Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club

  EVERYTHING

  BEGINS & ENDS

  AT THE KENTUCKY CLUB

  EVERYTHING

  BEGINS & ENDS

  AT THE KENTUCKY CLUB

  STORIES BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ

  CINCO PUNTOS PRESS

  www.cincopuntos.com

  Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club. Copyright © 2012 by Benjamin Alire Saenz. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.

  He Went To Be With the Women first appeared in Narrative.com. Sometimes the Rain first appeared in 11/11.

  FIRST EDITION 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sáenz, Benjamin Alire.

  Everything begins & ends at the Kentucky Club / by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

  -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  E-book ISBN 978-1-935955-33-7

  I. Title.

  PS3569.A27E94 2012

  813’.54--dc23

  2012004532

  COVER PHOTO AND BOOK DESIGN BY ANTONIO CASTRO H.

  Thanks to Lostandtaken.com for the back cover, flap, and spine texture.

  Obb, this cover took a lot of doing. First it was going to be Fred and Patty Dalbin on the cover with Rich Wright in a spectacular old photo supplied by Vanessa Johnson. Much discussion ensued on that one. Flow we would have loved to see our friends hit the big-time. But it was not to be. Bruce Berman took some great shots and one made an almost perfect cover. But ultimately it was this image made by Antonio Castro that evoked the essence of Ben’s stories. Antonio went to the Kentucky Club in Juarez with Ben and Bobby on one of those dreamy afternoon visits you can only have when you cross over to the other side.

  I want to listen to my heart as it beats like a

  piece of music in a silence that waits to be broken.

  IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

  ELOISA ALIRE SÁENZ

  Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

  Matthew 5.8

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  HE HAS GONE TO BE WITH THE WOMEN

  THE ART OF TRANSLATION

  THE RULE MAKER

  BROTHER IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

  SOMETIMES THE RAIN

  CHASING THE DRAGON

  THE HURTING GAME

  HE HAS GONE TO BE WITH THE WOMEN

  1.

  The slant of morning light made him look like he was about to catch on fire.

  Every Sunday he was there, a singular, solitary figure—but not sad and not lonely. And not tragic. He became the main character of a story I was writing in my head. Some people are so beautiful that they belong everywhere they go. That was the first sentence of the story.

  I always noticed what he was reading: Dostoyevsky, Kazantzakis, Faulkner. He was in love with serious literature. And tragedy. Well, he lived on the border. And on the border you could be in love with tragedy without being tragic.

  He drank his coffee black. Not that I knew that with any certainty.

  Sometimes, I could see that he’d just come in from a run, his dark wavy hair wild, half-wet with sweat.

  He was thin and had to shave twice a day. But he only shaved once. There was always that shadow on his face. Even in the morning light he appeared to be half-hidden.

  I don’t know how long I’d been noticing him. A year. Longer.

  He was a creature of habit. Not so different from a monk. Not so different from me.

  Our eyes never met though I had memorized the color of his eyes.

  I never lingered at the coffee shop—but there was always a line on Sunday mornings. I was grateful for the wait. It gave me the opportunity to glance at him as he read his book. I wanted to walk up to him and ask him what he thought of Kazantzakis. I imagined me blurting out that no one read him anymore. I imagined him smiling at me.

  I never ordered coffee.

  I would drop in to pick up the Sunday New York Times and drive back home to drink my own free-trade, fresh-ground coffee. I always ran into someone I knew. People were so nice to me. Always. Hello Mr. De la Tierra you’re looking good Mr. De la Tierra what are you working on now Mr. De la Tierra so nice to see you Mr. De la Tierra. The fact that so many people knew who I was had never given me much comfort. If anything, it made me feel more alone. And anyway, nobody knew who I was. Not even me.

  2.

  Sundays were mine. The rest of the week belonged to my responsibilities, my writing, my family, my friends, my commitments. I could give all my days up for everything else. But not Sundays. I loved the quiet softness of that day. I’d read the paper and inhale the stillness of the neighborhood that was resting from the punishing week. It was that kind of neighborhood.

  And then one Sunday we spoke.

  I was standing at the counter of the coffee shop, New York Times in hand, deciding. Croissant? Maybe a scone? I was hungry.

  “You never buy a cup of coffee.”

  Even before I turned around, I knew it was him.

  “No,” I said.

  “You don’t like coffee?”

  “My coffee is waiting for me at home.”

  “So your coffee is like a wife?”

  “Yes,” I said, “exactly like a wife.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I?”

  “Have a wife?”

  I stuck out my left hand. No ring.

  He didn’t smile but I thought he wanted to. I paid for my paper.

  He ordered a tall coffee of the day. I was right about him drinking his coffee black. His voice was deep and friendly. It was nice—his accent. I wanted to keep talking. But there was never anything to say when it mattered so much to say something. “You like newspapers,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re the past. And they’re all lies.”

  I held up my newspaper. “It’s not El Diario.”

  “Are you one of those?”

  I looked into his smiling face. “One of those?”

  He laughed. “One of those Mexicans who hates other Mexicans?”

  “No. I don’t suffer from that disease.”

  “What do you suffer from?”

  I didn’t say anything. I looked into his chocolate eyes. I think I was looking for suffering.

  “You’re not really Mexican,” he said.

  “Not Mexican. Not American. Fucked. That’s the disease I suffer from.”

  We found ourselves sitting outside. The morning was cool. The wind was back, the wind that was in love with El Paso, the wind that refused to leave us to enjoy the sun.

  “You’re cold,” he said.

  “I forgot my jacket.”

  “We can go inside.”

  “No,” I said. We studied each other. My eyes weren’t as dark as his. Pedestrian brown. “I don’t live far from here.”

  He was thinking.

  “I’m not looking for a hook-up.” Just as the words came out of my mouth, I realized they sounded like an accusation. I was sorry for having said anything.

  “No,” he said, “not a man like you.” He smiled. “My name is Javier.”

  “Javier,” I said, “I’m—”

  “Everybody knows who you are.”

  “Nobody knows who I am.”

  He laughed, Javier who drank his coffee black. “Tell me. I want to hear you say your name.”

  “Juan Carlos.”

  “Juan Carlos,” he repeated. “Where do you live?”


  “Sunset Heights.”

  He tapped his paper cup. “Interesting neighborhood.”

  3.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” he said. He was studying one of my paintings.

  “It was built in 1900.”

  “Ten years before the Revolution.”

  “More than a hundred years ago.”

  “And here we are. One real Mexican and one Mexican who’s American.”

  “My grandfather was born here,” I said.

  “My grandfather was born in Israel,” he said.

  “So I’m more Mexican than you are.”

  “I wouldn’t say so.”

  That made me laugh.

  He was still studying the painting. “Why is the man grieving?”

  “He’s tired of war.”

  “I’m tired of war too.”

  “Israel,” I said. “Israel and Mexico. A true child of war.”

  “Yes. Maybe that’s what circumcision is all about.”

  That made me laugh.

  “You too,” he said. “I think you’re circumcised.”

  “Such a tragedy,” I said, “to lose your foreskin. Not that I’m Jewish. You don’t mind, do you—that I’m not Jewish?”

  “I didn’t say I was Jewish.”

  “But you said your father was born in Israel.”

  “He was an Iraqi born in Israel. He fled to Mexico. He married my grandmother in Chihuahua. He was killed in a bar. He liked to fight.”

  “A child of war,” I repeated.

  He laughed. “So why are you circumcised?”

  “I have no idea. I woke up one day and there it all was.”

  “Real Mexican men aren’t circumcised.”

  “It’s settled then. I’m not a real Mexican.”

  He knew the conversation was making me uncomfortable.

  “You don’t enjoy talking about circumcision?”

  “It’s never come up in a conversation before.”

  “And do you like to fight?”

  “No. I don’t like to fight.”

  “Certainly you’re not a Mexican,” he said.

  I took the paper cup out of his hand and replaced it with a fresh cup of coffee. I let him drink out of my favorite mug, the one with Van Gogh’s face on it.

  “You didn’t lie.”

  “About what?”

  “Your coffee was waiting for you.”

  “I always put on the coffee before I go get my newspaper.”

  “What do you like about newspapers?”

  “The world’s a big place.”

  “And you need a newspaper to tell you that?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Really?”

  “It gives me the specifics.”

  “The world you live in can give you all the specifics you need.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Already we were arguing.

  “I need facts.”

  “What for?”

  “To help me form an opinion.”

  “You don’t know what you think?”

  “I’m not always right.”

  He laughed. “You study me,” he said.

  “Study you?”

  “When you walk into the coffee house, you study me.”

  “You seem oblivious.”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “You seem not to notice anything except the book you’re reading.”

  “Carlos, I notice.” He had a pensive look on his face.

  “That means you study me too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Javier, you’re beautiful. And me? Not so beautiful. And your English is perfect.”

  “Perfect but with an accent.”

  “Which makes it even more perfect.”

  “You’re something better than beautiful,” he said.

  “What’s better than beautiful?”

  “Interesting. Interesting is much better than beautiful.” He reached over and ran his fingers across my cheek. His hands were rough. His fingers were calloused.

  Maybe he played the guitar.

  I wanted to kiss his fingers.

  “You’re quiet,” he said.

  “If I don’t say anything, I’ll stay interesting.”

  He ran his fingers through my salt and pepper hair.

  “I’m older than you are,” I said.

  He kissed me.

  I kissed him back.

  4.

  We sat on the balcony and drank our coffee—and listened to the rain.

  “I don’t know you,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  So he told me. About how he was caring for his uncle who was dying of lung cancer, about how he had helped care for his aunt who was paralyzed in an accident. About how he came every weekend from Juárez—Friday night till Sunday night—and other times whenever he could. About how he worked as a chauffeur for the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, and how he’d lived with his uncle and aunt who lived on Florence Street so that he would be able to go to school, and how they’d passed for his parents, and how he went home on weekends for twelve years of his life to stay with his mom who worked as a social worker, his mother who had a passion for working with transvestites, about how his father had been killed and had maybe left another family in Chicago or Los Angeles or Chihuahua (I wasn’t the only one who made up things about other people). About how his aunt had died of cancer and how he’d helped his uncle take care of things, and how he took care of him now. But only on weekends.

  “Do you love him?”

  “He was good to me. My aunt was hard, but not him. He was soft. Can you say that in English? Soft?”

  “Yes.” I leaned over and kissed him. God, he was beautiful. That wasn’t just a story I was making up.

  “I didn’t like my aunt,” he said. He pulled out a cigarette. “Do you mind?”

  “No. I don’t mind.”

  “Would you like one?”

  “I quit years ago.”

  “Why?’

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Are you a man who has amnesia about certain things?”

  “Cuando me conviene.”

  He laughed.

  I watched him light his cigarette. I remembered how once, in a bar, a woman had walked up to me as I smoked a cigarette and told me I was beautiful. She kissed me. I let her tongue linger in my mouth. She tasted of cognac and cherry.

  He let out the smoke through his nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to start smoking again?”

  “No. I want to start something new, something I’ve never done before.” I watched him smoke. “So you didn’t like your aunt.”

  “I didn’t like her—but I loved her. She was so hard on people.”

  “Some people are like that,” I said.

  “You’re not,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve read your books.”

  “They’re just books. You don’t know anything about me.”

  He put out his cigarette. He ran his fingers through my salt and pepper hair. He kissed me. “I make up stories about you,” he said.

  I wish now I would have told him that I made up stories about him too.

  5.

  “¿Tienes hambre? I can cook something.”

  “Somehow I knew you liked to cook.”

  “Something you made up about me?”

  “No, there’s a lot of cooking in your novels.”

  “Well, people have to eat. Even people in novels.”

  He laughed. “I like the people in your novels.”

  “They’re mostly fucked up.”

  “That’s what I like about them.” He looked at his watch.

  “That’s a beautiful watch.”

  “It was my father’s.”

  “You need to go?”

  He nodded. “I need to get back to my uncle. We always eat Sunda
y dinner together.”

  “Do you take him out?”

  “Those days are gone. He used to love to go out. He would laugh and tell me about how life used to be for him. Now, he won’t go out. He’s afraid. Before, the only thing he was afraid of was my aunt. Now, he’s like a boy. He cries. He reads the newspapers. He thinks he’s living in Juárez. I tell him that we’re in El Paso, that he’s safe. But he doesn’t believe me. He’s afraid to go out. Nos matan, he says. I try to tell him that no one’s going to hurt us—but it’s no use. Every time I go out he tells me to be careful.”

  “And are you careful?”

  “I’m not afraid of getting killed. Are you?”

  “I don’t live in Juárez.”

  “There are murders in every city.”

  I didn’t want to get into an argument. Not about this. What good was that? And he knew Juárez better than I did. “You’re right,” I said.

  “I just learned something else about you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not a very good liar.”

  “I used to be.” I wondered what look I was wearing on my face. “I would be afraid, I think, if I were you.”

  “What good is being afraid, Carlos?”

  “No good at all,” I said.

  He studied my face.

  I wanted to kiss him again. Maybe he would kiss me. Maybe I would just stand there feeling like a perfect idiot. I wasn’t any good at any of this. I never had been. Some men were graceful when they loved. I was tentative and awkward.

  “What?” He looked at me.

  “Nothing.”

  “You were studying me again.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t mind. I like the way you look at me.”

  “I could look at you for a long time,” I said.

  “You can kiss me again,” he said.

  He bowed his head and looked down. He was shy. Or maybe he was just humble. That’s the one thing I hadn’t made up about him—that he was humble. That he was sweet. That he was decent. Good-looking men were rarely any of those things.

  I kissed him again.

  He whispered my name. I wondered how my name felt on his tongue.