And now I'm going to skip to the very end of the story.
They've not only met the legendary Gato,
but they've gone out to lunch with him.
"All the time, those smoky blue eyes ignoring James and Jim B,
yet measuring Van.
James Gato did not like at all, not his obsequious ways, not
the presumed intimacy.
James was giving Gato indigestion.
Van had seen it happen before.
And Van saw other things, flashes of light,
some from high in the window of a building, a body
in the backseat of a car.
Maybe there were two bodies, the souls faint.
It was like watching an old Mexican movie
at his nonna's when she had only the black and white
and it flickered every time something exciting happened,
and so the story was always shadowy and always jerky
and always in Spanish.
Eres mío.
He had heard these voices all through group, all
through lunch.
Yo te mato.
Or rather, how to explain he hadn't heard them exactly,
not in his ear, except for cuidado, eh, the same phrase
as before.
That was whispered right next to his ear, definitely external.
He could feel the breath of the speaker.
Sometimes there were voices, not literally voices,
but more like phrases that randomly floated
through his head, as in telepathy,
the aural equivalent of an opium dream,
sounds you've never heard but that are nevertheless
vivid and real, as vivid and real as anything
in your waking life.
Whereas cuidado, eh, was uttered, came from outside,
was maybe his dad.
After all, the hair had stood up on the back of his neck
when Gato asked them to meet him at the crossroads for lunch.
Clearly it had been a mistake to go.
Yet he had ignored his gut, even with his father watching over
him.
And that set him on edge, sent through him
a pure rush of adrenaline whenever
he considered objectively the recklessness
of the James and Jim B business venture.
After lunch, when Gato shook Van's hand, he said, "You,
I can trust."
And there it was, the foil that held
the cure, the only calm in the world,
right there in the palm of his hand.
Van could see the flame under the spoon,
the glass-packed syringe, the bodies
in the backseat of the car.
He could see Darlene draped across a bed crying.
No, revise that.
Darlene at a table signing books, her smile insincere,
her fame small consolation.
He could see a prison cell, then a small room in an old motel,
where the disabled and discarded rented rooms for $300 a month.
Te vas a caer, the voice said.
Gato's blue eyes watched.
The phone in Van's pocket vibrated.
The door of the motel opened and an old man
stood there, an old man with gnarled hair and yellow teeth
and nicotine-stained fingers, dirty clothes.
He lit a cigarette and waited for his sister."
That's the end.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.