The bartender tried to intervene: “Sir, excuse me, you’re going to have quiet down or else I’ll have to call security.”
Without taking his eyes off Vicente, David stopped barking and said, “I’ll quiet down when this piece of shit wipes the smile off his face.”
Only at that moment did the others finally turn toward Vicente, who stood with his arms crossed, his smile unwavering.
God, he’s so handsome, Marcela thought despite herself and the circumstances. But how could she ignore his perfect white teeth, his dimples, that confidence?
Vicente looked around and shrugged.
Satisfied, everyone now turned back to David, except for Marcela, who kept staring at Vicente, waiting for him to look at her. But he was fixed on David. There was a certain twinkle in his eye, and again he mouthed something, less perceptible than before, but Marcela was ready for it.
Bow-wow, she thought. That’s what he’s mouthing. Bow-wow, like a little dog. Bow-wow, like the poet Francisco Alarcón’s dog. Earlier that day, a colleague in session had described her appreciation for the Chicano poet’s verse about his bilingual dog. How when he came home, the dog greeted him, Bow-wow — and in case he didn’t understand, the dog then barked, “Güau-güau.”
Vicente had made a strange comment. He interrupted to ask what kind of dog it was.
“What?” the speaker didn’t get it.
“I haven’t read the poem. So I’m curious, does it say what kind of dog it is?”
“It’s a bilingual dog.”
“No, I mean, is it a bulldog or something, or is it nothing but a mutt?”
People were quiet for a moment, but then Vicente smiled and everyone realized it was a joke and a few people chuckled to be polite.
Marcela shook her head and tried to alleviate the tension. “Ay, you tell the worst jokes, Vicente.” He laughed good-naturedly and leaned back in his chair. Not a minute later, David abruptly rose from his seat and walked out of the conference room. No one gave it a second thought, and not until now did Marcela think that the two were connected: Vicente’s stupid joke and David’s exit.
Vicente did it again. Speaking softly now: “Bow-wow.”
David barked in response and lunged toward Vicente. Two other men tried to restrain him but their efforts were pointless. David pushed them aside like the featherweight academics they were.
A glass fell off a table, hitting the floor with a dull thud; someone cried, “Oh my God!” In three bounds, David was on top of Vicente. Vicente didn’t attempt to move. He didn’t even flinch. David tackled him to the floor, where he straddled him and began punching Vicente’s face in a left-right combo.
Marcela kept thinking it would stop, that David had to stop, but he’d lost all control. No one dared step forward. Vicente’s head was limp and soft, like a rag doll.
Hotel security pushed through the crowd and grabbed David from behind, cutting short one last punch. They dragged him backward. He gave little resistance, and his wide-eyed expression made him seem as shocked as everyone else. Vicente lay prostrate on the ground, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, his face already swollen. One of the security guards said into his walkie-talkie, “Call the police. Get an ambulance too!”
The Avanza conference attendees, so accustomed to doling out advice to desperate young people, were at a loss. They stared at Vicente’s limp body, fearing the worst. Marcela overcame her shock and rushed to his side, collapsing. “Vicente!”
As if beckoned from the dead, he turned his head to her. The last thing she expected was for Vicente to smile and reveal a mouthful of bloody teeth.
“An ambulance is coming!”
“No, I’m fine.” He coughed. “Tell them I don’t need one.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Really, I’m fine,” he said. “Just give me a sec.” Vicente rose onto his elbows, turned, and pushed himself to his knees. He grabbed a table and with a little hop, hoisted himself up onto his feet. He looked around at everyone. “I’m all good,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Frederico, a counselor at Davis, said, “Vicente, bro, you should go to the hospital, man, it doesn’t look good.”
Vicente waved him off. “I’ll just ice up, get some rest.” He turned to Marcela. “Help me to the room, will you?”
Marcela held his arm and together they walked slowly toward the elevator. She turned back to look at their colleagues, wanting someone to stop them. But no one said a thing.
They stepped onto the elevator and a few seconds later the doors slid closed. After a long silence, she realized she’d forgotten to press the floor number. She pressed 3 and stood back, staring at the tile floor, trembling. Mirrors surrounded them. She didn’t want to look up. She couldn’t bear to look at Vicente’s face.
“Baby,” Vicente said.
“Yeah?”
“Look at me.”
She slowly looked at Vicente’s reflection in the mirror. One eye had shut completely. He stared at her through the slit of his other. He started to laugh, revealing his blood-smeared teeth.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she said. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks.
He let out a long satisfied sigh. “I needed that,” he said.
“You — what?”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. An elderly white couple was waiting outside. They were dressed for dinner, bubbling with excitement. When they saw Vicente their eyes bulged in unison. The woman gasped, “Oh my God! What happened?”
Marcela was too upset to respond.
Vicente had no problem finding words: “You know, just a little scrap with a bitch-ass nigga.”
Vicente slept for an hour with ice-wrapped towels covering his face. Marcela watched over him from a rolling desk chair. Her heart steadied. She knew David was capable of violence. She’d seen it firsthand. She knew what the barking was all about too. After the liquor store incident, she’d confided to a friend from her writing group. Like David, he had grown up in Fresno. “He must be a Bulldog,” the friend said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s a Fresno gang. That’s what they do. They bark to show how crazy they are. I swear, look it up on YouTube.”
“It’s psycho, that’s what it is,” Marcela said. “A grown man barking. And what the hell, wasn’t he supposed to have left that life behind?”
“Vatos locos forever,” the friend said, doing his best Miklo impression from Blood In Blood Out before bursting into giggles.
But as enigmatic as Vicente could be, violence hardly seemed in his nature. In addition to his physical beauty, he was polite, almost debonair, as if he’d been raised at an English boarding school, at least how Marcela imagined one. He rarely cussed. He never raised his voice. He didn’t even fumble when he spoke, rarely letting slip an “uh” or an “um.” He used words that were odd coming out of a first-generation Mexican kid, such as “preferably” and “perhaps.” Vicente adhered to the rules of chivalry as though he’d come across a guidebook, holding doors open for others regardless of gender, the first to give up his seat, always insisting on clearing the table and washing the dishes.
His colleagues loved him, his students worshipped him. And yet to date him, Marcela had learned, was like eating in a dream. The feast might be all hers but she still couldn’t taste a goddamn thing.
What did she know about him? He’d grown up nearby in Watsonville. At her insistence, he once brought her there. She had taken him to meet her parents in Woodland, and he remarked that the place reminded him of where he grew up, a small California city surrounded by fields and full of Mexicans. She wanted him to return the favor, show her “his” Watsonville.