Into the Beautiful North (22 page)

“Welcome,” Rigoberto said.

Tacho asked, “May I take a shower?”

Rigoberto replied, “Thank you. I was about to say, ‘Would you please take a shower?’ ”

They walked into his house, laughing.

Chapter Twenty-two

N
ayeli, she’s hot,” Atómiko whispered.

“So is Yolo!” Matt replied.

Atómiko had never given up the couch. Matt had dragged his mattress out of his room, and Nayeli was in there, sleeping on the box spring and a mattress pad. Yolo and Vampi had pulled apart Ma’s bed and were jammed in the other bedroom. The two men were drunk and giggling like Boy Scouts. Matt couldn’t believe his Spanish had returned so easily, though his accent was atrocious. Atómiko didn’t care. He was enjoying his own mastery of English. They were speaking some conglomerate pidgin. He’d downed eight Tecates, and Matt could have been speaking Chinese. They found a bottle of Ma’s tequila, and Matt was veering toward cactus juice visions.

“Chingado,” Atómiko sighed as he gulped a shot of Cuervo.

“Thank you, Jesus,” said Matt.

This struck them as hilarious, and they buried their faces in their pillows and guffawed.

A door opened in the dark.

“Uh-oh,” said Matt.

Yolo came out, wearing one of Matt’s T-shirts. It barely covered her nether regions. They could see her in the streetlight glow, luminescent in the hallway.

“Morra,” Atómiko growled. “Hurt me. Damage me. Put me in the hospital.”

“Would you,” Yolo said, “please—I am being nice—please—be quiet so we can get some sleep!”

“I’ll help you sleep,” Atómiko said.

She went back and shut the door decisively.

“Oh, my God,” Matt noted.

They snorted into their pillows some more.

“Hey, gringo,” Atómiko said, “don’t you got any shorter T-shirts?”

They screamed into their pillows for a minute.

The door opened.

“I mean it!”

That was even funnier than whatever they’d found funny a minute ago.

“You are such idiots!” Yolo said.

The door slammed.

“One time,” Atómiko said, “there was this chick named Alma Rosa. She was hanging out at the dompe when the missionaries came around. I used to help the gringos give out beans and, uh, potatoes. Alma Rosa took me back by her father’s pigsty and showed me her chi-chis. Can you believe that? I guess she wanted more beans.”

Matt lay on his back, staring into the dark.

“I’m lost,” he announced.

“Huh,” Atómiko replied. “You’re drunk.”

“No. Yeah. I know I’m drunk. But it’s deeper, dude. It’s like, I’m lost.”

“Ah.”

They listened to the muffled and sparse traffic going down Clairemont Drive. The Mongols were in residence next door—they could hear the TV going. Atómiko farted explosively.

“Did you hear a duck quack?” he said.

There was thump on the bedroom wall.

“Yolo threw a shoe,” Matt noted.

“The world,” Atómiko proclaimed, moved to alcoholic profundity, “is lost! Not just you, Mateo. Look at it, vato. Look! At the ice caps! At the pinchis Arabs! Look at, uh, the border and shit like that!”

Matt could not drink any more. He put the bottle down and gave up trying to find the cap in the dark.

“Grf,” he said.

“Me?” Atómiko continued. “I was a soldier! That’s right! I was in the Mexican army! I was a sergeant! But so what—everybody in the Mexican army is a sergeant! My real name is Kiko. My mother call me that. But that was me! Soldier! How you think I became a warrior! You think I can’t kill everybody? I can kill everybody! I can kill the pinchis Mongols right now! I’ll go over there and do it!” He struggled symbolically to rise from the couch, then lay back down. “In a minute,” he said.

“So how’d you end up in the garbage dump?” Matt asked.

“I got caught stealing a chicken.”

This struck them both as hilarious.

After a while, Atómiko said, “Is not big deal. Everybody in the Mexican army steals chickens! But I was illegal in San Ysidro.”

“Wow.”

“Mexicano army don’t like that!”

“Yeah. No.”

“You steal chickens?”

“Not so much.”

“The Mexican army, they teach us English. Why I speak so good? Army! And they no pay in pesos, Mateo! They pay in gringo dollars!”

“The Mexican army pays in dollars?” Matt managed to say, though his lips were completely numb.

“Hell, yes. In Tijuana is all English and dollars. They know where everybody’s going when they get out!”

“I’m going to sleep.”

“Me, too.”

“But first, I’m going to think about Yolo in that T-shirt.”

“Me, too.”

They chuckled and sputtered themselves to sleep.

The girls crept around in the morning, doing their laundry in Ma Johnston’s little washer-dryer in the alcove by the back door. Nayeli and Yolo wore Matt’s T-shirts and nothing else. They were quiet because they couldn’t bear the boys looking under their hems. Vampi had found Ma Johnston’s tatty bathrobe. She was a sight—goth eyed and raven haired in an unraveling quilted puce wrap. The dryer banged and rattled, but it didn’t wake the guys. The girls nudged one another and laughed: Atómiko slept like he’d been shot in the head, and he had his right hand stuffed into his boxers. Matt was a lump on the floor. He had his head buried under his pillow. One-fourth of his bum-cleavage protruded whitely from his blue checkered boxers.

The girls were dressed and drinking instant coffee before the guys even moved.

Atómiko snorted, sat up and glared at them, rubbed his shaved head. He rose like a zombie and kicked Matt. “Pancakes,” he said. He staggered toward the bathroom, scratching his ass. He stood peeing with the door open. Nayeli went over and shut it. She shook her head. “What a pig,” she muttered.

Matt sat up.

His blond hair stood up all over his head. His eyes were puffy. He smiled like sunrise. Nayeli wanted to kiss him and climb under his blankets with him.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.

She thrilled.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he said to Yolo, who still acted angry with him over last night but secretly smiled. Nayeli studied this stratagem. How did she do that? How did she scowl and smile at the same time? How did she know what angle worked best when she glanced sideways like that? Nayeli’s face just broke into her crazy smile and made her look like a clown.

“Buenos dias, you goddess,” he said to Vampi.

Vampi didn’t waste time worrying about how to deal with Matt. She walked over and plopped down beside him and pulled the covers over herself. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Hello, handsome,” she said.

Damn
, Nayeli thought.
Just like a puppy!

Atómiko yelled from the bathroom: “Pancakes!”

¿Qué son pancakes?” Vampi asked.

They were in the minivan, tooling down the street.

“Son jo-keks,” Yolo said.

“¿ Jo-keks? ¿Qué es eso?”

They passed the Von’s market where Ma used to shop, and the library where she got her books, and they swung around a wide bend and were delighted to see the sweep of Mission Bay before them. It looked like Mazatlán.

Atómiko said, “¡Los jo-keks son panquéquis!”

“¡Qué!”

Nayeli said, “It’s like a tortilla, Vampi.”

Matt was laughing.

“You put syrup on them. Butter. You know?”

“No.”

“They put blueberries in them. Or chocolate chips.”

“Blueberries and syrup on a tortilla? Guácala. I will have huevos rancheros.”

They pulled into the little strip mall at the bottom of the hill. There was the Jack in the Box they’d eaten at ten hours ago.

“I been there,” Atómiko said.

“You’re a local,” Matt said. “Leave your pole here, though.”

They walked into the American Eagle diner. It was full of fat and happy Americans. Old duffers with white baseball caps cracked wise with the waitresses. The waitresses had stiffly sprayed hair-dos and frilly skirts. Paintings of rampant stags and soaring eagles graced the walls. The Camarones crew goggled. It was still 1965 in the restaurant, but they didn’t know that.

“Hi, doll!” a waitress whose bosom proclaimed
Velma!
said to Matt. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“You know,” Matt said. “My mom and all.”

“Hey—we were so sorry to hear about that. It was real sad.”

“Thanks.”

“Five?” she said.

“Yup.”

She snagged five plastic-covered menus out of a slot in the counter and whisked them to a corner booth.

“Booth all right?”

“Great, thanks.”

“Who’s your friends?” she said as they sat.

“They’re old friends from the mission field.”

“Oh! Missionaries!”

It was too hard to explain, so Matt just smiled up at her.

“Mexicans?”

Matt nodded.

“Welcome to the United States,”
Velma!
shouted at them as if they were deaf.

Everyone smiled warmly, wondering if she was mad at them.

“You’ll have to meet El Brujo. He’s around here someplace.”

Vampi looked up: El Brujo? There was someone here named the Wizard?

“Get you some coffee?”
Velma!
asked.

Everyone nodded.

“Please,” Matt said.

“Five coffees. Coming right up, doll.”

They stared out the big window at the spotless USA. People lined up across the street for five-dollar gas. No dogs anywhere. Skateboarders zoomed by on their way downhill.

El Brujo appeared, carrying five waters. Vampi turned and froze. He wore an apron. He was as short as she was. His black hair was pulled back and hung in a heavy ponytail. She saw a dragon in the swirl of ink on his arms. But his T-shirt, his T-shirt! Nayeli nudged Yolo. They stared at the man as he put the glasses down, then went to retrieve five silverwear setups from his cart. The shirt was black,
THE
69
EYES
in red across the chest.

“Oh, no,” Yolo said.

“Vampi,” warned Nayeli.

But Vampi was deaf to them. Vampi was turned in her seat. Vampi’s mouth hung open.

El Brujo put down the napkin-wrapped forks and knives and glanced at Vampi. At the apartment, she had done her eyes in fresh death makeup. He smiled a little at her. He looked like an Aztec warrior.

“Soy una vampira,” she whispered.

El Brujo did a double take.

“¡Ah, cabrón!” he said.

The other girls were out of practice. They didn’t remember how fast Mexican romances moved. By that evening, El Brujo had arrived at Matt’s duplex and swept Vampi off on a date. He drove a ’71 Chevy pickup that had a Héroes del Silencio decal in the back window. The girls were stunned and jealous. “Just like that?” they kept saying. “Just like that?”