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8. Dreams of the Blind
- University Press of Colorado
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105 8 Dreams of the Blind Facts and truths keep us whole and sane. But nothing in this world is at it seems, not the light, not the dark, not the sound of an elephant weeping, nor the touch of a lover’s hand. And most certainly not the truth. “Victor Delgado!” a woman in a cage shouts into a tired PA system. “Front!” The speakers rattle with her efforts. She looks like she’s spent the better part of her life on a barstool, smoking cigarettes, drinking watered gin, and waiting on her next exhusband -to-be. Hard and polished like the runners on an old sled. I’m glad it’s not my name she’s calling. I turn my back to her and scan the men standing in this room with me to see if I can guess which one is Victor. The room is not big— wooden floor and the far wall lined with thin, tall windows. A couple of sofas sit slump-shouldered against the near wall, and six or eight men are scattered like stones across the dirty floor. Some of them are talking, others are watching me. Every one of them looks like he knows about DOI:10.5876/9781607322337:c08 l o u s y s e x 106 me already—without a word from me. Some sort of pissant that has never spent a day in jail. Maybe they’re right about the pissant part, but they’re wrong about the rest of it. I turn toward the woman in the cage. She’s looking at a magazine now. Splashed across the page that has drawn her away from me, Cher appears in the arms of aliens, all caught in the blinding explosion of a photographer’s flash. And then Victor comes walking out from a side hallway. I turn to watch. The man is shorter than I expected, muscular with a rolling gait like he might have been a sailor, and thick through the shoulders. His black hair has thinned across the top of his head, and his goatee is mostly gray. He’s older than I expected. He has time in jail written all over him. “Hello,” he says to me. Which, unexpectedly startles me. I say nothing to him. “Are you Gerald?” he asks, like he might ask a child. “Hello,” I say. “Yes, I am.” He reaches for my right hand, his palm slick and dry and his grip to the point. We shake. He smells of lemony cologne. “Do you want to sit outside?” he asks, looking me in the eye. It is July. The air is thick with summer, and a little breeze is rolling down from the mountains. “Sure,” I say, in spite of myself, and then add, “if it’s all right,” eyeing the lizard woman and her tabloid. “Yeah, we’re allowed outside,” Victor says, glancing at the woman with the magazine. She steps sideways to spit into a trashcan. Something about that makes me think a little better of her. While my mouth fills with its own spit, Victor pushes me aside and heads for the door. He is wearing a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, no belt. Old tattoos on both his forearms have been poorly scratched into scars. His neck stands up thick and creased across the back, deep brown. As we walk, I stare at his back, muscled, filling up his shirt, and I watch the slow roll of his hips. His walk says more to me in ten seconds than his words will for four months, or so I think. Outside, a small knot of men stands on the concrete patio, idly smoking cigarettes and watching the college girls across the street. Most of the men are young, younger even than Victor, whom I’d put at about forty. No one speaks to us. [52.91.255.225] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:54 GMT) D r e a m s o f t h e B l i n d 107 We walk around a corner of the building, and Victor points to a spot on the lawn near the wall. Both of us sit. Victor leans back against the red brick and drops his hands across his knees. His fingers fall across his blue jeans like polished wooden pegs. For a moment, I worry about his crime, and how it will be for me working with him. We are sitting against the...