by Mara White
He stepped over yellow police tape on his way back to the projects. He’d never wanted to shower so badly and yet at the same time it felt kind of meaningful to be covered in her blood. Like a twisted virgin sacrifice—not that she was a fucking virgin, but something almost religious like that. He licked the dried blood on the back of his hand. It tasted like salt. Every interaction with her was somehow larger than life; his head swam, his heart ached for what he knew he couldn’t have. Santiago tasted her blood again and remembered their very first kiss. And he knew it was a fucked-up thing to do when he did it, but he didn’t care. She’d already tasted his once in the bathroom after he got punched. That was how it was; their run-ins caused the whole world to shake up and fall apart.
He knew too that after that shower, he’d go to Mount Sinai to find her and make sure she was okay. The woman did strange things to him. He wanted to stand up and be a man, do everything he could in his power to impress her. It couldn’t be just coincidence that the Universe kept pushing them together.
His grandmother was waiting up for him, not because she was worried, but because she could barely sleep. She’d complain of arthritis and pains in her legs that woke her intermittently during the night. She couldn’t sleep through sirens or yelling or God forbid, fights. She kept the radio on to try to drown out the noise, but she was attuned to the sounds of the neighborhood and still woke up whenever something was wrong.
She had a cup of tea in front of her and an open Reader’s Digest. His grandma read scripture like she was eating the words. God was the only thing she loved more than her grandson. Her worn bible was next to the magazine; it was never far from her reach.
“Hijo, mío, ¿qué te ha pasado?” she asked him, startled at the blotch of red that stained him.
“No es mi sangre,” he told her. “A doctor got shot. I helped her and she’s gonna be okay.” She held her hand to her chest and he hated to scare her. “Come, I’ll walk you back to bed. I’m okay. I promise.”
She cupped her palm and patted his cheek like she always had. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
His grandmother had raised him by herself since he was six and his father went to jail on his third strike for drugs. His mother was probably dead. She came and went for a few years and then they never saw her again. Fucking Rockefeller laws put petty criminals and users in jails and kept the real thugs in suits and nice cars. But at least his dad was clean while he was in jail as far as they knew. He had minimal contact with him and then a number of years back, he’d suddenly died of a heart attack. His mom had spent time in jail too and he had some fond memories of visiting her there. It was when she got back out that things really started to change. The drugs got her and consumed her life. She overdosed at thirty-two, then disappeared from his life and that of everyone they knew. For years he would take the train up to the shooting grounds in the South Bronx, a graveyard for dead needles and dead junkies, ask the zombies if they’d seen her, sometimes toe a sleeping form to look for the familiar eyes he missed so deeply. Mom? Mom?
He showered and let the hot water beat down on the back of his shoulders. Her blood turned the water pink and he had to scrub to get it off where it had dried on his skin. He recalled the pinkness of Salana’s skin when he had a bed full of her and twenty-four hours of her needy body to feed himself to. What a fucking softy he was. That night they were together, Tiago felt like she loved him. But that apparently was a fantasy he made up in his head. What had been so meaningful to him was forgettable to her. God damn, she’d tried so hard to forget what happened that she actually didn’t recognize him.
Tiago shaved with a towel around his waist, using his hand to wipe the cloud of humidity off the mirror. He assessed himself in the mirror; he looked fine—the same. But his gut roiled with a strange sense of foreboding, like he was going to get creamed by a teacher for not finishing his homework, or like his grandma got called to school again for another fight, had to pay for a busted tooth or something out of her measly savings—story of his pathetic life. He couldn’t stay outta trouble if he tried. Trouble was his middle name, it followed him like a lost dog, always creeping over his shoulder.
He hadn’t done anything wrong, it wasn’t his fault. She did get fucking shot, however, and he wondered if he could have somehow prevented it. If he’d noticed her standing there a second or two earlier. If he’d walked in, seen her first, and then blocked the bullet from hitting her.
Grandma washed and ironed his clothes, including his T-shirts and jeans. He never had stains or any yellowing on his white shirts, because she scrubbed them out with bleach by hand on the side of the tub. He suddenly had a memory of her cutting his hair—she’d bought clippers at K-Mart and for the first few haircuts he got laughed at so much the Yankees hat had become a permanent part of his wardrobe. He could almost feel her bony fingers holding his young head still, nicking his ear and the nape of his neck. His grandmother loved him. But after those looks they always hit up the barber shop for his sides and let the hair on top grow, which she painstakingly cornrowed with her bony fingers.
He brushed his teeth, even used mouthwash, put on deodorant and a spritz of cologne. That’s why they named her that, Salana. Salty as fuck. He was gonna make her remember him for good, like it or not. Why’d they keep running into one another? There had to be some kind of fucking reason.
He walked down the sleepless streets to Mount Sinai. No rest for the wicked—pushers and users were out in droves. He almost stopped at a brightly-lit deli to buy her a bouquet of flowers, but he’d had enough of delis for one night, and besides, they might not even let him in to see her.
The hospital was so bright that he felt naked and squinted under the lights. He explained to the receptionist who he was looking for and why. She looked him over, up and down, taking in his appearance, nodded and huffed her way through an inquiring phone call. She’d been admitted, out of the ER, but visiting hours were over and he clearly wasn’t related to her, didn’t even know her last name.
“Livingston!” he said suddenly.
The lady still wasn’t buying it.
She told him he could come back tomorrow. The unibrow receptionist with long clackity nails wrote visiting hours on a card and told him where to report to for a visit at the right time.
Fuck them. He hated rules. Always had, and spent a helluva lot of time figuring out how to bend them.
In the hall on the way out he saw a cat he knew from the Clinton houses, rolling a cart of laundry and wearing scrubs, kicks with little paper booties over them. Somehow even the hospital managed to make his peers look like they were in prison. They shook hands elaborately, clapped each other on the back.
“What’s good?” he asked Tiago, who couldn’t remember his name.
“Some shakedown at the deli. The girl I was with got shot, but they won’t let me in—it’s not visiting hours.”
“Shit, son, I heard there was a hostage situation.”
“Not really, we hid in the walk-in freezer for a minute until the cops showed up.”
“She in the ER or admitted? She your girl, bro?”
Tiago’s face felt hot. “Not in a million. Just wanted to check up and see if she was all right. It looked like a graze, but I ain’t a fucking doctor. Not sure if her people are in the city, you feel me?” He handed the guy the card they’d given him. He read it, looked up with his eyes and jerked his head for Tiago to follow him. They rolled the giant laundry bin to the elevators and got in one that was empty.
“No one’s gonna be up there at this time anyway. Just say she’s your girl if one of the nurses asks what you’re doing there.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Tiago never left the house empty-handed. He slipped the guy a fifty when he offered him a handshake. He wished he’d had on scrubs so he could blend in with the scenery. Breaking laws to see Salt, the ungrateful woman she’d turned into. He didn’t even have to walk past the nurses’ station—her room was right to the left of the ele
vators. She was asleep, straight up Sleeping Beauty, her blonde hair now pulled out of the clip and spread out around her like a halo. He remembered the slip of that flaxen hair through his fingers. The room was alight in a wash of incoming dawn. He coughed. She stirred. Opened her eyes and looked disoriented as to where she was.
Salty as fuck.
“Gangster,” he said.
“What?” she asked him. She was high, he could see the zombie glaze of opiates in her blue eyes.
“Hey, you got shot, remember? In the arm.” Santiago pointed to his own arm. “I saved you.” He smiled. Flexed his bicep. “I’m your hero.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said, her voice scratchy with sleep and pain meds. “Are you my doctor this time?”
Tiago smiled too. He felt shy. Stupid. Happy. “Nah, I just came to make sure you was all right. I live up the street.”
“What a gentleman you are. Always saving me, despite those gun tattoos.” She tried to sit up and winced in pain. She gestured to her own neck as if to remind him of the bad placement of his ink.
He shook his head at her. “Just stay where you are. Want me to get someone? A nurse? For the pain?”
Okay, she mouthed without making any sound. Salt was pretty even fucked up in a hospital bed. Her eyes were the kind of blue that old men wrote boleros about. Her lips—pink, and her teeth—everything about her was expensive. This woman was cultivated and grown in a garden of rich white girl perfection. Jesus Christ, what the fuck was he doing? What was he even thinking?
“Hey,” he said and rapped his knuckles on the desk of the nurses’ station. “The girl in 804 needs something for the pain. The doctor, who got shot.” The receptionist looked him over and pressed a button on her phone.
“Who are you?” she asked Tiago.
“A friend,” he said, striking the side of his fist lightly twice on the counter. A friend who banged her eleven years ago like she’d never been banged, then she forgot that shit. Forgot it, like amnesia. Like a lot of people do, she scratched out the dark parts, a selective memory of the past. People see what they wanna see.
“Visiting hours are listed on the—”
“Listen, I’m out. Just get her some painkiller, a’ight?” Tiago was giving the nurse attitude but he didn’t give a fuck. He walked off toward the elevators. Probably shouldn’t have come. It really wasn’t his business or his place. He dragged his hand along the metal hand rail that ran the length of the wall. He pushed open her door.
“I’m out, Salt. See you round… ” he said, his voice breaking off. Her people had arrived. Money, money, money. Her ma had had work done. Like a whole lot of fucking work, but the same blonde corn silk hair as her daughter. She leaned over the bed fussing and crying. Drama. Waterworks.
The Caribbean-sea-blue in her eyes came from her father. While hers were open and curious, his were shrewd, judgmental. They’d make her leave New York after this shit—that he was sure of. Run back to the castle, into the arms of your white knight. Stay away from urban areas with fire-breathing, good-for-nothing gangsters like Tiago. We all walk around with guns shooting innocent white doctors.
“Could you bring us some coffee?” her father said, eyeing him up, assuming he was an orderly.
“At your service.” Tiago bowed with an arm in front of him like an old-fashioned butler. Dude, I fucked your seventeen-year-old diamond daughter so hard she begged for it and then came in my mouth and all over my dick.
Better to not say it out loud. Right?
Don’t say it.
She licked her own cum off my dick, bitch.
That ‘bout summed up how he felt toward her father.
Salt smiled genuinely, looked like she might even giggle. Her hand covered her lips and he had the urge to run across the room, yank them away and kiss them. But this wasn’t Cinderella or any kind of soap opera. That man in the room wouldn’t let Tiago lay a finger on his daughter. He knew the type. Rich, racist, stuffy. Golf course, cigars and nice cars. To guys like him, Tiago was a bothersome cog in the system, someone to be stepped on, brushed off, go get your coffee, because they ate off your taxes and that makes you God—them cockroaches. Fuck the fuck off.
Tiago stood there for a moment taking her in just because she was so beautiful. They were both smiling stupidly, the rest of the world and their expectations disappearing in the space between them as it always had. He’d washed off her blood, sure. But he swallowed hard because in that moment he realized, it was gonna be hard to wash Salt completely out of his system.
Chapter 11
Tiago
“I don’t fuckin’ know, son. You gotta get something like sixty college credits before you can apply to work for the city. Alls I know is I got shit,” Tiago said. He spat on the concrete. He and his former neighbor were discussing real jobs while standing on the corner doing their real jobs. A cigarette dangled from his lips and he spat intermittently on the ground. He had an ounce in his pocket that he should cut and package, but what he really wanted to do was sell the whole lot to someone else and let them deal with it. He sold in the Heights because that was his stomping ground. Fuck Spanish Harlem, he wasn’t getting his head blown off for accidentally stepping on someone else’s territory. He wanted a city job for real, like with the MTA or the Department of Sanitation, something with real benefits where he could work his way up the ladder. Tiago didn’t want to end up like his parents—he wanted a different ending to his story, but he didn’t know the first thing about living life on the straight and narrow. Where did you go to learn that? They weren’t handing out that knowledge in public school, that much he knew.
“Alls I know is I want to get my shit together before it’s too late. Those exams come up like every six months and the wait list is already fifty thousand people too long.”
“What about one big heist? Pull a bank or a jewelry store, then you’re set for life and can kick back and put your feet up,” Chico said. The guy already spent his life with his feet up because his old lady had a good job. Tiago just shook his head at his friend. He didn’t mind doing real work, the problem was that he didn’t have an in. And he’d gone sour on the fantasy of robbery ever since he’d been on the other end of the gun.
“I’m gonna take the test. You got to arrive at six in the morning. They work on a point system so I can build up all the stuff I need over time. You bring in bills for proof of address and you gotta have a license.” Chico passed him a joint and he took a hit absentmindedly, coughed it out as soon as he realized the city probably ran random drug testing on applicants.
“Hey Alcatraz, go easy!” He turned at the sound of her voice, thumped his chest with his fist, wished his eyes weren’t watering. “Thought you lived on the other side of town?” she asked him. She was coming from the grocery store with bags in each hand. What the fuck, this chick either had him under surveillance or God had a plan for them. They were running into each other on the daily.
“I do. My ma does. But this is where I grew up, so I come here to hang out.” He felt like a fucking idiot. Hang out? What was he, eighteen still? Salt probably saw right through that one. “Salana, this is my boy Chico. Chico, this is the doctor who saved my life a couple weeks ago.”
“Hardly,” Salana scoffed. “I put in your IV when we were short on nurses.”
“So you work at the hospital?” Chico asked her. He didn’t recognize her either. What the hell was wrong with these people? Maybe it was better that way. Tiago didn’t like how his eyes lit up when he talked to her. He also didn’t want him asking her stupid fucking questions. His face felt hot again. Why’d she have to see him like this?
“Besides, Alcatraz saved me the following week when we walked into a shootout.” This time Tiago made a noise to dismiss her nonsense.
“Shit, Tiago, you didn’t tell me you had company, a little rendezvous, huh?”
“It was just a coincidence,” Tiago deadpanned at his friend. He wanted to smash his fucking patronizi
ng face in. He’d never hear the end of this shit.
“See? This ni—”
“Christ, can you not fucking talk like that in front of her, man!” Getting worse by the second. He was usually confident around women, the one making all the jokes at anybody’s expense. Somehow Salt made him feel like a kid, a kid fucking around in front of his favorite teacher.
“It’s okay, Alcatraz. I’ve heard all the words. I work in the ER in Washington Heights, remember? No offense taken at however you want to talk.”
“This punk doesn’t tell me shit even though we been best friends since preschool,” Chico blurted out.
“So you live over here?” Tiago asked her, trying to change the subject.
“Yeah, near the hospital.”
“Then what the fuck were you doing over there that night?”
