The Soup and Sorrow Digest

A man needs a plan.

Elena had demanded Ricardo they go to a music show on the Sunset Strip. The show was a carousel of multicolored lights and a fog of cries and smoke. They were up and close to the stage, and all Ricardo could see were feet, wires, the black bases of music stands.  The electronic whine of the synthesizer smothered him, and yet the quiet found him. It stunned him. It brought Robert’s voice back to him and entwined the neural burls in his brains. Robert’s lisp scratching his skull to dig for meaning.  The runny watery profile of Robert always sniffling, snorting or oinking, always something about irritating in his nostrils, something that should have obviated his seemingly wise person.  Elena was flailing her hands like a heavy penguin, twisting and popping her head up and down in a choreography entirely directed by madness.  But this was music, this was fun, it was free and liberating.  And the lights arcing across the black ceiling, blinding the dark and their eyes to whoever was screaming over there.  Everything pressed around him demanding him to enjoy the decibels hounding from the gigantic three-way speakers, demanding him to conjure dopamine in the neural tangles of his brain.

His pitiful words to Robert about the girls he did not mind came back to him. He saw he was just like José bragging about foursomes and fivesomes. Just like José at the hospital trying to be threatening, standing on his toes to reach for the extra two inches that should shock him to submission.  He remembered José’s breaths, noiseless and harshly still, like something thick and heavy in the air had plugged him.  Maybe not the air, but words that would be said, or should have been said, like that day on Celina Street when Ricardo mentioned not-too-discretely about Steve and his dimple. José lashed out for being carelessly open but just as soon inexplicably shriveled, giving him that same wordless stare. Ricardo recognized fear, confusion, but in his myopic manner, he chided him for being jealous. José grumbled insensibly and said he could do what he wanted and they should stick to being friends. He agreed, perhaps too flippantly. He did not remember feeling broken about it.

And looking up the crotch of the singer standing over him, Ricardo realized that José had dumped him. He had hurt Jose and he did not know. How did he miss that? Idiota, that was what he was, a dunce who was too stupid to know to when feel pain and shame, so stupid to think that he could reclaim his place at the family table. Maybe José was justified in turning against him. Maybe his parents were justified in kicking him out of the house. And here he was thinking, all he had to do was tickle Marisol, nag Jésus about taking too long to read the Conan comic, smile stupendously through Selena’s litany of worries, and things would be fine. Right. Idiota.

Ricardo felt the energy of the crowd gather and press thickly against his torso. His chest was tight; breathing was difficult. A sound cascade of the kick drums trembled through his being and flattened his senses further into the miasma of the hall.

The next morning Ricardo did not feel like going to school. He sat like a defeated Buddha on the couch, nodding off to the blares of the lusty lawnmower outside. The walls vibrated with off-sounds of Elena too busy in the bathroom. He rubbed his eyes, circles over circles, squinting and squeezing, and still he did not feel like going to school. Not today to crawl in the blinding gloss of the linoleum hallways, or stand tall before Miguel’s gimlet eyes, or laugh off the dismissive droop in Cherry’s hands. Not another day to dare the vacuum fraught with mutters and murmurs.

He rolled off the couch and stumbled to the kitchen. The sink was still full of Elena’s dishes. With the open bowl of flour on the countertop, there was still a plan afoot to bake oatmeal cookies.  Ricardo sighed. It was useless to tell her to clean up, it was useless for him to clean up. Living with Elena was useless. It was only matter of time before she would kick him out for living rent-free.  And everything would be as Robert said, he would be another homeless fa*** sucking di** for six night hours on a couch.