Chapter 16: Mateo

WHEN I THINK back on it now it was probably inevitable. There was no way to avoid it. Mateo and I had too much history to make what had happened a total break. The thing about too much history is that you still have a lot to weigh. When you feel something, when something happens that affects you so deeply, it becomes a part of you and you cannot get it out of your head or out of your life without cutting off a piece of yourself. That hurts.

Plus, I didn’t want to give Mateo up. Part of me was part of him. We’d known each other as long as Ellie and I had met. The two of them had done pretty much everything together even when they were little, and at first I was kind of a third wheel. A third wheel attached to Mateo more than to Ellie, perhaps, but a third wheel nonetheless.

I guess the three of us, Mateo, Ellie and I must have looked pretty cute to the adults, to their parents and mine. They never said anything, never made fun of us, but as we got old enough our moms and our dads had little talks with us together and separately to make sure we understood the rules. I think we all did. Of course we did. They were my friends and I was their friend and no one is going to hurt a friend, at least on purpose.

I should have seen it coming. Mateo and I had agreed to meet in the park, neither one of us wanted to be at the other’s house. We decided to meet at the little meadow, the one well past the entrance and almost to the lake and semi-private because of trees and other low vegetation surrounding it. Mateo was already there, and but for a couple with a large yellow lab on their way out of the meadow we had it to ourselves.

Mateo walked up to me. I couldn’t read his expression, but it didn’t seem hostile. I thought he was going to shake hands. He wasn’t. He hit me as hard as he could in the stomach.

I knew it was going to happen this way. Some part of me knew it, but I guess I somehow hoped it wouldn’t. It was the kind of hit that takes your breath away. I collapsed to my knees holding my stomach and trying to breathe. I don’t know how long I was that way but it must have been a few minutes.

Fight or take it? I’d thought about this and hadn’t decided. On the one hand I knew I was innocent. I’d never laid a hand on Ellie that she didn’t want me to, I never raped her, and I never spoke ill of her before the trial, during the trial, or afterwards. I knew she told the cops and the nurses what she thought had happened. I knew she was speaking in good faith. That didn’t make it any easier, but at least I was spared the thought that she for whatever reason was trying to set me up.

I knew Mateo was going to have to exact some kind of what he thought was justice for his sister. I wasn’t entirely surprised by his choice, even though he caught me unawares. In the end I decided to let it go, this once.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and I shifted to protect myself. I was afraid Mateo hadn’t finished, but I was wrong. Mateo extended his hand to help me up and I accepted the help. He must have been as uncertain about me as I was about him, because he stepped back out of my reach as soon as I was on my feet.

I stood there for the longest time and stared at him. He stared at me. I started to wonder whether there was any hope of getting to him, getting him to understand I hadn’t hurt his sister.

“Fuck you, Mateo. Fuck you.”

He stepped forward and I thought that’s it, pal you had your chance. I wasn’t going to let him take another swing and me suffer another hit.

“Don’t try it, pal. You had your one chance, Mateo. That’s it.”

I think Mateo reconsidered. Both of us were, in one sense ready to fight to the death, if not literally. We both loved Ellie and we both felt we had the absolute right of the situation. I wondered how we could make this work, how I could convince Mateo to work with me on this.

He stepped closer.

“I mean it, Mateo. Don’t even think about it.”

He swung. I blocked his swing and nailed him in the chest with a straight right. I wasn’t the greatest fighter in the world, but I’d spent eighteen months in a place where it helped to know how to defend yourself, if only to limit the damage the other guy wanted to do to you. I wasn’t thinking clearly right then, but I knew the essentials I’d learned in prison.

My blow knocked Mateo back but only for a second. He rebalanced himself and came at me again. This time I got him exactly the way he’d hit me, right in the solar plexus under the breastbone, and he went down the way I had done.

I let him lie there and gasp for breath, like I’d had to do, before I reached out my hand to give him a hand up. He took it, but when he got to his feet I moved back a little and I saw he was ready to charge me again. I put up my hands.

“Mateo, I’m not going to fight you, man.”

He stepped forward and I thought for a second we were going to have to go through this again. Thank god he stopped. He looked uncertain, and I was pretty sure I understood what was going through his head. I put out my hands again in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner.

“Mateo, look. You had your one shot. That’s it. If you really want to keep this going, I’m totally up for it. I’ll pound your ass and you know it.”

I stepped closer.

“Look, man, I understand. You had to do what you did. I get it.” I snorted, or maybe it was a cough, I don’t know. “But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to be your punching bag.”

He lowered his hands, a good sign.

“Look, let’s walk over to that bench and sit down, OK? See if we can do that without killing each other.”