The Infinite

by Nicholas Mainieri

  In the shotgun apartment, one passed from the front room directly into the kitchen, and there was her father, pacing with his hands on his hips. He wasn’t tall but he was thin and wiry, with big strong hands. Stubble dotted his cheeks and there was gray in his hair. He was darkly sunburned, perpetually. Luz, like her mother, never needed the sun to get so tan. A deep red blossomed and flushed through his face when he saw her. Luz aimed to walk around him and keep the conversation as short as possible.

  “¿Dónde estabas?” he demanded.

  “I was with Jonah, Papá.” Luz answered in English in hopes of sparing Rodrigo the argument, but she heard the screen door creak as her father’s friend made a quiet exit.

  “What are you supposed to do if you are going to be home late?”

  “I’m sorry, I forgot. I’ll call next time, I promise.”

  “Luz. This boy. He keeps you out late. I don’t know where you are. He makes you forget things.”

  “I didn’t forget anything, Papá. I had him bring me home.”

  “I want you to come straight home after school tomorrow.”

  Luz sighed. She turned and left the kitchen, passing into her father’s bedroom. Her father called after her: “I’m serious, Luz. Straight home.”

  “I have practice,” she called back. “Jonah is a nice boy, Papá.”

  There was a loft over her father’s bedroom that contained Luz’s mattress. She climbed the ladder and plopped down. She could hear her father talking to himself, now in Spanish, either scolding himself or rehearsing a future scolding of her.

  Luz knew that her father was worn down by stress. As time passed, work became scarcer. There used to be days when her father and Rodrigo waited outside the home improvement center with the other workers and had their pick of jobs—the whole city needed repair. The further they got from the hurricane, though, the less need there was for the labor they provided. Storm or no storm, it had happened to her father before, in other American cities; when the work grew too scant, it would be time to move on again. There were days now when her father came home empty-handed, days when he baked in the parking lot all day, standing with Rodrigo and watching trucks pull into the lot, waiting for a window to roll down, for someone to say they needed folks who knew roofing or drywall or brickwork. If today had been a bad day, well, that would help explain her father’s mood. But Luz wouldn’t let her father begrudge her Jonah, not after the lonely years she’d spent in New Orleans. What other friends did she have? When else had she done anything but study or work?

  Her first year in New Orleans, Luz had sometimes awakened frightened. It had been the dark and the ominous thumping of a helicopter, or the shaking when a military truck passed by in the street, or it had been simply the dead and utter silence and its own catalog of monsters. The city was desolate. But this was a different fear than a year or so later, when folks returned to New Orleans in droves, when the drug gangs came back and reignited old hostilities and fought to redraw territory in a place where the traditional borders had been washed away. The early days, they were a different fear—Luz waking in the dark and Papá turning on the lamp and saying, Come here, come here, my Luz.

  Papá would scoot to make room, and Luz—whichever apartment they were in—would lie down. Did I ever tell you about how I met your mamá? Papá asked.

  No, Luz answered, even though he had.

  I was in Piedras Negras, Papá continued, for work. And some friends dragged me to a dance. I’m not much of a dancer, me, but I knew there would be beer. The dance was in a courtyard. There were lights strung from the walls—I had seen fireflies once in my life and they were like this. The dancers were kicking up dust. I could feel it in my throat. I needed a drink, but there was a woman dancing. She was wearing a white dress and swishing it around, and it was like the dust parted around her. I forgot my thirst. I was standing in front of her. I don’t know how I got there. It must have been God, nudging me. She stopped dancing and looked at me like I was a crazy person. I said, What is your name? And she said, Esperanza. Then she grabbed my hand and made me dance. She could dance, your mother. Yes, Esperanza danced.

  And now Luz lay in the loft, listening to her father rattle a pot in the kitchen as he angrily prepared dinner. She reflected on the reality that she hadn’t heard any stories from him in a long time.

  7

  THE CITY STIRRED TO LIFE AS JONAH DROVE HOME. THE STREETCAR on St. Charles tunneled through the dark, following its lone headlight. Jonah’s F-100 tooled alongside. He glanced at the folks packed into its illuminated interior. People were also bunched on the sidewalks, sifting in and out of bars, waiting outside restaurants. He turned into his neighborhood, and the streets grew dimmer, quieter. A group of kids sitting on the steps of a raised home stared at his truck as he passed by.

  We are always just arriving.

  Luz’s words looped in Jonah’s mind. That means—Jonah thought—you’re always leaving somewhere, too.

  Jonah turned around and drove again to the auto shop. They still owned the structure and the land—well, Dex did. The titles had transferred to him after Pop’s heart attack. There were other shuttered businesses alongside—a barbershop, a grocery, a laundry—gray plywood sutured across windows and tagged with graffiti. Jonah’s headlights cut across a figure in a black hoodie spraying paint onto the auto shop’s facade. The kid didn’t startle, didn’t move. Jonah sat in his truck and looked at the place. It occurred to him that of all the graffiti plastered across the auto shop and the other buildings, too, nobody had painted over the X codes left from Katrina. The spray paint skirted around the markings. Jonah imagined an unspoken bit of etiquette between faceless taggers who knew one another only by their symbols and their brashness. I might paint over your shit, but we’ll leave that there alone.

  The truck idled and Jonah breathed. Luz had asked if he ever thought about reopening the shop. He hadn’t really, not in earnest, not any more than a quick, fanciful daydream. But now he envisioned a future in which he cleaned the place up, got it running, made a good living. He did it for Luz in this vision. He could take care of her. They would be married, live in the house, raise a family together. It was clear. He was alone now, but he wouldn’t be. He might build a family with Luz one day, and the business would allow him to do that. There was so much Jonah had believed was forever lost to him. He shifted into gear and drove home on a wave of hope.

  8

  NIGHTS LATER THEY WERE OUT, AND SHE MADE HIM CHASE HER through the French Market, at the edge of the Quarter. She squeezed between the stalls and ducked behind stands of hats, of bags, of kitschy paintings. Glimpses of her through the crowd, teeth shining as she smiled. She passed a stall selling Louisiana-themed trinkets to tourists and disappeared into the crowd. He came even with the stall, adorned with embalmed gator heads and chicken feet and straw voodoo dolls. He stood on his toes to search over the heads of the shoppers. As he stepped forward, she leaped out and shouted and scared him. He grabbed her and kissed her. She laughed into his mouth. She pulled away to look at him.

  “We will be responsible for each other.”

  He tilted his head.

  “I need you to remember this.”

  He looped his arms around her waist and lifted her. He kissed her again and made the promise in his heart. He held her amid all those others who were not her and were not like her because she was his and they were there together, so near the river.

  9

  THEY GOT SOMETHING SMALL TO EAT FROM A VENDOR, AND they watched night fall on the levee. Then it was time to go home. They walked together away from the river through the lower Quarter. As they passed from the market and then crossed Decatur, the blocks became calmer, more residential. Something itched in the back of Luz’s mind. Responsible for each other? She felt like she had been repeating something—the thought had risen and verbalized so naturally—but once the words left her lips, she wasn’t sure where they had come from. She was a little embarrassed by the sentiment, but Jonah didn
’t seem to mind, didn’t seem to think what she said had been weird at all.

  It was a cool night. The street was wet, and while they walked moonlight flashed like sallow fish bellies in the black water puddled on the asphalt. Ahead, a car blipped through the intersection. All at once, Luz was aware of movement like a gathering of shadow, and she felt Jonah tense beside her. Two figures slid out from a darkened doorway and blocked their path. They wore navy hoodies. One was taller than the other, eyes wide and glaring out. They both held pistols.

  The taller of the two said something quick, a demand, but Luz couldn’t latch onto the words, though she understood and pulled from her pocket five dollars, all she had, and the boy’s fingers shot forward and snatched the cash, and Jonah’s wallet was out and gone, and Luz noticed now the shorter of the two. He was holding his pistol with two shaking hands. The barrel wobbled, and Luz saw his finger on the trigger and prayed—please no, please no! The face swaddled in the hood was a child’s face, a scared little boy. “Let’s go,” said the taller of the two, and they spun, and they ran, sneakers smacking against the wet sidewalk. They turned the corner, and the sound of Jonah’s ragged breathing filled the quiet street.

  “Motherfuckers,” Jonah wheezed, voice higher than usual. He took Luz’s hand in his. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Luz said, soft. And she was. Her pulse raced, but she felt calm otherwise. Almost suspended, detached. Jonah was holding on to her, but the sensation—his cold, damp hand—didn’t seem to touch her, as if she had become a distant observer.

  Muggings were a common occurrence, particularly in this part of the Quarter, where tourists might wander away from the busier corridors, and Luz found herself unsurprised by the experience. What had scared her was the little boy, his shaking hands on the gun. Nevertheless, it had been quick. A transaction. She and Jonah played their roles without hesitation.

  “I shoulda done something,” Jonah said.

  “They had guns,” Luz heard herself say.

  “I shoulda done something.” His voice took on an edge.

  “Don’t worry about it, Jonah.” Luz shivered, felt herself coming back to the earth. Adrenaline began to burn in her limbs. She tried Spanish, which Jonah didn’t understand but sometimes thought was cute: “No te preocupes, Jonás.”

  “I feel like a pussy.” He let go of her hand and stalked a few steps in the direction the boys had gone.

  “It was just a few dollars.”

  “It’s not about the fucking money,” he snapped, turning toward her. He softened after a moment: “I’m sorry. Come on. My phone’s in the truck. We’ll call the cops.”

  “No,” Luz said.

  “Huh?”

  “No police, Jonah.”

  He cocked his head. A question formed on his lips even as he was figuring it out.

  Luz spoke first: “I can’t call the police.”

  “But—”

  “All we need is for one of them to be an asshole,” she told him. “To ask me where I’m from because I have an accent.”

  Jonah pursed his lips, lowered his eyes. Luz’s own father had been robbed twice, just so. Rodrigo once, that she knew of. Others they knew—they’d all been mugged. It hadn’t taken long for the city’s thieves to figure out that the workers made easy targets. They got paid in cash and wouldn’t go to the police, concerned that some enterprising cop might notify la migra.

  The last time her father had been robbed he fumed, just like Jonah. Luz tried to reason with him—You couldn’t do anything, Papá, it’s okay—but he’d gotten angrier. What a way for a city to thank the people who had rebuilt it.

  “All right,” Jonah said to Luz. “No cops.”

  “I’m sorry,” Luz said.

  Jonah squeezed her hand to say he understood.

  When they got into the truck, Jonah sat there for a few breaths without turning the ignition. He ran his hands over the steering wheel, worn smooth by his brothers’ and his father’s hands before him. He moved quickly and punched the wheel once, hard.

  Luz jumped. Jonah closed his eyes and hung his head. Luz watched and waited. He finally spoke. He sounded worn out.

  “It’s not about the money,” he said. “I hate feeling helpless. I hate that I couldn’t do anything about it. The world taking what it wants. Like, Fuck you, Jonah.”

  And that’s it, Luz thought. Every loss had the touch of Jonah’s greatest loss.

  She watched him drive—the streetlight like water over his face, hardened with frustration—and she loved him.

  10

  THE TEAM USED ONE OF THE PUBLIC TRACKS IN CITY PARK FOR practice because there were no sports facilities at the school. Jonah dropped Luz off and parked under the live oaks to wait and give her a ride to the restaurant afterward. There were other people about, walking strollers in the lanes, throwing footballs in the infield. Folks wore sweaters in the cool air. Luz’s teammates jawed while they sat on the rubber surface and stretched.

  Luz had her own routine. Their coach was a math teacher who had been pressed into service. He didn’t try to tell the girls much of anything, except for organizing the list of events and having them sign up for what they each wanted. Two girls came to blows over the relay anchor, so Luz waited and took what was left: the 400 and the 800.

  The track team was not very good; the girls weren’t very athletic. But Luz discovered she had a talent for the sport herself, and took her practice seriously. There was something she liked, something she couldn’t quite define, about the craft of getting somewhere new as quickly as possible. And when she felt particularly good about herself, this ability played into the fantasies she allowed—a future with Jonah, college, a life she could build on her own with him.

  She took herself through her warm-ups and form drills, exercises she’d found on the Internet at Jonah’s one day. The other girls gibed, and if Luz retorted at all she’d make a sweet face and say something in Spanish, which made them laugh.

  She ran a few lazy laps and then readied for a full-speed 400. When she ran, she imagined a ghost runner chasing her. A cold presence at her hip. It was never truly the other girls she competed with but rather this figure—she always imagined it as a he—who was compiled out of whatever lay at hand. The ghost runner came from the thin, limbo feeling she lived with as the only Latina daughter in the neighborhood—even if there were boys she knew, other recién llegados, who were close to her own age. The ghost runner came from the Spanish she spoke at home and the English she spoke at school. The ghost runner came from the frequent despair, those feelings that flared when she thought of the future and the deep truth that none of her fantasies was reality. It came from when she thought of her past, and the country where she’d left her mother buried. That nowhere place she’d crossed, thirsty, with her uncle, whom she’d not seen since he left her at her father’s door in Texas. When she thought of her father’s own despair, when the work started to thin. Times her father and Rodrigo had been robbed. Her ghost runner derived from all these feelings, and as she broke into her sprint he sprang to her side, cold, shouldering against her. She often had nightmares in which she couldn’t outrun him because her legs wouldn’t work well enough, but in real life she reached with her strides and outpaced him, and when she outpaced him she always won.

  Today, though, her legs felt numb, as in the nightmares. Muscles that normally fired more quickly than she was aware were sluggish. A glacial stride, and slowing. Her breasts ached, bouncing in her sports bra, and she finished her circumference of the track more breathless than usual. She straightened with her hands on her hips and sucked at the cool, lung-searing air.

  11

  SHE WAS TWO WEEKS LATE BY MARDI GRAS DAY, BUT SHE HADN’T said anything to Jonah yet.

  She had promised to meet Jonah and Colby in Central City for the Zulu parade. It was cold out, but Luz felt like she was burning up. The parade was already rolling when she arrived, floats packed tight with riders in black-and-white face paint. They wore vibrant
frills and robes and skirts made of straw. They chucked beads and toy spears into the throngs of people bunched against the curb. Sometimes a rider held aloft a rare, prized coconut, painted gold or silver or decorated with rhinestones. This was the evolution of a century-old tradition. The crowd lost themselves at the sight, held arms high, strained their fingers, and the rider picked his favorite and tossed the throw. The bouncing cadence of the bands between the floats punctuated all of it.

  The boys were already drunk by the time Luz found them. Colby had a bottle of whiskey stashed in his backpack. They offered Luz a swig. She put on a good face and abstained, and they kept offering, having forgotten they’d already tried. There had been good moments earlier in Carnival season—dancing with the boys to marching bands, competing for the best throws from the floats, celebrating the Saints’ victory in the Super Bowl—but today, the ability to be present eluded Luz.

  A sharp smack near her ear made her snap to.

  Colby was standing there, shaking out his hand. He bent and picked up the coconut, a beautiful thing painted a solid and gleaming silver. He grinned. His drunken eyes bloodshot. He tapped his temple. “Thing was gonna hit you right there,” he said.

  Relief blossomed in Luz’s belly and she leaned and kissed Colby on the cheek. An overwhelming release, like she might float away. Certainly she could have been injured and Colby had saved her from that, but the feeling struck her as incommensurate with simple personal gratitude. Luz backed out of the crowd.

  Toward the end of the day they found themselves in the Marigny, downriver from the French Quarter. Luz followed as the boys listed through the costumed people on Frenchmen Street, and in the darkening day they stumbled upon some otherworldly drum corps on the corner. Men and women wearing costumes of horns and chains and red flashing lights. They had snares and bass drums, and some had triangles they dinged or cymbals they crashed, and one man wearing a skeleton mask shouted dancing orders into a megaphone as the revelers passed. Jonah and Colby fell in with the gathering group. Luz did her best to laugh as Jonah pulled her into the fold, but everybody reeked of liquor and sweat. The stench clawed up her nostrils and thrust itself down her throat, and her stomach clenched against it. Wet bodies slid against her. She was jostled about, vulnerable, exposed.