Boy was moving back to the Rio Grande. Everything was de aquellas, but the act of packing up and unloading his chivas was aguitandoing him. Everything he picked up made him think how he’d acquired it and the memories that had attached to it.
There was the unused Polaroid disposable camera he was given at his best friend’s wedding to take shots from the crowd. He got two of them. He only used one and didn’t take the other out of the cellophane wrapper, and he promised himself he’d take related pictures and send them to his friend. But the newlyweds had already had two kids and the idea of late wedding pictures seemed stale now. Órale now qué?
There was also the big antique silk handkerchief. It was still in the nice see-through plastic box that came with it when he bought it. He’d planned to give it to the wife he’d marry someday, but he’d lost and forgotten about it. Now he was divorced, and it resurfaced only when he had to empty his house and pack everything in boxes. Now what?
And there were his tramados. Four identical ones, perfectly pressed at the bottom of his trouser drawer. They only occupied space. He never wore them anymore. The Stacy Adams Madisons they went with had fallen by the wayside long ago. Nothing else went with the narrow-cuffed legs. But he couldn’t let them go or even use them as garden chore pants. They were coming for sure, but the sight of them took him back to an entirely different life he once lived.
Pressed and straight-legged cuffed kakis over polished Stacy Adams and an unbuttoned short-sleeved linen shirt over a bleached white t-shirt was the style of the day. And so much had changed in Boy’s life that the tramados seemed to come from another lifetime and belong to another man.
“Simón, they’re staying with me… de amadres,” he thought.
“Maybe there’ll be occasions to wear them again,” he said to himself.
Soon afterwards, he was back in his homeland. The first Sunday even before he’d unpacked his boxes, he put on his tramados and some office shoes and called a vato he knew to go out for breakfast in the barrio with him.
“Simón,” the vato said.
When they got together, they talked about old times.
“Hey, ese, where can I get some Stacey Adams to go with my tramados,” Boy asked.
“Eee! I noticed’em when I first saw you. Classics,” the vatos said.
Boy paused. He got the signal: his look wasn’t right anymore.
“The raza doesn’t ponerle así anymore?” Boy asked.
“Nel. Same kakis but with white tennies and plaid long-sleeved wool shirts,” the vato said.
“Eee! Sura. Then I’m out of style?” Boy said.
“Or you’re poniendole a new one. Ponle?” the vato said.
“Hmmm,” Boy said.
