Free Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken

“Flip, I’m Graciela.”
    “Graciela. Nice to meet you.”
    “I haven’t seen you around before.”
    “No, I’m new. I just got in,” Flip said. From prison, he thought, but didn’t add. Graciela did not seem like the kind of girl who would be impressed by such a thing and suddenly Flip found it very important that she think well of him.
    “Do you work with José?”
    “Actually I just got a job at a warehouse.”
    “I thought everybody here worked with José.”
    Flip did not know how to answer that. He asked himself what he would tell a total stranger. “José is a friend of a friend,” he said at last. “He’s looking out for me.”
    “I understand.”
    “Good, because I don’t,” Flip joked. He laughed and she laughed and Flip wished they were somewhere else besides this loud, smoky room. She looked very good, but he thought she would look good in anything; she was that kind of woman.
    “Do you want to sit down?”
    “Sure, okay.”
    They found a table no one was using and sat across from each other. Flip drank from his margarita and wished he’d just gotten a beer instead. But then what would Graciela think of that? Too working-class, too ordinary? He felt stupid that he couldn’t recognize what she was drinking, but he didn’t know that stuff.
    “Where are you from?” Graciela asked him.
    “Oh, I’m from El Paso. My parents are from here, too. Well, my father was from Juárez, but my mother came from here.”
    “Ah. When you said you just got in, I thought you were from somewhere else.”
    There it was again. Flip did not want to lie to her. “I was away for a few years. Doing other things.”
    “Okay,” Graciela said and Flip felt a great tension ease.
    “Where are you from?”
    “I come from here, too. I grew up in the Second Ward.”
    “Really? So did I.”
    “That’s cool,” Graciela said. “Maybe we were neighbors and didn’t know it.”
    “Maybe.”
    It was easier to talk to her then. From time to time Flip looked over her shoulder and saw José with Emilio or somebody else, deep in conversation. Once Flip thought he caught José looking at him from across the room.
    Flip learned that Graciela went to cosmetology school and worked at a craft store during the day. She had three sisters, all younger than her, and an older brother who died. About how she met José she was less candid, but Flip didn’t care. He liked listening to her, even over the din of the house music, and watching her mouth form the words. Twice she asked him questions and he didn’t realize it. He blushed.
    He told her what he felt she should hear: about his family and growing up without brothers or sisters, but with plenty of cousins. About his father dying young. He did not tell her about shoplifting at eight and doing bicycle theft by thirteen. He did not tell her how he went to Coffield.
    By the time he checked his watch it was after midnight. They had four drinks between them and Flip felt sluggish. He looked around for Emilio, saw him kissing a girl in the corner. José was still drinking and still talking. When he caught Emilio watching, he smiled and waved.
    “I should probably get out of here,” Flip said.
    “You have to go?”
    “My mother… I’m living with my mother right now. She worries. If I stay out too late, she’ll never let me forget about it.” Flip started to get up, jostled the little table and almost toppled their glasses.Across the room Emilio looked over and Flip signaled to him.
    “Hey, wait,” Graciela said. “Let me give you my phone number. You can put it in your cell.”
    “I don’t have a cell phone,” Flip confessed. “Can you write it down?”
    “You don’t have a cell phone? Where have you been living?”
    “I mean I had one, but it broke. I need to get a new one.”
    “Give me a minute. I think I have a pen in my purse.”
    Graciela went away and Emilio came over. “You been talking to that girl a long time,” he said. “What’s she