“I think I’m ready to go now.”
“Okay.”
“Can we go back to your house? I think I just want to lay down with you for a while and not think about things.”
“I think we can manage that.” I stood and offered him my hand. He watched it for a moment, and then a beautiful smile bloomed on his face. He reached up and grabbed my hand, and I pulled him up with me. He put his arm around my waist and laid his head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around him and led him away.
We were almost back to the car when he spoke softly. “I’m glad I found you. I think someone somewhere knew I’d need you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
And that was that.
Chapter 22
God Rides A Harley In My Very Happy Ending
TWO months later, we broke up.
I know, I know. What kind of a happy ending is that?
Sorry.
Unfortunately, it was pretty much all my fault. I hadn’t meant to let it happen. There was this new guy at work who seemed to take a shine to me for some unknown reason. It was like Vince had opened the floodgates, and all the people who didn’t even really know I existed before suddenly found me to be irresistible. One day, stupidly, I let new guy come over to my house and one thing led to another and Vince walked in right as new guy had his hand shoved down my pants, our lips fused together, pressed up against the wall where I’d hit my face months before getting ready for our first date—the first date I had with the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
I regret it. I regret the shit out of it.
The blowup was huge, and there were tears and apologies and begging and pleading. But I’d fucked up and Vince didn’t forgive easily and it ended. Badly. Vince quit his job so we wouldn’t see each other every day. He moved back to Phoenix, and I heard he started dating some random guy that he’d had an on-again-off-again thing with there before he’d come back to Tucson.
My parents disowned me after that, saying that they couldn’t believe that I’d done that to him. I was no longer welcome in their house. Nana agreed with them and told me I that I was no better than what Johnny Depp had been calling me all along.
Sandy broke off our friendship following that whole disaster, saying that no friend of his was a cheater. He moved to Colombia, where he married a drug lord and lived a life of leisure as the madam of the house. I heard a while ago that he had a tiara made entirely of blood diamonds and a wing in his mansion dedicated to all of his wigs.
And as for me?
Disgraced, I headed south of the border and ended up in that little town in Mexico that I knew I was going to end up in. I opened my bar, Taco’s Bell, just like I knew I would. I had a tiny little apartment above it that didn’t have air-conditioning, and the ceiling fan did nothing to move the stifling hot air aroun
d.
On the upside, I grew a fantastic mustache and was never seen much without my poncho. The locals, initially wary of a gringo among them, grew to accept me as one of their own. I was eventually presented with the bride of my choice and married a tiny little woman by the name of Esmerelda Arroyo. She bore me two children—Guapo and Hortencia—and we moved out of that little apartment above the bar to a rambling old farmhouse on a spread of land right outside of town. It was hard work, but at least it was honest work. I grew wheat.
Ten years later, masked banditos came to town and tried to take it over, as they had decided our little haven was the perfect place for a new center of operations for their cocaine empire. Women and children were held hostage, including my beloved Esmerelda, Guapo, and Hortencia. Deciding I’d had enough, I rode into town on the trusty burro I’d named Princess Snow Cloud, given her propensity for acting like a princess and looking like a fat, white cloud.
The bloodshed was great and the violence extreme, but I emerged victorious and saved my little town from the banditos and rescued my family. The townspeople gathered around me and lifted me in the air, chanting, “Gringo! Gringo! Gringo!” A statue was erected in my honor in the middle of town, showing me riding Princess Snow Cloud. It was made from the bones of the banditos as a warning for any other masked hooligans who tried to take over my town.
On my sixtieth birthday, as people laughed and drank and danced around me, I was asked by a young man if I had any regrets. I told him that I had just one. He asked what that was. I told him that I regretted never finding out if I’d actually been Freddie Prinze Juniored or not.
Of course, he understood exactly what I meant because over the years, Freddie Prinze Junior had become the most famous actor who ever lived, especially after portraying such memorable roles as Hank, the gay chimpanzee who fell in love with his animal trainer, and in a stunning revelatory performance, the title role in the biopic Material Girl: The Life and Times of Madonna. Madonna herself said that no one in the world had ever been more Madonna than Freddie Prinze Junior.
Two minutes later, I died of a heart attack, not yet having gotten to the refried bean buffet or my piñata.
I ascended into heaven and God was waiting for me at the Pearly Gates. He looked like a Hells Angel, which I thought was slightly odd. I didn’t know they had motorcycles in heaven.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’s up?” God asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing much. So, I guess I died, huh?”