Mauricio Alejandro Chávez

By Mauricio Chavez

He slammed the door to the two door coupe and it peeled off. The ice silver flashed away into the distance. He had a flashback of 30 seconds prior when his wallet fell through the crack between the center console and the alcantara seat. Nausea wafted through his vagus. “I'm usually the designated driver. Why was she even driving?” He looked ahead and saw the freeway stretch farther and farther into the distance the longer he stared. He drank the last bit of Jack and Coke that was sitting at the bottom of the clear plastic cocktail cup. The conical obtuse angle of the cup never afforded the required area to hold against the palm or fingers. The wide awkward lip of the cup was difficult to hold when his big hand tried to grip it. You knock it back and all the cup wants to do is slide out from your hand. He crunched on the ice. He looked around before he threw the cup on the blacktop freeway. He kicked it towards the shoulder of the road, trying to sweep up after himself. He looked behind him for a bit. He saw the backside of the freeway entrance sign. His vision was blurry and he was squinting in the dark night. “If I go back that way, I might be able to find the house where the party was at.” He tried to think about the directions and the turns the car made heading towards the freeway. He lost his balance. His feet shifted nowhere near as cool as they had been on the dance floor 3 hours earlier. 

“I know I'm in Marina del Rey... and this is the 405,” he thought to himself drunkenly “How the hell do I get home,” he asked out loud. “The 105 is just over there. How could she have done this to me? She's got to be coming back. I better wait here in case she comes back to get me. She would not just leave me here,” he made himself believe. A cloud of breath appeared when he spoke. He nervously looked around. Down south. Up north. Down south again. It was night and the signs were lit up. He didn't recognize any of them. It was about 1 a.m. and nothing would be open. It didn't take him long to realize he only had only one choice. He played a lot of sports. He had the stamina. 30 miles wasn't too far of a walk he told himself. “ I could drive this in 30 minutes with no traffic. People can run a marathon in 3 hours. I can walk this freeway and be home before late afternoon.” He was blitz drunk but he was thinking exceptionally clearly. It was that easy. He had to walk down the path laid down by these two freeways. His house is not too far from the eventual exit. Square blocks. 12 down, 3 over. Bada bing, bada boom. He's home. The oaf. All he had to do, he told himself, was put one foot in front of the other and not stop until he opened his front door and got into bed. Who knows, maybe even his fiance would be there with his car. He checked behind him to see if she had returned. He looked. And looked. Nothing. Then, he could see headlights. He waited until it came roaring past never slowing in the slow lane. It wasn't her. It wasn't his car. His vision tracked the car as it made its way down the freeway. He started walking. For the first time probably ever he wished he hadn't drank so much. 

“Wait,” he hesitated.”There has got to be another way,” he thought. He searched a third time for change or money in his pockets which he knew for certain was not there. He checked inside his coat pocket hurriedly. Wallet, money, anything. Nothing. Checking his inner coat pocket always gave him a self assured feeling before. “What a fucking putz,” he thought as he started the march forward. “The trail of tears was like 1000 miles. I can do this with both hands tied behind my back. No problem,” he said out loud. He looked at his hand, gripped an imaginary drink, lifted his arm and titled his head back. He drank the imaginary drink.

He walked forward as the cars whizzed by intermittently on all lanes to the left of him. He stayed close to the center divider. He was drunk but he still knew his chances of getting run over had gone up exponentially. If your car dies while on the freeway, the first rule is to never leave the confines of the vehicle. Like Gary Numan, stay put. Your car has all kinds of safety measures to keep you safe against other vehicles while on the roads. But here he was, walking southbound, on the right shoulder of one of the biggest and busiest freeways in Los Angeles. 

He doesn't know how long he has been walking for. It was dark between the light posts, which came few and far between for someone walking the freeway instead of barreling through at 90 miles an hour.  The freeway lights shone on him like a spotlight. For 20 steps at a time he was the most brightly lit debris on the road. But he'd keep walking and find himself plunged into total darkness again. The subtle roar of each car coming up behind him sounded like a long wave creeping up, suddenly breaking, and the long ebb, once the source had met the receiver and ultimately moved away from it. He closed his eyes and blue phased to red in his vision. He gulped, flipped the collar on his sports coat. His feet were getting cold and he started to feel every rock and pebble on the road through his worn leather soles. Worn from dancing every dance floor from Sunset to sunrise. His feet started shuffling and strutting to the beat and bass line in his head. Eyes closed. He was dancing on the 405 freeway. “Now it's four on the floor. Check your head at the door. You've been here before but you wanted some more.  And the kids from L.A. say ‘Hey, hey’ La la la. La la la. La la la. Everybody's going L.A.” He continued dancing on the 405. 

He came to. He was still walking the freeway. His arms were folded in front of him keeping his chest warm. He looked around and recognized the signs only to confirm he was still more than many miles from home. He heard a car coming and somewhat instinctively turned around, threw his hand high above his head and stuck his thumb out. He stopped short of trying to wave like he was deliberately trying to flag someone down. “This isn't an emergency. I'm just out for a very long walk, down this long and winding road. In the middle of the night, that will lead to my front door.” He had never tried hitchhiking before and hand thought any of this through. He tried picking up his pace as the sound got louder. The headlights got brighter. He realized he was in a dark span of the freeway and started running fast to get to the light post so that maybe that someone in the passing car would see him and theoretically give him a lift. He was huffing and puffing as the car passed him, never slowing or intimating the driver had seen him. He was just now under the light again. Brightly lit. “I wouldn't have picked me up either,” he said to himself. Handel’s Passacaglia in harpsichord starts propulsing in his head. Feeling a little desperate, he began to run.

He ran a handful of miles and had started dodging over any stones he could see in his path. Jogging along now uncomfortably he started to feel the levity leave his body. The alcohol had stopped being consumed and he was running on fumes. His lungs started getting heavy and his heart was burning up his chest. He felt stinging radiate up from his chest cavity into throat through his larynx. He stopped running. Put his hand on his knees and took deep breaths. He swallowed. Continued deep breaths through his nose, flaring his sinuses, begging his heart to oxygenate his blood. He leaned against the center divider to recollect himself. 6.7 has been his highest ever recorded blood alcohol level. It's written on a 4 of spades. It happened at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. The tail end of an epic pub crawl. “I must have walked at least 10 miles that day,” he imagined the words in his head to himself. The night was imaginably blurry and raucous. A woman he had never met before took him back to the Sheraton Hotel and he remembered coming back from blacking out as the women bounced emphatically on top of him. He adjusted his stance on the freeway and stepped on a rock. He opened his eyes and glared at the freeway. He was dizzy but he got up and started walking again. 

He came up on the Hollywood Park Casino signs. The 405/105 interchange was just ahead. He had to cross lanes to the on ramp to keep walking his path. There weren't many cars around and he didn't have to run but he did. By the time he crossed a couple lanes he started high stepping like a wide receiver scoring a touchdown. “God, I am a fucking moron” he said to himself as he opened up his jacket to let in some night air. He had worked up a sweat as he crossed into Lennox. A girl he had sex with once but was in his circle of friends lived in Lennox. She had broken up with her boyfriend and invited him out dancing. They got drunk, danced and ended up having sex in the front passenger seat of his car. It was Christmas time and while having sex with her, in his steady and consistent whiskey stupor, he remembered looking away from her cute face and pretty tits and out the window to see a nativity scene. He smiled at her wide and said “Immaculate conception.”  What he said never seemed to register to her as her eyes and mouth continued agape directed at him as she slipped back and forth against the seat.

Passing the Watts Towers he was crossing the 710. His legs were stiff and his drunken high was completely gone. Sobering up he was starting to reassess the situation. The need to be constantly alcohol infused was causing obvious dissonance in his life. He chose not to see it that way. He was young. He was happy. He was making more money than his father ever had. The world was his oyster. A pickled spicy oyster. Carlos Cubeta knew he had come from a long line of terminally cirrhosed livers. He didn't feel the need to change fate. The disease had been passed on. “Not much I can do about it,” he muttered. Hard headed, he made himself believe. He thought about his fiance. He had quit womanizing after he met her but the alcoholism was as prevalent as ever. The previous year on the 710 freeway Carlos Cubeta was drunk driving again. He was returning home from another night out. Weeknight. Weekend. Sure. He didn't know what freeway he was on but he remembers the soft dive of oblivion feeling as he fell asleep in the middle of driving. He shut his eyelids and good night, sweet prince. His head floated softly towards the steering wheel as if by being lulled into place by gravity. The kick of consciousness jolted him awake. Driving by braille, his brain now realizing the car was crossing lanes to the left and veering into an interchange wall. No one was driving. He jerked to attention and snapped the wheel away from the wall, slamming on the brake. The thoughtless move sent the car into a complete spin. He realized his seat belt was locked in when the g force began. After a spin and a half the car came to a complete stop. No more loud screeching noises. He was wide awake now. Everything was still. It must have been too late at night and too early in the morning because he  looked around and saw no else on the road. No one had witnessed what had just occurred. He was facing the wrong direction. The car wasn't working. He put it into park. Restarted the engine, put it back into gear and hit the gas,making a big swimming U turn over the wide open lanes. The only proof that the drunk driving spinout had ever occurred was that his navigation screen spun in place. From that day on, everywhere he drove, the   arrow shaped cursor on his gps would spin over and over. While he was driving. While it was parked. It kept spinning, like the tell tale heart beating under the floorboards. It gave him vertigo at red lights. He had escaped death. Like a dog with his tail between his legs, he drove in the slow lane the rest of the way home that night.

He was still walking. Down the 105 he was coming to his exit. He crossed the entire freeway casually. A coyote roaming through the neighborhood has stopped to watch Carlos Cubeta exit the freeway under the power of his own two feet. The sun was coming up and the garage workers at the Porsche dealership were starting their early morning shift. The world's most ethereal violins played Claude Debussy’s “La Plus Que Lente” in his head. He thought about Honoria, his fiance. He doesn't know if he can quit drinking but he has got to get her back somehow. What event occurred before she kicked him out of the car, he doesn't remember anymore. He was too sober to remember at the moment but he was sure it would all come back to him at some point. He'd promise her anything. “Anything to get her back. I don't know if I can give up drinking but maybe I can start slowly. Just have one. Every day. In the afternoon.” Hard headed, he made himself believe. 

She let the car roll into the same parking spot under the same bottle brush tree, behind the same middle school, across from the same fence, occupied by all the same cars.  As the car comes to another complete stop she throws the gear into park. Turns the key, shutting down the engine. The radio continues playing. She flicks the window visor back up as usual. Opens the sunroof, reclines the seat, and turns the radio up just enough, again. "I can't help myself, I love you and nobody else".  The Four Tops were playing on the oldies station. She turns it back down and leans back, staring out of the sunroof, once more.

The bottlebrush tree blows in the cool breeze, just enough to wave the wands that hold the bright red bristles. She lifts her left hand and waves back to it. The wind breezes again and the tree continues waving. 

"When I get home I have to get the rice and throw it in a bowl of water to destarch it, rapidito. Hopefully the chicken is defrosted, I took it out this morning but they are larger pieces than before. Estoy secando la ropa, pero no va a estar lista como hasta 20 minutos despues que llegue. God, I really do hope that chicken is defrosted because if he gets home and the food isn't ready Arde Troya. I don't remember if I put away the ironing board or not. I might have, or am I confusing that with the folding away motion of the niña's walker? I think I also need to change the newspaper in the birdcages.”

The bristles were so red. So red. And the pollen was fire yellow with a drop of nectar on every tip. Perfect globules barely visible to the naked eye. "I wonder if bees carry the pollen or do hummingbirds slurp the nectar?"

She adjusted her vision to look into the rear view mirror. She saw the burgundy vinyl seats in the Oldsmobile station wagon and the lined heated glass from the rear fold down cargo area where the young twin boys always sat no matter if all their siblings were sitting in the car or not. She pictured the back of their heads facing out of the rear window. "The boys need haircuts. I have to get that done by picture day next week," she reminded herself again. 

She rocked her head from the right to the left resting it almost on her shoulder. She looked out the side view mirror. She saw the strip mall at the end of the block where the video store is. At that moment she reminded herself to get the quarters from her purse to give to her boys so that they may play arcades while they wait for their sisters. The sisters were a little older in age and took longer to get to the station wagon after the bell rang. Lollygagging, they always had some excuse. She fixed her eyes straight ahead and the saw far into the fixed point perspective of the street block. It was block after block after block after block. So much room to drive in front of her. She seems to be right in the middle of everything.

Suddenly the bell rang. The last din of the bell died out when she heard the Beach Boys quietly echoing inside the currently empty, about to be quite loud car. "wouldn't it be nice if we were older, than we wouldn't have to wait so long"

She let out a sigh and hadn't cried for a while now. The rush of children exiting the largest middle school in the nation sounded like Niagara falls. Not like she'd ever been there. She felt her heart beat faster, swelling in her chest. An eagle, she scanned the masses for her eaglets. The twins, as usual, broke away from the crowd, jumping and bounding, flapping books and folders in their arms as the backpacks bounced off their backs. 

"MOM, can we go to the vid-" Before the 6th graders could finish their sentence Madre Maria replies "Si, Si. Aqui estan las pesetas. Pero nada mas un juego cada uno. Nos tenemos que ir pronto. Tu padre llega tempranito del trabajo. Y ya saben como es."

The boys open the back hatch, throw their books and backpacks in, slam it back down and run as fast as possible towards the video store. She feels an itch under the eyelid and slides her fore finger just under it. She looks away from the direction of the rub. The bottle brush bristles wave up and down slowly as the branch extends into the distance away from the trunk. 

It gets so loud again as she looks out for her daughters. 7th and 8th graders. "Where are those white keds?" Even though a lot of girls wore Keds, she'd always recognize her daughters because her daughters always had the cleanest and brightest, no matter how old they were. She always made sure of it. 

Her eyes picked up on them. The girls came strolling out of the crowd clutching their books to their chests, walking as slowly and gingerly as possible. Their friends are doing the same. They walked mousley along, out of the parking lot and to the sidewalk. A car drove down the street. "Despues de este carro, mija." The 8th grader grabbed the 7th grader by the hand as they crossed the street together in arpeggio. The Keds skipping lightly. They open the car doors, each on one side and they sit down in the middle bench seats. 

"Mom, my ponytail fell out”, said the 8th grader Catherine. “It got loose then I don't know what happened, so I put it all the way up instead. It looks way better.”

"No le ve a gustar a tu padre que te quitaste la cola de caballo". Madre Maria looks to her other daughter, "y tu, como estas mija?" 

"Yo bien Mom, gracias. Que vas a ser de comer?" said the 7th grader Ophelia looking visibly tired, dropping her many books down on the middle seat.

"Ya tienes hambre, que no comiste lonche?"

 "I was studying hard in class Mom, ya me dio hambre otra vez" 

"Well, I'll make you a quick sandwich when we get home," Madre Maria said as she remembered everything else she had to do. "Don't forget to change the newspaper in the bird cages."

Not a nano second later the twin boys show up out of nowhere, huffing and puffing from running as fast as they could from the video store, one head reaching in from the passengers side another from the drivers side, she had to lean back inside the car for some personal space.

"Ya llegamos Mom!" they both say in unison into each of her ears.

"Alright, jump into the back seats and let's get a move on. Maybe we can catch your other sisters walking from the high school.

"Mom, I'm hungry" says Henry, the louder of the two boys.

"Dude, just wait til you get home and you can get something from the fridge. Mom's busy, can't you see?" says Alexander. Alexander's 6th grade English teacher Ms. Victoria Fortin-Martin had caught him off-guard earlier that day. While she was giving him his final school year grade she told the kid "Don't ever change, Alexander." Surprised, he thought about it for a second, looked back at her and the 11 year old said "Ok," shaking hands with their vision.

"Brace yourself, I'll take you on a trip down memory lane. This is not a rap on how I'm slingin crack or move cocaine. This is cul-de-sac and plenty Cognac and major pain. Not the drill sergeant, but the stress that weighing on your brain" -Kendrick Lamar, "m.A.A.d. city"

The old man wasn't that old but he definitely was not young. The best years of his life were past him and his body was only gaining speed over the hill. Something snapped in him that day. It was another day of blue collar work in a factory that produces slides for cabinets and drawers. Ball bearing slides. The metal was processed and assembled at that facility in the gray industrial city of no gentleman's land Los Angeles. The land filled with suburbs. Big wide streets. Big hulking power towers that buzzed all day and night over head. Helicopters thwupping about at all hours. There was always some car honking or an engine revving hard in the distance. Instead of cactus South Los Angeles produced cement light posts with an ugly dehydrated urine orange yellow color which only ever lit up arbitrary parts of the night. 

The old man must have had a rough day. Constantly mired in solvents and acids that prevented metals from corrosion. Metal filings from holes being constantly drilled into the next unit that is being produced. An endless production line of standing, bending, and repetition. Loading and unloading of heavy materials. Filling, draining and refilling of toxic liquids that could stain not just your clothes but your skin and lungs too. 

Did I mention the wife and 8 kids he had at home?

When he started going over the hill he started letting go. Instead of continuing as the weekend athlete he'd stay home and drink. He'd take a load off. After work all he wanted was some beer and many shots of tequila. He'd get hammered. Let it all out. Gorrita al lado, ojos tumbados. When he got this way you could see his brain start to crack. Split. Melt out of his head. This one wasn't too bad but it was odd. 

He couldn't take it anymore. He fee fi fo fummed his 5'7 chicken leg self to the front door and without warning yelled and castigated his neighbors while they were building a fence around their own front lawn. "Why are you caging yourselves in?! Before you got here, a long time ago there were no fences. No femces at all! The kids would run around, wherever they wanted! Anybody's lawn. Nobody cared! It didn't matter! We were all a community!! Now you all want to shut yourselves in!" 

The neighbors sat around looking at each other for a few seconds. There were more people there than just the immediate family. Uncles, aunts, cousins. They were all having a good weekend, knocking back some beers as they erected the fence. "Go back to your house old man youve been drinking." They laughed it off a little before starting to laugh at him. "Just get out of here old man. Tell your old lady to come get you. You don't even know what you're saying or who you're talking to right now. But I do see estas bein pedo. I'll cut you just that much slack."

In slurred speech, "Why!? Why are we doing this to ourselves!!" The old man was looking up to he sky at this point. His fight wasn't with the neighbors anymore. 

"Hey Carlitos," the neighbor man was getting the attention of Carlos Cubeta, the old man's son who was standing the whole time, watching the impromptu scene shatter and scatter around in front of him. “Take your old man inside. He drunk. Throw him in the shower.” Carlitos had seen his dad drunk before, it wasn't anything new. This time his dad seemed blind but not of vision. Who was he yelling at? Why was he yelling? Why would a fence upset him to the point of distressed delirium? Something seem wrong with Carlitos' dad but he couldn't put his finger on it. He cocked his head askance as he stared as his father. A look of uncertain disgust. Carlitos felt shame. Every Sunday his entire family would attend Catholic mass, and although mistakenly, it all seemed so fake in this moment.

Mr Iwason was a short man. To put it succinctly Mr Iwason resembled Adolf Hitler. Dark thinning hair on top swept to the side. He sported a type moustache that made you wonder if it was even necessary but you knew it was there. Stalky. Glasses with a deep stare that when looking at you could make you rethink your own thoughts, and search for the best possible response so that Iwason, satisfied with your intellect, would move on to the next socratically malleable blooming brain.

But he also resembled the librarian character from the film "The Neverending Story. Gruff guy, smoking from a pipe. One look and you knew he was wise and cunning for his age. He tricks the young boy into stealing a book from his own library. Using reverse psychology to plant the antagonizing and unlawful act into the boys mind, the boy leaves a note in place of the book and hightails it out the door while the librarian is ocupado on the phone. The librarian grins like the Grinch into the camera with smooth satisfaction knowing his best laid plan went according to.

Mr Iwason taught me about Jack London, Call of the Wild and White Fang. These dogs had come alive to me. These dogs were smart with vibrant and morally righteous personalities. He used to pan for gold in the San Gabriel mountains and tell us all about the gold rush. He'd bring out little pebbles of gold and lots of vials of water containing trace amounts of gold easily visible floating in water. It looked like sand but glittered brightly in the light just as if it was trademarked.

On most days he wore a puffy vest like Marty McFly which looked a lot more practical on him. He carried fishhooks in the pockets when he took us on a fishing trip after we read Tom Sawyer. First time I ever smelled fishing paraphernalia. Bait, reels, fish. It all stunk as advertised. Couldn't have been more fun to experience. Every Friday we'd play baseball. Our class would split into two teams and play ourselves, but if he could get another class to compete against we would. We were undefeated. He was the perfect coach, using all our different abilities like a symphony to victory. I wasn't the best in class but a respectable third or fourth in batting order. I had a good arm, football or baseball I'd sling it, and I ran very fast, agile. My batting skills kept me humble. Iwason also taught us the game of Chess, which I loved as a kid. I would play against my brother often but I'd beat him every time we played so we quit playing with me. I had my own wooden chess set as well as an electronic set that reminded me of the the game Battleship. The pieces would fit into the tiny holes and the computer would recognize the I put and move accordingly. LEDs 8x8 along the edges that would light up telling you where the move the computer piece. Queen to e5. Rooks to everywhere, bishops as well. Knights stay back. Pawns defend. Keep the flow of attack and counterattack steady and ready.

How far back do you go? Do you go back to when he woke up today or do you go back to when they met? Or do you go back to the first time he went online? Or do you go back to the first time he got punched in the face? Maybe going back to the first time a girl kissed him would be best.

It was in his 1st grade classroom, middle of the day. The alarms were ringing and ringing. Thrrrriiiiing, thrrrriiiing, thrrrriiiiing, clanging hard at first, trill din echoing at the end, only to start over again and again. All of us kids were under our pupitres. Growing up in California earthquake drills were practiced regularly. Some kids would hang on to both legs of the front desk. Other kids' eyes would dart around looking for direction because they knew it wasn't normal, although expected. I just kind of sat there or learned forward on my shins. It never bothered me because I knew it was all pomp and circumstance for the real thing. But this wasn't the real thing. It was pretending for the sake of muscle memory. For safety.

This one girl didn't get it. The constant trilling bells upset her. Scared her. The bells unnerved her so much that she would cry and moan and wail just enough to be heard. She had dark black long hair that was ponytailed on each side. Kind of reminds me now of a Mexican Lucy from Peanuts. Bigger puffy jowls, almost as if perfect for wailing. She kept looking at me and I kept looking at her. Eye to eye, I tried to reassure her that nothing was wrong. Not to worry about the bells. This is only a drill. It's not real. It's just loud. There is no earthquake. There is no emergency. I'm sure she understood but had no choice but to follow through with her first and only plan of action which was to cry her fear into existence. I just kept looking at her, it's okay, it's okay, I'd say. She's look at me; waah waaaah, waaaahhhh!

I went to pat her on the shoulder reassuringly and that's when the bells stopped clanging. Our ears still ringing, the sound billowing in the class like the smoke of a gun that has just been fired. Ms Winlock, a very lovely black southern light skinned black woman who bleached tasteful streaks of light brown in her hair, led the classroom onto the next process of the drill. She had big luscious lips that she often perfectly complemented with different shades of red lipstick. When winter came around and it got cold, she never said it was cold. She said it was chilly. Or at least I thought she said "chilli", which reminded me of "chile". She yelled and articulated well through the classroom instructions showing her big beautiful buck white teeth. "Students, we need to exit the classroom in line-order to the blacktop emergency area!"

The kids bedan emerging from under their desks as if it was San Francisco 1906. Did we survive? Are we still here? Shell Shocked scholars searched for the spot en fila. The boy had just barely looked back when the now silent girl kissed him full on the lips. Immediately he felt a quick tug in his underpants. An internal mortal coil jerked him to life. Atten-hut! He looked steadfast and forward, right at her, eyes wide as if to say "do you know what you have done?!" She didn't say anything or look particularly worried while he scanned the room to see if anyone had caught what just happened. The classroom was almost empty as everyone was arranging, lining up and exiting. She grabbed his hand and they raced to line up. She dropped him off at his spot slowly before she raced forward to reach hers.

I was at the Whole Foods meat counter, filet mignon please. Woman butcher asked if I knew French. Listening to a bad bunny in one ear and reading my grocery list with the other eye, I had no idea where the question came. I wanted to say "oui'' just to be a jackass. 

I took French in 6th grade for one semester and all I remember is la tete, les epaules, genoux et pieds. When I was a kid my Mom would sing Frere Jacques to me and what I remembered most was the onomatopoeia "dig, ding, don", which my mom sounded out with perfect inflection. That's a French bell if I ever heard one.