HOT OFF THE PRESS

I pick up the newspaper at the end of the driveway. I return to the house, seat myself on the sofa and turn on the light. I pull off the rubber band, unroll the Herald and read the 60-point headline at the top of the front page: MARISOL FOUND DEAD Hoping against the growing hopelessness of each passing day, the inevitable news brought Matamoros to a standstill Wednesday morning. A boy herding his goats across a patch of scrubland discovered the remains of Marisol Mireles, the 18-year-old television personality and college student who was kidnapped ten days ago at the state university campus by a former boyfriend and an accomplice. "We initially identified Marisol by her clothes," said Matamoros Police Chief Enrique Espinoza who had cautioned from the outset to keep expectations low. "Between the elements and the animals there wasn't much to identify by the naked eye. We have sent the body to forensics for an autopsy and a formal identification, but I have no doubts about the final findings." "She was a beautiful girl," lamented Dr. Miguel Mireles who rushed to the scene to confirm that the macabre discovery was his daughter. "Now we have nothing left but the memories. Nobody deserves this fate and no mother should have to endure such a horrible tragedy. We will give our angel the funeral she deserves and send her home to God." The multi-talented Mireles had starred in the children's show, Rocinante Y Yo, in which she sang, played a variety of instruments, danced and displayed her remarkable skills as a ventriloquist, sharing the spotlight with Rocinante, her puppet horse. XURV, the station that hosted the show which appeared Monday through Friday from five to six, has been showing reruns since her disappearance. "It has been our most successful local production for the past two years," said General Manager Jorge Briones. "We have maintained the programming because hundreds of parents have been contacting us saying that their children weren't prepared for the sudden termination of the show. She was a big sister to our viewing audience. Her senseless murder has been a death in the entire Matamoros family." The big break in the case came late Tuesday night when the police nabbed Lucio Cienfuegos, the alleged accomplice in the murder. The authorities had captured Rafael Bocanegra, the former boyfriend, two days after her disappearance. In spite of the intense interrogations and eyewitness accounts asserting that he and Cienfuegos were seen dragging her into the car, Bocanegra steadfastly denied any involvement in the crime. "We persuaded Cienfuegos that he was in a dire situation," explained Comandante Espinoza who emphasized that no torture was exercised to exact the confession. "We're not the U.S. military. We're professionals with years of experience who employ time-tested techniques. If we resorted to the unethical methods that the U.S. Army uses against accused Middle Eastern terrorists, we would have squeezed the truth out of the boyfriend or he would be dead. We have graduated from the old school of doing things to more modern methodology." By Wednesday morning Espinoza and his underlings had convinced Cienfuegos that it was in his best interests to admit the truth of face the consequences of his actions. "Though we would do our best to keep him isolated, there is a vigilante justice inside these walls, no different from U.S. prisons, that sometimes we are unable to control," admitted Espinoza as a sardonic smile offered a stark contrast to his usual fierce expression. "It's no different from the other side of the river. If you're a nasty person, you should prepared yourself for the vicissitudes of the nasty world that you have chosen to inhabit." According to the authorities, Cienfuegos admitted that he had assisted in the kidnapping, but he insisted that he hadn't laid a hand on the victim once he and Bocanegra had secured her in the backseat. He drove the car to the beach while Bocanegra raped his former girlfriend. He remained behind the wheel when his friend reportedly said, "She's dead. We need to dump the body." They turned off the highway and abandoned the body where it was ultimately discovered. They returned to Matamoros, Cienfuegos leaving Bocanegra at his parents' house. He fled to Monterry, hiding with relatives until they told him that they could no longer help him. He returned to his aunt's house in Matamoros with the intention of borrowing money in order to escape to Houston, but the police staking out the residence nabbed him when he arrived. "Among the drug dealers we aren't as successful at capturing the culprits as they generally even accounts in their own bloody fashion, but we're much more successful in resolving crimes of passion," continued Espinoza. "These aren't professional criminals. The moment they step over the line, they are lost. They become their own worst enemies. In their attempts to cover-up their own misdeeds, they make a bigger mess of things. They are so confused by their own actions that we get the impression that they want to get caught in order to anchor themselves back to reality again." Cienfuegos led the police to the body. "I never imagined Rafael would do something like this," Cienfuegoskept pleading to the officers guarding him. "He said he needed my help in order to talk to her. I owed him 500 pesos for CDs I had bought from him. He said he would forgive my debt if I drove him. I never conceived that anything like this could possibly happen. I knew he was jealous, but I never thought he was capable of such a terrible act. Except for being stupid, I'm innocent." Both Bocanegra and Cienfuegos are in solitary confinement. "They wouldn't last 24 hours within the general population," said Fidel Becquer, El Bravo's police reporter. "Their lives have no value. I predict that neither will be alive by Christmas. Mexico may not have the death penalty, but these two are facing an execution date in the near future." For the Mireles family, the torture is over. For Bocanegra and Cienfuegos, the torture has just begun. I rest my head against the back of the sofa. I take the first of many deep breaths to calm the rising tension. The Apostles are awake. I stand and head toward the bedroom. I have a boner and I'm not about to waste it.

A CROWN OF THORNS

I remember the Apostle who seduced you in the parkinglot. "We were seeing each other three and four times a week," you told me. "Then it dropped off to once a week. I was in a club in Matamoros and my friend says, 'Isn't that Osiel?' And I told her I wasn't seeing him anymore." But during those passionate times I imagine how he must have fucked you and how you must have received him, especially in those first weeks and months. You kept no physical secrets from him. I want to stomp into the bedroom and demand all the details. Then I want to scream that I want a divorce because I want to die in peace, but as long as you're a part of my life, that goal is impossible. "I can't live with your promiscuous past," I hear myself voicelessly yelling. "How many guys did you fuck? You won't say because you're embarrassed by the number. I married a goddamn puta who won't fuck her husband. I gave up the love of my boys for a goddamn puta. I told you a long time ago that our relationship was hopeless. You want to know the meaning of hopelessness? I've been cheating on you since the first year of our marriage. The night our son was born I fucked a prostitute. That's your punishment for being a puta and not fucking me! Iliana had a thousand failures, but she wasn't a puta. I despise you! I detest you! You make me sick to my stomach. I want a divorce and I want it now. And don't pull any shit with me or your daughter will learn that her mother for dinner and drinks and a dessert of drugs was ready to spread her legs for any asshole's dick. And if you cross the line, I'll start a blog and everyone will know every intimate detail of the reasons I can no longer find peace living with a puta who had no qualms about distributing her piece to every beggar who came knocking at her door. I want you out of my life before I do something stupid like beating the shit out of you or raping your daughter or taking our son by the ankles and slamming his head against the wall or turning gay because I'm so goddamn horny and infecting you with AIDS as the ultimate act of mutual destruction. Do you want to hear more about my hate for you." You'll either leave me or break down. If you break down, I'll demand every detail about your past or our relationship ends that very moment.When Marisa told me about her affair, I slapped her across the face and early the next morning we departed non-stop to Brownsville where I left her with her parents and never lived with her again. I felt absolutely no jealousy as we went our separate ways. Why can't I deliver this final blow to you? When I was with Iliana, I would ask the fates to allow me to love one more time. You were their response. I want to love again. I want to live a Spartan existence in a sparsely furnished apartment near a pool and a tennis court. I want to have several relationships until the next woman sweeps me off my feet and I push the rock back up the mountain again. Or maybe we should have an open relationship? We'll meet other swingers and fuck other partners while observing each other. There will be no reason to have sexual secrets. I can invite a male dancer to the house and he can fuck you in front of me. With that gesture I will have transcended my jealousies. There are times when I want to hurt you, to see you suffer, to inflict emotional damage on you that will afflict you the rest of your life. It's pure madness to live this way. Day after day the assault continues. Last weekend a truckdriver pulled his vehicle to the side of the road along an abandoned stretch of highway near the outskirts of Matamoros. He walked 50 yards into the brush, fastened a yellow cord around a sturdy mesquite and hung himself. According to El Bravo he had had enough. I entertain the temptation of ending it all, but then I think of you rejoicing and thanking God for answering your prayers. You fill me with a rage and I want to wreak my vengeance on you by continuing with my miserable existence. I may be ill mentally, but as long as I am well physically, I owe it to myself to reject surrendering. Besides, we don't have to worry about death. That inconvenience has been resolved for us. How many were there really? Were there only two in high school? Was there only one in Mexico City calculating the many vacations you spent there with your older and precocious cousin? How big were these guys' dicks? "He was a mistake," you lamented to me about your parkinglot affair. Why was he a mistake? How many weeks or months did the relationship last? Did he fuck you 50 or 500 times? Would he come over after the kids had gone to sleep and fuck you in the same bed we're sharing now? One of these days when you're refusing to fuck me or you're belittling me like my mother would scold my father in front of the children for an insignificant matter, I am going to unleash the mother-of-all tirades: "You fucking cunt! You promiscuous bitch! Why did you have to fuck so many guys? Were you so desperate for food and entertainment as a single mother and divorcee that like a circus clown you were willing to perform tricks if someone threw peanuts your way? Take your whore pussy away and resume your whoring ways elsewhere!" "I have only existed for you," Iliana insisted as she described her fictional encounters with other men in order to excite me. These fictional seductions she created for my delectation. There is nothing fictional about your exploits. The more you withdraw from me, the more the Apostles fill the void, kissing your lips, groping your breasts, fingering you, eating you and fucking you. Your infamous stories reverberate through my mind, finishing with the blunt reality: "And then he fucked me." Get out of my life. Go back to your multiple lovers. Enjoy sex again, but be discreet because you don't want to be enamoured with the idea that your 15-year-old daughter may be chalking up multiple lovers within a few years. You will forget me after the inconvenience of another divorce. A decent-looking guy with a hard cock will drive another nail into my coffin and a succession of these cocksuckers will bury me in the forgettable past. I loved you once. I loved you so much that I gave up my boys for you. I see my oldest son with his trembling lantern jaw sobbing, "I need my father." I have to live with that image for the rest of my life while you treat me with scorn. You are a fucking whore and it's time you went back to fucking everyone who walks. I could kill you. I wouldn't want to shoot you. I would want to stab you repeatedly: 'This is for the drummer! This is for the one-night stand in Reynosa! This is for the night of ecstasy with Danny! This is for that wintry weekend in Denver! This is because you're a bitch! This is because I hate you! This is because you dashed all my dreams! This is because you're a cold, cold cunt! This is because everything is so fuckin' hopeless and you gave me hope. This is because you're death! I never loved more and now it's gone. How many guys did you really fuck? Twenty! Thirty! Forty! And how many more will you fuck after I have died, every thought of me further reduced by each succeeding orgasm. We used to fuck twice a day. I never thought we would be down to fucking twice a week, nothing more than pussy masturbation. With Iliana I couldn't touch her in the beginning, but I had everything in the end. With you I had free reign in the beginning and nothing in the end. Youl touch me, you ask me if I love you, you talk about buying a car next year and you speak about a future that includes both of us. I look at the framed pictures in my office of us together. We were happy. I couldn't keep my hands off you. I couldn't stop kissing you. You touch me gently, but gesture elicits thoughts of you touching the twelve...the twenty? The thirty? The fifty? How many guys did you let into your apartment after you put the children to bed? How many guys did you fuck on the bed that we share? I can smell the stink of their sweat and sperm stained forever into the mattress. How many were there? These bastards flow into my consciousness like tributaries until they rush through my brain like a raging river. I have to close my eyes and hold my breath as the refuse washes over me. You are just getting fucked, fucked, fucked and the animal that is me is screaming with wild, uncontrollable pain. I'm drowning, but I survive only to nearly drown again. I find a tranquil pool before I'm inundated in these sordid images again. I can no longer sleep in the same bed with you. Hell! It's not even my bed. I'm the latest visitor. My promiscuous wife has no passion for her own husband in her own bed, which she has most likely shared with a dozen guys. But you were so refreshing. You were that first norther after a long, hot summer when you wake up at three in the morning and walk outside because you can't sleep and feel the first wisps of cool air enveloping your body. Winds of change are blowing. I wish there were a different ending to this story, but between your refusal to fuck me and my refusal to escape the past, I can't take it anymore. I want peace. I want to make love to someone without imagining that I am someone else, one of the Treacherous Twelve seducing and fucking you. I want to be free of those motherfuckers. When I fucked you, I told you how I imagined your Denver gringo seducing you after he picked you up at the airport. You took a shower at his place. You knew that you were going to fuck him after he served you a drink and kissed you. You knew that when he paid for that airline ticket that you were going to fuck him. You put on his robe after you dried. He was waiting for you outside the bathroom and took you into his arms. The robe slipped off and you stood before him naked. After engulfing your body with his eyes, he kissed your breasts as he touched you. He backed you against the wall while he smothered your breasts in kisses as his fingers found their way into your pussy. He directed you to his bed and for the next three days he couldn't get enough of you or you of him. On the way to the airport he parked, pulled you into the backseat and fucked you a last time. Over the next three months you met a half-dozen times in San Antonio where he would rip off your clothes and fuck you. You are testing my Zen. You told me in the middle of a noon tryst how the doctor operated on you. You both spent the evening going from bar to bar drinking. You were drunk and I know how quickly you lose your inhibitions in that condition. He pulled you close to him as he drove and reached under your dress, sliding his hand inside your panties and sticking his finger up your pussy. You unzipped him and sucked his dick. At his house he dropped you to his couch where you both rolled off onto the floor, he fucking you on the carpet. He pulled your hair, slapped your ass and humped you like he was going to slam you through a brick wall. You passed out from the drinking and when you regained consciousness you were in a bathtub filled with hot water and he was submerged eating you. He wanted to fuck you again, but in order to relish the experience he had to revive you. You would get together whenever he returned from his practice in Monterrey, and though you liked it rough, he became too violent and you couldn't take it any longer. My Zen exercises aren't working. You have admitted to twelve, but how many were there? You're a fuckin' worthless liar with that whore's cunt of yours. "I've never been touched by anyone else," Iliana sobbed as I left her, but I didn't care because I wanted you. "I need my father," trembled my oldest son, but I needed you more and I turned by back on him and his brother. The dikes are overflowing and their collapse is imminent. When the break happens, all of my repressed hatred and rancor will come spilling out of me. You used to brag about friends with privileges. Doesn't your husband have any privileges? I could withstand the pounding as long as I could respond with some pounding of my own, but nothing. "Hurry up! Get it over!" Did you have that many lovers who fucked you so good or did you become addicted to the variety of new cocks penetrating your cunt? You say that I'm guilty because I insisted of your telling me the details. That is true, but you should have known better. You've kicked this dog too many times and I'm no longer begging for scraps. I am rabid frothing with revenge to bite the hand that once fed me. And I loved you so much. I was loco about you. You'll rebound. There is a picture of you in your senior class picture. You are standing on the balls of your feet with a magnificent smile on your face and a curly mane falling to your shoulders. Though five pregnancies have taken a toll on your body, your face radiates beauty that not even the most sated Don Juan could resist. There will be a better man than me. And you'll be ready for him because you're tired of me. And I'm sure you won't entertain him with a litany of stories and I'm sure he won't demand any details. "Our pasts ended the moment we met," you told me. Perhaps the percentages will be with you next time and you won't find yourself between the sheets with a guy who likes talking shit. What would it be like to unload my burden in one terrible fit and no longer feel the psychological weight dragging me through the dirt? How long would it take me to get over you or would I spend the next year wondering who you were fucking at that particular moment or would an active sex life mitigate the pain? Two nights ago I dreamed that a substance as thick as tofu and streaked with blood poured from my penis as I pissed. After your divorce--you remained faithful to your husband even when he was no longer living with you--you didn't want to have anything to do with men, but inevitably the forces of nature supplanted the pain of the past. You wanted to fuck again. You told a college classmate you wanted to fuck him and he told you that he wanted to fuck you. His answer doesn't surprise me. You went to his apartment and fucked him. You ordered Chinese food and then you fucked again. I came just as he was mounting the second time. I fall on my back and don't pursue more details of one of the lesser Apostle figures. Who was he? How did you meet him? What did he do? How long did this relationship of convenience last? How did it end? Where is he today? Instead, you related the story about surprising your lawyer at his office, locking the door, sweeping the desk clear and fucking him like you were appearing in a Hollywood movie. I came for the third time. If all he sperm deposited in your pussy were conserved in a dam, you could irrigate the Sahara Desert. Why all the drama? There are only four endings to this play: I leave; you leave. I die; you die. You embraced each other with the fierceness of the surf beating against the rocks. I recall another of your reminisces: "He rubs his hands softly across my nipples. Then he squeezes my ass. He drops to his knees and runs his tongue along my legs toward my pussy. He pulls down my panties and eats me. I want him to put his dick in me, but instead he turns me on my stomach and licks my back while he fingers me from behind. I say to myself, 'Fuck me! Fuck me!' Instead, he bites my neck and sticks his two fingers deeper in me. I'm squeezing the sheets in my hands. I can't take it any longer. He is running the head of his cock up and down my back and ass. In my mind all I can envision is this huge, hard cock. I can't stand his teasing any longer and he must sense my desperation because at that moment he turns me on my back, spreads my legs with his knees and rubs the head of his dick against my clit. 'Dammit!' I moan. 'Now!' He slides into me like he was meant for me, pumping slowly at first, then pounding, finally pouring all his power into me. "I had been seeing him at bars for a few weeks. We were drinking and he took me out to his car. I was wearing a dress and sitting on him when he moved his hand inside my legs. I could feel him hard. He moved my panties to one side and stuck his finger in me. When we arrived at his house, he picked me up, I wrapped my legs around him and he carried me inside. In the hallway he pressed me against the wall and pulled my blouse and bra off as he grabbed my tits and sucked them. He carried me to his bedroom and lay me down on the bed. He took off my shoes and kissed my feet. He moved from my ankles to my pussy and took off my panties and ate me. He took off my dress and licked all my body. He started fucking me, but before he would come, he would change positions. He would push my legs behind my head, turn me around, have me climb on top. He finally fucked me from behind. He didn't have a condom so he came on my back. I wasn't satisfied. He fingered me when he saw that I was hot and he fucked me. This time I came." You asked me why I was smacking my lips. I said that I was thinking of your past lovers and how they must have enjoyed the same sensation I was experiencing at this moment. I wanted more details about Osiel. I felt like I was shaking the last coins out of a piggybank. I explained to you for the umpteenth time that lewd commentary during coitus had been the pornography--like the twisting of my nipples--that was part of the process that made me come. Your anecdotes, oftentimes when I was losing force, were the saving antidote. You and Osiel, you commenced, were at a club when you dropped a drink that splashed on your thigh. He used his hand to help dry you and that hand moved precariously close to your pussy. That made you hot. He could tell that you were excited too. You left and went to his truck. He leaned you against the vehicle and you could feel his hard cock pressing against you. Then he dropped to his knees and licked your legs along the inside of your thighs until he reached your panties, which he pulled down. Then he ate your pussy. He rose, opened the door to his truck, pulled down the back seat and slipped his dick into you. "Then we fucked," you said as I exploded inside you. I woke up at two in the morning and came in you again. We woke up together at seven and I came again as you retold the story. I exploded five seconds after you said "and we fucked." I had become Osiel and I had you stretched out in the back of the truck and I wasn't going to stop humping until I had excised and exorcised that motherfucker from your cunt. "We're just horny persons," I told you over lunch. "We're just horny persons," you repeated. There was something ominous in those admissions. I have to only imagine you in the arms of another man, panting shallowly, your nipples erect and your pussy wet as you lay with your legs spread and waiting for a hard cock to enter and I'm ready to fuck anything that walks. The thought of you fucking in the past gives me a carte blanche to fuck on you in the future. I can only consummate my revenge against a woman by fucking on her. The girl of my dreams has plunge me into a nightmare in which maggots are swarming over a piece of meat. When I told Iliana that I was going public with you, she scoffed, "She'll put a pair of horns on you that will break your neck." I had accepted that a few weeks with you would be worth a lifetime of pain, but I wasn't prepared for the torture. I had lived by the philosophy that everyone should fuck everyone else with the sole requisite that all the action include at least a regular cameo appearance by all the participants with me. But all these guys pumping and humping and eating and fingering you has been too much for me. I, the most liberal of liberals, the one with the pornographic mind who delighted in nothing more than raw, unfettered sex, had been served a heaping dish of his own vomit and couldn't swallow it. I told myself that this reaction was beneath my dignity, but until the animal speaks, the man must keep his mouth shut. Are a dozen individuals in a decade a normal number for your generation? If you met a man your age, would he find nothing remarkable in that figure? I don't know if there is a number in your case that I would accept. I can hear Iliana snickering between the sobs. "I like hard dick," you often told me in the beginning. I see you wrapping your legs around them and begging them to thrust harder as you grab the cheeks of their asses and pull them inward. I see your half-opened mouth, your half-closed eyes and your furrowing forehead as your climax approaches. I have never enjoyed fucking anyone as much as I've loved fucking you and I'm sure they shared the same sentiments. How many guys have slipped their hands into your panties, parted your moist lips, pushed your legs apart and plunge their penises into the sweetest pussy I've eaten? Every day I torture myself with your high-school sweetheart ripping off your clothes in the backseat of his car, your Mexican macho sitting you on a ladder, eating your pussy and then doing you dog-style while another highrise tenant watched from afar, your husband burrowing you in the ass, your rebound lover freeing you to follow your instincts, your Monterrey drummer inspiring you to forego your panties so he could drill you whenever and wherever, your first night with Osiel as he pinned you against the pickup and "we fucked", your lawyer pouring wine over your pussy as he consumed you with a connisseur's elan, your doctor who cut you into little pieces with the precision of a surgeon, your lover's best friend who wrestled you to the bed without a struggle and "we came together" and your last admitted lover who kept flipping you over and over and inserting himself in and out and calling on his reserves after he had shot his wad because "he could tell that I was still horny", the Denver gringo who paid for your airline ticket and reaped ten-fold on his investment and your ecstasy lover with whom you found yourself alone with at the end of the evening and you decided to keep the party going, your curiosity of fucking two guys at once and your fantasy of the Man in Black who meets you for the first time in a bar and a half-hour later he has taken you to a hotel room where tumbling over furniture, slamming against walls and falling over chairs he fucks you black-and-blue. "You like to fuck don't you," I repeated into your ear those first days little knowing that I was ambushing myself. As you reeled off your stories, I was coming like a broken dam, one day bursting the dike seven times. I pressed for more and more details about the characters. "This isn't normal," you told me. "I've told you too much. I should have told you that there had only been my husband. I've made a mistake. You're not going to want me because I've had too many guys." Where did you and your high school sweetheart go to make love? What did your Mexican macho teach you about love-making? How many times a week would you and your husband have sex? Who exactly was the rebounder? What was it that made you insane about your Monterrey drummer that he could convince you to accompany him to a restaurant without panties and then fuck the shit out of you in a restroom stall? Did he convince you to shave your pussy too? How drunk and horny were you when Osiel ate your pussy in the parkinglot and then fucked you in his truck? Where did you meet your doctor? How many times did he perform a sexual autopsy on you? How drunk did your lawyer's prick become after he poured wine on your pussy? And ruminating on that one-night stand with your drummer's best friend, how many other times drunk or drugged did you allow your Man in Black to take you to the backseat of a car or a hotel room because the spontaneity of the moment reigned supreme? And what kept the relationship together for another five months after that first night with your last lover? I have no desire to know the answers to the great questions in life. I have no idea why we walk the earth or if there is life after death. I only want to know about you. You are my Russian epic. Everything else could fit into a thin comic book. I want to know why you fucked these guys and the many others you have hidden from me. When I lie on the table I request the girls to masturbate me until they have squeezed out all the poison. This is a snake with a mind of its own and it can strike at any moment. If someone were relating to me my woes, I would laugh. "She's a mother, a 35-year-old professional," I would say. "What did you expect? Does she talk about her past lovers. Does she compare you to them? Does she treat you right? And how many conquests have you had? Then what are you talking about? You should be grateful that a young, beautiful woman would allow an old fart like yourself to touch her." My Zen mind recognizes the absurdity of my attachments to physiological pleasures, but the more I drink, the thirstier I become. According to popular culture, the Muslims have it right religiously. They enter heaven and four virgins are waiting to entertain them. Sex is shallowness multiplied to the umpteenth power, so let me drown in bath water one-inch deep. Much like a basketball player who specializes in garbage, I position myself for the rebounds and score on the easy shots. I would cheat on Iliana three and four times a week and she would forgive me. If we were Hindu, Iliana would have thrown herself atop the pyre. I must know everything. I need to know whether they came inside you or on your stomach? Did your hips grow wider after you started fucking your high-school sweetheart? And how old were you exactly when he fucked you for the first time? Did you bleed? Am I only interested in your sexually? I submit that a woman gives a part of her soul away when she shares her sexuality with another. Fuck the Indians and their phobias about photographs robbing a part of their spirituality. How did the Apostles convinced you that you were their Christ as they nailed you to the cross? How were they able to convinced you that making love to them would be something special? These twelve hound me just like they hounded Christ, or more importantly, you. They want to experience another miracle. Everytime I make love to you, one of them intervenes and I'm part of a menage de trois. Your lawyer has been a frequent partner of late. "My pussy is hot," you told him. You must have been on fire that night. He slurped your pussy and you sucked his dick. Ah, mamacita, I love it when you're steaming, your pussy stuffed like a quiver full of arrows. Did you spend the night with him? Did he fuck you again in the morning? Did you shower with him afterwards? Did you, did you, did you... You are more beautiful than any painting that I've seen of the Virgin Mother. Why couldn't you have conceived your children immaculately? You've made a mockery of my philosophy that everyone should be fucking everyone else. I had gone on a tear after I separated from Iliana. I felt like an aging athlete who was enjoying a prodigious season in the autumn of his career. I gave myself over to a bacchanalian existence. The border is a cornucopia of females. There was a stretch when I had ten options without counting the spontaenous moments or the strip clubs in Matamoros and the massage parlors in Brownsville. On a regular basis, as regularly as one can summon the strength to meet the moment, I entertained a nurse, a TV personality, the mother of one of Octavio's friends, the ex-wife of a school administrator, a teacher, a secretary, a wealthy Mexican widow and, of course, Iliana. I would fuck a different woman for breakfast, lunch and dinner two and three times a week. They all had their demands. The masseuses wanted their money. The Matamoros strippers had crazy illusions that a lover might set them up with an apartment and an allowance. The nurse, whose husband was a doctor, was enduring a mid-life crisis. The TV personality had accumulated an impressive list of conquests, blacks a predilection, and looked at me as both an adornment and a kindred spirit. She talked about us spending time in Paris, but I lost interest in her sexually when she kept asking me to fuck her dog-style under a bright light and I saw several plump figs hanging from her anus. Octavio's friend's mother thought she could kill two birds with one stone if I serviced her and served as a surrogate father. And the school administrator's wife recruited me as her backdoor man. But instead of recollecting those halcyon days, I awake each day and the dogs are tearing at my innards. Who was that gringo with whom you spent the long weekend in Denver? How many times were you with him after that first weekend? Besides sleeping with him, what else did you do with him that weekend? These scavengers attack me in packs. The doctor and Osiel, the two mongrels forever lurking in the shadows, dig into me after the gringo has had his fill. You called Osiel a mistake. What drove you into his arms? Where did you go on dates? Where did he take you when he fucked you? Why did it end with him? How many hours or days did it take you to move to your next lover? You must know that answering these questions leads to more questions, which leads to the only question worth answering, "Why did you have to fuck him?" And if Osiel isn't enough, there's the doctor. How did you meet him? Did you fuck him the first time you went out for dinner? You called him crazy. Did you do ecstasy together? You said he left town to do consulting work in Monterrey, but he would call you upon his return. You said that you exulted in nothing more than having your clothes ripped off. Is that what happened when you fucked your drummer's best friend? Was this another ecstasy moment? You were groping each other when he unhooked your bra. He was drooling with appreciation as you sat on his supine body and settled on his twitching penis, your heavy breasts like two ripe mangoes engulfed in his greedy hands. I wake up in the middle of the night and these guys are pushing your legs skyward as their furious pistons move in and out of you. There's your fresh and fabulous face and there's the misery and the mess. My mind, like my penis, has a will of its own. To the extent I have control over either, I can keep myself from committing suicide just like I can keep myself from committing rape. I am two people, both locked in a vicious battle to control me. The conscious me is the standing army under attack by guerillas operating under the cover of darkness. In this endless civil war I'm trying to attain a compromise between the two. "I can't believe I'm telling my husband this," you said as we made love. Your Denver gringo collected you at the airport. After depositing your suitcase at the hotel--this wasn't a sure thing within his calculations--he took you to his apartment. Freed from those hometown eyes you felt horny and giddy. You had never been with a gringo before--would you ever admit to being with a black--and your curiosity was in high gear. He took you into his arms and in less than two hours after arriving at the airport he was dropping his gears and landing on you. Did you return to your hotel room except to collect your clothes during that long weekend? How many times did you fuck during that 72 hours? He knew that you weren't a sure thing, but once you delivered yourself to him, he couldn't believe his luck and there was no sating him as he went at you again and again. The affair didn't end in Denver but for the following several weeks you would meet him in San Antonio. I can visualize you arriving at the hotel and his whisking you away to a room, pulling off your clothes and coming in you at least twice before returing to the surface for air. Did you feign any resistence that first night? "He knew I was a big girl," you told me. Did he figure that as a divorcee that you would be an easy fuck? There is nothing circumspect about you. If you decide the moment is propitious, you proceed with deliberate speed. You never beat around the bush with me. I knocked on your door on a Sunday night and you were fucking me on a Tuesday. I can never forgive you. How they must have fucked the shit out of you! Your high-school sweetheart must have been beside himself as his masturbating dreams became reality. "Nobody will be at my sister's apartment after school," he would tell you and you would put your homework on hold for a few hours. And your fifteen-year-old body would make his penis stiffer than a diving rod as he sought the source of your juices. How he must have fucked you! Your Mexico City lover, ten years your senior, awaited your periodical visits with an anticipation that eclipsed his Christmas expectations. He did you dog-style on the roof of his apartment as his howls encircled the moon. How he must have fucked you! Your husband, night after night, reveling in the body of a teenager with heavy breasts and hot pussy, could pump you blindly without even kissing you until he dumped his sperm in you, twice hitting the bull's eye. How the young fellow when you were on the rebound must have fucked you! Forget the initial weekend in Denver! Those subsequent escapades in San Antonio must have been scenes of carnage as he couldn't drag you fast enough into his room, couldn't strip you fast enough, couldn't find himself in you fast enough, couldn't come in you fast enough in order to reclaim his territory no different than a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. How he must have fucked you! And for the next 48 hours he would fuck and fuck and fuck you because he knew that this banquet would have to fill him for the next few weeks before he returned starving and devoured you again. Then your Mexican drummer who swept you off your feet, pounded you incessantly, sweetening your trysts with ecstasy, screwing you in public bathrooms, backseats of cars, your own bedroom while your children slept in other rooms. How he must have fucked you! When that relationship bottomed out, newcomers arrived to lift your spirits. The doctor, who never informed you that he was married until you encountered him at the mall with his wife, ripped you apart as only a married man can rip a woman apart. How he must have fucked you! And after he ate your pussy in the parkinglot and fucked you in the backseat of his truck, how Osiel must have ravaged you for weeks! And how your lawyer, who for six months declared his love to you, must have fucked you with an energy that only sentiment can deliver! And how your one-night stand must have fucked you knowing that this rendezvous would be the sole opportunity of his lifetime! And the night at Danny's when you found yourselves alone at the end of the party but high on ecstasy and you couldn't help but keep the party going! And then there was your lover the five months previous to our relationship. How many mornings after uncompromising sex did he turn you back over in the morning and fuck you with your pussy already brimming with his sperm? How can I go on with this kaleidoscope of sex swirling inside my brain? The liberal has overdosed on his own liberalness. Hour after hour the smut runs endlessly through my head? How many times did you bring each of the Apostles to a head? Based on time and circumstances: high-school sweetheart (300); Mexico City lover (75); husband (1500); rebounder (30); Monterrey drummer (750); the gringo (100); doctor (50); Osiel (200); lawyer (100); one-night stand (2) (I'm sure he went for seconds knowing that his time was short); the ecstasy partner (10); the last fling (150). Before I fucked you for the first time, you had been fucking for 15 years, plugged conservatively 3,000 times, probably closer to 5,000 times. I'm counting sheep.

BRIAN'S DEAD

When I was growing up and we were discovering the cheap thrills of Matamoros, we would return in the early hours from Mexico and stop at the Austin Cafe for enchiladas that would eliminate the edge from the next day's hangover. The Austin Cafe had opened in 1906, the same year that black troops stationed in Brownsville had allegedly shot up the town and the same year that the railroad arrived in Brownsville and connected the town with the rest of the nation. Antonio Vasquez's father had been the proprietor and had bequeathed the establishment to his son as well as numerous other properties that he managed as a slumlord. He had a daughter and a son, Briana, who married a surfer when she was 18 and was living at the Island 30 years later with a waiter, and Brian, who was my age but had attended parochial school. He worked at the restaurant's cash register and was at this post from the time I first accompanied my father for breakfast in the morning. Since we went to different high schools, it wasn't until I came home from college that he and I became friends, he having replaced his father on the graveyard shift during the week since like the rest of us he had free reign on the weekends and was usually eating like the rest of us at three in the morning. It wasn't uncommon for me to be returning in the wee hours on a Wednesday or a Thursday after a spontaneous night in Matamoros. He'd be sitting in a booth drinking coffee and keeping an eye on drunk customers recently exiting from the Market Square cantinas. His face would brighten when I'd enter because he wanted to hear all the details about my latest foray on the other side. He would offer me a beer, which I would have to drink out of a coffee cup in case the police arrived unexpectedly, or a line of coke that he would cut over the tank in the men's bathroom, or a joint that we would smoke in the alley, or all three, which weren't rare occasions. Brian possessed Italian good looks. He had married the pretty daughter of a rich merchant. He supplemented his income from his father's business by becoming the manager of the Chrysler dealership, a job he held for a decade until he spun out of control, the loss of direction coming in the wake of a divorce and the death of his father although cocaine and crack were the real culprits. He found irregular employment at the Island as a waiter and a bartender. I seldom saw him, a bitterness having overtaken him, his condition exacerbated by growing paranoia. Several years ago I encountered him at a club. After the place closed, we went to my apartment to snort coke and drink beer. "I want you to do a favor for me," he said. "Sure." "I want you to write in your column that I had a confrontation with my ex-wife's boyfriend at the Sombrero Club." It was tidbits about the personal lives of locals sprinkled among the general commentary regarding politics, sports and culture that provided the important spice to my daily musings as a columnist. "Did you hear..." was followed by "How did you know?" which invoked the answer, "In Tamaulipas' column." Brian explained that he had seen his ex with her lover at the bar and a shoving match ensued, which resulted in Brian's expulsion from the club. I wrote about the incident and elicited the usual chuckles from those who knew the principals. A week later I bumped into Brian in another club and he started screaming, "You ruined my marriage! You ruined my marriage!" "What are you talking about?" I asked in disbelief as I retreated into a defensive position since he resorted to blows at the slightest provocation, a lifetime of thrashing skidrow bums and drunk shrimpers part of his apprenticeship at the restaurant. "You ruined my marriage with your comments in the paper," he ranted. I looked at him incredulously. Was he coked out of his mind? Was he searching for a scapegoat to unleash his frustrations? I had often been confronted by angry readers in public places and had learned as a matter of survival to extricate myself successfully from these delicate situations. Confronting drugged and drunk hotheads like Brian was never an effective strategy. "Don't you remember, Brian, that you were the one who told me to put the incident in the newspaper?" "I would have never done anything to jeopardize my marriage," he seethed. "I'm sorry if I offended you. Can I get you a drink?" "Fuck you, asshole!" Last week a pair of Cajuns on leave from an oil rig barged into a private party at the Island where Brian was drumming. He rose, approached the pair and asked them to leave, a natural act for him since he had been escorting drunks out of his father's restaurant all his life. He had more than once put individuals in the hospital who didn't respond positively to his requests. Nobody heard the exchange, but they departed and Brian returned to his musical duties. He drummed the remainder of the evening until the party ended at two. The surveillance camera caught the murder. As Brian exited the club, the two were waiting for him. They ambushed him with pipes. He never saw the attack coming. He fell to the ground and they beat him until they disappeared into the dark. Brian died the next morning. I didn't bother to attend the wake or the burial. Without the blank screen to fill, I felt no need to issue an pronouncement, which would have required an appearance. Grilled chicken was a house speciality, the family longtime practitioners of South Texas barbecuing. With a dollop of rice and bowl of frijoles a la charra, I more than filled my belly. Brian had arrived early and wasn't scheduled to work for a few hours with his father behind the counter. He and I were eating and talking in the booth when a woman in her late twenties--about our ages in those skinny days--walked into the restaurant and found a place. We looked at her and then we looked at each other. "Excuse me," said Brian. "Would you like to sit with us?" She studied us for a second, rose from her chair and sat next to Brian in the booth. "My name is Brian and this is Tommy. What's your name?" "My name is Darlene," she answered. She had dirty blonde hair, brown eyes and a freckled face. Her jaw receded into her throat. She was short and stocky with trailer trash written all over her stumpy body, but it wasn't often that white girls strolled downtown. "Where are you from?" continued Brian who was accustomed to making small talk with customers. "East Texas." "Is it as hot there as it is here?" "No." "Would you like a cold beer?" "Why? Do you sell them hot?" Darline Cobb was from Nacodoches. She had been married twice and her two children were with her mother back home. She had come to visit her brother who was working at the Port of Brownsville as a welder, but he and his wife had gotten into a fight and Darlene had taken a taxi downtown to escape the ruckus. She confessed that she had no plans for the evening. I was living at the Cameron Motel three blocks away and I suggested to Brian that if he had some coke we might go to my room and party in peace. "You have coke!" she exclaimed, a spark of electricity energizing her languid body. "Are you interested in going to Tommy's room?" asked Brian. She smiled, revealing teeth that had seen a dentist's touch in years. We walked to the motel. The desk was accustomed to a steady flow of traffic moving in and out of my room and the clerk flashed me that aggrieved grin of someone outside looking in. There was nothing fancy about the room, but it was clean, fresh towels hung in the bathroom every day, the maid changed the sheets every three days and I had a color TV with a remote, which was a luxury in those days since I had never possessed either. I kept a mini-refrigerator stocked with beer, juice and snacks. After we snorted, Brian pulled out a joint and we smoked it. "Aren't you afraid that someone will report you?" asked Darlene. "I've been here several years. The employees sometimes knock at the door with a joint." We were eyeing each other nervously. "I have an idea," I said as I extracted a deck of cards from the drawer of a table next to my bed. "Let's play strip poker." Brian looked at me askance. "Let's do it," she said. I then suggested that we play twenty-one with the loser or losers discarding a piece of clothing. I wanted her nude as quickly as possible. Five minutes later I was straddling her while she masturbated Brian. He was married and didn't want to place his penis in pestilent places. Now Brian is dead and I'm sitting alone on the sofa asking myself where will I lay my weary head. I walk to the patio and turn on the fan, but it is too hot. I stretch out on the couch in my office with another ceiling fan swirling above me. The couch, really a loveseat, isn't long enough. I rise and return to the couch in the frontroom and place two pillows at one end. The clock above the television reads 11:30.

QUEBEC

I spent several summers with Iliana and the boys along the St. Lawrence in a small town between Montreal and Quebec. About 5,000 lived in this village brightened by summer flowers hanging in baskets from lampposts. We rented a chalet, little more than a wooden cabin located on a tributary that emptied into the St. Lawrence. The nights would dip down to almost freezing and I'd rise every morning and collect logs from outside to build a fire in the fireplace. Iliana and the boys would rise and we'd leave for a morning drive through small towns and past clear streams as Edith Piaf entertained us along the country roads. We'd find a restaurant and stop to eat. I'd choose bacon and eggs. I don't remember the rest of the family's orders, probably pancakes, but the breakfasts were second to none with verdant vistas stretching into the distance. We'd return to our chalet in St. Anne de la Perade and spend the rest of the day relaxing. It wasn't uncommon for me to prepare a late lunch. From the kitchen window I could watch the boys play along the shore with their summer friends. Nobody worships the summers like the Quebecois. While they make the most of their winters with ice-fishing and snowmobiling, summer is a season-long infatuation that keeps them awake 18 hours a day. They relish every shaft of light and every ray of sun. These days are fleeting before the cold reasserts itself. In the evenings we'd drive to Trois Riviere 30 miles from our chalet for dinner. We'd order pizza, the ingredients at the bottom with the cheese and sauce spread across the top. Iliana and I would share a bottle of wine before returning to our chalet with the night upon us and a chill in the air. These summers were our happiest, the four of us freed from the distractions of Brownsville. Iliana and I fucked every night with the wine setting the mood and the weather conducive for love-making. I don't remember much anymore about our time together except one time in Northern California we took a rowboat on Pinecreast Lake and screwed uncomfortably but excitedly on the boat's bottom. It was a fuck she liked to recall. The drives up and down both the east and west sides of the St. Lawrence were nothing less than spectacular with restaurants in the middle of nowhere and baseball fields dotting the serpentine roads. If we were driving with no destination, we'd stop at a soccer field and play two against two the length of the pitch. I suppose I'll reflect on the summer I spent with Fabiola and the kids in Montreal with the same nostalgic fondness, but there is too much bitterness in me to contemplate that vacation with the same longing that I feel for Iliana and the boys. I have maintained that heaven and hell are the final thoughts that we have prior to our last breath. Since nothingness follows death, our last thoughts are eternity. Will I remember Iliana before the lights dim sitting in a restaurant with a big smile on her face as I opened a bottle of wine or will I remember her trying to choke me as she raged against the injustice of my destroying our family after she had made every sacrifice and forgiven me time and time again in order to keep me in the fold?

A FUCK

I return to the bedroom and stand over Fabiola. I reach under the sheets and up her cheap flannel gown to her panties. She pushes my hand away. "I'm tired. Let's wait until morning." "I want to do it now. I'm horny. I took the pills." "Why did you have to take those stupid pills. I told you not to take them." "I wanted to be good and hard for you. I need to come." An air of exasperation escapes her. I pull off her panties and spread her legs with my knees. I reach down to touch her pussy, but she pushes me away. I pull her nightgown above her breasts, but she pulls it down. I touch a breast with one hand as I straddle her in a push-up position and she swipes my hand away. "Let me eat you so I can get you wet." "No! Hurry up and do it." I'm a hard as a rock and as straight as an arrow. She guides me into her chute like a plane entering a hangar. She turns her face to one side to prevent me from kissing her on the lips. I push myself completely into her and slowly pump. If she doesn't want to share in the lust, then I'll take all the pleasure for myself. I filed through my mental archives in order to create the right scenario. The doctor is standing in the wings waiting to assume his usual role. I stop momentarily for the Denver connection as Fabiola emerges from the bathroom with her clean naked body rubbing against the soft fabric of the bathrobe. I move speedily to another scene in which her last lover is carrying her through the door of his home after fingering her in the car when I settle on that little known character who was the first to have sex with her after she had split from her husband. She is entering his apartment after they have agreed that they will make love. She is wearing a short red shirt with a black top. He escorts her toward the couch, but before they sit he kisses her as he runs his hands up and down the side of her body. He lifts his shirt and places her hands on his chest. He unbuttons her blouse and puts his hands on her breasts and squeezes them while he bites her neck. Then he reaches around her back and unclasps the bar, which he removes along with the blouse. As he slips out of his shirt, he sucks her nipples. Slightly bent over in order to lick her tits, he unbuckles his pants and pulls down the zipper. He moves Fabiola's hand toward his belly button. She doesn't need much prompting as she slides her hand into his briefs and grips his hard cock. She is stroking him while their tongues clash like sabers. There is no hurry although he wants to feel his dick insider her as quick as possible. After he fucks her once, he can take his time with the second one. He reaches behind her and unzips the skirt which falls to the ground. Then he grabs her panties from the hips and yanks them off. He runs his hand over her thick patch and prods inward until he has inserted his index finger to the second knuckle. He moves his finger in a larger and larger circle until there is enough room to include the middle finger in a digital orgy. He moves the two fingers in and out. He thinks about eating her, but that can wait until later in the evening. He pulls her down to the carpet, spreads her legs and finds his way into her. Then he starts pumping, slowly gaining momentum, his entire mind concentrating on the sides of her vagina as her pussy contracts against his cock. The pressure escalates and he explodes inside her. Exhausted and relieved, I fall off Fabiola assisted by a shove. She rises from the bed and I watch her ass disappear into the bathroom. How many other guys have observed that same sight as she hurried to clean the fresh sperm out of her? I have no desire to cuddle. She would only push me away. Sex was the price she had to pay in order to avoid a confrontation. Now she can sleep. In her own mind she has gone beyond the call of duty. I am not going to quibble either. It was an adequate fuck in terms of imagination and ejaculation. I have not cheated myself. When I am dead and dispersed, I will be able to say that I wasn't cheated out of my share of cheap thrills although I may have cheated myself out of most everything else in life. I leave for the kitchen with a sudden need for a glass of wine and a snack. They will serve me as better companions than the person who was once the love of my life. I hear her leaving the bathroom as I make a left turn down the hallway and set my sights on the kitchen. The wine bottle is empty. Stoned, I must have finished it without realizing it. I need at least a glass, maybe two, before I can fathom the idea of sleeping. I walk to her bedroom and mutter into the dark, "I'm going to the store. Do you want anything?" "Check and see if there's any cereal for the kids." "I'll be right back." At HEB the aisles are abandoned at this late hour. No young women pass to exchange questioning looks. I am cursing Fabiola beneath my breath: "Fuck you, puta! Get out of my life, puta! I hate you! I hate you! If your mother ever reprimands you about your behavior, Adriana, you might remind her that I kissed her on the second day after I knocked at her door and fucked her the following day after she had sent you and your brother to stay with your grandparents, that she would have three and four lovers at a time and that she loved getting drunk and doing drugs and having sex in the back of a car. Your mother is a puta! Fuck you, Fabiola! Fuck you, Fabiola! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" "Excuse me, sir. What did you say?" A middle-aged woman carrying a tub of ice cream is standing in front of me. She is red. "Excuse me, ma'am. What are you talking about?" "What were you saying?" "I wasn't saying anything. Maybe I was talking to myself. I wasn't talking to you." "Regardless, sir. You need to watch your language." Not only will I be an old man shambling down downtown streets, but I'll be muttering to myself. I look for a Cabernet Sauvignon. One of the luxuries I allow myself on a regular basis is a good bottle of wine. I stand and study the offerings as if I were at a Nevada cathouse and a dozen girls were filing in front of me. I know that I can't miss if I'm willing to dig a little deeper into my wallet, but it's a question of whether or not I can make a direct hit, a taste that causes the hairs to stand on the back of my head. I could pay thousands for a high-priced prostitute and there would be few surprises if any except for the regret of the numerous $100 whores I could have for the same price. But to drink from a bottle worth thousands! What kind of experience would that be!?! Would it be like Fabiola's famous words: "Once you come, you never come back." And once again I'm staring into a blank existence as the reds dissolve into the black and I'm shuddering imagining the sensations streaking through her supine body as some guy is eating her for the first time. I pick up at $25 bottle instead of a $15 bottle since tomorrow is payday and tonight's check won't clear for a few days. Living from paycheck to paycheck, there won't be any extravagant bottles of wine for me. Like the majority of humanity, I will be condemned to eternal ignorance. I stop for the mandatory salami, cheese and crackers as well as the cereal before taking my place in the ten-items-or-less lane. The teenager cashier, chunky and acne-scarred, leaves her station to discuss the dollar exchange of a large peso bill. A woman waiting in front of me displays her impatience by casting a grave look at me. I regret that I'm not better attired. "Young lady, we're waiting," I say. "There are other check-out stands," she shoots back. "Either attend to your customers or I will call the manager." She returns to her cash register, but she continues with her impertinent countenance. "Do me a favor. Call the manager." "What?" "You heard me. Call the manager." She makes the call over the loudspeaker. Within seconds appears a former athlete whom I wrote about years ago. "Mr. Tamaulipas, what can I do for you?" "This young lady is severely lacking in manners. She'd rather be gossiping with colleagues than doing her work. When I mentioned that she had a job to do, she suggested in a negative tone that I could take my business to another check-out stand. I don't appreciate her attitude." The manager looks at his employee who works with head bent. "I'll talk to her about this matter, sir." "I'd appreciate that, sir." She checks me out and hands me my receipt. "Thank-you," I say. "You're welcome." At home peace reigns. Everyone is asleep. I open the bottle and let it breathe while I check on the boys. I return to the kitchen and prepare myself a plate of salami. I pour a glass retire to the backyard. The forecasters have been predicting that this is the year of the big hurricane. Like everyone else, I fear a catastrophe is imminent.

THE GOMEZ BROTHERS

"Dad-Dee! Dad-Dee!?" I hear Marcos' voice echoing down the hall. "Your son is waiting for you," follows Fabiola's voice. They are both in bed with their backs propped against pillows. Fabiola has opened her book and Marcos has his five--Sam I Am, two collections of animal stories, a children's dictionary of dinosaurs and a Mickey Mouse book with his entourage featuring the alphabet and ending with Mickey going to bed--spread before him. "Milk, Dad-Dee, milk." Marcos stands on the bed and wraps his arms around me. "Who loves his baby more than anyone in the world?" "Dad-Dee." "Give me a kiss, papacito." He kisses me on the lips. When I was a teenager my father asked me why I didn't kiss him anymore. I responded with a look that he must be crazy. I supposed that he had assumed the bird had flown its nest. I place Marcos on the sofa while I continue to the kitchen. I take the milk from the refrigerator and locate his plastic cup among the clean dishes. "Chocolate, Dad-Dee, chocolate," he pleads from the frontroom. "There is no chocolate." Fabiola has issued unequivocal orders that he can have no chocolate prior to bed. She has determined that I put too much chocolate in his milk. I return to the livingroom to collect him, avoiding the throw rug in the middle of the room out of habit since Fabiola doesn't want anyone stepping on it with shoes. I make the superficial concessions while the rest of the universe spins out of control toward the black hole. Fabiola is immersed in her book and ignores us while we accommodate ourselves next to her. "You have a date with destiny," I remind her. She turns a page. Is she on the road to becoming a religious conservative like her mother or has she buried herself in literature about confused women pining for a more fulfilling life? I will continue with her until she discovers the truth about my secret life and then I will have a frontrow seat to the spectacle that ensues. I feel Iliana pounding her fists against me in throes of desperation while I retreated into my rope-a-dope defense until the boys pulled her off me."Who is going to make me those sandwiches?" she screamed. Marcos is jumping on the bed. Fabiola is biting her bottom lip as she reads. There is a Mexican song that insists that all relationships are condemned to failure because even beauty grows old. She is beautiful. "All his wives were beautiful," my friends and family will say when I have passed. "I know that you're staring at me," she grumbles. "You know I hate that." When we first started seeing each other I would sit in bed waiting for her while she performed her chores. We haven't been separated physically for more than ten nights and those first 100 days we screwed every morning and night. I fucked her fanatically. I fucked her as if I were trying to extinguish a fire that no matter how much I smothered it, it kept burning. "I said stop staring," she growls a second time. "Read to your son." She has poky ears and a large mole under one of them. No black hairs sprout from it. I remarked to her that too many black hairs were sprouting from her nipples and she took tweezers and yanked them out. If I mention that there is a black hair, which there never is, dangling from a nostril, she pulls her head against her chest. "I know that I have my defects," she told me when we were squabbling. With an exquisite face that has blinded suitors, she further deprived them of the light by burying them beneath her big tits and hairy pussy. She would sweep them away by fucking them within hours after meeting them. They would stare into her huge brown eyes while they drove their dicks deep into her innards. She was going to fuck while the fucking was good and in the process drive her lovers loco because they knew that they couldn't possess her even though they were fucking her. The pills have unleashed their potency. I'm raw with desire. I am possessed and obsessed. I will fuck her tonight like I have on a previous 1,500 nights. I will ejaculate inside her, fall on my back in exhaustion and frustration, and begin to wander through the house looking for a place to sleep. I can't remember the last time I told her I loved her. "I'm not going to read tonight, papi. I'm going to tell you a story?" "Which one, Dad-dee?" "The Gomez brothers!" "I like that one." "How many brothers were there?" "Five." "And who did they live with?" "With their mother." "There was Raul, Rene, Ramiro, Reymundo and Rafeal. They didn't have a father, but who did they love very much?" "Their mother." "But she was very sad? Why?" "Because they all died." "Except?" "Rafael." "There was Raul who was crossing the river when the water moccasins attacked him. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Rene." "Rene was in the middle of the street, but he didn't see the stage coach and the horses trampled him to death. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Ramiro." "Ramiro was planting tomatoes on his farm when bad men shot him. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Reymundo." "Reymundo was coming to Brownsville to buy tortillas when other bad men hung him from a tree. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Rafael." "Did Rafael make his mother happy or sad?" "Very, very happy." "Exactly. Rafael became the first Mexican-American president of the United States." "Can I be president like Barack Obama?" "You can be anything you want to be, papi, but you won't be a big boy if you don't go to sleep and eat well tomorrow. I love you, baby." "I love you, Daddy." He settles into the crook of my arm. Five minutes later I carry him to bed, lie him on his side and give him a kiss on the top of his head. I walk quietly to the computer in my office and call up the letter that I have written to Fabiola but haven't delivered. I have made numerous presentations in public, but I have prepared my speeches beforehand, delivering them to my audiences with a poetic understatement. I can ad-liv, but I prefer to read from a prepared statement to be sure to cover all the salient points. I have attempted to broach my dark sentiments to Fabiola, but I haven't been successful in articulating my anger against her. I am working on a letter that I will deliver to her when I have reached the point of no-return. I pull it up on the screen and peruse it for the umpteenth time: "You have exhausted me both physically and emotionally. As little as I excite you, you excite me less. As miserable as you are, I'm ten times more. miserable. Our sex life is a shambles. We used to make love every morning and evening. Now you don't want me next to you. I think of all the guys with whom you made, and god knows how many there were, and you won't make love to me. These friends with rights would feed you dinner and then feed on you for the rest of the night. There is no hope for us because I can't forgive you for your promiscuous past. How many were there? I've counted twelve, but I'm sure there were dozens more. Their stories have entwined themselves in my brain and I feel like my head is choking with a cancerous weed. I have to live with these lascivious images 24/7. How many were there or are you too embarrassed to admit the number? How many nights did you leave your children with your parents while you partied and fucked all night long? All your stories are branded in my brain. I know by heart the scores of stories describing in excruciating detail your inability to resist the moment. Nobody appreciated the aphrodisiac qualities of ecstasy more than you. You've never had any problems controlling yourself with me. The best you can do is lie there without any movement and bark that I have the face of a dog. We have nothing. You hate me. I can feel it. You wish I were dead. Between a small insurance settlement and the face-saving escape of not having to endure another divorce, you would be in heaven if I dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow. I think about the price I had to pay, the loss of my two sons, for a woman who is secretly counting the days, although she fears it may be years, until we're parted. I can feel your rejection by the way you push me away when we are together. I haven't forgotten or forgiven you when you told me I had "la cara de un perro" because I was panting to make love to you. Last Mother's Day I couldn't believe you complaining that the book and flowers I gave you weren't enough. I remember as a child when times were tough we would buy my father a book of crossword puzzles and a Mr. Goodbar and he felt we treating him like a king. When a woman loses respect for her man's contributions, then he should recognize that all is lost. I have given your children a hundred times more than their father has. I have given them more financially than my own sons. I have coached their teams and I have taken them to places they would have never visited otherwise. I have done these things for no other reason than I love them. I am paying too much for a house, but you insisted the kids have their own rooms and a big yard, and I am paying for the most expensive daycare in Brownsville so you can watch our son on your monitor at school. And you choose to give me no credit for my sacrifices. I am so short of money that my clothes sit in the dry cleaners for months. And I have to think twice about renewing my magazine subscriptions. No matter how much I wish things were different in our relationship, it is impossible because your past wrecks havoc in my mind and allows me no peace. I cannot accept your rejections, particularly when I imagine you opening your legs for a series of lovers. I suppose this rancor will allow me to hate you more and reinforce my opinion that you are little more than a puta. So you don't have illusions about where I stand on our marriage, I have been cheating on you with several women over the past six years. I have had it with you and this relationship. Is there anything I have expressed that you don't understand? When I told Iliana I had had 100 affairs during our time together, she collapsed on the couch, but she quickly forgave me. I didn't care one iota for her. When I slapped Marisa across the face when she told me she had been cheating on me, I didn't give a shit. When I deliver you this epistle, I will have proven once again that I don't give a shit."

BEDTIME

"I'm going to lay in bed with Adrian and then I'm going to read to Marcos. I've got some bad news for you." "What? What happened?" Fabiola lives on the edge, waiting for the call that tragedy has struck. "I took my super pills." "Why did you do that?" "I want to fuck you tonight. I didn't fuck you this morning." "It wasn't my fault. You were hungover and didn't wake up." "I'm not saying that it was your fault. I want to fuck you tonight. I haven't fucked you in days. You know how much I love fucking you." She looks at me with a blank stare. Having sex with me is no different than preparing breakfast for the children as she rushes to ready herself for another day of work. I bore her. She would rediscover her ardor with someone new. I'm part of the upkeep. Adrian is waiting in his bed. I kiss him on his damp head. "Who loves you, big guy?" "Daddy-O." As much as I have made a difference in his world when I entered his life at three, he has been there as much for me." "Who do you think will win?" he asks. "Chelsey or Manchester?" "I don't know. What do you think?" "Manchester. Rooney and Ronaldo are the best." "When is the game?" "Saturday." "What time?" "At eight." "I won't be doing too much drinking Friday night." "Drinking isn't good for you, Daddy-O." "It's my medicine, papi. The doctors say that it is good for the heart. I should have a very strong heart. What time is our game?" "We play at two. Do you think we're going to win any games this season?" "Maybe, although I wouldn't be surprised if we don't. You're improving, right?" "Yeah." "Then don't worry about anything else. I put you in this older league so you would get used to playing against bigger and better kids. This fall I'm placing you on a select team. You need a coach who can teach you more technique and you need to be with players in a more competitive situation if you're going to improve. You want to be a good soccer player, don't you?" "Of course, Daddy-O. Can you get me a Rooney jersey?" "When I get paid, we'll go downtown and look for one. Is he your favorite player?" "He's number one." "I thought Ronaldo was number one?" "He scores more goals, but Rooney is a team player. You've said that it's more important to be a team player than a star, yes or no, Daddy-O?" "You're absolutely right, Adrian. And what has Daddy-O told you about winning and losing?" "Winning and losing is for small minds." "Good. You need to play more like Rooney. If you were more aggressive, your game would improve." "What does 'aggressive' mean, Daddy-O?" "You have to attack the other player more. You can't allow him to dribble past you. You can't play afraid." "When am I playing tennis again?" "How long has it been since the summer program ended?" "Four weeks." "This Friday I'll go to the club and sign you up for lessons twice a week. You liked the lessons during the spring, right?" "They were fun." "I want you to play both soccer and tennis well. Are you happy with those sports?" "Yes, but I like football, basketball and baseball too. When are we golfing again?" "We'll go to the range tomorrow, but we can't play every sport. You're catching the football well and I like the way you're snagging the ball with your mitt." "Snagging?" "Catching. You are laying up the ball properly in basketball and you have a good shot for your age, but we're waiting until junior high for these sports because you can't play everything now. You really want to play football?" "Football is fun." "You have good hands, papi, and you would make an excellent end, but football is rough and you can get hurt." "But you tell me getting hurt is a part of sports and you want me tougher for soccer." "If you want to play football, that's fine, but for now we're going to concentrate on soccer and tennis. We'll practice the other sports in the backyard." "But tomorrow we're golfing, right?" "We'll hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. You need to go to sleep. I have to read to your brother or he won't fall asleep. I love you, big guy." "I love you, Daddy-O." He nestles himself in my arm and I scratch the top of his head. I listen to Adrian breathe and coordinate my inhalations and exhalations with his breath. The clock ticks. Cars speed in the distance. Two minutes pass and Adrian is sleeping soundly. I extricate myself and pull the covers up to his neck. An air-conditioned house in the suburbs in the summer is colder than a house in the barrio in the winter. I kiss him on the forehead and tip-toe out the room.