was checking to see if this was something worth waking up for. He wanted to comfort her in some way, but how without giving her the wrong idea? How did it come to this between him and this lady? When did they begin this dance of resentment and regret? Is this verbal and emotional tightrope walking all that would ever become of relationships? Of sex? Or was it work? Was it the age difference? Was it Greenton? Chon foolishly believed that this awkwardness was brought about by the strange circumstances of his having gotten involved with Ana, that he would someday be able to answer these questions.

Something in his face made her sit up and rub the tired out of her eyes.

“I talked to you yesterday,” she said. She snuffed the burning filter she held in her
hand and lit a fresh cigarette. “Well, I guess I've been alright. No news to report here. Just coming into work and going home and then coming into work and going home. What is there for me to tell you? You know the ins and outs of my life. It ain't pretty, but I'm here.”

Chon nodded and stood, wondering if he should speak into the awkward void of Ana's silence. Ana's voice was flat. He hadn't heard her speak in so long without a coquettish raise or malicious dip to her words that he'd forgotten what she sounded like when she was occupied with anything other than Chon and getting his attention or making him feel like shit. He didn't want to be back in the front of her mind, not necessarily. It's just that that was the Ana he'd taught himself to deal with. Sure, he'd been keeping her at arm's length. That way, he could tell how she was doing. It's not like he ever stopped caring about her.

“And Tina?” he asked.

At the mention of her daughter's name, Ana looked at Chon, sizing him up, his intentions. She was calculating his latitude and longitude on the plane of friend or foe. She let out a sigh and shook her head.

“Still up in San Antonio. I had to ask Bexar County to drop all of the charges against her father so that she could live with him. She said she'd be cool—stay clean, piss in cups, go to school, the whole deal—but only as long as she didn't have to come back and live here in Greenton. Her dad's still a fuckup, but he's trying. She's run away a few times, but there's a cop that's helping us, helping her. I think they're fucking, but not in a messed up way. He's real young, she's almost seventeen. I think he likes her.”

Chon nodded.

“And things are seeming like they might be better. We're talking on the phone almost every day. Chones, I'm about as happy with the way things are going as I was before she hit puberty and turned wild and got caught with that Marquez fucker and
left me alone here in this shithole. What's getting me is this: before it was almost like I didn't have a daughter, just a ball of problems that I didn't really have to deal with because she was there and I was here. But now I talk to her, and I'm getting to know her, and she's really smart and funny, and I'm hurting because I'm not with her. Is that fucked up?—that it almost hurts more now that she's doing okay without me?”

Chon stood there, listening, finally over himself and his (non)involvement in the sad state of Ana's being. Tears started rolling slowly down her face. They traced a slick outline of it, of Ana. Face framed as it was in the glow of the westward-leaning sun behind Chon, Ana looked like a different person.

Chon put his hand on her knee. She grabbed it and held it, crying through closed eyes and still bringing her cigarette to her lips with her other hand. She gave Chon's hand a final squeeze and let go.

“And you?” she said, wiping away the tears on her face with her sleeves. “You getting anywhere with your chula?”

“You know what, I am. But it's nothing worth mentioning right now. I'll let you know when something real happens.”

Ana made to slide off of the cooler. Chon gave her his hand to help her down.

“Sounds like you're saying nothing's happening,” Ana said. “You don't have to lie to make yourself look cool, because I know you aren't.”

Chon laughed.

“Really, it's kind of happening. I just don't want to jinx it.” He opened the door for her.

“I get that,” Ana said. She walked to the register and closed her till. She was out of the store in less than ten minutes, leaving Chon with little more than goodbye and forty-five minutes to himself until the next customer came in.

*

The following Saturday night, Chon was still there. There again, really, but the predictability of it all created a dependable, if not suffocating, state of static flux. He could move, live, study, work with his eyes closed and at any given time know where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. Life was a series of reruns of a not too interesting show when nothing else was on. This was especially the case at work now that Araceli had joined him and Henry in their regularly scheduled daytime programming.

Chon's plans to win her had been circumvented by the actuality of her existing in his day-to-day life, live and in person. It was so much easier to seduce the objectified idea of someone than to actually listen to and enjoy spending time with that same person.

He stood at the register, counting down the minutes of his last hour at work more intently than on any other Saturday night. Tonight was GHS's homecoming dance. At that minute, Araceli would be crowned homecoming queen, looked on and talked about by a whole gym full of students whose compassion had died and who were back to envying and lusting after her. Chon had decided that he would close the store an hour early—at eleven, when the dance would be ending—so that he could run home, shower, and dress for the party Araceli had invited Chon and Henry to—Chon and Henry who weren't invited to parties unless they were providing the spirits.

By ten-thirty, Chon had the store swept and mopped and the cooler, condiment trays and cigarette racks stocked. After every customer who came in, Chon restocked whatever they had bought. The store looked better than it had in a long time. If Sammy or Artie Alba had anything to say about the fact that Chon shut down early, he would
point to the fact that while he didn't put in his whole eight hours, the seven he did put in were better than anyone else's. Chon was thinking about the possibility of getting caught. He came to the same conclusion that set his mind at ease every time he sold a case of beer to an underage friend or rang up and charged nineteen loaves of bread to someone's Lone Star card in exchange for a carton of smokes: he was a good employee.

10:37. Chon was still lost in thinking about getting caught, fired, maybe even ticketed or arrested for all of the times he sold to minors and defrauded the state's welfare system—all worth it. Like the party at the Saenz ranch that last spring, selling three whole kegs and letting the ice cooler be almost emptied by classmates who didn't like or care about him. But it was worth it because he was seen as someone other than an insignificant loser. Or so he thought. And Araceli saw him. And smiled and gave him a little half wave from her tailgate throne at the side of the person who, at the time, Chon had sworn to be his chief enemy.

Today there was no enemy. Today it would not be just a smile and a little half wave. A year ago, Chon would have burned the Pachanga to the ground for the chance to have the kind of interaction he would have with her tonight.

10:40. The warm halogen glow of an SUV's headlights pushed its way through the cold, white fluorescence of the Pachanga's storefront, waking Chon up and making him thankful for a distraction, however small, from the slow turning of time during the last, and longest, minutes of his workday. He grabbed a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner and a rag and began cleaning the counter in front of him for want of something to do with his hands. The bell above the door rang. Chon looked up. It was Henry—shirt and tie, pressed slacks, shined two-tone Stacy knockoffs, hair actually combed—looking clean. And Araceli in a T-shirt, warm-ups, an old pair of cross-trainers.

“Gimme all the money in the register and no one has to get hurt,” Henry said, thumb and forefinger gun raised, pointing at Chon's face.

“Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every last one of ya!” Araceli shouted in a funny voice like she was quoting someone. Chon and Henry looked at her quizzically.

“It's from a movie,” she said. “We'll have to watch it sometime.”

“What are you guys doing here? The dance isn't even over,” Chon said.

“Oh my god, if I had to sit through another goddamn Shania Twain song, I was going to kill someone,” Henry said. He walked back to the cooler and grabbed an eighteen-pack of beer.

“Did you win?” Chon asked Araceli.

“Yeah,” she said. She was in house clothes, comfortable as could be, but her hair was still done up in curls with a couple of strands falling down on either side of her face. Her makeup made her look like a pageant contestant.

“I got the crown, got the pictures for the parents, and we took off. We went to my house and I changed. We baked a couple of pizzas, but I thought we should come get you before someone ate them all.”

Henry put the beer and a Snickers bar on the counter. Chon rang it up, took Henry's money, and gave him correct change all without looking away from Araceli.

“Hey,” Henry said, pointing a finger at Araceli, “I'd be doing you a favor. You eat enough pizza, you'll look like me with a wig and makeup on.”

Now Chon looked to Henry, eyebrow raised.

“I got you thinking about that, don't I?” Henry said, laughing. “You're picturing me as a woman right now, aren't you? Yeah, she ain't the girl of your dreams when I put it that way, now is she?”

Chon and Henry shared a look that contained multitudes—
Fuck you
and
I'm sorry
and
As soon as she's not around, I'll kick your ass
. The moment didn't have time to become awkward. Araceli intervened.

“You give yourself too much credit,” she said, not letting on, in true Monsevais fashion, whether she was smoothing things over or so rapt in trying to get the next jab in that she honestly didn't catch all of the meaning in her cousin's banter. “Think about it this way: if you lost a hundred pounds and put on a dress and makeup, you'd still be dogshit ugly. I don't mind saying I'm not dogshit ugly. So if you gave me all of that made up weight you'd be losing, I'd still be winning crowns and you'd still be an asshole.” They all laughed.

“You never stick up for yourself,” she told Chon. “You have to punch back every now and then. So, as you might be able to tell from my clothes, we're not going to any stupid party tonight. We're just going to hang out and watch movies or something at my house. My parents are at a wedding in Laredo, won't be back till late.”

“You coming?” Henry asked.

“Yeah,” Chon said. “I was going to go home and change after I closed—”

“If I'm dressed like this, you can wear your work clothes,” Araceli said.

10:58. Chon turned off the store's lights, locked up, and followed Araceli to her house, the house he'd driven by so many times hoping to catch a glimpse of her through a window, in the front yard, getting groceries from the car, anything. They drank until the early morning hours, not watching the TV that was on and talking about absolutely nothing that mattered. If either Sammy or Artie Alba found out that the store was closed an hour and two minutes early, they never said anything to Chon.

*

The weeks passed like this. Weeks, then months, with Chon working and living for the weekend. Everything revolved around the time he spent with Araceli and Henry. He felt that Araceli's presence in his life granted him a degree of normalcy he never had before, had never even striven for. She had bestowed upon Chon a life worth thinking about.

But Chon was not satisfied. He wanted more. He wanted her. He was convinced that what he felt for Araceli was real love. After all, his feelings showed that he wasn't trying to get anything from the girl but the girl herself.

Araceli's inclusion in nearly every facet of Chon's life—hanging out before school and at lunch, sitting together in class, going out on weekends—was, of course, what Chon had always wanted, but the novelty of friendship was wearing off and the reality of that friend being Araceli—up close, in the flesh, painfully beautiful—was starting to set in. After three months of close interaction with her, Chon felt sure he wasn't much closer to existing in her eyes as a romantic possibility.

It was a Friday. The Greyhounds were playing their final game of the season in Corpus Christi, the last of their high school careers. Araceli would be doing the driving that night since Chon didn't trust the Dodge-nasty to make it all the way to Corpus and neither she nor Henry cared to ride in a car without A/C, regardless of the few degrees November had made the temperature in Greenton drop. Chon went home straight from school that day—he'd requested the day off from work—shaved, showered, and ate a snack. By three o'clock, he was ready to go. He sat in the living room ignoring Pito and whatever he was watching on TV, thinking of all of the ways in which he could make some sort of progress with Araceli.

Just after four, there was a knock at the door. Chon, who was lost in his scheming
and fantasizing, was surprised at the sound. He wasn't expecting anything more than a honk and the Suburban idling on the street, Henry and Araceli as eager to get on the road as any teenaged Greentonite had ever been. But it was Araceli standing alone at the door, as beautiful and perfect as she was in any dream he ever had about her.