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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Hands that Hurt” Down in the Dirt, v145 (the May 2017 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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A Girl Named Beryl

Miguel Gardel

    I read about a club where you could dance and didn’t have to pay to get in. It was in the Crenshaw District. I wanted to find friends, but I didn’t have much money.
    So I drove over to the place and was very lucky. I met a girl. Her name was Beryl. I had met a girl in New York with the same name. I knew what it meant. This Beryl was dark and pretty, and very skinny. She loved to dance and we danced all night. The place had very little light. A strobe would come on and everybody would yell. It was like an approval. Of the flashes of light? It was very crowded, and it was fun. You couldn’t see white faces anywhere. There was an empty bandstand. All the music was coming from records or tapes. When I walked in, no one looked at me, so I had no need to get nervous. Nervous about my appearance. Was I hip enough, and how much in the center was I in the circle of fashion? That sort of thing. I didn’t want to, but I still worried about things like that.
    Beryl was threading herself through the crowd at the moment I met her. And I was too, trying to get to the bar. And we bumped into each other. We hardly said a word all night. But she did say, with slurred words, I’ve never danced with a Mexican before. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t either.
    At the bar, they asked me for ID. I spoke in Spanish and the bartender nodded and gave me the drink. I had money for only one. Beryl was high on pills and didn’t notice I was broke. We were both exhausted at around three in the morning and I drove her home. She was too high to give me good directions, so we got lost and found her place hours later. She had fallen asleep in the car. Then I got lost on my way home and finally got there when my mother was making breakfast.
    I borrowed a few bucks from my mother in the afternoon after I got up from bed. Beryl hadn’t been ideal. She wasn’t sexually turned on the whole night. I had grabbed everything I wanted. I shoved my hand down her crotch while we danced in the dark. We twirled tongues for an eternity. But nothing happened. She was into the high. I wanted a girl who I could talk into having sex with me. And conversation can be great with the right girl, too. Beryl didn’t seem to be the right one. Her eyes were barely opened.
    But I was lonely, so I went and picked her up the next day at her place. And I drove and she directed me towards a cousin of hers who had drugs. Afterwards, we were going to dance at that same club where we had met. I don’t remember exactly where we went. It was a motel. A nice motel with a bright and cool-looking pool. And there we got high with her cousin. We smoked good skunky weed. And then we did many lines of coke. On the way there, she had asked me to stop for a bottle of cognac. The cousin liked cognac. We both chipped in and got the bottle. We drank the bottle with him in his nice clean room with kitchenette. We were on the second floor, sitting by a wide window with a view of the blue pool with the cool water shimmering. The cousins kept a conversation going that I didn’t understand at all. Before it was time for us to go, Beryl asked for Quaaludes. One for her and one for me. We took those with the last of the cognac. She wanted two more to go. The cousin gave her everything. I don’t remember him or her asking me to pay for anything. I don’t remember seeing money that late afternoon, now evening with the beginning darkness.
    The time it took to get to the car and the distance we walked is completely missing as if it had been chopped off by the effect of the drugs. I remember I couldn’t find the key to the car. And then I found it. Then I couldn’t fit the key in the ignition. And then the car was driving. We were off to somewhere. I wondered where. Beryl had not said a word since her good-bye to the cousin. The cousin had turned out to be a great guy and very, very generous. I tried to tell this to Beryl but I couldn’t articulate the words well. Since the car seemed to be doing alright without my help, I extended my right arm and reached the silent Beryl and pulled her over to me. She was so very skinny that she weighed nothing. I squeezed her skinny hand lightly like I used to do to my mother when I was a little kid and needed attention or reassurance. The car was taking us somewhere. I was feeling guilty for not knowing where, for my inability to give it direction. I was powerless. And I tried to tell Beryl that nothing good would come of this undisciplined drug taking. That we for sure were abusing ourselves, and perhaps others if our vehicle doesn’t soon get the appropriate guidance. I squeezed Beryl’s hand lightly again. She seemed to be in a stupor.
    There was total silence in the car. Memories of the motel room were coming to me. As if it all had happened long ago. I was recalling the past which presented itself now as nostalgia. I remembered Beryl knocking on the door and no one answering. I remembered telling Beryl how much I liked her name and how I thought it was so interesting. So interesting, I told her. Beryl is a mineral and a gem. She had skinny knuckles. Knock harder, I had said in front of the motel door. She knocked, and then I knocked. And finally the door opened. A big guy was standing there with a friendly smile.
    What was the cousin doing now? I was sort of dreaming this nostalgia. And that’s when the car crashed. We had gone on the sidewalk. We knocked down a fence and crashed into a tree. It was a thick-trunked tree. Beryl hit the windshield with her head. She had to wake up from her stupor. What happened? she said. I’m not sure, I said. Are you alright? She said she was. The engine shut off. We were in front of a house. We were momentarily dazed. She couldn’t open her door. I couldn’t open mine. We sat there and waited. Any moment the owners of the fence were going to come out. We could see the driveway and a garage at the end of it. We waited patiently. No one came out of the house. No lights were turned on. No one called the police. I think we should go, Beryl whispered. No one on the street came out to look. It was as if nothing had happened. I turned the key and the car started. It didn’t have much energy. Eight or nine blocks later it died in the middle of a famous street. The door was stuck and would not open. I came out through the window and pushed the car near to the curb. There’s a phone booth, Beryl said. She was pointing. Over there, she said.
    We were towed by a nice tow man. Beryl told him to take us to the club. He didn’t hesitate. I then remembered that had been our destination. The good tow man drove us to the club we had been on our way to. Beryl had a big chichón on her forehead. It wasn’t serious and she wanted to dance when we got there. Let’s dance, she said. I couldn’t. She went to look for a partner, and I went to the bar. And then I remembered I had spent the few dollars I had on the cognac. I walked out of the club and walked for hours and somehow found my way home. I never called Beryl again.
    I had paid three hundred dollars for the car. The junkyard gave me fifty. It was an old Grand Prix. I had no insurance. Other than the bump on Beryl’s forehead, there had been no injuries. I was sorry for the people whose fence I knocked over. They were going to have to pay to fix it. The tree was going to be alright. I was sure of it. The fifty dollars was not a bad amount to have. The worst part was having to tell my mother. She had lent me the money. I made something up. She believed me. Somebody had crashed into my car.

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