Hector looks so comical suddenly, Mateo laughs, and Hector’s eyes pop big and he laughs along. A truck roars down the street and nails a deep puddle in the road so hard that the backsplash nearly reaches the two of them over the sidewalk.
“Whoa,” Mateo mutters — awkwardly, because he doesn’t know what to say now.
“What day is it?” Hector finally asks.
“Thursday,” Mateo says. “It’s Thursday.”
Hector gives him a sort of for real? look, and Mateo nods. Then the silence engulfs them again. Hector stares placidly forward, looking like he’s content with his buzz despite the rain.
“I wanna say I’m sorry,” Mateo finally hears himself saying.
“Sorry for what?”
Huh? Mateo hadn’t expected he would say that. “For—” Well, for what? Using him for drugs and shelter? Mateo is not about to say that. That last time in L.A.? The truth was Mateo hadn’t needed Hector that time for drugs or shelter. Why had he called Hector from that apartment, the very thought of which never failed to make Mateo shudder? Mateo figures it’ll probably be like that for the rest of his life.
“If I hadn’t called you that last time in L.A. — ” Mateo begins.
But Hector puts a finger to Mateo’s lips. “Shh,” he goes. He shakes his head, slowly but firmly. “No, no,” he says.
“But—”
“No, no,” Hector says. “Not going back there.”
Mateo is stumped. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry.”
Mateo laughs bitterly, surprising himself. “You never stop saying sorry,” he says.
“Now listen,” Hector says decisively. He’s still staring ahead, not meeting Mateo’s eyes, but something authoritative in his tone disarms Mateo. “You go say you’re sorry to the woman who raised you,” he says. “That’s what you should do.”
Now Mateo is scrambled. “Say what?”
“You heard me,” Hector says. “You know now about the woman who had you. Now you go to the woman who raised you.”
Mateo looks down, kicks one sneaker with the other. “I told you, we haven’t talked in, like, ten years.”
“Okay, fine,” says Hector. “So now you’re in New York, so you can go pay her a visit.”
Mateo says nothing.
Hector laughs. “There,” he says. “Now you know why you came to see me today.”
“You know why I came to see you,” Mateo protests. “To ask you about my real mother.”
Hector giggles now, like he’s feeling the full ripeness of his buzz. “Well, negrito, I guess I had more to tell you,” he says. “Because you may forget, but I watched you and that lady — your other mother. Every day, up Avenue A, holding your hand, you with the fucking backpack that was too big for negrito. Fucking nice lady showing everybody in the building somebody’s drawings. Her husband, not so much. But the lady. Ava’s daughter.”
Hector shoots Mateo a look now. “That was one fucking nice lady,” he continues. “She put a note under my door begging me to go to rehab to keep from getting kicked out of the building. She said she’d help me find one.”
Mateo looks at him. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. I still have the note upstairs somewhere.”
Mateo nearly squirms in discomfort. “She had a fucking guilt trip, that’s all,” he says. “She pitied me. That’s the only reason she adopted me.”
“No, mijo, I watched her. That wasn’t pity. She needed you.”
Mateo stuffs his hands in his pockets, tucks his head down. He stares down at the pattern the raindrops make in the puddles on the sidewalk. Then he feels Hector’s hand on his back, right below his neck. Mateo glances sidelong, sees the effort Hector has expended to hold himself up on one crutch to put the other hand on Mateo’s back. Something about the gesture unlocks a compartment deep in Mateo’s chest.
“I can’t,” Mateo mutters, feeling tears rise behind his eyes. “I can’t deal with it. It’ll crush me.”
Hector emits a short, sharp guffaw. “Negrito, take it from me. Just go see her,” Hector says.
Neither of them speaks for a long time. Mateo starts to realize he feels a comfort he hasn’t felt since those times he and Hector would nod out together. Except this time it’s different. He’s actually lucid enough to realize it, that he feels safe with him. I miss this guy, he thinks. Awkwardly, he puts an arm around Hector, careful not to hang on him too heavily.
Hector turns and looks at him a good long time. “I actually needed this joint to ask you something, negrito.”
Mateo laughs. “Really? What?”
“If I give you my e-mail, will you write to me? I get lonely here.”
“Of course I’ll write to you.” Mateo pulls out his tablet as Hector recites his e-mail, with the prefix SonyaBrisa. “I’ll come see you again before I leave.”
“There might be more I wanna tell you eventually.”
“Yeah, definitely,” says Mateo. “When you remember things about my mother, will you tell me? Anything you can remember?”
Hector regards him keenly, emits a short laugh. “I remember a lot, negrito. I’ll tell you little by little. Okay?”
Mateo gingerly puts an arm around him, draws closer until their heads are lightly touching. “Okay, brother.”
Hector looks down at the ground. “Okay,” he says again.
“I gotta go,” Mateo finally says. “Let me help you back in the house.”
“No, you go,” Hector says. “I wanna stand here and watch you go.”
“For real?”
“Jesus, I just wanna little more fresh air, okay?”
“Okay! Fine!”
Gently, still awkwardly, Mateo hugs him good-bye one more time.
“I can’t hug you back with these crutches, mijo,” Hector says.
“That’s okay.”
“If you promised to help Karl, you better do it,” Hector says warningly. “He’ll come find you otherwise.”
“I will,” Mateo says. “So I’ll see you again.”
Mateo starts off down the street, his hands thrust in his pockets and his head down against the rain. But after a few paces, he turns and walks backward, watching Hector recede on the cinder block stoop, smaller with every step away Mateo takes. Near the corner, Mateo raises his hand farewell before he turns.
Moments after he turns, Hector pivots carefully on his crutches and rings the doorbell. Melvin, the chunky black queen, answers the door.
“You gotta prop the door, ya damn pothead, so I don’t have to keep coming to do this for you,” Melvin whines.
“Just help me the fuck back inside,” Hector says, handing off his crutches to Melvin.
“What a damn pain in the behind you are.”
Hector looks up at Melvin with a stoned, elated grin. “I did something right, Melvin.”
“What?”
Hector slowly brings up a right leg into the house, then the left, held up under one arm by Melvin. “I said I did something right in my life.”
Melvin sighs. “That’s right, girl, you did something right. You and Karl and you all else saved the day back about a hundred years ago and that’s why we’re all here in this mansion living the high life.”
Hector lets out a high, ragged laugh. “Fuck you, Melvin.”
“Come on now, get back on your crutches, Superwoman, and come get your dinner.”
Twenty. Millicent Heyman (2021)
Her life had basically become all about her father. Good old Sam. That’s what Milly said on the rare occasions now when she talked to people and they asked her what was going on. He’d become her organizing principle, in addition to the fact that she loved him deeply.