With his head to one side and an almost embarrassed look on his face, Rick told her how Jesse was the most handsome boy in the world, and that they were more like friends than father and son.
That piqued Coco’s interest. She didn’t know any kids. Her knowledge of men was almost complete, but she knew nothing at all about young boys. She wanted to see Jesse so much that she suddenly decided it would probably be worth sleeping with Rick just to get the chance.
When she stood up, saying, “Okay, let’s go to your place,” Rick couldn’t believe his luck. After a moment of surprised silence, he leapt up out of his seat and hugged her.
“Thank you,” he blurted. He had no idea why she had changed her mind.
As soon as Coco walked through the door of his apartment, she told Rick she would like to meet Jesse. He was delighted. He opened Jesse’s bedroom door noiselessly and beckoned her silently.
“Isn’t he a good-looking boy?”
She didn’t know what to say. He had Asian features, and looked like a monkey to her.
“Yeah, mmm…” she replied, disappointed. She couldn’t tell Rick what she was really thinking, and of course she didn’t mention the part about the monkey.
She could tell that Rick was plastered just by the way he poured her drink. She watched him absently, deeply disappointed with the boy.
Sex with Rick turned out to be anything but disappointing, however, and she soon forgot all about Jesse sleeping in the next room and gave herself to the moment.
Rick spoiled Coco. He treated her like she was a little girl and she loved it. She was tired of the kind of love-hate relationships she’d always had with men when the relationship was equal.
Whenever they went out somewhere, there was never a moment when Rick wasn’t touching some part of her. And when she was falling asleep, he would keep tapping her cheek to keep her awake.
Everything was very simple with Rick—nothing was hidden. There were no sycophantic sweet nothings or psychological games, and Coco found that refreshing. Although she felt awkward at first, she soon found that with Rick there was no point in trying to preserve the love-struck pretense she usually used with other men. It was the first time she had ever felt good enough just to relax and be herself with a man.
After a while, she began to stay with Rick and Jesse on weekends, and it was not long before she came to hate Mondays because it meant she had to go back to her own place. Every Monday morning she would kick off Rick’s tired, worn-out bedcover and scream at the top of her voice, “I hate this bedcover and I hate leaving here.” And Rick would rub her back gently, like he would a little baby, to comfort her. Then she would calm down a little, lie back using his arm as a pillow, and fall asleep with a smile on her face.
Coco’s relationship with Rick was stable and comfortable, but when it came to Jesse there was never any shortage of surprises.
One morning Coco was in the kitchen making breakfast and Jesse told her he wanted raw eggs.
“Raw eggs? What are you, Rocky the boxer or something?”
Without a word, Jesse broke an egg into a bowl, drowned it in soy sauce, then threw rice in on top and started to mix it all together. Coco just stood and stared at the disgusting sight of him guzzling the whole bowlful with a spoon, the sticky mess turning his mouth yellow.
When Rick came in, Coco pointed wordlessly at Jesse.
Rick ignored her, instead turning gleefully to his son.
“Hey! Raw eggs and rice, right? Outstanding! Make some for me, too, will ya?”
Coco gave an involuntary shiver of revulsion as she watched them greedily slurping down their breakfast together.
“Baby, don’t you want some? Aren’t you hungry?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Jesse’s mama used to make this for us all the time. She’s Japanese, too, you know.”
Coco didn’t believe in God, but at that moment she couldn’t help crossing herself and praying for help.
She had already noticed that Jesse usually didn’t bother to use a knife and fork. It seemed that his mother had never really bothered to teach him about things like table manners. So when Coco saw Jesse grab a piece of meat with both hands one day, stuffing it into his mouth like a dog, she immediately ran into the kitchen to find him something to eat with. She searched the cupboards, but all she found was a single clean plate and fork. This house was simply not equipped for normal, everyday life.
Coco had always been taken to the best restaurants and she was used to spending time with well-mannered, sophisticated people. So eating with Jesse was a real headache. She could only hope that she never had to go out to eat with him.
“You’ve got to do something!” she screamed at Rick. “You can’t let him keep eating like that!”
Rick didn’t seem to mind it at all.
“Don’t sweat it, baby,” he said soothingly. “He can learn about things like table manners when he gets himself a woman.”
“Why doesn’t he ever stay with his mother?” she asked.
“He did at first, but after a month he couldn’t take it anymore, so he packed his stuff up, got on his bike, and came to live here. He told me every day was just fighting and arguments and that there was no fun at all. If I learned anything at all from being married, it’s that a bitching, whining woman is the most difficult thing in the world for a guy to deal with. And Jesse’s a guy, too.”
“But his manners are awful!”
“And whenever he wants to see his mama,” Rick continued, “he can go on his own: she lives right near here. But anyway, you don’t have to worry about it. Parents have to raise their kids and teach them manners.
That’s not your responsibility. You’re just here because you’re my girl, right?”
He kissed her in an attempt to bring an end to the conversation, but Coco’s mind was on Jesse and his part in their relationship.
All Coco had ever known was the simplicity of sex between a man and a woman. Nothing else had mattered to her before. But now, for the first time, she began to realize that there might be another type of relationship: far more difficult to understand, infinitely more complicated, and completely unavoidable.
Coco didn’t understand her feelings toward Rick. Looking at it objectively, Rick certainly wasn’t the sort of guy she would normally fall for. He drank so much that she was sure he was well on the way to terminal alcoholism, and would go numb from head to foot. He never seemed to savor the taste; it was more like a race, like he was trying to get drunk as fast as possible. And he made sure he never wasted a drop—he even sucked the whiskey off the ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.
Coco enjoyed drinking, too. But Rick drank so much that it hurt just to watch him. Because he was so used to consuming large amounts of alcohol, it was extremely rare for him actually to get drunk. Coco was sure it would take at least a couple of bottles of Bacardi to do the job.
That was Rick in a nutshelclass="underline" he was a middle-aged drunk with a kid. And that made it all the more difficult for Coco to understand why she wanted to spend so much time with him and why she would go crazy every Monday morning when it was time for her to leave and go to work.
The sex was great, of course. Rick never failed to satisfy Coco in bed.
But she didn’t think that was the reason she stayed with him. She enjoyed sex, of course, but she could say with absolute certainty that sh had never been a slave to it. To Coco, it was just a pleasure shared between a man and a woman.
Rick could not be described as cool. Nor did he ooze sex appeal.
When they went to bed at night, Rick was always clinging to her, his arms and legs entwined with hers. At first Coco found it claustrophobic and irritating, but after a while she found she couldn’t sleep without it.