After Delores Read online

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I said, deeply ashamed. “Do you want me to go away?”

  As soon as I said it, I remembered that that’s exactly what Delores used to say whenever we’d have a little spat. She’d say, “Do you want me to go away?”

  And I’d say, “No, Delores. I love you. We’re just having a fight. It’s no big thing.”

  I’d say that because I wanted to be able to persevere with people, to have faith in them. But I was so, so stupid. Thank you, Delores, for showing me how stupid I’ve been.

  “Yes, I want you to go away,” Charlotte said, laughing, as if she could have, just as easily, asked me to stay.

  16

  ALL THE WAY HOME, people were asking for money. Some were young, sane, and homeless. Some were boozers, stumbling in speech and movement with swollen lips and gray faces. Some were psychotic and poisoned. I believed every word they said. Each one wanted money from me. When I gave, I was blessed, and when I refused, they cursed me. I stopped giving then, just to see how many curses I could accommodate in one city block.

  I didn’t want to go home but I didn’t know how to find anyone to talk to, so at least at home I could talk to myself. Sometimes on the street, waiting for the light, I’d try to talk to somebody but nobody wanted to except some sleazy guys. I got as far as my front steps when someone called out, expressly for me. I turned around and saw Charlotte, running to catch up. My eyes opened so wide and happy that the night came inside.

  Oh God, she knows my name.

  I was breathless and my skin began to burn with joy. She followed me upstairs and didn’t mention all the fire around my couch, where we both sat, right on top of the sleeping bag and rolled-up towel.

  “You know,” she said, “it’s wonderful to have a crush on someone but it can get frustrating when you can’t do anything about it. When it’s impossible.”

  That shamed me into looking down at the floor, and then was embarrassed for that, so looked at the wall instead.

  “Do they always know about it?” I mumbled.

  “They know,” she said. “They know when you’re sitting across a table and you want to kiss their neck. They can always tell.”

  “Well, if that’s the way it goes,” I said, “then no one’s ever had a crush on me because I’ve never felt a woman kissing my neck across a table if she hasn’t already done it in real life.”

  Then Charlotte looked at me and I looked at her. She let me look for much too long. She let me look at her huge legs with their beautiful bruises. Then she let me look at the skyscraper that was her neck. And I was so thankful she had taken the time to let me admire her like that.

  “In my drawer are two nightgowns,” I said. But I wasn’t being sexy. I was being overwhelmed and looking down too much. “One is silky, light green. One is pink and frilly. They’re both for summer. I pretend that different women come to sleep in my bed and we wear these nightgowns talking like high school girls and looking at the moon outside the window. After we giggle and snuggle down cozy under the quilt, they run their hands along my bare skin and we sleep so soundly, with our arms around each other, that no dream can disturb us.”

  “Do it to me,” she said.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  She looked like a maniac. She was strange.

  “Charlotte? What are you doing? Are you acting?”

  “I’m going to do it to you,” she said.

  I got so angry, I got so furious. Charlotte knew I couldn’t have sex with her, I was too crazy. Besides, she had a girlfriend. I would never take love away from another person. What would be the difference between me and Sunshine if I did that? I could have punched Charlotte, I hated her so much.

  “No,” I hissed. My teeth were clenched so tight, my face was somebody else’s face.

  She slapped me. I was crying. I wanted to kill her. Where was my gun? Charlotte didn’t kiss me. She pulled down my pants. She pressed her whole body so I couldn’t move and jammed her hand inside me. I was pinned by a rock that was Charlotte. I didn’t fight her. I wanted her. Tears and snot were everywhere and her breath was dripping wet all over my chest. Her fingers were huge and pried open the muscle. My body was the only thing left to me and now she was breaking that too.

  I heard myself whimpering in a way that makes people despise you. Charlotte pushed and pushed until eventually she pushed me into a feverish clarity. I could see everything. I was burning. I could see that there was so much more pain than I had ever imagined and I didn’t have to look for it. Those closest to me would bring it with them.

  Charlotte was sweating all over me. When she stood, the couch was wet and sticky and smelled foul. I couldn’t sit up. I could feel her scratches, the impression of her grip inside me.

  “Charlotte,” I said. “You’re just what I deserve.”

  But she was already bored.

  17

  EVER SINCE THE Rambo incident, Dino had been acting sort of hostile toward me. He smiled like he hated me. He was always saying how good I looked and how I should marry him. Instead of saying “Smile” every morning, he’d started saying, “You sure look healthy, Momma.”

  “Let’s get married,” he’d say about three times a day.

  “I don’t want to get married, Dino.”

  “Oh, come on, Mrs. Monroe.”

  He called me “Mrs. Monroe” because his name was Dino Monroe.

  “I need a good wife.”

  “Good luck,” I’d say three times a day. “Because a good wife is hard to find.”

  Charlotte had left three bruises on the insides of my thighs and she’d scratched my cunt so that it stung every time I pissed. It was hard to walk around that restaurant all day because the welts would rub and then start to bleed.

  “What’s that between your legs?” Dino finally said.

  I had to stop serving the blue plate specials and tell him straight to his face.

  “Dino, be polite, man, because I want to like you. Be my friend, okay?”

  Then he shut up for a minute but came right back to the marriage rap.

  Momma was still doing her routine. But since she was too cheap to replace Rambo, she’d started working the register herself. Only she was practically blind, so she’d ask each customer how much the check was and how big a bill they were paying with. When it came time to go to the bank, she’d roll up the deposit in a paper bag and stick it in her girdle before waddling off. Theat’s when we’d eat the corned beef.

  One day, who comes into the place but Rambo himself. He was weirder than usual, unsettlingly calm. He had the collar of his jacket turned up and the visor of his baseball cap pulled down and he smoked Lucky Strikes very quietly, staring at the ashtray. None of the crew said anything to him. I had to talk to him, though, because I was his waitress.

  So I said, “Coffee?”

  And he nodded.

  Herbie’s is one of those places that rich people think are quaint and the poorest people are always welcomed. Anyone who can scrape together one dollar and sixty cents for the breakfast special will be served. It’s not the kind of place that anyone gets thrown out of. Even if they can’t pay the check, we just let them leave. That’s what dive coffee shops are for. So no one thought to throw Rambo out. He just drank and smoked and thought things over.

  “Look at that poor boy. He can’t get a job,” Joe whispered in the kitchen. I nodded. Most of the crew couldn’t get a good job anywhere else. That’s why they were all working at Herbie’s. Take Joe, for example. Joe is a great chef and a good guy, but he’s from Saint Kitts and he doesn’t know how to read, so we have to pretend that he can. I put up all my checks with the orders clearly written, hanging on the line, and Joe stares at them all day long, checking back and forth every once in a while. But all the time I’m whispering, “Chopped sirloin, mashed, and string. Burger well, L and T.”

  Joe wouldn’t last a minute in a fancier place. They’d get someone who knows how to read. He was right about Rambo. The guy probably co
uldn’t find anything else and had to come in to ask for his job back. Joe bet me a joint. He’d get it too.

  After a whole hour, Rambo got up and kind of shuffled to the bathroom. The back of his pants were dirty and stained. I could tell he’d been sleeping out on the street, really falling apart and punishing himself.

  Rambo would have to hate himself and give up everything he believed in to crawl back to Herbie’s and beg Momma for a job. She looked at him conspicuously over her glasses.

  “You look like a bum,” she said, too loud. “I can’t take you back looking like a bum.”

  That did it. I would have done the same thing in his place at the same moment. I mean, I don’t like Rambo, but to turn someone down before they ask, when they’re just thinking about asking, takes away their dignity to make the decision to ask by themselves. It was unnecessarily gross. When Rambo blew his cool, he did the weirdest thing. He stared at Momma and then he turned around and jumped behind the counter. He leaped, like they do in basic training, and grabbed a big prep knife. He stood there, in battle, pausing for a moment to remember where he was and then plunged the knife into Dino’s arm. There was blood everywhere. The customers started screaming and Rambo started running and Joe rushed over to Dino while Momma called the police. In the middle of this, I stood in the corner of the restaurant and thought, Why Dino?

  Then I realized. It’s just too damn hard sometimes to give up on somebody. Momma was his boss, telling him what to do for three years. All that time, Rambo had been phony polite to her every day. He couldn’t let go of that. Somewhere inside, he thought he still needed her. That’s why Rambo took it out on one of us. On Dino. On someone just like him.

  Then I went over to Dino. His apron was covered with blood and he was looking old and shaking but he didn’t say anything. Not even a moan or cry. He just tried to keep it all together by thinking about other things. The ambulance came and the cops came and when everything was cleaned up and settled down, Joe and me were the only ones left in the store. Eventually new customers started coming in again, looking for menus, not knowing about anything that had gone on before. So Joe and I looked each other in the eye, he heaved a sigh, and we started working again—me taking orders and him cooking them up.

  18

  SPRING CAN BE the best time in the city because it’s so emotional, but some years it only lasts a day. This year it rained cool and gray for two weeks, which gave everyone enough time to think something over. But as soon as the sun came out, it got hot and that was the end of that.

  I woke up that morning right in the middle of spring and it was too early. The sun had already come up but no one was taking advantage of it yet. Although some kind of breeze stuck its hand in through the window every now and then, it was obviously just a matter of time before the heat became unbearable.

  There was nothing in the refrigerator except a beer and the gun, freezing away on the top shelf. I brought them both back to the couch and stretched out, naked, my skin so soft. All I could let myself understand on that beautiful morning, balancing a gun on my belly, its nose nestling in my pubic hair, was a profound sadness.

  Everything was in confusion. A young woman was dead with no explanation, unless Beatriz killed her to defend her honor. But, was honor reason enough to kill a sixteen-year-old? If the answer was yes, it was certainly reason enough to kill a photographer from Vogue. Charlotte and Beatriz held a secret for me, but I couldn’t tell if their answer lay in love or violence. Whenever one was apparent, the other stirred in the shadows. I could not integrate those two feelings into my life the way they fit together so perfectly in theirs. Charlotte and Beatriz maintain their passion and brutality with each other, but I have to face all my anger alone. Before the first hour of this new day had gone, I was already angry again, punching my fists into imaginary faces and hearing the echo of old lies. Then I finished my beer.

  By late morning I was agitated and sweating and decided to go outside. On the street, people were moving very slowly. Some of them ahd been drinking already too, unusually tall, warm beers in brown paper bags. They drank Colt or Bud, a dollar eighty-five a quart. I could afford rum. I was working.

  It’s men, for the most part, who drink outside in the morning in the park. They sit placidly on benches with shirts hanging from their belts, nipples brown like roasted coffee beans, listening to a Spanish radio station. I wanted to listen too, but they started talking to me and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I just stared because they moved slowly like branches, like movie screens as the projector breaks down. It was like the last moment of a dream when the telephone rings and you desperately want to keep sleeping because you know there’s nothing at all for you out there.

  This bag lady that I know was looking in the garbage for deposit bottles. She had white hair and a thousand wrinkles. Her face was like crushed velvet, like you could peel it off her and she’d be young again underneath. It’s too awful to be so old and sleeping in the shelter.

  “Let me tell you something,” she said. “Let me tell you something.”

  “All right, ma,” I said. “What is it?”

  “It’s awful,” she said. “It’s awful when you ain’t go no place to go and they put you in the street. To get a place, you gotta have a thousand dollars. How can I get that?”

  She wore an old winter coat. She wore everything.

  “I don’t know, ma,” I said, giving her two dollars, but she didn’t move on right away.

  “It’s awful,” she said, starting to cry from realizing the thousandth time that day how awful it really was.

  “I know, ma.”

  I was crying too. It was so hot. But the whole time, it was like she was on a television set and I wasn’t crying for her because there are people just like her everywhere you look. I was crying for me because I didn’t know how to live in this world. I had no idea.

  “Let me come stay with you,” she said. “In your house.”

  “No,” I said. I looked her in the eye and said no. I didn’t even think of a reason why.

  “Okay,” she said. We weren’t crying anymore. Now it was back to business. “Okay,” she said, holding on to the dollars I gave her. She went on to the next garbage can and I had another hit of Bacardi.

  19

  WHEN I WOKE up from my nap, someone had snatched the rum bottle and I had a sunburn on one-half of my face. I was grimy from head to toe plus Coco Flores was standing right over me, taking notes in her little spiral notebook.

  “You make a great metaphor,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “You look like a fucking wino. Get up. Come on.”

  She didn’t lift me from under my arms, or even offer a hand up. She just stood there and told me what to do.

  “Listen,” Coco said. “Do you know that I like you?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  It was embarrassing and I was still sleepy.

  “Do you know why?” she asked, pointing me toward the water fountain.

  “Why?”

  I was really thirsty and then we washed up. I say “we” because Coco was standing there making sure I washed my neck and also my ankles, which somehow hadn’t been washed in a long time.

  “Because you see the world in a really individually twisted manner and so do I. If we don’t stick together, one of us is going to get put away, and I don’t think I’m first on that list. Do you understand? So don’t lie around in the park like that. Any crazy could come along and smash a bottle over your head or spit on you.”

  Her hair was streaked magenta, lavender, and some other color.

  “Amethyst Smoke,” she said, fingering it playfully. “We just got it in the shop. Cute, huh? How many Puerto Ricans can you name with hair that’s colors like Amethyst Smoke? Huh? That’s really living.”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt like crying.

  “Listen,” Coco said. “It doesn’t matter who Dolores was, why you loved her then, and why you hate her now. Delores is a hallucinat
ion, so the facts are irrelevant. What’s important is how hurt you are. You’re so hurt that regardless of who or what she is, Delores has control. In other words, you lost, okay? That’s the reality of the situation. Look, I’ll tell you the truth. I never liked Delores anyway. She wouldn’t even ask me how I was doing, you know? She’s not a friendly girl. There, does that help you feel better?”

  “What do you do to keep it together, Coco?”

  “I’m busy right now experiencing life.”

  “What’s the difference between living it and experiencing it?”

  “Now I’m seeing it with the narrative eye, you jerk. Take a look around. It’s all there.”

  I started checking out the park with Coco, and it gave me so many memories of all kinds of people. There were winners and losers and gays and straights and me and Delores. There were too many dogs, though, and the whole place smelled of piss.

  “Hey, look.”

  Coco pointed through the busted-up playground, next to the art gallery over by the condos where Cher was supposedly moving in soon. Two white women had been stopped by two white cops in one police car.

  “Busted,” Coco said. “Come on.”

  I followed her closer and closer until we were practically on top of the whole procedure. The cops were going though one of the women’s pocketbook, taking out her personal things, and laying them on the hood of the car.

  “Let’s get closer,” Coco said. “If they know that someone is watching, the cops won’t try any brutality. They hate it when someone watches them do a bust. They lose their cool.”

  The woman being searched was definitely a junkie and couldn’t keep a straight face. When he found a little piece of aluminum foil, she started jabbering away with half-baked explanations, as if talking as fast as you could would keep him from opening it. She was freaked out, scared, like she’d been inside ten times before and could not stand the idea of going in again.

  Me and Coco were staring at the cop’s fingers as he slowly unfolded the foil. He looked up once, looked right at us like he was nervous as hell. That’s how close we were. He unfolded the first fold and he unfolded the second and then the third and then it was open. But there was no dope inside. No white powder, nothing. He couldn’t believe it. He turned it over and over in his hand but there was nothing there. Then the woman remembered something. She started laughing and laughing. She remembered that she had gotten straight an hour ago and put the foil wrapper back in her purse. It was inside her, so he couldn’t get his piggy paws on it or her. She was laughing really loud too. Then me and Coco were laughing and laughing. We all laughed until the cops drove away.