Drown

AURORA

Earlier today me and Cut drove down to South River and bought some more smoke. The regular pickup, enough to last us the rest of the month. The Peruvian dude who hooks us up gave us a sampler of his superweed (Jewel luv it, he said) and on the way home, past the Hydrox factory, we could have sworn we smelled cookies baking right in the back seat. Cut was smelling chocolate chip but I was smoothed out on those rocky coconut ones we used to get at school.

Holy shit, Cut said. I’m drooling all over myself.

I looked over at him but the black stubble on his chin and neck was dry. This shit is potent, I said.

That’s the word I’m looking for. Potent.

Strong, I said.

It took us four hours of TV to sort, weigh and bag the smoke. We were puffing the whole way through and by the time we were in bed we were gone. Cut’s still giggling over the cookies, and me, I’m just waiting for Aurora to show up. Fridays are good days to expect her. Fridays we always have something new and she knows it.

We haven’t seen each other for a week. Not since she put some scratches on my arm. Fading now, like you could rub them with spit and they’d go away but when she first put them there, with her sharp-ass nails, they were long and swollen.

Around midnight I hear her tapping on the basement window. She calls my name maybe four times before I say, I’m going out to talk to her.

Don’t do it, Cut says. Just leave it alone.

He’s not a fan of Aurora, never gives me the messages she leaves with him. I’ve found these notes in his pockets and under our couches. Bullshit mostly but every now and then she leaves one that makes me want to treat her better. I lie in bed some more, listening to our neighbors flush parts of themselves down a pipe. She stops tapping, maybe to smoke a cigarette or just to listen for my breathing.

Cut rolls over. Leave it bro.

I’m going, I say.

She meets me at the door of the utility room, a single bulb lit behind her. I shut the door behind us and we kiss, once, on the lips, but she keeps them closed, first-date style. A few months ago Cut broke the lock to this place and now the utility room’s ours, like an extension, an office. Concrete with splotches of oil. A drain hole in the corner where we throw our cigs and condoms.

She’s skinny — six months out of juvie and she’s skinny like a twelve-year-old.

I want some company, she says.

Where are the dogs?

You know they don’t like you. She looks out the window, all tagged over with initials and fuck you’s. It’s going to rain, she says.

It always looks like that.

Yeah, but this time it’s going to rain for real.

I put my ass down on the old mattress, which stinks of pussy.

Where’s your partner? she asks.

He’s sleeping.

That’s all that nigger does. She’s got the shakes — even in this light I can see that. Hard to kiss anyone like that, hard even to touch them — the flesh moves like it’s on rollers. She yanks open the drawstrings on her knapsack and pulls out cigarettes. She’s living out of her bag again, on cigarettes and dirty clothes. I see a t-shirt, a couple of tampons and those same green shorts, the thin high-cut ones I bought her last summer.

Where you been? I ask. Haven’t seen you around.

You know me. Yo ando más que un perro.

Her hair is dark with water. She must have gotten herself a shower, maybe at a friend’s, maybe in an empty apartment. I know that I should dis her for being away so long, that Cut’s probably listening but I take her hand and kiss it.

Come on, I say.

You ain’t said nothing about the last time.

I can’t remember no last time. I just remember you.

She looks at me like maybe she’s going to shove my smooth-ass line back down my throat. Then her face becomes smooth. Do you want to jig?

Yeah, I say. I push her back on that mattress and grab at her clothes. Go easy, she says.

I can’t help myself with her and being blunted makes it worse. She has her hands on my shoulder blades and the way she pulls on them I think maybe she’s trying to open me.

Go easy, she says.

We all do shit like this, stuff that’s no good for you. You do it and then there’s no feeling positive about it afterwards. When Cut puts his salsa on the next morning, I wake up, alone, the blood doing jumping jacks in my head. I see that she’s searched my pockets, left them hanging out of my pants like tongues. She didn’t even bother to push the fuckers back in.

A WORKING DAY

Raining this morning. We hit the crowd at the bus stop, pass by the trailer park across Route 9, near the Audio Shack. Dropping rocks all over. Ten here, ten there, an ounce of weed for the big guy with the warts, some H for his coked-up girl, the one with the bloody left eye. Everybody’s buying for the holiday weekend. Each time I put a bag in a hand I say, Pow, right there, my man.

Cut says he heard us last night, rides me the whole time about it. I’m surprised the AIDS ain’t bit your dick off yet, he says.

I’m immune, I tell him. He looks at me and tells me to keep talking. Just keep talking, he says.

Four calls come in and we take the Pathfinder out to South Amboy and Freehold. Then it’s back to the Terrace for more foot action. That’s the way we run things, the less driving, the better.

None of our customers are anybody special. We don’t have priests or abuelas or police officers on our lists. Just a lot of kids and some older folks who haven’t had a job or a haircut since the last census. I have friends in Perth Amboy and New Brunswick who tell me they deal to whole families, from the grandparents down to the fourth-graders. Things around here aren’t like that yet, but more kids are dealing and bigger crews are coming in from out of town, relatives of folks who live here. We’re still making mad paper but it’s harder now and Cut’s already been sliced once and me, I’m thinking it’s time to grow, to incorporate but Cut says, Fuck no. The smaller the better.

We’re reliable and easygoing and that keeps us good with the older people, who don’t want shit from anybody. Me, I’m tight with the kids, that’s my side of the business. We work all hours of the day and when Cut goes to see his girl I keep at it, prowling up and down Westminister, saying wassup to everybody. I’m good for solo work. I’m edgy and don’t like to be inside too much. You should have seen me in school. Olvídate.

ONE OF OUR NIGHTS

We hurt each other too well to let it drop. She breaks everything I own, yells at me like it might change something, tries to slam doors on my fingers. When she wants me to promise her a love that’s never been seen anywhere I think about the other girls. The last one was on Kean’s women’s basketball team, with skin that made mine look dark. A college girl with her own car, who came over right after her games, in her uniform, mad at some other school for a bad layup or an elbow in the chin.

Tonight me and Aurora sit in front of the TV and split a case of Budweiser. This is going to hurt, she says, holding her can up. There’s H too, a little for her, a little for me. Upstairs my neighbors have their own long night going and they’re laying out all their cards about one another. Big cruel loud cards.

Listen to that romance, she says.

It’s all sweet talk, I say. They’re yelling because they’re in love.

She picks off my glasses and kisses the parts of my face that almost never get touched, the skin under the glass and frame.

You got those long eyelashes that make me want to cry, she says. How could anybody hurt a man with eyelashes like this?

I don’t know, I say, though she should. She once tried to jam a pen in my thigh, but that was the night I punched her chest black-and-blue so I don’t think it counts.

I pass out first, like always. I catch flashes from the movie before I’m completely gone. A man pouring too much scotch into a plastic cup. A couple running towards each other. I wish I could stay awake through a thousand bad shows the way she does, but it’s OK as long as she’s breathing past the side of my neck.

Later I open my eyes and catch her kissing Cut. She’s pumping her hips into him and he’s got his hairy-ass hands in her hair. Fuck, I say but then I wake up and she’s snoring on the couch. I put my hand on her side. She’s barely seventeen, too skinny for anybody but me. She has her pipe right on the table, waited for me to fall out before hitting it. I have to open the porch door to kill the smell. I go back to sleep and when I wake up in the morning I’m laying in the tub and I’ve got blood on my chin and I can’t remember how in the world that happened. This is no good, I tell myself. I go into the sala, wanting her to be there but she’s gone again and I punch myself in the nose just to clear my head.

LOVE

We don’t see each other much. Twice a month, four times maybe. Time don’t flow right with me these days but I know it ain’t often. I got my own life now, she tells me but you don’t need to be an expert to see that she’s flying again. That’s what she’s got going on, that’s what’s new.

We were tighter before she got sent to juvie, much tighter. Every day we chilled and if we needed a place we’d find ourselves an empty apartment, one that hadn’t been rented yet. We’d break in. Smash a window, slide it up, wiggle on through. We’d bring sheets, pillows and candles to make the place less cold. Aurora would color the walls, draw different pictures with crayons, splatter the red wax from the candles into patterns, beautiful patterns. You got talent, I told her and she laughed. I used to be real good at art. Real good. We’d have these apartments for a couple of weeks, until the supers came to clean for the next tenants and then we’d come by and find the window fixed and the lock on the door.

On some nights — especially when Cut’s fucking his girl in the next bed — I want us to be like that again. I think I’m one of those guys who lives too much in the past. Cut’ll be working his girl and she’ll be like, Oh yes, damelo duro, Papi, and I’ll just get dressed and go looking for her. She still does the apartment thing but hangs out with a gang of crackheads, one of two girls there, sticks with this boy Harry. She says he’s like her brother but I know better. Harry’s a little pato, a cabrón, twice beat by Cut, twice beat by me. On the nights I find her she clings to him like she’s his other nut, never wants to step outside for a minute. The others ask me if I have anything, giving me bullshit looks like they’re hard or something. Do you have anything? Harry’s moaning, his head caught between his knees like a big ripe coconut. Anything? I say, No, and grab onto her bicep, lead her into the bedroom. She slumps against the closet door. I thought maybe you’d want to get something to eat, I say.

I ate. You got cigarettes?

I give her a fresh pack. She holds it lightly, debating if she should smoke a few or sell the pack to somebody.

I can give you another, I say and she asks why I have to be such an ass.

I’m just offering.

Don’t offer me anything with that voice.

Just go easy, nena.

We smoke a couple, her hissing out smoke, and then I close the plastic blinds. Sometimes I have condoms but not every time and while she says she ain’t with anybody else, I don’t kid myself. Harry’s yelling, What the fuck are you doing? but he doesn’t touch the door, doesn’t even knock. After, when she’s picking at my back and the others in the next room have started talking again, I’m amazed at how nasty I feel, how I want to put my fist in her face.

I don’t always find her; she spends a lot of time at the Hacienda, with the rest of her fucked-up friends. I find unlocked doors and Dorito crumbs, maybe an un-flushed toilet. Always puke, in a closet or on a wall. Sometimes folks take craps right on the living room floor; I’ve learned not to walk around until my eyes get used to the dark. I go from room to room, hand out in front of me, wishing that maybe just this once I’ll feel her soft face on the other side of my fingers instead of some fucking plaster wall. Once that actually happened, a long time ago.

The apartments are all the same, no surprises whatsoever. I wash my hands in the sink, dry them on the walls and head out.

CORNER

You watch anything long enough and you can become an expert at it. Get to know how it lives, what it eats. Tonight the corner is cold and nothing is really going on. You can hear the dice clicking on the curb and every truck and souped-up shitmobile that rolls in from the highway announces itself with bass.

The corner’s where you smoke, eat, fuck, where you play selo. Selo games like you’ve never seen. I know brothers who make two, three hundred a night on the dice. Always somebody losing big. But you have to be careful with that. Never know who’ll lose and then come back with a 9 or a machete, looking for the rematch. I follow Cut’s advice and do my dealing nice and tranquilo, no flash, not a lot of talking. I’m cool with everybody and when folks show up they always give me a pound, knock their shoulder into mine, ask me how it’s been. Cut talks to his girl, pulling her long hair, messing with her little boy but his eyes are always watching the road for cops, like minesweepers.

We’re all under the big streetlamps, everyone’s the color of day-old piss. When I’m fifty this is how I’ll remember my friends: tired and yellow and drunk. Eggie’s out here too. Homeboy’s got himself an Afro and his big head looks ridiculous on his skinny-ass neck. He’s way-out high tonight. Back in the day, before Cut’s girl took over, he was Cut’s gunboy but he was an irresponsible motherfucker, showed it around too much and talked amazing amounts of shit. He’s arguing with some of the tígueres over nonsense and when he doesn’t back down I can see that nobody’s happy. The corner’s hot now and I just shake my head. Nelo, the nigger Eggie’s talking shit to, has had more PTI than most of us have had traffic tickets. I ain’t in the mood for this shit.

I ask Cut if he wants burgers and his girl’s boy trots over and says, Get me two.

Come back quick, Cut says, all about business. He tries to hand me bills but I laugh, tell him it’s on me.

The Pathfinder sits in the next parking lot, crusty with mud but still a slamming ride. I’m in no rush; I take it out behind the apartments, onto the road that leads to the dump. This was our spot when we were younger, where we started fires we sometimes couldn’t keep down. Whole areas around the road are still black. Everything that catches in my headlights — the stack of old tires, signs, shacks — has a memory scratched onto it. Here’s where I shot my first pistol. Here’s where we stashed our porn magazines. Here’s where I kissed my first girl.

I get to the restaurant late; the lights are out but I know the girl in the front and she lets me in. She’s heavy but has a good face, makes me think of the one time we kissed, when I put my hand in her pants and felt the pad she had on. I ask her about her mother and she says, Regular. The brother? Still down in Virginia with the Navy. Don’t let him turn into no pato. She laughs, pulls at the nameplate around her neck. Any woman who laughs as dope as she does won’t ever have trouble finding men. I tell her that and she looks a little scared of me. She gives me what she has under the lamps for free and when I get back to the corner Eggie’s out cold on the grass. A couple of older kids stand around him, pissing hard streams into his face. Come on, Eggie, somebody says. Open that mouth. Supper’s coming. Cut’s laughing too hard to talk to me and he ain’t the only one. Brothers are falling over with laughter and some grab onto their boys, pretend to smash their heads against the curb. I give the boy his hamburgers and he goes between two bushes, where no one will bother him. He squats down and unfolds the oily paper, careful not to stain his Carhartt. Why don’t you give me a piece of that? some girl asks him.

Because I’m hungry, he says, taking a big bite out.

LUCERO

I would have named it after you, she said. She folded my shirt and put it on the kitchen counter. Nothing in the apartment, only us naked and some beer and half a pizza, cold and greasy. You’re named after a star.

This was before I knew about the kid. She kept going on like that and finally I said, What the fuck are you talking about?

She picked the shirt up and folded it again, patting it down like this had taken her some serious effort. I’m telling you something. Something about me. What you should be doing is listening.

I COULD SAVE YOU

I find her outside the Quick Check, hot with a fever. She wants to go to the Hacienda but not alone. Come on, she says, her palm on my shoulder.

Are you in trouble?

Fuck that. I just want company.

I know I should just go home. The cops bust the Hacienda about twice a year, like it’s a holiday. Today could be my lucky day. Today could be our lucky day.

You don’t have to come inside. Just hang with me a little.

If something inside of me is saying no, why do I say, Yeah, sure?

We walk up to Route 9 and wait for the other side to clear. Cars buzz past and a new Pontiac swerves towards us, a scare, streetlights flowing back over its top, but we’re too lifted to flinch. The driver’s blond and laughing and we give him the finger. We watch the cars and above us the sky has gone the color of pumpkins. I haven’t seen her in ten days, but she’s steady, her hair combed back straight, like she’s back in school or something. My mom’s getting married, she says.

To that radiator guy?

No, some other guy. Owns a car wash.

That’s real nice. She’s lucky for her age.

You want to come with me to the wedding?

I put my cigarette out. Why can’t I see us there? Her smoking in the bathroom and me dealing to the groom. I don’t know about that.

My mom sent me money to buy a dress.

You still got it?

Of course I got it. She looks and sounds hurt so I kiss her. Maybe next week I’ll go look at dresses. I want something that’ll make me look good. Something that’ll make my ass look good.

We head down a road for utility vehicles, where beer bottles grow out of the weeds like squashes. The Hacienda is past this road, a house with orange tiles on the roof and yellow stucco on the walls. The boards across the windows are as loose as old teeth, the bushes around the front big and mangy like Afros. When the cops nailed her here last year she told them she was looking for me, that we were supposed to be going to a movie together. I wasn’t within ten miles of the place. Those pigs must have laughed their asses off. A movie. Of course. When they asked her what movie she couldn’t even come up with one.

I want you to wait out here, she says.

That’s fine by me. The Hacienda’s not my territory.

Aurora rubs a finger over her chin. Don’t go nowhere.

Just hurry your ass up.

I will. She put her hands in her purple windbreaker.

Make it fast Aurora.

I just got to have a word with somebody, she says and I’m thinking how easy it would be for her to turn around and say, Hey, let’s go home. I’d put my arm around her and I wouldn’t let her go for like fifty years, maybe not ever. I know people who quit just like that, who wake up one day with bad breath and say, No more. I’ve had enough. She smiles at me and jogs around the corner, the ends of her hair falling up and down on her neck. I make myself a shadow against the bushes and listen for the Dodges and the Chevys that stop in the next parking lot, for the walkers that come rolling up with their hands in their pockets. I hear everything. A bike chain rattling. TVs snapping on in nearby apartments, squeezing ten voices into a room. After an hour the traffic on Route 9 has slowed and you can hear the cars roaring on from as far up as the Ernston light. Everybody knows about this house; people come from all over.

I’m sweating. I walk down to the utility road and come back. Come on, I say. An old fuck in a green sweat suit comes out of the Hacienda, his hair combed up into a salt-and-pepper torch. An abuelo type, the sort who yells at you for spitting on his sidewalk. He has this smile on his face — big, wide, shit-eating. I know all about the nonsense that goes on in these houses, the ass that gets sold, the beasting.

Hey, I say and when he sees me, short, dark, unhappy, he breaks. He throws himself against his car door. Come here, I say. I walk over to him slow, my hand out in front of me like I’m armed. I just want to ask you something. He slides down to the ground, his arms out, fingers spread, hands like starfishes. I step on his ankle but he doesn’t yell. He has his eyes closed, his nostrils wide. I grind down hard but he doesn’t make a sound.

WHILE YOU WERE GONE

She sent me three letters from juvie and none of them said much, three pages of bullshit. She talked about the food and how rough the sheets were, how she woke up ashy in the morning, like it was winter. Three months and I still haven’t had my period. The doctor here tells me it’s my nerves. Yeah, right. I’d tell you about the other girls (there’s a lot to tell) but they rip those letters up. I hope you doing good. Don’t think bad about me. And don’t let anybody sell my dogs either.

Her tía Fresa held on to the first letters for a couple of weeks before turning them over to me, unopened. Just tell me if she’s OK or not, Fresa said. That’s about as much as I want to know.

She sounds OK to me.

Good. Don’t tell me anything else.

You should at least write her.

She put her hands on my shoulders and leaned down to my ear. You write her.

I wrote but I can’t remember what I said to her, except that the cops had come after her neighbor for stealing somebody’s car and that the gulls were shitting on everything. After the second letter I didn’t write anymore and it didn’t feel wrong or bad. I had a lot to keep me busy.

She came home in September and by then we had the Pathfinder in the parking lot and a new Zenith in the living room. Stay away from her, Cut said. Luck like that don’t get better.

No sweat, I said. You know I got the iron will.

People like her got addictive personalities. You don’t want to be catching that.

We stayed apart a whole weekend but on Monday I was coming home from Pathmark with a gallon of milk when I heard, Hey macho. I turned around and there she was, out with her dogs. She was wearing a black sweater, black stirrup pants and old black sneakers. I thought she’d come out messed up but she was just thinner and couldn’t keep still, her hands and face restless, like kids you have to watch.

How are you? I kept asking and she said, Just put your hands on me. We started to walk and the more we talked the faster we went.

Do this, she said. I want to feel your fingers.

She had mouth-sized bruises on her neck. Don’t worry about them. They ain’t contagious.

I can feel your bones.

She laughed. I can feel them too.

If I had half a brain I would have done what Cut told me to do. Dump her sorry ass. When I told him we were in love he laughed. I’m the King of Bullshit, he said, and you just hit me with some, my friend.

We found an empty apartment out near the highway, left the dogs and the milk outside. You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again. After, she drew on the walls with her lipstick and her nail polish, stick men and stick women boning.

What was it like in there? I asked. Me and Cut drove past one night and it didn’t look good. We honked the horn for a long time, you know, thought maybe you’d hear.

She sat up and looked at me. It was a cold-ass stare.

We were just hoping.

I hit a couple of girls, she said. Stupid girls. That was a big mistake. The staff put me in the Quiet Room. Eleven days the first time. Fourteen after that. That’s the sort of shit that you can’t get used to, no matter who you are. She looked at her drawings. I made up this whole new life in there. You should have seen it. The two of us had kids, a big blue house, hobbies, the whole fucking thing.

She ran her nails over my side. A week from then she would be asking me again, begging actually, telling me all the good things we’d do and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out of her ear like a worm but right then, in that apartment, we seemed like we were normal folks. Like maybe everything was fine.