A Tender Discomfort

Alvaro was nude on an empty floor when his phone rang and woke him up. It was 4:08 A.M. The text he received from his cousin Brianna, inscribed in all caps, was vicious and straight to the point: NANA OLGA WAS MURDERED!! PLEASE CALL BACK. The message cut like a knife, sending a tremor throughout his body that he couldn’t shake off. Besides a pained, reflexive gasp, he held himself from reacting too audibly. He tried his best not to awaken the good-looking stranger beside him, snoring restfully under a thin bedsheet. On simpler days, Alvaro would’ve thought fondly of their casual encounter the night before, but now all he could keep his mind on was this sudden throbbing pain building up inside of him, seeping out his pores through liquor sweats and clammy palms. He stood up quietly and rushed to the bathroom.

He sat on the toilet and wept, the eerie buzz of a flickering bulb droning above him. He wept for a half hour in a hiccup-charged agony. Hand to his mouth, he muffled his sobs. With the jagged tips of his chewed-up fingernails, he began to scratch at himself to soothe his grief. Forty minutes went by before he could finally muster the strength to call back.

“I just got up,” he told her while swallowing a lump, “what happened?”

She choked. “A burglar broke in. In the middle of the night. He killed her and took everything: her jewelry, her–” Brianna went into horrific, unspeakable detail.

He bought a ticket the next day, beginning the long trip back to his best-forgotten hometown. He sat quietly in a bus full of working folk like him. On occasion, he would peek outside the window, looking out towards a vast panorama of barren, drought-punched farmland.

When it was time for a break, the bus stopped at a rundown diner where the workers were sad and the food was dry. A waitress approached him and asked him what he wanted. It was clear as day that she wished to be anywhere but there with him in that crummy shop. She seemed angry at him, for what specifically, he couldn’t guess.

He asked for the special of the day: a grilled steak with a microwaved side of greens and grits. It came back with a small American flag pitched to the center of the meat. He tried his best to enjoy it, to become lost in its greasy, decadent flavor—but his mind was occupied by his dreadful reality.

With eyes closed, he ate and concentrated. He tried to conjure some distant bliss—a faint memory of some point in his life when he had felt some joy. There was one fragment, in particular, which stuck out to him: one of watching soaps with his grandmother. He was eleven. Scrawny. With a shrieky voice. It was a pleasant memory at first until it wasn’t. As the tape of his mind’s eye reeled on, he began recalling things he wished not to recall.

• • •

Each day at the Custer Park Mobile Village began with the mighty crow of a cooped-up rooster. Gradually the sky took on a serene, cloud-tinted hue. It lent a storybook charm to this otherwise desolate land. People walked about in their cheap clothes and discount shoes, from one dusty shack to the next, scattering about for their daily struggle. Across the desert, an asphalt road stretched into a vast horizon of mighty, ancient hills, where vultures flew, eternally scouring for their breakfast carrion.

In one of its many trailers, there lived Yahaira–the youngest of Nana Olga’s kin. Nana kept the little home cool with a rickety fan that clicked and clacked with every oscillation. Empty CD cases and folded-up Yu-Gi-Oh cards lay scattered around. So hoarded with useless junk was the living room that there was actually very little living to be had in it. Patchy wiring and an overflowing septic tank were the order of things. Over time, Nana Olga had cultivated a monk-like indifference toward the discomforts of her living situation. At her age, it was best not to be too difficult or too demanding. She had come to terms long ago with the bitter hand that life had dealt her way–rotting away slowly on a beige pleather couch, in her Jesus sandals and cheap floral dress.

It was summer on a Saturday. The TV set rested on a synthetic woodgrain shelf, covered with doilies and pastel-tinted statues of the saints. The TV was an outdated CRT, with image quality so weak and deteriorated from years of baking in the sun. Nevertheless, it remained an adequate form of escapism. Olga had the channel tuned to forty-six, the year she was born, though that was merely a coincidence. Channel 46 was the only one of two stations that would broadcast in Spanish.

She was watching an ad for some instant powder corn syrup drink when suddenly a loud barrage of black and grey specks swarmed across the screen in a violent flurry.

“Mijito, come in,” she yelled out towards the front door.

Alvaro came in with an old GameBoy in his hand. “The signal went out,” she told him, “hurry up and fix it, would you?” And so, Alvaro did as his grandmother kindly told him. He went out through the spring-loaded door from which he came in. He looked up to the sky where the antennae stood out. On windy days such as this, it was prone to spinning sporadically in whichever direction the weather intended. He began by spinning the pole and returning it into a functioning position.

Inside, his grandmother waited for a signal. As he spun the antennae outside, the TV would warp and wobble its pixels into a colorful array of lines and shapes, revealing a commercial for foot fungal medication. “Stop,” she said. “Stop now.” But he kept going, not hearing her at first. When finally he caught on, he stopped, but already it was late. The signal was out just like before. “No, no, back, back. It went away.” So he twisted back, and the image came clearer once more. “Stop,” she repeated. They continued this for about thirty seconds, as was often the case on windy days. When finally he found his position, Alvaro grabbed a rope and tied it to the trailer, securing it with the firmest of knots that he knew. One loop, two loops, bunny ears, down and over. Snug and tight. This kept it in place. He came back to the living room and sat beside his grandmother. “It’s starting,” she said, and then she smiled.

It was the hottest new telenovela of the season—the latest export from Colombia’s ever-so-hot soap opera industry. Good-looking Hispanics, with bleach-cooked hair and contact blue eyes, wildly gesticulated before gorgeous spiral stairways and fake-looking soundstages. The series epitomized contrived storytelling. It chronicled the lives of two sisters, the wealthy daughters of a corrupt oil magnate. One sister was good and kind-hearted and conflicted about her father’s fortunes. The other was cruel and malignant, obsessed with objects and power. Both sisters were played by the same actress. Both sisters had fallen in love with the same man, a simple servant that worked in the fields of their father’s ranch. It was a tale of desire and betrayal. It was not sophisticated, but it was delightfully camp.

Grandma and Alvaro were happy when they were together. She always cooked him delicious meals and even taught him how to make tamales and bake cornbread. She told him funny stories all the time about his uncles and aunts back home. With the gentle old woman by his side, nothing could hurt him. Not even his mother. Nana Olga would never allow that. Not in a million years.

As the show began, she shifted in her seat and plopped her feet onto Alvaro’s lap. Without a single word having to be exchanged, Alvaro began to rub them with his hands. He dutifully massaged his grandma’s feet. It was the least he could do for the woman who’d brought his family into the world.

• • •

It had been a decade since he’d left the town. When the bus rolled in, he looked out and soaked it in: the one-story houses with the planks on their broken windows, old porches rotting with age, trash strewn across the roads, and a dispirited countenance across every individual that he glanced at. It was no different than how he had remembered. As if all had decided to remain stagnant until his eventual return.

He met Brianna outside the red brick, barbed wire entrance of Custer Park. She guided him down the path, past the familiar mobile homes and tacky garden gnomes. She took him to the old family trailer. Outside, there was a medium-sized tree with dried-up leaves. Alvaro remembered when it was young like him. Now it had grown up sizably and loomed large like a brooding umbrella over this haunted RV. They walked up to the door where the intruder had pried open the door with a crowbar and a mallet: the same instruments of his nana’s death.
Nana Olga had become a minimalist towards the end of her life, having discarded most of her daughter’s belongings after she’d been committed to a psychiatric ward. She had lost most of her eyesight by then and had very little use for decorations and such. Alvaro looked around. Everything was shattered. Everything was trashed. Even the saints had been smashed. He saw the knock-off Birkenstocks she used to wear, the Pollo Campero plastic plates with the cartoon chicken on them, and a cracked flat screen where the old TV used to be. Then he saw the twin-sized, bloodstained futon.

“That’s where it happened,” he asked with a whisper.

Brianna nodded, but she didn’t have the heart to point out any of the grimmer details that were there. The powdered fragments of her shattered teeth. The red prints of her fingers on the telephone. 

“What have the police told you?” he asked. “Do they have a suspect?”

“Every hour, I call, I check, I ask. But they’re not doing shit.” She sniffed. “They’re not looking into this at all. Bunch of useless fucks!”

Alvaro could feel the tears welling up inside his ducts, ready to burst. “Why don’t they care,” he asked with a whimper. Brianna patted him on the back, then hugged him tightly for a good long while. She was a good cousin. The one and only in the family who knew him and loved him for all that he was.

• • •

In today’s episode, Maria, the good sister, was embroiled in a fierce confrontation with Elvira, the bad sister. “You betrayed me, Hermana,” exclaimed Maria. “I just did what I had to, Hermanita,” Elvira coldly replied. As he watched the TV, Alvaro continued massaging his grandma’s feet. They were particularly sore this afternoon, and the favor was well appreciated. He knew how to work his magic. He knew where to press, where to be tough, and where to be delicate. As his knuckles preseed down those ashy soles, he slowly made his way onto every single toe, until he heard a faint clicking of relief.

Olga looked down at her feet. How old and wrinkled they looked. Her memories brought her away from the show, and back to the days of her wasted youth, when she walked barefoot in her tiny village, running errands, avoiding men. She remembered it all: the dirty, sleazy men that approached her at the age of sixteen. The men who said vulgar things to her when she walked them by in those tattered rags, with her blistered feet. Nearly half a century had passed, and now she had graduated into a battle-hardened woman: the proud matriarch of a tribe that spanned four daughters, two sons, and twelve grandchildren, all male, except for Brianna.

Alvaro gasped. Something unexpected happened on the show. A big reveal. The star had come on. Curly hair, a chiseled chin, with a movie star grin. It was Marco Linares, the Latin American heartthrob, in the glorious romantic lead role of Carlos. Alvaro stared fixated as Carlos confessed his love to a weepy Maria. “Oh my God,” Alvaro remarked, “he finally proposed.”

In his heart, he knew that the beautiful Maria deserved so much more than Carlos’ mediocre romance. Yet in spite of Carlos’ indiscretions– his numerous affairs, his violent behavior, his tendency to gaslight and emotionally abuse– there was something in the gleam of this actor’s emerald eyes, the way his muscles protruded through the cotton of his comical tearaway shirt, under the scorching heat of those movie star lights. Whatever he’d done, Alvaro thought, was worth forgiving.

“He looks like your Abuelo,” Olga said.
Seeing as how his grandfather was a full-blooded Quechua, Alvaro found this hard to believe. Marco Linares was as white as a Latino could get. “Did I ever tell you about the time he gave me a diamond ring?”

Alvaro laughed. Of course she had. Plenty of times.

In those days, Papa Nestor was a lithe, delicate young man, a brown-skinned ectomorph with cavernous eyes and a skeletal disposition. His ancestors could trace their lineage to the earliest settlers of that village’s history. His was a family name of note and esteem in the land. It was a bloodline that had weathered the storm of violent colonization. Though by no means wealthy, they were noted merchants and traders, respectably prosperous in the eyes of their impoverished neighbors. Olga never forgot when Nestor gave her that diamond ring that he stole from his uncle’s trinket shop. Such a beautiful, romantic thing: a divine band of gold with a shiny, pretty rock on top. It had fallen out onto the road from a passing politician’s car. His mistress must have dropped it while she was checking her nails. It had fallen off her privileged hands and now Nestor was giving it to her. Never in a million years did Olga expect a Don Juan like him to pay a simple girl like her any mind, let alone spoil her with fine gifts such as this. She was not from a good home and she was not particularly beautiful. She was plain Olga. And that was enough for him. Nestor adored her, and he sang her ballads and read her poetry until she swooned and collapsed into his arms. It was a sensuous affair that they had there that night, in the back of his uncle’s shop, there in that damp closet. It was a night that changed history forever. At least for Alvaro it did.
Olga sighed quietly to herself. Rarely would she reminisce over something like that. On the TV, she watched the soap star Marco Linares, with all the connotations he brought, and said to herself: “he is so good-looking.” After all, she wasn’t dead yet.

Alvaro agreed with his grandmother, though he knew better than to voice it. He recalled how frothing-mad with rage his long-absent father became, that time when he expressed his love for a boy, with blonde hair, on the cover of a Tiger Beat magazine, that he saw on a liquor store counter. His father surely scared some straightness into that six-year-old boy.

“Ok, honey. That’s enough.” She pulled her feet away and sat upright. Olga’s massage was done and her grandson had completed his task. “She’s beautiful, too,” she said, referring to the actress. “One day you’ll find yourself a pretty girl like that and marry her. Won’t you?” Alvaro laughed.

On-screen, Carlos spoke sweet affirmations to Maria. Their eyes were lost under the enchanting spell of romance. They moved closer to each other. At last, they kissed. Though second-rate actors they were, something about this kiss felt so magical and real (months later it would be revealed in a gossip magazine that the two had an on-set affair despite both being married at the time) . An erotic sax with a synthy bass provided the music to their softcore embrace.

She huffed when she sensed that an adult sequence was afoot. “You’re not supposed to watch this,” Olga said with severity, “go away.” And so Alvaro left the trailer.

He sat outside waiting on the lawn chair. He tried turning on his Gameboy, but the battery had died. He looked out and saw that, not too far off, some of the neighborhood boys were playing a game of basketball. He didn’t care much for sporty things, and it wasn’t the game that caught his attention. It was Calvin.

His long legs lept past the dusty chainlink fence, aiming high for that unnetted hoop. He dribbled the ball across the concrete court, the other boys pushed across, shuffling their sneakers, trying to intercept, his height giving him a distinct advantage. He was an animal at the game, a star in the making. Score after score after score. A gifted athlete of extraordinary ability. He could throw baskets all day and never grow weary. Wow, Alvaro thought, what a thrill to watch. Better than his Gameboy. Maybe one day he’ll make it in the NBA. Alvaro imagined himself in the future telling others that he once spoke to someone before they became famous.

Two weeks earlier, the two had encountered each other at the laundromat. The machines were old. The floor tiles green like bile. The fluorecents above shone a sickly yellow. It had been a sweltering hot afternoon when Alvaro came in. He carried a basket of dirty laundry and his hair was a pillow-pressed mess. Calvin sat there, at the opposite side of the room, on a bench by the KISS pinball machine, bored by the constant snare of sudsy washers and thumping dryers. They were alone in that shady coin-op. Though not instantly, Calvin did eventually notice the strange boy looking at him, long and intently, as one would an artifact at a museum. 

“What’s up,” he said with a performatively deepened voice.

Alvaro nodded slightly.

“Laundry day, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“Right on. You still in school?”

“Actually, I’m in a laundromat,” he joked.

Calvin looked back with a squint, dimples on his cheeks, and a disarming smile. It was enough to make Alvaro feel funny.  “Sorry, erm, yeah,” Alvaro mumbled. “I mean, we’re on break, but…”

“Good for you. Keep at it.” Calvin grinned in a way that evoked some sort of regret. “Cool underwear.”

“Huh?”

He pointed at Alvaro’s basket. Alvaro looked down and saw that his blue Superman briefs were spilling out from the top. “Oh–” he grunted with a pubescent chirp. He stuffed the childish garment back in with the rest of the pile. He was mortified, to say the least. He turned back and proceeded to toss his laundry into the machine. When he was ready to pay, he saw that it needed five quarters.

“They keep raising the cost,” Calvin said.

Alvaro rolled his eyes. “It was four quarters last week.” He shuffled the coins in his palm, a wrinkle of frustration came across his forehead. Calvin approached and handed him a coin.

“Take this,” Calvin said, “I was gonna play pinball with it, but this is a gooder cause.”

“Gooder?” Alvaro smiled as he accepted the quarter.

“Like I said. Stay in school”

Alvaro laughed. Then the timer bell rang on Calvin’s dryer. He opened it and took out his stonewashed jeans. He flung them over his shoulder and headed for the door. “See you around. You can pay me back next time.” Alvaro didn’t know it, but this was to be the only time they’d ever talk.

• • •

The red clay desert bore nothing but tiny motels and brightly-lit gas stations. Here, there was a sad little strip mall. It was the town center; the closest the locals had to a downtown. There was the barely-there grand theater. It had three screens and a perpetually strobed LED marquee. After catching the latest blockbuster, one could saunter a few steps down and receive a cheap massage, buy some dollar-store treats, or even get their taxes filed from a disgruntled broker.

Around the edge of the lot, a line had formed outside of a greasy taco truck. Brianna and Alvaro sat together on the hood of her ‘08 pick-up truck, sharing a bowl of nachos, with al pastor meats and melted cheeses, watching traffic, not saying much. They came here after paying a visit to the police precinct, where they became outraged by the apparent lack of effort going into their grandmother’s murder investigation. Now was a time to clear their mind of such torrid affairs.

“So how's city life treated you?” she asked.

Alvaro took his time to chew. He listened to the Mexican ballad blaring from the truck radio, its sweet melody lilting with melancholic notes. He wiped a napkin across his face and shrugged.

She mimicked his shrug. “What’s this mean?” She shrugged again. “I don’t know what that means.”

“City life’s ok.”

“Just ok? 

“It’s boring,” he said.

“It’s boring,” she repeated with a mocking tone. “Knew you were gonna say that. After all these years, and you really don’t have anything you want to tell me?”

He shrugged again. They said nothing for a bit, just listened to music, until she spoke up.

“She always asked about you, you know? I don’t think a day ever went by in nana’s life when she didn’t think about you.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. She loved you. Loved you.”

“I know,” he muttered. 

“She always wanted to know if you were ok. And I always told her that yeah, you were, but I–” she thought for a moment, “I was never sure if I was telling the truth. Was I? Have you been ok, Alvie?”

He slowly turned to look his cousin right in the eye, as if that was enough to answer her question. She stared back at him too, her eyes big and wide and penetrating, as if trying to come at the truth. His eyes were tired and puffy, with a permanent mascara of disappointments and heartaches.

She scoffed. “You’re just like her, you know? I could never get a word out of her either.”

“Did she know?” he asked.

“Did she know what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Did she know… about me? Did Olga know about me?”

“No,” she shook her head. “No, it’s probably better that she didn’t.”

He said nothing, wishing it weren’t so, but knowing it was. He took a bite from the nacho plate. He chewed it lethargically, then swallowed with significant effort. Finally, he answered her question. “Life hasn’t been too good to me,” he said while forcing a smile. “If you have to know.”

She could sense the longing in his voice. Brianna grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him close. “I’ve always been proud of you. How you found the courage to leave this place. But, I’m glad that you’re back. I missed you.  I wish it didn’t have to be this that made you come back.”

“You think I haven’t missed you? It’s quiet out there without you. It’s no fun.” Alvaro said.

“Maybe I’ll pop by sometime. Play freeze tag, and watch Totally Spies with you. Like the old days.”

“Old days,” he sucked his teeth, “girl, we are not that old to be talking like that.”

 They both laughed for a bit until then their faces got tired. Then they got quiet again, enjoying the soreness of their grins, a tender discomfort that neither had savored in a good long while.

“So how long are you staying?” she asked.

He hesitated to answer. “I'm going back tonight,” he said with a blurt.

Her face turned severe, contorting with a scrutinizing glare. “What? But Nana Olga. Her funeral. It’s in three days. You can’t miss it. I told you already. She fucking adored you.”

“I know. But I have to go back to work.”

“So ask for time off.”

“I can’t. My boss. He’s a piece of shit. You don’t–”

“–He can't be that much of a shit, can he?”

He carefully considered his next words. He began to stammer. “Look. It’s just –”

“You can’t miss it, Alvie.”

“I know. I don’t want to. I really want to come. I want to be there for her. But I can’t. Ok?” He wished he could tell her the truth. He wished he could tell her the real reason why he couldn’t attend his beloved grandmother’s funeral. He wished he could tell her the story about what he did to her, but it still filled him with such boiling remorse that he couldn’t bear to let it out. So he chose instead to just repeat himself and make it clear. “I can’t go to grandma’s funeral. I will not go.” He said seethingly through clenched teeth, practically on the verge of tears. 

She took a bite of the nachos. Alvaro could sense the revulsion in her posture. As the sun set and the brightness on the land had begun to fade, the air outside had grown inhospitably cold.

• • •

He came back into the trailer and saw that the commercials were on. The network ran through the usual line-up of ads for iced coffees and enticingly-colored cleaning fluids.  A preview went on for the evening news. “Tonight at eleven,” the reporter began. Images flashed across the screen: men and women stood outside a courthouse, holding signs, protesting something. “Inside the heated demonstrations for gay and lesbian rights that have surged in the midst of recent attacks. More on this tonight, and later…” It went on. Alvaro gave it little more than a passing glance.

But Olga grumbled something. He couldn’t make any of it out except for the final words: maricones asquerosos. Those were angry words, and gentle as she was, Olga never minced her true feelings. She said it all in a grave sort of way: “if you find out one of your friends is a maricon, you get away from him as fast as you can, you hear? Better yet, you tell me where he lives and I’ll help you beat the gay out of him.” And then she laughed as if it was some very funny sort of thing.

He felt something when she said that. What it was, he couldn’t quite pinpoint at the time, but it caught him so off-guard. It seemed so casually cruel and offensive. Where had this nastiness come from? He consciously made no expression at all, lest his grandma saw how he truly felt. But, oh, how he felt it. He could feel his heartstrings quivering with resentment. The velvet glove had come undone to reveal the iron fist beneath. He looked upon his grandmother and studied the features of her face: the tortoise-like expression, the peppery freckles on her wrinkled skin, and the petrified bun of grey hairs that sprouted from her sunkissed scalp. He saw past his grandmother and glimpsed someone unfamiliar, more hostile, more unforgiving.

He nodded in a mechanical, unfeeling way. He knew deep down that that was how she had always been, how she had been raised to be. As much as he tried to find the logic in it, he realized he couldn’t. So he took his mind off it.

Thirty long minutes passed by before the show concluded. A beloved character had died, but he didn’t care much anymore. None of it mattered to Alvaro. His mind was out of the show. Its gaudy artificiality did nothing for him. He sank into the couch, lost in a sensation of intense delirium.

“Can you heat up a Hot Pocket for me, mijo?” Olga asked.

He sat back up and quietly refused it to her. “Why don’t you get it yourself,” he asked with indignant smarm.

“Que?” she asked. “Oh, I would, but I’m so old. Everything hurts, and–.”

Anger swelled in the back of his throat. He rose from his seat and spit in her face. Like a cobra spraying venom, he unloaded his wrath. The spit splashed across her eyes and cheeks. Olga was in shock. She could hardly react. It took her a moment before she could wipe herself clean with the collar of her blouse. All she could muster was a pitiful, wounded remark. “No,” she moaned, “you’re not supposed to do that.”

And when she said that, any pride Alvaro had derived from exacting his revenge on her vicious beliefs had quickly dissipated. Now all he could see was that he had humiliated his beloved relative. He felt his soul plummet to the soles of his feet. An immense void overtook his psyche, and the only thing that could keep him standing now was by doubling down on his caustic flame. He yelled. He paced around the trailer in circles, rambling angrily about how she was too demanding, too needy, too old, and too weak. Grandma quietly walked to the tiny bathroom so she could clean off her face.

Why had he done that, he instantly wondered. At the moment, it seemed like the justest thing to do, but now, he felt the downtrodden face of the harmless old woman who’d raised him become etched into his memory.

An hour passed, and just in time, his mother arrived back from the airport. Yahaira was dressed in her black and blue TSA uniform. She had come back from a long, exhausting double shift. Yahaira was usually too tired to be much of a mother to Alvaro by the time she came back. So she’d always end up sleeping through most of the day, not waking up until three in the morning to get ready for work.

When Yahaira came in, energy drained, her posture hunched over, she was carrying a large bucket of KFC with a liter of Sprite. “Dinner’s here,” she said. She set it down at the table and then headed straight for the bathroom to take a shower. Olga stopped Yahaira and told her what had happened.

Yahaira was angry and she knew of only one way to discipline him. It was the same way she had been disciplined when she was a child, just as grandma was disciplined when she misbehaved as a child. “Go outside and fetch me a branch.”

Alvaro knew what this meant. “Mommy, no. I’m sorry.”

“Do it, or I’ll pick it for you. Which is it going to be?”

“Mommy-” he pleaded helplessly as sweat nervously dripped from his scalp.

She slapped him across the face. Obediently, he walked outside and approached a pathetic sapling that resided alongside the trailer. The adolescent tree stood short with long, leafy branches protruding from its supple bark. He snapped off the most reasonably sized branch he could fathom. Neither too big nor too small. He knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors picking a little one. His mother was not the playful kind. He took the medium-sized branch with the thin, plentiful vines– a cat o’ nine tails, fashioned by mother nature herself. He brought it back in, and his mother went to work.

All the nearby trailers could hear the hard whacking reverberating, but Yahaira’s violent grunts proved a harsher sound. As for Alvaro, one could barely pick up on the muffled cries of pain as his young body was lashed again and again. It was only two minutes, but it felt like an eternity. What hurt him more than the pain itself was the deafening silence of his grandma, in the next room over, whom he could sense sitting there, quietly, indifferently listening to his suffering. At no point did she intervene or try to stop it. She made no demands and protested nothing. Through his grandmother’s silence, it was as though she had granted a tacit approval of all this. At that moment, he was far too wounded to cry, and so, he kept it all bottled inside, as he would for many years to come.

When it was over, Alvaro apologized. He approached his grandmother and said he was sorry. He said it with the most pathetic tone that an eleven-year-old could say. Olga accepted, and it was never spoken of again. Then he went into the shower and washed the blood off of his body. He rubbed away at his pain with cotton balls and alcohol.

• • •

It wouldn’t be until years later that he came around to regret what he did. He would never get over the insincerity of it all. He knew then that it was a phony apology. He did not mean it then. It was beaten out of him. Had he the chance, he would’ve apologized again, but this time mean it. But it was too late. She was gone, never to return. That beaten apology he gave as a child would have to suffice for the rest of his life. It was more heavy baggage he would have to drag into any meaningful relationship he sought.

He read the time on the terminal clock. It was cold out, and his bus wouldn’t be around for at least a few hours more. So he decided to visit the bar a few blocks down while he waited. He could get shitfaced off a few negronis and maybe make the return trip slightly more palatable.

It was a Sunday night. The crowd was loud. So was the music. He spent most of the night listening to the inane, inebriated ramblings of others as he sipped away at his troubles. It filled him with such dread, knowing that his most cherished memory, the one of watching soaps with his grandmother, was one he had tainted with his own childish impulse.

So wrapped up in self-pity he was that he took a while to notice the violent commotion transpiring across the room. He turned to see. In a booth by the entrance, a young woman with a pregnant belly was screaming and slapping at her belligerent man, calling him names and pulling away from his possessive grasp. 

Her man, from where he could tell, was a tall, pudgy-bodied man, with a grizzled beard and a nasty scowl. He barked vicious obscenities at her. The man grabbed her by both arms and began to shake her back and forth. Alvaro didn’t want to intervene. It wasn’t his place to do such things. This wasn’t his town, not anymore. He turned away and kept drinking. He could hear the conflict escalating, the boyfriend becoming more agitated as the woman began to cry. He heard a loud smack, and following soon after, a crowd of men came to the young woman’s defense.

The man hollered vulgarities across the dusty tavern. This was a volatile man. The other men huddled close and dogpiled him. With all his ire and might, the man smacked his way through the pack. They could not restrain him. He was too rabid a beast. Too formidable a force. He smacked his lady upside the face. She let out a wounded howl. Then he charged across to the door.

As the man stormed out, Alvaro could see that he had left something on the floor. The other patrons were too focused on the young woman’s well-being to notice the sparkling object. He stood up and drunkenly staggered to pick it up. He could not believe it at first, but instantly he knew what it was. It was his dear nana’s wedding ring. That golden band with the shiny rock. When he touched it, he felt the same chill that he felt when he heard of her death. His breathing quickened to a frantic pace and his body shook with rage. With barely a moment’s thought, he ran after the volatile man outside.

The man was walking in the street with his hands in his pockets. He was cursing in the wind. Alvaro pursued him, yelling as loud as he could. “Hey, you. Stop!”

And so the man stopped. He turned methodically to face Alvaro. Alvaro recognized him in an instant. Though he had gained weight and grown hair, there was no doubt in his mind that he was who he was. The man was none other than Calvin– no longer a spritely, gorgeous young athlete, but now a violent, erratic thug inching towards forty. How astonishing it seemed. Here he was. Alvaro’s dream, now a living nightmare. And in his pockets: evidence of Calvin’s hideous, unspeakable deed. The boy who had ignited his passions had grown up to become the man that slew his grandmother. He was frozen stiff and paralyzed with disbelief. Alvaro had never felt so utterly confused in all his life. 

The old Calvin kept looking at Alvaro, giving him a look, filled with scorn, danger, and anxiety. As his anger lowered to a simmer, Alvaro quickly considered the variables that had brought them both to this night. He could read the biography of his life plainly off the lines on his face. There were faint traces of sweetness and reserve in his soul as of yet, but something about this land had turned him into something raw. It seemed this hideous land had damned them both to lives of misery and strife. Though angry of course, he also pitied Calvin. Alvaro knew he had to do something, to respond in some manner that made sense. Only one thing occurred to him. He held out a closed fist and carefully approached.

 “You dropped this,” Alvaro said. He opened his palm and showed him Nana Olga’s ring.

Calvin came closer and snatched it from him. He seemed to have no recognition of Alvaro at all. He stuffed the ring in his pocket and spat on the ground before he walked off and disappeared into the night. Alvaro stood, trying to reel back, trying to gain composure towards a tangible reality, trying to make sense of what had just occurred. The air was chilly. So he walked back to the station. Drunk and trembling, he waited for the bus, wondering if what he had done was the right thing to do.

On the bus ride back, he felt as though a lifelong weight had finally been lifted. He fell asleep on that uncomfy bus chair, and peacefully, he dreamt.

He dreamt that he was lost somewhere, in some lush fertile rainforest, where panthers, tigers, monkeys, and large insects dwelled under a canopy of dripping leaves and papery barked trees that stretched heavenwards into infinity. The air was fresh but the surroundings were unknown. And although he had never been to a rainforest before, somehow it all felt so tangible and real. He was alone in this jungle, and he could sense something lurking in the bushes, pursuing him. What it was, he couldn’t say or even imagine, only that a dangerous presence lingered closely by.
The danger was never far off, and he ran as fast as he could, but it was never much. Just his legs skittishly drifting through a midsummer canvas. Every trot in his step was followed by the tense sound of a snapping branch or a hungry predator.  His foot kicked across a thorny branch, and he tripped and fell into a bed of crunchy leaves. A flash of flying colors gave way to a constellation of spinning, blinding brightness. In the atrium of a colossal sports arena, everything was white. Everything was clean. The hallways were pure, antiseptic, and numerous. Unseen crowds cheered feverishly for their basketball team. But that was all they were. Unseen. No game, and no players. There wasn’t anyone. He was away from that hostile forest, yet even here in the cold embrace of modern architecture, he could feel something had followed him here. He ran through the halls, trying each door, but finding nothing but locked handles.
He climbed so many stairs until he came upon a door where the doorknob had been undone with a crowbar and a mallet. He swung it open. Now he was back inside his mother’s trailer, back in old Custer Park. But it was different now. Now it was clean and breezy. You could walk inside it. It felt like a Hollywood RV: spacious, luxurious, a home. Once more, he was on that couch, watching TV with his grandmother. She looked beautiful in her opulent gown and stately beehive hair. She smiled at him and he smiled back. They sat together and laughed, just like they used to, as if nothing had ever changed. Together they watched an old black-and-white film. It starred Olga, in all her youthful vigor and sweetness, singing gentle ballads alongside her co-star. Perhaps it was Pedro Infante, Pedro Armendariz, or some other bygone icon. Perhaps it was Papa Nestor. It was difficult to tell.
“I didn’t know you were in the movies, nana.”

“I wasn’t,” she said, “and it was so much fun.”

He awoke and saw that the rest of the passengers were still mostly asleep. It was six in the morning in that packed bus. He glanced out the window and saw that they were not too far off from their destination.  Within an instant the strange dream had been wiped from his memory, and yet despite it, he could not stop himself from smiling.