The Beatles Have Come to Mexico

Anthony Gomez III

 

Eventually, everything goes wrong at home. 

After my father died, my mother spent all her time behind a flickering screen watching old films—those ones in which all the actors seem to have funny voices and accents that no longer exist. 

I preferred things in technicolor myself. 

To get away from this house catered to a black and white world, I frequently told her I was off to rehearse, and she would laugh and smile and tell me the same thing: “Goodbye Mexican Paul McCartney.” As mother’s words always seem to do, the joke spread and everyone began calling me Paul (though I preferred George). These were the only laughs and smiles she shared anymore unless a particular moment from Jimmy Stewart sent her into a spin. That laugh was why I always mentioned my plans when leaving; at the same time, a personal irritation at this repeated refrain was enough to stop me from further elaborating my nights to her. 

You see, her joke was obvious. 

Picture this: A scrawny nineteen-year-old with pinto bean skin and permanently wavy long hair walking through Tijuana heat in a dark suit. You can now guess the set up. I was in a Beatles cover band. 

Across Tijuana’s cantinas a tourist or a tired local might walk in to hear the Fab Four’s songs. I would run through as many as I could. Of course—and here is the truth—I was the only member of this cover group. The limitations of one man covering the greatest band to ever exist yielded poor audiences. Often, the songs available to me were the more quiet and acoustic choices. Such a shtick could only last so long as some drunk would eventually shout and request a different number. The result of this was to leave the stage or else risk the unfortunate violence my hometown is known to create.

Late one night, in a bar cowboy John Wayne might have made home, where the Wild West’s lawlessness endured, and where a bartender practiced serving drinks while crouched behind the bar in the possible event of spontaneous and directionless gunfire, a man, tall and thick-shouldered, arrived in the middle of the setlist with an all too familiar lady next to him. 

My mother had taken to a recent therapeutic practice known as a new lover. Don’t think I’m annoyed because I find the act disloyal to my father or any of that Freudian bull. No, what hurts is how they came to the cantina where I performed. 

I managed to finish. 

After, I strolled to the side with my guitar in case, debating if I should run home to avoid the coming conversation. My mother approached me first and the man hung back like the Sundance Kid. Once near, she could hardly contain herself: 

“Doesn’t he look like Gary Cooper?” 

“I think those movies got to you, mom.” 

I did another take. Dark hair, heavy eyes, and skin our color was not selling the comparison. 

“Where did you find him anyway? I haven’t seen you leave the house in months.” 

“What do you think I get up to when you’re out playing? We talked for months and then he dragged me out when he said he heard about a Mexican Paul McCartney.”

“Great.” 

She grabbed my wrist, a sign she knew me too well, and waved her hand. Not Gary Cooper started over, two beers in his hand, and neither I assumed were for me. With her free hand, she reached for a beer and pointed a finger toward me. “This is my son. You can call him Paul because he likes that.”

“Hello Paul, I’m—” 

He mentioned a name and I missed it because the lightness in his voice was another strike on my mom’s ability to judge reality. Since then, it was easier for my mind to refer to him as Not Gary Cooper. 

The thought of my mother and her new boyfriend across town at night put a knife to my most immediate pleasure. He announced something particularly cold: “We’d be happy to see another of your performances.” That remark twisted the knife further. I imagined a different set and a different stage. The eventual arrival of these two interrupted the dream getaway, putting an end to any motivation. 

Alright. Here it is plainly: It was hard to get excited for performing when one’s mother and her boyfriend are the most excited audience members, when one’s mother attracts more attention than you do.

I replied, “Actually, I think I need a break.” 

* * * 

The only job I could find was at the city hospital cleaning floors. From mopping to sweeping to vacuuming, there was forever a smell persistent in the air, something lingering when I left for the streets and when I crashed my head on my pillow. I chalked this scent up to the hospital’s need for a sterile touch. To send me to clean a floor meant a room or an area was empty, the bed devoid of its body. A strong odor was just the distraction needed to make the next patient forget this detail, to overwhelm one sense with another.

It was a strange job to keep. I often debated what the place could mean to someone like me. I was not a doctor, not a patient, and there was no one I was visiting. Hospital time equated to something as simple as seeing the clock quietly symbolize my exit. To others, time never passed the way it did outside these walls. They were stuck in their rooms with their visits, with that awful light, and that endless musty smell. Everything seemed still—that was the quality that most made the work difficult. 

Whistling through songs I loved was often the sole comfort to the miserable tedium. One day, while summoning a melody, a voice behind a curtain called me over. 

“Hey, what song are you whistling?” Calm and light, the woman’s voice was a song itself, a call to a wandering mariner. I approached the curtain, unable to see even a silhouette through the thickness of the cloth. Like it was a wall, I put my head close, the curtain tickling my face as it moved at my touch.

“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s called, “‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’ The Beatles.”

“Yes. I remember now.”

“I’m sorry. Was it bothering you?” 

“Not at all. It’s a fun song to hear. God knows, I could use that right now.” 

Whistling again, the mop felt lighter and the minutes faster. The song’s ridiculous and overly optimistic lyrics were on my mind while I worked. The woman behind the curtain remained an abstract dream. During the song’s bridge, I quieted down and turned to see a doctor and nurse cross the path and disappear around a corner. After, it was some time before anyone else crossed into the room. Even more time passed before the woman spoke again. 

“What a funny song,” she said. 

“Excuse me, you shouldn’t be up,” a young nurse snapped as she stepped in front and peeked through the curtain. I tried for a glimpse, but it was not going to happen with Nurse Ratched. When the nurse reemerged, she grabbed my shoulder, the mop bucket wheels dragging as she pulled me into the hall.

“Listen, the last thing she needs right now is a man willing to speak to her. It’s enough to hurt her all over again.” 

“What happened?” I asked, a bit too venturous I knew. As the words came out, I could already imagine this small nurse storming through the hall, her dark hair tied, to complain about an insubordinate and nosy janitor. I would receive a note about my firing at the front door, never to step foot in this place again, and I would have only a voice to remember that woman behind the curtain. Instead, the nurse shook her head again, something she must have done a lot from the way she kept her eyes locked on mine. 

“What do you think? What happens to young women in this country.”

The nurse walked away, perhaps expecting me to take a hint and do the same. Rather than follow the unspoken order, I reached for the mop bucket to continue cleaning and keep myself close. Maybe I shouldn’t interrupt the woman’s rest, but if someone hurt wanted to speak to another…surely that was alright?

I don’t know the answer. I still don’t. 

 If I’m being honest, I don’t understand other people, and because of that I never know if there is something wrong with what I am doing. None of the pondering amounted to much because the woman was quiet, a soft sleep having taken over. Eventually, I had to leave, and I hauled the cleaning tools with me, whistling the tune again. 

Over the following week the hospital returned to being a barren place. I was itching to perform in cantinas again, from the sleazy to the tourist-minded. Each day, thoughts of announcing my leave came and vanished. Simple hopes of speaking to that one patient kept me on the shift schedule. 

Toward the end of a second week, I caught a break. On a different floor and in a different room than before, I cleaned and whistled, repeating the number that had first caught her attention. 

“Still Ob-La-Di, huh?” Behind a hospital-colored curtain, the angelic voice remained dispossessed from its body. 

“Yeah,” I answered. “I couldn’t get rid of it.” 

“That is hard.” We were quiet, and for a moment, I accepted our conversation had reached a premature end. My shoes squeaked as I prepared to turn when she stopped me. 

“I had the nurse play it for me. She found it online last week and put it on.” 

“It’s comforting,” I told her. “It’s what I play when I can’t think. It’s what I play when I feel like a joke, when I think the world wants to make me a punchline.” 

“That’s good. That song though…There’s something I’m not telling you.”

The beat stopped in my head. Unable to fathom what could frighten me so much from a bedridden stranger, a sense of dread nevertheless grabbed hold.

“The song…It’s what I heard when I was last with my dog.”

“Your dog?” 

“Yes. My favorite. Before all this…the last time I saw him—I mean—I was with my former boyfriend, Neto. My dog started to bark during Neto’s favorite detective show. He wouldn’t stop. I tried to tell him to hush and…”

A haunting quality overtook her speech, an evocative and moving impression that overpowered the words themselves. To my shame, I have to admit to losing myself in this fantastic feeling. From the rhythms and cadence of these sounds I built an ideal woman behind the curtains. While she was describing her sorrow, I was imagining dark hair resting on her shoulders. As she moved to discuss the horror of living with this Neto, I was piecing together puzzling brown eyes on a face Diego Rivera might have painted. When she mentioned the violence he inflicted, I was conjuring a face made for black and white film. By the time I returned to her words, I accepted that only a writer like Juan Rulfo or Carlos Fuentes deserved her past, only they who could truly capture her memory. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But what happened with your dog?” 

“That’s the trouble. There was an issue in the house we lived in. It’s barking came from behind the walls.” 

“Behind the walls?” 

“Yes, it was an incomplete house. Its walls weren’t finished, and its floors were open in several spaces. He still barked as I stumbled out of the house and into the street. I was afraid of what could happen to him. Somewhere, I could hear that song.” 

“And now? Now, is there anything I could do?” 

* * * 

I put all blame on the apparition built up in my head. This was a spirit I could never live up to, though I would try. 

Construction equipment lay in the path of what looked like three plain, huge boxes stacked upon each other. This modernist catastrophe was called a house. The color was new, a funny beige that plagues Tijuana’s architecture lately. White bars separated each layer, a trim untouched at the highest level, where the wooden pane was visible. A tarp that might have been opaque when new was hanging over a side of the house, illuminating only dirt and dust. No car was visible in the driveway.

I started with the most obvious entry—the front door. A man like Neto does not believe basic crimes could ever happen to him. Sure enough, it was unlocked. It creaked, as if uttering a warning: TURN BACK! But this was not a haunted house, however much violence it contained. 

The house was not just bare, it was startlingly blank. Other than a TV and a single couch, the room was empty. The kitchen to the side was similarly devoid of a human presence, as if recently built, unfinished, and unused. No frames hung on the walls. No images. No posters.

About then, I could feel relief at being the only person inside and moved to freely conduct the search. 

“Hello, boy!” I shouted. “Hello.” At various spots, the walls were incomplete, awaiting their final touch. Along these areas, I devoted the most time and energy to tapping several times and shouting, “Hello, boy! Hello!” Tap! Tap! Tap! I let the beats hit behind me as I moved up the stairs, continuing the procedure to the second floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. Nothing seemed to respond, and it began to all seem a futile endeavor. One more floor of no success and all I had done was sneak through a stranger’s house. 

On this third floor—the attic—I stared around to find different boxes, opened but not emptied. I peeked inside the different sets and found books, records, and other tokens of personality. Scattering through it, I found what I needed for inspiration: The White Album. 

I whistled the song I had sung for her. I whistled it as I returned down the stairs. At the start of the second floor, there was a faint bark. I kept the song going. I turned to the wall. Knock! Knock! I banged harder. Hurried steps scattered along and out came a small Border Collie. It neither barked nor moved further. I could see the problem already. Though it could move, the leash was stuck on something within the walls. 

It was not going to stop me. I was here to steal someone’s pet. And hell, I was going to do it. 

I took the end of my key and began to scrape one side of the leash down, whistling as I did so to keep the dog at bay. 

* * * 

Walking down the street with a ripped leash, heat from the sun and anxiety hit me. Sweat was an aftermath, a bodily response with a single question: What did I do? The dog moved ahead, stopping to smell every few dozen steps. These delays were nervous weights, seconds stacking up nerves that I was about to be caught. However, the dog and I managed to make it out without much attention and soon, I crossed into my neighborhood.

I reached for a key. As usual, the house was locked, and, used to my mother’s presence extending only within these four walls, I called out. 

“Hello! Mom, I have a brief favor!” I went back outside, considering how best to tell her, and tied a knot with the ripped end of the dog’s leash to the fence. “Hello!” 

The footsteps that came to the front were not hers, but heavy and slow. Not Gary Cooper emerged from the corner room to see what I was calling for. 

“She’s not here; said she’d be back in a bit.”

“Not here? She hardly leaves.” 

“Well, guess this is one of those times. Anything I can do for you?” 

“Maybe. I have a friend’s dog here. I just want to let her know I have him.”

My thoughts of returning the dog, seeing him run to her on the hospital floor, collapsed as soon I pictured them. Knowing its rules on pets, a question of what to do in the meantime became more concerning. Admittedly, the real reason for wanting to leave was to announce proof of my effort to her, evidence that I would listen and act for her. 

“I guess I can do that. You’ll be gone long?” 

“I shouldn’t be. If you need to calm him, just play that Beatles song: ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’”

“Are you being serious right now?” 

“Actually, yes. It seems I’m not the only Beatles fan here in Mexico.” Even just hearing the title, the dog jumped and bounced, stretching himself on my knee as if begging for the song. A simple petting would have to do; I was ready to see her. 

“Looks like he needs a walk to burn that energy off.” 

“Maybe. Maybe a snack too. I found him with that poor thing of a leash, but it’ll work.” 

“Alright, then. It’s a good thing I like dogs. What’s its name?” 

“I…I don’t know.” I searched through the conversations with the woman in the hospital. No success.

“Some friend’s dog, huh?” 

Not Gary Cooper did not press on the matter like I thought he would. For the first time, I thought my mom had picked an alright guy, even if the more I saw him the more I questioned if those black and white films did something to her head. The last look I had of him as I turned back was him leading the dog past the gate. 

Seemed he was serious about the walk. 

Back at the hospital, I had to tell security and staff I left something in the custodian closet to avoid too much suspicion. Curious glances snuck into corners as I bit these words. I was never a great liar. Still, no one stopped me or questioned me further. Past the main floor I rode up to where I last saw her. Exiting the elevator doors, I made a right and another down a long hall, heading to what seemed the heart of this place. I could see the chair and the curtain, hiding and maintaining the fantasy. 

“Hey, are you awake?” As I asked this, I realized another crucial piece of information remained unknown—her name. Was that just who I was? A collector of stories about men and women and dogs without their identities? I had trespassed and stolen and risked it all for her. Never did I stop to put a name to a dream. Was I afraid a name would make her too real? Would it make this city too real? Yet why should I be afraid? What was I to Tijuana except a single soul? Luckily, her voice interrupted this self-criticism. 

“Hello. Who’s there?” 

“It’s me. You can call me Paul. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you my name.” 

“Oh, yes. I hear you clear now.” 

“I just wanted to let you know, I got him. Went and found him.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Your dog? I grabbed him. I wanted to bring it to you here but then I started thinking about this place’s rules and the trouble and the difficulty. I…I guess I just wanted you to know where he is now. I brought him to my home, and I can watch him for you.” 

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry, Paul. What they give me just gets me so tired now. I’m happy though.” 

“Then I’m glad to hear it. I will see you tomorrow.”
Despite her body calling for sleep, she spoke again as I stood. 

“Did you have to sing him that song?” 

“I did.” I could feel a glow effect on the words, a positive spin to them. Blame this on my joy, but I felt the urge to try for a question, one whose answer I wanted to hold onto. “Before I go, I was wondering, what is your name?” 

“Magdalena.” 

* * * 

“Magdalena. Magdalena. Magdalena.”

I spoke her name out into the open, letting it float and dissolve into the air. I spoke her name like a magic spell that kept the fantasy running.

As soon as I stopped, Tijuana broke through with reality.

At the end of my home’s driveway, two crossed cars blocked the entry. Blue-uniformed officers stood around while several more came out from the gate that once separated my house from the street. It clanged and banged, an invisible force preventing it from being still. Several officers spoke and laughed, as if whatever scene they guarded was a silly drama from a telenovela. Several neighbors were out, some were familiar, and others were as strange as what was happening at home. 

“I’m glad you are alright,” Fernando, the old man next door all my life, told me. “I’m glad your mom was fine too.” We continued to stare forward, awaiting something substantial. I didn’t want to ask Fernando, that would make things too close, and risk implicating myself in Not Gary Cooper’s fate. So, I contented myself to wait. Next, two strangers around me started to speak. 

“What kind of man steals another’s dog?” 

“A cruel one. I tell you, this city is getting more cruel by the day.” 

“Some things are just off limits though.” 

Despite the whispers, I could continue to hear the rattling of the gate, and from somewhere within…a faint bark. I was sure of it! The dog continued to call out.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting the strangers. Fernando glanced over, though his eyes quickly went back, not wanting his eavesdropping to appear too obvious. “Can you tell me what happened with the dog?” 

“Yes,” one of them said. “It seems someone who knew Neto recognized the dog that man was walking. Something about a broken collar of sorts that gave it away. After, the man had to pay for it. Like I told my friend: Who the hell steals a dog?” 

“I see, but what about the dog? He’s alright?” 

“The dog, yes. But it seems Neto didn’t want him anymore. He told the police it reminded him of something now. Of what, I don’t know.”

The scene took a long time to clear. When all the police and the cars had vanished, it was late, and the gate remained open. That poor and unnamed dog was whimpering in the lawn, half his body disappearing into a bush. Not Gary Cooper could not be identified. I didn’t have a name, and my mom was unable to bring herself to give one. 

She was back inside, back to watching those black and white films. 

Without anything to do, I went to the dog. Soon, Magdalena would get better, and he would be back in her arms. And oh, I had forgotten to ask for a name. Surely, he had one! Until I could visit her again, I remained outside. Slowly, the dog came back out again. The fears of the day were in his eyes, which looked up with suspicion and hope. To calm him, I began whistling that song again: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” All the time I did so, I guessed what name might fit, what name belonged to the dog.