Drowning Tucson (10 page)

And shit if that son of a bitch, that sickass muthafucka with a wife and two babies at home, didn’t put on a show for almost an hour doin God knows what—

Now don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain, Sonya.

Damn, Kia, you worse than my mom. I’m only tryin to let these females know what they men doin behind they backs and—

Stella walked in the door and the room fell silent except for the snipping of scissors and the rustling of magazines.

How are you ladies doing?

Oh fine, Stella. We just talkin bout the usual. You know, how men are dogs.

She smiled and took her seat and picked out the latest issue of
Us.
I wouldn’t know about that.

Yeah. So this muthafucka try to run at me with a bump on his thang, talkin bout just kiss it girl, just put it in your mouth, and I say look at YOUR shit. What is that, a sore or some thin? You think you Herpules? Get that shit out my face.

More laughter, but everyone was watching Stella, wondering if she knew about what her husband had done the night before.

But at least there are some good men out there, like Stella’s man, Cap’m Torres.

Yes, he’s been very good to me. I consider myself blessed.

Girl, you better, cause a man like that don’t come around too much and when he does, you got to snatch his ass up before one of these females here pounce on him.

Everyone nodded in agreement and gave Stella the sweetest smiles, telling her how lucky she was but not exactly meeting her eyes.

Weren’t yall high school sweethearts?

No. We met in college. I still remember when he proposed on the day of his graduation, right outside the arena in front of both our families and the ten thousand other people who were there. It was the most embarrassing and romantic thing that has ever happened to me.

Damn. That’s sweet, Stella.

Yeah, Torres is real.

Yes, he is. And he’s a great father too. He takes the kids to Lakeside Park to play without me even asking. He even woke up with both boys when they were babies and fed them so I could sleep. But nobody’s perfect, ladies. He’s got his ass side just like the rest of them. There are days when he’s terrible and I want to punch him. But for the most part, he’s good.

Still, girl, you got yourself a real man.

Yeah, a good man.

Manny sat at his desk filing field tests on a handful of soldiers, taking phone calls, and preparing for a noon meeting, but he couldn’t concentrate. He had come to work feeling great, returning salutes to the soldiers at the gate, happy to have gotten a few hours of restful sleep. When he checked in with his company for first formation he made more jokes than usual, subtly referencing his fling with Satin in case any of the men had been there.

Eventually the night before was virtually forgotten as he busied himself with work that he’d let fall behind over the week. And today was Friday, which meant the day would go by fast and everyone who didn’t have to work over the weekend would be in a good mood, so it had the makings of a pleasant day. After he had been at work a few hours, he noticed that he kept rereading and reorganizing the same files. He laid his head down on his desk and tried to concentrate on his breathing. He sorted the files again. A to Z. They weren’t even close to being in the right order. And that afternoon’s meeting was when they were supposed to assign the officers to their training schedules. He placed the files on his desk and reclined in his seat. The itch in his chest grew into a tiny burn right beneath his heart and above his stomach. He placed his feet flat on the ground and sat up straight, hoping to give room to whatever was raging inside his torso. He shifted his feet and started tapping his pencil against his temple with no exact rhythm, shuffling papers and sipping his coffee, and he looked at the clock over and over and ignored his pager, which was beeping to remind him of the meeting in half an hour—I haven’t even made a dent in the schedules—and got up from his desk and closed the door to his office and paced around the room and unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt, looking at the clock again and realizing it hadn’t budged. He held his nose so close to the face that it was almost touching the glass. But the second hand wasn’t moving.

Wait. There. It moved.

His pager beeped nine, ten, eleven times, and he paced the room, going in circles around his desk and ignoring the beeper and suddenly he had his jacket on and was searching the pockets for his car keys and
he’d taken the pager off his belt and thrown it in his desk drawer and slammed it shut, finally finding his keys as he walked out the door, past his secretary who tried to ask him if he would like to leave a message for anyone who might need to contact him, but he kept going through the narrow hallways of his building, ignoring the occasional soldier who stopped to salute him as he passed, increasing his speed, but that was not enough, and his heart beat faster while the pressure taunted him more than it ever had before and he tried to outrun it, slipping on loose gravel and catching his slacks on the cactus that lined the parking lot and stumbling, and by the time he reached his car his shirt was damp with sweat, but he didn’t mind a bit because he felt a little better already now that he was out of his office. He started his car and drove toward the gate.

The rush that Manny felt the moment he passed onto Kolb relieved him long enough for him to breathe clearly and deeply as he headed toward the middle of Tucson. He had no destination. He simply needed to drive. He allowed himself to relax and look toward the boneyard where rows of dismantled planes were bleached white by the sun, purposely avoiding the direction of the Loveboat.

He tried to think of something to do. Anything that would take his mind off the tension. He could pick Justin up for lunch and take him to Chuck E. Cheese’s for pizza. Justin loved the singing and the puppets. And the miniature ferris wheel. But the thought of screaming kids and flashing lights and the smell of grease made Manny nauseous. And even though he knew how excited Justin got when he surprised him at school for lunch—the way his tiny chest puffed out and his back straightened like a real soldier—Manny decided against the idea.

Of course, he could always surprise his wife. Reserve a table at a nice restaurant on Broadway and call her at home so she could meet him there. But seeing her right now wasn’t a good idea. On Speedway he decided he wanted to get out of the sun and into a dark building, so he stopped at the first bar he saw and went inside to order some food. The bar was full of men, construction workers and plumbers and mechanics, all taking their lunch breaks. He made his way to a corner booth in the rear where he could be left alone. Just when he thought he would have
to walk to the bar to place his order, a middle-aged woman dressed in cut-off shorts and a tank top approached him and pulled a notepad from her back pocket and asked what can I get for you. Jalapeño poppers. A cheese crisp. Oh, and a shot of Crown.

The shot went down real nice, melting the hardness in his stomach and clearing his throat somewhat. He ordered another one before she walked away. Then another one. And by the time his food arrived, Manny had finished off five shots and had a sixth sitting in front of him. For the first time since he left the base, whatever was constricting his insides had lightened its grip enough for him to move freely. He was thankful for that much. And for the additional shot he had after he finished eating his poppers. And for the cigarette he bummed off the waitress. He sat back and let the food mingle with the alcohol and the nicotine.

When he got up from the booth, he felt good, fuzzy and numb to the anxiety that had tormented him earlier. Most of the customers had gone back to work, so Manny relaxed as he walked toward the bathroom past the remaining men—two in a booth and a few singles sitting at the bar.

At the urinal, where Manny was relieving himself and reading the newspaper taped to the wall, another man stood beside him at another urinal. Manny rolled his eyes over as far as he could without moving his head and looked down at the guy, who had finished pissing a few seconds after Manny came into the bathroom but still stood there holding his dick. He stared over at Manny once in a while, not shaking it, not getting ready to put it away, just standing. The feeling Manny had relished the night before returned, and even though he too had finished pissing, he didn’t move. The tingling in his groin made him want to close his eyes and stand there feeling it throughout his body, but instead he caught the man looking directly at his dick and was suddenly hit with a wave of disgust that overwhelmed him so much he forgot his excitement and he looked at the man and down at the man’s hand, which had begun to move a little, waving his dick back and forth, and said what in the FUCK are you looking at, and the man smiled and looked down at Manny and said just you, and Manny felt rage begin to well up inside his throat, you’re staring at my dick? you some kind of fuckin homo? you think I’m gay? and Manny noticed the longing in the man’s eyes slowly
change to an awareness, and he fumbled with his pants and his zipper and looked away and Manny, furious, was not going to let the fucker off that easy and he turned toward the man, is this what you’re lookin at? you want to stare, go ahead and stare, you fuckin queer, cause it’s the last one of these you’re ever gonna see, and Manny could tell the man was trying hard not to look at him, that he was scared and worried but he looked anyway and immediately back up at Manny, and his eyes, even before they made their way back up to Manny’s face, were full of the realization that he had just made a mistake, a big mistake, a mistake so huge that Manny snapped and watched himself—as if he were lying beneath a rushing body of water and everything was happening right above the surface—reach out toward the man, who did not move but stood with his arms hanging at his sides, and grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the wall, you just gonna stare at my dick like that? you must think I’m one of you, and the man tried to stammer out a response but Manny increased his grip around the stranger’s neck, digging in with all his might while the man’s face immediately reddened and his Adam’s apple bucked beneath Manny’s grasp, then the man’s hands came up from his sides, as if he had just remembered that he even owned them, and he instinctively clutched at the clamp on his throat, trying to tear the hand from his neck or at least lodge his own fingers beneath it so he could get a sip of air, and Manny found that he suddenly did not care whether this faggot lived or died and he stood watching the man grow redder and redder and then he was beating the man’s head against the tiled walls, not loud enough to draw attention out in the bar but certainly hard enough to draw blood from the back of the man’s head as it hit the tile over and over again, and with each hit the man struggled less and the sound of his head hitting the tiles became less sharp, more muffled, and the man’s hands fell to his sides again and his head slumped sideways, and Manny decided to stop before he killed the little fairy so he tossed the man aside. He washed his hands and checked his teeth and practiced a few smiles in the mirror to make sure he looked normal, then he closed the door behind him as he emerged from the men’s room, wiping his hands on the thighs of his uniform slacks, ignoring the man’s groans. He looked at no one as he left the bar,
just waved a general wave in case someone was looking. The sunlight blinded Manny for a moment until his eyes grew accustomed to the brightness of the outdoors again.

His rage was gone. The man in the bathroom had drained it from him. But something was still there, growing more intense with the heat of the sun. He momentarily entertained the idea of going back into the bar and rousing the beaten man and letting him stare at his dick if he really wanted to. He’d tell him he was just kidding, you can look at it, want to pet it, maybe he’d even let the guy suck on it too. Instead he got back in his car. As he drove away, he thought maybe I should just run headlong into a semi or smash into a telephone pole and get it over with. He thought about his wife and his job—oh shit, what if that poor bastard saw my name, I’ll be ruined—and he wanted to pull over and cry and tear the clothes from his body and claw into his chest and rip out the ever-growing mound of filth that had set up residence inside him.

He needed something. Silence. A place to clear his head. Maybe I can stop in that church up the road, what is it, Our Mother of Sorrows. It’s Catholic, so it’ll be cool and quiet inside. No, that won’t work either. Something else. Dammit. His breaths were short. His hands and teeth clenched.

He parked in the lot of a flower shop and wept tears of rage and sorrow and frustration. He no longer felt like Captain Torres, the man in charge of hundreds of airmen. He was no longer sure of anything except that he must regain control of himself. He sat in the car trying to calm himself, wiping the tears from his face with his dirty shirtsleeve, rocking back and forth and thinking, thinking, thinking. It’ll be okay.

When he had finally regained some composure, Manny decided flowers might be just what he needed. I’ll buy my Stella some flowers and I’ll water them for her. It was small, but it was something. Right after he bought the flowers, he would call the base and tell them he left because he was ill and they could brief him in the morning on everything he’d missed. Yes, then I can go home and give Stella the flowers and take the boys to the park. Or I could call the babysitter and take Stella out for dinner and a movie, something real nice so she’ll be happy
and we can go on playing house, the perfect family that makes all her friends jealous.