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The grill started to fill up with morning
customers and more staff arrived. The grill took on a kind of life. I prepared
the dishes and set them out and orders came in and the bus boys already were
starting to clear tables.
A woman waited for my attention, then came to
me.
“El hoy es la noche de viernes, Garcia,” Belicia said.
“Yes.”
“La noche sera clara. Podriamos ir a la montana.
Podriamos mirar al sur y ver el desierto.”
“Maybe.”
“Apreciaria eso,” she whispered. Her hand lingered upon mine for a
moment. It was uncomfortable and we didn’t speak for the rest of the day.
I didn’t like to feel uncomfortable, so unsure, because she was a nice
woman and deserved to be treated well. I didn’t want her to believe things
of me that weren’t true.
Belicia was a short woman and with a kind
face. Sometimes we would go out together. I didn’t like her too much, but
then I didn’t know how to tell her nor could I tell her about my hands and
the blood they had on them. Sometimes I had to leave the men’s hotel on
the weekends where I stayed if there were many people and a lot of drinking and
noise so Belicia and I would walk and talk about Mexico a little. It was then
that I wished I had a car or something to get out to the desert under the sky
and then I resented the grill and longed for home. I had the money easily for a
car, but I never bought one. It was a bad feeling to have and going to the
mountain and climbing it in the dark took those feelings away. It was too
beautiful outside to speak so I didn’t have to worry about what I would
say. It would be dark and the lights from the city would spread out far in
front then abruptly end in scrub lands hidden in a starlit darkness.
Belicia was a Spanish name, not necessarily Mexican. Her father had come from
South America and lived outside Mexico City then moved to New Mexico. Belicia
lived with her parents not too far. Her father drove a truck for the Post
Office. His brother and brother’s family had moved here years earlier. It
was tough making a living south. It was a very good paying job. Belicia’s
father wanted his only daughter to marry, but I never spoke about these things
when Belicia brought them up.I wished that I could go to the mountain with
Evelina, but I knew that it would never happen and maybe as long as I loved
her, I would never leave this place.
At the end of the day, a man came to
the grill. The man was tall and fair skinned with light brown hair with good
teeth. He had a tattoo on his right arm of an eagle holding a rifle. They went
into the hotel lobby to speak and he held Evelina’s hand and they laughed.
She became embarrassed. In the kitchen, all the cooks laughed and made jokes
about how a man should handle Evelina, and they made humping motions and then
she came into the kitchen. She heard them and turned red. But she scolded them
to mind their own business. I looked away. The cooks and a waitress in the
kitchen went back to work, speaking and laughing to each other quietly in
Spanish. The man left her.