“I wasn’t driving.”
“You have gang tattoos.”
That made Godo laugh. He looked at the backs of his hands: a dragon, a bat. “These?”
The cop leaned closer. “Let me explain something to you, son. Here’s how it will go: I’m a decorated officer with twelve years’ experience working this city, with expertise of particular relevance to the matter at hand, numerous multiagency task forces, narcotics unit, youth gang outreach. Am I getting through?” The two cops behind him grinned like jackals. “I say those are gang tats. Think any judge in this county is going to second-guess me?”
Godo’s eyes burned. Fearing he might cry, he bit his lip, telling himself, Don’t be a bitch. “I don’t care,” he whispered.
The cop accepted this remark with an oddly warm smile. “Thank you. That’s consent. Please step outside the vehicle.”
Godo watched as they tossed the car, thinking: sly motherfucker. They found the pot but nothing else worth bagging and tagging, no open containers, no crank, no weapons. Half an hour later the dogs cornered Happy out among the sloughs on the river’s far side, hiding in a patch of oleander. He and Godo were taken to lockup in separate cars. I’ll never see him again, Godo realized. The weed was a California misdemeanor, no more than a fine for him, his bigger problem would be public intoxication and even that was just another minor beef-a lecture from the bench, community service, counseling. But for Happy, the pot was an aggravated felony. No matter what any lawyer tried to do, no matter what Godo said under penalty of perjury-the pot was his, no one else’s, he’d paid for it, hidden it under the seat-none of it mattered. Happy wasn’t a citizen. His case was heard in immigration court and he drew a hanging judge. Not only did he get deported; he was barred from reentry for the rest of his life. Exile, for an ounce bag of Godo’s bud.
It took only one time, looking into Tio Faustino’s eyes, for Godo to realize there was no other option. He had to go away, someplace strange and terrible. If he came back, he had to come back changed. And so he headed to the small featureless office downtown, where the man in the olive-green pants, the khaki shirt and tie, the famous high-and-tight buzz cut, sat behind his simple desk, Stars and Stripes on one side, Marine Corps colors on the other.
“I just got popped on a weed charge,” Godo said. “That gonna be a problem?”
Eight
THE DULL CHIME SOUNDED BEYOND THE THICK DOOR. ROQUE cupped his hands, a gust of breath, hoping for warmth. A ten count, longer, then she appeared, dressed in paint-stained sweats, wiping her clay-muddied hands with a towel. Her eyes looked scalded.
“You’re working,” he said, remembering the debris from last night.
She forced him to endure an unnerving silence.
“I thought I’d check in on you. Make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.” Her voice barely a whisper.
Something in her reticence suggested shame. Given his own, Roque found this encouraging. “I was hoping we could talk. I hated leaving this morning, the way things stood.”
Her eyes seemed focused on a spot several feet beyond him. “And how,” she said, “would you say things stood?”
A sudden wind sent a shudder through the chinaberry tree, rattling loose a few pale leaves. “Can I come in?”
Her eyes blinked slowly, just once, like a cat’s. She stepped back and he followed her to the kitchen, grateful for the warmth.
She poured them both tea in the breakfast nook. A wooden statuette of a bodhisattva named Jizo-typically portrayed as a child monk, she’d once explained, guardian of women and travelers, enemy of fear, champion of optimism-rested on a teak-wood platform at the center of the table. Steam frosted the windows looking out on her terraced backyard. In the sink, a drip from the faucet made a soft drumbeat against the blade of a carving knife perched across a bowl.
“Something strange has come up,” he said. “I kinda wanted someone to talk to.”
She sat with her elbows propped on the tabletop, cup lifted, as though to hide behind it. “I thought you wanted to discuss what happened between us.”
“I do. Yes. I’m just saying…” The thumping drip from the sink unnerved him. “Last night, why couldn’t you stop crying?”
She regarded him with sad disbelief, then chuckled. “What a treat it would have been to get asked that at the time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I gathered that. Or I wouldn’t have let you in.” She brushed a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “What will it take to get you to pay attention to what I’m feeling, Roque?”
“I thought I did pay attention.”
A rueful snort. “We had sex.”
He felt his stomach pitch. The woody scent of the tea didn’t help. “It wasn’t like that.”
“I know it wasn’t. But it wasn’t all loving kindness, either.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that, please. You’re being sorry isn’t much help, frankly.” She sat back, glancing out at her dormant garden. “I haven’t much wanted to get into this, but things haven’t been so great for me the past year or so. The drinking tells you that much. That’s new, trust me. I never used to drink, not like now, not till after my divorce.”
She’d been married to an air force captain. “Your husband didn’t love you.”
She made a face, like he’d missed the point entirely. “Yes, he did, Roque. Just badly.”
“Talk like that, anything passes for love.”
“Oh please, just once, try to realize that things are going to look very different to you in a few years, all right?”
He blanched from the scolding. Gradually, anger brought his color back.
She said, “I can tell you’re taking that the wrong way.”
“There’s a right way?”
“Yes, actually.” Beyond the steam-fogged window a crow rustled the branches of the tangerine tree. “I’m trying to make you understand what middle age is like.”
He slumped in his chair. “That’s all you ever talk about.”
“Please, listen. You get to where I am, see all the things you wanted that never showed up and realize, finally, they never will. This time of year just makes it worse. I’m feeling all bitter and Brahmsian and bored with myself.” She shivered. “God, that sounds like the line from a song. What I mean is, this thing, here, between you and me? It’s just an attempt to pretend I’m not really getting older. There. That simple, that stupid, that sad. As for you-”
This part wasn’t new. “You think I’m needy.”
“I think you need, yes, a kind of love I can’t promise or provide.”
“And what about the love I can provide?”
“I’m more concerned about what you can’t promise, actually.”
“Which is?”
“Please, stop being so angry, so-”
“You think you know how I feel. So why do you get so scared when I try to tell you what I’m actually feeling?”
“I was your age once, remember. I had passion and confidence and exuberance, all that lovely stuff. I envy you. But I can’t recover what I’ve lost through you.”
Roque was floored. You think I don’t understand despair, he thought. You think I don’t know what it means to
