Mamá let herself be talked into it. I can’t blame her.
I let myself be talked into it. Daniela never forgave me.
Seven years old. Daniela was just seven years old when I broke her heart.
She never sent it off for repairs. She learned to like the dripping of her fractured baby bottle. It lulled her at night; it gave her life a different beat.
When I came home from school, I’d lie down next to her, just like before, and I’d talk to her about festivals up at Dunlop Square, and about Mardi Gras and San Francisco.
“Stop talking shit,” she’d say, and turn her back to me.
Yuri would sometimes come by and take a look at us, and it seemed like he felt sorry for us.
Yuri is sitting alone at the table. Standing next to the wall, the sergeant is smoking. But he doesn’t count. Yuri builds a wall with dominoes. Then he knocks it down with his finger.
“I already know.”
I sit down facing him, pick up a few of the dominoes, and build half a Stonehenge. Daniela was always intrigued by that sort of thing. Dolmens, menhirs, that stuff; neolithic drunken sprees, all that bullshit.
“We hafta keep going. Do you hear me, Omaha? We hafta let go, let go of old baggage,” he says, raising his head to see beyond me. “What you got there?”
The man coming in is pushing a little boy in front of him.
“You can keep him overnight. But I need him back early tomorrow. You can pay me the usual.”
“What’s your hurry?” Yuri takes stock of the boy, who smiles at him.
“He’s my sister-in-law’s nephew. That’s the hurry. Like I said, the usual.”
The man leaves.
Yuri gets up. “Come here,” he says to the boy.
I follow them.
In the back bedroom, Yuri sits the boy on the bed and offers him a cold ham-and-cheese snack and a TuKola from a little table. He watches for a while as the boy eats and drinks, then he gives him a Nintendo DS.
“I can’t stand it when they bring them to me like that,” he says. “They don’t last the night.”
I shrug and go back to the living room.
The sergeant’s at the table, pawing a domino. He blinks like a kid who’s been caught in the act, drops the domino, and returns his three hundred pounds of fat and muscle to their post.
I stick the first DVD I find into the player and throw myself on the couch.
Wesley Snipes with glasses and a sword. Just what I need.
It starts to rain outside.
That night two weeks ago it was also raining out on Santa Catalina.
Héctor. Héctor and I shared a desk in primary school. He’d lend me his pencil. He’d let me play with the toy soldiers that he brought to school behind his mother’s back. His hair was very blond, practically white, dry, curly.
He hadn’t changed much.
“Omaha,” Héctor said, “decide. We’re not gonna be here all night.”
Daniela looked scared. The other girl, her friend, did too.
When he was a kid, Héctor had been a loner. He only played with me. Now he’d switched playmates. And multiplied them — by a lot.
Those five guys looked very capable of waiting all night. But maybe they weren’t.
They’d certainly seemed impatient when they stepped in our path and dragged us to that garage in Heredia.
I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway, I am not your carpet ride, I am the sky... screamed Chris Cornell from the Panasonic on the Chevrolet’s hood.
It seemed possible.
“Your brother’s gone too far, Omaha,” Héctor told me. “He’s stepping on my territory. Gourmet meat is his thing, and that’s fine, but selling weed is my business, and given how tight it’s been, the last thing I’m looking for is competition. I hafta send him a message, okay? It’s not that I wanna do you harm but I’ve got my buddies and the neighborhood watching me. That’s all it is, so relax, nothing’s gonna happen to you. Just decide already. Which of these two?”
Both girls stopped looking my way.
“C’mon, your sister or her little friend. You decide.”
“All so that I turn around and let my brother know that you threatened us with a switchblade and—”
“What switchblade? Do you see a switchblade? Any kind of knife? Do you think we need that?”
I looked at them.
Héctor had really grown up. Quite a bit. The others too. I remembered them vaguely from primary school too. No. They didn’t need any of that.
Daniela’s little friend was still holding one of the sunflowers the actors had given out to the audience. The play had been fun. There were a lot of kids in the audience. There were a lot of laughs.
“Get my sister outta here,” I finally told Héctor. “I don’t want her to see anything.”
The guy shakes his umbrella at the door and comes in.
“Got anything?” he asks.
Yuri nods. The guy takes out his wallet.
“And the other thing?”
Yuri nods.
“Thank God.” The man puts two bills down in front of him, on the table. “I had a fight today with the union guys, because of last week’s payroll. I told you about it... so I’m short. And when I get home my wife is going to want me to take her to the movies, and my daughter’s fighting with her husband so she comes over now and then just to talk crap and...”
Yuri keeps nodding. He takes a couple of joints from his pocket and gives them to the man, who then heads to the back room.
“Gimme one,” I tell Yuri.
“No,” he responds. “No, unless you pay for it.”
“Fuck, man, I’m your brother.”
“Debt between brothers is the worst thing in the world.” Voices.
The man’s voice. I think I also hear the boy. I’m not sure.
They took Daniela out of my sight. Two of them grabbed the other girl. Héctor pumped up the volume.
I didn’t look at her face as I unbuttoned her jeans. Or as I pulled them down. Or as I pulled down her panties. Her navel was pierced. It was a tiny Chinese lion’s head, with a miniscule gemstone. Maybe it was just some piece of glass. Yeah, that’s probably what it was.
I felt the tip of Héctor’s boot on my butt.
“Not like that. Fuck her from behind. So she’ll feel it. So you’ll both feel it, you and her.”
They turned her around. They bent her over the hood of the car.
I realized the best thing to do was get it over with as soon as possible, and I acted accordingly. She was good. She didn’t scream.
“Okay,” Héctor said as I zipped up my fly. “Tell your brother to keep his paws off my business. You were great, really. Just ask her.”
I turned around, very slowly.
Daniela was behind me, at the garage door. Two of them were holding her; she had a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. They’d held her there the whole time. Her jeans were at her knees. A third guy, at her back, moved away.
Daniela heaved as if she’d been holding her breath for hundreds of years.
The guy pulled up his zipper.
I don’t know what was worse: that she saw me or that I saw her. Or knowing that she’d seen me, or knowing that she knew that I knew she’d seen me, or knowing that she knew I’d seen her.
Maybe I should have asked the other girl, her little friend, what was worse.
But I didn’t. I never saw her again.
The woman leans against the doorframe, her hip pointing. “Hey, Yuri, what about me? Are you gonna pay me or what? Look, I don’t want any trouble with you but you can’t disrespect me.”
Yuri stretches in his chair.
“I’ve got your stuff, girl. But it’s not time for me to give it to you yet. I’m about to make an investment, and I could need it at any moment. I’ve got a live one. Let it go for now, come back Thursday. Look, I’m not lying.” He takes a wad of bills and fans them out. “Your stuff is right here, but listen to what I’m telling you... Of course, if you really need it, I’ll gladly... I mean, you know that, right?”