Tecate Sunset
When I got there, she was sitting on the back of a dusty pick-up truck, sipping on a bottle of Mexican beer. Her hair, writhing serpents against the fuchsia sky, seemed a woven mess atop her head. I’d never seen it like that.
“You all right?” I asked, approaching carefully from behind.
“Mm,” she replied, never turning her gaze from the setting sun.
I slid slowly toward her left side and leaned conspicuously against the truck. I tried not to notice the smell of cigarettes, cocoa butter, and baby powder that hung stiffly on the air, but I liked it, and as usual, I couldn’t resist touching her.
“Not today,” she warned, stiffening her leg as my hand ran softly up her thigh. I tried to ignore her, but the reddening of her knuckles as she gripped the bottle moving slowly toward her lips gave me pause. Her leg relaxed, and she tilted the bottle up, finishing the last ounce.
“You sure you all right?” I asked again, this time looking intently at her face.
She never returned my stare. Instead, she reached back into the cooler and pulled out two more beers: the first she placed firmly between the meatiest part of her thighs, letting the condensation gather gently, and the second she handed to me after she’d twisted off the top.
“What you doing way out here anyway? Whose truck is this?”
“I had something to do.”
“You ain’t really telling me nothing. Whose truck is this? What are you doing out here?”
She twisted off the top of her bottle and drank the beer in long, hard gulps. She turned to me, for the first time, and looked me squarely in the eyes. “Just shut the fuck up and drink.”
Memos from the Middle 