Manuel Munoz - What You See in the Dark

“That’s what I had planned,” she said, shaking her head in embarrassment.

“What’s your name?” he asked. This time, there was kindness in his voice, as if he recognized that he had been too brusque. His voice wasn’t just kind but apologetic. She looked up at him, his brown hair still singed with a light color on top from the summer days, his nose slightly sunburned.

“Teresa,” she said.

“You’re Alicia’s girl, aren’t you?” He shielded his brown eyes with his hand against the sun, but he studied her as intently as he had studied her guitar. “Yeah, you are — you look a lot like her in some ways. Around the eyes, I mean.”

“You knew my mother?”

“She worked with my mama at the café. Everybody knew your mama. She was a real nice lady. Did you know Mrs. Watson? Arlene Watson?”

She shook her head.

“I’m her son. Dan.” He stuck his hand out and she reached to shake it. Even though it was hot out, his hand felt cool to the touch, her hand tiny in his palm.

“It’s good to meet you,” she said. She tried to keep her hand light in his, not knowing when to let go.

“She around anymore? She didn’t pass, did she?”

“No. She had to go back to Texas,” Teresa said. “Family.” She spoke with a nervous hesitation, and Dan Watson seemed to catch the waver in her voice. She could tell that he already knew her whole story, but his face didn’t betray it.

He smiled at her instead and pointed at the guitar, and the way he smiled eased everything. “You want to sing for me?” he asked her. He leaned over and picked up the guitar with great care, holding it out to her. In his hands, the guitar looked like a toy, small against his frame.

Teresa shook her head. “I should be heading home.”

“Come on, now,” Dan Watson encouraged her. “Just one little song.” When she shook her head again, laughing, he stepped closer, nearly placing the guitar in her arms. “You can sing at the Copas if you’re any good.”

He held the guitar out to her. She thought of the women on the television sets at Stewart’s Appliances, the women not just singing anymore but speaking to her somehow, letting loose with their admonishments: this was why they held out their arms at the end of every song, they would tell her, because someone like him might reach right back.

“You want to go across the street? Have some water and rest a little while I’m setting up?” he asked. He had a hint of a singer in his voice, the way it rose and fell, yet still nestled in sincerity. He placed the guitar in her arms, and his brown eyes held hers for a moment before he backed away and began walking toward Las Cuatro Copas.

“Come on,” he called out, half turning, as he walked. After that, Dan Watson didn’t turn around again. He was tall, his back wide, his brown hair thick against the sun. The sound of boot steps on the gravel slowly faded as she watched him disappear inside the building.

She stared across the street at the dark opening of Las Cuatro Copas. Where was Cheno? Her hands clutched the guitar and she heard her feet against the gravel, and she found herself at the threshold of the bar, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness inside.

“That water’s for you,” Dan’s voice called out to her, but she couldn’t see him, her eyes still not acclimated. She stepped in, making out a long bar against the lefthand side, with stools padded in royal blue velvet. She reached for the glass, grateful to be out of the heat, the ice water stinging her lips. She looked up at a ceiling fan whirring, an old swamp cooler rattling high in the corner above the bar.

His boots sounded against the floor and he emerged from the other side of the cantina with a plate in his hand, the swinging door to a kitchen padded red with a diamond-shaped peep window. “I’m not much of a cook, but I can make sandwiches,” Dan said. “You looked hungry.”

“You didn’t have to bother,” Teresa said, but her stomach gurgled at the sight of the plate, and she held her hand over her stomach as if Dan could have heard it.

He stepped behind the bar and set the plate down, spying her empty glass and refilling it, even tossing the old ice into the sink and giving her fresh cubes. He pointed to the sandwiches as he poured himself a beer. “Go ahead and eat. It’s just ham and butter. That’s all the kitchen had back there that I knew what to do with.”

She took one of the sandwiches. The butter gave it an unusual taste, but Teresa didn’t complain, even though the bread was thick enough to catch in her throat. She had to swallow water with every bite.

“Aren’t you going to join me?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” he begged off. “You eat as much as you want; it’s all for you. But you’ll have to sing for your supper, of course. That’s the only requirement.”

She smiled at him as she took a bite, nodding her head in agreement. “So there’s a little kitchen back there?”

“Just basics. Nothing fancy. We cook a few things and bring them out to people with their beers. See the tables?” He motioned. “We’re a little less rowdy than Ed’s place. More dancing over there, more coming and going.” Dan tipped a thumb back to his mouth as if taking a drink. “Too much sauce over there sometimes. Gets out of hand. Very … worldly, if you know what I mean.”

“Worldly?”

“Things go on in places like that,” he said, sighing.

“Right across the street?”

“You’d be surprised what’s right across the street, no matter where you go.” He slid the plate closer to her. “Go on. It’s all for you. I already told you you’re singing for your supper.”

She took another sandwich and he busied himself behind the bar, washing glasses and counting beer bottles. She tried to eat as slowly as she could, and the thick, heavy bread helped, but before she knew it, her hunger had won over and the sandwich was gone. Almost as soon as Dan Watson saw the empty plate, he said, “So how about that song?”

From her seat at the bar, she could see outside to El Molino Rojo, across the street, but Cheno wasn’t there. She took a drink, the water having warmed some in the dissipating heat of the cantina, so it wasn’t too cold for her throat. The song she had practiced was one she had tried to recall from her mother’s record playing, a simple set of repeated chords, but now the idea of singing in front of someone besides Cheno felt ridiculous. “I’d be terrible,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Come on, now,” Dan said. “I gave you a sandwich.”

She laughed. Cheno was still nowhere on the street. “I suppose,” she said, a bit defeated, yet somehow relieved that her number wasn’t going to be a real audition. She smiled at Dan’s good nature and bent down for her guitar, adjusting herself on the blue velvet stool and looking down at the strings in preparation.

“No, no,” he said. “Not there.” Dan pointed to the center of the cantina. “Over there.” He stepped from behind the bar and grabbed another blue velvet stool, handling it as lightly as he had the guitar, bringing it to the center of the room and setting it gently on the dusty floor. “Right there,” he called, then retreated toward the kitchen. She didn’t have time to imagine how the cantina might look at night, full of people, the sound of boots on the wood drowned out by song and laughter and chatter. A honey-colored spotlight came on from above. “Go on,” Dan called, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. “I can hear you.”

She laughed nervously but took her place, her stomach sinking and her hands beginning to shake. So this was what it was like to perform, to call out while everyone was hanging on your words. Her knees felt watery and wooden at the same time. None of it felt right: her posture, the honey light, her throat clearing but her voice sounding reserved, her fingers too jittery to focus. But she held them on the strings just as Cheno had shown her, and took a deep breath, imagining herself on the television sets at Stewart’s Appliances, remembering that the singers and the fiddle players and the horn section always faced the camera. So Teresa looked up, as if she were facing an audience herself. Ahead of her, on the opposite wall, a long horizon of mirror stretched from one end of the wall to the other. There she was, with her denim skirt and her white blouse, and the light coming down like hot honey. She was too far away from the mirror to see herself clearly — her features, her face, the way her eyes must have looked, confused and full of apprehension — but she was close enough to see that she would never be a distant figure to anyone in that cantina. She would be close enough to the patrons that the songs would mean something if she sang them the way she did in the quiet of her rented room above the bowling alley, and she could focus on the image of herself in the mirror if she didn’t want to look in their eyes, just the way she did with Dan Watson outside in the heat of the day, his eyes squinting to conceal what he was really seeing.