11. Home

The Kodiak crept noisily through the San Felipe neighborhood where Ervey lived. San Felipe is a mixed section adjacent to the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, which is commonly referred to by its acronym, UACH. The neighborhood started as an attempt to buttress the UACH campus with middle-class housing for university faculty, recent graduates, and professionals starting in the early-1960's. The plan worked for the most part, but over time competing alternatives kept springing up farther and farther away from the central part of the city, and San Felipe started to become a harbor for student housing and industrial and warehouse activities associated with the university, like many of the neighborhoods that surround universities throughout the world.
The location Ervey was heading to that night was a few blocks away from the UACH's science faculty buildings. It was a studio apartment that the landlord-- now his father-in-law-- had converted from a bedroom by building a separate entrance and tiny bathroom with the toiled located in the shower stall. The lights were out in the apartment and, for that matter, throughout the entire neighborhood when he stopped the big truck in the middle of the narrow street.


"Here we are," said Chonito, "I still get that warm and fuzzy feeling when I come here."


"Well get over it. Next time you show up drunk thinking you still live here, I'm going to throw a bucket of cold water on you," said Ervey.


"You already told me that, remember?" said Chonito, "oh man, that time I was so drunk that even now I don't remember where I had been that night or how I got here. I was like the milkman's burro, returning to the corral on his own once the load had been taken off."


"Again, again, and again," said Ervey.


"We'll it had been my home for so long, even before you. That's another one you owe me. First for bringing you in as a roommate and second for moving out when you hooked the landlord's daughter," said Chonito, "wait a minute, it's three for not competing for her."


"Sí, güey, I owe you for everything, but you're stupid to think that Fabiola ever looked your way," said Ervey, opening the truck door on his side, "she often complained to me that she didn't understand why I was doing keeping company with a fresh like you."


"We'll take that up next time, güey," said Chonito as he passed Ervey in front of the Kodiak, "right now I know you need to go plead for woman's attention, and I need to go park this big truck before I go hunt for a woman."


"At the races, güey?" asked Ervey sarcastically.


"Wherever," said Chonito, "see you on Monday.


"Be careful, güey," said Ervey, giving him a hand bump.