But he didn’t. He turned left, no cars coming in the moments it took to coast quietly toward the red Chevette, head on, to hear tree frogs shrilling and see Teddy raise his hand in the headlight beam-there he was. Linda saying, “That’s Teddy?” as Vincent cut around the car and picked up speed. He turned off Magdalena at the end of the block.
“That’s Teddy.”
In the night traffic on Ashford Avenue, the young Puerto Ricans cruising the Condado section, he appeared behind them again. Vincent kept track of him in his mirror. Linda turned in her seat to look back.
“He waved. Did you see him?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
The red Chevette’s headlights moved out of the rearview mirror. Vincent glanced over. Teddy was coming up gradually on their right. They stopped at a light and Teddy pulled up next to them, close.
Linda said it again. “That’s Teddy?”
Vincent watched him, Teddy looking straight ahead, drumming lightly on the steering wheel to the music coming from the car radio. The light changed. Teddy looked over and gave them his smirky grin.
Linda said, “You haven’t even laid a hand on him? I don’t believe it.”
“If I started,” Vincent said, “I don’t think I could stop.”
“Why would you want to?” Linda said.
The white Chevette and the red Chevette crept along in traffic side by side, came to a stop at the light in front of the Holiday Inn.
Teddy looked over. He said, “This your new girlfriend?… Nice-looking babe.” He waited, staring, Linda staring back at him. “ ‘Ey, arn’cha talking to me no more?”
Vincent kept quiet; he believed he’d better.
Linda turned to him. She said, “Vincent?” But didn’t say anything after that.
Teddy said, “She as good as our PR pussy was?”
The light changed.
Vincent was watching it and the white Chevette moved off the light ahead of the red Chevette, coming to the end of Condado Beach now, out of the rows of hotels and shops, to cross the low bridge that was like a section of causeway over the inlet and pointed one-way in the direction of Old San Juan.
Vincent pushed the white Chevette to forty-five watching the mirror to see the red Chevette gaining, coming up again in the lane on Linda’s side. He eased back slightly on the accelerator. The red Chevette came up, pulled even, close to them, Vincent thinking, Give him a nudge, just enough. Teddy was yelling in the wind, through his open window and into their car, “ ‘Ey, stupid! Catch me if you can!”
Now, Vincent was thinking, ready to crank the wheel, when Linda beat him to it-Jesus, with the same thought, the same urge-grabbed the top of the steering wheel with both hands, gave it a quick hard yank to the right as she yelled, “Fuck you, Ted!” Even the proper name he would have used, amazing. And saw the guy’s eyes go wild in the moment the white Chevette tore into the side of the red Chevette, metal scraping ripping metal, forcing the red one to veer off and jump the sidewalk, out of control. The white one slowed down, Vincent and Linda looking back at the sounds of horns and brakes; the red one last seen, a glimpse of it, plowing along the guardrail, metal scraping cement till it ground to a stop.
He told her in the night he wasn’t going to lose her. Not now, after all this. She told him he couldn’t lose her if he tried.
They could tell each other in different ways they were in love and couldn’t live without each other and become analytical and say it wasn’t just physical either, the hots. Was it? It was physical, you bet it was, not able to get enough of each other, but it was even more than that. Wasn’t it? Yes, of course, it was. It was real. They could talk in the night about love, with feeling, using familiar words, and it sounded wonderful, natural, no other way to say it.
But he had to go home.
Tomorrow they’d go to Mayaguez and the day after that, in the afternoon, he’d leave for Miami.
She understood. She had an eight-week engagement and would do part of it, a couple of weeks, then follow him to Miami and find work.
She said, “You can’t follow me around, doing what you do, and you’re more important to me than playing a piano, Vincent. But I wish I could make you stay a while. I wish you had just come here on your leave and I had just started playing… I play better when I know you’re close by… And we’d have all day together and almost all night and nothing to think about but us. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“That would be neat,” Vincent said.
Later on in the night, waking up, he walked to the balcony and stood for several minutes looking down at the empty street.
Teddy got up during the night to go to the bathroom. “Go potty,” his mom called it; woman her age. She’d even say to Buddy, poop all over his stand, “Buddy go potty?” Tub a lard trying to be cute. He had actually been inside her and almost killed her, she said, coming out at birth. Well, excuuuse me. It could still be arranged. She’s sleeping, hold a pillow over her face so as not to have to look at her. Lay on top of it till she finally quit bucking and breathing and he would never have to hear her say “Kisser mom” or “Buddy go potty” again. He shouldn’t think things like that. He said to the bathroom mirror, “Would you do that to your mom?” Then had to grin at himself, turning his head to look at the grin from different angles.
“Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
“Haven’t I seen you someplace before?”
“Now you do, now you don’t.”
“Wait.”
He stared at himself in silence, not grinning now.
“When you gonna do it?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
He stared at himself in silence.
“Tomorrow. Didn’t I tell you?”
IN MAYAGUEZ, in a barrio called Dulces Labios, they found Iris’s grandmother living in a house made of scrap lumber painted light blue. The grandmother sent for relatives to come and Vincent and Linda waited, standing by the white Chevette with red scrape marks on its side. They were tired from the drive. It had rained on the way here from San Juan. They didn’t look forward to the hours it would take them to drive back, or the road or the leisurely traffic. At least they were together; they had been together in this from the beginning and it was part of the feeling between them. When the women came Vincent presented the stainless steel urn to the grandmother. She hesitated before taking it and passed it on quickly as she saw her reflection in the polished metal. Each woman in turn looked away to avoid seeing herself in the urn, passing it on and making the sign of the cross. Vincent told them Iris’s death was an accident; one night she fell from the balcony of an apartment. He said he was very sorry to have to tell them this; he said Iris’s friends loved her and would miss her. The women nodded. None of them asked him how it happened that she fell. She fell; they accepted it or didn’t wish to know how or why or if anyone was with her.
It was done. They were relieved but remained silent until they were out of the barrio called Sweet Lips, past the docks of the port and finally in the country, out in the island. They let the wind blow into their open windows, the sun fading behind them.
“You’ve done this before,” Linda said.
“I’ve never delivered ashes.”
“I mean told people someone was dead, the relatives.”
“Too many times.”
“You do it so well. You show you care.”
He turned the radio on to static and turned it off.
“I’m glad I didn’t say anything at the funeral home. Remember?”
“To young Mr. Bertoia?”
“It would’ve been dumb.”
“There was no need to.”
“You have a nice calming effect on me, Vincent.” After a moment she said, “Except when we’re in bed.”
It was full dark by the time they got back to the Carmen Apartments and pulled into the parking area, the courtyard by the liquor store.