The Curious Incident of the Man Who Had It All

I

Sendera, 10:45 a.m. Yesterday. Almost now.

I drag myself into the work building, past my oblivious secretary chatting on her cell, the stale coffee and day old taquitos (“Can we throw those out, Sissy?” “Why? Do you hate my kids?”), into my office, stare at my pile of files, contemplate my next move.

My cell rings and I (regrettably) answer; it’s the 313th's pinche court manager, Dora, telling me I've got a case on the docket and Judge Travis is pissed I'm not there; it’s near the end of his docket. I'm in faded jeans and a tucked-out purple dress shirt. I can't go to court like this, can he just reset it? What case is it? She says she’ll call back. I return to the stare-down with the stack when I get a text from Kim. Kim used to work for me. She thinks she's doing me a favor. <Hey Sam I'm clerking for judge today. You have Tyson set. Hurry. OC is talking shit.> Sigh. I type <tell Travis I died>.

Today's headache has arrived earlier and heavier than usual. Too many jigs last night when there should have been jags. All yang and no yin. Haligan’s. Across the street. Asian girl. She was pretty and listening. I don't know, maybe she wasn't all that pretty. Patty or Lila or Tom Petty or something. Fuck my life. I backspace the I'm dead text, tuck in my shirt and grab my black tie, jacket, backpack with nothing in it, a Listerine mint and text Kim back <brt>.

Fuck my life.

I take care of Tyson and Judge Travis, his pique smoothed over, wishes me a good weekend, oddly optimistic about my next two days.

II

A

There was a time, five years ago (ten? time flies when you’re manically depressed), when my wife, office manager (And there’s one person standing there!), would never have let this happen and, if it did, she would have been mortified. She is remarried now. I don’t know if she is happy now. She is rich now. (That answered itself.)

I had it all and, like any good country song, I lost it all: the house, the dog, the Jeep, the wife. Even got fired from a job I never should have agreed to take in the first place. I’m not the “yes, sir” type, retirement and health care benefits be damned. I lost it all, like any good country song—except there are no trains in this one.

There was a time, before the alcohol, before the weed with Rachel, before the debt, black outs and appearances before the Grievance Committee, when things were less messy; when Amber, despite my predilections, loved me.

With an introduction that needs no introduction, here is Samuel Steven Barrios’ latest country album. We’ll call it “Finishing Last:”

I fucked Sheila Madrid three times before the calendar changed to a new year. Once in the conference room, once at the Super 8 on Zac Lentz Parkway and once on the bed I shared with Amber. She (Amber) found out. Of course. They always find out. Not at the point where she’s ready to leave (not all the chips are in place) but tired of turning tricks for me at the front desk, she quits working for me (step 1), finding a job in the oil and gas industry. JAZ Oilfield Services, as they called it. Just her and the boss man in the tiny office on Main Street, half a block from me. The two hit it off, I’m certain, commiserating with each other about how hard life is. He never wanted to see her leave but he was always happy to watch her go.

Amber and I would occasionally lunch together at the Riverside Pumphouse to fight about Sheila or Amber’s late hours but mostly we would skip lunch and give in to each other at home just before midnight, then get up seething and resentful the next morning and do it all over again.

We make it to May, Amber’s sister graduating from UTSA, looking for work. As it turns out, I have a vacancy.

All the Sanchez sisters are beautiful with varying degrees of crazy but Cecilia—Sissy—the youngest, is scary smart. Amber thought Sissy would make a good addition to the office, my office, and insinuated it might be good for our marriage to have baby sister keeping an eye on things / (me). Good for the marriage, you know, if I was interested in that kind of thing. (I was.) I said I couldn’t pay her much. Cecilia offered to take a cut of every client she brought in. I pointed out that, ethically, I couldn’t split attorney’s fees with a non-attorney. We were at our home, the three of us, at the high top table off the kitchen. Amber looked at me, my predations written all over her face, the moment I said “ethically.”

Amber and I had a break-out session, Cecilia waiting patiently at the high top.

A deal was struck.

“You start Monday,” I told Cecilia, returning to the dining room table with Amber, giving Sissy a side arm hug.

Then my office got busy. Really busy. Cecilia seems to know a lot of people. And she’s very persuasive. Vivacious, almost.

The office, under Cecilia’s watchful eye, became all business. For the next six months, my marriage was good. At the office, we raked it in. Sissy got her cut.

Cecilia would join me for drinks at Haligan’s (across the street from our office) in the beginning and then we migrated to Toppers, mid-town, for the sexy outfits the waitresses wore. Cecilia would complain about her husband and then later, after we had been going out for a while, about her boyfriend. She tamed my wandering eye with her conversation, occasionally draping her arm around my shoulder if the woman I was talking to on my left showed interest in me. I’m fairly certain Cecilia was shooing the woman off with that part of her arm around my shoulder I couldn’t see. I liked Cecilia. I liked her a lot.

Whatever Amber was doing in the off hours didn’t affect our marital midnight routine. I was comfortable and I was happy. The sex was good. Always. Even when we weren’t talking. Even better then, without the talk.

B

(1)

The State Bar of Texas has its annual family law conference every November in Austin.

On a Monday, Cecilia made all the arrangements so I could leave Wednesday after court, back in Sendera on Saturday.

There was a networking mixer Wednesday night and I behaved myself.

Thursday night, I hunt down and find Sonny Wolf playing at Maggie’s off Sixth Street. The bartender, Blue, fixes me up with a few drafts and then a shot at the end of Sonny’s last set. Good show, I tell Sonny, slipping a twenty into the tip jar on the stage. I behaved myself. The seminar ended Friday at noon.

Here it gets a little tricky.

(2)

Friday, 12:30 p.m. Austin, Texas. Then. Really then.

I told Cecilia the seminar ran three days. I told Amber there was a networking mixer Friday night and that it would be good for me to meet judges and lawyers from around the state. I lied to both of them. When I’m occupied, I’m OK. But here I am with a blank 24 hours in front of me. All I could hear, taste and feel was tick, tick, tick. A quick google search for “Austin escorts,“ past the Ford ads, a Wells Fargo $300 withdrawal and I’m on my way to a sparsely furnished mid-town Austin apartment.

I knock on the door and a hot Latina lets me in and leads me to her couch. We make small talk and, setting the ground rules, she makes me take off my shoes and then leads me to her bedroom.

Once there, at her instruction, I turn off my cell phone and hand it and the cash to her. She counts the money and puts it and the phone in her nightstand drawer. Then she turns and smiles at me. She’s all mine, 5’4”, 110 pounds, 22 years old, for the next hour.

III

Saturday, 11:00 a.m., Sendera, Texas. Highland Hills. Then.

I’m in my bed in my home with my Amber. The sunlight comes in through the partially open blinds on the second story of our home. The light illuminates her brunette hair, making it appear almost blonde. She’s a beautiful woman going through a tough time. I kiss her on the forehead, tell her I’m getting in the shower, then to the office. I’m not sure she heard me. I was speaking softly. I sit on the side of the bed, and say out loud, to no one in particular, “So much work.”

While I was showering, she made herself up, put on jeans and a bra. Before putting on her blouse, she opened the shower curtain and looked at me. I looked back at her, but, without my glasses and with the steam coming off the running water, all I could see was a blur.

"Steven," she spoke quietly, using my middle name, signaling this was serious, "you know I love you, right?"

"Of course. I--" She closed the curtain and walked off before I could say anything else. I got out, dried off, wrapped a towel around my waist. Since the Shiela deal, my wife wouldn't let me wear my wedding ring so I kept the ring on a necklace chain that I wore every day under my shirt. I was getting ready to put the chain around my neck and clasp it behind me when I heard a voice from the bedroom say, "Sam," and it surprised me.

"I thought you were gone," I replied. I turned to face her in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom.

“You killed my love for you,” she said, slowly and surely, firmly, soft and thundering at the same time, like Kathy Bates in Misery. A hot Kathy Bates, if you will. Ready to do some damage. Some lasting damage.

I stared at her.

She put her hands around the back of my neck. I think she was thinking about what to say next. She unclasped and took a step away. I think she said “you” but I wasn’t sure. I just looked at her, tightened the towel around my waist.

“You want to file for divorce,” she said. “Today.”

I stared at her.

“Or you can make me file.”

I continued staring at her.

“I have a tracker on your office computer, your laptop and your cell. I can tell you exactly where you were when you fucked that whore.”

I stared at her, remembering Anita. Austin Anita.

“I could tell anyone.”

The color drained from my face.

“File. Today.”

“It’s. It’s Saturday,” was the only thing in my brain so that’s what I said.

“You know what the fuck I mean,” she said, over my last syllable (“day”), as she put on her blouse, button, button, button, turned around and walked down the stairs. I heard the muffled engine of her car as it started up, ground floor, and then drove off.

I did as she asked.

Three months later, Judge Travis presided over our divorce. She left me the house which, in short order, became a foreclosure item. Judge Travis took care of that one, too, kicking me out of my own house.

IV

Cecilia tried to hate me for the Sheila affair and the Anita tryst but mostly she just felt bad for me. She is also not thrilled about her own life, each mirroring incident with her husband bringing her closer to the inevitable. Our drinking together increases, now including lunches at Riverside and dinners at Toppers, as well as 4:00 drinks at Haligan’s before closing the office at 5. It’s just a lot of drinking.

JAZ shuts down the Sendera satellite office, consolidating operations in Hooker, Oklahoma, as do Amber and her boss.

The river rolls.

Sometimes my ex-Amber comes back to Sendera to visit her family and, since her sister and I have become besties, we find ourselves at the same event at the same time, mutual acquaintances and all.

One particular gathering, two, three months ago, was for someone's kid at a new park in town. Barbeque and see-saws, cake and beer. Hard liquor whisked from my back pocket mixed in a Sprite bottle. I had been getting wired for this event all morning with the assistance of my friend and sometimes bartender Rachel, alleviating my anxiety with drink, smoke and prescriptions. Rachel, the smell of weed on her mostly unbuttoned blouse, kissed me on the forehead as I left her apartment.

Some couples didn’t get the “You Gotta Choose Sides” memo and for that I was grateful. Others didn’t talk to me.

There we were, the former couple, circling away from each other all afternoon, her the picture of tranquility, me just a bag of nerves, occasionally feeling the ring hanging in the middle of my chest.

Cecilia, as the party was winding down, says it might be time for me to go. Too bad, I’m just getting relaxed, I told her. She suggested Amber’s husband might be on the way.

And when your big dog gets here, watch your puppy dog run.

I took Cecilia’s suggestion.

V

Saturday, 1:00 a.m. Haligan’s. Now, finally now.

“Sissy,” I say, “I gotta go.”

“No,” she replies, “have one more.” Our bartender, Brent, put an Amaretto Sour in front of her. There is one other couple at the bar. Dangerously close to one another. Brent looks at me and shrugs, brings me another Dallas Blonde, twisting off the cap. I frown at Cecilia.

“You’re my ride home,” she responds. The women, giggling with each other, leave. Cecilia flirts with Brent some more until he kicks us out at closing time and we’re driving to her place. She’s drunk-telling stories when I stop the Equinox in front of her mailbox.

It’s after 2:00 a.m. We are parked outside her house. I tell her to be safe, which is a stupid thing to say because she is five steps from her front door, her sleeping children inside, hoping she will tell me to call her when I am home safe. Instead, she just looks at me in the dark, engine running, opens the door, illuminating the cab. She gets out, grabbing her purse and cell phone, which is lighting up from a call or a text from her ex-husband or ex-boyfriend. The light in the front seat area dims automatically as she brings her torso back into the cabin and I involuntarily look at her bosom. She is leaning over the front passenger seat. There is no street light in this part of the town, no front porch light and I watch her by moonlight as she points her finger at me, admonishing.

“Stop being an asshole,” she says, her finger exiting the space between us and she slams the door of my vehicle, walking toward her front door. Safe, I assume.

As it turns out, I love Cecilia.

I would do anything for her, sacrifice it all.