A television vibrated with a man singing “La Tremenda.”
The window fans made everything that was loose swing or flutter.
“Grab a beer,” Jewels said. Her accent was all Texas and her voice had rust in its depths.
“We gotta yell over the fans but I never did believe in air conditioning. You know? I think sweating’s good for your pores—sweat awl the time and stay youthful. You wanna have dinner with me, sweets?”
“No thanks,” I said, but accepted the lo-cal beer she passed to me.
I watched her fill a brown-freckled tortilla with beans and rice and green chili picante.
“Raymond didn’t really explain why I was supposed to come here,” I said. “I’m hunting for my husband. Maybe you know that already.”
“How do you smoke and keep your skin so smooth?” she asked.
Over her head hung a door-sized Fuelex poster that showed a growling wolf, “HI OCTANE 93,” the poster said.
She said, “You belong to Raf, I know.”
Now she lay back on a couch the color of papaya.
On an end table, rows of giant novena candles squatted in glass containers big as thermos jugs. One black holder had a cobra on its side. Another was printed with “Iglesia Bisettra!” and the letters dripped blood. Others were painted with little portraits or figures of saints.
Jewels’s bathroom door wore a wood cemetery cross that was wired around with fabric flowers, white and hot pink.
She swirled beer in her cheeks as if using mouthwash. She swallowed and said, “Raymond has gotten so damned keerful. I miss the old Raymond, isn’t that terrible? When he drank? But I do. I almost wish he’d have a slip. These are strange times.”
“What’s Raymond being careful about?” I asked. “Do you know where my husband is?”
“I sorta do. He’s with Julio. Julio’s mine. He’s a wonderful man.”
“But do you know where Julio is either?”
“I sorta do,” Jewels said. “He’s with my sister. Raf and him’re both with my sister Reba. Me and Reba are hairdressers for Nicole Roccio? You know Nicole’s. They’re all over town.”
“I just got here,” I said.
“We do that and help out our daddy some. Our daddy owns that bar downstairs you probably seen.”
She said, “You look like you’re gonna scream, Mrs. Deveaux.”
“Paige,” I said. “I need to find Raf. And this reminds me of those nightmares when you’re moving in slow motion. Please go on. You were saying about Reba? Your husband, Julio?”
Jewels smiled and waved off the smoke from my cigarette, which was unnecessary. Her fans were pushing such a current her blond hair blew on end.
She said, “All right, it’s like this. When Raymond threw Raf out, Raf called up Reba . . .”
“Of course, naturally.”
“Well,” Jewels said. “Raf doesn’t have a lot of money.”
“But he sure has friends.”
“Hey, sweets, don’t climb on me. I’m not in this. I got a set situation with Julio. You mind if I ask about something, though? I can’t quite feature you with Raf.”
I bit on that, gave Jewels an assenting nod. Finally I said, “We’re a lot alike, have a lot in common. . . .”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re much too straight for the Raf I know.”
“I meant underneath,” I said. I really didn’t want to try for words on what was between Raf and me.
“Sex?” Jewels said.
“That and everything. We need each other. Otherwise we can’t feed or dress ourselves. We don’t know what to think next.”
“Oh,” Jewels said, gesturing acceptance with her raised eyebrows.
Outside a tomcat squealed.
“So Raf came over and he collected Julio, and then as soon as Reba got off work, they all three went to The Anzac Club and the New Texas Motel.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Don’t it give you the sicks, that place? They were there awhile though, and then at Reba’s, and today they’re either coming here or going to Facinita or over the border.”
“I hope you didn’t mean that last.”
“Wish I didn’t,” Jewels said.
With her kimono she wore slacks and padded white shoes, like nurses’ shoes.
“Did you just get off work? When did you last talk to any of them?” I asked.
“Few hours ago. . . . I gotta take a bath,” she said. “You’re more’n welcome to wait here. They might come, who knows? Or you could try Facinita. It’s a dance place for Hispanics? But you know what? I think you could pass. You’re brown as toast. You’d get hit on but they got security, no big deal. You should wear a bra if you go.”
“What if they decide on Mexico?”
Jewels shrugged and moved through the door with the flowered cemetery cross.
I heard a torrent of bathwater.
She came back and undressed while she chattered at me. I thought this could be an act of competition, that she felt close to Raf and wanted to show me what I was up against. Or maybe she was like a kid, treating me as a sister, never imagining a same-sex erotic context. Or she was ready for anybody, anytime.
“Raymond quote the Bible to you? That shit drives me lupo. He never used to, I’ll tell you that,” she was saying.
Anyway, she didn’t make a bad show. The room was hot and she had the sheen of perspiration she wanted. Tattooed around her ankle was a fine-link chain in indigo ink. I couldn’t guess her age—eighteen or thirty-five—either way.
I finished my beer and it felt like nothing.
“Raymond used to be the best non-Latino man I ever knew,” Jewels said. “That’s when he was drinking. Now between Luisa, and the church, and AA . . . They’ve made him a robot. What’s the point of him even living?”
She vanished again, and suddenly I didn’t mind being here. I cracked a second beer.
Jewels had lit a few of the novena candles, and the winds from the wagging fans played with the candle flames, sending them sideways every five seconds.
I unbagged a pen and my poetry notebook. Just words, I listed at first, but then I got a start on a tercet. This tercet, if a student had submitted it to me, would’ve earned a low C.
I reeled over and whomped cheerily on the bathroom door. “Jewels! How’s the water?”
She said, “I’m glad you waited. I can go to Facinita with you. I won’t need no ride home and you’ll feel better if you’re with someone.”
I wanted to go alone, though. I wanted to get drunker, go alone, and the hell with a bra.
“What’ll we do, leave a note for Raf and them?”
“Good thinking,” Jewels called. “In case they decide to crash-land.”
“Do you have any more of that beer?” I asked her.
“Sí,” she said. “In the kitchen in the fridge compartment. Then how ’bout soaping my back for me?”
“Not this month,