The Flowers (11 page)

I added those letters up fast. “Ay, his name is
stupid,
” I figured out. “Man, I'm so fucking stupid I didn't realize he was Mister Stupid!”

“Is too mush, Tanto,” Mike said. “Es muy estupid, stupid.”

I tried to tell my mom but she didn't hear me. She wasn't dressed for listening or like she had been in the kitchen for very long or like she was planning to stay there either. It seemed to me she was wearing another new dress, and she was smelling washed and bath-oiled and lotioned and misted, and the high heels were glossier and redder than her lipstick. She was opening American cans of Mexican salsa.

“He doesn't even know I buy este chile at the grocery store,” she told me. “He thinks I make it. He even tells everybody I do.”

“You do make it,” I said. “Or you could.”

She crinkled her face at me like I'd suggested she go out like jogging or something.

“You think I should cook for him day and night like he wants?”

I tried to think of what she did all day, now that she didn't have to work.

“What's it for?” I asked.

“It's for some client. Something to snack on while they're drinking beer and talking about their business. He says it's for a big contract. I think a whole housing development.”

“That sounds big,” I said.

She made one of those as-if-she-cared-about-that-part. “Like it would make him act like he has one extra dime to spare.”

This was new complaining. She'd made some new move. At first I got thinking like,
Oh, no!
and then I got thinking like
All right!

“Do you know what he told me this morning?” she said.

Oh yeah, of course I do.

“Do you know what he told me?” she asked again like I hadn't heard any of it the first time.

I answered no, even though I didn't feel like it.

“He told me again that I was using too much toilet paper.”

I wondered what any of this was really about, where it was really going. … Nah, that's not right. I didn't wonder. I only wished I didn't have to hear any of it.

“Not in so many words,” she said. “Just, ‘I think you need to buy some toilet paper when you go to the store.' Or maybe he was talking about me not going to the grocery store enough. I don't know.”

She struggled with the can opener. That was because she didn't want to use it. The other night I heard her telling Cloyd she was going to buy an electric one, and he was saying how they didn't last and took up too much counter space. She goes, I can buy a better one when it breaks.

I was trying to think of something else the hell to talk about. “So is that what you're mad about?”

“Why do you ask that? Who says I'm mad?”

“It sounds like you're mad.”

“M'ijo, I'm not mad. I don't have to get mad.”

“It sounds like you're mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

“Okay, you're not mad.”

“Don't tell him I didn't make this,” she said, as she poured another can into a big ceramic bowl.

“Tell him what?”

“That I don't make this salsita!”

“You should just tell him if you're worried about it.”

“I'm
not
worried about it. I'm asking you to not tell him. Can you do that for me?”

“What are you gonna say when he finds out?”

“How will he find out unless you tell him?” She put a dinner plate over the bowl. “Will you take this outside to the trash for me?” She handed me a bag with the cans in it.

“You're afraid he'll see the open cans.” Now I was smiling.

“Go throw them away, will you? Will you please?”

I went to the cabinet under the sink where the kitchen trash went.

“No, not there, Sonny. You're very funny.”

“Why not?”

“Please? Can you please do what I ask for me without making me want to scream?”

I knew I couldn't tease her too much right then. Sometimes I could, but I could tell that this time she might not like me going too far. She hadn't hit me or threatened to since we moved in here. She was going out, and something was going on.

I was stuffing the empty cans under some other garbage—trying to do a good hiding job for my mom—when that Gina came from behind me with her paper sacks of trash.

“Caught you,” she said. She wore plasticky blue pants and shoes which came to a point, sharp as a rosebush thorn. I don't know why it's what I kept noticing. Besides her short black hair, chopped to the bottom of her ears, I couldn't see her above her waist because my eyes were stuck on what was below. “What're you digging for?”

“I wasn't. …” I felt caught, not as much for hiding the cans only for doing something like it. I couldn't make eye contact with her.

“I'm your neighbor,” she said. “Gina.”

“I figured that,” I said. “I know you're in, well, Number Two.”

“The apartment next to you guys,” she said. She was bones, way skinny, really small, all buggy eyes that watched.

“Right,” I agreed.

“You're doing such a good job around here,” she said.

“Yeah?” I wanted to move on. “Thanks, whatever you mean.”

“Of keeping things swept up and clean! You're doing such a good job. The building's never looked better.”

“Oh yeah, that. Cloyd has me doing it.” I was dying, afraid she was gonna try to accuse me any second of lifting their magazines. I was glad when we were finally away from the trash cans and walking toward the apartment doors. “I don't mind. I kind of like working around here even.”

“It looks
so much
better around here too. Really! It's always been kept up, but you're making it almost spotless.” She stopped at the #2 door, hers. “It's great to meet you finally.”

I started crunching on tortilla chips in the bowl sort of like I was out of breath and needed air and the oxygen was inside them.

“Don't eat those!” my mom yelled. She was practically skidding around the corner, she was banking her turn so fast. She was in a hurry. “Those are for him and his client.”

“Isn't there a bunch more in that bag over there?” A bag was on the corner of the tile counter. I wanted these and I wanted them too.

“Please don't eat them. Please. Okay?”

I still had one in my hand, and I took a few more.

“And I want you to do something else for me.” She reached into her purse and handed me a five. “Maybe just go get yourself dinner tonight. He'll be going out.”

What was strange is that she said this like I wasn't buying my own dinner practically every night. I guess she was so distracted it hadn't occurred to her to wonder how I did that—how I'd been doing it. At first she would give me some money like this. But that stopped. I was using from my own hidden money pile.

“It'll probably take more than this to shut me up,” I said.

“What did you say?”

“I'm joking around, Mom. You remember how people do that?”

“M'ijito, I don't have time,” she said.

“I'm pretty busy too,” I told her, “but I still remember how to joke.”

She didn't hear a word I said.

“Speaking of that,” she suddenly said, “are you going to finish that painting outside?”

“Speaking of that? What're you talking about?”

“I thought of it right now,” she said. “It's that, well, I don't want it to turn out like the weeds.”

“What's that mean, the weeds?”

“He talks about it. How you couldn't finish.”

“Couldn't?” I was pissed off. “Wouldn't,” I told her. “Didn't want to.”

“Well, I don't think you should not finish this other too.”

“I'm almost done already. He knows it too. I'm sure he knows. I'm almost done right now. Did he say something?”

“No. I just don't want him to.”

“He better give me money for it,” I announced. “He said he would.”

She had actually stopped moving and was standing still, facing me even, looking at me, that's how serious the situation was.

“He said he was gonna pay me for that work,” I said right back at her. “I wanna be paid.”

“Don't make any trouble,” she said. This was another kind of tone, with another meaning. It wasn't, I could tell, about me but about her and him, her and her trouble. “You hear me? I'll give you money if you need it. You know that.”

I knew that? How did I know that? When did I know that? “I want it, and he said he'll pay me, right? He said he would. I believed him.” I was feeling like I was on my toes a little.

“If he doesn't, I will. If you really need it, I'll get it for you.”

If I really need it? I couldn't believe she said that. “He will.” And no, she wouldn't. She wouldn't remember, and if she did, or I reminded her to remember, she'd either deny she offered or say she would later.

She stopped and, distracted, sponged the kitchen counter as if she'd already forgotten we'd had this conversation and then turned back to me, eye to eye. “Please tell him that I left the salsita in the refrigerator.”

She had a note for him under the bowl of tortilla chips. “Doesn't it say that right there?” I asked.

“M'ijo, please tell him?” She drooped her head and closed her eyes for like two seconds, like a prayer. I was still thinking of him not paying me. “Will you please tell him? For me? Please?”

“Where're you going?”

“I've got an appointment at the beauty parlor,” she said. “A late one. Then I'm going to a fashion show.” She stopped and stared too much at me, then away like she was still staring, waiting for what I would say—I decided; I figured out—because she was lying. “Remember Nely?”

Nely was one of her better friends, one she liked to go out drinking with, talk about dresses and bras and makeup and men with. I did like Nely, how wouldn't I? She was the one who used to touch me the most when I was small, her soft hands
all over my face and neck, and when she'd grip my shoulders and squeeze the muscles in my arms, she'd do it hard, like I was so strong, and like it made her feel muscles inside herself too. She'd tell me how I was a guapito, say it loud for everyone, soft in my ear. Of course I liked her. What I really didn't forget is my cheek against her soft chichis when I would be in her lap. I would pretend I didn't really know where my face was. In a way I wasn't pretending to not know where I was. Except I wasn't maybe supposed to like it, and she maybe wasn't supposed to let me.

“Didn't she marry some really rich guy?” I asked.

My mom made a face. Obviously she didn't want to talk about that, and she snapped at me. “That's who I'm going with is all,” she said. “I haven't seen her since I moved here.”

It wasn't nighttime yet, though it wasn't the bright afternoon anymore. I could paint the Los Flores sign. I was planning on that, planning on finishing this very day. Now I didn't want to very much. Outside the front door, on the grass I'd mowed and edged the other day, I thought of some other things I could do to get away from the two of them. I could go bowl. Or I could go sweep the walks, though I had been doing that too much, like that Gina said, and nothing needed it that much. Mostly I did it to get an excuse to go past Nica's door. Right then I decided to walk around from the front of the apartment building to look up there again. I was always watching the curtains, trying to figure out when she for sure was there alone, her parents at work. I don't know why I was afraid to just knock.

Mr. Josep was sitting on his chair, staring out. I didn't think he ever noticed me or anything else.

“Come.” He waved.

“Excuse me?” I wasn't sure what he said or if he was talking to me even.

“Come,” he said again, waving upward. “Go up the stair and come to here.”

I took the stairs up and stood close to him.

“You want the chair?”

“I don't think. …” I started, considering. “I probably don't need one.”

I was standing there, waiting for him, for what he wanted.

“You go to the school?”

“Yeah,” I said. “High school.”

“You like the high school?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

He must not have heard what I answered.

It was like he didn't really want to talk to me but was working up the words, or his mouth was too full and he had to swallow. I stared out at what he might be seeing when he sat there. What I saw were dark electrical wires looping from one pole to another in the gray droop. And so many crinkly wood greased-up poles. I heard the traffic on the boulevard that I usually didn't hear, unless I was on that bed in the dark, now everywhere in the air like insects in a jungle. I heard a motorcycle revving, then popping. I heard an airplane but couldn't see it in the sky. I heard a dog barking, and then another dog barking. I saw the sky not like air but like gas, like clean fizz on a blank TV screen. For a second I started to imagine what he must see out there. Then he interrupted me.

“She doesn't go to the school,” he finally told me, nodding at Nica's door. “She doesn't know any English.”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn't for one second think this was what he was going to talk about.

“That is not good,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. I didn't understand why she didn't either. “Probably not, huh?”

“I practice my English,” he said.

I was wondering what language he spoke. It didn't seem to me like his accent had anything to do with Spanish.

“I went to the school. My father wanted me to finish the school because it was good, he told me. He told me I would get good job and have good life because I finish.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I have good job too,” he said. “All my life, I have good job.”