Several years ago, around the height of the #MeToo movement, I was pulling weeds in the garden while speaking on the phone with one of my former students, who was filling me in on the gossip and drama from the latest conference, which I’d been unable to attend. Now an ambitious graduate student, she was complaining that her panel had been hijacked by a group of women who decided to interrupt the Q&A session by lobbing accusations of sexual misconduct at one of the panelists. “Here I am editing my paper until three in the morning,” she said, “and I’m the idiot thinking that people are going to care whether my citations are thorough enough. Everyone was there to see this professor get his due.”
“A professor?” I had assumed it was a graduate student, and it now occurred to me that I might know the person. I stopped weeding. “What’s his name?”
“Dr. Ochoa,” she said.
“Rafael Ochoa?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
This article appears in Issue 33 issue of Alta Journal.
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Our phone call ended, and I was left dumbfounded. I no longer felt like weeding. I went inside and made myself an espresso and stood at the kitchen window, sipping it, thinking of my former mentee, if I could call him that. Rafael, or Rafa, as I knew him, attended the same graduate program as I did, several years after me. We had been placed in touch because his undergraduate mentor, Muñoz, thought I could provide him with positive direction. “He’s a fish out of water,” Muñoz had told me, chuckling. “Tell you the truth, he looks better suited to manual labor.” I thought Muñoz’s comment a bit crude, but when I saw Rafa for the first time, I understood his point. Rafa was a big guy, definitely the biggest academic I’d come across. Tall, big forearms, wide shoulders, thick neck. We were both from agricultural towns not far from each other, but other than that, we didn’t find much to connect about. He wasn’t forthright about his struggles in the program and didn’t ask many questions, so I wasn’t sure how best to guide him. He didn’t strike me as particularly intellectual either. Frankly, I wondered why our grad program had selected Rafa. I attempted to keep in touch, but after a handful of meetings over coffee where I did most of the talking, I gave up and he disappeared. My guess was that he wasn’t going to make it through the PhD program, let alone land a tenure-track job. So I was surprised when, a few years later, I found out that he’d been hired in Chicana/o studies at Cal State. Surprised but also happy for him. Sure, we never became friends, but anytime a kid from the Valley makes something of himself, I’m the first in line to shake his hand.
My wife found me staring out the kitchen window, sipping my espresso, and she asked why I had such a strange look on my face. “A strange look?” I asked.
“Yeah, your coffee bitter or something?” she asked, laughing, as she set two bags of groceries on the countertop.
I told her I was fine, just lost in thought, and I placed my espresso cup in the sink and ran water over it until the grounds had spilled out and found their way to the drain, all the while thinking of Rafa Ochoa on that panel, that stage, microphone in front of him, his broad shoulders slumped as though he was trying to make himself smaller, sweat dripping from his forehead, as a woman or two or three stood up in the audience to accuse him of sexual misconduct. What specific misconduct? I had no idea, and my former student didn’t know either, but the words “sexual misconduct” spread through the audience until everyone had at least whispered it twice, and those colleagues and students would leave the conference and surely go and tell other colleagues and students until the entire field knew about it, just as my former student had told me. And now, instead of Rafa up there on that panel I was imagining myself in his place and I even felt my body temperature rise, and I had to stop and tell myself, as if I needed reminding, that I hadn’t committed anything remotely close to sexual misconduct. I heard my wife say something about a drought, and she reached past me to shut off the water.
“Jesus, what are you thinking about?” She began unloading groceries.
I told her what I’d heard about Rafa. She didn’t remember him, and I spent a few minutes trying to place him for her before deciding that she had no point of reference. Rafa was just another academic at another university. She did find it interesting that he lived in Woodland. “He’s just down the road from us,” she said.
“I guess you’re right,” I said.
“And he commutes all the way to the Bay?”
“I think so.”
“Why would he live in Woodland? Seems like a strange place to end up.”
“He’s from there.”
“Still…”
Woodland to me was Costco and Home Depot on the outskirts of the city, although the last time I’d visited was to pick up pan dulce and masa at one of its many Mexican markets. I pulled bell peppers and cucumbers from a bag and handed them to her. “What could be worse than being accused of sexual misconduct?” I asked.
“To be the victim of it,” she said.
“Of course, of course,” I said. But I didn’t know the victim, I knew Rafa, and it was Rafa I kept picturing, and it was me I kept placing in Rafa’s shoes because the two of us, although never friends, were bound by…what were we bound by? Graduating from the same rigorous program? Knowing the esteemed Dr. Muñoz? Having a few awkward coffee dates? Two Chicanos climbing our way from our agricultural hometowns to academia? The fact that we were both men? Whatever the reason, I thought about Rafa for the rest of the day and even into the sleepless night, and the thought I kept coming back to until I finally drifted off was “That guy is fucked.” Followed by “Thank God I’m not Rafa.”
It was an old friend of mine from college, Maribel, who finally told me more about Rafa’s situation. She invited me to a gathering at her house in Oakland, where another friend from college, Adela, was visiting from the East Coast. I hadn’t seen Maribel in years, and Adela not since we graduated. They were both academics, but Maribel was still struggling to finish her dissertation and was forever on the verge of losing her funding. Adela had finished, but after a few prestigious postdocs, she was stuck in the part-time lecturer racket. They were both incredibly bitter about academia and its “racist sexist capitalist patriarchal institutions,” a critique they repeated several times, and understandably so, but they did their best to separate me from their judgment. Instead, they had opened the door with shrieks of delight and over-the-top compliments about how I hadn’t changed since college.
They weren’t fully dressed and were still putting on makeup. Apparently, I had read the time wrong and was early. But they didn’t care. They poured me a glass of wine, refilled their glasses, and dragged me into the bedroom to talk while they finished getting ready. They filled me in on all the gossip from their own miserable love lives and the miserable love lives of everyone else we’d gone to school with, and it was wonderful to laugh with them just as we’d laughed together as 18-year-olds.
I had to drive home that night, so I was watching my liquor, but they weren’t, and because I had showed up early, they were drinking without the benefit of food, which was being saved for when guests arrived, and I could tell that the alcohol was having an effect. Their cheeks and necks were flushed, and I could see that Adela’s eyes were beginning to narrow, and what a strange detail to seize upon because I suddenly remembered that the same thing used to happen to Adela 20 years ago in college: She’d have a few drinks, and her eyes would narrow so that you couldn’t see past her eyelashes thick with mascara. She was also notorious for attacking whoever was closest to her. I assumed time had mellowed her, but while Maribel fluttered about the house, arranging chairs and tables and opening bags of chips and pouring them into bowls, Adela turned her narrowed eyes toward me. “So, we’ve confessed our sad love lives. What about you? I hear you’re married.”
“Yeah, we’ll be celebrating our eighth anniversary soon.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “How’d you meet?”
From the other room, Maribel called out, “She was his student!”
“She wasn’t my student,” I said, laughing nervously.
Adela swirled her wine and took a swig. Her eyes narrowed even more. “But she was a student, huh?”
“We met through family, but yeah, she took another year to finish, so my first year of teaching, we overlapped for a semester.”
Adela let out a long groan. She downed her glass of wine and poured herself another. “Even you. Even you,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought you were different.”
“What? Are you serious?” I thought she might be joking. When she continued glaring at me, assessing me, no longer as her old friend but as the embodiment of all men, I started to defend myself. “She’s the love of my life—”
“Of course, of course, the loooooove of your life.”
“You’ve never met her,” I said. I could feel my heart pounding. “She never took my class. I didn’t meet her as my student.”
Maribel entered the room and collapsed onto the couch. She looked at me with sad, disappointed eyes. “She was 22. That’s so young,” she said in a plaintive voice, as if saying it in this voice would immediately make me see the error of my ways.
“Yeah, but I was 30, also young. We met and fell in love and—”
Adela groaned again, and this time her face twitched. She was drunker than I had thought. “What is it with men and younger women? The only men interested in me are in their fucking 60s, as if I’d actually be attracted to them. And men my age, don’t even get me started. I have three degrees from Ivy League schools, and you’d rather be with a 28-year-old waitress? Dating in your 40s is the most miserable, depressing…”
I hardly listened to Adela as she lamented the lack of men out there willing to date a strong, intelligent, opinionated woman. I was still too disturbed by Adela and Maribel’s insinuations. Or were they accusations? My wife and I had been together for so long that I had stopped worrying about the origins of our relationship. She was in her 30s now, the age difference becoming less and less an issue. But the look in Maribel’s eyes—as if I were currently dating a 22-year-old student!
The doorbell rang, and Maribel rose to open the door. I was introduced to her friends. The living room filled, the foil was removed from food platters, drinks were poured, and I engaged in other conversations, but the entire time I was replaying the conversation with Maribel and Adela in my head. A part of them resented me, I thought. A part of them hated me. And I became so sure of this that I no longer wanted to be at the party.
I found Maribel and told her that I was leaving. She begged me to stay and told me I could crash on the couch. When I insisted that I had to get going, she looked genuinely disappointed, and I felt a little better. Her previous look of disappointment had disturbed me, and it was a relief to know that I was her old friend again. She spread her arms out wide and brought me in for a hug. She started giggling as she pulled away. “You know, there’s a group of women in my program who hate your guts.”
I was halfway out the door. Why couldn’t she have just left things alone? I didn’t want to hear the misinformed opinions of people I had never met, but I couldn’t help myself. “They hate me? Why?”
“Well, that you dated a student.”
“Maribel!” I practically shouted. I lowered my voice and said through my teeth, “Ten years ago, she was a student, and she wasn’t my student—”
“Calm down. I know you’re not a bad guy. I’m just telling you what’s out there. At least you’re not Rafael Ochoa,” she said. “Consider yourself lucky.”
I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to flee the house and never see Maribel or Adela again, but I wanted to find out more about Rafa.
“What have you heard about him?”
“I don’t know exactly. He was dating a student too. Got her pregnant. She dropped out.” She began shaking her head and staring at me with the same disappointed eyes again. “You men can’t help yourself. Even when you know it could ruin your life. I heard he’s a fucking mess.”
“Is he still teaching?”
She shrugged. “Someone told me that he resigned, and get this, that he’s working as a roofer in Woodland.”
“A roofer?”
The doorbell rang again, and Maribel moved me aside. About five women stood outside in their party outfits, their hair and makeup done, and they emitted enthusiastic squeals as soon as they saw Maribel. She didn’t bother to introduce me, and I wondered, without any evidence, if these were the women from her program who hated me. I maneuvered around the group to leave. I tried to catch Maribel’s eyes, but she was engaged with the new arrivals. I didn’t even try to say goodbye to Adela. I’d see her in another 20 years.
When I got home that night, I crawled into bed with my wife, who was already asleep and warm, and she awoke enough to move toward me so that I could wrap my arms around her. “How’d it go?” she asked. I contemplated waking her, telling her how upset I was about what Maribel and Adela had said. I wanted her to reassure me that there had been nothing wrong or improper about our relationship. I wanted her to quell the doubts that Maribel and Adela had placed in my mind. “Did you have fun?” she said again, sleepily.
“Yes,” I said. “It was a lot of fun.”
“Good,” she said. “You need to see your friends more often.”
I almost laughed. My life was her and my work, and I was fine with that. This is what happened when I ventured out into the world! “You’ll tell me more about it in the morning,” she whispered as she drifted off to sleep. I was wide awake. I kept picturing myself as a roofer, hammering shingles into place, the hot sun beating down on my back. It’s not possible that Rafa has been reduced to that, I thought. I should go and find him. I had to pick up some things at Costco anyway. I would call Dr. Muñoz and see if he had an address for him. Should I email him first? What would I say? “Dear Rafa, I’d like to see what you’ve been reduced to.” “Dear Rafa, I want to see what fate could’ve been mine.” “Dear Rafa, I heard you’re fucked, and I’m glad it’s not me and I want to make myself feel better by drawing a distinction between my life and yours.” “Dear Rafa…” I continued this until I fell asleep and thank goodness when I woke up the next morning my desire to see him was gone, and I was just happy to wake up in my own bed next to my beautiful wife, and I rose to make us breakfast.
A few weeks later, I was in Woodland for my weekly Costco run, in line for gas, and I noticed a truck with a decal on its side door: “Ochoa’s Roofing.” What are the chances? I thought. A man wearing a bright neon yellow Ochoa’s Roofing shirt was filling his tank. I walked up to him and asked if he had a card. He ducked his head into the cabin, opened the glove compartment, then the middle compartment, and came out empty-handed.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Any chance you know Rafa Ochoa?”
“Yeah, he’s my boss’s brother.”
“He work with you?”
“Sometimes. He’s on a job today, but might be finishing up soon. You know him?”
“Yeah, we used to work together. Do you have his number?”
He looked me up and down. “You a professor?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
His whole face broke into a smile as if I’d told him that I once played tight end for the Raiders. “Damn, so that’s what’s up. Then Rafa was a professor too?”
“Yup.”
“That’s crazy. His brother told us that, and we all call him profe, you know, but I thought we were just fucking—sorry, messing around.” The smile didn’t leave his face. “Look, I don’t have his number, but I’m heading there right now. Write down yours and I’ll give it to him.”
I found a piece of paper in my car and jotted down my information. I felt as if I should write something. I settled for “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” I gave the roofer the slip of paper and thanked him. He drove off, my name and number with him, and I wondered what Rafa would do when the man gave him my note. My answer came sooner than expected. I was still on the freeway when I looked down at my phone and saw a 530 number. It was Rafa.
“Are you still in Woodland?” he asked, his voice almost desperate, or maybe I just wanted it to be.
“No,” I said. “I’m almost—” An exit was approaching, and I put on my blinker. “I can be. You want to meet up?”
We met at a bar called Zitio’s at the corner of East and Beamer. I pulled into a parking lot full of trucks and got out of my car. Nearby, a door screeched open and a man stepped out. It took me a moment to realize it was Rafa. He was wearing the same bright neon yellow shirt as the man at the gas station. He had on a baseball cap, sunglasses perched on the brim, and his dark brown skin was reddened from the sun. He was sweaty and had obviously put in a full day of work. The last time I’d seen Rafa, he was dressed as an aspiring academic, a cardigan pulled over a collared shirt, carrying a computer bag. It was a shock to see him so transformed.
Rafa smiled broadly as he stuck out his hand to shake mine. He then brought me in for a half hug, almost forcing me to rethink our coffee dates from years ago. Had I judged them too harshly? All I could remember was that conversing with him was like pulling teeth. But now he was talkative, telling me how delicious the tacos were at Zitio’s and that these beers were on him. I had turned around on the freeway because I detected desperation in his voice, and here he was talking about cold beers and tacos! I didn’t even realize we were going to have drinks, or eat, for that matter, but I didn’t know what the alternative would be. Chatting in the hot sun at his jobsite, sipping water from paper cone cups?
I told Rafa to give me a second, and I texted my wife that I had run into an old friend who’d invited me for beers. I also said I might get tacos and would she like some. I thought she might wonder who this “friend” was, but all she texted back was “Have fun! 4 adobada con todo!” She was so focused lately on encouraging me to spend time with friends that it probably never crossed her mind that I was cavorting with a man accused of sexual misconduct at an establishment that—as I took in my surroundings and realized I was the only one there without construction boots or a flat-brimmed baseball cap—was overflowing with testosterone. I decided to give her more info: “The friend is Rafa Ochoa.” She replied with a dancing emoji. I gave up. If she wasn’t worried about me, then I wasn’t going to worry either.
“Everything OK?” Rafa asked as we sat down at the bar.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
The bartender, a young woman with a rose tattoo on her neck, tossed two coasters in front of us and asked what we wanted. “The usual,” Rafa said. The bartender turned to me. “I’ll have the same,” I said. She brought back two shots of whiskey and two utterly gigantic frosted glasses of beer.
“This is your usual?” I asked Rafa. “I might not be able to drive home.”
Rafa laughed. “After the year I’ve had…,” he said, not completing the sentence.
I pretended not to know. “Oh? What’s the year been like?” I watched him take the shot of whiskey in one go.
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
He looked at me incredulously. “You came out here to Woodland just to see how I was doing?”
“I had errands at Costco.”
“Bro…” He started laughing.
I decided to come clean. “I’d heard from a friend that you were working as a roofer. I saw the truck with Ochoa’s Roofing, and I just thought, What the hell, let me see if he knows Rafa.”
Rafa took a sip of beer and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “If you know that I’m working as a roofer, then you know what happened.”
“Yes, but only the barest details. I know that accusations were made against you at the conference. I heard something about dating a student.”
Rafa was silent, staring ahead as though contemplating the bottles of alcohol on the shelves behind the bar. Then I realized he was staring behind the bottles at his reflection in the mirror. I didn’t think it was vanity that compelled him to look. Was he trying to recognize the sweaty-faced sun-drenched roofer staring back at him? Was he saying to himself, I have a PhD, I’ve written articles and a well-regarded book, I have tenure? Or were those just my thoughts, my judgment? My incomprehension?
“But you seem good!” I said to break the silence.
He turned to me slowly, his face darkening. “You think I’m good?” he asked.
“Yeah, well, you know—” I stopped. I didn’t know why I’d said that. “How about going on the market again?”
He scoffed. “I’d never get hired.”
“I heard community colleges are opening more ethnic studies positions.”
“Nah, man. Look,” he said sharply. “The gig is over. There’s no going back.”
“So they took away your tenure?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know the exact details of his separation from Cal State.
He shook his head. “No.”
“You’re still on leave, then?”
He nodded.
I marveled at this. Leave was academia’s answer to every problem. “Then your job hasn’t ended,” I said. “You can go back.”
“I’ll never step foot onto that campus again,” he said.
Rafa was almost done with his beer. I took a few large gulps to catch up. He finished his off and signaled for the bartender with the rose tattoo to bring another round. I felt the pressure to down mine. It wasn’t easy. I was starting to feel flushed. The alcohol was in my system all right. A Mexican song started playing. I thought I recognized it. Was it Ramón Ayala? A mustached man at the end of the bar cried out something I didn’t understand, but everyone burst out laughing. I found myself chuckling along with them, feeling the camaraderie of men in a bar. I hadn’t forgotten that Rafa’s words were hanging in the air waiting for my response.
“There’s no need to play the martyr,” I told him.
He turned to me. “This isn’t martyrdom. I’m accepting my fate.”
“I don’t believe this is your fate,” I said.
“What you believe doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Why? Because I’m a man too?”
He furrowed his brow. “No, because what you believe is just an opinion based on your own fears and assumptions,” he said as if staring into my soul. He continued, “Everyone thinks they know what happened, and depending on their perspective they come to their own conclusions. Those who love and care for me forgive me. Those who don’t know me condemn me, or believe what they want to believe. And the fact is, I refuse to engage others’ perceptions of me.”
“Perceptions aren’t just in academia!” I said louder than intended. “Your roofing buddies might not care if you dated your student, but they’re certainly thinking something of you. You should’ve seen how excited that guy was when I told him you really were a professor.”
Someone behind me said in Spanish, “Professors? You guys are professors?”
A look of resignation crossed Rafa’s face. I turned around and found a small man with a carefully manicured mustache sitting on the stool next to me, a bottle of Bud Light in front of him.
“Yes, we are,” I said.
The man looked past me at Rafa, glancing up and down at his attire. “You too, primo?”
Rafa didn’t answer.
“He’s one too,” I confirmed.
The man smiled and stuck out his hand. “It’s an honor to be in the presence of people with education,” he said. “I have studied as well.” Then, without prompting, he started to explain that he had gone to the University of Guadalajara before he was forced to immigrate to the U.S. If it had just been me and the man, I would’ve responded in Spanish, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Rafa, stumbling for basic words, so I asked the man in English what he had studied. “Engineering,” he replied. He proceeded to describe the extent of his academic studies, and then he explained the circumstances that forced him to leave the university and his beloved homeland. I didn’t catch everything, impatient for the story to end, but I learned about his father’s death, an unwanted pregnancy, and a land dispute.
Rafa had turned to watch the television screen, and I kept waiting for an opportunity to exit the conversation. After all, I was there to speak to Rafa. But the man continued for another 10, 20 minutes—it could’ve been 30—interrupting his own life story only to ask what kind of professors we were. I skipped over the interdisciplinary nature of our departments and told him literature. Immediately, his face lit up, and he said that he too had wanted to study literature, and he explained that he was from the same region as Juan Rulfo, the author of Pedro Páramo, and asked us if we had ever read the great novel. I told him I had, but the man seemed determined to draw Rafa back into the conversation. “Hey profe,” he said until Rafa noticed that he was talking to him. “Hey profe, have you read Pedro Páramo?”
“Yeah,” Rafa said tersely.
“I’m from the same region, you know?”
“Cool,” Rafa replied, not hiding his lack of interest.
“One day we’ll have to travel there together during the fiestas. You’ll never want to return here, I tell you that much, profe. I once brought my boss, a gringo, and now he’s always asking me when we can go back. I tell you, profe, we have the most beautiful women in the world… Are you married, profe?”
I told him I was, but asking me was just a step to asking Rafa. “Hey profe, you married?”
“No,” Rafa said.
“Then we’re going!” the man exclaimed. “We’ll find you a beautiful wife in my hometown. You just name the date…”
The man continued until it felt like he had told us about every street and plaza in his hometown, and when he was done with his hometown, he told us about his sons, even taking out photos to show us how tall they were considering how short he was, and just when he seemed about to lose steam, he would use the smallest thread to segue into another topic, always returning to the invitation to visit his hometown because we were men of education, professors, and we would appreciate it more than most. I tried to show my indifference. I even turned to face forward, my elbows resting on the countertop, but the man kept reaching behind me to get Rafa’s attention, saying “Profe, hey profe” until Rafa acknowledged him, and I started to worry that Rafa and I were never going to be able to return to our conversation.
It was Rafa who finally put an end to it. He called the bartender over and asked for the check. He pulled out his credit card and paid before I could offer. I remembered that I had promised my wife tacos.
“I have to order my wife some tacos,” I told him.
“Tacos? You want tacos?” the man said, fearing he was about to lose his audience. “They’re on me, profe.”
“No, you don’t have to, really,” I said, but the man insisted, pulling out a wallet stuffed with cash.
“I gotta take a piss,” Rafa said, his annoyance clear. He turned and walked toward the exit, and I feared he was leaving for good, letting me deal with this man I had allowed to hijack our conversation. I ordered my wife’s tacos, then I pushed back my stool and stood up. My head felt heavy. I asked the bartender for a glass of water, and as the man related yet another story, I kept nodding my head as if I was paying attention, periodically glancing toward the exit, hoping Rafa would reappear. I drank the glass of water in one go, and the bartender refilled it, and I downed it again, and finally my wife’s tacos arrived and Rafa still hadn’t come back.
I grabbed the take-out bag and was about to thank the man and say my final goodbye when around the corner near the exit I heard stools crashing to the ground and tables moaning across the concrete floor. Everyone in the bar seemed to rise at the same time, blocking my view. I found myself moving toward the action.
“No, profe!” I heard the man say. “No, profe!”
I rushed forward, certain that Rafa was caught up in the fight. He had gone to the bathroom, agitated, annoyed, and something had happened, something trivial and stupid—accidentally knocking over someone’s drink, stepping on a shoe, a misinterpreted glance—but through a combination of alcohol and a desperation born of the circumstances he found himself in, circumstances that I had dredged up out of my own curiosity, Rafa had been pushed to the brink. I heard shrieks and glass breaking, cries of encouragement—“Bust his ass,” “Knock him out, foo,” “Kill that motherfucker”—and I pictured Rafa in the middle of the melee taking blows to the head or dealing blows to someone else’s, and I blamed myself, for his aggravation, for my curiosity about what his life had become, for not shutting up the man at the bar. This is all my fault, I thought, and I let the bag of tacos fall from my hand, and I pushed through the frenzied mass of bodies until I stood at the front of the crowd.
Everyone’s eyes were on the fighters, their sweaty faces filled with excitement. I looked at the men pawing at each other, whirling around like two bulls in a ring. They came closer, and suddenly I was in their path with nowhere to go. I felt a foot or a hip crash into mine, almost knocking me over. I grabbed a table to regain my balance, and I retreated into the safety of the onlookers. I could now see the fighters more clearly. One had pulled the shirt over the other’s head, his fat, stretch-marked belly exposed. The dominant fighter had blood pouring from his nose, and he was saying, “Enough, foo, enough!” But his opponent wouldn’t give up. He kept groping blindly for an advantage. It took me several seconds to realize that neither of the two men was Rafa. I looked around the crowd, scanning the feverish faces for his. He wasn’t among them either.
I searched for the exit. I was having trouble breathing. Like a voice in a nightmare, I could still hear the man calling out to me, “Profe, profe!” But I didn’t turn around. I pushed past a wall of men blocking the door. The fresh air brought me immediate relief. I had never been so close to anything like that in my life, and I felt strangely triumphant. My right thigh was throbbing. Whatever had hit me had given me a charley horse, a sensation I hadn’t experienced since playing youth soccer. How bad was the bruise going to be? I limped forward and leaned against a grimy picnic table surrounded by cigarette butts.
I wondered where I was going to order my wife new tacos because one thing was for sure: I never wanted to step inside Zitio’s again. I would have to find another place. I was already imagining the relief of arriving home and presenting the adobada tacos to my wife. While she ate, I would fill her in on everything that had happened, from the chance meeting with the roofer at the Costco gas station to the fight I had just witnessed. I would repeat to her Rafa’s words about judgment and perception and how we could never truly know what happened, and she’d counter me, telling me that, no, we do, in fact, know what happened and that a man doesn’t just get accused of sexual misconduct and leave his job because something unknowable happened, and we’d go back and forth on this point, but really, she’d just be happy that I had spent an afternoon with a friend, and I wouldn’t have the heart to tell her that Rafa and I weren’t friends…just former colleagues, nothing more.
It was only then that I saw him through the back patio’s iron bars. He didn’t see me, so I raised my hand to get his attention, but I was lost in the shadow of the overhang. Rafa had lowered his truck’s tailgate and was sitting on it, his feet dangling in the air, the only soul in the parking lot. Everyone else but him had lost their minds inside, and he had no idea. No idea that I had imagined him in the bar fight. Felt fear for him. But Rafa appeared calm. He looked like he was waiting for someone. He looked like he was waiting for me to get my wife’s tacos and rejoin him outside, far from the man at the bar, where we could say our goodbyes in peace, without interruption, and wish each other good luck with promises to stay in touch, and I would tell him that whatever he needed not to hesitate to reach out, even though we both knew that I couldn’t do anything for him, and he wouldn’t reach out even if I could.
“Rafa,” I said, and I limped forward into the sunlight, finding the pain in my leg almost unbearable. “Rafa,” I said again, and this time he looked up, his brow furrowed in confusion as he watched me limp across the asphalt.•
Maceo Montoya is an author and visual artist who has published books in a variety of genres, including four works of fiction: The Scoundrel and the Optimist, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, You Must Fight Them, and Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces. He is a professor of Chicana/o studies and English at UC Davis.
