Gritty Side of Life
The story titled “Mayela One Day in 1989” is a road trip through the nightlife of El Paso with a woman named Mayela. One passage in particular brings the scene into sharp relief through metaphorical language heavy on the simile:
“Through the sludge of night we…glimpse bars whose décor and patrons, like the jukebox boasts and cries of love and death seaming to push open their doors, are as elemental as horses and goats and snakes, as leather and lard, as sweat and sunburn and rocks.”
Living the Dream
“Brisa” is a story titled after what may or may not be the real name of the woman at the center. Brisa is a mystery; she is full of mysteries. The narrator learns how to work that to his advantage, at least in a self-deceptive story of way:
“…once I got used to her mystery, I made that into a source and sign of strength in me. I was living out a rock ‘n’ roll song.”
Cata
The story “Bottoms” is a woodcut of a girl name Cata who is big. To the point that the narrator suggests that he doesn’t think she could ever have been small when she launches into a story about her childhood. Her physique is transformed into a metaphor that hints at just what an impressive figure Cata cuts:
“She is an autumn cloud blotting out nature’s light.”
Pure Metaphor
By the last story of the collection—and nearly the last page of the story—women have become almost pure metaphor and the specificity of a name collapses into a vortex of impersonal feminine pronouns:
“Her gray eyes were diamonds, her hair a gold fiber, she was a real as a magazine cover girl, a makeup or underwear or negligee ad.”
Hub and Grace and Jesse
It is not just the women who are portrayed as metaphorical cutouts—nor the seamier side of El Paso, for that matter. “A Painting in Santa Fe” is an atypical tale of a domestic couple and how their relationship is affected by the arrival of an artist named Jesse. The effect on that relationship is a bit more complex than might be expected:
“Around him they felt like Europeans, delicate and upper-class, though Hub was from the suburbs of Colorado and Grace was from urban New Jersey.”
