Moondogs - Alexander Yates [6]
And so, for the last year Benicio had worked as a systems administrator for Montebello High. It wasn’t even a partial lie when he told friends and family that he enjoyed the job. He was in charge of managing the local network and user accounts, maintaining each of the workstations and doing technical assistance as needed for the faculty and staff. He may not have felt especially passionate about it, but the pay was good and it usually kept him interested. Moreover, it was comprised of tasks that were straightforward and none too challenging, but that seemed impenetrable to everyone else he worked with. He loved the way older teachers and administrators would gawk at the simplest of his daily tasks, the way they’d try to escape a conversation at the mere mention of firewalls, IP switches or routers. He got a kind of pleasure from this, similar to the pleasure he felt when speaking a language that the people around him couldn’t. Like on his childhood visits to his mother’s old home in Costa Rica, teaching his beaming cousins absurd English phrases that in retrospect weren’t nearly as naughty as he’d thought. Or the exclusivity he’d felt as a teenager in their Chicago townhouse, walking through the living room where his father was watching the news, speaking to a friend on the phone in side-slung Spanish that—as far as his father could tell—flowed out effortlessly and without the slightest trace of an accent.
But that had been awhile ago. Benicio hadn’t spoken Spanish, nor heard it in the mouth of a real live person, since his mother’s funeral in January. He’d been the de-facto translator and guide for the members of her family who’d managed to get visas in time to attend the service. That included communicating with their hotel for them, shepherding the ill-prepared aunts to Macy’s so they could buy winter coats and ferrying them from the funeral home to the church. When they all boarded a flight back to San José they took Benicio’s Spanish with them. They even took it from his dreams, which were now like silent movies that lacked even a piano soundtrack. Since then Benicio had only uttered a word of Spanish if Alice asked him to. The two of them would be on the couch, Alice flipping channels while Benicio stroked her pale, round knees. She’d linger on Telemundo sometimes and ask him to repeat what the announcer was saying. There were words that she liked the sound of, especially in Benicio’s Spanish voice, which she insisted was different from his English voice. Like a whole different person speaking. “Moribundo,” he’d say. She’d have him repeat it a few times before trying to sound it out with him. Festividades. Sueño. Pico de gallo. Nieve. Sabado Gigante.
The dive shop on Barracks Road was small and packed with more gear than should have reasonably been able to fit through the door. Each of the walls was lined with multicolored wetsuits hanging from racks above deep bins of gloves, booties, mask and snorkel sets, dive lights and fins. Regulators and buoyancy control vests dangled from big plastic hangers suspended from the ceiling and Benicio had to navigate between pyramids of empty dive tanks and rusty magazine racks just to get to the service desk. Alice began to follow him but became distracted by a big fish identification chart stapled to the only scrap of bare wall space. Benicio watched her as she ran her fingers over the laminated names and fins of moorish idols and triggerfish.
“Pickup or drop off?” the silver-haired man behind the service desk asked.
“Pickup.” Benicio handed over a crumpled receipt. “For Bridgewater.”
The man scrutinized the paper and disappeared through a door behind the service desk. He emerged a moment later, his arms laden with the tubes, hoses and chrome of Benicio’s gear. “The old Oceanic,