To Selena, With Love (32 page)

“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked.

“Still working,” I said.

“Can you get away?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Please? Can’t you just say you’ve got to go somewhere?” Selena asked. “I’d really like it if you came over to the studio.”

“I could say that, but we’re finally making a little progress,” I hedged. “I need to see this thing through for a little bit longer. Then maybe I can come by. Why? What’s so important?”

“I really want you to come hear something,” Selena said. “It’s that song, ‘Dreaming of You.’”

I knew which song she was talking about, of course, but I hadn’t
yet paid much attention to the demo with the lyrics on it. I had no idea what the song was about. “I’ll try,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “I really want you to come over here and listen to what I did on that song.”

Then we hung up. Later—much later, after it seemed like the world had ended and my heart was torn in two—I thought about that phone call. I like to imagine that Selena was thinking of me when she recorded that vocal track. I think that’s the truth, too, because Selena had never before asked me to drop whatever I was doing to come hear something she was singing.

That’s what I should have done—drop everything to spend a few more precious minutes with my wife. If I had done that, my last moments with Selena might have included standing right next to her in the studio and hearing that song of hers, which carries all of the feeling she had for me.

I still feel happy when I think about how Selena was thinking of me when she sang that song. But I’m also torn up by the fact that I didn’t go to her then. Why didn’t I just leave work so that I could listen to what my wife wanted me to hear?

The answer is simple: I didn’t realize that my chances to hear Selena sing were nearly over.

On March 30, Selena and I were at home, waiting for my father to come in from out of town. He was going to spend some time with us and stay in our guest bedroom. Before my dad arrived, though, Yolanda called to say that she was at the Days Inn in Corpus and had finally brought the missing paperwork that Selena needed for her business.

“Just come over here and get the papers,” Yolanda told Selena. “I don’t want to have to deal with anyone.”

“She sounds kind of shaky,” Selena said to me after they’d hung up.

“She’s always telling stories,” I reminded her. “What makes you think that Yolanda has the papers this time, when she never has before?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going over there,” Selena said. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Let me drive you to the motel,” I said. “I don’t want you going over there at night by yourself.”

I drove Selena over to the hotel in my truck and parked. Selena got out of the truck and told me that Yolanda was in Room 158.

“She wants to see me alone,” Selena said. “Why don’t I do that, and you stay here. She might be more likely to tell me the truth if I’m alone.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Besides, if you’re out here in the truck, I’ll have a good excuse to leave.”

“Okay.” It was a nice night. I turned the ignition off and rolled down the windows. I listened to the radio, but when Selena didn’t come back after a while, I decided I’d better go see what was going on.

I locked the truck and followed the path that Selena had taken. The door to Yolanda’s room was open and light was spilling out of the doorway. I looked inside and saw that Yolanda was sitting on the bed. She looked like she had been crying. Selena was standing in front of her, looking upset as well.

“Hey,” I said. “Everything okay in here?”

“Yeah, everything is cool,” Selena said.

Neither of us knew that Yolanda had returned to the same gun shop in San Antonio a few days before this, where she repurchased the exact snub-nosed Taurus 45 revolver that she had bought before. I didn’t see the gun. All I saw was a small, sad, ugly little woman sitting on a bed, not a murderer.

Who knows? Maybe Yolanda would have killed Selena that night, if I hadn’t come along. In any case, Selena followed me back out to the truck, and told me that Yolanda had been telling her about being raped in Monterrey earlier that day.

“What?”
I turned around in shock.

“Yeah, she was trying to show me her torn clothes,” Selena said. “I offered to take her to the hospital, but she wouldn’t go, probably because it’s another one of her stories. It looks to me like Yolanda did that to herself.”

We got into the truck and I started the engine. Selena turned on the overhead light and started flipping through the papers. “It’s not all here,” she said in frustration. “There are more papers missing, Chris. Let me go in and see Yolanda again.”

I was already pulling the truck out of the motel parking lot. “No, let’s just go,” I said. “You know what’s going to happen if you go back there. Yolanda’s just going to make some excuse about why she can’t give you anything else.”

Selena sighed and leaned her head back. “Yeah, you’re right.”

By the time we got back to our house, my dad had already arrived from San Antonio. We hung out for a while and made plans for the next day. Selena made a list of things for me to buy at the grocery store; she was planning to make my favorite meal of black-tipped shark.

Eventually, my dad went to the guest room to unpack. When he came back to the kitchen, Selena and I were paying bills. We both had our checkbooks out on the kitchen table. Seeing that made my dad laugh and get his camera.

“Here,” he said, aiming the camera in our direction. “I want to get pictures of you two paying bills like grown-ups and being so responsible.”

That was the very last picture ever taken of Selena alive.

If I had to pick my happiest memory with Selena, I’d probably pick the night before she was killed. Things were so good with us at that moment. As we always did, when Selena and I went to bed together, we hugged and said how much we loved each other. That night, she lay with her head on that sweet spot on my shoulder and we talked about the future. It was one of those moments when you’re so in love with somebody and you feel that love coming back to you. I’m happy to have that memory of our last night together as a reminder of how rich and full of love our lives were, despite everything.

The phone rang as we were lying there, and Selena looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“It’s Yolanda.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

Selena rolled over and picked up the phone. After she’d said hello, Selena listened for a minute, then said to me, “Guess what? Yolanda found those missing papers. She wants me to come back to the motel and get them. She wants me to go alone.”

“No!” I said. “Tell her that you’re not going back. It’s too late. No way. Plus, I don’t want you going over there alone.”

“No,” Selena repeated into the phone. “Chris says it’s too late. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

Yolanda then started talking about the rape. Selena stopped her and said, “If you want to go to the hospital, I’ll take you. I already told you that.”

When Yolanda said no, that she didn’t want to go to the hospital, Selena said, “You know what? It’s late, and this conversation is over.” Then she hung up the phone.

“She probably thought I would be with you, and that’s why she said no,” I said.

“Yeah, and she probably also knows that if I take her to the hospital, they won’t find anything wrong,” Selena said. “Maybe I should go over there anyway.”

“Don’t. Just stay here with me,” I said. “We’ll handle everything tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Selena agreed, and we both fell asleep at last.

In the morning, I woke up to the sound of Selena shuffling things around in the bedroom. I opened one eye and watched her getting her clothes together. I didn’t know where she was going, but I was too sleepy to wonder about it. I didn’t even think about the motel or Yolanda.

Selena showered and dressed, then opened the door of our bedroom to leave. As she did, my dad opened the door to the guest bedroom at the same time. Selena had completely forgotten that he was in the house. She screamed at the sight of him—a really loud, scared kind of scream.

I jumped out of bed. “What? What’s going on?” I shouted.

Selena turned around and started laughing that great big laugh
of hers. “It’s nothing. Go back to bed, Chris. I’m sorry. I forgot your dad was here. He really scared me!”

At the same time, I could see my dad in the hallway, apologizing. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said to Selena, but truthfully, he also looked pretty startled.

My dad and Selena talked for a few minutes in the hallway. I turned over and went back to sleep. I didn’t even think to ask Selena why she was up so early. She often woke up before I did, got dressed, and chilled around the house, made phone calls, or went off to have breakfast with her dad. The only unusual thing about that morning was that I had been awakened by Selena screaming.

Selena, it turned out, was on her way to the Days Inn. She had talked to Yolanda again that morning, and she was determined to take Yolanda to the hospital and have her examined after the so-called rape. That was Selena’s style: she was going to see this thing through and prove that Yolanda was lying.

Selena called me a little later that morning to tell me that she had taken Yolanda to Doctors Regional Hospital. Now they were returning to the Days Inn. “I couldn’t find my keys,” Selena confessed, “so I took your truck and your cell phone.”

Yolanda was in the truck with her, so Selena lowered her voice as she told me that the doctors had found no evidence of rape.

There was nothing else Yolanda had now that could keep Selena there. They were on their way back to the motel and Selena would come home, I thought. Maybe we would finally be rid of that woman and her craziness.

I went with my dad in his car to pick up the groceries we needed
for dinner and to run a few other errands. The sky was cloudy and gray, and the day had a gloomy feel to it.

Something made me decide to call off the other errands after we’d bought the groceries. “You know what?” I said to my dad. “Let’s just go back to the house. I can go back out again later.”

We left the seafood place where we’d bought the shark and drove home. When I saw that the answering machine light was blinking, I pushed
PLAY
and listened to a cryptic message from one of our DJ friends in the valley.

“Hey, Chris,” he said. “Is everything okay? Call me back.”

Why hadn’t he called my cell phone? I wondered. Then I remembered that Selena had my phone in the truck with her. Nobody could reach me.

There was another message as well, this one from someone who had heard a rumor that Selena had been hurt or in an accident. I just rolled my eyes. Selena and I often got these kinds of crazy calls, because the media in Corpus was always looking for another story they could do about her.

I was in the bedroom and my dad was in the living room watching TV when the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up the call. I never answered the phone right away.

This time, however, I heard Selena’s aunt Dolores speaking and picked up the phone receiver immediately. “What’s up?” I said.

Dolores sounded calm and fairly collected, but her voice was a little higher-pitched than usual, tight sounding. “Selena’s been involved in an accident, Chris,” she said, her voice starting to shake a little. “She’s at Memorial Hospital. You need to get over there as soon as you can.”

Immediately, I thought of how fast Selena liked to drive.
It must
have been a car accident
, I thought. “What happened?” I asked, my heart starting to pound.

“Selena was shot twice,” Aunt Dolores said. “You need to come to the hospital right away.”

I hung up the phone, ran into the living room, and told my dad about the call. I was upset but still not panicked. People get shot and survive their wounds all of the time, I told myself.

By now, we were in the car. Aloud, I said to my dad, “Damn it, man, why did she have to go to that motel by herself this morning? Now look what’s happened.”

My dad had been going the speed limit. He began driving faster and faster the closer we got to Memorial Hospital. By the time he pulled into the hospital parking lot, he was driving so fast that the tires screeched as he went around that last corner.