post script

He walked into the bar, slightly to the left of the door, passing through a couple of tables, not quite touching the floor. The guy (for lack of a better term) was handsome if you looked at him dead on, but if you turned your head just to the left, if you squinted just right, you could see he had all the wrong angles. Things didn’t line up the way they should, and geometry was something he elected to ignore.

He sat next to me at the bar. They always did.

His name was Eduardo. A full decade had passed since our last encounter. Time had not been kind. His boyish looks had melted into sadness. He sported a ponch. His eyes, once emitting sparks of insane artistic madness, are now dull and dead in a face lined with a fine layer of glistening sweat.

Common to all my past acquaintances in Juarez in lieu of the raping by the drug cartel wars, he was beaten. Down trodden and left with little hope. As we sat and shared a caguama amid stilted dialog, he confessed his woes and which depressed me even more. He was the last of the old crew. My friends of when I lived here so many years ago. I want to leave. I have to leave. This city and all its painful memories are a dead museum.