Losing Clementine Page 5

  “Tuuuumors.”

  “I am serious.”

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. I laughed until I disturbed the chickadees hanging in cages around the restaurant. Their chirps echoed off the tiled floor of the indoor courtyard, where a small child had escaped his mother’s table and was slapping the water in the central fountain. I wiped tears from my eyes. Richard concentrated on his food, but his dimples were showing.

  “Mmmm … uncontrolled cell division.”

  That was enough to make him put his knife and fork down, which brought one of our four waiters scurrying over to take away the plate.

  “You are insane,” Richard hissed, but he lost the battle with his cheeks, which split open in a wide grin.

  “I win,” I said.

  “You do not win.” He took a sip of wine and laid his hand on mine, slipping two fingers into my palm. I squeezed them.

  “I want to go with you to the doctor,” he said.

  “What?”

  “When we get home, I want to go with you to your doctor visits.”

  “Richard.”

  “Have you made arrangements? For your care, I mean, not for—. Do you have a place to go?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  After duck carnitas with blue corn tortillas, tamarind sauce, and cilantro, we stumbled out of the restaurant and into a cab. The four waiters waved us off, bidding us a quick return. Tourism was really down.

  The sun had set while we worked our way through the courses, and Tijuana, like Los Angeles, was at her best at night. The soft-focus light of restaurants and bars took the edge off.

  Traditionally, someone sits up front with the cabdriver, and Richard’s Spanish was even worse than mine.

  “Dónde música?” I asked the driver as we headed back toward town.

  “Discotheque?”

  “No,” I said. “Personas.” I mimed a fiddle.

  He nodded, and we were off, with neither of us being absolutely certain we had understood the other.

  The cab had seen better days. Part of the door’s plastic lining was missing, and the dashboard had been loosely upholstered with a Muppet-like faux fur. Unlike the sharply dressed drivers standing vigil at the border, our chauffeur that evening was fraying at the edges. He looked to be near retirement and relying on the faded picture of Jesus taped to the center of the steering wheel to get him through. I guessed that meant I was relying on Jesus, too, and under the circumstances, that was worrying.

  We drove through town and by the Zona Norte, the city’s famous red light district, where tourists were warned not to go. Another turn took us past a few small bars and then deeper into a neighborhood full of seemingly nothing but apartments already gone dark for the night. The streets got smaller, one after the other. The radio was not on, and I could hear Richard shifting in the backseat. Just before he could get nervous enough to reach over and tap me on the shoulder, the cab stopped, and the driver said in his best English, “This good place for music and for drinking.”

  I was all for a good drinking place.

  “Gracias.”

  Cabs in Tijuana don’t have meters. Everything is negotiable. I offered him a five-dollar bill, and he nodded and accepted it.

  A small wooden sandwich board sat on the sidewalk, painted in a curlicue font I couldn’t read in the dim light. The sound of guitars floated out of a window, and every inch of curb space was taken up by cars sporting some amount of scrapes and body damage. Driving here was a full-contact sport.

  I opened the metal storm door and stepped inside with Richard behind me. His hand was pressed against my lower back. The temperature outside had dropped, and he felt warm against me. Wine and tequila were sloshing around in my veins and making that seem like a very nice thing.

  The whole place was filled with tiny round café tables with no room at all for standing. Men and women sat close together. Sometimes women and women, too, whether friends or something more it wasn’t clear. Three guitar players sat on a small stage finishing a folk song, and a host who looked like a high school student in a black apron approached us.

  “Dos,” I said.

  He nodded, and we followed him to one of the only three empty tables, which were all down the steps and in the front row. The crowd applauded the last song as we sat and were presented with menus. The young men on stage were lit gently and glowed varying shades of brown. All three had oiled black hair and eyes too dark to discern where the pupil stopped and the iris started. They were dressed in khakis, and the one in the center had long hair pulled into a ponytail and a plaid, hipster porkpie hat pulled low over his eyes. He could have slid past the velvet ropes at a Hollywood club and had his choice of women.

  They nodded their thanks to the audience, and the one closest to Richard and me took a swig from a bottle of cough syrup. A woman from the audience called out to him. I didn’t follow her words, but he held up the bottle and blushed. Everyone but us laughed.

  I ordered a carafe of the house red wine and waved off the offer of more food by patting my stomach to indicate “too full.”

  Paintings hung on the walls with little papers next to them listing titles and artists. It was a gallery along with everything else, and it felt as if the universe were having a joke with me. The paintings were almost all of naked women, most turned and bent so at least some of their sex was exposed. The artist wasn’t trained—or at least not trained well—but he was passionate about his subject.

  The wine came quickly and was not as smooth as the cabernet at the restaurant, but that hardly mattered. I filled Richard’s glass and then mine.

  The player on the far end leaned into the microphone and began his words the way a slam poet begins his, something between a rant and a song. The middle guitar started softly and picked up speed and volume to keep up. Richard reached over and slid his arm around the back of my chair. The song stretched on. It was Mexican folk, and it was improvised jazz. The notes swirled around each other, found their center, and came back to the original runaway beat. It grabbed you by the shirt and pulled you forward with it until your feet were barely skimming the floor. All three men leaned forward and belted out the final words a capella, and the tables erupted.

  I stopped our boy waiter, all but grabbing his pant leg as he passed.

  “What was that song?” I asked without bothering to try to translate.

  “Narcocorrido,” he said before the music began again.

  Mexican gangster rap, glory to the drug runners and the killers. I didn’t care. I loved it anyway. I was full of booze and food. The people around me smiled when I looked at them. I wanted to stay, rent an apartment, and learn the language by immersion. I wanted to eat blue corn tortillas every day. Let them tow and auction off my car.

  Richard refilled our glasses.

  I leaned into him so he could hear me. “Let’s stay,” I said. “Let’s not go home.”

  He smiled. He didn’t think I meant it. Maybe I didn’t. There are some things you can’t outrun.

  The music was slow then, all three guitarists working together, no break after the marathon they’d just run. A saxophonist stepped out of a small door in the back that most certainly led to the kitchen. A black-aproned waiter carrying a flan dodged him. A smattering of polite applause welcomed the new musician to the party. He brought the instrument to his lips and joined the ballad.

  Richard touched my arm. I turned to him, and he kissed me. I kissed him back once and then twice. He tried to slide his tongue into my mouth, but I hadn’t anticipated it and didn’t open for it. I reached over and squeezed his thigh to make it okay. He rubbed a finger along the back of my neck.

  He never would’ve done that back home, and I never would have let him, but there is something about crossing borders that makes other boundaries easier to cross, too.

  We watched for two more hours. The waiters brought more drinks as the musicians waved for them, but not once did they take a break. All three plus the saxophonist were still
there singing to full tables when we stepped back out onto the sidewalk. The alcohol sloshed around in my brain, and the pavement seemed to shift under me with each step.

  We wandered down the narrow residential street toward the slightly larger one ahead. Outside of the club, the air was quiet. It was midnight or somewhere close. Some small, weak-voiced part of my brain wondered if it was safe for us like that, leaning into each other and walking alone, not quite lost but not knowing where we were, either. The night’s wine reached up and patted my back. There, there, little one, it said, and I forgot to worry anymore.

  “Do you think we’ll find a cab?” Richard asked.

  “Probably on the next street,” I said.

  We came to the intersection and turned toward the heart of the city and our hotel, but the road was quiet. A few cars passed, perhaps three a minute, but none of them were taxis. We passed businesses shuttered for the night. Metal gates were drawn down over their entrances. Graffiti hung like lace on all but one, which had been painted with a blue face so sharp it seemed the bone structure underneath had been honed. Abstract green and yellow shapes swirled around it with the words “amor y respeto por las culturas indigenas.” Even I could read that.

  We were alone on the sidewalk, which turned to dirt and broken concrete at intervals as if a jackhammer had been taken to it but no follow-up work done. No caution tape or safety cones blocked off these uneven, ankle-twisting sections. We were, it seemed, expected to use our own common sense, and it was our problem if we didn’t.

  We walked for what seemed like a long time, and still there had not been any cabs. I knew only in the most general direction where our hotel was, and knew it was much farther than I cared to walk, even on whole sidewalks. I wondered if we’d have to sleep in a doorway. The wine was patting me on the back again when we both saw it.

  Up ahead at the next cross street, many blocks from where we’d left the club, a cab passed. Richard gave a whoop and held up his hand.

  Hopeless, I thought. Too far away, going too fast. I patted his arm. Nice try.

  We continued on a few steps before we saw it. The cab had shifted into reverse and come back into view, zipping backward to our street and turning down to meet us.

  When he stopped, I opened the passenger door. “Buen ojo,” I said. Good eye.

  For another five-dollar bill, we were delivered back to the air-conditioned comfort of our hotel. The bellman opened the door and greeted us in English. We fought with the buttons in the elevator but had no trouble with the key card to my door. I don’t know if Richard’s key worked in his door. We didn’t try it.

  I saw the kiss coming this time. I opened my mouth to him and tasted the last of the wine on his tongue.

  Richard is taller than I am. Taller and stronger with a chest and arms that can swallow me, and when they do, I feel small and feminine, which is not nothing at my size.

  We stood just inside the room by the bathroom door and mirrored closet, our mouths open and locked onto each other. He pressed his pelvis into me, and I felt his swollen cock, shoved uncomfortably down the leg of his jeans. Blood was rushing to my cheeks and my chest, and my underwear was damp.

  I worked a hand in between us and rubbed my palm against him. He groaned into my mouth and pushed harder. His belt was new and stiff, and I had to yank to get the buckle loose. I fumbled with the button and pulled down the zipper, and the jeans drooped off his narrow hips. I gave them a tug, and they let go, falling to his feet. He was still wearing his shoes and had to hold onto the wall over my shoulder while he kicked them off. I pulled on his boxers, and he took those off, too, so when he stood up straight he was wearing nothing but a T-shirt down to his hips and ankle socks.

  His cock was sticking straight out from his body, and I grasped it, but without a tub of Vaseline, I couldn’t do much more than massage him without a friction burn. He had one of my breasts in each hand, cupping and squeezing them, and trying to pinch my nipples through my shirt. I let go of his cock and undressed myself (top, bra, jeans, underwear) in the utilitarian way of couples who have done this many times before. I wondered if I’d gained weight since he last saw me naked, figured I had, and wished the room had kinder lighting.

  I got down on my knees. The industrial-grade carpet bit into them, but sex is always intermittently uncomfortable. I kissed the length of his cock and took it into my mouth. It was familiar in a way I had forgotten.

  Richard rested his right hand on the back of my head, trained by years of girlfriends not to press down. His breathing quickened into a pant, and I pulled back, letting him slide out past my lips for fear that it would end before I’d begun.

  He lifted me up off the floor by my armpits, and I struggled to find my footing in time. He slipped his hand between my legs, and we worked together to rock his fingers into place. I buried my face in the crook of his neck while he found his rhythm and blood swelled me around him.

  Too much and not enough, he took his hand away and steered me backward across the room to the bed. He pushed me back onto the comforter, and just for a moment I imagined all the unwashed bodies doing just this on top of it. Then he pushed his face between my knees, and I cared less about the biohazards.

  Richard had always been good at this—enthusiastic and near worshipful—and when I had clutched and groaned and clawed and bucked without half of the restraint he had shown earlier, he stood with his knees crosshatched and red and guided his cock inside me to take his turn.

  I had forgotten how good it could be when I wasn’t half dead on medication. This was better. This was much better.

  26 Days

  When I woke, I had a low-grade headache to remind me of why it’s never a good idea to order wine by the vat. Richard was still there. The comforter with all its biological contaminants had been kicked off onto the floor, and nearly all of the white sheet was wrapped around his narrow hips, leaving me with cover up to my thighs and no more.

  I wondered whether I should wake him or if I should get up and shower, letting him slip out the door in yesterday’s clothes. We could agree to pretend the night before never happened. We might, if we were deft, be able to agree without ever mentioning the agreement. We would just start talking about breakfast and then never stray into other territory. I wanted to know what he wanted to do, but by asking him what he wanted to do I would by default mention the sex and thereby eliminate not mentioning it as an option, leaving only the possibility of dealing with it.

  It was a goddamn logic puzzle, and I was dehydrated and headachy.

  I got up and went to the bathroom, because peeing wasn’t really taking a position on anything.

  When I came back, having spent some time trying to read the back of the bottle of complimentary shampoo in Spanish, he was awake and wearing pants.

  “There’s an espresso bar in the lobby,” he said. “You want me to bring you something?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Was this the deft agreement or just a desire for caffeine?

  “You still like it the same way?”

  “Milky, weak, and sweet,” I said.

  He pulled his shirt over his head and didn’t bother looking in a mirror to see what state his hair might be in, which is the sort of thing that had sparked in me from an early age the sneaking suspicion that I had gotten the short end of the gender lollipop.

  By the time Richard came back, I had showered, carefully protecting my nipples from the power wash, dressed, and was fighting with the hotel-provided blow dryer, which was about as effective as someone repeatedly sneezing on your head.

  He had done more than fetch coffee. He was shaved, washed, and wearing new clothes, which made me wonder if he had been stalling. The fact that I wondered that made me angry at myself. I was sure he wasn’t psychoanalyzing my personal hygiene, so why was I being so needy about it?

  He set my café con leche on the bathroom counter along with two packets of sweetener, gave my shoulder a quick peck, and then disappeared into the bedroom. I
heard the television switch on and the unmistakable cadence of a soccer announcer’s voice.

  Great. What did that mean?

  I sneeze-dried my hair just until it was no longer dripping down my back, then parted it to the side and pulled it into a stub ponytail at the nape of my neck. People who are trying not to appear needy don’t spend too much time with their hair.

  The bellman directed us to a local breakfast place that looked much like an off-brand Denny’s and was located in a strip mall next to a nail salon.

  The waiter brought us a basket of room-temperature pastry with our menus. There were a couple of minibaguettes, what looked like a single-serving pumpkin pie but surely wasn’t, and a bit of folded dough that strongly resembled a British pasty. I bit into that one and was disappointed. The goo inside was from a fruit I couldn’t discern but was not unlike the gel that surrounds chunks of apple in a pie. I left most of it uneaten.

  We each ordered combo plates and orange juice. The juice came right away in old-fashioned fountain glasses with straws. Richard wasn’t talking much, and when he did, I felt like a visiting relative he hadn’t seen in several years. (“Hey, look at that. A lady cabdriver. Don’t see that too often, do you?”) We had officially entered the postsex twilight zone, where everything was off and potentially dangerous. It was a relief when silence settled in to stay.

  I watched a middle-aged married couple divide their food. She gave him her beans. He passed her extra tortillas.

  “We never got there.”

  “What?” I looked over at Richard, who was looking at the same couple I was. “We never got where?”

  “Never mind.”

  Our food came. My breakfast was ham, tortilla, eggs, salsa, and bacon piled one on top of the other with a side of beans and tripe. The tripe had the texture of a fibrous vegetable combined with the undeniable flavor of meat. I left it on the plate.

  “What are we doing today?” Richard asked.