Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the author of In Perfect Light, Carry Me Like Water, and House of Forgetting, as well as the author of several children’s books. He won the American Book Award for his collection of poems Calendar of Dust. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department at the University of Texas-El Paso.

In Perfect Light

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

Light and the Sadness of Dreams

Standing in the light, they look like salvation itself. Her son's hair, fine as strands of silk, his eyes as clear as water. Her husband's face is perfect as the flood of light. They are happy, at play, laughing, talking. The dream is always the same. Always, she is alone, apart, an exiled observer to their movements.

Always, she wakes when she hears them calling her name.

She lies in the darkness and steadies her breathing, trying to soothe herself. She can smell their clean sweat filling the air, sweet as summer rain. She runs her hand across the cool sheets—then waits for the beating of her heart to slow. She thinks of Mister. Always, he was more yours than mine, Sam. She thinks of their last visit, how they both left angry. She can still taste that anger in the back of her tongue, as if the words she had spoken were as solid as a piece of bitter fruit.

She sits up slowly and places her feet on the cool wood floors. She walks toward the French doors and opens them. She breathes in the desert air.

Mister and me, Sam, we've lost our way. Sam. So many years he'd been dead. And still she woke uttering his name. A part of her expected him to answer.

Where They Found Him

I would hurt you for the simplest of reasons. That's what he said with his eyes. The streetlight and the empty city made him feel as if he were in a play. No one had come to watch him except for Dave. "Why'd you bail me out?" He kept his head bowed, his dark hair falling over his eyes.

"You called. I came."

"I shouldn't have called."

"I could throw you back, Andrés."

"What the fuck. Go ahead."

"Where'd you learn to be so fucking ungrateful?"

Andrés almost smiled. "Sorry, I'm fresh out of gratitude."

"Hating me is part of the whole deal—is that it?"

Dave was like everyone else. He wanted to be loved. He did want to be loved. Andrés almost laughed out loud. He closed his eyes, then opened them. His face was beginning to throb again, and he knew his bruises would be turning black and blue. A brown man turning blue. Like a chameleon. Ha, ha, fucking ha, God, tired, all he wanted to do was sleep, be in bed, dreaming of palo verdes in bloom, the yellow blossoms bursting in the blue sky like firecrackers. He wanted to dream soft hands rubbing his skin. He pictured himself melting beneath those hands, like butter or ice cream or anything else that wasn't human. He wanted to close his eyes and be somewhere else, Toronto Madrid Paris. He hated all this, his life, the days he lived, the nights he didn't sleep, arrests, police, questions being shot at him, phone calls to a lawyer he loved and hated and needed and hated and hated and God, and mostly he didn't want to feel this way, this thing, like the tick-tick of a bomb, like the click of a gun about to shoot a bullet. Like a chronic pain that was so much a part of his life that he almost didn't call it pain anymore. Maybe it was shame, this thing he felt. Partially, it must have been that. Sure. But it was other things, too. He knew that. And just then he hated himself for calling Dave at three-thirty in the morning. Call anytime. That's what he'd said. And so he'd called. And there he was, standing in front of him like some goddamned angel conjured up by a desperate prayer.

"I think we should get you to a doctor."

"Nothing open but ERs—"

"C'mon. Let's have you looked at."

"Nothing's broken." He didn't know why he'd said that. It wasn't true. He lit a cigarette.

"You could at least offer me one of those."

Andrés tossed him his pack of cigarettes. He watched Dave as he lit one. Manicured hands, no worker in them—but he had his own way of being a man. Not a worker, but another kind of man. He had something, Dave did. Sure. Anyone could see that.

Dave stared at him and shook his head. "God, you look awful. What'd they do to your beautiful face?" He said that so easily. Beautiful face. He could say that to a man or to a woman, and the man and the woman would look up in gratitude. Because he said it as if he was the first human being who'd ever noticed. Maybe that's why so many people trusted him, because he had something in his voice, because he was well-spoken and had learned to modulate his speech—just so—and somehow, with that calm and controlled voice, he managed to rearrange the chaos of the world in such a way as to make it appear as if there really were a plan. Yeah, the whole fucking world trusted him because he was nice to look at and because he was a gringo, and that still mattered despite what anybody said or wanted to believe, the whole fucking world.

Finally, he decided to look at Dave. Why not lift his head? "I wasn't as drunk as they said."

"You told the officer you'd kill him if he touched you."

He didn't remember that. Sometimes, when the rage set in, he couldn't remember. Like alcohol blackouts. He shook his head. But it could have been true. "I don't like people I don't know to touch me. So that makes me weird?"

"The officer said you were crying, that you couldn't stop crying." He stopped. Waited. As if his statement were a question.

"Yeah, I was crying." As if admitting it were nothing. Nothing at all. Easy as pie. Easy as biting into a Hershey's candy bar. Tears. They're like seeds in a watermelon. Good for spitting out. "And in public, too. Crying in public—now that's a fucking crime, isn't it?"