SALT: A HEIGHTS NOVEL

by Mara White

  “Sorry,” he mouthed to her, his lungs filled to capacity with smoke. “I thought it would be a good time to cut our losses. We both got way too stressed out.”

  She nodded in agreement and declined his pass of the joint.

  “So that’s what you bring with you on a Fresh Air Fund field trip? They don’t frisk you before you get on the school bus?”

  “They ain’t cops, girl.”

  When she tuned the radio to a pop station, Tiago swatted away her hand and changed it to one that played reggaetón and rap.

  She pulled onto the highway like a professional race car driver, speeding past a semi that was going well over the speed limit.

  “So where should I drop you? Do you live in Manhattan? Do you want me to take you to the pick-up site in the Bronx?” She was good-natured and friendly. Tiago wanted to know if she was attracted to him, like he was to her. But what would he do, just come right out and ask her?

  “Pick-up site sounds exciting, but I actually live in the Heights. You gotta run straight back or can you stay and chill for a bit?”

  “Morningside Heights, by Columbia?”

  “Yeah! Pfft. Fuck naw, Washington Heights.”

  Her arms were straight as she gripped the steering wheel with two hands. She turned her head to look at him. That eye contact killed him. It was looking into a faceted diamond that made you giddy with how it brilliantly it dazzled. Rich too. Fucking glitzy and just as expensive.

  “Seriously? You’d want to hang out with me?” she asked. He couldn’t tell if she was incredulous because she thought he was a loser or because the idea was preposterous in the first place. Was he a joke to her and a punchline she could later laugh about with her friends?

  “I told my parents I had to drive into the main office of Fresh Air Fund to fill out the accident report. They’re expecting me home in a few hours.” He nodded to the beat of the song and flicked his roach out the open window. Figured. Prude, rich and righteous, too good to hang out with him.

  “But I would love to hang out with you for like an hour or so. Would that work?”

  He didn’t answer, but smiled and reached across the seat division, grabbed her hand and squeezed it in his. The light from her smile flooded the car just as strongly as the music did.

  “Ma,” he screamed when they walked into the small apartment. The hallway had been humiliating enough. No way this girl could have imagined the rude awakening she’d be in for by coming up to his place. Garbage and graffiti littered the steps and the stairwells, more unpleasant smells than you could count all mingled together in the hot box that was his shitty brick building off of Broadway on 172nd St. At least the climb had been rat- and roach-free. Would she have squealed? Would she have hit the ground running?

  “She’s old. Deaf in one ear so you gotta talk extra loud,” Santiago told her. This was the worst decision he’d ever made in his short life. Never ever had he brought a girl home, not even from the neighborhood, and now he was inviting in the wealthiest person he’d ever come into contact with, unless you counted the big-time pushers who stopped at the corners in armored SUVs with tinted windows and ruthless bodyguards. Public bathrooms in Connecticut were probably nicer than his falling-down tenement building that his grandmother had raised his own mother in.

  “Santi, bendito sea Dios,” murmured his grandmother as she padded toward them in a flowered house dress and slippers. “Santi.” He hated it. Such a weird baby name and he only ever let his grandmother use it.

  “Ma, this is Salana. She works up at the horse camp. Gave me a ride back ‘cause Chico fell off of his horse and broke his neck, but he’ll be all right.”

  “His collarbone,” Salana said, reaching her hand out to shake his grandmother’s.

  “¿Salada? Pero que mala suerte!” She kissed the girl anyway.

  “Santiago has never before brought a girl home. He’s growing up, almost a man now. I’d better get used to the idea of someone else taking care of him,” she said to no one and everyone in Spanish. Great. His ma was already assigning washing his dirty underwear to the first girl to step foot in his home.

  “You like Spanish food?” Tiago asked her. The tension was thick. All he could do was look around at his shitty apartment, seeing it through her eyes. The peeling paint, the couch and chairs with their plastic covering, the religious tchotchkes that dominated every surface—they looked cheap and plastic, embarrassing and weird. The roach traps in the corner, the cheap parquet floors that were warped and bubbling. The smell was the worst part and he knew it even though he’d long been immune. It was the heat, the stagnant air, dollar store air freshener and onions. Salana’s house probably just smelled like money.

  “I like anything. I’m not picky,” she told him. They made fleeting eye contact again and it made his heart race. What the fuck was he thinking? She was a thoroughbred horse and he felt like a fucking donkey. Burro. Idiot. Jesus-fucking-Christ. He’d lost all of his swagger walking up those four stories and now she knew how he lived. Gone was any chance he’d ever get at fucking her. Forget that, even holding her hand.

  “It’s so hot in here. You wanna go get a slice down the block instead?” He couldn’t imagine the three of them around the small table in the kitchen, swallowing beans and rice past lumps of awkwardness lodged in their throats. Granted, his ma was a badass cook who could turn whatever was on sale at the corner bodega into a culinary work of art. She cut out the bruises, used stuff that otherwise would have been thrown away. She was a survivor and Santiago had learned to weather anything that came his way just from watching her. Tough as nails, insanely religious and thrifty, she raised Santiago as if he were her own son and she didn’t sugarcoat the hardship, but rather taught him how to deal with it. Your father is in jail, your mother is an addict, sometimes you have to demand your rights because nothing will be handed to you. Keep your clothes and shoes clean, don’t wear hoodies or caps, stay away from the corners because that’s where bad things always happen. Stay out of trouble with the police, but if they stop you, do exactly what they say. Don’t even talk, Santiago, mi hijo, just obey. He did what he could.

  “I love pizza,” Salana said. “Does your grandmother want us to bring her some?”

  For some reason Salt offering to bring a slice back up to his grandma nearly broke his heart.

  Target on the streets was what he was with a rich white chick on his arm. They got serious stares and garnered chiding and cat calls. He pulled her in close to his body and she let him. Fucking bad idea, but at the same time, he liked showing her off. This is what they meant when they said trophy wife.

  “Is it dangerous here?” she asked him. “I’ve never been to this part of the city.”

  Surely not, he imagined. She’d probably been shopping on 5th Ave, to Lincoln Center, maybe Central Park, but not to the Heights; it wasn’t exactly high on the list of tourist attractions for rich whites.

  “You’re safe with me,” he decided was the best answer. “I know every motherfucker on this block.” She moved in closer and he let his hand fall to her hipbone, which caused a charge to skate through his whole body.

  “I should go home after this,” Salana said. She bit into a hot slice without reserve. Santiago liked that about her. She seemed sincere, and comfortable in her skin, not trying to be something she wasn’t. “What do you want to do after you graduate?”

  Ugh, he thought. She’s as bad as a parent. That’s really what she wants to fucking talk about?

  “My grandma wants me to join the service, but I don’t know about all that. My whole life is here and I don’t know, guess I’d rather get shot on my block than in some other country. What about you?” Miserable. Terrible answer. How’z about you talk about dirty feet and how your dad died in prison?

  “I’m going to boarding school starting next year. Switzerland. Then my father wants me to go into medicine, become a surgeon like him.” Her smile was empty and her eyes glassy, like she wanted to cry.

  “What do
you want to do?” He reached across the table and took her hand. She squeezed his back and smiled.

  “I’d love to ride horses for the rest of my life. But I do love to help people. I guess if it were truly up to me, I’d go into forensics.”

  “Like dead people, bullets and blood splatter?” Just stick around here, he thought. Plenty of that where I come from.

  “Yep, just like that. I should go before my parents start wondering where I am.”

  “I’d offer to take you home, but… Well, let’s at least hope that your car is still in the garage you parked in.”

  “Ha! I hope that’s a joke.” Santiago hoped so too. She’d probably get in big trouble if her car had been ripped off.

  He held her hand while they walked back up Broadway. The losers hanging outside couldn’t keep their mouths shut and were delighted in the new material Salana and Santiago walking together provided. A playful and never-ending insult game was how they communicated, but they were downright pigs and Tiago hoped that Salana didn’t speak enough Spanish to understand the shit they were saying.

  At the garage they exchanged an awkward goodbye. He wanted to kiss her, but it didn’t feel right. He thanked her for the ride and she thanked him for the slice. If their lives weren’t so completely different he’d ask her on a date, but he knew it was too much of a long shot to even throw it out there. He typed out S-A-L-T, when he put her number into his phone.

  “Good luck in Switzerland,” he told her. He meant it.

  “Thanks. Tell Chico I’m sorry about the accident.” She got into the car and put her seatbelt on.

  “See you ‘round,” he said, both hands on her rolled-down window. He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, a platonic goodbye, but she turned and faced him, escalated his goodbye kiss into a little fire she stoked between them. She gave him her mouth. Her lips were soft and her hair smelled like roses. It was a closed-mouth kiss, but still full of tender yearning.

  God, he couldn’t even take it. He pounded his fist against his heart for how much she twisted him, then banged it twice on the hood of the car. He watched her drive off and felt an ache, not unlike the one he felt when he thought about his mom, missing in action, or his dad who was locked away behind bars for life until he then died in the big house. An ache for a different destiny, an alternate ending to the story. But there was no way of getting around who they were—she was born into a life of elite privilege and he, into the cold, hard fist of poverty.

  Chapter 2

  Tiago

  “I’m telling you, homie! As soon as this bitch-ass arm heals we’re going back to Connecticut. You got the code for the garage, we roll out a Lamborghini and we’re set for life, motherfucker!” They were sitting in Chico’s living room. The air was hot and sticky, circulated only by a lazy ceiling fan that was covered in years of greasy dust and the dangling remnants of some bygone party streamers. They’d ordered a pizza and demolished the whole thing. Chico was only gaining more of a gut rendered immobile by his collarbone break. He had pizza sauce on his tank top. A real gem. A catch, this kid. But the horse ranch trip, the fall, and Tiago’s ride home from the princess were still high on their list of the most exciting things to happen that summer. They rehashed it all, spilling the details to their friends.

  “I don’t want to steal her car. I liked that chick,” Tiago said in weak protest. He flipped through the channels now that Chico’s mom had gone out to get groceries and relieved them from endless Telemundo. He left the television on a basketball game and did his best slam dunk swoosh leaping up from the couch.

  “Mano, we won’t be stealing from her really if you think about it. That’s her parents’ car—not hers. And what the fuck would she care, she’s got so much money anyway? We’d be doing them a favor, taking one of those off their hands.”

  “That’s pushing it, Chico. Why don’t we just steal a different car from someone else in the same neighborhood?”

  “’Cause you got the code for her garage, fuckface! Jesus Christ!” Chico hit his forehead exaggeratedly. “How many cars can one family even drive?”

  “What, you don’t have the guts to break in?”

  “Neither do you, bitch. Can you help me take my shirt off so I can take a shower?”

  “Fucking baby, you are on your own for that shit ‘cause you stink. Check you later. I gotta go home and check on my ma anyway.”

  “I’d help you if it was the other way around!”

  “Never will be, cause I ain’t fucking stupid, bro!” Tiago punched Chico hard in the arm that wasn’t in a sling. He got up and threw the remote at Chico’s belly. “I’ll fucking go if you park that shit downtown and the fuck away from my building. I’ll drive it, but I don’t want to sell it.”

  “Deal!” Chico said, smiling triumphantly. Tiago wasn’t giving him a bath. He had to draw the line somewhere.

  The tickets for the Metro-North just about cleaned them out. There must have been irony in the deal, spend all your money on transportation to go steal something that could help you get around and then sell it to make money. Tiago was so nervous his sweat stunk; Chico, however, was riding on cloud nine, already ticking off the list of things he was going to buy in his head. Tiago would buy a washing machine for his grandmother, so she wouldn’t have to lug laundry down to the corner, or wash it in the tub with her arthritic hands like she sometimes did.

  “Mijo, there was no laundromat when I was growing up. My mother scrubbed the clothes on a board in the yard, hung it to dry on a line between two trees.”

  “Look at your hands, Ma. You not even sixty but your hands are eighty. That’s why.” He kissed her on the cheek and grabbed his book bag off the back of the chair. “I’ll be home late, don’t wait up.”

  Tiago had spent countless hours in school daydreaming about being able to provide for his grandmother. Visions of washing machines with a red bow on top, a new refrigerator that didn’t drip or smell. He never imagined what he’d get for himself, just fantasized about the amenities that would make her life easier.

  “Shit, this train is huge. The seats look like couches!” Chico couldn’t play it cool to save his life. The kid was green as fuck, not a seasoned car thief. The only thing Chico was good at was remembering stats on baseball cards and eating everyone under the table.

  “Bro, we’re trying to not call attention to ourselves, you hear me?” Tiago sat down by the window, the uneasy feeling creeping through his belly. They stuck out like sore thumbs with the evening commuters. Everyone in suits and blazers, reading newspapers, scrolling through stocks on their phones. How could they pull off a car theft with so many witnesses? Every single one of these jerks would remember them. Nobody who looked like them was on their way to Connecticut. Tiago’s gut felt heavier with each mile gained toward their destination. How fucked up was it that they were gonna go after the girl who’d been so kind to them? Rip her off in return? No wonder people branded them as thugs—maybe that’s what they were.

  They filed off the train with a million commuters; it was nearing dark when they arrived and everyone rushed to the park and ride lot to get home to their families. Must be nice, Tiago thought. A house and a car, backyard and people acting happy you came home, a jumping dog, kids with spelling tests to show you. Probably a fucking pool to swim in. He’d seen it in the movies and on TV. That wasn’t what happened in his neighborhood. Broken families were the norm, functional ones the exception. At least half of his friends were being raised by their grandparents. A parent in jail, addicted to drugs, never made it to the States, plain old down-on-their-luck, were the stories he heard on his block. Domestic violence, child abuse, neglect—those were the cuts that tore families apart.

  The park and ride lot emptied just as fast as the train to leave Tiago and Chico standing under the bright glow of the station lights, looking caught in the headlights. Tiago started walking toward the street and Chico followed him. He had a good sense of direction and he knew Salana’s house, her estate, was walking distance
from the train station. Walking distance in a town where nobody walked. Again they stuck out like strobe lights, ambling along the side of a residential street with no fucking sidewalk.

  “These people probably gonna call the police on us just because of how we look. Probably got cameras set up.”

  They walked for twenty minutes, the houses bordering the streets becoming more and more opulent, the gates taller, the security tighter. Tiago recognized Salana’s house as soon as they neared. Not because he’d cased the place to steal, but because he’d wanted to see her again, to return to the spot under different circumstances. He’d imagined himself as her boyfriend countless times in his head.

  “It’s this one up here with the all the lights on. How we gonna stay hidden when they got that place lit up like a stadium?”

  “We crawl on the border and then stand up and sprint to get to the garage.” Chico flicked his cigarette and the cherry bounced on the street and spewed sparks. The kid had watched too many action flicks.

  “Bet the fucking gate is wired,” Tiago said. He was getting cold feet.

  “We move fast. That way if we trigger the gate, by the time they get there to check it out, we’re basically already in the garage with our pick of cars.” Tiago thought Chico was being unrealistically optimistic. Grand Theft Auto had inflated his ego to carjacker extraordinaire, when in reality the most he’d ever stolen was a handful of cash out of the collection plate at church. Their luck peaked in the unexpected arrival of a car, its lights looming larger out of the darkness. The driver signaled and pulled into Salana’s driveway. A young man stuck his head out and said something into the intercom. He smiled like a million bucks and Tiago already hated him. Fucking Hitler haircut, first car—a Tesla. But what really made him want to smash the guy’s head in was the idea of him touching Salana, her laughing at his jokes. Tiago would fight with bloody fists for her, while that douche would throw his money in the air as a distraction and start crying before someone even hit him.