The thugs were out there, as expected, on La Esquina Caliente. I went up to the kid who had shown Tony his shiner my first night back from prison, when Tony introduced me around. His black eye pretty much healed since then.
“What up, shorty?”
The kid looked at me a little distrusting.
I said, “What’s your name again? JJ? Remember me? Tony introduced?”
“Oh yeah, yeah. What up, old school? Palo, right?”
“That’s right.”
The other kid, the skinny one, shook my hand. “What up, dawg?”
I pointed at him. “Moco?”
“Word.”
I said, “Moco, I need a quarter.”
“Weed?”
“Naw.”
“Cornuto?”
“Naw, junior. Sugarcane. You carry that?”
“Bet.”
JJ went over to what looked like a discarded beer can in the gutter. He looked around, picked it up, twisted off the top to reveal that it was actually a trick can, a container disguised as a beer can. JJ picked out a small bag of cocaine, brought it over, handed it to me.
I looked at the bag. “That’s it? That’s how much I get for twenty-five dollars?”
“That’s how we bag ’em, G.”
The thought Just drop it, run! passed through my mind. I had three 100-dollar bills in my pocket.
I said, “Let me get three more bags, then,” and right there went a third of all my cash.
JJ went back to the discarded beer can. I looked at the others who stood around and noticed the two girls who had been at Tony’s house the night I returned from prison. The dark-haired, olive-skinned one named Nena that Tony fucked in the bedroom, and the light-skinned, green-eyed one that had given me the hand job in the living room, Nieve. JJ and I finished our transaction. I walked up to Nieve.
I called her by her street name. “Sweetleaf, right, mami?”
She nodded.
“You still like to party?”
Nieve smiled. She looked at Nena, then back at me. “You just cop somethin’?”
I patted my jacket pocket. “A little blow.”
“I got weed.”
“Perfect.”
Nieve looked at her partner. “Can Nena come?”
I looked at Nena and calculated the chances of a threesome. But then I thought about sharing the coke.
“Why don’t we make this a party for two—you know I don’t bite.”
Nieve did not seem concerned. We left Nena on the corner and walked toward my place. Nieve told me she was seventeen. She asked how old I was.
“You don’t wanna know, girl. Remember when Carter was president?”
“Who?”
“Exactly.”
“Age ain’t nothing but a number, anyway,” she said, which only proved how young she really was.
We walked past a bodega.
“Should we grab some forties?” she said.
“I spent my cash on the coke.”
“I got a fin.”
“Hurry up,” I said, desperate already to get back to my room and put down a bag.
Nieve walked out with the 40s. We got to my place and hustled up the stairs. We threw our jackets on the bed. Nieve was dressed in tight white jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that didn’t take anything away from her taut, young body. She cracked open her 40 and checked the view.
I emptied a bag onto a plate, cut it into two little lines, pushed one nostril closed, and sucked. It was so instant, it had to be psychological. I mean I just sat back for like half a minute, and I was like soooo happy. Ecstatic. I felt like it was a good thing that Xochitl and I broke up. Real good. And the job? Fuck the job. Hell, in that minute the coke popped like Independence Day. It gave me a thousand little hugs and I didn’t even understand why I had been so upset earlier. Shit, now I could play the field.
I looked Nieve up and down.
Yeah, I thought. Now I can fuck all types of females. Who needs just one? Fuck being tied down. It was time to fly. Time to taste everything. To make life an adventure. And Florida! Fucking Florida. That was just like this big, wet, juicy papaya, waiting for me to put my tongue on it. How did Chiva put it? “So much delicious poosy, you pinga gonna send me a thank-you note?” Hell yeah.
I could make money doing whatever. Real money.
I floated on that first powerful rush. I said, “Nieve,” and pointed at the plate. “Get busy, already.”
Nieve did a line.
I patted her firm ass. “Good girl.”
“Wanna smoke a blunt?” she said.
“Is the pope Catholic?”
She’d bought a cigar along with the 40s. I watched her cut it open and fill it with weed. I shoved a towel under the door. We smoked. Nieve giggled. I put on some Eddie Palmieri. Nieve didn’t know who he was.
“You ain’t got no reggaeton?”
“Hell no.”
“Hip-hop?”
“Nope.”
“Merengue, at least? Bachata?”
“Only salsa up in here.”
“Can I put the radio on?”
“Just listen to this.” I turned it up.
Nieve made a face.
I said, “We’ll do another line, you’ll get over it.”
We emptied another bag. Palmieri broke into “V.P. Blues” and it sounded really good. Even Nieve said so.
I said, “You know how to dance salsa?”
We danced in my room. It felt stupid, since she had no clue how to move to it and I did not know how to lead the uninitiated. The carpet didn’t really let us slide. And that is not a song that lends itself to dance as well as others. My limbs felt heavy from the coke. We tripped into each other and Nieve laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. Every two minutes she paused to grab the 40 off the table and pour malt liquor down her throat.
At one point she put the bottle down, but instead of dancing again, I said, “Come ’ere, girl,” and grabbed her by the back of the neck and kissed her hard.
The kiss was sloppy and wet, but Nieve did not pull away. I pressed up against her and tongued her like it was passion, though it wasn’t that at all. My heart beat too fast, and I told myself it was just the coke. I wasn’t used to it. I squeezed Nieve’s little tits over her sweatshirt, stroked her firm thigh, and tongued her like I wanted her to take me seriously.
At one point she pulled away and laughed. “Damn. I thought you was shy.”
We made out some more. The natural thing would have been to proceed to the bed, but I didn’t want her there. I wanted her on her feet, and as we kissed, I led Nieve toward the wall—toward the door, actually—and when we got there, I pressed her to the door and kissed her hard. She didn’t resist.
Nieve tasted like spit, actually—that was one thing I didn’t like. Like when you drool in your sleep and you wake up and your own spit has gotten all over and it’s gone kind of stale. Whatever. I didn’t give a fuck.
I reached down to undo the button on Nieve’s white jeans and unzip them and pull them down over her white hips. I wanted to pull her panties down, too, just to the middle of her thighs, and expose her bush. I wanted to smell her, to find out whether she smelled different from Xochitl. I wanted to part her and stick my finger in abruptly, and stir up the juices until they filled the room with that strange, sour aroma.
Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my hand on Nieve’s zipper. I saw the lines in my face. The bags. The mileage in my eyes. And Nieve, with her eyes closed, and her head tilted back—not in ecstasy, but in something else. I thought about the crookedness of Xochitl’s mouth, her pain when she talked about the abortion, and I backed off.
Nieve opened her eyes. “Are you all right?”
I went to the table to line up another bag. Nieve stood with her back against the door.
I snorted a line. “Shit!” I looked at her. “You shouldn’t follow strange men to their rooms, Nieve.”
Nieve did not seem to know what to make of that. “Are you OK? You want me to suck it?”
“No.”
Nieve paused. “You got a bathroom?”
I did not look in her eye as I tossed her a roll of toilet paper. “In the hall.”
I snorted the next line by myself. It burned my membranes and dripped down the back of my throat. My heart made like it wanted to bust a hole through my chest. Nieve came back and sat on the bed.
I sat at the table, and tried mentally to bring my heart rate down. I was breathing erratic.
Nieve said, “You got any more sugar?”
I had one bag left. “No,” I said. “I’m out.”
She said, “I’m gonna spark the rest of that blunt, then.”
She stood by the window and smoked. I looked at her. She really was very pretty.
“Nieve, you see downtown?”
She nodded and held in smoke. I looked her over as she stared out the window.
“You ever been to the Art Institute?”
She shook her head. “What they got in there?”
I laughed to myself. After a while I stood and went to my dresser and found the box with the earrings. I handed it to Nieve.
“What’s this?”
“For you, Nieve. But don’t open it here. Take it home.”
Nieve made a face that showed that she honestly did not get it. “Today ain’t even my birthday.”
My head raced from the coke, but I said, “Maybe it is your special day, and you just didn’t know it.”
Nieve looked at me, stuck out her tongue, and crossed her eyes. “You’re a little freaky.”
“You should go now.”
Nieve nodded, but finished her blunt. Without being asked, she wrote her name and cell number on a napkin and left it on the table. She gave me one final kiss, and it still tasted like stale saliva, despite all her smoking.
Once Nieve was gone, I put the last bag of coke in the top drawer. I looked at the napkin. Nieve signed her name in big, round, childish letters. She dotted the i with a little heart. I tossed the napkin in the garbage and went by the window.
The skyscrapers in the distance had not changed their positions, yet somehow they seemed diminished. The coke was in the top drawer. I thought about washing up.