Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

just listened. But one thing I noticed about her. She was there. She was really there. Not like me. I was somewhere else. In my heart. Pifas and René were drinking a lot. Gigi and I only drank a little. Then, out of nowhere, Angel says, “Let’s play a game. Let’s play, What-are-we-going-to-do-when-we-leave-Hollywood?”
    No one said anything. Everyone was thinking she was stupid. But before anyone said that, I said, “College. I’m going to college.”
    “Me, too,” Angel said.
    René looked at us like we were crazy. “Not me. No gringo-ass college for me. More teachers and more gringos. No way. I’m gonna go be a boxer in L.A. That’s where I’m headed.”
    “A boxer?” Gigi said. “Estas loco. Te van a matar.”
    “Nobody’s gonna get killed,” René laughed. He took a big swig from the bottle of wine and passed it to me.
    “I joined up.”
    We all looked at Pifas.
    “What?” Gigi said.
    “I said I joined up.” Pifas had this really serious expression on his face.
    “You’re drunk, Pifas.”
    “Fuckin’ A, René,” he said. “¿Y qué? But I’m goin’ in the pinche Army.”
    René had this sick look on his face, like he just couldn’t believe it. “Órale, Pifas, don’t be a pendejo. What are you gonna do in the army? There’s a war goin’ on, ese. Don’t you pay attention? Hollywood isn’t enough for you? Shit, ese, you’re joining the system instead of fucking fighting it. You should join the Brown Berets, not the fucking Army.”
    “Órale, I’m not a pendejo. What the shit am I supposed to do? It’s either enlist or get drafted. Brown Berets, my ass. When they draft me, what are the fuckin’ Brown Berets gonna do? What are they gonna do for Pifas Espinosa? Fight the system, shit! Shit! That’s what I say. Who’s the pendejo, René? What do you want me to do, run through the shithole streets of Hollywood yelling, ‘Come out of your goddamned good-for-nothing houses and fight the fuckin’ system! Come out! Come out!” Pifas got up from the hood of his car and started running around throwing his arms in the air like a bird flapping his wings—a bird that couldn’t fly nomatter how hard he flapped. And he kept yelling, “Come out!” like a crazy man. “Citizens of Hollywood, rise up! Rise up against the fucking system!” We all watched him, didn’t say anything, just watched, looked at each other like maybe we were supposed to do something. But what do you do when someone loses it? Right there, in front of you. Right there. He threw himself on the ground and just lay there, “Rise up! Fucking rise up!” Then he laughed. I thought he would laugh forever. And right then, the laughing sounded like crying. And maybe he was crying. Then, he stopped. Just stopped. Got up and sat back on the hood of his car. “I enlisted,” he said, his voice completely normal again.
    “Are you okay?” Gigi whispered.
    He nodded. “Yeah. I enlisted. And, anyway, what if they send me to Germany instead of Nam?”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “It could happen, ese.” Pifas looked away from René, then looked at me. “It could happen, couldn’t it, Sammy?”
    “Yeah,” I said. He knew. I knew. Everyone knew. But I said yeah.
    “Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” he said. Then he twisted open a new bottle of wine.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Remember that time those guys were after you, all those pachucos, and you grabbed my rake as you ran by, then turned around and bashed one of those guys with it? Broke my rake on that poor bastard. Right in half, broke my rake. All those vatos after you, and nothing happened. Not to you, Pifas.”
    Pifas laughed, “Fuckin’ A.”
    No one said anything for a long time. We just sat there. Just another summer night. Five of us from Hollywood, at the river, having a good time. We had smokes and wine. We didn’t have anything to be sad about.But for a minute, we all went to our separtate corners, all of us like the boxers René wanted to be, all of us tired,