Chapter 12

After I do one last walk-through of the spa, I lock up all the doors. We drive home. The early-morning fog disappears by the time we reach downtown. Sunrise hits the skyscrapers and the cranes that mark all the new construction sites between the buildings. Everything turns golden. Morning commuter traffic picks up before the East L.A. interchange and we get caught in a little gridlock not far from home.

“This is not so bad,” Vanessa says.

Hundreds of brake lights flash in front of us. “It’s not?”

“No. It’s Labor Day. Muñeca has the day off school. I don’t have any meetings. Do you have to work tonight?”

“Yeah, at the gym.” I’m stroking her hair as she drives. I’m exhausted—wrung out—but I don’t want to stop touching her. My thoughts are fuzzy. I have to do something else today, but I can’t remember what. And then there’s my problem with Barry. “I have to talk to my boss tonight,” I say. “I’m not looking forward to it.”

“What’s the matter?”

I explain to Vanessa how Barry wants to take me on as a personal trainer.

“You get a raise, right?” she asks.

When I tell her how much I make now and how much the new job would pay, even I can’t believe the difference. What kind of idiot turns down money like that? “I don’t want the job, but I don’t want to tell him no.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a lot of money, number one.”

“Money’s important, but it’s not everything.”

“Working out is me time.” I sigh. “Jesus, that sounds so cheesy. Like I have a bubble bath and listen to smooth jazz.”

“Maybe it’s cheesy, but it’s honest. You work out alone and it’s important to you. Any other reasons you don’t want to do it?”

I think back and remember something Barry said that didn’t sit well with me. “I asked my boss if clients would be turned off by my appearance.”

She looks sideways at me. “Which part? The brownness, the terrifying muscles, the angry face, or the prison tattoos?”

“All of it? Together?” I smile and squeeze her knee. “He said that his clients would kill to look like me. It made me feel…I don’t know. Wrong.”

“How so?”

I struggle for the words. “Rich people—they will pay thousands of dollars for tattoos in shops. They’ll wear baggy clothes, listen to gangster music, wear chola makeup. They copy the fashion and listen to the music. They daydream about what this life is like without understanding what it really is. What it really means.” I’m frustrated by my clumsy explanation. I don’t know how to say it. My body—it’s not a product to sell. “It’s complicated,” I say at last.

She slowly merges across three lanes and takes the off-ramp to our neighborhood. ESHB graffiti marks the freeway walls, the street signs, even the curbs.

“It doesn’t sound complicated to me,” she says.

“But he stuck his neck out to hire me. He’s sticking his neck out again to offer me this job.”

“No offense to you, Sal, but that’s utter bullshit. Be realistic. You don’t owe him anything. He hired you because you’re cheap. He’s hiring you as a trainer because he’s in a bind and you’d be his new gimmick to hipsters. He’ll probably want to put you on the website too. On the posters and brochures.” She puts on an old-fashioned announcer’s voice, goofy and loud. “ ‘Look at my new trainer. He’s hard. He’s been in prison. He’s from the streets. Work out with a real-life gangster!’ ” She passes the park and turns onto her street. “If it feels wrong, just say no.”

“What should I tell him?”

“Don’t tell him anything if you don’t want to. Just say, ‘Hey, thanks for the offer, but this is not the right time.’ Or, ‘This job is just not for me.’ You don’t owe him an explanation. He runs a business. He’ll change course and find another solution.” She parks in the driveway and turns off the engine. When she turns to me, my heart skips a beat. I still can’t believe how beautiful she is.

“We don’t have to say yes to every single thing that comes along,” she says. “We don’t always have to be…pathetically grateful for what people toss our way. We have a choice, and sometimes the correct answer is no.”

The lights in the house are still off. I reach forward and run my fingers through her hair. Everything she’s just said makes sense to me. I kiss her softly. “I’m glad you didn’t say no to me.”

She smiles against my lips. “Sometimes the correct answer is yes.”

I follow her out of the car and take her in my arms in the shadow of the avocado tree. I can’t get enough of her. I wish we could continue this for the rest of the day. I want to make love to Vanessa in a bed. I want to fall asleep with her naked in my arms.

“Will you have dinner with us tonight?” she whispers.

The fuzziness in my head clears and suddenly I remember what I have to do tonight. “No, I can’t. I’m meeting my friend Alan later this afternoon. He owns a bar in Santa Monica.”

I see the little flash of hurt in her eyes before she blinks it away. “Oh.”

“I’d rather stay here with you. But I promised I’d come see him. He’s a nice guy.” I kiss her again.

Her face relaxes. “So when can we…” When I kiss her neck, her voice trails off.

“I’ll be back early tomorrow morning, baby.”

“Okay.”

We kiss one more time on the back porch and separate as soon as we hear the dog barking inside. A split second later, Chinita opens the door with a yawn and Chancla bolts out past us to do his business in the tall grass.

“Good morning, lovebirds.” Chinita reaches into the pocket of her bathrobe and takes out a pack of cigarettes and a hot-pink lighter. “You both look very relaxed. Congratulations on finally consummating the relationship.”

“Abuelita, I’m too tired to be angry at you.” Vanessa walks past her grandmother into the kitchen.

“Oh, then you must be very, very, very tired.” The old lady winks at me as she lights up. “Good work, Sal.”

I collapse on the narrow bed in the garage and sleep like a dead man. No dreams, just darkness, deep and quiet.

Hours later, I wake up slowly. My eyes sweep the garage. I realize I’ve done a lot of work in here. No boxes or stacks of newspaper remain. The floor has been swept. Vanessa has sold most of Ben’s old tools. I arranged the remaining tools on a pegboard where she can find them. Only the truck remains. I still have to sort through its bed full of junk.

I close my eyes and stretch. My arms and legs feel heavy and light at the same time. I take my time remembering my night with Vanessa. I wonder if this is really my life or one I made up to cope with my usual shitshow of a life.

Either way, I’ll take it.

Whistling, I get dressed, pack my bag, and walk into the kitchen to wash up. Muñeca, Chinita, and Vanessa are playing Candy Land at the kitchen table. Muñeca pops up and runs to me, throws her arms around my legs, and says, “Sal, you’re the blue gingerbread man.”

“The blue gingerbread man?”

“The game piece,” Chinita says. “She wants you to play.”

“Oh. I see.” I get down on my knee. “Thank you. I can’t right now, but we can play later.”

She puts the plastic piece in my hand. “Mommy’s the green one. Chinita’s the yellow one. I’m the red one. You’re the blue one.”

“Mi’ja, Sal can’t play right now,” Vanessa says. “We’ll save it for him when he gets back. Come finish the game with me and Chinita.”

I pick up the little girl and raise her high. She squeals. I put her in the chair and carefully put the blue piece back in the box. “For later, okay?”

“Okay.”

My eyes meet Vanessa’s. “Have a good night.” My voice is calm, but just being close to her sends heat racing through my body. “I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

I make the trip out to Santa Monica in the daylight, bright sun shining in through the windows of the train. Warm wind whips my face when I exit the station and walk the few blocks to Bay City Brews. Ocean air fills my nose. It’s just past five o’clock when I walk through the door. The hostess leads me to the back of the bar where I follow the hallway to Alan’s crazy beer laboratory.

Alan is waiting for me, a big smile on his face. “Hey, I’m glad you made it!” He’s wearing a T-shirt that says punch it, chewie.

Full of energy, Alan walks me through the process. First, he shows me sacks of grain and specialty malts that he uses for his beer. He shows me his different tanks, each with a funny name—a mash tun, a lauter tun, a brew kettle, a whirlpool. There are fermenting tanks and storage tanks. There are stacks of kegs. He shows me his bottle filler.

Next, Alan shows me two books: first, an old textbook about brewing, and second, his brewer’s notebook with all the ingredients, amounts, and times he’s used to brew his different beers. On each page, he’s taken careful notes about how to fix problems and which mistakes not to repeat. “Beer is four ingredients: water, barley, hops, and yeast,” he says. “All I do is experiment with that formula.” The book represents thousands of hours of work. I think about the weight-lifting book in my backpack—it’s the same thing.

Today we’re making his Dogtown IPA, which I remember was the bitterest, most refreshing of the beers in the flight. My mouth waters when I remember it.

“IPA stands for India Pale Ale.” He shows me the recipe, neatly written. “These are the grains I use. Here are the hops. I use this kind of yeast. This is how long we have to wait before bottling—IPAs need a long fermentation.” He closes the notebook and hands me a hairnet. I put it on. I wonder if Alan knows hairnets are straight old-school gangster accessories, to be worn with a big handful of Tres Flores pomade. I smile to myself. Alan continues his lesson. “India used to be a colony of England. Pre-refrigeration, barrels of beer brewed in England didn’t survive the long ocean journey to India until brewers learned they could load the beer with hops to help preserve its quality. Thus, IPAs were born.”

I give up trying to hide my ignorance and ask him what the hell a hop is. In between all of the very long words, I figure out a hop is a little green pinecone-type thing that grows on a vine. It preserves beer and gives it a bitter taste. Alan shows me some of the hops he uses. I inhale. They smell fresh and spicy, a little like a Christmas tree.

Alan is cheerful as he walks me through the process. I watch the liquid boiling in one of the kettles. “We add hops in the beginning of the boil for bitterness,” he says. “We add hops later in the boil for aroma.” I watch as Alan carefully adds yeast to the cooled beer. He tells me it will hang out in tanks for a few weeks until it’s ready.

After we clean up, Alan takes me out front to the bar. He pulls a cold pint of Dogtown IPA—a batch he made last month—and without a word, puts the glass and a big steak salad in front of me.

I start to refuse but he cuts in. “Just eat, Sal. I’m a nerd who likes talking about what I do. There aren’t a lot of people who listen as well as you do.”

Between bites, I wonder why Alan’s taken a shine to me. I’m pretty sure he’s gay. As a straight man, I can flatter myself into thinking he’s coming on to me, but I’m also pretty sure that’s not what’s happening here.

“So how did you first start making beer?” I ask.

Alan looks over his brewmaster notebook, checks the old textbook, and makes one more note. “I had just moved here from Alabama to teach. I’d never been away from home.” He looks up at me and for the first time, his smile fades a little bit. “As much as I love it here, it can be a lonely place. It may not seem like it, but teaching is isolating. Most of my adult colleagues were older. They had families so they didn’t go out and socialize very much. I lived in a studio apartment by myself and went to work and came home and that was it.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Almost fifteen years.” Alan closes both books carefully and tucks the pencil behind his ear. “I was taking a walk in my neighborhood when I came across a home-brewing store. Out of curiosity I went inside. I struck up a conversation with the owner. I’m from a rural area, so back home, every family had a still. Moonshine’s in my blood, so we had a lot to talk about. He sold me my first home-brewing kit and I got hooked. I learned there was a community of home brewers in this city. They welcomed me in. That’s how I made my first friends in California.”

He pulls up a barstool next to mine. From this spot, we can see the whole bar, the back door to the front door and all the customers and staff in between. “It’s a process, Sal. Just like brewing beer.”

“What is?”

“Making…making a man. Making yourself.” He pauses. “You know, you remind me a little of myself back then.”

I put down my fork. What do I have in common with this skinny white dude? “What the hell are you smoking?”

He laughs. “I’m serious. Back home, I was angry. Alone. I lashed out. I did things I regret. My town was small and everyone had made up their minds about me a long time ago. When I turned eighteen, I enrolled in the nearest college and got my degree. I opened up a little bit. Then I moved here. I opened up a little bit more. Eventually I made friends and soon I realized I had allies. People who weren’t going to judge me. People who weren’t going to write me off.” He nods to himself. “But all of that—it’s a process. It takes time.”

“What about mistakes?” I ask.

“I made lots of those.”

I gesture to his notebook. “Did you write down your mistakes so you wouldn’t make them again?”

“I should have.”

Alan and I chat a little more. I finish my dinner and swallow down the last of my beer. Hops. Their aroma swirls in my nose, in my brain. Grapefruit peels. Fresh-cut grass. Christmas trees. Because of Alan’s teaching, I can taste each flavor in a way I couldn’t before. Like being able to hear the different instruments playing in a song.

The words come out on their own. “Will you teach me more about brewing?”

Alan nods as if he knew that question was coming. “Sure.” He slides the old textbook across the table. “Read that. Come back on Thursday. I’ll show you how I make my Weissbier.”

When I tell Barry that I can’t accept his job offer, he leans back in his swivel chair and looks at me like I’m a ball of hair in a shower drain, backing everything up. “Are you being serious right now?”

I nod. “Yup.”

“Why not?”

I remember what Vanessa told me to say. “It’s just not the right time for me. I appreciate the offer, though.”

Instead of being the happy-go-lucky flexible business owner she predicted he’d be, Barry goes for one more hard sell. He lists all the reasons this job would be perfect for me. The flexible hours. The skills I’d be picking up as a trainer. The travel—Barry and his staff attend conferences all over the country promoting the gym. He tries to sell me on the free shit—companies regularly dropped off sample products for gym clients to try, everything from new equipment to nutritional supplements to workout clothes to shampoo.

And the last thing.

“Are you really saying no to this truckload of money? Sal, are you kidding me?”

When Barry laughs in disbelief, I realize Vanessa was right about one thing. He’s already imagined me on the website. He’s already imagined me on his brochures. He wanted me to be part of his brand. After all, what says “defiance” more than a real-life lawbreaking thug?

“Seriously, Barry. Thank you for the chance, but it’s not for me.” I stand up and hold out my hand. “I hope you find the right trainer for the job.”

Barry shakes my hand with his eyebrows raised. “All right, bro. Suit yourself.”

When the last trainer and client leave for the night, I turn up the music in the gym and stare at the water pouring from the tap as I fill the mop bucket. I take stock of my situation and realize a few things.

First of all, this is not glamorous work.

This is the work of the invisible, the ones who don’t want to see or be seen, the work of ghosts like me. Underpaid, often exploited, ignored, dismissed.

This is not easy work. In fact, it’s a bitch.

I turn off the water and wheel the bucket into the men’s restroom. As I swab the deck, I have another realization.

This work may be a bitch. But it’s my bitch.

Tonight, I turned a corner. I’m not the young kid I used to be. The one who said yes to everything. The one who was so hungry for approval, he’d do anything that was asked of him, no matter how wrong it felt. Beat people up. Scare people. Sell drugs. Steal cars.

Granted, working as a trainer for Barry is none of those things. But it would’ve felt wrong. And this time, the money, the approval, the happiness I would’ve brought my boss—none of it—was enough to convince me to say yes.

Alone with my thoughts, I clean three toilets and restock the stalls. I polish the mirrors and scrub down the sinks. I restock the towels. I do the same in the women’s restroom. I wipe down all the weights and workout equipment and mop the gym floor. Outside the big glass windows, the night darkens, then lightens again. The sky turns pale.

I turn off the music, take out my weight-lifting notebook, and begin my workout. The iron feels good this morning. I watch my muscles move in the mirror. Each repetition makes me a little bit stronger, body and mind. I write each exercise down faithfully—no shortcuts. I blaze through my cardio, running full tilt on a treadmill until I’m pouring sweat. I wipe down the machine and hit the shower.

On the train ride home, my mind is quiet, calm in the knowledge that for once in my sad, sorry life I’ve done the right thing. I get off at my stop. On the corner by the park, there’s a woman in an apron selling hot atole and tamales out of a shopping cart. She’s ready for the crowds of kids on their way to school and adults on their way to factories downtown. I buy a cup of atole and enjoy it as I slowly walk home. The hot corn porridge is thick and sweet, the perfect breakfast. The orange streetlights turn off just as the sunrise takes over.

I feel strong.

Alive.

I unlock the door to the garage and shut it quietly. When I turn around, I am only half-surprised to see Vanessa lying in my bed.