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.