Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (9 page)

He starts getting mad. I can hear it in his voice.

“Doesn’t matter what cops think,” I said.

“I like you, Sammy. You’re smart. But you’re full of shit.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re full of shit, too.” I tossed him a cigarette.

“It matters, Sammy.” That’s what René said. “It matters what the cops think. Just like it matters what our fucking teachers think.” He licked the cigarette he was holding. “Toss me a light,” he said. “Sammy, the only thing that doesn’t matter is us.”

We get to the party around nine o’clock. Nice. Hollywood didn’t have
houses like the one Hatty Garrison lived in. Cars everywhere on her street. I knew there’d be trouble. Already the neighbors looked like they were ready to swoop down. So Pifas and René Montoya and me, we go to the door. Hatty’s there with this big smile. “Pifas!” she says. She was nice, Hatty. Always liked her. “Sammy!” she says. And she hugs me. I could smell the beer on her. Well on her way to being drunk. Not a good sign, I thought. I hated that I was such a worrier. Was Pifas worried? Was René worried? Was Hatty worried? No one was worried. We had a house full of Alfred E. Newmans.

We made our way through the crowd. The music was loud as shit. I never liked that. I mean, I liked rock. I liked the song that was on. I liked the Rolling Stones. But I didn’t like loud. I pushed my way through the crowd and made my way to the backyard. Lots of gringos. Lots of Chicanos, too. Integration. Yeah, yeah. I tried to see if anyone else from Hollywood was there. Didn’t see anyone, mostly people I knew from school. People I’d be ashamed to take to my house. I hated that I was ashamed. Where did that come from?

Someone handed me a plastic cup. I walked over to the keg and some guy says, “Sammy! Fucking A! Sammy!” He takes my empty cup and fills it up from the keg. There’s always a keg watcher. Afraid everybody will drink all the beer and leave nothing for him.

“Hey, Michael, how is it?” That’s what I always say. How is it? It was a Sammy Santos thing.

Michael nodded his head to the music and handed me the cup full of beer. “It’s good, Sammy. Everything’s good.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m good, too.” That’s when I see Gigi talking to some girl. She was wearing a mini-skirt, and her white go-go boots and really pink lipstick. Pink as Mrs. Apodaca’s house. She had a body, Gigi did.
Liked having it. Liked it a lot. I walk over to her. “Gigi. How is it?”

“It’s you,” she said.

“Yeah. Me, Gigi. Just me.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” I said. I walked away. I didn’t get her. I just didn’t.

It was an okay party. People were dancing. People were talking. People were drinking. People were making out. That sort of thing. You know the scene. Funny thing, I wasn’t into it. Maybe it was Juliana. Maybe my head was still in another place. With her. At the Aggie Drive-In. I was always a watcher. But now, I was even more of a watcher. I wasn’t a part of anything. Not anything real. Maybe something would happen. If not to me, to someone else. Didn’t matter if it was something good or something bad. Just anything to make me feel like I was alive. Maybe, deep down, I knew why Pifas and Joaquín and René and Reyes liked to fight. They wanted to feel something. Maybe I was just like them. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. So there I was, at a party at Hatty Garrison’s house, a beer in my hand and about to light a cigarette, when Gigi comes up to me and says, “You know, Sammy, you’re a real asshole.”

“Did I do something to you, Gigi? Did I?”

“You have your head stuck so far up your ass you can see what you ate for dinner.”

“Nice mouth.”

“Don’t nice mouth me, Sammy.”

“You wanna tell me why we’re fighting a war?” I offered her a cigarette. She took it—like she was doing me a favor.

“Why do you tell everyone my name’s Ramona?”

“Well, because that’s your name.”

“I hate that name.”

“Pick it up with your mom and dad.”

She really shot me a look. You know. The look. The one that makes you feel like a worm about to be stepped on.

“Okay. Look, I don’t go around telling everyone your real name’s not Gigi. I don’t know—”

“You told Jaime Rede.”

“Big deal.”

“Now he knows.”

“He was in the first grade with us, Gigi.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s how I know what your name is—from first grade. That’s what the teacher used to call you.”

“You remember that?”

“How the hell else would I know what your name is, Gigi?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have told him. Everyone he knows has started calling me Ramona. And it’s all your fault. I feel like a pendeja.”

She didn’t smoke a cigarette like a real smoker. She didn’t like it. I think a cigarette just went with the outfit—that’s why she wanted to hold one.

“That’s why you’re mad at me?”

“I have other reasons.”

“You wanna tell me about ‘em?”

“No.”

Great. I hated that. “No?”

“No.” She inhaled the cigarette I’d given her like she was real cool, like she’d been practicing in front of a mirror. “See ya, Sammy.” She disappeared into the house, got swallowed up by the song that was blaring out
I’m getting closer to my home. . .
I look over and see Jaime
Rede talking to this guy that was in my Spanish class, Eric Fry. And the two of them are talking real quiet. I wondered if they were making some kind of dope deal. Someone told me Jaime was into that. And Eric Fry, well, I didn’t know anything about him—except that he spoke perfect Spanish, something pretty odd for a gringo, spoke it better than most Mexicans. But he was a little too proud of himself. He liked to correct people in our Spanish class. I hated that. I didn’t like him much. I don’t care if he did speak Spanish. No. I didn’t like him. Not that he wasn’t nice to me. He was. It wasn’t that. Anyway, whatever they were talking about, they were really into it. I wondered if I shouldn’t walk over there and say “How is it?” but then I thought, what would I say after that?

Just then, I thought I’d light a cigarette. That’s when I heard someone yell, “Fight! Fight!” Somehow the whole party had pushed itself out to the front yard. There was a big circle around two guys who were going at it. I had a feeling. I did. So I elbow my way to the front. And there’s René and some guy who played football named Scott. And they were really fighting. They hated each other. Nobody could fight like that if they didn’t hate. Shit. Shit. And then someone yells, “Cops! Cops!” And Scott and René don’t care. They keep fighting. But I care. And if the cops came, I knew they’d just haul René in again. I hated that. I jumped in. Crazy. I was crazy. “Goddamnit, René, let’s get the hell outta here!” He looked at me—then we just ran.

I couldn’t believe it, there I was running down some street, didn’t even really know where I was running. And then I start getting mad. This is what I get for saying okay. This is what I get for dancing with the fucking devil—I wind up in hell. What did I expect? Shit, when I get a hold of Pifas—I kept looking back to see if there was a cop car following us. And then I saw these headlights, and I thought, busted. Cabrón, Pifas,
when I get a hold of that little shit — busted, busted. My heart was pounding right up to my throat. Right there. In my throat. And then, when I turned I could see it wasn’t a cop car, just an old beat up ’57 Chevy, but that didn’t stop me from running. I just ran, René still running behind me. And as the car caught up to us, I heard a voice, “Hop in.” Gigi! It was Gigi! Thank God. Thank God for Gigi. We didn’t ask questions, we just hopped in the car.

“You guys aren’t too smart, you know that? How many times have you been hauled in, René? And you, Sammy?” The thing about Gigi was that she was pretty straight. I mean, she played tough, but she wasn’t. Not really. There were some girls in Hollywood that were really tough. But Gigi wasn’t one of them. She was a nice girl trying to pretend she wasn’t.

“Can I catch my breath?” I said.

No one said anything for a while. René and I, we just wanted to catch our breath. God, breathing can be loud. In a car. When no one’s talking. I wiped the sweat off my face with the shoulder of my shirt. “Thanks, Gigi,” I said. “You saved our asses.”

“Yeah, well, look, give me a smoke.” So I gave her a smoke. I watched her light it, then noticed who was driving the car. A girl who lived down the block. Angelina. Quiet. Never stood out much. Everyone called her Angel. Good girl type. What was she doing at a keg party?

“Hi Angel,” I said.

“Hi Sammy.” She had a nice voice. Soft. Maybe too soft for a girl from Hollywood.

“So where we going?” René says. “It’s early.”

“I’m not taking you anywhere. I’m gonna dump your Raza ass at home—unless you promise not to start anymore fights. What is it with
you, anyway? You’re such a bofo. Estás loco ¿o qué?”

“I didn’t start that fight. That pinche gringo has it in for me. Y yo no me dejo. Hell no. I don’t bow to cabrones like that. No way. Next time I see that cabrón I’m gonna kick his ass all the way to Minneapolis or wherever the shit his people come from.”

“You know why Gloria broke up with you? Because you think with your fists, that’s why. That’s even worse than thinking with your dick.”

“Hey, hey, Gigi,” I said.

“Cállate, Samuel. Just shut up.”

“I don’t want to talk about Gloria.”

“Guess you don’t. She loved your stupid pinche brown ass. Did you care?”

“I cared.”

“Oye el agua. Está lloviendo. Look, just shut up.”

“This is fun,” I said. “We’re having fun, aren’t we, Angel?”

Angel smiles but she’s a good driver. She nods and just keeps driving. By then, we were on El Paseo just cruising. And then René says, “Hey, there’s Pifas! Honk, Angel.” Angel, good girl that she was, does exactly what René says.

René hangs out the window, “Hey, Pifas!”

Pifas looks up, and does that Aztec chin thing. We both pull over to a side street.

“There was cops everywhere! Chingao, and everyone’s running, and I’m thinking, shit,
all that wasted beer.
And people are hiding all over the house, and Hatty’s crying, felt bad for her, and I’m just tryin’ like hell to boogie, ¿sabes?” Sometimes when Pifas got going, you couldn’t shut the guy up. “Bunch of people got busted. And, cabrones, you left without me.
Órale ¿qué pues?” But already, he’d forgiven us. “Let’s go to the river. I got some Boone’s Farm.” And he just takes off.

“Follow ‘em,” René says. And Angel does what she’s told.

“Pifas is all screwed up, ¿sabes?” Gigi does this thing with her cigarette like she’s writing a sentence in the air.

“He’s alright, Pifas.” René was loyal. I liked that. “Buena gente. He’s there when you need him.”

Gigi was into lecturing. If she didn’t watch herself she was gonna grow up and be Mrs. Apodaca. “He finds trouble. He smells it. Just like you, René. If you could only smell money like you smelled trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah. If only, if only,” René said. He kind of went away for a second. I could tell. I wondered where he went. He did that sometimes, went somewhere in his head. Just like me.

At the river, we parked the cars. God, you could see everything in the moonlight. The river looked clean and pure—even though it wasn’t. In the light of that summer moon, everything seemed calm. Even us. Even Pifas and René. God, I liked it there. I think the garden in my head was lit up like this. Better than any party.

Gigi and Angel and René and Pifas and me, we sat there and drank Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. And we smoked. Mostly Angel didn’t say anything, she just listened. But one thing I noticed about her. She was there. She was really there. Not like me. I was somewhere else. In my heart. Pifas and René were drinking a lot. Gigi and I only drank a little. Then, out of nowhere, Angel says, “Let’s play a game. Let’s play, What-are-we-going-to-do-when-we-leave-Hollywood?”

No one said anything. Everyone was thinking she was stupid. But before anyone said that, I said, “College. I’m going to college.”

“Me, too,” Angel said.

René looked at us like we were crazy. “Not me. No gringo-ass college for me. More teachers and more gringos. No way. I’m gonna go be a boxer in L.A. That’s where I’m headed.”

“A boxer?” Gigi said. “Estas loco. Te van a matar.”

“Nobody’s gonna get killed,” René laughed. He took a big swig from the bottle of wine and passed it to me.

“I joined up.”

We all looked at Pifas.

“What?” Gigi said.

“I said I joined up.” Pifas had this really serious expression on his face.

“You’re drunk, Pifas.”

“Fuckin’ A, René,” he said. “¿Y qué? But I’m goin’ in the pinche Army.”

René had this sick look on his face, like he just couldn’t believe it. “Órale, Pifas, don’t be a pendejo. What are you gonna do in the army? There’s a war goin’ on, ese. Don’t you pay attention? Hollywood isn’t enough for you? Shit, ese, you’re joining the system instead of fucking fighting it. You should join the Brown Berets, not the fucking Army.”

“Órale, I’m not a pendejo. What the shit am I supposed to do? It’s either enlist or get drafted. Brown Berets, my ass. When they draft me, what are the fuckin’ Brown Berets gonna do? What are they gonna do for Pifas Espinosa? Fight the system, shit! Shit! That’s what I say. Who’s the pendejo, René? What do you want me to do, run through the shithole streets of Hollywood yelling, ‘Come out of your goddamned good-for-nothing houses and fight the fuckin’ system! Come out! Come out!” Pifas got up from the hood of his car and started running around throwing his arms in the air like a bird flapping his wings—a bird that couldn’t fly no
matter how hard he flapped. And he kept yelling, “Come out!” like a crazy man. “Citizens of Hollywood, rise up! Rise up against the fucking system!” We all watched him, didn’t say anything, just watched, looked at each other like maybe we were supposed to do something. But what do you do when someone loses it? Right there, in front of you. Right there. He threw himself on the ground and just lay there, “Rise up! Fucking rise up!” Then he laughed. I thought he would laugh forever. And right then, the laughing sounded like crying. And maybe he was crying. Then, he stopped. Just stopped. Got up and sat back on the hood of his car. “I enlisted,” he said, his voice completely normal again.