I wrote this story before "The Story of Frank." It's pretty depressing, but that's par for the course when it comes to my stories. I'd been out rock-hunting by the train tracks with Sam before I settled in to write the first draft. The character of Layton popped right into view (always a good sign that the story's going to work for me). My friend Jennifer provided Maricela's name. My apologies for the formatting; I just can't seem to get it dialed in.
Traté de Amo
The sound of the train woke Layton up, as it did most days. He stirred in the hotel bed, surrounded by pillows, the sheet draping his thin, pale body. He stretched and rolled over, but kept his eyes closed, listening to the rattling, clacking machine barrel down the tracks.
He'd grown up around trains and loved them. His uncle Bryce worked for CSX for sixty years before the company forced him into retirement at eighty. Bryce was the toughest man Layton had ever known, certainly tougher than his worthless daddy. When Bryce came to visit, Layton listened to his stories of working the trains while his daddy slouched in his recliner and drank beer after beer after beer. Layton's mother had enough sense to cut out of her marriage when Layton was still in diapers. He had no idea where she was.
Layton opened his eyes as the sounds of the train faded. He sat up slowly, feeling his back crackle and resist. He wasn't old—forty two next summer. But he looked old and felt old so people usually took him for old. I didn't bother Layton these days.
Naked, Layton walked to the windows shades and flung them open, not caring if a mother and her small children saw him, or a cop, or the hotel staff. He wasn't particularly proud or ashamed of his body. It was functional. He lingered in front of the window, letting the Texas sun gradually warm his chest, his neck, his arms. He turned, leaving the shades open, and went to take a leak.
Blood in the urine turned the bowl a delicate shade of pink. Layton shrugged. His kidney's had been flaring up again, no big surprise there. He knew he should get back to the doctor, determine if it was another infection or something worse this time. The last time he visited the doctor, though, Layton had sworn it to be the last. He didn't need some punk-ass kid straight out of medical school telling him to ease up on the bottle, watch his fat intake, or whatever nonsense they expect you to swallow when they shovel it. No, sir, Layton was finished with those roadblocks in his life.
Would he have done anything different if God had seen fit to reveal the plan, to pull back the universal curtain and whisper down from Heaven, "Hey, Layton, this is your final act. Make it count, my boy." Well, no. He would still go to the hotel room's tiny fridge, reach into its even tinier freezer, and pull out the pint of vodka, take a good, bracing pull. It always cleared his head in the morning, even as it burned a path down his throat and shook his insides up. Talk about a good morning salute. Good day, sunshine, let's start the day a little drunk.
He'd been staying the Gulch Creek Hotel now for nearly a month, and had paid rent through two months. Slightly buzzed, Layton surveyed the room. He'd added a few touches, though nothing permanent. He replaced one of the room's tacky beachscape paintings with a framed charcoal sketch of a man and a dog he'd seen at the flea market when he'd first blown into town. The old painting he stashed in the closet. He bought a ten dollar table at the Good Will so he could have two rather than one. He nailed a large nail above the bed where he placed his hat every night before he closed his eyes. When the maid Maricela said to him, "No, Mr. Layton, no. You no do that," he promised he would take the nail out, patch and paint over the hole when he cleared town. Maricela glared at him and stormed out, but she let the nail remain.
Since that night, Maricela was the only maid who cleaned Layton's room. He never placed the little plastic do not disturb sign on the handle, so it was nothing for her to stumble in on Layton totally naked, drinking cheap vodka, and watching reruns of Rockford Files. The first time it happened, she crossed herself, lowered her eyes, and backed out of the room. Layton had shrugged, turned up the volume, taken another sip. The second time, she came in the room, eyes still lowered, and waited.
"Can I help you, Maricela?" Layton asked lazily, vodka bottle firmly in hand, the TV playing out some sad black-and-white drama.
"Cleaning time, Mr. Layton."
"I'm aware."
"Why you are always naked?"
"Why do you always come in here at three when you know I'm naked?"
Maricela kept her head lowered. She could have answered, "Because Manuel say so," or "because that's the way it's always been." Instead, she backed out of the room, pulling her cart of sheets, towels, and cleaners.
" Christ," Layton said. "Let me put some pants on. But I'm not leaving, okay? I paid for this room straight up and you can't make me leave just because you're going to put on new sheets."
"Okay, Mr. Layton," Maricela said, inching her way back. Layton watched her approach the bed, admired her broad ass. He almost reached out to stroke it. He went into the bathroom, grabbed a pair of dingy Wranglers, and slipped them over his knobby hips. When he came back out, Maricela had already stripped the bed and was quickly applying the new sheets. He couldn't help but admire her efficiency.
"How long you been here?" Layton asked, firing up an unfiltered Camel.
Maricela didn't turn when she responded, "No smoking, Mr. Layton."
"Come on."
"No."
"I pay my money, Maricela, so just let me—"
"I say no, Mr. Layton."
Layton turned and flicked the cigarette in the sink, where it went out with a small hiss. He wondered if his mother had sounded like Maricela—firm with a slightly elevated voice, but not crazy.
"You haven't answered my question yet," Layton said.
Maricela brushed past him on the way to the bathroom with fresh towels. She gathered Layton's wet towels and washcloths. "Let me work," she said.
"All right, all right," Layton said, holding his hands up. "In fact, I'll just go out and smoke, come back when you're done."
"Gracias."
"De nada."
The third time she opened the door to Layton's naked, drunken self, she climbed in bed with him.
They didn't make love. There's a distinction between making love and what Layton and Maricela did. Love making is what you do when you're in love and maybe feel like taking your time. It's like heating up a pot of water of the stove. Pure fucking, on the other hand, deals with lust and immediacy. Want hot water? Run the tap for a few seconds until it burns like hell, and bam, you're fucking.
Layton had only ever fucked during the course of his sexual life, which was limited to four women. They were particularly impressive or pretty, and didn't have more than a few thoughts rattling around in their heads, which Layton preferred. His first time was with Stacy Horton, who was sixteen and Layton was nineteen. He had always told the boys in town he lost his virginity at fifteen, the average age of the liars he surrounded himself with. That fateful night, Stacy and Layton got thoroughly trashed on Boone's Farm and then got thoroughly vertical in the back of his Ford truck. Other girls, drunk or not, might have protested Layton's lack of protection, but Stacy didn't care. She was the kind of girl that gave blow jobs in high school bathrooms and bragged about it, hoping to inch up her popularity up among the boys. They boys continued treating her like trash, including Layton. That night left Layton finally feeling like a man and Stacy with a pregnancy that she later terminated in a botched abortion that left her unable to conceive.
The other three women were forgettable, disposable. After the last one—a wheelchair-bound woman with giant tits and a high, fluty voice—Layton cooled on women. It's not that the distracted him from his goals, since he didn't have any. Women just didn't add much to his life. Drinking became a much steadier companion.
For Maricela's part, sexual contact had always been accompanied by violence. Raped by her uncle and a cousin from age ten until fifteen, Maricela didn't trust men. In fact, she was normally terrified of them, but there was something about Layton, lying there naked and almost helpless, the smell of vodka and sweat clinging to him. She didn't think he would hurt her, and she found herself utterly surprised—and pleased— that she desired him.
So every afternoon, Maricela came to clean Layton's room and found him in some stage of drunkenness and always unclothed. If she timed it right at three o'clock, he was a little bit soused. If she doddled and waited until three-fifteen or three-thirty, which occasionally couldn't be helped, Layton could be nearly comatose. He could get it up most of the time, but a few days a week his equipment simply malfunctioned, and Layton would curse at himself, sometimes crying an apology before passing out on the bed. Maricela noticed the liquor bottles were getting bigger. In the corner of the room, they multiplied like glass rabbits.
Maricela was satisfied for the first time in a while, even though she was worried. Layton had told her he had kidney problems, but he clammed up when she asked why he drank so much. Really, she knew the reason. Her own father drank himself to death, and she was sure it was intentional. Layton was doing the same thing.
"You have family?" she asked one afternoon, the sun trickling through the curtains, Layton stirring slightly under the covers beside her.
"Probably somewhere."
"Probably?"
"I never kept up with it, really. I probably sprang a few kids into the world, but none of them have claimed me. Not that I blame them."
"Parents?"
"Long dead." Layton fumbled beside the bed for his pack of cigarettes, withdrew one and a lighter. He shot a questioning look at Maricela, who shrugged. He lit up and blew smoke at the ceiling.
"So no one to be sad when you go?"
"Not a soul."
Maricela tried to curl against Layton's body, but it was difficult. The man was all angles and hard edges. "I would be sad," she said in a soft voice.
Layton smiled around his cigarette. "No, you wouldn't be."
"I would."
"That's nice."
They remained quiet, lying beside each other, until it was time for Maricela to clean the other rooms. After she left, Layton cracked open another bottle.
Over the next month, Maricela tried reasoning with Layton to stop drinking, or at least slow down. He wouldn't hear it. If anything, he increased his intake, which scared Maricela to death. She lit votive candles for him every Sunday, pled with the Virgin Mary.
Layton spent the day either in bed, vomiting in the toilet, or pissing blood. He couldn't keep food down. He lost thirty pounds and then ten more. He was the walking, drinking dead.
"Por favor, no morir," Maricela begged Layton one afternoon. Outside, the train blasted down the tracks. Layton swayed to the noise.
"Don't worry about me," he said.
"Me preocupa todo el tiempo. Por favor quédate conmigo."
"No can do, señorita."
Maricela, tears welling in her eyes, pulled herself away from Layton. She went to Manuel and said she was too sick to work. Manuel smirked and asked if she was too sick to be employed. Maricela dried her eyes and told Manuel to go to hell. Manuel reached across the counter and backhanded Maricela, told her she was worthless and to get out, never return. Maricela swallowed and walked out of the inn.
She sat under Layton's window, listening to him cough wetly, listening to him trudge back and forth to the bathroom, thought she heard him praying. She wouldn't be there when he died.
Maricela finally stood and tried looking through the window, but Layton had draw the shades again. "Traté de amo," she murmured.
She stood, took in the dusty landscape, listened for the train. It was long gone now, heaving itself toward a destination Maricela could only dream of.
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