The Flowers (17 page)

Now I was dressed, and we were both standing in the bedroom. I noticed his clothes all around the floor too.

“Please?” she said. “I hate being alone. I'm alone all the time. Please keep me company, please stay. Please?”

“I dunno.”

“You don't know how much I hate being by myself, I can't.” She got close to me. She put her arms around me like it was Valentine's Day and we didn't do what we already did. She kissed me on the neck like she was my girlfriend. “I like you, Sonny. You know I like you, don't you?”

I felt the danger like I'd just felt the pleasure, only it hurt higher up, in the stomach. I felt the confusion like I wasn't on my own feet.

“He'll never know,” she said. “I promise, Sonny. I promise not to tell him ever.”

We walked into the living room together, but she turned toward the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Another game show was on. She was saying something but I wasn't listening. I sat on the edge of the couch and fought to tie my shoelaces. In one of his T-shirts, she came over smiling, thinking I'd changed my mind. Not for a second did I think of staying. “I gotta go,” I said, and I was out the door.

Cloyd was in his office, and he spun and squeaked in his metal swivel chair as I tried to get by his office door.

“Where's your mother?”

I wanted so much to get to that room where I could just lie on that bed. “I dunno, man.”

“Don't talk to me like that!”

It was like I got hit in the face but I didn't feel the pain there yet. It's that I was not expecting him to yell like that. I wasn't even sure what I'd said.

“You talk to me with respect, you understand?” He was standing up.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't know I wasn't.”

“Don't
ever
talk to me like that again!”

He was drunk, the red in the bulbs of his eyes at the bottom like it sank down there, or they were the roots growing off the blue above. I nodded at him but turned my sight away. I was too afraid to walk off and I wanted to so bad.

“Goddamnit,” he said. He was still fuming. “Goddamnit!” he said again even louder, swirling his whiskey around the one ice cube so hard I thought it would come over the lip.

I hated that I was afraid to leave, to scratch an itch. I hated him.

“You don't know where your mother is?”

“No,” I said.

“What?”

“No sir.” It's that I couldn't think of what else to say.

“Where the hell is she?” he said.

When he finally turned to me I shook my head.

“So where the hell is she?”

“I dunno,” I told him. “She wasn't here when I got home either.”

“She wasn't?”

“No sir.”

“Where the hell would she be?”

I shrugged my shoulders, I shook my head. I hated him, I hated this fucking asshole. Now I didn't even want to go to that bedroom I stayed in. Now I didn't know where I should go to get away. That's when we both heard her Mercury rolling down the driveway.

I couldn't go to that bedroom. I wasn't about to stay in this apartment.

Then my mom came through the back door anyways.

“I didn't say nothing,” I told her as softly as I could as she came in. I think she heard me, too.

Nica was sitting there beside Mr. Josep. She was outside. What would she be doing outside? It was almost dark enough that I wasn't trusting it was her for a few seconds.

He waved for me to come up, like they'd been waiting for me there.

“I tell her about Russia,” he said. “I tell her about when I am in Russia.”

“You are?” I asked him.

A tiny red light was blinking into the glass of her apartment window, a reflection, a blip between and under the electrical poles. It seemed like I was the only one distracted by it because
it reminded me of the Cloyd's bloodshot eyes. “Is everything okay?” I asked her. I said that in English. She was outside. I'd never seen her outside her apartment. It was like seeing her in a new way. It made me think everything could change for the better.

“It is not what you think about Russia. I was young and I came from Spain.” He said that in Spanish, which I couldn't believe, which I couldn't understand for a second, because he still had an accent that was like having a full mouth.

“Spain?” I said.

“I want to live in Spain,” Nica said in Spanish.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she said. “Don't you?”

I stayed in Spanish too. “I don't. I don't think so. But I don't think about it much. It's that I think about France.” They both listened. They didn't laugh. “Paris, France. I want to go to Notre Dame, you know, the church, not where they play football.”

They both stared at me but not like I was a nutcase, and neither of them laughed. It was more like they wondered if I said what I meant.

“I wish my name was Carmen,” Nica said.

“Yes?”

“Don't you think it's a beautiful name?”

“It is a beautiful name,” said Mr. Josep. “Very beautiful name and very beautiful music.”

“I am going to name my daughter Carmen,” she said.

“But you're not from Spain, are you?” I asked him.

“I want to tell you a story,” Mr. Josep said.

“About Spain?” she asked.

Mr. Josep was all hyped up in his voice, but his body was as wooden as the chair he sat on.

“No, no, I am talking about Russia. Hear me. It is beautiful, it is beautiful story.”

“He was going to tell us a love story,” Nica said.

I couldn't believe she was standing outside.

“Yes,” he said, “yes! Hear me! I was with her.” He turned his head, like he was checking on something on the other side of the walls of his apartment. He did have a wife who was always inside. “Her name,” he started, putting his finger to his lips and shaking his head so little that it wouldn't make noise or something, “is Alexandra, Sasha. I am in love with her. I am afraid she does not love me. I am afraid she does not like me. She is more beautiful than I deserve. The Russian people, the Russian women, they are beautiful, beautiful. I don't want to scare her and I don't know what she is feeling with me. She is a good girl in the heart and the spirit, and we are taking a walk. We have not kissed, and I am afraid even to hold her hand. I do though. Does she like me? I do not know, I do not know. We are walking and since I am not from there, she leads me to the river. It is named the Neva River, and it is stupendous. Rich like the most beautiful black hair, which is more black than black, and on its surface the whitest light hits it, like jewels floating on top of small little waves. It is evening but the sun never sets in the summer, it is always in the sky, always daylight and hot. We are sitting at the bank of the river, at the edge of granite rock. Our feet are hanging and the river is splashing us only a little. It cools us from the heat to sit there. It is very peaceful and, like a poem, very romantic. Sasha is sitting next to me. She is close but not yet close enough and I wish I can kiss her but I am afraid because I don't know and I do not want to spoil what I have. Because I am happy. Look how this is, you see? I am happy to be alive, to be with her thus. But then, wait, you see? I look and I see it. Up the river, an object is floating. I am not sure what it is until I see it and, yes, I am sure that it is a dog. It is a big dog. I don't want her to see it and I don't want to tell her. I don't want to leave but I am afraid if she sees this dog she will want to run, go and go, and
this time of us together will be over. The dog is coming toward us in the river. I am sorry to see the dead dog but in truth I am not thinking of the dog, I am not. I am thinking that our time together can all be destroyed, and that it is our destiny to be destroyed, dead as the dog. Then, yes, finally, it cannot be stopped, she sees it. ‘Oh, Josep, look!' she says. She is breathing with sadness, exactly as I believed she would, and she has put a hand over her mouth. ‘Yes,' I say, ‘it is a poor dog.' The dead dog is not twenty-five feet away, floating down the river. It is dead, dead. But it is not as you are thinking. Instead of wanting to leave, Sasha moves closer to me. Closer. She puts her arm around me, and she rests her hair on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her, which she wants. Now it is better! The dog is dead, yet I am lucky because I am in love and I feel as a man full of his strength.”

We all heard Angel crying. It hadn't been for very long. He'd started to cry while we were listening to the story.

“Did you kiss her?” I asked him. “Did she kiss you?”

“I have to go inside,” Nica said. She was sad. “I have to go back inside now.”

Mr. Josep stood up too. “He is fine.”

“I have to go in,” she said as she shut the door, the sunset light against the glass of her apartment's window gone.

I saw it. Or it's what I didn't. The darkness was not light. The darkness was what might be a wall and might be a bottomless hole. It was not light. No sun and no moon. Death was not light. And the light, the light was what could be seen. Light was what shined and sparkled and was happiness, and death was like sleeping alone—it was not light. Light could be still and be watched or could pass under like a freeway was under you and you sat there. It was a spray and flow in the face when you couldn't not notice it and you didn't always unless it came at you so hard.

I was sleepy, maybe even asleep, and light was making shadow and felt good, like the shape of a nipple and pushing against me, and my hands are on her, and she is a bright ball except small, and smaller—if I could get closer, if I could see it but it was too far, or so little, because I can almost not see it easy. I'm fast, I'm more, I'm more. I'm seeing, I'm hearing, I'm touching, I'm tasting.

I needed to get up, or I needed to wake up. I was too alone. I was confused. I was all alone and it was dark behind and around me and I was alone and I was scared to be alone. I didn't want to be this kind of alone. Nobody but me. Nobody else but me. I didn't know what I should do and I didn't know what else to do. I imagined going to my mom, but she wouldn't. Not her either. No one.

And so I woke myself up—whatever you call it when you get up from this and it's still before the birds. First I went to the magazines I'd hidden. Nobody else touched them. I don't know why I got so worried about having them. Nobody knew and nobody'd know unless I told them. First I thought about hiding them better. Then how I should give them to the twins. I pulled the bookcase over and pulled up the corner where I hid my money. I wanted to make sure it was how I left it. I was spending too much and I needed more and I didn't think I was gonna get any money unless I took it. I stood up and I went into his office and I sat in his swivel chair. It squeaked so loud I about jumped out of it, feeling busted. I didn't move, though. I waited. I almost went back, but then I opened, slowly, that desk drawer. The envelope hadn't moved. I closed, slowly, the drawer. I kept my eyes low enough but I stared back at all the killed eyes in his office, eyes like Goofy's, and though she watched me sometimes, hers were never sad.

Me and the twins started walking the high beam of the street curb near the railroad tracks, balancing above the half- and full-out
smashed paper cups in the gutter, near where dumpster trash blew up and out and off like moths unless they gummed up and tangled in the sticky weeds. There was a stink of a fire somewhere, which could not be called campfire smell and was something more likely horrible, like a house fire one day or two ago, and, yeah, also there was that nasty ammonia of wino piss new and old as everywhere as oil and grease and dried turds that, yeah, better be only dog doo, please. For me, it was not much like we were walking in wild nature even when we got behind one of those houses in an alley with bushy green growing all around it. First of all, mostly it wasn't green in the right way, because smog and grease and gas fume was stuck on it, and there were a lot of broken branches, sticks really, and then a car parked on the front yard was usually a dead one, and out in the backyard there'd be a couple trashed-out classics, but they were wheelless, dented, with broken windows and rotted tires and missing radiators—a bad place to make a life of getting in the back or seat behind a wheel. To me, death hummed through power lines and were not like cute clotheslines swinging low in the air and didn't make it feel like a clean spring morning. So for me it wasn't no great outdoors when our fun was tossing rocks at shit, even when the best ones—and I got me one of those rocks I wouldn't throw, a round one—and bigger ones that were chunks of broken cement made a nothing thud into and against trash cans, or when you had to be hopping over drying-out piles of bird shit—sure, you gotta watch your step out in the wild, I know that much, but barely tied-up dogs with drooling chops, leaping and snarling, gagged by rope that held them, wanting to chew us like we were bloody butcher bones still wet in the marrow. Nah, this was no wildass exciting danger in the woods. Maybe it was for these twins, but for me we never for one moment weren't where I knew this wasn't any nature hiking. Even if there were a couple of lemon trees and pomegranates in that alley, or oranges in that backyard, and over
there an avocado and an apple tree and yeah there were tall palm trees and banana plants, and little palm bushes, and all of it would seem like it was the jungle pushing itself over a backyard with a gang-tagged wall—maybe the twins saw things around them in a better way than me. They kept telling me it was my messed-up and no-fun head until these lowriders threw a can that landed close, either by accident or not, and sprayed all over. Those dudes laughed and screamed “Cuidense, putos!” and rolled up their tinted windows and spun off. That at least changed them for a couple of minutes.

Mike made the most flipped-out noises about them, cussing like he'd do something if they came back or we chased them down. Joe, who I finally knew was not Mike, was even saying, “Pinches culeros gachos.”