Free What You See in the Dark by Manuel Munoz Page B

stairwell.
    She knew he was going to ask her to marry him. Not soon, but one day. What she felt for him was affection, not love:she liked the thrill of pulling him closer and closer, then the slight edge of relief when their guitar lessons were over for the night. There were days he stayed away and Teresa knew he’d gone back up into the northern parts of the Valley to make money, but even so, she didn’t want to leave the safety of her single room. It was hers and she was a twenty-three-year-old woman walking down the street and she was no longer Alicia’s daughter.
    “Do you sing?” he asked her in Spanish.
    She was about to say yes but realized that the songs she hummed to herself were all in English. She didn’t know how he would take this. “Sometimes.”
    “Would you sing me something?” He took the guitar and, surprisingly, began to strum something she recognized, a Patsy Cline song. She laughed and shook her head, refusing, but he kept playing the chords over and over until finally she complied, the song she knew so well from the dim glow of the radio, which she left on at night to lull her to sleep. She sang “Walkin’ After Midnight,” casting her eyes over at the open window, remembering her mother and how the room had to be quiet when her records played, the only sound the pain in those women’s voices.
    “Que lindo,” Cheno said when they finished.
    “Gracias,” she answered, and she was not surprised when Cheno reached over and touched her hand. She could feel the thin plastic of the guitar pick between his fingers, his touch light and unsure.
    “We should sing together,” he told her in Spanish.
    “What song?”
    “No,” he said. “I mean in public. At El Molino Rojo.”
    “Why there?”
    “So we can earn some money,” he answered. He kept his hand on hers, very light, as he would have done if he’d emerged from the secret shadow where he stood watching her in front of Stewart’s Appliances, reading her desires in the shows flickering across the screen, touching her shoulder. He was asking her for complicated reasons, Teresa knew—to fulfill her dreaming, yes, but also to make their work a joint effort, not just his own sweat in the field.
    “But how?” she asked.
    Someone on the corner had urged him to go audition at El Molino Rojo, where the bar owner let people sing for tips. Cheno’s plan was to go there on Tuesday afternoon, her day off from the shoe store, and meet her there once he finished whatever fieldwork he’d managed to get that day. She knew what side of town he was talking about, the avenue over on the west. Over there was El Molino Rojo. The Wild Horse. The Bluebird. The clientele went to the bars where they could pronounce the names. The signs in English glowed amber at night, an electric necklace of shimmering bulbs, some of them buzzing neon: the Fiddle, and Rosie’s with the namesake petals blooming in light. The Mexicans went to the cantinas with names beautiful and full of promise, even if the buildings were tucked away in the dark, no neon to speak of. El Club Diamante. El Paraíso. Teresa’s mother had spoken of cantinas in Texas with names that sounded just as regal. El Presidente. Las Angelinas. Saturday night the one night of the week for elegance, for the dress made from expensive-looking fabric purchased at the TG&Y.Such places! Such names! Why hadn’t the idea occurred to Teresa first, all those afternoons dreaming in front of Stewart’s, as if her mother had never given her stories about the cantinas up and down the state, over there near San Antonio, near Temple. La Lupita, La Conga. Even the little towns past the onion fields and the sweet potatoes had cantinas. Beeville, Kenedy, Mathis, and on to Corpus Christi. El Siete de Copas. El Espejo. El Gato Negro. El Peek-a-boo.
    There was no reason, really, to go against Cheno. Women sang in bars like that. People watched them and listened. Old blues songs or honky-tonk or country or ranchera