Tito La Gaviota expended the final sixteen minutes of his short and colorful life adrift in a hormonal reverie revolving around the girl who worked in the front office of La Luna Negra Delivery and Storage, where he was a driver at the grace of Don Florida, who was a true hombre, a benefactor for his people, an important man in business, el jefe duro, who lied to Immigration for him and let him sleep on a jute-filled mattress out in the warehouse on the weekends.
This girl was called Anastasia; she was from Quito, Ecuador, and was Don Florida’s sister Angela’s middle daughter. Anastasia was haughty and cold and would not talk to Tito, who was Guyanese and too dark for quality like Anastasia. Such pride, in the face of the fact that her uncle Don Florida had made his money with smuggling. And in other ways, even Anastasia would find difficult to accept. Perhaps she did not know. Still, she was prideful.
Also, by Tito’s rather Catholic standards, Anastasia was bold, a teaser, because even in these New York winters she wore short plaid kilts like those schoolgirls Tito would see walking down Fifth Avenue or Madison or Lexington, watch them from the van, those blond girls like yams and mangoes and the dark-haired ones, creamy and chocolate, their breasts pushing out the soft white blouses, juggling their schoolbooks, glimmery hair swinging like bells, heads together, laughing, French-talking in sparkly girl voices that he could feel in his hip pocket, with their short plaid skirts and socks that came up to their knees, and under that maybe little white panties—not that Tito was ever going to find out.
Now Anastasia leaned forward to do something with the ribbon on her typewriter, and the skirt rode up her legs, showing a length of smooth buttery skin where the kneesocks stopped and the skirt started, the light from the ceiling fixture pouring down on her, and past the soft nut-brown sheen of her long hair Tito could see the curve of her cheek, and the soft golden down on her skin shining, her lips half-open as she cursed softly into the machine.
Tito groaned a little and held his breath, blood pumping bright blue in his neck and in his crotch, feeling a sweet incurable pain, feeling a deep incurable longing, while on his thin brown wrist the bright red Swatch watch that Don Florida’s wife had given him swept the minutes from the circle of his life, and under the watch Tito’s pulse was pounding as he watched Anastasia’s electric body. He sighed again, looked up past her, trying to calm himself.
Beyond the desk where she worked there was the counter, and a little space for the customers, and then the big glass window wall with LA LUNA NEGRA DELIVERY AND STORAGE painted on it. She had something on the radio, a samba, Tito Puente, drums and a lot of bright Spanish brass, speed and fire, and her body was moving to the music—ai, qué bonita—and Tito was burning for her, leaning against the open doorway that led back into the warehouse and the loading dock, where Don Florida was supposed to be coming with the van. What would Anastasia have on under that skirt, and what would it take for Anastasia to show him?
An act of God, Tito figured, rightly—with four minutes of his life gone and eleven remaining—help from Jesus Himself, that’s what it would take for Tito to see what Anastasia had under that little green plaid skirt.
He sighed, accepted that in his Indio way, and looked past Anastasia, lighting himself an Old Port from a pack he kept in his shirt pocket, flared it up, and blew the smoke out into the still air of the little office.
Across the street the concrete pillars and the green iron girders that held up the Bruckner Expressway were a black shadow with the pale winter light all around them. Tito could see cars and trucks stalled in the Friday afternoon traffic on the elevated expressway, and more trucks were lined up along Bruckner under the El, waiting for the lights to change, trucks from Gristede’s or Red Ball, Sloan’s, D’Agostino, Safeway, waiting for a chance to get across the railway bridges and into the big Terminal Market in Hunts Point, everything all jammed up and steaming in a tangle of cabs and cars and trucks, people hurrying along the crumbling curbs and rocky sidewalks, bending over and walking little herky-jerky steps like people do in the winter, watching the ground and feeling the sandpaper wind scour their cheeks.
Tito looked back at Anastasia, and warmth flooded his belly. She was off her chair and down under the desk, searching for a power cord, whatever, and her little butt was sticking out from under the desk, that wonderful borderline of green plaid riding up the smooth coffee-color satin of her thighs.
Tito felt his heart begin to slam in his skinny young chest, and his eyes burned from looking at Anastasia, were still burning, when he heard a step, felt somebody very close behind him, and Tito started to turn, thinking to see Don Florida, feeling a big shame, already beginning his excuses, saw instead a big yellow-faced man with dead black eyes like stones pushed into the pocked, leathery skin of his round face, and the yellow man put a hand on Tito’s chest, lifted him, effortlessly—the strength in him was frightening—threw him—Tito flying backward, yelling now—and Anastasia shrieking, startled, banging her head on the underside of the desk—big yellow man in a black leather trench coat and a face like a gravel road—total silence from him, just his stone face set, as he stepped into Tito and kicked him very hard in the belly, catching him under the solar plexus, lifting Tito’s ass a foot off the ground, Tito folding around the boot like a shrimp on a stick as all his air—hoof—blew out through his lips.
Tito crumpled forward, silence taking him, his breath gone and his lungs on fire, his short skinny legs churning. Anastasia was by this time screaming, hiding under the desk, pushing herself back into the recess with the wires and the wastepaper basket, her little penny loafers scuffling on the hardwood.
The yellow man reached for her, caught her by the ankle, heaved her out from under the desk, and threw her—into the air. Tito, in his private airless world, saw her flying above him in a timeless drawn-out moment of perfect observation, her shiny brown-black hair flaring, her legs flailing, soft shell-pink panties showing—Tito’s act of God had arrived—and Anastasia slammed into the filing cabinet, rocked it, and slid to the ground, wide black eyes staring up at the yellow man, at the eyes in his pitted round face, which were flat and empty.
Tito saw him too, and thought Indio, this man is from the south, a Miskito like him—Tito had less than four minutes to live at this point—and the yellow man reached into his jacket, still in silence, pulled out—what?
A hammer?
No, Tito saw it as the man raised it up to his face, turned it in the light from the fluorescent above him, the yellow man’s face set and still but now a kind of light glittering in his eyes as he turned—it was a hatchet, a tomahawk with a wooden shaft and a polished head that glittered with the same light that was in his eyes.
He reached down, put his huge yellow hand into Anastasia’s shiny brown hair, pulled her to her knees at his feet—her scream was thin and wild, pure pain and fear—and Tito remembered the sound that rabbits make when you pull them out of the pen and gut them, that very same baby cry. The yellow man slapped Anastasia across the face with his left hand. She reeled, and he tugged her upright again.
“Shut up,” he said in English, in a flat unaccented voice, no anger in it, a soft voice. He was looking down at Tito.
“Tell her to shut up, or I’ll kill her.”