The call girls were the last to be packed. Everything else, including the soaps and the hand towels that Maria’s mother instructed her to bring back with her, had already been stored away in suitcases.
“Who do you prefer? Alexis or Gina?” Rocky was holding up two naked women who had, in place of nipples, bright yellow stars on their chests. One was reclining against a chair with her hand on her crotch and her mouth ajar. The other was wearing nothing besides a pair of knee-high wrestling socks. Both of them looked like they were covered from head to knee in Vaseline.
“God. Alexis, I guess?” Maria looked at Gina again, her blond hair slick against her forehead. “Alexis, definitely.”
“Aw, that’s the one I liked, too.” Rocky looked at the cards in her hand. “Let me see if we’ve got doubles of her.”
Maria had been awake for a while before Rocky had gotten up. She had wanted to wait until breakfast to eat, but as Rocky continued to sleep, Maria became more and more restless. By the time Rocky woke up, in addition to the Snickers bar, she had eaten a packet of M&M’s, a plain Greek yogurt, and a bag of salted peanuts—all items she had found in the suite’s minifridge. She alternated between taking bites and then lifting her shirt up to her bra to make sure that her stomach still looked flat and the dent where her oblique met the wall of her abs still remained visible. Whom did it matter to, anyway? Andres, for example, was more fixated on her ass than anything else, and as long as she maintained that bulge down her back, the one that he smacked and caressed and kissed all over, he wouldn’t mind if a little fat gathered between her jeans and her shirt whenever she sat down. As she looked at the cards with Alexis, with Gina, with Isabelle, she tried to imagine herself in the same positions, tantalizing stars strategically placed over what she still had the habit of calling her private parts. She remembered the time she said the word vagina during foreplay and Andres scolded her.
You sound like a fucking doctor. This isn’t a medical exam.
Pussy, she said, correcting herself, immediately understanding.
But Maria knew it wasn’t a medical exam she was going through—no medical exam had ever made her so embarrassed. There were things that Andres said that Maria took very seriously and that had the power to undo everything she had once believed about herself, and others that she resisted against, albeit silently, discreetly, as to stage it to look not so much as resistance as sheer oblivion. The naked photos that Andres had asked her for were one of those things. When he opened them on his computer, he scolded her again.
“Your head is cut out of them,” he said. “These are the creepiest sex photos I’ve ever seen.”
It was true that the black-and-white photographs that she had sent over in a zipped file had been cropped from the neck down in order to conceal her identity, and that they seemed to suggest a crime scene.
“Well, maybe one day I’ll run for office,” she told him. “I can’t have naked pics of myself circulating the internet.” Andres hadn’t asked her for any more pictures since then, obviously thinking her an idiot, and Maria felt she had made a good decision.
Now, as Maria looked at the glossy call girls on their glossy cards, and their glossy skin, she couldn’t help but imagine herself in a similar photo shoot. She wanted to see herself in a lingerie set like Alexis’s. They sold things like that in the shop in the West Village where Rocky had bought her the vibrator. Rocky shuffled through the cards on the bed, making separate piles, still trying to sort out fairly who would take home whom.
“Keep her,” Maria said, staring at the photo of Alexis, her body drenched in what looked like canola oil. On a pan, Alexis looked like she’d sizzle.
“You sure?” Rocky didn’t pause to look up. She continued to flip through the pile.
“Yeah, I’ll take Gina.”
“Gina’s got character.” Rocky held out another image of a woman who looked like a human Slip ’N Slide. “Actually, maybe I should keep Gina.”
“Come on, give me Gina,” Maria said, taking the card from her hand. Gina and Alexis had been the last pair of cards left, and unlike Kara and Jean, whom Maria and Rocky each had six copies of, Gina and Alexis were the only cards of their kind. “You wanted Alexis.”
“I did,” Rocky said, looking at the card in front of her. “Hot mama Lexis.” She fingered Alexis’s skin, over her face and down to the crotch, where her legs spread out from under her like two branches coming off a tree trunk. Out of all the woman splashed onto the cards, Alexis was the only non-white girl—woman of color, like Diana would say. Maria looked on worriedly as Rocky held the photo of Alexis under her firm touch, her pastel-pink nail hovering above the graphic stars. She remembered how she was supposed to be an empowered woman—whatever that was supposed to mean.
“Actually,” Maria said. “I want Alexis. Sorry. Do you mind?”
“So indecisive! But okay. Whatever. They’re probably worth the same thing, right? But if for some reason, Alexis becomes really famous one day and this becomes some kind of limited collector’s card, you’re gonna owe me big-time.” Rocky laughed, handing the card over to Maria. Maria placed Alexis facedown on the top of her stack.
“She’ll be safer with you, anyway,” Rocky said. “You know I lose everything.”
Maria zipped her bag shut. Finally, they were all packed to leave.
“Back to the city!” Rocky took one final look at the room before she turned around. “Can you close the door behind you? My mom is going to kill us, she’s been waiting so long downstairs.”
Maria shut the door and with a small hop adjusted the bag on her arm. She felt the stack of call-girl cards poking out from the fabric, jutting into her rib. She looked at Rocky, who was staring into her phone as she rolled one suitcase down the carpeted hall, another bag slung over her shoulder. She’s right—Maria thought—Alexis will be safer with me. Rocky had so much, she didn’t seem to value anything, and her cards would undoubtedly end up in the trash. Even though they didn’t have room for any more women at Maria’s house, Maria promised she would hold on to Alexis forever.
Maria followed Rocky’s lead until they stopped at the elevator, and instead of putting her bag down like Rocky did, she held hers to her side even closer. Rocky’s matching suitcases didn’t need name tags. From the embroidered logos all over the leather flaps, it was impossible not to know which bags were hers.
“Can you help me with this one, Shelly?” Rocky asked, pointing toward the floor. Maria remembered Charlie. He would give Maria things, too. He would give her even more. A college tuition, unimaginable opportunity, not to mention a nice place to live: these were things the girls at Bell Seminary simply expected, without ever wondering why—or if—they should really be theirs. Finally, Maria would have what they had. And yet here Rocky was, calling Maria not by her name, but by an old nickname she’d discarded, as if Maria would perpetually be accepting her secondhand things, as if her role forever would be to live as a witness to Rocky’s glamorous life. Maria looked up from the suitcase and shuffled into the open elevator doors.
“You get it,” Maria said. “My hands are full.”
From inside the elevator, she watched Rocky stoop.
How does it feel to be an empowered woman? Maria smiled. She couldn’t wait to find out.
Miguel was playing with a knife, flipping it over and over again in his hand. He had already finished dinner, and his wife had cleared his, hers, and Ricky’s plates. As she let the water run over the dishes, he and his son sat on opposite sides of the table. Without turning off the faucet, she came over to grab an empty water glass, and then tried to slap at his wrist.
“Stop that! You’re going to get hurt.”
“Do you think that water bill is going to pay itself?” He gestured with the blade. Again, she tried to wrangle it from his hand. “Give me that. It’s dirty.” Finally, he opened his palm and let her take it.
Miguel watched as his wife walked away from the table, resuming her place by the sink. She seemed to never r
eally know what was up. When important things happened—things she really should know or be curious about—all she wanted to talk about was the newest sale at Express or whether the laundry machine had already beeped. When they were dating, he had loved this about her, how little interest she had in nosing into other people’s lives. All the girls he had met up to that point were helpless gossips, and there would always come a point where he’d lose track of which friends were the worst and which were the best, so that he’d say something like, But don’t you hate Larissa? which would inevitably make the girl sitting across from him tear up. How can you say something like that? I don’t hate anyone.
Miguel had quickly got tired of this game. When he met Analise and they spent their first dinner laughing at the fact that she had entered the restaurant, and, mistaking the only person she saw in a bowler hat for her date, sat down across from what must have been a very confused and perhaps delighted senior citizen, Miguel was overjoyed that he’d met a woman who could laugh at herself. When he retold this story to his kids, they just wanted to know what a bowler hat was, and when he finally showed them a picture, they laughed not at her, but him. Daddy wore that when you first met him? And you still married him? Maria had asked, back when she was a child inseparable from his wife and miserable if she ever had to spend a day without her.
It was the style! Miguel liked to assert, until one day Analise finally countered, Oh no, it wasn’t, it was your style! and even though Miguel saw she said it with a smile, after all those years of never having said anything, of never having intimated that she had thought it was silly, he felt a little betrayed. He had wanted so badly to date a girl who could laugh at herself, but now he worried that it was he who had no sense of humor, who took himself so seriously that twenty-seven years later, he couldn’t admit to himself that he had once worn a very stupid-looking hat.
“Where’s Maria? Have you talked to her?”
“Of course, Miguel. She’s fine.” Analise had on her yellow dishwashing gloves, the ones that reached up to the elbows.
“Who is that friend, anyway? That girl Rocky?”
“A friend from school.”
Ricky cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t let her hang out with her.”
Miguel turned his head away from Analise. His eyes grew wide as he stared at Ricky, from trying to take him in all at once.
“Why?” he said. “What do you think she’s up to?”
But Ricky was facing his mother, not him. He seemed to be waiting for her to turn around. She had stopped washing the dishes, but she didn’t turn the faucet off. She wiped her forehead with her rubbery forearm, pushing the hair out of her eyes. When she squeezed more detergent onto a sponge, Ricky gave up. “That girl Rocky,” he went on. “She’s no good.”
Miguel felt a million nerve endings tighten. Ricky hadn’t said anything like this before. He had expected him to say that Maria was hanging out with the wrong boys, not that she was hanging out with the wrong girls. Ricky wasn’t one to exaggerate, either—before dating Alex, he would bring home friends with tongue piercings who walked straight to his bedroom without stopping to introduce themselves to Miguel, Analise, or Maria, who all looked on, slightly astounded.
Maria’s mother finally turned off the faucet. She removed her right glove before taking off the left, and when she turned, she locked eyes with her son. Breathlessly, they stared at each other. What’s going on here? Miguel thought. It was as if he wasn’t even in the room. “How exactly do you know this?” she asked, her hands bare and in fists on her hips.
“I’ll show you,” he said, suddenly getting up. The wooden legs of his chair screeched against the floor, and Miguel watched wordlessly as Ricky got up and disappeared into his room. For a moment, he and his wife made eye contact, but Miguel looked away for fear that his wife might see through him. He didn’t want her to know he’d been asking Ricky for this, that he’d explicitly instructed him to keep tabs on Maria. And now that Ricky seemed to be more willing to talk to Analise than him, Miguel felt his face burn in anger.
When Ricky came back out, he had his laptop open to Rocky’s Facebook page. He stood between the kitchen and dining room so that Miguel had to stand up to see and wedge himself between his son and his wife. Image after image appeared of Rocky and Maria posing in front of grotesquely large statues that looked like replicas of Grecian masterpieces. Both of the girls had their mouths puckered to suggest kisses and their skirts hiked up well above their knees. “Look,” Ricky said, pointing at their limp wrists. Between Maria’s fingers dangled a lit cigarette. A temporary tattoo lined in brown henna crawled up her left thigh.
Miguel felt his thoughts go staticky. He felt like he was counting up to a number only to keep forgetting his place. He felt like he was solving a math equation that would be a hundred times easier if he could write it down. Or maybe if he could just keep a grip on his anger. Or if Ricky would just shut the laptop screen.
“Shoot,” Analise said, and something about the way she had said it, so flippantly, like they’d just found out that they’d placed two dollars on a losing bet, or misplaced a bag of groceries, made Miguel even more furious.
“When does she come back?”
“Tonight,” she said. “Late. She’s staying at her friend’s apartment until tomorrow. Just let her get some rest.” She was standing beside him, looking away from the computer screen, using a bare hand to press into his shoulder. She always did this at night when he couldn’t fall asleep, and it always helped him relax. But with Ricky standing right next to him, Miguel felt humiliated. When Maria was first invited to visit Bell Seminary as a prospective student, he remembered how, when they walked through the chapel, he had no difficulty identifying the wainscoting, the French Baroque style, because it reminded him of his favorite exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, a place he had first seen in high school as part of a home ec class. Even though he knew the price of the yearly tuition, he hadn’t expected Bell Seminary to be so steeped in importance and history, and as he stood in that hallowed room, he was grateful he had decided to dress up for the tour. Miguel would’ve never guessed that Maria’s new classmates would come from families that vacationed not in Europe, but Vegas, and this was what bothered Miguel now, that perhaps he was wrong on insisting on Bell Seminary, that perhaps there were parents who walked through those chapel doors and didn’t know to look up to admire the woodwork. Perhaps there were parents who walked through those doors who didn’t even make the sign of the cross over their chest. He had never been to Vegas, and he had never been to Europe, and now it seemed like they’d made a mockery of him—how they must’ve secretly snickered when he turned to them at the altar with his suit jacket lined with plastic buttons, and with swelling emotion, as he said We accept.
“We’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Analise said. “It’s just cigarettes, Miguel. She’s just going through a phase. She’ll get over it.”
Miguel flinched. He suddenly became aware of the fact that the whole time he was standing between her and Ricky, Analise had continued to work circles into the plates of his back. He knew that his kids were afraid of him, because Analise had told him more than once, but Miguel had only interpreted that as respect. Now, it seemed that their distance wasn’t due to respect for his rules, but to complete dismissal of them. He pushed her hand away. He went down the hallway, past her, past Ricky, and slammed the door to his bedroom behind him, his shoulders stiff and curled, a shell.
CHAPTER 15
In Queens, Maria first put on a white tank top. Then, she pulled on the royal purple Taco Bell polo. She splashed water onto her hair and smoothed it down with gel. In the winter, her routine was entirely different, but it was much too hot now to try to straighten her hair. The dial she usually set her straightener to was three hundred degrees.
Outside the bathroom, her mother was waiting for her. At her feet was her laundry basket, already filled with the dirty clothes that Maria had worn in Vegas. Her mother had unpacked her belongings befor
e Maria had the chance to.
“Listen, Maria. Your father found out you were smoking cigarettes. Cut it out, okay? And when you see him today, make sure you apologize. And don’t you dare be rude when he asks about your trip to Vegas.”
“I’m not smoking cigarettes!”
“Maria, quit lying already.”
“I’m not lying.”
Her mother put a hand on her hip. She was standing in the doorway, in Maria’s way.
“Very nice. You look very official.”
“It’s Taco Bell, Ma. It’s not Harvard.”
“You’re just like your father. You can never be proud of yourself.”
Maria frowned. She pushed her purple sunglasses on, the ones Rocky had lent her in Vegas.
“Go,” her mother said, when she could no longer see Maria’s eyes. “Go. And don’t be late.”
On her walk down Queens Boulevard, in her deep-purple shirt, Maria found she was dreaming. She was floating, as if her body were only dangling from her head like confetti paper. The billboards weren’t legible. To her right, the cars raced by in an unknowable blur. To her left, there were hourly motels that Maria usually tried to walk quickly past. But today, Maria didn’t hurry.
She looked toward the horizon, filled with love. Then she looked at the auto shops with cars stacked upon cars. She saw the scattered trash strewn on the sidewalk like children’s toys. Even the houses boarded up with rotting wood and the underpass where Maria kept her head down until all the pigeons were gone. She gazed upon all of it, brimming with love.
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