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Guitar Rain

The trip had been an unmitigated disaster. I was down to my last few hundred pesos, a return ticket home, courtesy ride to the airport from the hotel, and the luggage I'd brought with me. Strike that. Let's call it the baggage I'd brought with me. All of it was still the same damned weight.

I decided to take one last stroll through the center of the village before packing my lone suitcase and heading to the airport. The mercury was pushing the top of the thermometer again and the only movement on the dirt road was the occasional drop of sweat that rolled down a villager's brow. It was siesta time and the porches of the general store and the tavern were occupied by people sleeping away the midday heat before returning to toiling in the fields. Even the flies were asleep on the rusted screen doors.

As I came to the crossroads, I saw the same damned stereotypical derelict slumped against the side wall of the tavern. By his side was the same damned tequila bottle that was always there. On his body were the same damned trousers with holes in the knees, the same damned rope belt, and the same damned faded but multi-colored poncho. And tilted over his face was the same damned sombrero. Oh, and the same damned cheap and battered guitar, mustn't forget that. It lay across his lap the same damned way it had every same damned day since I'd been here. I wanted to kill him, to stride over and kick his skull in, to watch his blood spatter against the adobe wall. I hated him.

Without realizing it, I'd moved toward that very goal, had even pulled my leg back to bring my boot slamming into his face. And he moved. Dear God, he moved. Lethargically, he pulled back on the neck of the guitar until the frets clanked against the bottle, setting it wobbling.

"Have a drink," he said from under the shade of the sombrero. The shock of his voice, of the action I'd been about to take, of actual movement on the street brought me to my senses. I felt surprisingly refreshed, as if he'd offered me a cold and perspiring glass of Evian.

"Jesus," I said. "Are you sure? I think. I think I was about to kill you."

The sombrero lowered and raised perhaps a half inch.

"It's what you need, my friend. Have a drink."

I crouched down and took the bottle between my fingers. It was unlabeled and greasy around the neck. The worm still bobbed in the amber liquid. Carefully, I wiped the mouth of the bottle on my sleeve. Raising it to my lips, the tequila's odor almost knocked me unconscious.

I had second thoughts about drinking. Hell, I had third and fourth thoughts. But what else could possibly go wrong? Hadn't I already hit bottom? I drank.

I expected to choke and gag, but was pleasantly surprised by the smoothness of the alcohol. I had closed my eyes while the bottle was at my mouth. I opened them again as I swallowed. There was no burning sensation in my stomach, no tearing of my eyes. If anything, I felt suddenly cooler.

I set the bottle carefully back down beside the guitarist. The worm was gone. I'd swear that I never felt it pass my lips, but there was clearly no longer anything in the bottle but tequila. I decided to sit down next to the man, slumping against the wall beside him.

"Thank you, friend," I said.

"It was what you needed," he replied and began playing the guitar in his lap for the first time in my memory.

I don't know what I expected. Flamenco, perhaps? A traditional folk song? I certainly did not expect baroque music by Johann Jakob Froberger. That is, however, precisely what the guitarist played, with a precision I wouldn't have dreamed possible. It was not long before I found myself openly weeping.

When he'd finished, I pulled the wad of money from my pocket and curled his fingers around it. I was surprised by how fine and delicate the fingers were.

"Thank you, friend," I said again.

"It was what you needed," he replied. His voice had changed. Or had it been that high from the start and I'd been too deafened by my own self-pity to hear it?

The voice I suddenly heard was the very voice I'd missed since just before the trip had begun.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The guitarist tilted the sombrero back to show a face I'd dreamt of every night. To my surprise, the features were nearly alabaster. High cheekbones framed an aristocratic nose atop lips that I was sure I'd once kissed. And the eyes. the eyes were the pale blue eyes I'd wandered into seven years ago during an introductory anthropology class and never left since.

I wanted to throw myself on her, to claim her once again, but she was dead. Wasn't she? Hadn't she taken ill just weeks before we were to marry? Was this not the same woman whose condition mystified all the specialists her parents could afford? How could she now be here on the honeymoon we hadn't been allowed to take, playing music she was meant to play at a recital only days after her death?

"In this place, people find what they need, yet rarely what they want," she said.

"But I want you," I managed to say.

"But you need to let me go," she replied. "I have to leave. This is not my place anymore, and my place now is not yours. It's time to let me go."

She leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. And before I could open my eyes again, her lips were gone. I looked to where she had been and saw the guitarist asleep with the guitar across his lap. Under the brim of the sombrero, I could see that this was not my lost love; this was only another villager in a remote Mexican village. Before a tear could fall from my eye to lament my loss, the skies above rained down water of their own. The streets turned to my mud and my face was soaked so thoroughly that the wetness of tears would be redundant.

I rose slowly to my feet and looked up at the heavens, letting the rain wash over me. It is likely I stood there for an hour before the skies cleared again. Dripping, I looked down once more at the guitarist.

"Thank you, friend," I said a final time. "It was what I needed."

I turned and walked back to the hotel to pack my bags.

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