Lone Star Legend Read online

  Somehow, Daniel telling her she was too good didn’t convince her. And the way he described her situation made her not want to give the answer he expected.

  In her mind, she was framing the argument “What if this turns out to be a big opportunity for me?” But the door chimes tinkled behind her, and his attention wavered.

  “Mr. Thomas! Daniel!” cooed a whole flock of female freshmen who’d obviously wandered over between classes. Sandy watched her boyfriend flip his long bangs off his glasses in response and sit up a little straighter against the red vinyl of their booth. She felt herself become temporarily invisible. Like the super-powered girlfriend of the much more super guy.

  It should have annoyed Sandy, the way this always happened. Daniel’s female students—or any of his students, actually—showed up and then she ceased to exist. But what could she expect? He was their hero. Their demi-god, almost. He was handsome and smart, and he was a published author. He was, in short, everything they aspired to be. And Sandy was his girlfriend, the role that so many of his female students, and probably some of the male ones, too, would have killed to play. So she sat still and let them have their moment in the sun, basking in Daniel’s company.

  This little group—the chubby girl, the gawky girl, the kind-of-cute-but-very-annoying girl—posed questions about essays and readings. Daniel answered them with dry jokes and they giggled like middle-schoolers. They may as well have had big pink hearts flashing above their heads. Sandy couldn’t blame them, could she? She’d fallen for Daniel in just the same way, two years before, in the poetry class they’d taken together.

  While he graced the young women with his attention, Sandy took the opportunity to gather her thoughts. Her arguments, really. For some reason she felt a need to argue. To play devil’s advocate, as it were.

  Daniel dismissed the young women with a benevolent air, and she popped back into existence. By then she’d come up with a few points to make about Nacho Papi’s Web Site and the possibility that she might end up writing material that was edgy and entertaining but still literary. Before she could get into it, though, Daniel pulled out his tattered briefcase.

  “Listen, Sandy—sorry, but I have to get back to my office soon. Can you… Would you mind looking at something for me really quickly?”

  Sandy bit back her words, momentarily annoyed. But then Daniel flipped his hair back again and she nodded. He wanted to show her a new poem, she knew. And she was one of the very few people Daniel trusted to read his new poetry. He was working on a book-length collection for his thesis, and she’d read everything he’d written for it so far.

  Pushing his barely touched plastic plate aside, he removed a worn Moleskine from his briefcase, opened it to the designated place, and turned it to face Sandy. The inky, scratchy piece on the page was titled “She Walks into Obscurity.” Sandy eagerly pulled the book closer while Daniel, unable to stand watching anyone read his work, went to the cashier and paid for their lunch-slash-dinner.

  Marching, obstinate, she fades from me and

  I, disconsolate, am touched/not touched

  By she who is maybe nothing more

  Than a mask? shell? a shade of what

  Once seemed indispensable, now just

  Indistinguishable, a thousand pretty faces

  Marching onward.

  And I am touched/not touched by

  Myself, I walk alone, into aching hills of

  Inscrutable lonely horizons

  Daniel returned from the register and fell into his seat heavily. “So? What do you think? I mean, not your opinion of the piece, itself, because it isn’t ready for that, yet. But any, you know, anything you notice that’s worth further development…”

  “I know,” she said. He meant that he wanted only positive feedback. That was all he ever wanted. Like all the other writers she knew, Daniel was sensitive to criticism. He was more sensitive than most, in fact. Which was strange, considering that he was also the most successful writer she knew, and the most literary. But Sandy always worded her critiques very carefully. She didn’t want him to stop trusting her with his work.

  “It’s good,” she said. “Very…” She searched for a comment she hadn’t already recently used. “… lyrical.” She paused, then went ahead and asked what she couldn’t help but wonder. “This isn’t about us, is it? About me?”

  “Sandy.” His sigh was obviously exasperated, even though he tried to hide it. He took the notebook from her, packed it away, and made motions as if he might run out the door at any moment. “Come on. You know I don’t write about any specific person or situation. You know I work in metaphor, in allegory….”

  “Right, right,” she said. “Well, then I only have one other comment. I’m not sure it’s the kind of feedback you want yet, but it seems kind of important.”

  He waved impatiently for Sandy to go on.

  “There’s a line in there about touching yourself.”

  “What? No, there isn’t.” He stood up, then, and made as if to help her out of the booth with abrupt, unnecessary chivalry.

  Sandy grabbed her bag, but kept talking. “I think there is. Something like ‘I am touched or not touched, by myself’? You want to be careful with that. You don’t want it to sound like—”

  “Okay,” he said, cutting Sandy off, turning his back on her and heading for the exit. “Thanks, sweetie. I appreciate it. Come on. I have to get going.”

  As he walked Sandy to her car, she asked if she’d see him later. It was Friday night, after all. Date night, as she’d heard it called.

  “I don’t know. Can I get back to you on that? I have a late department meeting and then two classes’ worth of essays to slog through. Maybe you can come over and help me grade? Or we could have a beer with the gang at the Fat Man, if you really want to go out.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” She left it at that and, with a quick, bumpy kiss, they parted.

  She was almost relieved, to tell the truth. She wasn’t in the mood to grade Daniel’s papers or listen to his friends wax poetic about their own poetry. Plus, she had a lot to think about. So maybe it was just as well that she did her own thing that night.

  5

  Reader comment on My Modern TragiComedy, Wednesday, March 8

  Hey, Miss TragiComic TX!

  Yes, I know *exactly* how you feel. Seems like those popular kids follow you everywhere, doesn’t it? I’ve been working in engineering for seven years now. I thought I’d be safe from them there but, wouldn’t you know it, we had to get a *marketing* team and it was nothing but those cheerleader and jock types.

  So I feel you. Keep your chin up, girl! I’m sure they can’t run that business without you, no matter how it seems.

  Comment left by: Sunny B

  6

  Sandy read the comment from the stranger on her laptop, on her coffee table, in her garage apartment. It was a stranger she kind of knew, actually, one who read her blog—her online journal—every week. Each week strangers like Sunny B and Moan-a Lisa commented on Sandy’s virtual messages-in-a-bottle, and reading their comments made her smile. It was comforting to know that someone understood you and empathized, even if you’d never met that someone in real life.

  When Sandy had first told Daniel she was considering starting a blog, a year ago now, his immediate response was “Why? Only untalented, attention-starved teenagers write blogs.” By that time she’d already posted a few entries under her pseudonym that she’d been prepared to show him if he took an interest. But obviously he didn’t, so she said nothing more about it.

  Sandy had told her best friends Veronica and Jane about it, too, of course. But she’d sworn them to secrecy, so the blog was practically anonymous. Sandy was pretty sure her friends had forgotten about it, or had lost the link. They never left comments on it or said anything about its contents to Sandy on the phone. So it was, for all intents and purposes, completely safe. It was nothing more than a way for Sandy to get stuff off her chest and to keep her writing skills sharp in the p
rocess.

  Having read the only blog comment she’d gotten so far that day, Sandy stood and walked over to her closet to change into something more comfortable. Spring had just started, which meant that the mornings were still cool but the afternoons were boiling hot.

  Sandy felt a little guilty because she’d been home for an hour already and hadn’t done any work on the procedure manual she was writing for QBS Systems or on her audition samples for Nacho Papi’s Web Site. But she couldn’t help it—the QBS stuff was too boring, and just thinking about doing her Nacho Papi samples was freezing her into major writer’s block. She needed to quit thinking about it for a while, if possible.

  As she crossed the tiny main room of the garage apartment, she stole a glance at the front windows, making sure that hers was still the only car in the driveway. If Sandy was lucky, she could change her clothes, call and find someone to hang out with, and then leave before her landlady got home.

  In the bathroom-slash-dressing room, she switched out her work jeans for evening jeans and her short-sleeved maroon knit work top for a slightly darker maroon T-shirt. Pulling it over her head, Sandy readjusted her glasses and checked her reflection. Her dark hair had stayed in its ponytail okay. Her makeup wasn’t smudged because she hadn’t put any on that day. Therefore, she looked fine.

  Making the three steps back to her living room, Sandy was sighted from the front windows before she could even think to hide.

  “Sandy! What are you doing home so soon, m’ija? Come in the kitchen, baby—I’m gonna make quesadillas!”

  Her landlady was home. Obviously. The woman had seen Sandy’s silhouette and had no qualms about simply yelling up invitations from the backyard.

  Sandy stood still in the middle of her room and considered declining the offer. In the end, however, she turned and headed for the stairs. It wasn’t a good idea to hurt your landlady’s feelings, she decided. Especially not when your landlady was also your mother.

  Sandy sighed as she took her little staircase down to inevitability. It’d been sixteen months since she’d moved out of her mother’s house, into the garage apartment, and she’d paid rent every month on time. But her rent money hadn’t bought her the independence—the privacy—she’d been hoping for.

  It was true that she wasn’t yet independent enough to afford a real apartment—not at Austin prices, anyway, unless she wanted to live with a roommate or three. But she’d hoped that establishing a formal business relationship with her mother would also put in place a sort of professional buffer zone.

  She’d been mistaken, though. At best, she was merely helping her mother with expenses on the two-bedroom yellow house Sandy’s father had left them. At worst, she’d become a fellow working woman in her mother’s eyes, and therefore someone her mom would try to commiserate with more often.

  As Sandy crossed the backyard to the door that led to her mother’s kitchen, she told herself that she’d just eat one quesadilla and let Mom probe her life a little. The woman worked hard and got lonely. She needed Sandy to humor her once in a while.

  IN HER MOTHER’S kitchen, which was about eighty percent yellow Formica, Sandy sat and ate the quesadillas, the generic sandwich cookies, and the fruit-flavored drink that were set out for her. It was the same snack her mother had been serving since Sandy was in elementary school, except that Sandy had finally, mercifully, convinced her mother to switch from Kool-Aid to sugar-free Fruit-Ade.

  “So how’s my Danny doing?” her mother asked first thing. She meant Daniel. She called him Danny after John Travolta’s character in Grease. She called Sandy Sandy for the same reason. Sandy’s real name was Dominga, after her paternal grandmother. Domingo meant Sunday in Spanish and, as her mom reasoned, Sunday kind of sounded like Sandy, which is what she would’ve named their baby if Sandy’s father had let her. Thus, the nickname had been born.

  Mrs. Saavedra, as she liked to be known, had been feverishly excited when Sandy started dating Daniel two years ago. She was convinced that Daniel was Sandy’s soulmate, just like Danny was the other Sandy’s, in the movie. Never mind that her mom’s favorite movie seemed to be all about this Sandy person getting a slutty makeover in order to keep Danny from cheating on her. Every time the real Sandy pointed that out, or pointed out that no one called Daniel Danny, her mom just blew her off and started singing “Summer Nights.”

  So Mrs. Saavedra wanted to know how “her Danny” was doing, and Sandy told her that she didn’t know, that she hadn’t seen much of him lately.

  “Uh-oh,” her mother immediately said. “That’s not good. He’s not hooking up with one of those little hussy students of his, is he?”

  Sandy saw her mother’s eyes gleam as she licked the filling off her chocolate cookie. It was as if the possibility of Daniel cheating was fascinating enough to warrant any hurt feelings Sandy might have over it. Her mother always loved stories about adultery, for some reason.

  “No, Mom,” Sandy said firmly, wishing she’d never confided in her mother about Daniel’s flirty students to begin with. She’d learned her lesson since then and now gave her mom as little information as possible.

  “You know, Sandy, maybe it’s time for a change.”

  Sandy already knew where her mother was going with this, but there was no stopping the woman, so she didn’t even try.

  “A change with your hair, m’ija. Maybe it’s time for some highlights.” Her mom patted her own brassy curls. “Or you could go red. This Elvira thing you have…. Men like to see a little color, you know?”

  The Elvira thing to which she referred was another old movie reference, this time to Sandy’s natural dark hair and to the fact that she preferred dark clothing. Sandy wore a lot of dark colors, in general, because it was easier that way. She was petite, so pastels had the tendency to make her look too girly. And she needed to be taken seriously if she was going to give this writing thing a serious shot. When she wasn’t at LatinoNow—Nacho Papi now, she reminded herself—she was at software and engineering companies interviewing serious men about serious products, then turning their scientific explanations into words that normal people could understand. Serious as a heart attack, at triple minimum wage per hour.

  “And when are you going to get rid of those glasses, m’ija? Jesus Mother Mary, those glasses!”

  Her mom made a move as if to reach for said glasses, and Sandy shielded them protectively. She needed her glasses—not only to see, but to look professional. No matter how many times she’d explained it, her mother had refused to understand.

  Mrs. Saavedra had the same naturally dark hair and the same nearsighted eyes, and the same petite frame, plus about twenty pounds that she swore Sandy was responsible for, since Sandy had come out of her via C-section. But their personal style philosophies couldn’t have been more different.

  Sandy’s mother always wore bright pink or purple or orange, preferably all at once, along with some kind of animal print. And she’d been covering her gray with golden blond and sporting long, razored-to-hell layers for years and years, before Sandy had begged her to cut off all her split ends and assume a blunt bob like a normal mother.

  “Mom. Please. I’ve already told you. I’m not going to change my hair, my clothes, or my anything. Daniel’s just fine with the way I look.”

  She pouted a little, but Sandy could tell her mom had gotten the message and wasn’t going to risk driving Sandy out of the house by saying anything more on the subject. Instead she switched to mining info on Sandy’s job.

  “So, how was work today, m’ija? Your new boss is there now, right? The fancy lady from New York?”

  “Yes. I met with her yesterday.” Sandy left it at that. There was no use telling her mom that the fancy lady from New York hadn’t even decided to keep Sandy on as a staff writer yet. Sandy had until Sunday night to get her audition samples done, and she needed to concentrate on that without any maternal distractions. She’d had a hard enough time convincing her mother that writing for a Web Site was a real job, in t
he same way that sitting in her apartment typing software manuals for faceless employers was also a real job that paid Sandy real money. Her mom knew what a freelance writer did, in theory, but Sandy suspected that she preferred to imagine her daughter crafting paperback romances under a pen name.

  “So, your old boss, what happened to him again? Did he get fired?”

  Sandy reflected, not for the first time, that her mother should have been a journalist herself. She was always trying to sniff out a scandal.

  “No, he didn’t get fired. He got transferred to another media entity. He moved to San Antonio.”

  “And so they brought this lady in from New York? Sounds like a demotion for her. I wonder what she did.”

  “I don’t think it’s a demotion,” Sandy said, hurrying to explain before her mother got carried away and started up rumors. “She was in charge of putting Mujer magazine online, and she was really successful at it. So, LatinoNow’s new owners hired her away from them.”

  “Oh-h-h!” breathed her mother. “You didn’t tell me she ran Mujer! That’s my favorite! I always look at their Web page at work.”

  Sandy nodded. She’d seen the Mujer site, of course. She’d looked it up the moment she and her co-workers had first discovered Angelica was taking over. And she’d learned that Angelica had taken the glossy, gossipy magazine with its endless features on Latina stars and their boob jobs and made it into the most successfully interactive Web site Sandy had ever seen. Readers were invited to comment and vote on every photo on the site, and it was chock-full of contests and promotions by advertisers. Even though Mujer had gone out of print, it was apparently making all kinds of money in its new incarnation as a Web site, and Angelica was the one responsible. Sandy had to admit that it was exactly the kind of entertainment that would appeal to her mother, and to thousands or maybe millions of other women like her.