The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  The boulevard was working the air so fierce that landing screwy on the trash cans from the back fence didn’t even make a dog bark, or I wasn’t listening for one anyways. And it stunk like burning rubber everywhere, so that made it hard to hear too. Once I got my balance back, I kept sneaking in from the back of The Flowers, past Bud’s truck. Even Tino’s was there tonight, though not my mom’s. I did not want to run into Cloyd, I did not want to. I tiptoed up the apartment stairs like I was in socks and for some reason fell over Josep’s chair and it broke, I broke it, crumpled it like a toy. I stopped for only a second and felt sorry, but what could I do right then? It didn’t seem to make no noise either, so then I went over and put my ear to Nica’s window, lights on inside but no way with all the outside crazy could I even hear TV, so I just went on and knocked on it until I knocked on it harder and she bent the curtain and saw me and opened the door, already crying like she couldn’t wait to see me or somebody.

  “That I stole money,” she said again.

  I couldn’t get it until she said it a couple more times.

  “I didn’t do that,” she said. “I didn’t do that.”

  I kept up asking because I couldn’t believe it. I felt so bad. I never felt so bad.

  “Sonny, I’m scared,” she said, crying. “I didn’t do that.”

  “You didn’t do that,” I said. “I know you didn’t.”

  “But Margarito is very mad. He says that this man is going to make trouble for him and my mom. He doesn’t have papers. My mom, she doesn’t have the documents either.”

  “You gotta explain to me better what happened.”

  “Well he came over and told Margarito. He told him I stole money.”

  “From Number seven, that man?”

  “The big man who is the husband of the woman with the cat. That one.”

  “That’s not right,” I told her. “You didn’t do that.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. What can I do, Sonny?”

  “It’s that—well, I have to think of something,” I told her.

  “I want to leave here,” she said, sobbing. “I want to go home, I want to go home. I am afraid of Margarito. That he is so mad at me and he will not stop. I am afraid. I am afraid of what he will do. Do you understand? I am afraid to stay here.”

  She was crying so fierce I was afraid she would wake up Angel.

  “He’s asleep.” She didn’t stop crying but she got up with me when I went to look in the bedroom. He was on the single bed he shared with her, naked except for a diaper. “I love him, it’s not because of him, but I want to go home. I only want to go home now, Sonny.”

  We were back on the gold couch like I dreamed all the time, her body up against me, and I could see us in the mirror like I would always want to see us. I looked at us and I looked at us. Was the mirror real? Her tears wet me blue like a clean sky that never touched me before.

  “Where could you go?” I asked her.

  “Mexico,” she said.

  “But where? Do you have someplace to go there?”

  “Xalapa,” she said. “I can go there. It’s Veracruz.”

  “Really?” I asked. “You have someone there? Family?”

  She still sobbed, but without tears, nodding. She even looked at me straight into my guilty eyes, which she never ever did before. I flinched. I had to not look at her back, because that way maybe she would never know what she saw there. I wanted it to be as unclear to her as, like, English.

  “But Angel,” she said.

  “He’s not your baby,” I said. “He has a mom, and it’s not you.”

  She started crying and put her arms around me and she was crying even harder and I wasn’t sure what else to do.

  “Are you sure you want to go?”

  She was nodding her head. “I don’t like it here,” she said.

  “I don’t want to stay now.”

  I kissed her. She kissed me. We kissed. We kissed and kissed and there was almost nothing but me kissing her and her kissing me and kissing.

  “I’ll take you,” I said.

  She had no voice. Her breathing was more gasps, breaking in between sobs.

  “If you want to go.”

  Her breathing was becoming air. She sat up. She breathed with her chest, sobs were fading.

  “I have to come back. I have to take off. I’ll be back though.”

  “Sonny?”

  “You have to get ready. You have to bring everything you want.”

  I forgot about sirens and the streets and smoke too that made a taste in the mouth. Then there were shouts on the boulevard, so close they seemed close to the steps of The Flowers, though only silent ashes floated as much up as down, not even moths slapping any light on either side of Nica’s, not Cindy’s, not a creak from Mr. Josep’s. No light on over in #7 or in #6 either, meaning, maybe, did Pink’s roommate leave and did Pink leave too? If that was what he’d been waiting for. I went down wanting not to touch the steps—I probably could’ve stomped and nobody’d hear nothing. Dead lightbulbs kept it black inside Gina and Ben’s so I pushed against the wall to the back door of #1 until I decided not to go in that way once I was at the edge of Cloyd’s office—those lights were made of daylight. I turned back. I wanted to run but I only walked fast and I got to the other side of the building where the weeds were still jungle and itchy through my clothes and I made it over to the window where the bedroom I slept in was. Being expert with screens, I took this one off and started to climb in the open window when a lightbulb from the old people across clicked on and I heard their window opening, which scared the piss out of me so I pressed down onto the bedroom floor. I held still and grabbed the rock I’d thrown onto the bed. I kept myself there and I heard them talking from their window but there were sirens and other voices out there and now I could also hear voices in the living room of #1 too. I think they heard the noise I made but the TV volume was high. It was Bud getting closer, saying I don’t know what, and Mary wasn’t talking so I could hear. It was so much TV riot news. Under me from the floor I felt steps getting closer and then I could even sense his ugly eyes check out this bedroom, but since he wasn’t looking for me he didn’t see me clutching the rock. I had it ready. I peeked, and he was carrying a shotgun to the bathroom. He left the bathroom door open while he filled the bowl. I did not move except a little backward, more behind the bed in case he came in again. After he flushed, just like I guessed, he opened the bedroom door again, but he didn’t see the window open or the screen off, maybe since the neighbor across already turned off the light. He left the door like it was and in the kitchen said You’re outta beers, Cloyd. I stayed still I don’t know how long until his voice went a couple times in the living room and then I took all the hundreds I’d put back in the boyscout book and folded them and put them in my front pocket and I lifted the carpet because I decided to get the other money too and I rolled that up for the other pocket and I went back to the window. I tossed the rock a little to the side, where it thudded into the grass. I hopped up and swung myself over and down until I had to drop. I didn’t land perfectly. I had to catch myself with my hands and I hit sideways and on my shoulder and the rest of my body came behind that, and the tall grass made like bamboo crackled, not like some cat passing through but more some dude like me breaking in. As I fished around for my rock, that neighbor’s light came on again and I heard the woman making those words of hers I didn’t understand, but once I finally found my rock I just took off out of there because, though I didn’t see her, I think she saw me or someone, because she was shouting out the window. I ran through the grass straight to the back of the complex, and when I got to that cinder-block fence I somehow climbed it and got over with that pinche rock in my hand! I ran through another apartment complex out that street and I kept running. At first I thought I would head away from the boulevard, but no, I turned that way instead.

  I crossed over to the other side of the boulevard, wanting more distance between me and The Flowers,
and I stopped where the ranchera music at La Copa de Oro made like clearer air because the rest of the boulevard was smoked. Only a few people and voices moved between buildings and the sirens looped close, for a fire you could smell: was it right over there or just a little down from that one, that one where the light seemed too hot? The money in my pocket was what was burning me, like it needed the water hoses.

  At La Copa’s doors it wasn’t like there were people drinking inside, only a couple of dudes with bottles, more where they lived, not partied, and I was figuring my shit out near that door when Cindy, strapped in by a black halter top, was in my face. She was squeezed everywhere else too, like about to burst, and all of it at me, scooting and bouncing sideways and back, her hands and feet in pissed-off rhythm. It was almost like she’d come out of this Cadillac on the boulevard that’d been fucked over, not totally in a lane but not parked even close to the curb either and the tires on curbside were gone so it was sitting on its drums. The window glass on all sides was crashed out or smashed in and so were the headlights and taillights.

  “Fucking ass!” she said.

  It was like when you first wake up and you don’t even want to open your eyes.

  “I can’t believe you would be an asshole,” she said.

  “Cindy?”

  “And I told him.”

  “What?”

  “I told him it was you. That’s why. You asshole. Now I can’t be there.”

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you stupid?”

  “We’ll see who’s stupid!”

  Then she saw the rock in my hand—maybe I lifted it because I got fucking mad hearing her, or maybe I was protecting my body and forgot it was in my hand—and she jammed across the street over to the World Motel, where dudes started whistling for her or at her or who knows what.

  Ma chère, I whispered to the rock, ma chère pierre. It didn’t make me laugh doing that, didn’t make me smile even, but almost was good too. I was off the boulevard and was near the tracks and trying to get my head back to Nica, even with the money straining my pockets, so heavy I had to keep pulling up my pants. I rested my butt on the tracks, which was like sitting in the middle of nothing. Nothing nowhere and nobody. And soft too, kind of like if it was soft lawn, even if my nalgas were on a steel rail. I put la pierre down on the gravel and this time I did get a smile out of me: My rock was like the biggest, baddest pierre there.

  I was taking in some no-riot air from the sky, the best world peace anywhere, what wasn’t pushing on my sides but was straight up there, where nothing messed up could be happening. My back rested on the gravel, between the wooden ties, where I was wishing Nica … no, not here in this greasy shit with me staring up! That’s the best I had? She had to go, she had to go. When all I got is space above, which I can’t even hold, and that’s only when nobody’s around? That’s sorry. Nobody else who sat on the tracks—which wasn’t even like nobody anywhere because there were suspicious dudes on the sidewalk on that side, shuffling way fast like something was up, and over here a low car dragging along like it was bobbing one shoulder, then the other, and another pobre fucked-up one squeaking on this other side. Nobody and none of them saw me, even when I might be a dead body on the tracks. Or it didn’t seem like they did or they didn’t care if they did. Which was what I fucking wanted. At least the sky right above wasn’t stinky gray even if gunky ashes were snowing. But watch: on top of the silhouette of a fat tree, watch, so pretty, see how really pretty! It was the color of orange juice, which she knew I loved. It was like a beautiful flower on a woman maybe in Sevilla where Nica wanted to go, like beautiful clothes on her too. She never once went out of #4, never, and once she left, you know, she wouldn’t see an orange like this ever again, not tonight and not tomorrow and who knew how long this was going to go on. Nica could say to her family and her people, about when she left anyways, like when she got back to her pueblito, she’d be able to say how me and her were on these railroad tracks, me and her all by ourselves on a romantic night, our feet dug into the gravel like it was beach sand, the nightsky sweet like love and pure happiness, and above a silhouette tree there was the most beautiful orange sunset glow, which was really a building on fire during a riot. I was smiling again. It was like I was talking in French when I was thinking it, like I’d said oui. I meant yes though. It was yes!

  Once I finally got all of it figured out—sure, every little cosita, dude—I was only giving my brains a little break when the sickie’s car pulled up. I did not want to believe my eyes, could not believe my eyes that this freak was aiming his perv eyes at me and kind of showing his yellow teeth too. Until, I dunno, just like that I settled with it. Good with it even. So I stood. Like a dude, I stood up. I dusted pebbles off me and shook out some bigger ones stuck wherever and I crunched them with my shoes, fanning riot smoke that was clogging the air. The sickie was idling, saliva pooling up behind a quivering corner of his mouth.

  He wasn’t sure if he should hit the pedal or pull his body away or what when I got close. It was like he was shifting from the driver’s side to the passenger’s. He was twitchy, is what I’m saying. It was like, even though his windshield was already spider-webbed from that other time, he was thinking sickie. ’Course it had to be ma chère that freaked the dude some. And still he didn’t take off. He let his head and neck muscles grip those parts of his body harder as he exposed the front of his teeth—that meant he was cool with what was happening.

  “So,” I said, “what is it with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what the fuck is wrong with you, mister?”

  “Why are you asking this?” he said.

  “Are you joking?”

  “Why would I joke?”

  “Marrano pig.”

  “What’re you?” he said.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “A little punk,” he said. “A big punk.”

  He was grinning until he saw my rock going from my right hand to the left and back. He saw the rock good. It was a good rock, no doubt. The best. And I almost did it right then, and he thought I was gonna do it too, because he went to his shift stick to get in gear and the whole car jerked for him when it did but he stopped. He relaxed. He shifted back to park.

  “What is it with you, mister?” I said.

  He laughed, if that’s what you would call it. I maybe’d call it a gurgle. I felt the rock on my palm and my fingers, light, heavy, just right. Sometimes when my bowling was off, I’d hold and weigh the bowling ball to make it more comfortable in my hand, get myself more connected. Make time slow up, smaller in space, get closer to the lane, more private. It’d be when I wanted to get a spare if I’d been missing them. Like once you get spares, then it’s strikes again.

  I don’t know why I wanted to know, or what. It was more like the rock wanted to know. Right? Because here I was, for the very last time ever.

  Every bit of color everywhere around was gone. The orange bloom was snuffed by smoke gone to the shadows now, which is nowhere, and it was only another fucked-up night.

  “So what is it with you?” I asked him.

  “What is it you want to know, son?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said.

  “Just ask. We can talk about it.”

  “We can talk about it, huh?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Like you’re just this good dude …”

  “Absolutely.”

  “… and we should talk.”

  “You understand.”

  “You say I understand.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  “And after we talk… ?”

  “After we talk,” he said, “we can take a ride.”

  “Eso es. Take a ride.”

  “If you want.”

  “So,” I said, “you’re only some old sick fuck, aren’t you?”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “Oh and you don’t know.”

/>   “You’re standing here. You’re talking to me.”

  I nodded, I was nodding.

  “So I must not be that bad.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, man. I just never get to ask. I never freaking understand people like you.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “Why you can’t leave me alone.”

  He didn’t say piss.

  “You keep following me. You do, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Why won’t you leave me alone?” I wasn’t even looking at him. He didn’t have nothing, or I didn’t hear nothing. “Why do you do that? You know, follow me and shit. How can you be you?”

  “You want me to go away?”

  I hesitated. Because I didn’t know the answer. I wanted the fuck to go, but I didn’t want him to go. It wasn’t good that I didn’t. I was kind of scaring myself. I knew this was it, this is what I expected all along. What I wanted even. You know? But it’s that I didn’t want to be scared of nothing.

  “So you don’t,” he said.

  He was so fucked up, man. Dude, the dude was fucked and he was a sickie. He was way past fucked up. Fuck him. You know?

  “Yeah, that’s it, I want you to stay.”

  He didn’t believe me. The dude did not believe me. Or he did. Or finally he did. Or it’s that I’d been backing up. I didn’t realize I’d been taking steps backward. He was going for the shift again and the engine was getting louder and so I threw the rock hard, right at his head. He was rolling up the driver’s window as I threw the rock and it smacked at the glass but it took off inside too and I didn’t see how bad it got him or how much because the engine got going, the car rolled forward fast and its wheels even turned, and it was staying in the middle of the street until it hit a parked car. Which meant, I threw the rock and it was like everything went bright red.