Salt

by Mara White

  “Equestrian, Bascule, Halter-Broke, Vaulting, Cavaletti.”

  What did she do? Take fucking classes to talk like that? He was fascinated.

  The barn was thick with the scent of horses and hay. The smell was foreign to his nose and he rubbed it to squash the tickle that gave him the urge to sneeze. Maybe he was allergic. It smelled ripe. Like dirty sex, sweaty bodies fucking—or so Chico announced to the small group. Salana cringed; Tiago laughed out loud.

  “Sal, the colts are all saddled. We’ll be back around one to clean up,” a young man working in the barn told her. Santiago and Chico exchanged a look. Sal. In Spanish it meant salt.

  “White like fucking salt.” Chico laughed and snorted and Tiago bit the insides of his cheeks to stave off the giggles. The guy was older than Salana, but it seemed he knew her well and acted like she was in charge of the place.

  She thanked the man and continued on past the stalls, greeting each horse as if she were saying hello to a person. She explained how much they ate, when they slept and the climate-controlled barn. Chico and Tiago weren’t really listening, yet they were hanging on every word. Tiago was hooked on her lips, her hips, her ass in those pants, the white strands of her hair falling out of the little hat.

  Tiago walked faster than the rest of the group so that he could stride by her side. The compulsion to be near her was stronger than his fear of rejection, plus he fucking felt some weird shit when she looked into his eyes. It kind of made him feel high, or at least really fucking alive. His future was dead, the present was where he lived all of the time. Necessity and survival were words that ruled his life. A bad choice in the moment might be the only choice, so in his book, you took whatever you could get and then ran with it for a while.

  “How long you been riding?” he asked her, interrupting her soliloquy. God, he wanted to talk to her, share just between the two of them. She turned her face toward him and lowered her voice.

  “Since I was seven.”

  “You really a champion? You won awards and shit?”

  She smiled. Tiago felt like he won the fucking lottery.

  Ding ding ding. Jackpot! Three cherries! Fuck me! Look at her teeth!

  “Look at you,” he said. “That’s some real shit.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized he should have said real ‘cause a girl like Salt wouldn’t know what the hell rill meant. He had to talk right, act right, get her to smile for him again.

  Stop, Salana mouthed. Please.

  “What, why you shy about it? How many awards you got? Ready to teach a bunch of city kids to ride a motherfucking wild stag? Stud, whatever you call it?”

  She blushed when he swore and he couldn’t get enough of her reactions. Tiago knocked her lightly in the elbow to let her know he was only teasing. They were both blushing, like a fucking pair of love birds on a fence singing their hearts out to each other. This shit was the realest. Tiago was so getting laid, finally, and by a fairy princess to boot.

  He stole her attention away all day. He demanded and commanded all of her eye contact. He forced her to tune out the other losers and focus everything on him alone. Tiago knew how to hustle and he opened his whole bag of tricks and put on a show for Salana. She got so flustered that she couldn’t even remember what she was doing. He barraged her with compliments like he did the girls in school; it was his only recourse for winning the girl.

  Sweetheart, chula, amor, angel, niña linda, genius, champion, mami, beautiful, all came out of his mouth that day. He laid it on thick until she blushed so pink it looked like sunburn. Tiago touched her casually as much as fucking possible. When he and Chico were both in the saddle on the trail and out of her earshot, his friend spoke about her body like it was on display for the taking.

  “Imagine bagging a piece like that? Fuck! Aw, man, fuck!” Chico said. He wanted her too, but he arrived five motherfucking seconds too late. Besides, Angelica. “But what she’s gonna do? Come into the city? Hang out in the neighborhood? Ti, man, keep fucking dreaming. And you think her family’s gonna want a fool like you coming over to her house? Her pops is breaking out the shotgun right now just hearing that a busload of kids arrived from the Bronx. That bitch is money and she don’t mix with our kind. Look but don’t touch. Jerk the hell out of your dick tonight, bro.”

  “Speak for your fuckin’ self, bro. I’m feeling something else here.”

  “’Cause you up on a horse, man, that shit plays tricks on your mind. I even feel like Napoleon Bonaparte up here and shit. King of fucking Connecticut, get me a gold Burger King crown, I’d fucking wear that shit too.”

  Tiago looked over and laughed at Chico in the saddle—he was slouched and relaxed, but his body bumped up and down with the cloppity gait of the horse. Then they got the giggles and laughed until they were howling at one another in the saddle. Their uncontainable joy caused a ruckus which spooked Chico’s horse, Gumdrop, who then took off galloping at warp horse speed, leaving Tiago behind in the dust. Tiago winced as Chico slipped from the saddle, his chubby body landing not too gracefully on the rocks by the stream.

  “Im’a go get help. Don’t move, Chico. I’ll be right back, man!” Tiago yelled. Chico nodded, trying to look hard, but Tiago could tell his friend was in pain. This was some real shit, the country was maybe even more dangerous than their own shitty neighborhood.

  “Giddy up,” he said timidly to his own horse and lightly kicked him in the ribs. He tugged the reins like Salana had shown them and turned his horse to the left in the direction of the barn. He started screaming her name as soon as the barn came into view.

  “Salana!”

  He liked screaming it, liked how it sounded like he was screaming, Salty, to the air and sky, he even threw his Spanish accent on for good measure. Made him feel like he was starring in one of those Mexican novelas his grandmother watched.

  “Salana, Chico fell the fuck off his damn horse!”

  She came tearing out of the fenced-in pasture when she heard him. She was riding so fast that her back was nearly parallel to the horse’s, her brow creased in determination as she charged right toward him. He watched her foot and the crop work like a well-oiled machine until the fucking beast was rushing at full capacity. It was hard to see if its hooves ever touched the ground. The noise, oh the noise, of that gallop against the stone. They were both flying, her and the horse, and the power, the beauty, was something else to behold. Like a fucking movie, he thought. Salana in symbiosis with a powerful wild animal. A sharp note of adrenaline permeated the air all around him, but whether it belonged to the horse or Salana or was his own, he didn’t know.

  “Fuck me, Salt,” he whispered under his breath. Hell just released a dragon queen and her power was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Dealers, cops, CPS, corrections officers, gangsters, they were all struggling for power, but Salana on the back of the racing horse, all of sixteen years old, had a life force in spades that none of those fuckers could even touch. Tiago nudged his horse to gallop in the general direction. He hoped he wouldn’t fall off and kill himself.

  “I know we can’t do nothing like that shit, but let’s get over there and fucking help them. Try an’ make me look good,” he said to his horse. He spoke to the horse like a person, because the scene he’d just witnessed made him timid with respect for the animal whose sweat he could smell mingling with the leather of the saddle. Tiago could get used to this. Ride a fucking horse around the city. Wave down at all the motherfuckers on his corner.

  “Hi-ho, mates!” he’d yell down at them, or some other crazy shit. None of those motherfuckers ever rode a horse before, unless they were newbies and had come straight from el campo. He’d turn his horse and let him drop his huge stinking load in their circle.

  The idea was so funny he nearly forgot where he was. He saluted and bounced up and down with the horse. Funnest shit ever. Fuck Napoleon, he was Robin Hood. He was in charge. Riding up on that horse had him feeling like the world was his oyster.

  Tiago almost
laughed when he reached Chico and Salana. His friend was lying on his back trying to cradle both his knee and elbow, trying so hard to look tough and not cry in front of the hottest chick either of them had ever seen. Salana was such an adult, using a walkie talkie to call for help, feeling Chico’s arm and leg for broken bones. Tiago would break his fucking bones if his piece of shit friend gloated anymore about having la rubia’s hands feel him up. He smiled at Tiago like he was enjoying the fuck out of it, but whenever Salana addressed him, Chico made baby faces as if the pain were unbearable.

  “Let’s fucking leave him here to die. The vultures and wolves can fight over his chub!” Tiago called down from his horse as he approached.

  Salana scoffed, but smiled. He scrambled off his horse as fast as he could, not wanting Salt to witness his ineptitude. No way could he hop off gallantly like those rancheros with their cowboy hats in the telenovelas. He wanted to walk up to her and save the day, but he was the greenhorn in this situation and Tiago was about as far out of his element as he’d ever been. When Tiago reached her, he squatted down and touched her arm. She turned her head and made that intense eye contact that made him feel like maybe everything he ever thought he’d understood about women was wrong. How could she see inside him like that? How could her eye contact unravel him and at the same time make him yearn, not for her body, but for acknowledgement, reciprocation—things he’d never even bothered to think about before.

  They brought Chico up to the main house in a wheelbarrow with two hands from the farm. Salana went along, dismissed from her group leader responsibilities, and Santiago was allowed to follow considering he was really the only one who knew who Chico was. The main “barn” looked more like a decked-out country club to Tiago and he tried not to gawk. He pocketed some of the hand towels from the bathroom that were paper, but felt exactly like real cloth. He knew his grandmother would get a kick out of them and he wished she were along. A guy in a crisp white shirt and black pants brought him and Salana Cokes on ice with lime and straws. Then came a plate of little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Tiago downed it all while Salana explained the accident to the resident medical staff. They decided to take Chico to a hospital in Greenwich for x-rays to make sure no bones were broken. The kid was loving all the attention and even Tiago felt privileged to come along for the ride. Chico was probably faking it, but who wouldn’t with this kind of outfit at their disposal. Better than the damn Boys and Girls Club, that’s for sure.

  “Do we have to call his parents? What about yours?” Tiago just shook his head while Salana pulled out the latest version of iPhone and sent a text to her parents.

  “Don’t worry, I can drive you home. I’ve driven into the city a few times to go to shows,” Salana told him with confidence.

  “I’d like that,” he said. He looked down at her suggestively, playing it cool. He was trying to act chill but Salana had turned him into putty with her eyes. What he really wanted to say was, WTF, you drive? How old are you? Do you have your own car? But he reeled it all in, trying to be smooth and mysterious, seductive and cultured, fuck, anything besides the truth—poor, hopeless, and utterly fucked by the statistics so ruthlessly stacked against him. “Hey girl, I live in the fucking projects!”

  Chico was taken by ambulance to the hospital; turned out he fractured his collarbone, the boy wasn’t joking about the pain being real. Tiago could have ridden along in the ambulance, it wasn’t like they didn’t offer, but his desire to stay close to Salana was stronger than his brother-like bond with Chico. Besides, the paramedics had already loaded him up with the good shit and he was flying high, giggling about the fall and swearing his ass off in front of the staff. They took a driver from the country club back to the ranch and sat in the back both working their sweaty palms and staring out separate windows. It seemed like Salana felt out of place in her riding clothes, her shoulders slumped forward, and she looked as if she was carrying the guilt of what happened to Chico.

  “They gonna get on your case because he was in your group?” Tiago asked her.

  She looked up and smiled, lips sliding up to reveal her perfect set of teeth again, like white pearls. Teeth like that were expensive, Tiago wasn’t stupid.

  “Falls just make the insurance premiums go up and my dad gets on my case.”

  “Oh shit, you like own that horse ranch?”

  “Yeah—well I mean, my parents do. I just work there. It was easier than renting horses, all the equipment, training space—with all the competition I was doing.”

  “Sure, I get it.” He didn’t get it at all. “My parents bought the pool cause I wanted to join the swim team.” He regretted the joke the minute he saw her reaction. Her face fell hard and fast. Girl didn’t like to be made fun of. “Shit, Salana, I was just fucking with you.” He tried to knock her in the shoulder, let her know he was kidding. Making light of their staggeringly different lifestyles seemed to be the only way to break the ice between them. “You still gonna drive me home or are you cutting out now?”

  “No, I can drive you. I just have to change and make up something to tell my parents.” The driver from the horse ranch gave her the keys to the car when she asked for them. Tiago was impressed. He was lucky if he had a MetroCard and didn’t have to board the bus through the back door, or else hustle in the station stop for a swipe, like an everyday lowlife surviving off of handouts. And it wasn’t for lack of integrity or ambition, or out of greed—where Tiago came up short was on resources. He did what he could despite his circumstances.

  The girl drove like a pro, with the same kind of cool calm with which she rode the horse. She’d taken off the weird little cap and her hair flowed freely in the wind whipping in from the window. Tiago wasn’t sure he’d ever felt real blonde hair like hers. He reached out almost involuntarily and rubbed a soft strand between his thumb and forefinger. She’d turned off the highway onto a private road where the trees arched over in a kind of canopy and speckled everything with mottled sunlight. He felt like he was in an old Hollywood movie, like the car should be uncovered and Salana should be wearing a scarf and sunglasses.

  “You probably shouldn’t come in because then my parents won’t let me go,” she said. Her grip on the steering wheel was so tight that it made Tiago realize how stressed out the poor girl was.

  “Fuck, girl. I can take a train, just drive me to the Amtrak station or whatever you got here. I jumped enough turnstiles in my life before, I can make my way back to Gotham.”

  “Why would you have to jump?” Salana asked him. They’d pulled up to a large gate covered in vines. Whatever lay beyond it was hidden from view by a ten-foot cement wall with spiked trim. Whoever they were, these people didn’t want any outsiders. They pulled up a half-moon driveway to an estate that looked like a goddamned palace to Tiago.

  “I’m just gonna change and switch cars. Do you mind waiting here for ten minutes?”

  He shook his head. She smelled faintly of leather and something crispy clean, like lettuce or cucumbers.

  “Wait, you fucking live in this building?” Tiago spat, realizing this wasn’t a public space if her clothing was inside. “I thought we were at the country club or a private golf course. That’s your fucking crib?”

  “Please don’t make me regret bringing you here,” she pleaded with him.

  Fuck. This bitch is nervous.

  Tiago pulled a soft pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. He lit one with his lighter and inhaled, shook his head and blew smoke up out the car window into the sky.

  “I ain’t saying shit. Go get dressed. I won’t move, I promise. I ain’t even gonna steal nothing.” He smiled. She backed away, facing him until she reached the bottom of the stairs, then she turned and took the steps two at a time, bounding up to the intimidating door. He got out of the car and leaned back against it. Maybe he’d just take the stereo. That and the sunglasses she’d left on top of the dashboard. Chanel. Worth taking, that’s for sure.

  Some workers left the house carrying their
tools. Tiago raised his chin at them, lifted his cigarette in a half-hearted wave. They probably assumed he was some other lackey, there to take care of whatever the slave owners’ demands were. He tried to check his attitude. Salana wasn’t only fine, she seemed genuine and tough. He squashed his butt under his sneaker and stared at how it left a char mark on their pristine cement sidewalk. Too bad. He wasn’t gonna clean it up.

  Salana bounded out not ten minutes later. He’d stayed in the same spot despite the incredible urge to go explore, walk around the huge porch and peek in the giant windows. She was wearing a short powder blue polo dress, white sneakers on her feet and a headband that made her look like Alice in Wonderland. She had a bag slung over her shoulder, one that he’d seen the Chinatown knockoffs of. Tiago bet hers was real and that it cost more money than his grandmother had ever seen in her damn lifetime. Life wasn’t fair. He wasn’t complaining, just noting.

  Their feet crunched on the gravel as they made their way to a four-car garage. She punched in the numerical code without trying to shield it from his eyes. At least she didn’t think he was a car thief. At least he didn’t think he was a car thief, but he committed it to memory anyway, because he’d never met a lock he couldn’t pick. Perk of being from the neighborhood. Another locked box needed a code to retrieve keys. Tiago salivated at what looked like the police repo lot in the Bronx whenever they made a dealer’s sweep. A BMW, a Porsche and a Mercedes. A fully-loaded Land Rover with tinted windows that belonged in a movie.

  Salana undid the automatic lock on the BMW sedan. Tiago followed her to the car, letting out a low whistle that was directed at both the bounty of cars and the backs of her thighs.

  He lit up a joint as soon as they were off the grounds of her parents’ mansion. She laughed out loud and shook her head at him when he took a long hit.