EL QUINCENAL presents: Down South by Kyle Proehl
diSONARE Magazine is pleased to announce a new series of online publications. We will feature short fiction, poems, and creative essays in English and Spanish. Pieces will be published twice a month. The first piece is “Down South” by Kyle Proehl.
Kyle Proehl is Senior Editor at Art Handler. He has written for Dispatches and Les Presses Editables.
*****
I finally got rid of my phone. Rachel left just after that. She couldn’t take it, not knowing. Not not knowing where I was, but if I’d ever be the kind of guy to have a phone again. What that meant. The kind of guy with the kind of job that meant the kind of investment, such as a phone, that would help us grow together. Not the kind of guy who took getting laid off as a sign. Or the kind of sign I took it as. She left our little bungalow and went back to her parents’ house. They had two houses, her parents, and she went to the one where they weren’t. Left me with sandy floors and a painful rent, as if to remind me of all I couldn’t do on my own.
So I thought about leaving too. Or the dreams I used to have returned in my new freedom. I thought about it a lot on the beach, in the water, at the bars, pretty much wherever. The emptiness of the bookshelves and cupboards and kitchen echoed in my head. Hope wasn’t for us, that was the truth. Rent was cheaper down south, I could still live by the beach, my severance would run out eventually and I’d be forced to get a job that meant nothing, which sounded just about right. She’d never see the point. That was okay, I would live, but I’d probably be living alone for a while.
The bars of the beach welcomed me back. The Neon Blue especially. That cool blue light, just like it says, the bar’s ridiculous wave, greyhounds that glow in the dark, day and time told purely by crowd. We’d mostly stopped going, so when I returned the word got round. I took advantage, wallowed, indulged. Made sure however to refuse what might have taken me too far from that moment. This was moving forward, I thought, waking up on a stranger’s couch wearing a single crusted sock. It wasn’t the life, but neither was respectability. I was looking to refuse it all.
Not many people found my Mexico plan too attractive, not with the recent hostilities. The army had moved in to Tijuana just before Rachel left. Like a ghost town, the bartender said, it’s not even cool to visit. I hadn’t been in months, and the warning got me thinking. Maybe I couldn’t move right away, but I could do some reconnaissance. Rents were sure to go down if people kept turning up dead, and it seemed they were just getting started.
Walker still lived down there, still commuted to the paper during the week, still took tourists off the beaten track into the real TJ a couple of weekends a month. He was from Iowa. Still working up the nerve, like everyone else, to leave the paper for good. I sent him an email, I didn’t want a tour, couldn’t bring a group, Rachel was taking all our friends, or I was giving them away, him too maybe, maybe it was too late, I didn’t mention all this, but some of it probably made its way in somehow. Walker wrote back anyway, right away, I was welcome anytime, just let him know, he had a sofa, we’d eat and drink and dance and eat again and forget to sleep. I fired back, why not tonight, I felt like it anyway, though I’m not sure I did, what did it matter, only I had no phone, so we’d have to make plans or something, choose a time and a place. He replied, it was one of those days, how about Rasputina at ten, I’d been there, had no idea why it was called that, no one did, or no one remembered when they were told. The plan felt a bit reckless, maybe normal to Walker, except for including me, maybe I should bring a friend, or maybe he would, so we could avoid a plunge into the obvious.
I spent the rest of the afternoon reading up on all the violence. To prepare for the worst, give the trip a moral edge, feed an obsession, who knew. Walker’s website avoided the whole situation, he’d been fed up with the negative view even before packing his bags for the border. There was so much more than what we thought we saw. Before he was the tour guide he was still becoming he was just a guy who wanted to take his friends into every corner of his new city. Brighten the shadows, break up the clichés. Mostly by drinking at different bars, shopping on other streets, buying tickets to odd events. In a word, avoiding Revolución. Even with the rumors and news, there was still so much to do. The only headless bodies they’d found so far were narcos or police. The food was still terrific.
It was a Tuesday. Either that actually mattered, or people were actually scared, but no one wanted to join. This girl at the Blue said she was down, then made that face and tottered off to the bathroom, which is when I paid and left.
The night was warm, the drive went smooth, south of downtown the highway darkened, emptying itself right to the end. When I pulled off the last exit, there was one set of red lights ahead, one pair of white behind. Plenty of spaces in the lot, the lonely walk through the empty middle, bored drivers and their yellow cars, hardly a soul to honk at on the streets. Only after I was in a taxi did I wonder what makes a target, what made it clear I had nothing to offer, I wasn’t worried, just curious about my appearance, what made it disappointing. We didn’t talk much, me and the driver. Business was bad, the Americans were scared, the streets were quiet, isn’t everyone. Perched at the edge of a drift, a melancholy goodbye. On the curb I realized I’d never watched a cab I’d just left drive off into the night.
Rasputina was deserted. I stood in the doorway waiting for memories of better times to rush in, I must have seen it like this before, but nothing came, the chairs, tables, stools didn’t welcome me, the walls and the light were too bare, but it was too late, the bartender had spoken. I took a stool and asked for a beer and a tequila. And watched the room in the mirror and waited. Flipping through a magazine, maybe bothered by my silence, the bartender said there’s a jukebox. Lots of gringo music. That wasn’t all. I picked a few corridos with heroic titles. She looked at me without smiling, kept flipping pages, expecting no one.
Wonderful time to shut it down, said the man to my left. He had a beer. What happened to the time? He spoke English. We should get an award. The bar was still empty. He wasn’t looking at me, at anything really. I had a beer, but the tequila was gone. Do you know what a newspaper is? he said. I didn’t answer. He waited. The perfect lining for any animal’s cage. Which paper do you work for? I said. The same one you used to, he said, looking at me, then back into space, but it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same. I’ve seen you in the newsroom, once or twice when they called me up to check on my discipline, my sanity, loyalty. Whenever the leash fraying across the fence snapped and they had to fit me with a new one. More than a few angry oars on this stinking ship. I have read you, this is what happens. The curdle of mundane disgust. Shame you arrived for the backslapping triumph. Malcontents need a new refuge. This bar has never been so empty. Not even when it was closed. And they shut down my desk. Bigger insult than getting fired, believe me. No leash needed if you chop off the legs. You know where they’re trying to send me? Escondido, the new destination for patrons of the arts. Gallery district looked suspiciously like a row of antique stores, but what do I know. Trying to get me to quit without severance. And they probably will. No guts left. That’s why it’s just you and me here. And I don’t even know why you came. The world tears itself apart and we hide our faces in money. Dos Zapatistas, por favor. Can you believe they gave a mezcal this name? But it’s the only one here, so it’s not like we have much choice. To reckless humanity.
It didn’t even burn. He was Lorenzo, by the way, Lorenzo Clark. I knew the name. Another filthy gringo conquistador returning to comfort and safety. I was just waiting for a friend.
The Tribunal was closing its Tijuana bureau in two weeks. They just got word that afternoon. Rumors for months, not a straight answer to be found, then two weeks left. Only a staff of three down here anyway, so really a symbolic office, except when it wasn’t, which could always happen, because we were here. Resonant in contradiction, but bearing witness nonetheless. Now just reinforcing the wall. It’s not a fence, take a look. The infuriating thing is to spend years cultivating cynicism and have it fail you. Expected, unavoidable and still. There’s always something else.
This was not the night I was hoping for. Walker had failed already. It would take maybe more than I was prepared for to wipe this away. He knew how, I was sure, but Lorenzo’s words raised my doubts. I had forgotten that bitten-tongue taste, or thought I could, but here it was again, sunk and spread with the mezcal heat. Like lava it worked through my veins, raising hairs like cast steam, searing through days past I thought I was still living, becoming memory only then, only in that burn, my life a flaming ruin, which I tried to douse with beer. Faces slanting through rooms and streets in this city becoming dust, hardening to fossil behind the smoke, the redness rolling slow out toward the edges like a setting sun. Slow and inexorable, a creeping blindness, forgetting itself. What remained I could sift through, inhale the aroma, but what vanished would return as the only thing worth facing.
That’s where Walker found me. Couldn’t believe the state of the bar. He knew Lorenzo, we had another mezcal, grand idea, said good night, Lorenzo was committed to shutting it down, if no one else was, and no one was, so we left.
The rest of the night hardly happened. Walker had friends, we met them at a club, everybody’s hands held giant bottles of beer, upstairs over an empty street, the evacuating city, taking its time. It was too loud to talk, too something, there was only dancing with your eyes closed or throwing yourself over the balcony toward a silent doorway, which is where I was when we decided to leave, so much we didn’t get to, that night or ever. Another time, soon of course, it’s been too long besides. And in the cab back to the border, no worries, not even the fare. The driver made no attempt. I hope it gets better soon, he said.