Serafina had been expecting some mamitas with the greasy pollo frito piled in baskets, so when he led her to Mambi, she gasped and said, “Flaco! Can we afford this?”
Flaco grinned at the successful surprise. By midtown and downtown standards, Mambi was not terribly expensive; but they were so far up the island that you had to go a long way downtown just to reach Uptown, and by the standards of the Gonsalves-Mercado savings account, dining out was not a thing to be done lightly. “O&P paid us for the week of testing,” he told her. “So now we can celebrate.”
“Your coming home.”
“That, too.”
Serafina fell silent. She stared at the restaurant window. In her reflection, a small frown creased her brow and her fingers briefly caressed her stomach.
They both ordered the costilla de cerdo con berenjena that Mambi was famous for. Flaco ordered a wine. It was not so proud a wine as to have a year on it, but it did not come in a returnable bottle, either. He lifted his glass to Serafina and said, “To us. You an’ me an’ little Memo.” Serafina smiled and touched her glass to his.
“The trials went very well, I think,” he said after he had swallowed and set his wine down. “Met some good men. And a few assholes, too. They told me helping out your crewmates, regardless, counted for a lot of points.” He grinned. Serafina took a bite of her eggplant.
“This is very good,” she said, and developed an interest in her meal. “Mama came over while you were away. We bought a crib for Memo. And some clothes. Oh, Flaco! They were so tiny, I just wanted to cry.”
There was no telling with women how they would react. Flaco smiled and tried to look confident. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.” Sometimes, the thought of being a father terrified him. A helpless child, trusting him utterly, following after him… He would have to provide for the little one. He didn’t know if he was ready for the responsibility. He didn’t know if he could lead the boy anywhere it would be worth his while to follow. Grow up, be a rigger like your Papita? Or a waiter, like your Abuelito? But ready or not, here it came. His hands trembled and he cut firmly into his pork rib with his knife. Did Serafina feel the same doubts as he did, or was it all chemicals raging through her body? It would never do to show his uncertainty to her. She depended on him to be the strong one. “The money I make on this job,” he told her, “we set Memo up right.”
Serafina’s fork clattered on her plate. Flaco looked up. “What’s wrong?”
“You are not going back, are you?”
“Of course I am. I passed the trials. I told you, didn’t I?” Or had the subject never come up in the joy of reunion? Had he known somehow to avoid it?
“Flaco, you will die up there!” A few heads turned in the restaurant, then just as quickly looked away. Young people spoke of dying too often. The reason was well known, and a reason best not known. Flaco wanted to leap up and tell them they were wrong; that Diego’s death had turned him from that forever. He was a man of the construction now, a rigger. A life that was not so exciting and paid not so well, but which might last long enough to see your sons and your grandsons. No one shot you through your window at night because you were rigging on the wrong street comer.
But his quarrel was not with these strangers, but with his love. Flaco’s grip tightened on his fork and he stabbed his pork rib hard enough to send it off the plate. He had dreamed this weekend as a happy one of laughter and lovemaking, never giving a thought to Sunday afternoon and the long flight back to Phoenix. “I will not die,” he said. Death was something that happened—to quiet old men or to flamboyant young ones, but those who might have wanted to see Flaco dead were themselves no longer quick.
“Hundreds of men have worked up there,” he assured her. “Very few have been hurt, even in small things.” He did not mention Anselmo Takeuchi and how the blood had flowed from the eyes and mouth of his exploding body. His was not an error Flaco would ever make.
“What if you are not here for little Memo? How will your son and I survive without you?” Serafina twisted the napkin in her hands. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Pregnancy always made women more emotional.
“You will be provided for. The benefits are generous.”
She pushed away from the table and jumped to her feet. “You are cruel, Flaco! What will I do for comfort in the night with nothing but money for your bones?” She fled without waiting for his reply. Another woman in the restaurant raised her voice.
“You tell him, sister! They can t treat us that way no more.” She favored Flaco with a glare. Some of the men laughed and made motions with their hands or arms. “Show her who the boss is.” “Stick it to her; that’s what she wants.” An elderly couple by the window, their lips pressed tight in distaste, bent over their guisado. Flaco pulled a couple of presidents from his wallet and threw them on the table without waiting to see what the bill was.
At the door, a solitary old man with his napkin tucked in at his neck stopped Flaco with a hand on his sleeve. “It will be all right, young man,” he croaked in a voice harsh with cigarettes. “It is love that makes them mad. She would not hurt so much if she did not love you.”
Flaco was not such a fool as to chase after Serafina. She had not run from him in order for him to catch her. Not this time. The thought of her alone on the nighttime streets worried him, but it was not as though Boriqua girls grew up any less savvy than Dominicans. She would go either to their apartment, or to her mamita. He would find her. They would “rendezvous,” “match orbits,” like the news people on TV were saying about the spaceship and the asteroid, a little more than two weeks from now. He looked up at the sky, but the city lights were too bright, and there was nothing up there but a gray, pale shroud.
The merengue was pounding in Ysidro’s bar off Dyckman Street, but with more than a little of that Milwaukee “goofball” in the mix that the older panas found so irritating. Not the pure sound, at all. Not Cibao; not even the southern style, with its log drums. But Flaco had come here for the drinks, not the music.
“Is it wrong of me to want to provide for her?” he asked Clotario, his best friend among those still living. He stared into his tall, thin glass of El Presidente. “Is it wrong of me to want to afford things for her?” His voice was slurred from the drinking. He could hear the soft, slushing sound of it, but he didn’t care.
“No,” Clotario said. “Of course not. It is only that she will be lonely for you.”
Flaco drank his beer, set the glass down hard on the table. “Seven months training,” he said. “Ground-side and spaceside. But I will be back before the child comes.”
“A long time,” said Clotario, “for a woman to be without a man inside her.”
“She will not be the only one lonely,” Flaco said with a twist to his lips.
Clotario nudged him. “Ah, but there will be women on the crew, no? Even in space they have the secretaries. And you yourself mentioned a few welders and technicians.”
Flaco stiffened. “Serafina is the only one for me. I have given her my pledge.”
Clotario laughed. “Oh, you are the righteous one, Flaco.” He made a mock sign of the cross and kissed his fingers. “Your lady welders may be as attractive as their own welding tanks, but you will see. They will grow more beautiful as the months go by. Never will they be as lovely as your Serafina, who is the most desirable woman in all the Heights, but…” leaning closer to Flaco, “…they will be so much closer.”