Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Read online

  -running with Legs, who is not only a great dog, but also a great runner.

  -reading Dante’s letters (sometimes I get two a week).

  -arguing with Gina Navarro and Susie Byrd (about anything).

  -trying to find ways of running into Ileana at school.

  -looking through microfilms of the El Paso Times at the library trying to find out something about my brother.

  -writing in my journal.

  -washing my truck once a week.

  -having bad dreams. (I keep running Dante down on that rainy street.)

  -working twenty hours at the Charcoaler. Flipping burgers isn’t so bad. Four hours on Thursday after school, six hours on Friday nights and eight hours on Saturday. (Dad won’t let me cover extra shifts.)

  That list just about covered all my life. Maybe my life isn’t all that interesting but at least I’m busy. Busy doesn’t mean happy. I know that. But at least I’m not bored. Being bored is the worst.

  I like having money and I like the fact that I’m not dedicating too much time to feeling sorry for myself.

  I get invited to parties and don’t go.

  Well, I did go to one party—just to see if Ileana was there. I left the party just as Gina and Susie were arriving. Gina accused me of being a misanthrope. She said I was the only boy in the whole damn school who had never kissed a girl. “And you’ll never kiss one if you leave parties just as they’re starting to get good.”

  “Really?” I said. “I’ve never kissed a girl? And how exactly did you come by this bit of information?”

  “Just a hunch,” she said.

  “You’re trying to get me to tell you things about my life,” I said. “It’s not going to work.”

  “Who have you kissed?”

  “Put a lid on it, Gina.”

  “Ileana? I don’t think so. She’s just toying with you.”

  I just kept walking and flipped her a bird.

  Gina, what was with that girl? Seven sisters and no brothers—that was her problem. I guess she thought she could just borrow me. I could be the brother she could bug. She and Susie Byrd used to go by the Charcoaler on Friday nights around closing time. Just to keep bugging me. Just to piss me off. They’d order their burgers and fries and cherry Cokes and park and honk and wait for me to close up and just bug, bug, bug me and piss me off. Gina was learning to smoke and she’d flash her cigarettes around like she was Madonna.

  One time, they had beer. They offered me some. Okay, I had some beers with them. It was fine. It was okay.

  Except Gina kept asking me who I’d kissed.

  But then I got an idea that would make her just stop hounding me. “You know what I think,” I said. “I think you want me to lean into you and give you the kiss of your life.”

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  “Why the interest, then?” I said. “You’d love to know what I taste like.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she said. “I’d rather have a bird crap in my mouth.”

  “Sure you would,” I said.

  Susie Byrd said I was being mean. That Susie Byrd, you always had to be nice around her. If you said the wrong thing, she cried. I didn’t like that crying stuff. She was a nice girl. But she didn’t help herself out with all that crying.

  Gina never brought up the subject of kissing ever again. That was the good thing.

  Ileana would find me sometimes. She would smile at me and I was falling a little bit in love with her smile. Not that I knew a damn thing about love.

  School was okay. Mr. Blocker was still all about the sharing thing. But he was a good teacher. He made us write a lot. I liked that. For some reason, I was really getting into writing. The only class that I was having a hard time with was my art elective. I couldn’t draw worth a damn. I was pretty good at trees. I sucked at drawing faces. But in art class, all you had to do was try. I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.

  I knew I didn’t have it so bad. I had a dog, a driver’s license, and two hobbies: looking for my brother’s name on microfilm and looking for a way to kiss Ileana.

  Nineteen

  MY DAD AND I GOT INTO A ROUTINE. WE’D GET UP really early on Saturdays and Sundays for my driving lessons. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought that maybe my dad and I would talk about stuff. But we didn’t. We talked about driving. It was all business. It was all about the learning-to-drive thing.

  Dad was patient with me. He could explain things about driving a truck and his philosophy of paying attention and watching out for the other guy. He was actually a really good teacher, never got upset (except the time I brought up my brother). He said something once that really made me smile. “You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.” I thought that was a funny and interesting thing to say. I laughed when he said it. He hardly ever made me laugh.

  But he never asked me any questions about my life. Unlike my mom, he left me to my private world. My dad and I, we were like that Edward Hopper painting. Well almost—but not exactly. I noticed that somehow my dad seemed more relaxed with himself when he and I were out on those mornings. He seemed so at ease with himself, like he was at home. Even though he didn’t talk much, he didn’t seem as remote. That was nice. He sometimes whistled, like he was happy to be with me. Maybe my dad just didn’t need words to get by in the world. I wasn’t like that. Well, I was like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I wasn’t like that on the inside.

  I’d figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn’t like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.

  Twenty

  I HAD TO TAKE MY MOM OUT FOR A DRIVE BEFORE she’d let me go out on my own. “You drive a little fast,” she said.

  “I’m sixteen,” I said. “And I’m a boy.”

  She didn’t say anything. But then she said, “If I even suspect that you’ve taken one sip of alcohol and driven this truck, I’m going to sell it.”

  For some reason that made me smile. “That’s not fair. Why should I have to pay for the fact that you have a suspicious mind? Like that’s my fault.”

  She just looked at me. “Fascists are like that.”

  We both smiled at each other. “No drinking and driving.”

  “What about drinking and walking?”

  “None of that either.”

  “I guess I knew that.”

  “Just making sure.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Mom. Just so you know.”

  That made her laugh.

  So my life was more or less uncomplicated. I got letters from Dante and I didn’t always write back. When I did write back, my letters were short. His letters were never short. He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he’d rather be kissing boys. That’s exactly what he said. I didn’t know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and if I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it. And, because he was in Chicago and I was in El Paso, it was easy to be okay with it. Dante’s life was way more complicated than mine—at least when it came to kissing boys or girls. On the other hand, he didn’t have to wonder about a brother who was in prison, a brother his parents pretended didn’t exist.

  I think I was trying to make my life uncomplicated because everything inside me felt so confusing. And I had the bad dreams to prove it. One night I dreamed I didn’t have any legs. They were just gone. And I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke up screaming.

  My dad came into the room and whispered, “It’s just a dream, Ari. Just a bad dream.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Just a bad dream.”

  But you know, I was used to them in a way, the bad dreams. But why was it that some people never remembered their dreams? And why wasn’t I one of those people?

  Twenty-One

  DEAR DANTE,

  I got my license! I took my mom and dad for a drive. I drove them t
o Mesilla, New Mexico. We ate lunch. I drove them back home and I think they more or less approved of my driving. But the best part was this. I went out at night and drove into the desert and parked. I listened to the radio and lay down in the back of my pickup and looked out at all the stars. No light pollution, Dante. It was really beautiful.

  Ari

  Twenty-Two

  ONE NIGHT, MY PARENTS WENT OUT TO SOME WEDDING dance. Mexicans. They loved wedding dances. They wanted to drag me out with them but I said no thanks. Watching my parents dance to Tex-Mex music was my idea of hell. I told them I was tired from flipping burgers all day and that I was just going to stay home and relax.

  “Well, if you feel like going out,” my dad said, “just leave a note.”

  I had no plans.

  I made myself comfortable and was about to make myself a quesadilla when Charlie Escobedo came knocking on my door and asked me, “’Sup?”

  And I said: “Not much. I’m making a quesadilla.”

  And he said: “Cool.”

  I was not about to ask him if he wanted me to make him one even if the guy looked hungry as hell. But that was his look. He had this hungry way about him. He was the skinny type. Always looked like a coyote in the middle of a drought. I knew about coyotes. I was way into coyotes. So we sort of looked at each other and I said: “You hungry?” I couldn’t believe I said that.

  And then he said: “Nah.” And then he said: “You ever shoot up?”

  And I said: “Nope.”

  And he said: “You wanna?”

  And I said: “Nope.”

  And he said: “You should try. It’s fantastic. You know we could score some and go out into the desert in your truck and, you know, get high. It’s sweet. So sweet, dude.”

  And I said: “I’m really into chocolate.”

  And he said: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  And I said: “Sweet. You said sweet. I think I’ll get my sweet from chocolate.”

  And then he got mad and called me a pinchi joto and all sorts of other names and he said he was gonna kick my ass all the way to the border. And who the fuck did I think I was, thinking that I was too good to shoot up or even smoke cigarettes and didn’t I know that nobody liked me because I thought of myself as Mr. Gabacho.

  Mr. Gabacho.

  I hated that. I was as Mexican as he was. And I was bigger than he was too. I wasn’t exactly afraid of the little son of a bitch. And I said, “Why don’t you get someone else to do drugs with you, vato?” I figured the guy was lonely. But he didn’t have to be an asshole about it.

  And he said, “You’re gay, vato, you know that?”

  What the hell was the guy talking about? I was gay because I didn’t want to shoot up heroin?

  And then I said: “Yeah, I’m gay and I want to kiss you.”

  And then he got this really disgusted look on his face and said: “I ought to kick your ass.”

  And I said: “Go ahead.”

  Then he just flipped me off and, and well, he just took off—which was okay with me. I mean, I sort of liked the guy before he got into all this mood-altering substance abuse thing and to tell myself the truth, I was really curious about the heroin thing, but, you know, I just wasn’t ready.

  A guy has to be ready for important things. That’s how I saw it.

  I got to thinking about Dante and how he’d had a few beers and I thought about the couple of beers I’d had with Gina and Susie and I wondered what it would be like to get drunk. I mean really drunk. I wondered if it felt good. I mean, Dante had even tried pot. I got to thinking about my brother again. Maybe he got into drugs. Maybe that’s why he was in the slammer.

  I think I really loved him when I was a little boy. I think I really did. Maybe that’s why I felt sad and empty—because I’d missed him all my life.

  I don’t know why I did what I did. But I did it. I went out and found an old drunk loitering around the Circle K in Sunset Heights, begging for money. He looked like hell and smelled even worse. But it’s not like I was interested in being his friend. I asked him to buy me a six-pack. I told him I’d buy him a six-pack too. He was game. I parked my truck around the corner. When he came out and handed me my six-pack, he smiled at me and said, “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I said. “You?”

  “Me. I’m forty-five.” He looked a lot older. I mean the guy looked as old as dirt. And then I felt bad—for using the guy. But he was using me too. So that was the math on that one.

  At first I started to drive out into the desert to drink my six-pack. But then I thought that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. I kept hearing my mom’s voice in my head and it really pissed me off that her voice was there. So I just decided to go home. I knew my parents wouldn’t be home for a long time. I had all night to drink my beer.

  I parked my truck in the driveway and just sat there. Drinking my beer. I let Legs in the truck with me and she tried to lick my beer can so I had to tell her that beer wasn’t good for dogs. Probably, beer wasn’t good for boys either. But, you know, I was experimenting. You know, discovering the secrets of the universe. Not that I thought I’d find the secrets of the universe in a Budweiser.

  I got this idea into my head that if I chugged the first two or three beers then maybe I’d get a good buzz. And that’s exactly what I did. And it worked. It felt kind of nice, you know.

  I got to thinking about things.

  My brother.

  Dante.

  My dad’s bad dreams.

  Ileana.

  After chugging three beers I wasn’t feeling any pain. Sort of like morphine. But different. And then, I opened up another beer. Legs put her head on my lap and we just sat there. “I love you, Legs.” It was true. I loved that dog. And life didn’t seem so bad, me sitting there in my truck with my dog and a beer.

  There were a lot of guys in the world that would have killed to have what I had. So why wasn’t I more grateful? Because I was an ingrate, that’s why. That’s what Gina Navarro said about me. She was a smart girl. She wasn’t wrong about me.

  I had my window rolled down and I felt the cold. The weather had changed and winter was coming. Summer hadn’t brought me what I wanted. I didn’t think winter would do me any better. Why did the seasons exist anyway? The cycle of life. Winter, spring, summer, fall. And then it began again.

  What do you want, Ari? That’s what I kept asking myself. Maybe it was the beer. What do you want, Ari?

  And then I answered myself: “A life.”

  “What’s a life, Ari?”

  “Like I know the answer to that?”

  “Deep inside you know, Ari.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Shut up, Ari.” So I did shut up. And then the thought entered my head that I’d like to kiss someone. It didn’t matter who. Anyone. Ileana.

  When I finished all my beers, I stumbled into bed.

  I didn’t dream anything that night. Nothing at all.

  Twenty-Three

  OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK, I WAS WRAPPING SOME Christmas gifts for my nephews. I went looking for a pair of scissors. I knew my mom kept a junk drawer in the dresser in the spare bedroom. So that’s where I went looking for them. And there they were, the scissors, right on top of an extra large brown envelope with my brother’s name written over the top. BERNARDO.

  I knew that the envelope contained everything about my brother’s life.

  A whole life in one envelope.

  And I knew there were photographs of him in there too.

  I wanted to rip it open but that’s not what I did. I left the scissors there and pretended I hadn’t seen the envelope. “Mom,” I asked, “Where are the scissors?” She got them for me.

  That night I wrote an entry in my journal. I wrote his name again and again:

  Bernardo

  Bernardo

  Bernardo

  Bernardo

  Bernardo

  Bernardo

  Twenty-Four

  DEAR ARI,


  I have this picture in my head of you lying on the bed of your pick-up looking up at all the stars. I have the sketch in my head. I’m sending you a picture of me standing next to our Christmas tree. And I’m sending you a gift. I hope you like it.

  Merry Christmas, Ari.

  Dante

  When I opened the gift, I smiled.

  And then I laughed.

  A pair of miniature tennis shoes. I knew exactly what I was supposed to do with them. Hang them from my rearview mirror. And that’s exactly what I did.

  Twenty-Five

  THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, I WORKED AN EIGHT-HOUR shift at the Charcoaler. My dad let me pick up extra shifts since it was the Christmas break. I didn’t mind the job. Okay, there was this guy that I worked with who was a real jerk. But I just let him talk and most of the time he didn’t even notice that I wasn’t listening. He wanted to hang out after our shift and I said, “I got plans.”

  “Date?” he said.

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Got a girlfriend?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Cher.”

  “Screw you, Ari,” he said

  Some guys can’t take a joke.

  When I got home, my mom was in the kitchen warming up some tamales for dinner. I loved homemade tamales. I liked to warm them up in the oven which was really strange because that wasn’t the standard way of warming up tamales. I liked the way the oven sort of dried out the tamales so they got a little crispy and you could smell the corn leaves sort of burning and it smelled really great so my mom put some in the oven for me. “Dante called,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s going to call you back in a while. I told him you were working.”