Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz Page A

all of us wanting to rest for a minute before we got in the ring again. I don’t know what everybody else was thinking. Maybe they were thinking what I was thinking—that Pifas would go to a place called Viet Nam. That maybe he wouldn’t come back. That maybe we weren’t kids anymore and that last summer’s baseball games in the empty lot behind the Apodaca’s house were something that we’d lost. Lost without even knowing it. That was the problem with growing up—you lost things you didn’t know you had.
    Finally, after a while, Gigi reached over and kissed Pifas on the cheek. Like a sister. “Oh, Pifas, estas mas loco que un perro suelto.”
    They were both sitting on the hood of Pifas’ car. And I could tell Pifas, well, he got a little embarrassed. He was a year older, almost nineteen, but right then, he looked like he was ten. Ten and going off to the Army.
    I don’t know why—maybe I just didn’t want to think about Pifas going off to the military. I don’t know, I just wanted to think about something else. So I looked at Gigi and asked, “Hey, Gigi, what do you want to do when you leave Hollywood?”
    She grabbed the bottle of wine away from Pifas. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”
    “Ah c’mon,” Pifas said. “Tell us.”
    She took a swig from the bottle of wine. “No laughing.”
    “No laughing,” I said.
    “Tell them, Gigi.” Angel said it like she already knew.
    “Okay,” she said. There was that word that got you into trouble. She nodded. “I’m gonna be a singer.”
    “A singer?” René said.
    Angel shot him a look. “You said no laughing.”
    “A singer?” Pifas said. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah,” she said. She smiled. Gigi had a killer smile.
    “Sing something,” Pifas said.
    “Nah.” But she wanted to sing. We could tell.
    “C’mon,” I said. “Sing something for us, Gigi.”
    Even Angel, quiet Angel, told her to sing.
    “I don’t know,” she said. She was backing down.
    “C’mon, Gigi,” Pifas said, “sing.” He sounded sad. Sounded as if he’d break down and cry if she didn’t.
    She smiled at him. “Okay,” she said. “If anyone laughs they’ll be sorry. I swear there’ll be trouble.” She took a breath. She stopped. Took another breath. Then she started. Soft and unsure. At first. But then clearer and clearer. She sang. God, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anybody could sing like that. And the song she was singing, it was an old Mexican love song entitled La gloria eres tú. I’d expected her to start singing some rock and roll song or something that matched her go-go boots or maybe a Joan Baez tune—but that’s not what she was singing. She was singing in Spanish. She was singing from a different place. In a language that didn’t matter a damn. But it mattered to Gigi. And it mattered to us—to Pifas and René and to Angel. La gloria eres tú. God, she could sing. And in the moonlight, she didn’t seem like a girl at all. She was a woman with a voice. Any man would die just to hear that voice. I swear—just to hear it. I thought the world had stopped to listen to Gigi—Gigi Carmona from Hollywood. I could see tears rolling down Pifas’ face. As pure as Gigi’s voice. I could feel those wings inside me again—like they were coming back to life, like all they needed was just one beautiful song for them to get up and start beating again. Everything was so perfect, I mean really perfect. Maybe this was what the garden was like. Maybe this was theway the world should end. Not with me and my own thoughts, not with high school boys using their fists on each other, not with Pifas going off to war—but with the tears of boys falling to the beat of a woman’s song, the sounds of guns and bombs and fists against flesh disappearing. This is the way the world should end: with boys turning into men as they listen to a woman sing.
    I wish Juliana had been there.

Chapter Eight
    “YOU think I’m a dumbass, don’t you, Sammy?”
    We were sitting