What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [40]
“Can I pick you up for lunch?”
She pressed the guitar against her. “Well …”
“Noon? Is that when Carson lets you off?”
“How do you know I work at the shoe store?” she asked, both astonished and a bit amused.
“Small town,” he said. “How’bout it?”
Something told her that she was supposed to hesitate, but the words bubbled on their own. “I’d like that,” she answered.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Noon it is.” He reached over the bench seat to close the passenger door. “I’ll see you then.”
Teresa scurried up the steps in the dark hallway, and for the remainder of the afternoon she lay on her bed and watched the room tilt from deep yellow to the orange of the west. She kept expecting to hear Cheno’s voice from the street, her windows open to break the heat, but by now she realized he’d been kept at whatever fieldwork he’d been given for the day. Still, she wanted to hear his call, his tiny knock at the foot of the stairs, but as evening came, she thought more and more about Dan Watson and found herself not wanting to see Cheno at all. She let the violet come as her mother had done in the past and didn’t turn on the light. From below, she thought, maybe Cheno would see the dark window and think she’d gone to bed early.
She ate in the dark—a simple dinner of leftover beans heated gently on the stove, and two tortillas. She drew a glass of water from the tap. She thought of Dan sitting down at a table in a large white house, plates and plates of food, and the silhouettes of his family gathering round.
When even the violet light disappeared, Teresa showered to cool herself off before sleep. She stretched her little radio closer to the edge of her bed, its cord extended as far as possible, and turned on the dial. The face of the radio glowed amber, now the only light in the room. She lay on the bed and listened, irritated by the announcer, but then grateful for his information: he told her the names of the songs and the singers singing them, and each time one caught her attention, Teresa closed her eyes and listened hard. She tried to memorize the words, even though they floated past too quickly, and caught lines here and there when they repeated as a chorus. Men cooed together sweetly, standing behind the one singer as if to help in his pleading: that was how men sang. Songs of pleading and promises, tomorrows, wedding days, and love eternal. All of them in voices so high pitched that they sounded nothing like the men downstairs: they sounded regal, silky, like looking at cigarette smoke but not having to smell it.
Downstairs, she thought she heard the faintest of knocks, and she reached over to turn down the radio. She heard it again, a timid one-two, and then the pause that meant Cheno was waiting, looking up at her window, and wondering if he should knock again.
She wanted to raise herself up on her elbows and look down from the window. He’d come all that way. It was so late. She could feel him waiting. But on the radio, a new song started. It was a man. And all evening, whenever a man sang, she pictured Dan Watson. If a woman sang, Teresa imagined herself. Even the backup singers had a role, two or three Dan Watsons behind her in complete harmony if the song required it, or sometimes two or three versions of herself, in different-colored cowgirl skirts, with Dan playing a guitar and all three versions of herself reaching out to him from the single microphone.
Downstairs, she could hear Cheno’s footsteps give in to his indecision. Her heart ached for him a bit as she pictured him walking the streets of Bakersfield, dark now, and she lay back down on the bed. Sleep wasn’t going to come tonight, not the way her eyes closed and she saw visions of the pickup truck or the ham-and-butter sandwich Dan had served her or his hands pressing her fingers on the fret board. She reached over and turned up the radio, listening awhile before finally noticing the balance struck by the DJ: sometimes a song would be low and quiet, the love lost, but then a girl group would come up next and chirp like birds about the wonders