He took a moment to study her profile in the dim light, the distinctive shape of her eye, the girlish lashes, the pudgy nose. “You were expecting…?”
She blinked herself awake, moaned and barked a raspy cough into her fist. “Hope springs eternal.”
Roque waited. “Oh yeah?”
“Tell you what-do me a favor, before you go?” She wiggled her can.
The musk from their earlier lovemaking still lingered, mixed with the vaguely floral tang of cold wax from a dozen tea candles scattered across the hardwood floor, their flames spent. “Just go back to sleep,” he said, recalling the scene from earlier, tiny tongues of fire all around as they thrashed and rocked and cried out, shadows quivering high up the bare white walls. Mariko, a Buddhist, had a flair for the ceremonial.
“No, I mean it.” Her voice was fogged with drowsiness and she writhed luxuriously in a kind of half stretch, burying another yawn in the pillow. “It’s okay.”
“It feels, I dunno, wrong. You half asleep, I mean.”
“For God’s sake, Roque, it’s all wrong. That’s what makes it so delicious.”
Sure, of course, that’s what this is. Wrong. He shook it off. “You know what I’m saying.”
She flipped over, finger-parting the tousled black hair framing her boxy face. “There. Awake. Better?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Who says I’m mad?”
“I just-”
“Shush. Kiss me.”
He leaned down, instantly hard at the touch of her mouth, even with her breath sour and hot from the wine. It scared him sometimes, the intensity, the need. She wasn’t what any of the guys he knew would call a cosota linda, a looker, and with that a song lyric ghosted up:
So make your mark for your friends to see
But when you need more than company…
They’d met back in May during Carnaval, San Francisco’s biggest Latino celebration outside El Día de los Muertos, with samba dancers shimmying through the Mission in feathered headdresses and Bahía skirts while drum brigades hammered out a nonstop batucada. Bands of all kinds and every level of smack played hour-long sets throughout the weekend: ranchera, salsa, bachata, calypso, charanga, cumbia, reggaetón. It was Roque’s maiden gig with Los Patojos, a salsa-funk outfit in the Azteca/Malo/Santana mold but with a jazzier edge, and when Lalo called him onto the stage near the end of the set he introduced him as “The best young guitarist I’ve heard in a long, long time-Roque Montalvo!” They ran through three numbers to wrap up the hour, a reggae-inflected tune-up of Tito Puente’s “Mambo Gallego,” a timba reworking of War’s “Ballero,” and the finale, a double-time cumbia vamp on an old Byrds tune:
Don’t forget what you are
You’re a rock ’n’ roll star
“Hey!” Her rough hands locked at his nape and she tugged at his shoulder-length hair. “Where’d you go?”
He shook off the memory, busted. “Sorry, I-”
“You’ll make an old lady self-conscious.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Oh please.”
“I mean it. Really-”
She cut him off with another kiss, lingering, a nibble here and there, a swipe with her tongue. Refocused, he reached down, probed gently with his fingers, parting the feathery lips to get at the warmth inside, already moist. She moaned, a deep soft purr from the back of her throat, encouraging him, guiding him. He’d been such a wack lover when they’d met, all the usual young slob faults-the selfishness, the fumbling, the rush. Except for two girls he’d met at gigs, his pre-Mariko love life had been limited to pumping the muscle and wishful thinking, and the two exceptions had been disasters of opposite kind, the one girl just lying there in sweet-natured panic, the other thrashing around in such unconvincing bliss he’d almost stopped mid-fuck to ask if she was having a seizure. Mariko had taught him to relax, focus, think of it as dancing. Not the best analogy, perhaps, musicians being such clueless dancers, but he’d come around.
She said, “I want you inside.”
“So quick?”
“I didn’t say quick. I said inside.”
She guided him in. As always, he shuddered-so perfect, that feeling, like finding home.
“Just that,” she whispered. “Don’t move. Okay?”
She hooked her legs around his, locking their bodies tight, nuzzling her hips against his before returning to her kisses, deeper now. Another moan, this one longer, rose in the pit of her throat, followed by a tremor quivering up her spine.
Despite himself, Roque’s eye strayed toward the bedside clock. Three forty-five now. Soon Tío Faustino would be out of bed, getting ready to leave for the Port of Oakland where he worked hauling drayage. Tía Lucha would be preparing breakfast and getting ready for her shift at Food 4 Less. Godo would be stirring too, if he’d slept at all.
Drawing back his glance, his eyes met hers. She broke off the kiss, unwrapped her legs. “I know you have to go.”
“It’s just, you know-”
She cupped his face in her palm. “It’s all right.”
Godo was his half brother, back from the war. He spent his nights lurching around in bed, popping painkillers and antidepressants, chasing them with beer, unable to muster more than a few minutes’ sleep at a time. Better the insomnia, though, than the nightmares. It was why Roque couldn’t share the room anymore. No telling who or what Godo might mistake him for when he bolted awake, screaming.
“Sorry,” he said, thinking: You’re saying that a lot.
“Don’t be.” She brushed his face with her fingers. “It’s been lovely. It always is, Rocky.”
It was one way she teased him, mispronouncing his name.
“Roque,” he corrected, his part of the bit. “Rhymes with O.J.”
“Yes. How sad for you.”
He lowered his head, touched his brow to hers. “I love you.”
She turned her face away. “I told you-”
“I mean it.”
“What difference does it make what you mean?” Like that, the mood turned, as it did on occasion. Too often, actually, and more and more of late. “How many times-”
“Fine. Okay.”
He pulled away and gathered his clothes from the floor, threw on his sweatshirt, stood up to tug on his jeans, sat back down to lace his high-tops. You’re acting your age, he thought, unable to stop himself, at the same time wondering if he really did mean it: I love you. Maybe he was just raising the stakes, he wasn’t sure.
To his back, a whisper: “Roque?”
He wanted her to reach out, touch him, say it: I love you too. Or just: I’m sorry. But neither the caress nor the words came. He launched up and crossed the room, kicking several tea candles across the floor like little tin pucks.
Wood-plank shelves faced each other down the dark hallway, stacked with unfired pots, bowls, vases: Mariko Detwiler, Fine Ceramics. The clay smelled cold and damp and it made him think of fresh graves and with that another song lyric teased its way up from memory: The house is dark and my thoughts are cold.
He thumped down the porch steps, the fog cool on his skin, the air dank from the nearby wetlands. Lingering beneath the chinaberry tree in the dark front yard, he watched as the hall light came on and her silhouette materialized in the doorway. Timidly he ventured a farewell wave. She did not wave back.
CINCHING THE HOOD OF HIS SWEATSHIRT TIGHT, HE BEGAN TO RUN. Craftsman bungalows lined the block, some tricked out like minor museums, others sagging with neglect. At the bottom of the hill he skirted a thicket of blood-red madrone and turned onto the river road where he had the gravel berm to himself, dodging waist-high thistle. The solitude gave him space to think.