The Flowers (8 page)

My mom was already done with a tall drink of some kind and was asking Cloyd to fix her another. A whole lineup of colored and clear liquor bottles were out on the sink, and next to them was the silver ice cube bucket with tongs I couldn't believe anybody used but my mom said you were supposed to have. Mary was drinking a can of soda. Bud and the Cloyd were drinking beer and were the only ones talking.

“We can't let them take away the work from us,” Bud was saying.

“But don't you hire them sometimes yourself?” Cloyd asked.

“Cheap as they are, shit yeah!”

They both laughed and laughed.

Mary was squirming like she wanted to move her underwear with her butt. She picked out the widest chips that were in the bowl in front of her. She ate one while she picked another, not stopping.

“It's just that I don't know where they think they are,” said Bud. “This is my home, if you know what I'm saying.”

“Please stop talking about this,” said Mary. “I hate this kind of discussion.”

Bud didn't like her comment. “Save some of the chips for the rest of us,” he told her, shaking his head. “Does this topic get you perturbed, Silvia?” Bud asked my mom.

“God, I hate when you're drinking,” Mary said after she'd swallowed again.

“So now you see how come we have such a good sex life,” he told Cloyd. “We gotta make up every night.”

The two men laughed.

Bud said, “Maybe we have to limit our conversation to the black race.”

The two men laughed.

Mary said, “God, Bud.”

Bud said, “Okay okay already.”

Cloyd said, “He knows how to raise your hackles, Mary.”

Bud said, “See, he knows I'm shittin' around.”

Mary shook her head.

“So, what about these Southern Democrats? Isn't it only a matter of time they're in our neighborhood?”

“God, Bud,” said Mary. She said that a little muffled because she was eating the tortilla chips and had a mouthful again.

“That's not gonna happen,” Cloyd said.

“It's happening already,” Bud said. “Lotta moving noises coming from just a few blocks from here.”

“Bud, have you seen
one
yet living on our street? Have you seen
one
black living on any ten blocks around here?”

“I dunno. It's not like it's impossible if I haven't.”

“You have not,” said Cloyd. “It's not likely to happen neither.”

“What's to stop 'em?”

“I own this apartment building,” Cloyd said. “You think I can't let who I want to live here? That I can't figure out how to
not
let who I
don't
want to live here? We take care of each other by taking care of our own interests.”

“Food's almost ready,” my mom said from the cooking area. “Sorry it's been taking me so long. And I just know this rice could be better. I'm embarrassed.”

Cloyd went for his favorite bottle. He got a glass and an ice cube and poured his whiskey in it and swirled a cube.

“The truth is,” he said, “I don't want their problems.” It was like he was going to take a swallow but he didn't. “Now you take the Mexicans. The Mexicans aren't making no problems. They're good, hard-working folks who take care of their family and pay their bills. It's not that I don't work with black people who ain't like that too sometimes—”

“I don't think we should be talking about this,” my mom interrupted. “Can we please not? For me and Mary?”

The two men looked at each other, discouraged like the women told them they had to turn off a football game.

“Okay, so here's another one for you,” said Bud. “What's the deal with my new neighbor? What's that freakball do? You know who I'm talking about.”

“In Six?”

“Of course! He don't look like he's ever seen any daylight.”

“He is sort of strange, isn't he?” Cloyd said. “Pinkston. You call him Pink.”

“Pink? You kidding?”

Cloyd shook his head.

“How can his name be the color of his skin? I cannot believe a man who looks pink like that could be
named
Pink.”

They were kind of laughing without laughing.

“He sells used cars,” Cloyd told him.

“Used cars?”

“Parks 'em right outside on the street here. It took me awhile to figure it out. I'm betting he sells them like they're his private and personal property. I'm betting he tells them it's his old mother's or grandmother's dear car, practically never driven, something like that. How he hates to sell it because it's been in his family so long.”

“Is that legal?”

“Probably not exactly. He's being a dealer without paying for a dealer's license, appears.”

“Damn well knew he must be some kind of hustler.”

“He pays me cash too,” said Cloyd.

“For his rent?”

Cloyd nodded, but making sideways, thinking eyes. “Even when he moved in. All of it in cash.”

“Ain't that something suspicious,” said Bud. “It don't set off the alarms?”

Either Cloyd had thought of it a lot or never, I couldn't tell by his expression which.

“But then you gotta be impressed,” said Bud. “Yeah, I couldn't get much of a read on that freak. He's something, he is some work.”

My mom was carrying the food to the table.

“Don't you love Mexican food?!” said Cloyd.

“Here I thought you only married her for her looks,” said Bud.

“I am a lucky man.” Cloyd smiled at her. He was drunk, that stupid grin.

* * *

Los Flores apartment building was right off the boulevard. The boulevard was cars parked or moving. At night they cruised in slo-mo, checking not just what was ahead but the headlights beamed every screwy way from the banged-up cars, up and down and left and right, while the dim yellow from the streetlamps, because of the wino stink, turned the broken glass in the alleys and against the curbs and doorways of out-of-business stores into glowing, petrified chunks of piss, made the dried-up oil stains seem to come from beneath the asphalt, puddling up from the center of the earth. I'd made it a few blocks away to the corner diner with the bowling alley, Alley Cats, where I was going to eat most of the time. I ordered a large fries and a burger—Mrs. Zúniga put a pile of jalapeños in it, which I loved, and instead of mayonnaise, she put in her homemade chile—and a chocolate shake. The thick shake was really two because it was made in one of those silver containers and came out all iced on the outside. Mrs. Zúniga, who I think liked me to eat there, always gave me so much more of everything. I think Mr. Zúniga and her probably owned the place. To me it was going into a home except there was a bar and bowling alley and a cash register. Mrs. Zúniga did all the floors and dusting and dishwashing and cooking, and Mr. Zúniga had the tools, the register, the trash, the beer openers, and changed the channel on the TV up in the corner. They both were always smiling at me, winking and like that. Mostly her, I guess, not him. Not him at all. He was too business, watching everything going on or else distracted by what was going on inside his head.

There were only six lanes, and I was the only one bowling. There wasn't a time I went when I wasn't the only one bowling, and the customers on the stools at the counter got to watch me instead of the TV when I got there. The first time that made me do a lot worse, but not after a while. Mostly they
were a bunch of viejitos with bad eyesight or lonely drunks and probably had nowhere else to go either, drinking beer after bottle of beer, and if they didn't say something nice when I left, which they didn't, it was only because their nose was sniffing the glass. I already put my favorite ball in a corner of the rack at the most distant corner, and I never had to worry about it getting moved. The holes in it were drilled maybe twice or something like that, and they were chipped all around, but I liked the way my fingers and thumb went in anyways. The ball made a little curve about two-thirds down the lane. I was trying to break my high of 207. I'd hit that the third time I ever bowled and I was so hyped about it I daydreamed about bowling a lot. The last times I rolled I wasn't even getting close. I was missing some easy spares, and then I wasn't getting any strings of strikes like I did that high game. It seemed like I was right there, in that spot next to the one pin, but they wouldn't all explode in that crash when it was a strike and I was leaving one or three or some split. It was no different tonight, and after the fifth game—which at one point I was sucking so bad it seemed like I might not break a hundred—I quit.

I was following a street that ran beside the railroad tracks. I don't know how long this sickie white dude had been following me. At first he was like trailing a car length behind, but when I noticed him, when he saw I did, he pulled alongside. His ratty car had electric windows with a strip of chrome at the top and the passenger's window slid straight down, and he had to lower his head to do his pervie look over at me from the driver's side. He had short hair that was long in some wrong way and wore glasses. I'm not sure if what he had was what you'd call a smile. He followed like that until finally I decided to cross over the tracks and walk the other direction and go back to Los Flores. Not a few minutes later, there he was next to me again. Inside
I was screaming at him to fuck off, calling him queer joto homo and shit. I don't know why, but I just didn't bother to go after him. Maybe because it was easy enough to cross the tracks again, where his car couldn't follow. This next time when he pulled around, he parked way up above me because I was walking against the one-way. He was sitting there, waiting. Did he think I would just walk right over to him? Fucking fucked-up freak maricón loser. I decided to make a break. I crossed the tracks once more, but this time I was running and I got onto a street that took me into a neighborhood with lots of trees and bushy shrubs and I kept on running until I found an alley and cut through it. It was a good run. Pretty soon I was on a bigger street. It was dark enough that if I had to I could hide. I ducked in a corner once when I saw some headlights coming from behind me, but it wasn't sickie dude.

I could see them through the window by the dining area, dishes and bowls still on the maple table. I didn't go in. Then they were in the living room area. I thought about going around to the other side, where my window was, and crawling through, but while I was walking that way, I saw that Nica's door was open upstairs. I could hear my heart beating, and it wasn't red but blue. It beat with circles that made circles. You know how when you drop a pebble in a pool of water? I decided to go see her anyways.

She was sitting on a golden couch, that crushed soft material, watching the TV but without listening to the sound. I saw this through her window, the curtains pulled open. It was like when she saw me, she couldn't look too hard or smile too much. Then she came outside quickly, talking soft.

“It's that Angel just went to sleep, and I don't want nothing to wake him up.”

“So you take care of him every night?”

“My parents are at work, so I have to.”

I was thinking of the layout of the two-bedroom apartment. “So he sleeps in the room with you?” There was a dented pillow and a ball of blanket next to where she was sitting. “Or you sleep on the couch?”

“Maybe it's better if you come in, so that nobody sees us out here,” she said.

“How come—” I started.

“Shh,” she said, holding that finger to her lips.

She was
so
chula! She was wearing a dress exactly like the other one I saw, only this one was orange-colored.

I tried to whisper. “You could turn some dials so that you can't see the TV either, so it doesn't make any light against the walls.” The TV was almost that way anyway, too purple, the color gone. The program was a Mexican soap opera. We sat at different ends of the couch.

She didn't laugh but she smiled at me.

“What do your parents do?”

“My mom cleans at a medical center. Margarito, he cleans at an industrial complex.”

“Then, they work at night and you watch the baby.”

She nodded. “What are you doing out?”

“I walk around,” I told her. “It's what I do.”

“Your father and mother don't care,” she said, more as a comment.

“He's not my father,” I said.

“Margarito's not my father either,” she said.

“But the baby?”

“He's my brother from my mother's side. My mom is married to him.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you go out all the time? Whenever you want?”

“They don't really notice. I think my mom doesn't care, but if she did maybe, she don't notice anyway. Probably I've always been kind of on my own.”

“So you go out every night?”

“Not really. Sometimes, not all the time. More these days.”

“I wish I could.”

“Come and go to bowling with me.”

“Bowling?”

She had trouble saying that word, and I didn't know the Spanish for it. I stood up and made motions and dumb noises.

“Shh!” she said.

“You wanna go with me? There's this place right around the corner.”

“I have never been to this bowling. But no, I can't go to this bowling.”

I think she liked the word
bowling
.

“Sure you can. It's … fun.”

“
Fun?
” She almost laughed when she said that word in English too. Like saying it in English was the most fun she'd had all night.

“Fun fun fun!”

“Shh!”

“You will love bowling. Especially when you get good like I am. Even if you always lose against me.”

She shook her head, happy. “Are you good at it?”

“Hell yeah!” I said in English.