Bobby Byrd - Lone Star Noir

“Haven’t you smoked enough of that stuff?”

She looked at him, one eye closed. “What? You pay for this shit?” Then she giggled, remembering that he had. “Just kidding, amigo, just kidding. Sit down with me.” Stoned. Wasted. Gone. Here. Come. “Sit right here, my sweet papaya. Close to me.” She patted her hand on the seat of the chair next to hers, then pulled another cigarette from her purse, pushed the last two pieces of rock into the tip.

He sat down.

She caressed the inside of his thigh, made her way up to his crotch. Smiled sweetly. Lit up.

“Oh, sweet little jewel,” she said.

“Why are you so quiet?” she asked him, coming out of her stupor, as she had done a few times during the ride to get her home, enough to let him know where to take her. Back to the same neighborhood they’d been the night before. He thought about dropping her off at a bus stop, dumping her. It would’ve been easy enough, she seemed so lifeless, wasted. But he couldn’t do it. He’d take her home even if it meant going back to that part of town. He’d take her home. Get rid of her. Anything to get rid of her.

“I’m tired, that’s all,” he answered. No interest in talking with her, angry, really angry now that the sun was out, now that it was light, now that he felt safe.

“Hey, don’t worry. I know lots of guys who can’t get it up sometimes. No big deal. Get some Viagra,” she said to him rather lucidly, giggling. This made him even angrier.

He pulled down the visor-the strong, early morning, South Texas sun blinding him. He could barely see where he was going. Even now, still a little drunk. In shock. Still nervous. Edgy. Knew he wouldn’t be all right until she was out of the truck. Away from him. His life. His home.

She nodded off again.

“Hey, wake up,” he said to her a few blocks later, shaking her rather severely, a little too hard. “You have to tell me where we’re going. Wake up. Don’t fall asleep.”

She opened her eyes slightly, dazed. “Where are we? Oh, yeah, up there. I see. Up there. Take a left on Zarzamora. Just up there. Yeah, right up there. Up there,” she repeated, pointing in no particular direction. “Yeah, one more block. Right here. Turn. Right there. Yeah, just right there on the left. Yeah, drop me off right there. That’s my momma’s house. She’s dead now. Dead. She left it to me. The house, that house, the white one with the red roof. Que pretty, right? Yeah, that one. Right here.”

She leaned over, tried to kiss him. He turned away. She laughed, got out slowly, slammed the door shut.

El Paso

Alex opened his eyes. The sunlight was creeping from around the heavy motel curtains. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Same thing. He was on the edge of a king-sized bed. He was naked and uncovered. Curled up like a dead baby. He could feel her warmth pushing up against him. He stuck a thumb in his eye and rubbed. Six hours before, the two of them had begun their postorgasm journey on the other side of the bed next to the night table, she asleep in his sweaty arms. But during the night they had migrated eight feet, him inching away from her, her tracking his warmth. A long nighttime journey.

As if , Alex thought, she was stalking me in her sleep .

But he didn’t feel happy with himself. He wasn’t even satisfied, whatever that meant. Maybe Alex considered satisfaction some form of forgiveness. Some form of hope.

He pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. He cradled his head in his hands like it was a foreign thing-an egg in the wrong nest. Or the bloody head of Danton harvested from the basket behind the guillotine. Poor Danton. Robespierre was such an asshole. These were his strange thoughts. He stood up in the semidarkness and walked the narrow path to the bathroom. He grabbed his black boxer shorts. He didn’t shut the door. He used his left hand to pee. The right hand scratched his chest.

Twice during the night he had gotten up to pee, and each time upon his return the woman had pulled him back again in her arms. Alex had drunk a lot of beer. They had gone to sleep around two and now it was seven or eight. So getting up twice to pee wasn’t bad.

There were two plastic liters of water next to the sink. He took one and went to the table and sat down next to the window. The table was round with two uncomfortable chairs. Mexican chairs were always uncomfortable. He peeked around the curtain and looked at the morning. The desert sunlight made him shut his eyes. A few women walked with their children toward a church that must have been hiding behind storefronts-pottery, bathroom fixtures, tile, a bar named Café Soul. The street was filthy with Saturday-night garbage. There was a drunk asleep on the ragged grass in the median. Cars came and went in the freedom that Sunday morning brings. He was the dead man again. He wished he were north of the river. He wished he were home on his front porch drinking coffee.

But he wasn’t. He had come across last night because it was the time of the month to get fucked. It was his ritual. The third Thursday of every month, nine p.m. Six months after his wife died, he started coming across. First, it was every few months. But after a while he made it a monthly ritual. A ceremony of my confusion , he called it. He knew two cab drivers. He was their friend. Or, more aptly, their “business acquaintance.” He had met them through a friend of a friend. He wanted to be safe on the other side. And he had been hearing about the women disappearing. They were raped and killed and dumped in the desert or in vacant lots. No one was ever arrested. Sometimes the police didn’t even find out who the woman was and where she came from. Nobody seemed to care. The victims were forgotten. Alex didn’t want to think about those women. He wanted to come across and conduct his personal ceremony. He wanted to resolve this thing he called confusion in his body. So, thanks to the friend of the friend, he had searched out the two cab drivers. One was named Tony and the other was named Pete, and they were partners. Together they owned a beat-up green cab. A Plymouth four-door. Tony or Pete, one or the other, would be sitting in the No. 107 cab when Alex walked across the bridge. They would smile at each other and shake hands. Alex would get in the front seat and they’d go shopping. Alex was a two-hundred-dollar man, so Tony or Pete would take him to a two-hundred-dollar club and together they would choose a two-hundred-dollar whore and Tony or Pete would negotiate while Alex listened and then Tony or Pete would take Alex and his two-hundred-dollar whore to the Best Western on the Avenida de las Americas. The whole night would cost Alex maybe four hundred dollars. It was in his monthly budget. It was part of his life.

The two-hundred-dollar whore on the bed was Arcia, and she was feeling around in the dark for the man she had stalked in her sleep. She groaned. The man was no longer there. She didn’t understand that the man was dead and that the dead man was sitting on a chair looking at her. She was naked and lying on her belly like she was swimming. She pushed herself high enough up to look around, her eyes blinking. She saw Alex and sighed, then fell facedown into the sheets again. Alex watched her turn over to look at him but he wasn’t thinking about her.

He was thinking about a night ten years before. Maybe it was fifteen years before. He didn’t care which. His wife was still alive, and they were holding hands. They were driving home on the old road between Las Cruces and El Paso. They had been to a dance party. They never went to dance parties. But this had been a special occasion. Some sort of fundraiser with an old-time C &W band. They had promised themselves that they would dance, and they had wandered around the floor with their stiff-legged waltz and clumsy two-step like they were driving bumper cars. The band had a very fat guy yodeling funky old songs. The fat man sat on the stool and sang with a wonderful tenor voice. The flaps under his chin trembled. The whole night the fat man never got up to pee. Alex and his wife loved the fat guy. On the way home they laughed and made up stories about the fat guy who had sung “Danny Boy” like he was Pavarotti. Alex had wanted to cry.