T ito and Vianca packaged the contents of his room as ten parcels of varying sizes, each one double-wrapped in contractor-grade black trash bags and sealed with heavy black tape. This left Tito’s mattress, the ironing board, the long-legged chair from Canal Street, and the old iron clothing rack. Vianca, it had been agreed, was taking the ironing board and the chair. The mattress, assumed to contain enough skin flakes and hair for a DNA match, would be on its way to landfill as soon as Tito left the building. Vianca had sealed it in two of the black plastic bags before she’d vacuumed the room. The black bags made a slithering sound, now, when you sat on the mattress, and Tito would have to sleep on it.
Tito touched the Nano again, on its cord around his neck, grateful to have his music.
“We’ve packed the tchainik,” he said, “and the kettle. We can’t make tea.”
“I don’t want to wipe them again.”
“Carlito called Alejandro and I tchainiks,” Tito told her. “It meant we were ignorant but willing to learn. Do you know that way of using ‘tchainik’?”
“No,” Vianca said, looking like a very pretty, very dangerous child, under her white paper hairnet. “I only know it to mean teapot.”
“A hacker’s word, in Russian.”
“Do you ever think that you are forgetting Russian, Tito?” she asked in English.
Before he could answer, someone rapped lightly at the door, in protocol. Vianca came out of her crouch on the mattress with a peculiar grace, at once tight and serpentine, to rap a reply. “Brotherman,” she said, and unlocked the door.
“Hola, viejo,” said Brotherman, nodding to Tito and pulling off a black knit headband that served him as earmuffs. He wore his hair in a vertical mass, touched a peculiar dark orange with peroxide. In Brotherman, Juana said, some African had surfaced in the Cuban, before mingling with the Chinese. Brotherman exaggerated this now, to his own advantage and that of the family. He was completely ambivalent, racially. A chameleon, his Spanish slid deftly between Cuban, Salvadoran, and Chilango, while his black American was often incomprehensible to Tito. He was taller than Tito, and thin, long-faced, the whites of his eyes shot with red. “Llapepi,” he greeted Vianca with a nod, backslanging papilla: teenager.
“Hola, Brotherman. Qué se cuenta?”
“Same old,” said Brotherman, bending to catch and squeeze Tito’s hand. “Man of the hour.”
“I don’t like waiting,” Tito said, and stood, to shake unease from his back and arms. The bare bulb overhead seemed brighter than ever before; Vianca had wiped it clean.
“But I have seen your systema, cousin.” Brotherman raised a white plastic shopping bag. “Carlito sends you shoes.” He passed Tito the bag. The high-topped black shoes still had their white-and-blue Adidas logo tags. Tito sat on the edge of the bagged mattress and removed his boots. He laced the Adidas shoes and pulled them on over medium-weight cotton socks, removed the tags, and carefully tightened the laces before tying them. He stood up, shifting his weight, taking the measure of these new shoes. “GSG9 model,” Brotherman said. “Special police in Germany.”
Tito positioned his feet shoulder-width apart, dropped his Nano inside the neck of his T-shirt, took a breath, and backtucked, the new shoes missing the bare bulb in the ceiling fixture by less than a foot. He landed three feet behind his starting position.
He grinned at Vianca, but she didn’t smile back. “I’ll go out for some food now,” she said. “What would you like?”
“Anything,” said Tito.
“I’ll start loading this,” said Brotherman, toeing the pile of black packages. Vianca passed him a fresh pair of gloves from her jacket pocket.
“I’ll help,” said Tito.
“No,” said Brotherman, pulling on the gloves and wiggling white fingers at Tito. “You twist your ankle, sprain anything, Carlito have our asses.”
“He’s right,” said Vianca, firmly, removing her paper hairnet and replacing it with her baseball cap. “No more tricking. Give me your wallet.”
Tito passed her his wallet.
She removed the two pieces of identification most recently provided by the family. Surname Herrera. Adiós. She left him his money and MetroCard.
He looked from one cousin to the other, then sat back down on the mattress.