When I sat down, we shot the shit about this and that for a minute, but I knew there was something on Pablo’s mind. So, after he started his second drink while going on about how students always think poetry is something they have to get, and his first job in introduction to poetry is to unteach them bullshit they learned in high school, I interrupted and said, “But that’s not why you brought me out here, Mijo.”
I could tell he thought it was weird that I called him mijo by how he looked at me, and really, I felt weird saying it, but ten years can be a lot sometimes. It felt like a lot.
He said, “Dolores thinks I’m cheating on her.”
And what a fucking stack to drop on someone. I mean, we had talked about deep shit before. He read my novel before it was published; gave me feedback. Drinks and talks were normal, but there was always a distance, you know? It’s not like we weren’t friends outside of literature and academia. We were definitely friends when we were writing reviews or discussing books or talking about the courses we were teaching. But books touch on life, and when you talk about books if the conversation’s any good you wind up touching on life.
I liked the idea of being his friend, his friend outside of books, just life. So, I asked him, “How come she thinks that?”
“She said she got a letter in the mail from the woman I cheated with, but that’s the thing, I never cheated, and Taya didn’t send that letter.”
I don’t know how I reacted. I don’t think I reacted to him. The bar stools at B&J’s Pizza don’t got backs, and they kinda tend to topple this way and that, so I think I was thinking about the wobble. I tried to pull myself back to the conversation. “Walk me through this.”
Looking over his Coors (he only drinks yellow bellies, never tries anything new) he said, “Dolores got a letter in the mail from Taya, a friend of mine. In that letter, Taya says that she and I have been having an affair for years. Like, since before I started working at the university. But the thing is, Taya and I never had an affair, and she didn’t write that letter.”
I was drinking a local brew, a Rebel Toad Pilsner. I remember because I ordered something really really light, that way I wouldn’t be confused while he talked to me. In fact, I was still sipping my first drink of the night, while Pablo had one empty bottle and was emptying another. But still, even with relative sobriety, I just couldn’t keep up. I think it was that stool. Maybe it’s because of my own shit I had going on at home. My own marriage wasn’t doing too good. But that bar stool. It had this weird rusty screw I could feel against my left calf, and I was thinking I’d get tetanus, but then I thought it was stupid, so I tried not to worry about it. “Who’s Taya?” It almost felt like he expected me to know.
He sighed. “A friend.”
“Okay. Did you cheat on Dolores with Taya?”
“No. Of course not. Never.”
“Alright, alright. So one day, Dolores gets a letter from Taya saying that you two cheated?”
“Yes.”
“When was this?”
“Monday.”
That bar stool kept squeaking. I don’t think his stool squeaked. Just mine. “Okay. So, Dolores gets this letter, but you never cheated, but in the letter Taya says you did.”
“Well, I don’t think Taya sent the letter.”
“Why not?”
“Because I talked to Taya on Tuesday.”
“And she said she didn’t send the letter?”
“Exactly.”
I thought about asking him if we could trade stools. They weren’t fixed to the ground or nothing. I figured he wouldn’t care, but mine was really bothering me. “Where’s Taya from?”
“She’s living in Mexico City right now.”
“Alright, so Taya’s in Mexico City, and Tuesday you called Taya to ask about the letter.”
“Well, not to talk about the letter. We always talk Tuesdays.”
I took a swig. The bar was getting loud, cuz, I guess, some of the regulars were getting too comfortable, a bit rowdy. My stool felt like it squeaked, but I couldn’t hear the squeak anymore once people around us started talking loud, so it bothered me less. People were talking, all talking, all getting louder to talk, so we had to raise our voices a little, which is weird, talking loudly about something that should be so secret. “Taya’s a good friend?”
“Taya’s a very good friend.”
“And you two never fucked?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then what’s the problem? Did you tell Dolores you didn’t have an affair?”
“Yeah, and she was fine at first, but then I called Taya to tell her about the situation, and Dolores said, ‘You have her number?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, we talk, like, once a week.’ And she said, ‘How come I ne—’”
“Oh, shit. Dolores never knew about Taya?”
“She absolutely knew!” He slammed his bottle on the table, so a little volcano of foam shot up. Not enough to warrant napkins, but enough so I knew his sleeves would smell like beer when he got home. “Me and Dolores own a painting Taya painted at an artist colony. Taya and I are friends. Good friends. When we have meaningful conversations. I always bring them home. And I told her, yeah, you definitely knew Taya and I talk. I definitely tell you about our conversations, but you never listen.”
“Shit,” I said. I pulled off my jacket so my sleeves wouldn’t get beer, because, if we’re honest, I can be very clumsy. “You told her that? In the middle of her accusing you of adultery, you told her she never listens to you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I talked loud, because, well, with the noise at the bar it’s not like anyone beyond Pablo could really hear me, and he really needed to hear it good. “Man it hella sounds like you’re cheating, for real, compa, I wouldn’t tell you this if it didn’t.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“Not even a little kiss?”
“No. Well, on the cheek when we see each other.”
“Ah, she’s probably used to it living in México.”
“Well she’s living in Mexico City, but she’s from Tyler. Tyler, Texas. We met in Rockport.”
Don’t get me wrong, I got nothing against white people, I mean, my boss is white, some of my best friends are white, I’ve even slept with a few white women myself, but I had to ask, “Is she Anglo?”
And Pablo said, “I don’t know what that’s got to do with it.”
“You know how Anglo girls from the country get when a Latino guy kisses them on the cheek. They think, ‘Oh, I think he loves me.’ I’m not saying you cheated. I’m saying, maybe in Taya’s mind, maybe you did.”
“It’s not like that with Taya.”
“How do you know? Maybe not to you, but to her, there was some cheating? You don’t know.”
“Because we’ve talked about it,” which is a weird thing to say because, well, if you talked about it, then someone brought it up, then cheating was on someone’s mind.
He looked sad. Actually, he looked frustrated at me. I tried to shut myself down. I think a lot of my questions were getting to him, and I had done this to students before, asked them so many questions about their point that they realize they don’t know as much as they thought, so they think they don’t know anything, so they just shut down.
But Pablo and Taya had talked about cheating. If they had talked about it, something happened, even if Pablo wasn’t telling me.
I tried to set that aside. I thought he’d tell me when he’s ready. Instead, I leaned on that uncomfortable backless stool where a spring in the center pushed up against my asshole, I took a big sip of beer, and I said, “I’m sorry,” although I wanted to ask what he meant when he said that they’d talked about it. I knew. I had been there before. In some ways, I was still there.
Somehow, between my questions, he managed to finish his drink. That second yellow belly was washed down dry. “Do you want another?” he asked me.
I asked, “How much longer do you wanna be here?”
He said, “Honestly, I got all night.”
I knew that sign. I had been there before. “Need a bed?”
“I was gonna sleep in my office.”
“Nah, Jackie can set up the guest room.”
“Thanks,” he said, and repeated, “want another?”
“Yeah.”
While he ordered more drinks, a few of the people who had been there since happy hour stayed, a guy with the baggy pants started looking over at me and he seemed high or drunk but like he was just gonna keep getting high or drunk or both, and the sunset made me realize how dark and smelly it was inside, although, B&J’s always smelled like pepperoni, and that smell always made me happy because B&J’s pizza had been my daughter’s favorite pizza since she was ten years old.
After we got our drinks, Pablo asked, “What are you thinking?”
And I said, “Man, marriages never recover from that.”
“What do you mean?”
I leaned forward. “I cheated on Jackie five years ago.”
“Yeah?” he said.
I nodded. “You remember. When my book was published.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, man. I went to some literary festival, and this beautiful tall woman (I remember, I had to look up to talk to her) just published a critical biography about Gwendolyn Brooks, and said she really liked the title of my book, Essays on Chicano Anarchism, and she asked how long I’d researched for it.”
Pablo laughed.
“Yeah, I told her it’s fiction, and I don’t really research anything, but I teach a class on the rhetoric of the Chicano movement. We talked for a long time about the line between fiction and nonfiction and the idea of using nonfiction forms for fiction and poetry. I don’t know. It was a great conversation. And you know, when you meet someone and you can just talk. I think it’s bad for artists to marry other artists, and Jackie isn’t an artist, but when you meet another artist it really… I don’t know. Well, of course she saw my wedding ring, and of course I saw hers, and of course we went out to dinner, but before we got in bed she said, ‘I just want you to understand, this doesn’t mean anything,’ and I said, ‘Of course. Just two people having sex.’ And she said, ‘Just two people enjoying each other’s bodies, no love, just sex.’ Which, I guess I get it, you know, trying to say we’re not having an affair because there’s no love, just sex.” I realized I was talking real fast, so I took a breath, took a swig, another breath, another swig.
“How did Jackie find out?”
“I told her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. One day, like a year later, we were lying in bed, and she said, ‘What’s something I don’t know about you?’”
“And you said, ‘I cheated on you?’”
I nodded. “Yeah. Basically,” although it wasn’t totally true. If we’re honest, she beat the shit out of me. If we’re honest, I think she suspected something already, and she had spent a lot of time hinting at it. But I wasn’t ready to be honest. Not totally. I’m still not. I might never be.
“What were you two talking about?”
I got real tense and tried to shake off my shoulders, but that shook the stool, and reminded me of that rusty screw at my calf, which made me more tense. “I can’t even remember, but it hasn’t been the same since.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know. It’s just not. Just a bit more distant. A bit colder. She does whatever she wants now.” I was gonna tell him about her “work-husband,” but that required honesty. I sidestepped to a half-truth. “It’s like we’re roommates, not partners. My kids, who were in high school then, treat me like a failure as a father.”
He nodded. “I hope my kids don’t think that about me.”
I was glad he didn’t ask about her doing whatever she wanted. I’d rather talk about the kids than about Jackie, so I asked, “How old are they?”
“Francisco’s fourteen. Ambrosio’s ten.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s tough.”
“Maybe someday they’ll forget about it.”
“They won’t,” I said. “Ten and fourteen. They know dad’s not home tonight. At those ages, they’ll remember the rest of their lives.”
He had worked to the bottom of his beer again, and I was still maybe just an inch down my glass. He waved to the bartender to bring him another, who brought him another, and yellow bellies are twist-offs so when he twisted it off, I said, “Take it easy with the Coors, compa.”
And he said, “We never cheated.”
“If you keep going at this rate you’ll be drunk real soon.”
He swigged and said, “When we were in Rockport, where I met Taya, at an artist colony, of course I saw she was beautiful. And, like you said, with that woman who wrote the Gwendolyn Brooks book, we just talked, and it was just good, and sometimes we argued, but by the end of it we prayed together.”
“It just feels like you’re finishing them faster and faster.”
He swigged and said, “And by the end of it, I remember calling Dolores and telling her all about what I was reading and what I was writing, and I read her a poem I wrote her, and she didn’t even listen to anything I said. Not a word. Like, I asked, ‘What did you think of the poem?’ and she said, ‘What poem?’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry honey, I’ll show you when I’m home.’ She ended the call with, ‘Okay. Love you. Bye.’ Okay. Love you. Bye. Like teenagers. Like your aunt does on the phone. What the fuck.”
“Don’t you have a class to teach tomorrow morning?”
He swigged and said, “And after that, I wrote this poem. I still remember it. It goes: Under lavender scented sheets, workday mornings called in sick, we discovered sins previously unknown. I-love-yous hush spoken so tender they offend angels, soften devils. Your blushing cheeks. A radical blessing. And, honestly man, I wrote it for Taya. The morning I wrote it, I masturbated to the idea of waking up to her. But I told myself I wrote it for Dolores, and I put it in that chapbook of poems for Dolores.”
“Maybe we should go home soon.”
He swigged and said, “It was Dolores’s favorite poem when she finally sat down with the chapbook. Really, though, I don’t think she liked any of them, because she didn’t read them until a few years later. That’s always how she’s been. But Taya and I never cheated. On our last night at Rockport, she said, ‘What if we had met in New York City?’ We both just missed each other living there, before Dolores and I were married. And I told her, ‘If I met you in New York City, I don’t think I would have married Dolores.’ And she smiled. She seemed happy about it. But she said, ‘We shouldn’t talk about that, then, because, you did marry Dolores.’”
“If you’re gonna keep drinking I should just text Jackie and tell her we’re gonna come home both of us drunk, and honestly, I really hate this stool. The whole time we’ve been here, it’s been creaking, and there’s a spring in the dead center that’s been riding up my ass. The creaking isn’t really a problem anymore, cuz it’s loud so I don’t hear it, but you know how you can kinda feel it when you shift? Then that spring in my ass. I’ve been having to sit on the edge the whole time, and the seats don’t have any back. If we’re gonna keep drinking, I gotta change seats.”
“Here. I’ll trade you stools,” and he stood up.
Jackie was cool about it. The guest room was ready for Pablo, and he vomited a bit in the toilet as he told me that he loves Dolores and would never cheat on her, and he told me he loved Taya but doesn’t love her like he loves Dolores, and that Dolores was the mother of his kids. But that’s what we all say. And I said, “Yeah, Mijo,” and I brought him water and ibuprofen and liquid IV. I made sure he fell asleep on his side facing the trash can.
When I came to bed, Jackie was up, reading on her Kindle. The room was dark and it looked like the Kindle’s brightness was all the way up. I didn’t bother telling her she was going to ruin her eyes, like I’d told her before, and she never seemed to care. She asked, “Did you have a fun night with your friend?”
And I said, “Yeah, did you have a good night here?”
“I went out, too.”
“Yeah?” I asked, knowing I didn’t wanna know the details. But I wanted to ask who with, although I knew it was probably her work-husband, and I wanted to ask where, but it’s better for me that I don’t know. I think, the more I let her be, the sorrier I can show I am.
“Lara called.” She changed the subject for me. “It was nice hearing her voice again. She says fundraising’s going well. She has a new boyfriend.”
I said, “Another one? Mija can’t stay in a relationship.”
Jackie turned off her Kindle. “Runs in the family, I guess,” and I didn’t know if she was talking about herself or me.
She lay on her side, turned away from me. I lay on my side towards her; not spooning her, but I put my hand on her waist to reach for her.
Like she sometimes does, she let me keep it there. ◆
Homepage Image: Jim Dine, Contract Graphics, May 1971. Photograph by Rodney Marionneaux, from Gulf Coast Winter/Spring 2027, Issue 39.1
