On Love Street

Amber Sanchez, her brunette hair curling just above her blouse, top two buttons open, the hint of a pink embroidered bra underneath, is on my right; Cecilia Contreras, in a blue and gold UTSA tee shirt, is to my left. I am smiling, squinting, a slight sweat  above my eyebrow.

It is 2001, summer, by the river in San Antonio. The sun is directly overhead; there are no shadows, no jets from Lackland streaming overhead. It is a cloudless day; the sky is empty.

I remove my hand from my wife’s shoulder on one side and then from her sister’s shoulder on the other. The tourist hands the camera back to my sister-in-law, the first picture we took that weekend.

Cecilia thanked the tourist who handed the camera back to her and, after he was out of earshot, made a joke about him to my wife. They both laughed, walking behind me, as we continued down the river walk and I kept my eyes open for a Mexican restaurant. When I found one, we had a leisurely afternoon dinner before heading back to the hotel.

Years later, ten to be exact, Amber filed for divorce, much later than she should have. I filed a response, waiting for her to come back into town—which she did. Once.

A few months later, I saw a picture of her and her boyfriend getting a pedicure on Facebook. Per the caption, he loved her. I ranted to Cecilia.

“What are you going to do,” she asked me that day in the front office, either disinterested in my monologue or putting on a good show of it.

“I’m setting this for a final,” I said, by equal measures defiant and resigned.

And it came to pass.

I commiserated with Cecilia, the ex sister-in-law. Slowly at first. Then it became daily. Then I couldn’t do without. It pained me, physically, when Amber came into town with her husband and I was momentarily excluded from Cecilia’s life. She, the sister, would text me the places I could not go for that weekend. Our places. Or when Sis would go out of town to party with the Ex and the new guy and I would be bombarded at Haligan’s, at Armadillos, at Toppers, with the same question. “Hey, Barrios, where’s Cee Cee?” I took to half-jokingly calling her a traitor on those weekends she was with Sister Amber. Half.

And then there were the pictures on social media. Two dark-haired women, arm in arm, drinks on the table in front of them, never with the new guy, laughing, smiling.

I could still hear the laughter behind me to an unheard joke, walking beside the river in San Antonio. That last weekend we spent together in San Antonio. Well—memory—maybe it wasn’t the last. But it was the most memorable.

It’s Thursday. A minute after five o’clock. Cecilia and I are across the street from our office, seated at the bar at Haligan’s. She is squinting her eyes at her phone screen, going through her boyfriends’ and assorted exes’ texts. I am looking at my Facebook memories. A memory at the bottom of the scroll comes up. It stretches back years, miles and miles. The next heartbeat pounds. It’s us. It’s Amber and Steve and Cecilia. Smiling by the river. Screenshot. I save the picture.

Wordlessly, I slide the phone on the bar toward Cecilia. She looked down at us. Gave me a thumbs up, taking a call.

I gotta tell ya, babe, my life has kind of hit the skids here recently.  I’m in a Sheryl Crowe state of mind. A change would do me good. Bet that picture, the one of us three, would look amazing on my wall. Twenty by twenty-four. Black frame. Bet if I saw it every day, I could get some work done. Maybe drink less. Stop vaping. I bet. What do you say? Sure, hon, whatever you say. The alarm wakes me. It’s 5:00 a.m. Friday.

Mid-way through that Friday morning, stressed, I take my glasses off, lean back in my office chair and grind the knuckles of my thumbs into my eyes. Curse this day. Eyes closed, the picture comes back to me. Rewind it 30 seconds. A guy’s  voice says “sure.” Sister hands the camera to him. In slow motion, we align, the three of us, side by side. It slows even more: my arms go around the sisters. I smile.  I hear the click of a camera.

“Mr Barrios,” I hear a questioning voice at the door. I open my eyes. “Your 11:00 is here.”

“Be right there,” I answer. She walks away.

That picture on my wall would change my life.

After I meet with Mr. and Mrs. Chen, I go back to my desk. I have a high school acquaintance who went on to become a self-famous photographer, mostly of 20 year old blonde girls. I send a friend request and work on the Chens’ wills. After about twenty minutes, Rudy accepted my request. I private messaged him, “If I have a Facebook picture, can you stylize it and turn it into a 20 x 24?”

I got back to business and finished the paperwork for the Chens, had my secretary call them to come in and sign next week,  prepared a case for Monday, then went across the street to get an early start on what would be a long night of drinking.

Things didn’t get better. I was briefly suspended for failure to pay bar dues and keep up my continuing education credits. I came back from my suspension determined to do better but I kept stalling at that blank wall. Rudy never answered my message.

On Wednesdays, Cecilia and I go to Riverside Pumphouse for lunch, a few drinks, then back to the office. This particular Wednesday, however, she was looking at a house. I was on my own.

Both parking lots at Riverside were full so I parked next to the trail. Even though the lots were full, I wasn’t worried about a crowd; I figured there was a big party in one of the party rooms off the bar. After walking in, I looked around and, as I suspected, the bar area was empty. As I took my seat, Trent pointed at me and said, “Love Street?”

“Yes,” I answered, “in a pint glass, please.” I took out my phone and logged my stats (Riverside, Trent, Love Street)  into my habit tracker.

I set my phone angled up on my external battery (just in case) and started going through my news apps: two weather apps, the Sendera Advocate, New York Times, Newsweek and, time permitting, the Wall Street Journal. When my cajun chicken pasta was set in front of me, I switched to Instagram. Always lovely to see Amber and the new guy with their Boxer rolling around on the grass behind them. Três cute. Scrolling on, there’s this ad that catches my attention.

“Ready,” Trent asks me, observing the empty Love Street.

“Yes,” I answer, “same glass.” I logged my second beer on my habit tracker.

The ad promises to turn any picture from your phone into a framed picture for your wall. “From your wall to your wall,” the ad self-consciously promotes. I check the sizes. Twenty by twenty-four, black frame is available. We are in 2021. We have survived. We survived a lot since that cloudless day two decades ago. This. Now this is a sign. I uploaded the picture of us three and placed my mail order.

A few months later, Saturday. My head is pounding. Last night was Cecilia’s birthday. She made a wish. So did I. I’m so hung over, I can barely breath. I get a silver Kuerig coffee tumbler from my night stand. Fill it with HEB bottled water. Pour that into the reservoir. Drop the coffee pod into the receptacle. Smash that down and push the go button. Man, this hurts. I’ll chase the coffee with orange juice and my life will get back on track, Amber or no Amber.

I laid back down, the sound of the coffee maker doing its work, holding me awake. My phone went off. I hoped, wished, that it was Cecilia, texting me “are you alive” like she sometimes did the day after. But it was, in fact, not Cecilia. Not my ex-wife’s sister. There are only so many wishes a man can have come true in his life. Mine, it seems, were spent.

The notification was for a package delivered upon my front porch.

I laid my head back down, waiting for the coffee to come to completion. When it did, I took it, steaming, to my Mac, turned it on, lifting last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal from my light blue Nike back pack, unfolding it to the front page. I snapped it open—pop—and took the days’ first swallow of caffeine.

After a few articles and the bottom of the coffee mug, I got up and walked to my front door. As promised, there was a package there. It was almost flat, slightly longer than it was wide, feeling weightless. There was an incredibly long neon blue shoestring top to bottom tied in the middle of the package and another one intersecting it left to right, two neat bows in the middle. Where my address should have been, it was blank. Where the sender’s address should have been, it was blank. There was no postage. I left it there on the ground and walked to the sidewalk, looking both ways. No trucks. No one, in fact. The street was empty. I came back into the house, picking up the weightless package, wrapped in brown paper and blue shoestrings, and placed it on my kitchen counter, the pounding in my head receding slightly because of the caffeine infusion. Slightly.

I opened the refrigerator door and lifted the orange juice carton to my mouth, seeking relief, ready to change my life, Amber or no Amber.  There was no orange juice. The carton, almost weightless, was empty.