EL GRINGO

I look at the clock: 4:10. I breathe and count. At twelve I throw back my head on the pillow. Whenever I see or hear the word twelve, I'm bombarded by the dirty dozen. I can't think "Denver" without the only gringo that Fabiola knew replaces Rudy. I haven't been awake ten minutes and these bastards are performing a tag-team number on me. "What's his name?" I asked. "I'm not going to tell you. I've told you too much already. One of these days you're going to throw everything that I've told you in my face." "No, I won't." "Yes, you will. I wish I hadn't told you anything. I wish I had lied." "And who would you have left out?" "I've told you everything. I've told you too much." Was he a Steve Jones or a Mike Wilson? He was the last revelation that brought her tally to twelve. And I didn't make the discovery during intercourse. She had mentioned two trips she had taken with girlfriends. I saw photos of her in strange locales and she explained that some were taken in Puerto Vallarta and others were taken in Denver. In the Mexican photos she is dressed in a bikini wading in the Pacific while in the Colorado photos she is wearing a ski jacket with the snow-capped Rockies in the background. She spent three days at the beach and I accused her of having a fling because conditions were optimum. She denied having sex. I was so consumed by the Mexican sojourn and her skimpy bathing suit that I never questioned her about Denver until we were returning from Austin after spending a weekend in the Hill County. She had assuaged my doubts about Mexico when I asked her if there had been someone in Denver. She hesitated in her response. "There was, wasn't there?" She turned her head and stared out the window. "Dammit! There was somebody?" "Yes, there was," she answered with disgust. I wanted to drive with my eyes closed. Goddammit! When does it end? I could hear Iliana's wild, vengeful laughter.We pay double, triple, quadruple for our sins. If I'm bragging that my tennis game has reached a new level, the next day I'm defeated in straight sets. The gringo demoted me to the lucky thirteenth. I suspect, however, that I'm not that number unless it's the lucky thirteenth of the second dozen. I wheedled the gringo's seduction from Fabiola during sex. He worked as an engineer for a manufacturing company that had a plant in Matamoros. They met through a mutual friend. Fabiola's friend mentioned that she was going to visit family in Denver and he suggested that she bring Fabiola and he would pay for the flight. He met Fabiola at the airport while the friend departed with her waiting family. "We went to my hotel where I left my suitcase," commenced Fabiola. "Then we drove to his apartment. It was the middle of winter and I was freezing. At his place he served me brandy and after a couple of glasses I was feeling good. He started to come on, but I told him I needed to take a shower. I didn't have any clean clothes since I had left my baggage at the hotel. He gave me a robe and I took a long, hot shower, the whole time thinking about the sex I was going to have with him. I put on the robe with nothing underneath. When I came out of the bathroom, he put his arms around me. We stood kissing and he ran his hands up and down my body, caressing my tits, touching my ass through the fabric. He knew that I was naked. He stepped back, untied the belt and opened the robe. For several seconds he stared at me. He took off the robe and pushed me against the wall. He fingered me and sucked my tits; I wanted him to fuck me. He led me to his bed and had me kneel on his mattress where he fucked me dog-style. We must have fucked ten times that weekend, the last time at the airport when he convinced me to join him in the backseat for a farewell fuck." Fifteen minutes into my day and I'm battered. Did she sleep with Rudy again? I never asked her. But her affair with the gringo had a long sequel. She had a girlfriend whom she described as a nymphomaniac living in San Antonio. The city served as the perfect meeting place with the gringo. She would drive up every two or three weeks and he would fly down. I wanted to ask her if he came in her before she boarded the plane or if he shot his wad on her? I wanted to ask about the San Antonio trysts, but by this juncture she was taking the Fifth and screwing in silence. She can't comprehend my obsession with the past, preferring to pay homage to songs with lyrics like "my life started anew the day I met you", but for me the past, present and future are one. They oftentimes change places chronologically. At a minimum, the past is a part of the present and the two conspire to condemn the future.