Ernesto, my Friend
Ever find yourself unable to remember where you first met somebody? Yeah, this isn't it.
I hear a pot clang onto the stove and a match strike as propane is lit outside my closed door. My heart leaps.
This is how I can tell it’s him, because all else, except the noises emanating from him, are that winter night quiet, when the terrible or the impossible is about to happen.
I had him in my mind, which had been pregnant with his growing fetus. He developed and he grew—and just seven days ago, sitting on the toilet, longer than I had to be, thinking of all kinds of shit I didn’t want to be contemplating (like The Thinker statue, but with his pants around his ankles), I could’ve sworn I heard a cough—a hearty, Cuban cigar clearing of the throat, enough just to let me know he was there, so that he wouldn’t frighten me.
I put on my pants and start walking. Although we do it all the time, I go, what feels like, foot by foot at a time to the door and slide it open as slowly and quietly as functionally possible.
He stands at the stove, sloshing around a skillet full of peppers, onions, and chunks of meat.
He takes a step to his left to the cutting board, which we never took out because it was all just ramen and shit, and cups his dense hands around some more peppers, shaking them around a little to even them out, then releases them into the skillet too.
He wipes his hands together without bending a single finger. He mixes the peppers around with one finger, then takes a hunk of golden onion between his fingers, drops it into his mouth, and chews like he’s getting a job done.
It goes on and on as he seasons it periodically with my mom’s limited spices from the cabinet which he continuously looks into and shakes his head while clicking his tongue.
He doesn’t even notice me. He is a stocky kind of Mexican guy who wears worn out jeans, but also a sleek black turtleneck. His hair is slicked and just a little spiked, like it wasn’t intentional. He has only a small goatee on his hardened face. He’s worked his ass off doing god knows what—to afford that Rolex on his wrist, I guess—and he’s only thirty-six but he’s aged terribly.
His name is Ernesto.
The flame flicks off. He swishes it all around some more after adding a pinch of salt, then takes a fork and starts eating, standing upright at the stove.
He only looks down and chews slowly, but roughly, so that his jaw pops each time.
He doesn’t shove more peppers into his mouth before he’s done chewing, like he has been for the past five minutes. He finishes what he started, and swallows it like he’s savoring it this time. There’s a pause.
“Hello, my friend,” he says with a heavy accent, and my heart stops.
He still doesn’t take his eyes away from the peppers, so I think, maybe he’s talking to himself, or he’s one of those assholes with a Bluetooth who makes business calls on public toilets—
“You goin’ to come out, or you wanna jus watch?” He says all snide and finally glances over for a brief second, his eyes meeting mine, peering through the door like I’m the creepy one, big and brown and looking right through me, and if it wasn’t only evening, I would’ve thought moonlight had been hitting them. He’s waiting.
“Oh,” I say, then nothing at all, as I watch how casually he can just carry on. “Okay,” I answer myself, looking down at my pajama pants and bare stomach, pulling it together for the ten feet of distance.
I slide into the booth, hands in front of me all limp. I gaze ahead at the empty seat in front of me as I talk to him. “Ernesto?”
“Yes, boss.”
I blink. God. I hadn’t been called boss by a foreign man in so long. It’s just not something you ever hear in this boring fucking life.
He continues chewing.
“Do you want to sit down?”
He waves me away. “I don’t want to take up space—not my house.”
“That didn’t stop you from using all our peppers and spices.”
He squints his whole face, like I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. “It’s a different culture, my friend.”
“Oh, bullshit!” I laugh, “You son of a bitch.”
He pumps his eyebrows up and takes another bite. “How you been?”
“Me? You can’t tell?”
He finishes the last of his peppers and licks his fingers despite not using them at all. “You want something? Come on,” he says, walking over, rubbing his hands. “Some dessert? A Corona? A little back massage? Ehh?” He grips my shoulders from behind and starts digging in, not loosening me up from the massage, but from my laughing, still not over the shock of touchy foreign guys, who must be the most wholesome thing we have left on this planet.
He laughs like an Italian chef, which always sounds slightly perverted, making my eyes go wide and my face flush.
“No, seriously, Corona? On me,” he opens my fridge.
“Sure, why not?” He’s already cracking one open with my countertop and squeezes an already cut slice of lime inside.
I grasp it, probably incorrectly.
“Cheers,” he clinks my glass without my participation. I watch him cautiously as I take a sip. It hits my tongue, and I swallow more than I have to. It actually has taste, too. I hold it away from my face and look at it like it’s different planet juice.
“You know you’re too old for this shit?” he says.
I stare crossed and confused at my bottle, because if that's what he’s referring too, I’m too young—
“Too old to be having imaginary friends, and all.”
“Oh,” I mutter, “I know. I don’t think I really care, though.”
“Come outside, will you?” he starts walking off, his footsteps a heavy waddle, barely picking up his feet.
He opens a sliding door where the front door should’ve been. I come up, cautiously behind him, shitting my pants, because our front stoop no longer exists, and instead, a small balcony is in its place. The whole trailer has apparently crafted itself around it, too, because somehow, it’s elevated in the air.
I take a step outside and steady myself, arms out on the railing because I’m too used to it being directly on the ground, only two steps high, making me go full caveman at the idea of not being flat on dirt.
Ernesto sits in a low hammock lawn chair, indented like he was already there. The other one is for me, and I drag my ass over, lowering myself with my arms, looking out at the trailer park like never before.
I frown. “It’s like I’m a king, apparently, but my crown is just a paper Burger King hat.”
Ernesto smacks his lips after sipping his drink that he’s just so obnoxiously into but I couldn’t care less about. “Wise words, man.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m always here if you need anything, boss,” he says, and it feels like I’m at the end of a therapy session, and I’m left thinking: That’s it? You take my mother’s peppers and leave?
“Like what?”
“When you get that loneliness.”
I sit back and look at the sky, already becoming warm. Oh. That’s why he can just sit there with a beer in his hand. He’s got the easiest job in the world. He’s just company.
It’s my first time meeting the man, technically, but I’ve definitely known him before—but the only other meeting I can think possible would be in the future, where we are living in some Slaughterhouse Five universe, and time is not chronological.
“So we just sit here?” I turn, wind hitting my face, slight bite, like my nose might go red after about a half hour of it.
“Or else, you do something impulsive.”
I blink something away.
“Like what?” I ask again, starting to think he’s just some giant 8-ball metaphor.
“You tell me, boss. Killing puppies for fun?”
“Uhh,” I pause. “I don’t eat meat.”
“I’m not saying you gotta eat them afterwards, you know.”
“In that case—well, no, I don’t know.”
“Or maybe you fuck your teacher?”
“Fraser?”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“The old Freudian slip!”
“I don’t even think that’s how it works. Anyway, I want that man to be my father, nothing crazy.”
“We get it, we get it!”
“You’re turning out to be a real pain in the ass.”
“But are you not entertained?” He shakes his big hands out in front of him.
I look out again at the expanse, if you wanna call it that, from up higher than I’ve ever lived. “I guess. I mean, this is nice.” Three little girls go by on tricycles and a man walks a Doberman—none noticing my floating house—not even the dog, who was supposed to be attuned to these kinds of things.
“You gonna ask Wendy to hang out, or what?” How he knew about her either, I don’t know. I guess me and her had just been friends for so long, she had become ingrained in my personality.
“She doesn’t want to hang out with me,” I mumble.
“But you never ask! You gotta stop with this feeling sorry for yourself shit, man.”
“But why do I have to be the one to ask?”
“Because you scare her, man!”
I frown. “I do?”
“Don’t you see?”
“Are you Wendy’s fairy godmother too?”
“No, we’re not having lunch or nothing without you.”
“Okay, good.”
“Do it soon, alright?”
“Why?”
“Because you might develop some sorta schizophrenia if I’m the only one coming around.”
I shrug. “It’s not schizophrenia if it’s all up to me.”
His lime plops back into his beer as he finishes his sip. “Suit yourself. I don’t care,” he snides, trying to teach me a lesson, but I don’t give him the satisfaction.
I look down at my pajamas and skinny rat chest. I would never have stepped outside without a shirt. I shake my head and say to him, “Any of us could just be in a fucking asylum right now, talking to a wall for fifty-six hours straight.”
“Funny you say that.”
“That’s why I said it. I hope that’s how I die—ushering myself right into the next life.”
“Up to you, boss.” He shrugs again, and I think, okay, what the hell is the point of you? Could you conjure up a more useless man? But at the same time, he was probably exactly what I needed.
He puts his empty drink on the small table in between us, probably only big enough for an ashtray, next to my full one.
“Where your mom at?”
“With friends.”
He scoffs.
“I know.”
“Your mom’s beating you at your own game, man!”
“Oh, definitely not my game.”
“Was that her, on the wall over there, with the rockstar?”
“Huh?...Oh, the photo of her with Howard Stern? Yeah, she fucking loves Howard Stern. That was when she met him backstage once. Yeah, she framed it and all.”
He sits back. “She’s a very pretty woman.”
“Gross, dude.”
“She single?”
“Very much, yes. But please, stop.”
“Very much? She pretty. She probably into more than you know.” He holds his hands up in submission.
I sigh. “Oh—I would know. I wish she would try to hide it.”
He holds up his hands in submission, then puts them to his knees and pushes himself up. “Alright boss—I better be going.”
I say nothing, just keep looking at the concrete ground at my feet, which are red from night cold.
“You good?”
“Sure.”
He tuts. “You never gonna give me a straight answer?”
“Nooope.” I give him one shake of the head.
“Ahahah,” he laughs, slapping a big hand to my shoulder. “Alright—get up now, boss.”
I frown up at him.
“You're the one who's gotta go through that door—this is my stop...c’mon man! Get with the program!”
I get a whiff of some kinda BBQ, like New Jersey falafel, the greens stowed somewhere far away, so it’s just like New Castle in your backyard. Some guy’s voice goes on in the distance but I can’t make any of it out. I interpret it as a Pauly D looking gentleman on his second day out of prison, yelling “I fucking loved you!” to his girlfriend who’s now pregnant with someone else’s baby. It all makes me want to stay.
I don’t put on a show and sigh or frown anymore. I stand and slump past him back into the house. I don’t look back because of the feeling, maybe the hairs standing up on my back, and instead, go straight back to my room and collapse, face first, onto the bed and dream about nothing.