by Alisa Valdes
Fifteen minutes? I dig my crooked toes into the plush blue carpet, make kissy lips at my cat, Fatso, who sleeps in the huge, crescent-shaped window. She ignores me, so I kiss harder. Kiss kiss kiss kiss. Finally, I wake her. She yawns, fangs flashing, and lifts her giant round body. She stretches, tumbles down, wobbles over to me on her dainty little feet. It’s my fault she’s fat, of course. I’m the one who gives her four cans of Fancy Feast a day. That’s how I show my love. She shows hers by rubbing my shins, leaving smeared sheets of white fur as she goes. I scratch behind her ears until she purrs.
“Okay, big girl.” I grab her can of salmon-flavored treats from the side table, pop the top; the noise sets her twirling in desperate, mewling circles. Pavlov’s cat. I toss a few her way. She pounces as best she can, reflexes slow for a cat, eats them with gusto, purring and chomping all at once. “What have we gotten ourselves into this time?”
I stand, start to topple over, and realize—again—I’m not sober. Still drunk. I hold the white banister, step carefully down to the mid level of my apartment, where the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom are.
This apartment rocks. High ceilings, modern. Trendy. At least I’ve got that, even if I’m fat and ugly and fiancé-less.
It’s all open and airy with tons of light, artistic. It’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived. Usnavys made me move here, mind you. I thought I couldn’t afford it. She was, like, “Stop being so stingy and poor-minded, m’ija. You can afford it now. Issues, issues.”
She was right. I still haven’t really gotten used to having enough money. More than enough. There are, in my memory, too many days of Papi giving me my lunch money in a damp wadded ball from his pocket, sighing as he took it out, saying, “We’re not made of money, remember that.” I always had to ask, too, you know? Every morning. Papi forgot things like that. He’s a good dad, but a professor. They don’t remember most practical things. That’s not a stereotype, either. We never had enough money.
Okay, done. I won’t talk about Papi anymore. Sorry.
So now that I have money, I don’t know what to do with it except hoard it for the inevitable famine. This dining-room set? Usnavys made me get it. Same for the bedroom set downstairs. “Don’t wait,” she said. “Live now.”
I hold the wall to balance myself and “walk”—or something noodley and similar—all the way to the bathtub. The cat box is dirty, again. I have to fix that. You can’t have a man over to your house with a dirty cat box. The whole apartment probably reeks of her neat little turds, coated in gray litter. I don’t notice it anymore. I’m immune. But I want to make a good impression on my drug dealer.
Drug dealer?
Jesus Christ, Lauren. What have you done?
I run the hot water in the tub. It will actually be hot in about three minutes. This is a nice apartment, newly renovated, but like everything else in this overpriced iceberg of a town, it has old pipes. Something’s always not right with the apartments in Boston for people in my income bracket. I know, I make more than most people, right, but here’s the thing: It costs more to live in Boston than any other city in the country, pretty much, even more than San Francisco. So you end up with six figures on paper, but you’re living like a graduate student.
I should go back to New Orleans, where things make sense. Palm trees, humidity, hurricanes, the Neville Brothers, Café Du Monde, crawfish, jazz funerals. I’ve had nothing but bad luck since I came here. I grab the little red scooper and start shoveling Fatso’s poop into the toilet. Plop, plop. I love this cat too much, okay? Way too much freaking effort, this cat. Does she appreciate it? What do you think? She comes in and rolls around on the bathmat, the first really nice bathmat I’ve ever had, an expensive purple thing I got at a bed and bath shop on Newbury Street. She leaves hair all over it. I just washed it. It’s like I wash this bathmat every two or three days, because of her hair. Just like I have to run the vacuum every two days. Her hair is everywhere. That’s one of the reasons I never quite feel like the successful woman people seem to think I am. Successful women have cats, yes, but they’re able to keep the fur under control, you know what I mean? They don’t walk around in a cat fur fog, like Pigpen with his dirt. I do. I go somewhere, and this cloud of cat fur follows me. The other day, in Bread & Circus, when I was buying food I thought would be healthy for me and might actually turn me around on the bulimia thing, this lady in line starts sneezing on me and asks me if I have a cat. I say yes, and she says she can tell by all the hair on my jacket. “You ever thought of using a lint brush?” she asks, sniffing. I’m, like, what the hell, lady? You’re a complete stranger and you’re gonna get up in my face like that?
Fatso rolls on her back and watches me, and as soon as I’ve scooped everything out, flushed it away, replaced it with fresh litter, and sprayed Lysol over the whole deal, she tiptoes over, steps in, and lays another giant crap.
“Et tu, Brute?” I ask her.
She ignores me.
This is my life. Lysol, cat box, and Ed porking that skinny little putita.
“I thought I could at least count on you,” I say to the cat. I collapse in sobs, again.
Fatso finishes her business, digs around a little halfheartedly, and scrams, back leg shaking litter all over the hallway as she goes. She is not what you’d call a fast-moving cat. The vet keeps telling me to put her on a diet. A diet? For a cat? Our relatives in Cuba struggle to get enough calories out of their stupid ration cards, and they want me to put my cat on a diet? What a world.
Besides, it’s up to Fatso, not me, if you believe the law. There’s still a law in Massachusetts that makes it illegal to own a cat because those men who hanged all those girls in Salem thought cats were people, sort of. So I guess I don’t own Fatso, not legally. She chooses me as her slave. I should be honored. At least someone wants me. I clean up her latest mess and spray the Lysol again. The water is hot now, so I pull the shower curtain (also nice, and dark purple, matches the rug) and lift the shower lever.
I undress and look at myself in the mirror over the sink for a second, my face. I look sick and puffy and tired. I look old and fat and stupid. How am I going to get cleaned up enough in fifteen minutes to impress a guy like Amaury? You’ve seen the girls he’s used to! They dropped out of school in the ninth grade so they can dedicate all their time to things like shaving their legs and putting on lip liner. Why would someone like him be even remotely interested in this sallow-looking freak with the messy hair and glasses? I have a theory: You work in newspapers more than three years and you start to look like a dancing corpse from a Michael Jackson video. Newspapers are factories that think they’re offices. So every evening the whole building trembles as the presses start to roll, and ink sprays out of the vents. There’s no natural light anywhere, just this big warehouse where people sit around staring at computers. There is no pastier, greasier, sicklier, sorrier-looking bunch of people than those that work in newspapers.
“You make me sick,” I tell myself. “You’re so ugly.”
Time. Passes. Room. Spins.
I realize I’ve been standing there making faces at myself for a while and the water from the shower has splattered all over the floor. I’m drunk. Did I tell you that yet? I think so.
How long have I been standing here? I don’t know. Is the door buzzer going off? I can’t tell, the water’s too loud. I don’t have a lot of time. What was I doing again? Oh, yeah.
Crying and insulting myself.
I laugh and get in the shower and start the long girl-process of becoming sexable. You know what I’m saying, don’t pretend you don’t. Shave, wash, scrub, shave again, get out, dry off, moisturize, shave that little scraggle you missed at your left ankle and pretend it doesn’t hurt when you cut yourself. Smear deodorant everywhere. Spritz fragrance. Stuff yourself into a velvet push-up bra, endure the invasive threadiness of your thong. Find something suggestive in your closet, something you hope doesn’t make you look fat. Black is your best bet. Leggings and a sweater from the Li
mited. Don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard. Put it on. Oh, but you’re not done yet. You still have your head to deal with. I mean what’s outside, not the inside. (That’s hopeless.) You put your long hair in a towel to keep it out of the way, use that cream that’s supposed to stop wrinkles, even though you are living proof that it’s a lie. (Why didn’t anyone tell me you start to look old in your mid-twenties?) Then you do the foundation, the blush, the eye foundation, the base shadow, the contour shadow, pluck the brows, fill them in again with black powder, smudge eyeliner, do the mascara like that, with your mouth open. Just try doing mascara with your mouth closed, girl. It won’t work. Then your lips. Liner, filler, smack the lips together, blot on tissue. Then powder over the whole royal mess, to set it, as they say. Take out the hair, run the brush through it, dry it with the blower for five minutes, then take the big round brush and work it through, piece by little piece, hundreds of pieces in all, to get the curl out, to get it straight and shiny and “natural” looking. I got me some curly Portuguese hair. It’s like taking care of a Victory garden on PBS, being a girl.
I examine the finished product in the full-length mirror in the bedroom downstairs and have to admit that in the right light, at the right angle, I don’t look half as bad as I seem to think I do. Elizabeth and the other sucias are always telling me how pretty I am and that I have to stop thinking so poorly of myself. Maybe it’s true, but if you have to put this much effort into looking pretty, then you probably actually aren’t.
Pretty girls probably don’t dump all their dirty clothes on the closet floor. I’ve got suits now, just like my other sucias, but I wad them up. I iron them because I think I can’t afford the dry cleaners, and it burns the fabric so it’s different colors in different places. The suits smell like weird chemicals because you’re not supposed to iron them. I try to fix it by spraying them with perfume. So imagine all that mess, with the cat hair, and the bulimia. My wedding is off. And now, a drug dealer is coming over.
Loser.
I go upstairs, ram the dishes into the dishwasher, wipe up the crumbs on the glass dining table, pick up all the photo scraps and ice cream tubs, dump them in the trash under the sink. There. Done. Ready to be romanced.
No, wait. He’s Dominican, right, from the island. So he likes Latin music. I go through my CD collection, pass over the Miles Davis and Missy Elliott, find some merengue. That’s what those kind of homie boys like, right? Merengue. Olga Tañón. I put the CD in the stereo and go to the couch and wait. I’m drunk, as I might have mentioned. Forget Ed and his big pockmarked head. I hate him. I pick up the phone and dial his number and when he answers, I hang up. I do it again. Four times. I start to cry again. I call Usnavys and tell her I want to kill Ed. “Can we hire a hit man? Could we actually do that?”
Usnavys’s voice groans with sleep interrupted. “Coffee, m’ija,” she grumbles. “Go drink some coffee. Go to bed. Get some rest, sucia. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Just shoot him. It’s not hard. His head is so big, you can’t miss.”
She sighs. “Is Amaury there?”
“No.”
“Good. He’s dangerous. You don’t need danger. You need to love yourself more, sweetie.”
“That’s a great idea! Amaury could shoot him.”
“Good night, m’ija. You go to bed right now, sucia. Sola. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Five minutes later, stupidity arrives in a leather jacket.
The buzzer rings. I pull some big knives out of a kitchen drawer and run around like a psycho, planting them in convenient hiding places in every room, under the sofa cushions, between my mattress and box springs, between stacked towels in the linen closet. Just in case. I check my butt in the mirror one more time. I toss my hair. Lights, camera, action! I must be ovulating.
I buzz him in, wait for him to find me here on the second floor. He is wearing the same green and white plaid shirt, leather jacket, and khaki pants with Timberland boots. Though I have degenerated into a scary old woman since my soaring moment of glory in the bar, he looks the same. Better. He looks better. He does not walk, he prowls. He is confident and happy to see me. A real live homeboy.
“Que lo que,” he says with a laugh. He’s singing, bouncing, jazzed. He brushes past me and walks right into my apartment, without waiting to be invited, starts running his fingers over everything, nodding his approval. He even opens my closets, looks in them, singing along to the Olga Tañón song and dancing as he goes.
Fearless.
“What are you doing?” I ask him in my crap Spanish.
“Nothing,” he answers in Spanish. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak the language, and he sounds more educated than I expected he would. Like, most hoodies would say “na” the way Usnavys says it. But he says “nada,” using both syllables. “Just checking,” he says.
“Checking?”
“Yeah,” he says in English.
“For what?”
He ignores me and continues his rounds. He finally comes to rest in the upstairs living-room loft, collapsing on the sofa as if he owned the joint. Just kicks his feet up, boots and all, puts his hands over his privates, smiles with the playfulness of a tiger kitten. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was no greeting, no small talk. Just this.
“Make yourself at home,” I say sarcastically in English, cautiously approaching him as the apartment twirls on its axis.
“It’s a nice place you got here,” he says in Spanish, spreading his arms like a long lost friend. Then, in English, “Come here, baby.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
He laughs, and says, “Oye ahora.”
I sit on the living-room floor and say, “Tell me a little about yourself first.” This makes him laugh extra hard, a big booming rasp of laughter. I hear a little electronic trilling sound. He tugs the red plastic beeper from his belt, and checks it, licks his lips.
“What you wanna know?” he asks in English. “You know everything already.” I know nothing about this dude, okay? In Spanish, he says, “You didn’t tell me to call you tonight because you wanted to talk, did you?”
“Do you sell drugs?” I ask.
He purses his lips and looks shocked, in a mocking way.
“Usnavys says you sell drugs. You lied to me about the janitorial thing, right?”
He grabs his belly he’s laughing so hard. Freak.
“Oye ahora,” he says again. “Escucha es’o, man.” I have no idea what he’s saying.
“I’m serious. I need to know. You sell drugs or what?” I lean back on my hands, trying to look casual and unafraid. I realize, with a sick feeling, that I am probably looking at him in exactly the same way all my guilty white liberal colleagues look at me. Don’t hurt me, please, exotic little Latin thing.
He looks at me, still grinning. In English, he says, “What you care, eh? What matter what I do?”
“I just don’t want to get involved with someone who sells drugs.”
He shrugs. “Bueno,” he says.
“So do you?”
He sits up now, and I realize he’s as uncomfortable with me as I am with him. I actually feel sorry for him.
“What, mamita?” Fingers drumming together.
“Sell drugs.”
“Drugs, no.” He leans forward over the coffee table and picks up the Olga Tañón CD case, opens it and takes the booklet out, pretends to be very interested in it. Then, without looking at me, adds, “Drug. One drug. La cocaina.” Then he looks at me, and grins.
I should know this is when you ask the drug dealer to leave. You escort him to the door, never talk to him again. There must be some etiquette book over at Rebecca’s with the protocol for this situation all mapped out, yeah? You do not go to college, work hard, become a columnist at one of the country’s top newspapers, and spend thousands of dollars on therapy just to suddenly start sleeping with a drug dealer.
But you know what? As soon as he says
it, I mean, like, as soon as he says it, as soon as he confesses, my body boings. To be specific, my clitoris sits up and pays attention. My spine tingles, my nipples stand up and salute the push-up bra. I realize, with a sick feeling, that this pretty young gangster turns me on.
“I think you better go,” I lie. A sucia must keep up appearances.
He says something in Spanish, fast, and I don’t understand. I ask him to repeat himself, and he does, in English.
“I never touched it.” He’s looking at me with an honesty I can hardly believe. I have years of interviewing people, and I usually have good radar. I know when someone’s lying. He’s not.
“You mean the cocaine?” I ask.
“Sí, claro,” he says. Of course. He shrugs again, looks at the bookshelf next to my computer desk. He continues in Spanish, speaking slowly and simply so I can understand him. “I have never sold it to my own people, either, Lauren. I sell it to lawyers. Gringos. They’re the ones who buy it.” Then, with a laugh, he adds, “My people can’t afford it.”
I sit next to him on the couch, all tenderness and guidance-counselor cool.
“So why do you do it?” I ask. He surprises me a second time, and gets up. He walks to the bookshelf and scans the titles.
“You like this one?” he asks, pulling out a Spanish-language version of Isabel Allende’s Portrait in Sepia. I got about thirty pages into it one time, with my Spanish-English dictionary, looking up every third word or so, kept a nice long list on a yellow legal pad of all the words I had to learn. I remember well the first few sentences, because I had to read them for so long to get the meaning of them.
Book closed in his big brown hand, Amaury recites the first two sentences. “I came into the world one Tuesday in the autumn of 1880, in San Francisco, in the home of my maternal grandparents. While inside that labyrinthine wood house my mother panted and pushed, her valiant heart and desperate bones laboring to open a way out to me, the savage life of the Chinese quarter was seething outside, with its unforgettable aroma of exotic food, its deafening torrent of shouted dialects, its inexhaustible swarms of human bees hurrying back and forth.”
