We end up at a food stand half a block from the apartment, on a traffic circle with three different bank branches. The stand sells hot dogs called italianos because the avocado, mayo, and ketchup covering the meat look like the Italian flag. Tía Ileana once told me people in Italy don’t eat hot dogs that way—it’s only a Chilean thing. Frankie buys two cans of Coke from the stand as well. The cans are so cold that chips of ice cling to them and don’t melt until we get to his building.
Back in the apartment, he pops in the CD of Kill ’Em All and sets our italianos on a large plate. Steam rises from the still-warm hot dogs. He takes a half-full bottle of pisco from under the sink. My breath rushes past my throat.
“I thought you didn’t drink.”
“I don’t drink much,” Frankie says. “But today’s special. Because you’re here.”
He puts on a show of mixing our drinks. “Two piscolas,” he announces, handing one to me. He’s made mine strong. I can definitely taste the pisco over the Coke. After a few sips, I pour in more Coke.
“You’d make a lousy bartender,” I say. “You’re supposed to water down the drinks. That way the owner makes more money.”
“You’re not my owner.” He carries the plate of italianos and his drink to the coffee table, sits, and pulls me onto his lap. I pick up an italiano, wrapped in thick foil, and take a bite from the avocado end.
“Mmm, good,” I say, mouth stuffed.
He twists around and bites off half of the mayonnaise section of mine.
“Frankie, you little thief!” In retaliation, I grab his untouched italiano and chomp the ketchup end.
“Sorry,” Frankie says. “I just love mayonnaise.”
“Then why don’t you go back to the supermarket and pick up a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise?” I really wanted the entire italiano experience. In Valparaíso with my aunt, I was too timid and chose the chili dogs.
By the time I finish my hot dog and drink, my head feels fuzzy. I lean into Frankie for a pisco-flavored kiss. My stomach does a dive loop when his tongue touches mine. My limbs relax.
“Frankie,” I say when our mouths separate. “I think you got me drunk.” With a used napkin I fan my face and smell ketchup mixed with piscola. “I guess you can take advantage of me now.”
“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he says. “I want to make you feel good.” He massages my shoulders. “How’s this?”
“Super.” I exhale. My arms and legs tingle. My heart beats to the rhythm of Metallica. The digital clock on the stereo reads 2:45. Fifteen minutes before Papá’s demonstration, and I want to stay like this forever.
I remember my father in the birds’ cage on Saturday night, the moments when he seemed completely relaxed and free of pain before I annoyed him.
Frankie rubs my stomach under my shirt, and I realize that I’ve pushed his turtleneck sweater and undershirt up to his armpits and am running my fingers up and down his bare back.
I’ve gone this far before, and a lot more, with Max. We were stoned and awkward and silly. Frankie moves his body and hands like someone older, someone who knows how to make a girl feel good. Whatever didn’t happen with Sofia Méndez must have happened with someone.
The CD ends and goes back to the beginning. Frankie kisses me again. The pisco has faded, but he still tastes sweet like fizzy soda.
He stands, takes off his sweater, and goes to switch the CD. I suddenly have a craving for chocolate chip cookies. I suggest we make the package we bought last week.
When I hop up from the sofa, I wobble. “Easy, love,” Frankie says, rushing over from his CD collection to steady me.
“Am I that wasted?” I wonder how much pisco he poured into my glass. I thought I watched him carefully, but maybe he’s one of those magicians who can somehow distract a crowd to make it look like they’re pulling coins out of their ears and rabbits from their hats.
“Low blood sugar,” Frankie says. “You’re not used to drinking.”
I drop back on the sofa, surprised at how hungry I am. When Papá drinks, he usually doesn’t like to eat at all, and after he knocked back nearly a dozen piscolas the night of my first date with Frankie, he was off his food for days.
Frankie, though, takes care of the cookies—and me. From the living room I watch him cut the frozen dough into neat quarters and set them on the oiled baking sheet in a perfect grid. Evan would be totally impressed. The smell of baking cookies makes me dizzy.
I think I fall asleep because the next thing I know, Frankie is kissing my forehead and holding the cookies in front of my nose, the way a paramedic would hold smelling salts under the nose of someone who’s passed out. Behind me, the TV flickers, and I make out English dialogue and the screeching of brakes. I bite into a warm, soft cookie and let the chocolate chips melt on my tongue.
“What the doctor ordered?” Frankie says.
“I think you like taking care of me.”
“Better than you know who.” His experience shows, but I don’t want to tell him that because it would keep reminding him of his dying father. And I can’t let myself get this way again. I don’t want to end up like his father—or mine.
Turning slowly toward the TV to keep my insides where they belong, I recognize Back to the Future. I take a deep breath and zoom in on Frankie’s eyes. “I want you to know I’m sorry. About not trusting you when you said there was nothing between you and Sofia. Papá—”
“What did he do this time?” Frankie’s voice suddenly turns hard.
“He called Sofia’s father. My aunt made him do it. But the guy didn’t know who you were.”
Frankie groans. “I need to get out. Go somewhere else and start all over.”
“I’m going to have my mother and stepfather bring you to Wisconsin.”
“Please. The sooner the better.”
Two years. When he’s done with the army and I finish high school. And we’ll visit each other before then. But can he wait that long? Can I?
I push up Frankie’s undershirt, press my face against his smooth chest, and stroke the fine hairs on his stomach. If Papá and Tía Ileana join us on the camping trip, we won’t have any privacy. And Frankie is so much more experienced than Max. He could make me feel so good. He’s already made me feel good.
At the end of last summer, Max and I tried. We smoked a lot of weed and made a lot of stupid condom jokes to stall for time. Petra told me it hurt the first time she did it, and I expected the same. The first stab of pain made me cry out, and it either scared Max or he’d smoked way too much because he couldn’t go on. And that made me sort of no longer a virgin and him sort of no longer interested in me. He said I made him feel like a failure, even though I never told anyone what happened—or didn’t happen.
“I love you, Frankie,” I whisper into his warm skin. With cookies joining the italianos in my stomach, the too-strong piscola is starting to wear off. But my limbs still feel anesthetized, and my body is telling me to let him make me fly.
“I love you, too. I’m so happy I met you.” He holds me tighter and rocks me back and forth. We’ve hit a quiet part of the movie, where Marty and Doc are having a heart-to-heart. I’ve seen the movie so many times I’ve practically memorized it.
I peer over Frankie’s shoulder at the VCR clock. It’s already four thirty. Less than four hours until I have to go home. Ninety minutes after the demonstration started. “You think they’ll have the demonstration on TV?”
“Nah. They never do. It’s like it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s terrible. All that work for nothing.”
Frankie strokes my hair. “They know the rules. You wonder why they bother.”
And if they didn’t bother, Papá would have more time for me. More time to take care of himself.
“Forget about the demonstration, Tina.” Frankie’s lips caress my neck, then inch lower, lower. I stretch his undershirt over my head and nuzzle his stomach. “We’re going to get away from all this. Soon.”
I want to get away now. And I think sex with Frankie will be ten times better than weed and pisco. I reach up and tickle his ear. “Let’s do it.”
“Not all the way. Just part of the way,” he says. “You’ve had too much to drink. And so have I.”
I giggle. “And you don’t want me telling my aunt you got me drunk and took advantage of me.”
“Something like that.”
With Max it never felt the way it does with Frankie. First comes the little jolts of electricity, the swirling in my stomach, the weightlessness of my arms and legs. The roller-coaster dizziness returns, even more thrilling than before, as if I don’t have a care in the world and will never hurt again. I was wrong. This isn’t ten times better than weed and pisco. It’s a hundred times better.
“You like it?” Frankie asks as I’m toweling off my sweat in the bathroom. The door is open, and he smokes a cigarette.
“It was awesome.” But I’m greedy. I want more. “Let’s go all the way.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” He’s not a little boy like Max. It occurs to me that he didn’t plan this. He doesn’t have protection. And if I go home pregnant, it will screw up everything for both of us. “Don’t they sell condoms here?”
Maybe not. Tía Ileana said it’s a very conservative country—and not just politically.
“Yes, but I have to stay here.”
I take the cigarette from his mouth and drop it into the sink. “It will only take a few minutes, right?” He nods. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him, pressing myself to him, skin to skin.
I glance at the clock. Just six. The TV plays white noise, Back to the Future done and auto-rewound.
“I don’t have to be home until after eight,” I remind him.
He steps into the living room and gathers his jeans, undershirt, and sweater. “Okay, be back soon.” He smiles. I think he’s drooling.
When he leaves, I wrap myself in a towel and peer outside through a crack in the curtain. It’s already dark, and the streetlamps cast a yellowish glow on the sidewalk. The street is jammed with cars, trucks, and buses, their tail lights growing brighter as they hit their brakes, then fading back to dark red when they sit, stuck in rush hour traffic. I try to spot Frankie’s motorcycle, but at least six of them weave among the cars, and three of the riders wear helmets like Frankie.
The phone rings. Could it be news about his father? Expecting that Frankie would want to know if his father is dying for sure, I hurry to the kitchen to answer it. Even though it would ruin our plans.
“A . . . Aló,” I say.
I hear silence.
I say hello again.
There’s a click and a dial tone. Probably a wrong number. I blow out my breath.
Minutes later, Frankie returns. He tosses a small box on the table, drapes his motorcycle jacket over the back of the sofa, and strips off his sweater and undershirt. “Showtime. You choose the music,” he says.
“‘Mastertarium.’” I swing the towel, as if I’m a bullfighter waving it in front of the bull.
He sorts through the cassettes, finds the bootleg with the concert medley, and holds it out to me. “This one?”
The phone rings again.