Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [10]
Rito’s busmess district featured the only sidewalks in town as well as a U.S. Post Office, Victor Ibañez’s grocería, the Mills Hotel, a laundromat called Casa de Wash ’n’ Dry, St. Catherine’s Thrift Store, and two bars: the Rito Lito and Happy Yolanda’s. Allegiances to these last two establishments cleaved the town neatly in two. Even teetotalers, bedridden grandmothers, and young children could express an immediate, ironclad preference for one bar or the other.
The newly remodeled Rito Lito, which was actually two blocks south of Main Street and across from the packing plant, attracted packers, commuters, trysting suburbanites, and underage beer swillers. An illuminated marquee announced live music and a daily happy hour. The cocktail waitresses, snub-nosed blondes imported from Newhall and Buchanan, served free peanuts and popcorn to generate thirst and profit. Happy Yolanda’s was right downtown, up from the Rito River bridge. On warm spring nights, with the door open, the sound of the river filled the pauses between Spanish ballads on the jukebox. Yolie’s regulars were the geriatric contingent from the Mills Hotel, neighboring merchants, the occasional adventurous student from the art institute down the road, and all of Happy Yolanda’s family, who made up about a third of Rito’s population. The back door of the card room was the front door to Yolanda and Luis Salazar’s living quarters, and due to the steady flow in and out, it was impossible to tell bar customers from houseguests and family. No gimmicks at Happy Yolanda’s.
Red had gravitated naturally to Happy Yolanda’s. In addition to Luis’s heavy pouring hand, Red also appreciated his respectfully laconic posture. Although versed in local history and trivia, Luis refused to gossip. Nor did he count rounds or cast disapproval on any man’s drinking method. He would, whenever appropriate, drive a staggering customer home, and he could be provoked, on behalf of his regulars, to collar an intemperate and throw him into the street. He deferred all confessions and sob stories to Victor Ibañez at the grocería or to Yolanda herself, now a corpulent, middle-aged beauty who sat at the end of the bar with the serene air of a happy queen. Luis and Yolanda both took to Red and tended fastidiously to his dietary needs. If the grill was off when Red came in for a late lunch, Yolanda prepared him a tuna sandwich, no mayonnaise, or skimmed off the orange droplets of fat from the cooling albóndiga soup and heated a panful in her own private kitchen. Luis frequently interspersed a free drink among those Red paid for.
As his diet progressed, Red bought drinks for a burgeoning pride of new friends. He arrived home later and later. In fact, the workmen came from his house and he stood them rounds and heard from their mouths how the restoration of his home was progressing. She hadn’t left. He was drinking and the windows were still being glazed, tiles grouted, floors sanded. Daily, huge appliances arrived. A new septic tank went in, the driveway was asphalted, the columnar palms trimmed. Well, he was drinking at a reasonable pace. He had yet to black out or get sick or even insult anybody. This time, it seemed, he could handle it.
On a Thursday in the dead heat of September, Red had eaten the soup-and-sandwich special minus