The Flowers (31 page)

I crossed over to the other side of the boulevard, wanting more distance between me and The Flowers, and I stopped where the ranchera music at La Copa de Oro made like clearer air because the rest of the boulevard was smoked. Only a few people and voices moved between buildings and the sirens looped close, for a fire you could smell: was it right over there or just a little down from that one, that one where the light seemed too hot? The money in my pocket was what was burning me, like it needed the water hoses.

At La Copa's doors it wasn't like there were people drinking inside, only a couple of dudes with bottles, more where they lived, not partied, and I was figuring my shit out near that door when Cindy, strapped in by a black halter top, was in my face. She was squeezed everywhere else too, like about to burst, and all of it at me, scooting and bouncing sideways and back, her hands and feet in pissed-off rhythm. It was almost like she'd come out of this Cadillac on the boulevard that'd been fucked over, not totally in a lane but not parked even close to the curb either and the tires on curbside were gone so it was sitting on its drums. The window glass on all sides was crashed out or smashed in and so were the headlights and taillights.

“Fucking ass!” she said.

It was like when you first wake up and you don't even want to open your eyes.

“I can't believe you would be an asshole,” she said.

“Cindy?”

“And I told him.”

“What?”

“I told him it was you. That's why. You asshole. Now I can't be there.”

“You're fucking crazy.”

“Yes!”

“Are you stupid?”

“We'll see who's stupid!”

Then she saw the rock in my hand—maybe I lifted it because I got fucking mad hearing her, or maybe I was protecting my body and forgot it was in my hand—and she jammed across the street over to the World Motel, where dudes started whistling for her or at her or who knows what.

Ma chère,
I whispered to the rock,
ma chère pierre
. It didn't make me laugh doing that, didn't make me smile even, but almost was good too. I was off the boulevard and was near the tracks and trying to get my head back to Nica, even with the money straining my pockets, so heavy I had to keep pulling up my pants. I rested my butt on the tracks, which was like sitting in the middle of nothing. Nothing nowhere and nobody. And soft too, kind of like if it was soft lawn, even if my nalgas were on a steel rail. I put
la pierre
down on the gravel and this time I did get a smile out of me: My rock was like the biggest, baddest
pierre
there.

I was taking in some no-riot air from the sky, the best world peace anywhere, what wasn't pushing on my sides but was straight up there, where nothing messed up could be happening. My back rested on the gravel, between the wooden ties, where I was wishing Nica … no, not here in this greasy shit with me staring up! That's the best I had? She had to go, she had to go. When all I got is space above, which I can't even hold, and that's only when nobody's around? That's sorry. Nobody else who sat on the tracks—which wasn't even like nobody anywhere because there were suspicious dudes on the sidewalk on that side, shuffling way fast like something was up, and over here a low car dragging along like it was bobbing one shoulder, then the other, and another
pobre fucked-up one squeaking on this other side. Nobody and none of them saw me, even when I might be a dead body on the tracks. Or it didn't seem like they did or they didn't care if they did. Which was what I fucking wanted. At least the sky right above wasn't stinky gray even if gunky ashes were snowing. But watch: on top of the silhouette of a fat tree, watch, so pretty, see how really pretty! It was the color of orange juice, which she knew I loved. It was like a beautiful flower on a woman maybe in Sevilla where Nica wanted to go, like beautiful clothes on her too. She never once went out of #4, never, and once she left, you know, she wouldn't see an orange like this ever again, not tonight and not tomorrow and who knew how long this was going to go on. Nica could say to her family and her people, about when she left anyways, like when she got back to her pueblito, she'd be able to say how me and her were on these railroad tracks, me and her all by ourselves on a romantic night, our feet dug into the gravel like it was beach sand, the nightsky sweet like love and pure happiness, and above a silhouette tree there was the most beautiful orange sunset glow, which was really a building on fire during a riot. I was smiling again. It was like I was talking in French when I was thinking it, like I'd said
oui
. I meant yes though. It was yes!

Once I finally got all of it figured out—sure, every little cosita, dude—I was only giving my brains a little break when the sickie's car pulled up. I did not want to believe my eyes, could not believe my eyes that this freak was aiming his perv eyes at me and kind of showing his yellow teeth too. Until, I dunno, just like that I settled with it. Good with it even. So I stood. Like a dude, I stood up. I dusted pebbles off me and shook out some bigger ones stuck wherever and I crunched them with my shoes, fanning riot smoke that was clogging the air. The sickie was idling, saliva pooling up behind a quivering corner of his mouth.

He wasn't sure if he should hit the pedal or pull his body away or what when I got close. It was like he was shifting from the driver's side to the passenger's. He was twitchy, is what I'm saying. It was like, even though his windshield was already spider-webbed from that other time, he was thinking sickie. 'Course it had to be
ma chère
that freaked the dude some. And still he didn't take off. He let his head and neck muscles grip those parts of his body harder as he exposed the front of his teeth—that meant he was cool with what was happening.

“So,” I said, “what is it with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what the fuck is wrong with you, mister?”

“Why are you asking this?” he said.

“Are you joking?”

“Why would I joke?”

“Marrano pig.”

“What're you?” he said.

“Don't you know?”

“A little punk,” he said. “A big punk.”

He was grinning until he saw my rock going from my right hand to the left and back. He saw the rock good. It was a good rock, no doubt. The best. And I almost did it right then, and he thought I was gonna do it too, because he went to his shift stick to get in gear and the whole car jerked for him when it did but he stopped. He relaxed. He shifted back to park.

“What is it with you, mister?” I said.

He laughed, if that's what you would call it. I maybe'd call it a gurgle. I felt the rock on my palm and my fingers, light, heavy, just right. Sometimes when my bowling was off, I'd hold and weigh the bowling ball to make it more comfortable in my hand, get myself more connected. Make time slow up, smaller in space, get closer to the lane, more private. It'd be when I wanted to
get a spare if I'd been missing them. Like once you get spares, then it's strikes again.

I don't know why I wanted to know, or what. It was more like the rock wanted to know. Right? Because here I was, for the very last time ever.

Every bit of color everywhere around was gone. The orange bloom was snuffed by smoke gone to the shadows now, which is nowhere, and it was only another fucked-up night.

“So what is it with you?” I asked him.

“What is it you want to know, son?”

“I don't know, man,” I said.

“Just ask. We can talk about it.”

“We can talk about it, huh?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Like you're just this good dude …”

“Absolutely.”

“… and we should talk.”

“You understand.”

“You say I understand.”

“Yes. You do.”

“And after we talk… ?”

“After we talk,” he said, “we can take a ride.”

“Eso es. Take a ride.”

“If you want.”

“So,” I said, “you're only some old sick fuck, aren't you?”

“Why are you saying that?”

“Oh and you don't know.”

“You're standing here. You're talking to me.”

I nodded, I was nodding.

“So I must not be that bad.”

“It's not that.”

“It's not?”

“No, man. I just never get to ask. I never freaking understand people like you.”

“What don't you understand?”

“Why you can't leave me alone.”

He didn't say piss.

“You keep following me. You do, right?”

He nodded.

“Why won't you leave me alone?” I wasn't even looking at him. He didn't have nothing, or I didn't hear nothing. “Why do you do that? You know, follow me and shit. How can you be you?”

“You want me to go away?”

I hesitated. Because I didn't know the answer. I wanted the fuck to go, but I didn't want him to go. It wasn't good that I didn't. I was kind of scaring myself. I knew this was it, this is what I expected all along. What I wanted even. You know? But it's that I didn't want to be scared of nothing.

“So you don't,” he said.

He was so fucked up, man. Dude, the dude was fucked and he was a sickie. He was way past fucked up. Fuck him. You know?

“Yeah, that's it, I want you to stay.”

He didn't believe me. The dude did not believe me. Or he did. Or finally he did. Or it's that I'd been backing up. I didn't realize I'd been taking steps backward. He was going for the shift again and the engine was getting louder and so I threw the rock hard, right at his head. He was rolling up the driver's window as I threw the rock and it smacked at the glass but it took off inside too and I didn't see how bad it got him or how much because the engine got going, the car rolled forward fast and its wheels even turned, and it was staying in the middle of the street until it hit a parked car. Which meant, I threw the rock and it was like everything went bright red.

* * *

I might have been walking now and I might have been running. White was coming out from the back of my head where the eyes saw and where the tongue tasted and the ears heard and white was inside my legs and in my feet and on my hands and the words and the shapes and lines in my mind and it pulsed my heart and was my blood. It wasn't like the soupy black that dreams played in, the black that everything pushed through and out of like Josep's river. This white was like a headlight before it hit on a street and what came at it dissolved. It was white but not the color white. It was inside me but there was no behind it, no where it came from, and it was coming through me. It shut down darkness and I didn't need to see. I was so far away on the street, in the night, I didn't need to hear or taste either. My legs were moving and they were in the white. My arms were moving and they were in the white, and when my hands rubbed my face, making sure, the white coated me like sweat.

At the driveway I turned without looking into the picture window of #1 and I went up the stairs. I was like way up there, not touched, not touching.

“You got all? That you need?”

I saw her blue tears in the gold-framed mirror.

“No,” I said. “You can't, you can't. Not now.”

She stopped herself. Like that. She bent away from the mirror and picked up two athletic bags. I got to their phone, where I called the emergency number—it's what I had figured out to do. I told the operator there was a baby alone at the address, in a building called Los Flores, apartment #4, and I hung up. As soon as I did that, it seemed like another wrong thing, but it was done too and this was all dreaming.

She followed me to my Bel Air. Out on the boulevard, voices were whooping and they were more than fire trucks or
fires or police and they almost made us stop walking, Nica and me together, like first-date-close together, almost holding hands. I even opened her side of the car for her and then we were both inside it together—nothing like this had ever happened. I didn't even remember about apartment #1, I didn't look, I didn't remember it already. It wasn't there. It didn't exist. She wasn't crying and she kept watching me. Into the eyes, carefully. She looked and she saw me and then she looked out, at the boulevard, at the voices and fires and police. It was what she was leaving, what I was taking her from, where she wasn't going to live. She looked at me again. Like I was good. She made me feel like I was good too. Maybe she was talking and I couldn't hear her because the engine kicked right over and was under my foot. I had the Bel Air in first and I let out the clutch and it jerked up and down and bounced horrible. But there were no cars in front of me close and I steadied it and got into second and maybe I didn't go fast but I didn't want to go fast. I mean I did but I couldn't. At least we were moving, and that is what I wanted, and nothing like this had ever happened before, nobody like us, nobody but us, and nothing like this ever. I only knew one way to get to the bus depot and so that's how I was going, no matter, and I turned right. Thank God no cars were around because I couldn't make it stop and then I turned again, no cars around again, and then I was at the boulevard where I pushed the brake pedal and the clutch to the floor. The Bel Air stalled. The boulevard was empty of cars except the way we weren't going, where it was fire trucks and lots more people around them. Nica might have been talking and not only crying. I started the Bel Air right up again, and it jumped a little less this time when I let out the clutch, and on the boulevard I shifted to second. That's when something hit the side of the car and more started hitting it too. People were coming off the sidewalks as I drove and then the back side window
got busted, and Nica screamed but very far away from my ears. I was afraid to shift and the engine was roaring like it would explode while lots of rocks and chunks were pounding the car on every side and black people came at us to beat it with sticks and fists as we passed them. Nica screamed when a bat splashed into the windshield and she held her head like the outside was dripping on her. I held on to the steering wheel and once we got past this, in front of us was a stack of police cars. No man, I just turned the wheel around them and let them yell at me too and didn't stop. I thought for sure they would follow me for real. I was driving steadier, straighter, waiting for them. This stretch of boulevard was empty: no one, no cars, every business closed, no police in front or behind. I kept the same speed. I was getting better even if I was driving slow, and I gripped the wheel hard, afraid to shift out of second gear. When I stopped at a light I left it in second gear and let the clutch out from there. Nica was sounding like she'd been hurt but she wasn't hurt. I could stop at the signals now. I could make the turns now too, and I'd learned the clutch and brakes.