Sunday is her one day off — the Five-Baby Father watches Justin that day, or better said, he and his new girlfriend watch Justin that day. You and Noemi fall into a little pattern: on Saturday you take her out to dinner — she doesn’t eat anything remotely adventurous, so it’s always Italian — and then she stays the night.
How sweet was that toto? Elvis asks after the first sleepover.
Not sweet at all, because Noemi doesn’t give it to you! Three Saturdays in a row she sleeps over, and three Saturdays in a row nada. A little kissing, a little feeling up, but nothing beyond that. She brings her own pillow, one of those expensive foam ones, and her own toothbrush, and she takes it all with her Sunday morning. Kisses you at the door as she leaves; it all feels too chaste to you, too lacking in promise.
No toto? Elvis looks a little shocked.
No toto, you confirm. What am I, in sixth grade?
You know you should be patient. You know she’s just testing your ass. She’s probably had a lot of bad experiences with the hit-and-run types. Case in point — Justin’s dad. But it galls you that she gave it up to some thug with no job, no education, no nothing, but she’s making you jump through hoops of fire. In fact, it infuriates you.
Are we going to see each other? she asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you.
It depends, you say.
On what? She is instantly guarded and that adds to your irritation. Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom?
On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon.
Oh classiness. You know as soon as you say it that you just buried yourself.
Noemi is silent. Then she says: Let me get off this phone before I say something you won’t like.
This is your last chance, but instead of begging for mercy you bark: Fine.
Within an hour she has deleted you from Facebook. You send one exploratory text to her but it is never answered.
Years later you will see her in Dudley Square but she will pretend not to recognize you, and you won’t force the issue.
Nicely done, Elvis says. Bravo.
You two are watching his daughter knock around the playground near Columbia Terrace. He tries to be reassuring. She had a kid. That probably wasn’t for you.
Probably not.
Even these little breakups suck because they send you right back to thinking about the ex. Right back into the depression. This time you spend six months wallowing in it before you come back to the world.
After you pull yourself back together you tell Elvis: I think I need a break from the bitches.
What are you going to do?
Focus on me for a while.
That’s a good idea, says his wife. Besides it only happens when you’re not looking for it.
That’s what everybody claims. Easier to say that than This shit sucks.
This shit sucks, Elvis says. Does that help?
Not really.
On the walk home a Jeep roars past; the driver calls you a fucking towelhead. One of the ex-sucias publishes a poem about you online. It’s called “El Puto.”
You take your break. You try to get back to your work, to your writing. You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco and one about a bachatero — all of them suck pipe. You get serious about classes and for your health you take up running. You used to run in the old days and you figure you need something to keep you out of your head. You must have needed it bad, because once you get into the swing of it you start running four five six times a week. It’s your new addiction. You run in the morning and you run late at night when there’s no one on the paths next to the Charles. You run so hard that your heart feels like it’s going to seize. When winter rolls in, there’s a part of you that fears you’ll fold — Boston winters are on some terrorism shit — but you need the activity more than anything so you keep at it even as the trees are stripped of their foliage and the paths empty out and the frost reaches into your bones. Soon it’s only you and a couple of other lunatics. Your body changes, of course. You lose all that drinking and smoking chub and your legs look like they belong to someone else. Every time you think about the ex, every time the loneliness rears up in you like a seething, burning continent, you tie on your shoes and hit the paths and that helps; it really does.
By winter’s end you’ve gotten to know all the morning regulars and there’s even this one girl who inspires in you some hope. You pass each other a couple of times a week and she’s a pleasure to watch, a gazelle really — what economy, what gait, and what an amazing fucking cuerpazo. She has Latin features but your radar has been off a while and she could just as likely be a morena as anything. She always smiles at you as you pass. You consider flopping in front of her — My leg! My leg! — but that seems incredibly cursí. You keep hoping you’ll bump into her around town.
The running is going splendid and then six months in you feel a pain in your right foot. Along the inside arch, a burning that doesn’t subside after a few days’ rest. Soon you’re hobbling even when you’re not running. You drop in on emergency care and the RN pushes with his thumb, watches you writhe, and announces you have plantar fasciitis.
You have no idea what that is. When can I run again?
He gives you a pamphlet. Sometimes it takes a month. Sometimes six months. Sometimes a year. He pauses. Sometimes longer.
That makes you so sad you go home and lie in bed in the dark. You’re afraid. I don’t want to go back down the hole, you tell Elvis. Then don’t, he says. Like a hardhead you keep trying to run but the pain sharpens. Finally, you give up. You put away the shoes. You sleep in. When you see other people hitting the paths, you turn away. You find yourself crying in front of sporting goods stores. Out of nowhere you call the ex, but of course she doesn’t pick up. The fact that she hasn’t changed her number gives you some strange hope, even though you’ve heard she’s dating somebody. Word on the street is that the dude is super good to her.
Elvis encourages you to try yoga, the half-Bikram kind they teach in Central Square. Mad fucking ho’s in there, he says. I’m talking ho’s by the ton. While you’re not exactly feeling the ho’s right now, you don’t want to lose all the conditioning you’ve built up, so you give it a shot. The namaste bullshit you could do without, but you fall into it and soon you’re pulling vinyasas with the best of them. Elvis was certainly right. There are mad ho’s, all with their asses in the air, but none of them catch your eye. One miniature blanquita does try to chat you up. She seems impressed that of all the guys in class you alone never take off your shirt, but you skitter away from her cornpoke grin. What the hell are you going to do with a blanquita?
Bone the shit out of her, Elvis offers.
Bust a nut in her mouth, your boy Darnell seconds.
Give her a chance, Arlenny proposes.
But you don’t do any of it. At the end of the sessions you move away quickly to wipe down your mat and she takes the hint. She doesn’t mess with you again, though sometimes during practice she watches you with longing.
You actually become pretty obsessed with yoga and soon you’re taking your mat with you wherever you go. You no longer have fantasies that the ex will be waiting for you in front of your apartment, though every now and then you still call her and let the phone ring to the in-box.
You finally start work on your eighties apocalypse novel—“finally starting” means you write one paragraph — and in a flush of confidence you start messing with this young morena from the Harvard Law School that you meet at the Enormous Room. She’s half your age, one of those super geniuses who finished undergrad when she was nineteen and is seriously lovely. Elvis and Darnell approve. Aces, they say. Arlenny demurs. She’s really young, no? Yes, she’s really young and you fuck a whole lot and during the act the two of you cling to each other for dear life but afterward you peel away like you’re ashamed of yourselves. Most of the time you suspect she feels sorry for you. She says she likes your mind, but considering that she’s smarter than you, that seems doubtful. What she does appear to like is your body, can’t keep her hands off it. I should get back to ballet, she says while undressing you. Then you’d lose your thick, you note, and she laughs. I know, that’s the dilemma.