In Big Trouble

Prologue

A sign hangs next to the cradle of Texas liberty, reminding visitors that concealed firearms are not permitted on the grounds.

She stops and examines this as if it were new to her, although the sign has been posted for several years now. "Don't bring your gun to the Alamo," she intones, to see how it sounds out loud, then laughs, startling a little boy. ("Mama, that lady is talking to herself. Mama-") Don't bring your gun to the Alamo. A nice phrase, but it doesn't make the cut. She won't record it in one of her little notebooks, the ones where she keeps her lists of first lines, fragments of poems, names for everything. Names for bands, names for songs. Names for the children she'll never have and titles for the memoir she'll never write, although her story packs some shock value, even in these jaded times. Oprah would need a whole week to get it all in.

Within the walls, it's like being in a shallow dish-azure sky above, the taller buildings crowded around, dwarfing the Spanish mission, which isn't very big to begin with. She walks through the gardens, noting the placement of each plant, each bench, each sign. Change is not to be tolerated. She picks up a cup with a little electric blue raspa juice inside and drops it in the trash, as fastidious in her own way as the Alamo's keepers, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. It is a shrine, and not only to Texas liberty. A shrine to her, to them. She even brings the same breakfast every time-two barbacoa tacos, coffee, an elephant ear, and the Sunday paper. She gets the pastry, while the tacos are for him, her own holy ghost.

He had been the first to bring her here, although she later learned she had not been the first he had brought here. Important distinction. Nor would she be the last, as it turned out. "Ever had breakfast at the Alamo?" he had asked her that first morning when they finally pulled away from each other, eyes bright, bodies limp, the cheap pearls of her broken necklace rolling beneath them, pressing into their flesh, so her skin was beaded like the white gown she had worn earlier. When everything was over, when she was banished from his life and had nothing left, she still had those words. "Breakfast at the Alamo." She knew others would be charmed by them as she had once been charmed.

And she began to see how a former lover's tricks could be appropriated and turned against him.

It was only a matter of time before the two of them showed up one Sunday with different, unwitting partners. She caught his glance across the courtyard, held it tight. The young woman with him had tried to see where his gaze had strayed, but he grabbed her hand and retreated. He had a horror of scenes, of anything ugly and public.

She didn't. That was her power. He had never shown up again, hadn't dared, and Breakfast at the Alamo became her exclusive property. Her signature, her trick of the trade, her trade for the trick. Rolling toward the warm body next to her on a Sunday morning, eyes still closed, mouth closed, too, so as not to inhale too much of the sour smell that strangers brought to one's bed. "Hey, darlin', ever had breakfast at the Alamo?"

Breakfast at the Alamo. Now that was a great name for anything-a band, a memoir, a betrayal. It was on all her lists. The world was full of poetry. Pick up a menu, for example, and there was "Shaved Meats, Piled High." That was going to be volume one of her unwritten memoir. She also liked the sign that had hung next to the Tunnel of Love at the old Funland amusement park: "C'mon Scaredy Cat, Let's Go Through." Of course, you had to be "this tall" to ride that ride, according to the grinning elf who stood next to the entrance with his measuring stick. By the time she was tall enough, Funland was long gone, its fixtures sold at public auction. Goodbye Scaredy Cat. And goodbye elf, you smug little S.O.B., with your measuring stick and your smirk for all those under five feet.

So she found her inspiration in the headlines and the rack cards, from the days when a sleazy tabloid king had owned one of the local papers. SEWER BOY STILL MISSING. GUNNED DOWN PREGNANT CAT FIGHTS FOR LIFE. GLUE DOG ON THE MEND. LITTLE GIRL IN BIG TROUBLE. TRUANT SAYS, "LET'S RAPE CHRISTY'S MAMA." 10,000 TOENAILS AID IN CANCER FIGHT. These, too, went into her little notebooks.

The lists had been something else they had done together, her gift to him. Sudden thought: Had he stolen those, as she had stolen Breakfast at the Alamo? Did he carry a notebook like hers, impress his new girls with the music of everyday life? No, he wouldn't make a list with anyone else, she was sure of that. Because he was better than she was. That's why she loved him still. That's why she hated him.

She works slowly through the paper and her elephant ear, savoring both. As always, she saves the society pages for last. It's skimpy this week, not much going on. Pretty soon the fall parties will start and that will change. Everyone who's anyone is on the circuit from Halloween on, especially now, with this stupid All Soul Festival. She used to be an anyone.

She closes her eyes, enjoying the sun, which has finally begun to relinquish its summer-tight grip on the city. It feels good. It feels good just to be alone. A few days ago, the flaws of the latest man had surfaced all at once, the details swimming into focus, the way a photo's image takes shape in a pan of developer. His pores were too large, his eyes the wrong color, his ties the wrong width. He wasn't tall enough. They were never tall enough, no one was tall enough. He didn't have the guts to go through with it. Another list to keep and maintain, a catalog of defects that always began and ended the same way: Not him.

But you don't have to be with someone to have breakfast at the Alamo. Actually, it's better alone. As long as she stays in the gardens. She doesn't like the buildings-the Long Barracks, the high-ceilinged souvenir shop where she once coveted the blue and white Alamo dinnerware. The buildings are cold as crypts, chilled by the horrible memories they hold. Places can remember, too. But here, in the garden, beneath the hot, healing sun, the soil has forgotten all the blood it has known. She wishes she could forget. She wishes she could remember. Wake up, Mommy. Wake up, Mommy.

"Tienes sueños, pobrecita?"

The voice makes her start, and the barbacoa tacos tumble to the ground from her lap. Tienes sueños-Are you sleepy? He uses the Spanish reluctantly, at her insistence. But it's so much better in Spanish: Do you have dreams? Nothing but.

She squints into the sunlight.

"Why are you here?"

"I couldn't find you this morning. I worried."

"We broke up. Remember, I broke up with you?" Not cruel, just stating the facts.

"I know. And I know why. But I can't turn my back on you."

"You're going to help me?" Incredulous, not quite trusting him, although she wants to so badly. She needs an ally.

"I promise," he says. "I'll help you, and you'll help me."

She wonders if he thinks this means he'll get to crawl on top of her again. As much as she could use his assistance, she isn't sure she could stomach that. Once she's done with a man, she's done. It's like trying to reheat a cup of coffee. Dark, bitter stuff. But she doesn't think he's trying to find a way back into her bed. Truth is, he had seemed even less interested than she, if such a thing were possible.

But he's going to help her. Her mood takes off, like a rocket. In her joy, she pleats the grease-stained bag from her breakfast into a tiny accordion and pretends to play it. "A little conjunto music, ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome la señorita con la concertina, la señorita mas bonita, la señorita de las carnitas, la señorita de Suenos Malos." She sings, one of her favorite old folk songs. "Ay te dejo en San Antonio." I've already left you in San Antonio.

A few tourists look up, smiling hopefully, as if her song might redeem their wasted morning. The Alamo can be the ultimate anticlimax, the guaranteed disappointment to end all disappointments, at least for those who dream of wind-swept plains and a Davy Crockett who looked like John Wayne. "It's so small," outsiders always complain. "And there's a Burger King across the street." Personally, she likes the way the mission is plopped down in the middle of real life. Home of the Whopper meets the fort of the whopper, with all its little lies, all those stories told to make it cleaner, better, nicer. Davy Crockett swinging old Betsy, Jim Bowie groaning on his cot with a broken leg, William Barrett Travis drawing the line that separated the men from the boys. Death made people so pure. Did it matter if none of it was true? Did it matter if all of it was true?

"Maybe I should sing a few bars of the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.' Bet I'd make some money before the Daughters kicked me out."

He isn't amused.

"If I help you, then you have to listen to me, do things my way. You have to stop doing shit like this. Nice and normal, remember? That's how you fly under the radar. Nice and normal."

"Who wants to be nice? Or normal?" She drops her makeshift accordion, begins breaking apart a scab on her calf. It reminds her of bacon, the way it crunches in her fingers. She scratches her shin, drawing fresh blood. Normal is giving up. Normal is everybody else, going on with their lives. Normal is the real sickness, the pretense that lets your body live while your soul shrivels inside. Besides, she wants him to know she's back in town, wants him to be aware of her. She wants him to sit up in bed at night, wondering if he just felt her hot breath on his neck. Tienes sueños, pobrecita?

Blood dribbles down her leg, warm as a teardrop. He grabs her hands, holding her fingers tight so she can't pick at herself anymore. "Everything you want, you'll have," he says, his voice almost pleading. "But you have to trust me."

She shakes her head up and down, pretending to agree, trusting no one and hoping no one trusts her. Everything you want. Men made such promises so easily. Alamo dinnerware, a new pearl necklace, a car upon high school graduation, a safe place in the world, love everlasting. It's her lot in life to have nothing she wants, she knows that now. She sees herself as she wants to be, sleeping peacefully, just like the photograph. Sees him as she wants him to be, screaming, screaming, screaming, his mouth as round and wide as the entrance to a carnival ride that never ends. C'mon scaredy cat, let's go through. She's ready. She's tall enough now-and old enough, and sad enough, and desperate enough.

She's ready.