“¿Y la Vampi?” Nayeli asked.
“Gone with that Satan dude,” Carla replied.
Atómiko was blowing bubbles under water.
“Yolo?”
“Inside with the Matt-ster.”
“Gracias,” Nayeli said.
“No prob.”
Atómiko surfaced.
“Pretty thing,” he said to Carla as he moved her way like a crocodile.
Tacho stood there watching Atómiko and Carla as if they were a National Geographic special.
Nayeli stepped into the duplex.
“Yolo?” she said.
She heard it before the screen door had closed: Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!
She could smell incense. Most of the lights were out. Oh-oh-oh! She should have backed out, left right away, but she could not.
She moved forward, toward the sound.
The bed was making thumping, squeaking noises. In Matt’s room. The door stood half open.
Nayeli looked in at them. She watched him atop Yolo. She could smell them. His bottom was pale blue in the window light. Yolo’s thighs were dark, like shadows. Her feet crossed over Matt’s back.
“Sí, sí, sí,” she cried. “¡Mateo!”
Nayeli backed out. She tiptoed to the living room. She stepped out onto the porch. She had her hand over her stomach. She put her other hand over her mouth. Yolo? Matt and Yolo?
“Hey,” Carla shouted. “You got a call.”
Nayeli just looked at her.
“El phone-o? While you were out? Una call-o?”
Carla helpfully held her hand up to her face, thumb and pinky extended to form a phone.
“Ring-ring?” Carla said.
“Hurt me,” Atómiko breathed. “Break my bones, devil-woman!”
“Huh?” Carla said.
Nayeli gulped and stepped off the porch. She had tears in her eyes. But really—they weren’t children. They were all grown up. They were outlaws! She hadn’t staked a claim on Mateo. Still…
“Some lady?” Carla continued, fending Atómiko off with one hand. “Your tía?”
“My tía?” Nayeli said.
“Right—Irma? Is that the one?”
“What did she say?” Tacho asked.
“She was lookin’ for Nayeli. Said she’d call back. She’s down at some hotel.”
Atómiko splashed Carla.
“Te amo,” he said.
“Excuse please?” said Nayeli.
“Yeah. She’s in a hotel. I wrote the number down. She’s here. In town. Flew in today.”
“Here?” cried Tacho.
“Yeah, mon. She’s got the hots for that Chava dude, if you ask me.”
Atómiko clutched her and they sank beneath the waves.
Inside, Yolo let out a long cry.
Tacho’s eyebrows rose.
Nayeli covered her eyes with her hand. She walked down to the alley to be alone.
“I see,” Tacho said.
His shoes were black with mud. The bottoms of his white jeans were a hideous brown. His shirt was torn. Tía Irma had arrived. Yolo had stolen the boy.
Tacho said to no one in particular, “What a day.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Carla’s bikini almost cut Nayeli in pieces, it was so tight on her. She sank into the water of the inflatable pool. It was late and the sky was hazy—she could barely see any stars. Few cars passed by on Clairemont Drive. She thought: None of them know I’m here.
Yolo, her betrayer, was asleep in Matt’s arms in his bedroom. Vampi was gone with El Brujo, so Tacho was asleep in her bed. Atómiko snored like a tractor on the couch. All very domestic. All very peaceful.
She was the only one who couldn’t sleep.
How could she?
She submerged, felt her hair lift, the cold water shrinking her scalp. She came up staring at the vague smear of moon in the haze. The palm tree fronds made awful skeletal sounds. She watched a battered cat saunter by. He paused to back up to the pool and spray it before vanishing into the alley.
“Perfect,” Nayeli said. “Just perfect.”
She could not comprehend where she’d been, what she’d seen, who she’d met, or what she’d lost. Now that La Osa was here, she was reminded that she was far from her home, and even farther from her true mission. She had lost Yolo, and she had lost Matt. Vampi? Well, in some ways, she never had Vampi. Not even Vampi had a real relationship with Vampi. But even she was gone with that Satanic busboy. She pondered Chava, too. Now that she had found him, would she lose Aunt Irma? To love? Was this whole absurd experience an elaborate dating service for La Osa? Of all the threats of the journey, Nayeli had never imagined romance would be the most ruinous.
With Aunt Irma here, would she lose the entire project? There was no way La Osa was going to allow anyone but herself to recruit the warriors, Nayeli realized. She was being demoted, even if Irma didn’t mean to demote her.
She slapped the water.
Her world was coming apart.
Pretty soon, it would just be her and Tacho.
KANKAKEE, she told herself.
What else remained but KANKAKEE?
When Nayeli, Tacho, Vampi, and that tramp Yolo walked into the Bahia Hotel on Mission Bay, they found Aunt Irma sitting on a couch in the lobby, talking bowling with a retired couple from El Paso. She was resplendent in black slacks, a bright yellow top, and tight pin curls in her hair. Her socks were silver.
“Oh, my God,” muttered Vampi. “She dyed her hair.”
“Shh,” said Nayeli.
“My girls!” Irma cried, struggling out of the couch. She hugged and patted and kissed them and lifted Nayeli off the floor. She turned to Tacho. “And you.” She smacked his arm.
She spied Atómiko and Alex the Wizard slouching outside the glass doors.
“Good God,” she said, “what is that?”
“Well…” said Nayeli.
La Osa gave them a withering look.
“This is what you managed to find?” she said. “In all of the United States, you came up with two drug addicts?”
Before Vampi could speak up to defend El Brujo, Tía Irma screwed a cigarette into her mouth and marched to the doors. They gasped open before her, and she stomped out to the lurking males. She looked them up and down.
“¿Y ustedes?” she demanded. “¿Qué?”
“I am Atómiko!” the Warrior announced.
Alex glowered at her and didn’t say anything.
“Hey, you jerk,” Atómiko scolded. “Light the lady’s cigarette.”
“No mames, buey,” Alex muttered. He lit Irma’s cigarette. They stood there glaring at each other.
“So,” Irma said. “You two degenerates got hold of my girls.”
Angel, the mechanic from Camp Guadalupe, stepped up.
“Ma’am?” he said. “I am not a degenerate.”
The other two snorted.
“I haven’t touched the young ladies.”
“Yeah,” said Atómiko. “He’s after Tacho.”
He and El Brujo laughed and slapped hands.
She inspected Angel. A nice, clean boy. Muscles like cantaloupes.
“You’re not much,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Angel.”
“That’s a pimp’s name,” she said. She blew smoke at him. “Have you even reached puberty yet?” she asked mildly.
Frightened by La Osa, Angel retreated and lurked in the shadows.
Irma smoked her cigarette.
“I am Alex.”
“Do tell.”
“I am Vampi’s man.”
Irma barked out a laugh that turned into coughs. She spit.
“At the wedding,” she cooed, “will you both dye your hair purple?”
El Brujo fired up a cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke.
“That’s not a bad idea, Auntie,” he replied.
“Good Christ in Heaven,” she said. “And what about you, stick man?”
Atómiko showed her his
staff.
“I am your protector.”
“Are you marrying someone, too?”
“Nel, esa.”
“What?”
“He said no,” Alex explained.
“Why didn’t he just say it, then?”
“La mera neta,” Atómiko blurted, meaning absolutely nothing to Irma. “Baby,” he said, “I’m only married to freedom.”
“I’d better get back inside,” she said. “Before you degenerates give me a heart attack.”
Nayeli knocked on Chava’s door again.
“¿Don Chava?” she cried.
“Go away!”
“It’s me, Nayeli!”
“I know who it is.”
“Let me in.”
“I’m not home!”
“Open the door, Don Chava!”
“Are you alone?”
“El Brujo is waiting downstairs.”
“But She—is She with you?”
“No. But she has sent me.”
After a moment, she heard him rattling the chain and throwing the bolt. He cracked the door open and peered out at her.
“She did?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But,” he stammered, “I-I-I am so old!”
Nayeli was startled to see he was wearing flannel pajamas. His face was unshaven. His hair stood straight up on his head.
“She is older, too,” she assured him.
“What am I going to do?” he asked.
Nayeli said, “You are going to have to buck up, Don Chava.”
He let her in.
“You must shower,” she said. “Get a clean shirt and comb your hair. Shave!”
“Yes, Nayeli.”
She sat on his plastic-covered couch and idly flipped through his Mexican Reader’s Digests, called Selecciones.
After his shower and shave, he appeared in gray slacks and an undershirt. He wore black socks and had his feet shoved into slippers.
“That’s better,” she said, sitting now at his little table.
He sat across from her, looking as miserable as any man she’d ever seen.
“I know you are worried,” she said. “I understand the romantic tragedies that have separated you. But La Osa is on a mission. You must help her now and worry about the past later.”
“Help her? Me? How?”
“I must go to find my father. You must help her recruit the rest of the seven.”
She wrote down the name of the hotel, Irma’s room number, her telephone number. Chava Chavarín simply stared at the paper.
In a small voice, he said, “I will try.”
“There is no trying,” Nayeli said, sounding like her aunt and liking it. “There is only doing.”
Before Nayeli left, he handed her his gas card and three hundred dollars he retrieved from under his bed.
“¡Gracias!” she cried.
“Go with God,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“You, too. You’ll need God more than I will,” she said.
Irma was deeply appalled to learn that La Vampi had promised Alex full control of the Cine Pedro Infante for one night each week.
“Heavy-metal concerts?” she gasped. “In Tres Camarones? Are you crazy?”
Her idiot girls had come to San Diego and handed over the world to these refugees. That Goody Two-shoes Angel believed she could get him a mechanic’s shop. No doubt Chava Chavarín would expect a dance studio to run. Oddly enough, she took a shine to Atómiko. He had immediately become her bodyguard, and he scowled in the corner of every room over which she presided.
Irma invested in a conference room on the ground floor of the Bahia, ordering a pair of long tables and several chairs. Here, she, Chava Chavarí n—if he ever showed some spine and revealed himself—and Yolo and Vampi would interview applicants for the remaining four openings. Just like a business—as it should have been handled from the start! All this romantic twaddle! Ha! That was no way to run a government operation.
La Osa could not convince Atómiko to come to Sinaloa. He was adamant. Too bad. If she washed him and bought him clothes, he could be the town’s first new policeman.
She provided Nayeli with a Bank of America debit card for her foolish jaunt to Kankakee.
“Do you think,” she bellowed, “that I am simply a provincial rube? You don’t think I have resources?”
And:
“Men are no good.”
“My father is good.”
“Your father is a dog like all the other dogs.”
“I will prove you wrong.”
“You will prove what you prove.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“¡Ay!”
Matt had laid out his road atlas on the kitchen table at the duplex.
“You can’t go up I-5,” he told them. “The Border Patrol checkpoint will nab you for sure.”
“Ay, Mateo,” Yolo marveled—he was so wise! She rubbed his arm. When her hand rose to his shoulder, he laid his cheek against it.
Yolo’s face announced: I win!
Nayeli sneered.
“Kankakee—man, that’s pretty far,” Matt said.
Angel and El Brujo were outside, tuning up the minivan, putting in fresh oil, adding coolant to the radiator.
“But you go up Fifteen. See here? You’ve gotta go to Vegas.”
“Vegas!” Carla crowed from the couch. “Oh, for sure!”
“Right?” said Matt.
“’S awesome!” she enthused.
“After Vegas, you keep heading north, dude—the Virgin Gorge is awesome. Then watch for Saint George, Utah. All right?”
Tacho was taking notes.
“It’s totally easy. Up past Saint George, you hit I-70 east. Bro—just keep on truckin’.”
“Truckin’,” Tacho said.
“Tee-ruckin’!” Carla chirped.
Tee-ruckin’? Tacho mouthed to Nayeli.
“Trip out,” Carla said.
“Trip,” said Tacho. Of course it was a trip. What did they think it was?
“Es un viaje,” Nayeli said to him. “Like opium.”
Tacho looked at the map again.
“Oh,” he said. “That kind of trip.”
“Totally,” Carla added.
I-70: they’d ride that sucker all the way across the Colorado Rockies and the Midwest plains to Illinois. But they had to promise, swear to God, they’d zoom up to Estes Park in Colorado and check out Rocky Mountain National Park.
“What’s there?” Nayeli asked.
Carla got up and stretched—Nayeli could hear her back popping.
“Mountains,” she said.
“God’s country,” Matt promised.
When Tacho and Nayeli pulled out the next morning, everybody was still asleep.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The morning light was red. Interstate 15. Only the two of them in all that distance.
Their drive to Las Vegas through the American desert was vividly dull. Dead gas stations. Outposts of I-Don’ t-Want-to-Live-Here sat in ruin beside the road. Border Patrol trucks puttered ignored around the off-ramps as Mexicans in wasted cars passed them in reeking oil smoke. The dense brown cloud of Los Angeles exhalations felt its way out across abandoned drive-ins and peeling ice cream stands. White men in pickups with ear-flapping big dogs in the back. Old trailers faded to white. Industrial buildings and dying palm trees, alkaline flats and military bases. Vast blacktop lots of abandoned RVs, the pale boxes arrayed like iron cows in a feed lot. Small triangular flags in vivid plastic colors rattled in the endless wind. And rocks, rocks piled upon rocks, whole hillsides of nothing but rocks.
Brown birds lined up on telephone wires like beads on a cheap Tijuana necklace.
Nayeli had Matt’s old Spanish-English dictionary. Bañera/bathtub, she studied. Barbecho/fallow land. The Spanish word was new to her, she was embarrassed to admit. She gestured out the window and proclaimed, “Barbecho.”
The air conditioner cut their engine power till they climbed at a crawl, so they sweltered on the way up hills and punched it back on when they dropped. The minivan rattled and groaned on the grades—both up and down. On the radio, they heard many angry Americans with loud voices saying Mexicans were unwanted, and immigrants carried disease and harbored terrorists. English only, the AM shouters boomed; English was the official language of America.
“What did he say?” asked Nayeli.
“Nada,” said Tacho.
On the next station, a woman doctor thought her caller should dress in skimpy black lace to seduce her husband instead of the hairdresser she had a secret crush on.
“What?” said Nayeli.
Tacho shrugged, hit the radio buttons.
Country music. Talk radio. El Rushbo. JEE-sus.
Country music. Sports talk. Hannity. JEE-sus.
Country music. Norteño. News talk. JEE-sus.
Tacho turned off the radio.
Nayeli observed the land in its splendor.
7-Eleven. Subway. Motel 6.
7-Eleven. 24 Hr Adult Superstore. 65 MPH.
7-Eleven. 29 Palms. Carl’s Jr.
70 MPH. Super 8. 7-Eleven.
Numerology reigned in Los Yunaites.
The desert,” Nayeli said after an hour of silent staring, “is so harsh.”
Tacho shrugged with one shoulder. He was shrugging a lot lately. He was thinking about Tijuana, about Rigoberto’s magic teapot.
“The deserts of Mexico,” he boasted, “are more brutal.”
She stared out her window. She thought she could see a concrete dinosaur in the distance. Bikers screamed around them and flew down the road, laughing skulls on their backs. Crows bent to flattened animal carcasses in the road. They seemed to be bowing to the tatters of rabbit fur, the skunk tails. The midday’s light was white.
Matt had told them to get off the road at Baker, California. They’d find it, he promised, right before they crossed into Nevada and really began their cross-country jaunt. They’d know it, he said with a laugh, by the World’s Biggest Thermometer. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “There’s a sign if you don’t see the actual thermometer.”
Tacho could not comprehend what was so funny about it. He hadn’t been in the United States long enough to have seen the Jolly Green Giant statues, the jackalopes, or the giant Indian arrows sticking out of the sides of highways. He did not know that Matt was proud of the World’s Biggest Thermometer in a way that equaled patriotism. Who could have understood that, say, a cement statute of Babe the Blue Ox with a garden hose running through his penis so he peed a constant stream outside a roadside diner was sacredly American? In Mexico, such things would have been shot to pieces, or stolen, or a family of beggars would have moved into the hollow centers of these attractions and made room for their pigs as well. He pulled off the road at Baker.