by Matt Burgess
You’re a bad fuck. You just lie there. You don’t like trying new positions. You don’t ever say anything. You’re dry. You can’t come and there’s something wrong with you. What else did he tell her? Oh, yeah. He said he could do a lot better, but she knew that already.
To become initiated into the Latin Queens a woman needs to allow three Kings to fuck her at the same time. Or she can let them beat her for thirty seconds apiece. Forget it.
They swapped stories from childhood, and here’s one of his: His father used to take him and his little brother onto subways to panhandle. The father told people on the train that his daughter had recently passed away. He showed a picture of the little girl and a photocopy of the obituary. He offered to give people the name and number of the funeral home, in case anyone wanted to check up on his story. He owed the home $1,700. Every dollar, quarter, dime, nickel, and prayer helped. He sent his sons down the car to collect money in their hats, and Jose’s little brother always got more because he’d blubber like a baby. Even between the cars where no one could see him. Snot coming out of his nose. Oh my God, Isabel said. I’m so sorry. She asked how his sister passed away, and Jose told her she didn’t understand. There was no sister. The picture was of his cousin Angelique, who grew up and lives in Jersey and works in a dental office. When he saw Isabel’s face, his eyes went wide and she could tell he regretted telling her this. But my father’s a cripple now, he said. That’s a sad story that’s true.
She loved him. She talked about him all the time at the kitchen table. She talked about the gun he bought off a Chinese guy from Flushing.
After the Virgil’s robbery, after the police arrested Jose, after he spent a couple days in lockup, the Batistas sprung him out on bail. So there was that at least. For a little while, until the trial, she would be able to hold on to him. They spent New Year’s Eve together, driving around Queens and Manhattan, making coke deliveries. At midnight, while Jose was up in a Forest Hills apartment, selling an eightball, Isabel sat alone in the van, listening to the ball drop on the radio. This was 1999 becoming 2000. The tabloids anticipated a Y2K computer Armageddon of reset clocks and erased debts and falling airplanes and a whole world plunged into darkness. But when Isabel looked up she saw lights still burning in dozens of windows. She imagined champagne-flushed faces pressed to the glass. She checked to make sure the doors were locked. She turned down the volume on the radio. She switched seats, got behind the wheel, and wished she knew how to drive. This was it, she thought. For the next two to three years, maybe more, depending on the judge, this was going to be her life. Sitting alone. Waiting for Jose to come back.
The doctor tucks Isabel’s shirt under her breasts. From what looks like a tube of toothpaste, he squeezes a clear sticky substance onto her stomach. Gelatinous lumps swim in the goo. Isabel’s belly button—recently outied—glistens. She feels cold. When the doctor leans over her body, she pinches her thighs together.
“Have you been having any strange symptoms?” he asks, as if making small talk.
“Strange symptoms?” she says. Her nipples are darker, her back hurts, she passes gas through the night. All normal, pregnancy-related symptoms, apparently, but what about the white discharge that sometimes leaks from her vagina? What about the bleeding? She gets nosebleeds; she wipes her ass and there’s blood on the toilet paper; she pulls her toothbrush out of her mouth and the bristles are tinged pink. What about absentmindedness? After making scrambled eggs the other day, she came back into the kitchen two hours later to find the stove still on, its blue flame tickling the bottom of the pan. In the last four months, she’s lost her house keys twice. She sometimes forgets what day of the week it is. Normal, pregnancy-related absentmindedness? Or not-fit-to-raise-a-child absentmindedness? Isabel has difficulty sleeping, but she’s always had difficulty sleeping. She feels faint, dizzy, itchy, and constipated. Her legs cramp up something terrible, her face swells, and sometimes she can’t breathe. If she could get any information at all in this hospital—for instance, what vitamins she should be taking, how much weight she should have gained, how much anxiety is too much anxiety, where the fuck have they taken her boyfriend—then maybe she’d be better able to answer this doctor’s question, better able to separate the strange symptoms from the normal ones. She says, “I feel like my head is underwater.”
“Stuffy ears,” the doctor says. “That happens. That’s okay.” He taps her nose. “And I bet a little nasal congestion, too?”
Alfredo opens the door. For a moment he hovers in the doorway, his hand on the knob. He squints, and when he decides he likes what he sees he bursts into the room with apologies. Got lost going to the bathroom, he explains. Got lost coming back. His voice booms. He takes the bottom of Isabel’s shirt and is about to roll it down over her stomach, cover her up, when he sees the gunk spread all over her belly. He scoops some of it up, rubs it between thumb and index finger. When the doctor comes nears him, Alfredo starts pumping his hand. “Nice to meet you,” Alfredo says. “A real pleasure.” Still shaking the doctor’s hand, Alfredo hooks a thumb toward Isabel’s belly. “I’m the father. Hey, listen, sorry I’m late.”
“Better late than never,” the doctor says. “Lots of fathers don’t come to these checkups at all.”
“Lost going to the bathroom?” Isabel says. “What else happen? You fall in the bowl?”
Like a little boy, Alfredo shrugs. As if Isabel asked him if he ate all the cookies or finger-painted on the walls. She grabs his waistband and pulls him close. She wants to shove her nose in his chest. She wants him up on this table next to her, so she can whisper in his ear, Don’t you ever leave me alone again.
While Alfredo squeezes Isabel’s hand, the doctor waves his magic wand over her slime-slicked belly. Presto zesto! The computer monitor’s speaker vibrates with the thump-thump of Christian Louis’s heart.
“My God,” Isabel says. “Listen to that.”
The doctor nods approvingly. “All the tests look great. Healthy baby, healthy mama.”
“Good work,” Alfredo says. He gives her a thumbs-up. Disaster averted for one more day. With a healthy baby and a healthy baby mama, Alfredo starts bopping his head. “That’s a pretty ill beat, don’t you think? Thump-thump. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Little man’s gone be a rapper. Thump-thump.” Alfredo taps his toe. “Thump-thump. Mama carrying a strong-hearted baby / Gonna be pimping gold chains and Mercedes. Thump-thump. Turn that joint up, Doctor!”
The doctor taps his lips, as if deciding how best to proceed. He puts the wand in Isabel’s hand so that she can hold it over Christian Louis herself. Free now of all medical responsibilities, the doctor gets up off his stool. He snaps his fingers. Puts some wiggle in his hips and shoulders.
“My man!” Alfredo says. “That’s some Calcutta shit, right there! Thump-thump. Our baby’s the ultimate MC / Gonna buy us a house with some cable TV.”
Alfredo freestyles while the good doctor waves his arms. The men are grooving. Alfredo gets louder, more pumped. The doctor’s belly jiggles. Sweat streams into his eyebrow. He’s getting tired—the stethoscope doesn’t bounce as high off his shoulders as it did just a few moments ago. Soon he’ll wipe his brow, button his lab coat, and move on to the next patient. Maybe later tonight at dinner, while uncorking a bottle of wine, he’ll tell his beautiful wife about the little jig he did with a Latino couple.
Alfredo stomps his feet, bends his knees, rolls his shoulders, dips his hips—tries, all by himself, to keep this dance party going.
Christian Louis Batista says, Thump-thump!
Isabel puts her hands in the air.
3
A Brief Interlude on the Art of Talking Shit
The streets started murmuring a couple of years ago, after the Virgil’s robbery. Gio, Conrad, and Jose Jr. stole over twenty-five hundred dollars from the catering hall, and a mere two days later detectives showed up at their homes. Spiral-bound notebooks in their hands, cuffs in their pockets. That’s some awfully quick
police work, the neighborhood shit-talkers said. And what a coincidence Alfredo happened to step out of that car. Alfredo’s defenders—principally Winston—argued that coincidences happen every day. That people were just trying to stir up trouble for the sake of stirring up trouble. That they were looking for conspiracy where none existed. That Alfredo caught a lucky break, that’s all. No big deal. End of story.
This became a slightly harder position to maintain after Jose went to prison and Alfredo took over his business. Buying trees directly from Baka, Junior’s old connect. Raising eyebrows all over the neighborhood. Well, there you go, the shit-talkers said. There’s your motive. Greed. Second oldest story there is. Alfredo’s dwindling supporters found this laughable. Jose’s in prison! His little brother can’t make a few bucks? Maybe Jose put Baka and Alfredo in touch himself. Ever think of that? (Voices rising, voices cracking.) Jesus, man—that shit happens every day of the week.
This became an almost impossible position to maintain after Alfredo was caught—in Manhattan, at South Street Seaport—sucking face with Isabel Guerrero, as in Isabel Guerrero, Jose’s girlfriend Isabel Guerrero.
Damn, said Alfredo’s defenders.
Love, the shit-talkers said, rubbing their hands together. Oldest story there is.
And then—like a gift from the gossip gods—Izzy got pregnant, and the streets went buck wild. Some of the chattiest shit-talkers must’ve gone to bed with their gums bleeding, with ice packs pressed to their overworked jaws. Must’ve spent their days recuperating with herbal tea, straight from the pot. Thanks to their efforts, the gossip grew legs, left the neighborhood, spread out to the borders of Queens, and then, eventually, farther north, upstate. How could it not? People got arrested and some of them were sent out to Woodbourne and Sing Sing and Attica and Otisville and Bedford Hills, but a small number rode the bus up to Fishkill, and of that number, all of them—Alfredo was sure of this—all of them found his brother as soon as their feet hit the ground. Big grins on their stupid fucking faces.
You heard, man? You heard?
Alfredo wondered how often his brother found himself on the other end of that news. And man oh man, what fun the other inmates must have had. When Tariq walked through the mess hall with a brown-lettuced hamburger on his tray did the other tables grow suddenly quiet? Or did they burst into laughter? Did the guards find out? Did they use it to taunt him? When Alfredo couldn’t sleep—which was every night—he asked himself these questions, and they always led him to the same place, the überworry, the mother of all questions: What’s Tariq gonna do when he comes home?
Yeah, well, join the club, Dito. That’s what everyone else wants to know, too. While chalking up cues at the pool hall, while bending slices at Gianni’s, while getting haircuts at Headz Ain’t Ready, while waiting on the platform for the 7 train, while tagging up streetlamps, while splitting open blunts, while sitting on bar stools and milk crates and beach chairs and apartment stoops, the shit-talkers speculated as to what the Batista brothers have planned for their upcoming reunion. They couldn’t ask Tariq, for obvious reasons. But they could always find Alfredo outside the Alleyway and tap him on the shoulder, put the question to him directly. But they won’t. It seemed somehow less rude—and definitely more fun—to talk about Alfredo behind his back. Everyone wanted to know what he had planned, but no one was willing to come right out and ask him.
Except for Max Marshmallow. Rude questions? Please. He was seventy-two years old. Asking rude questions was one of his specialties.
Last Sunday, with street-corner business slow to nonexistent, Alfredo walked into a late-night bodega to rifle through its magazine rack. This was days before Alfredo had ever even heard of Vladimir Shifrin. Max Marshmallow, the bodega’s owner, sat behind the counter, reading four different newspapers—his nightly research for a book he’d always been planning to write, A Comprehensive History of New York Schemes. In one hand he held a yellow highlighter, in the other, a red-handled pair of scissors. He put both away as soon as Alfredo walked in.
“How’s that beautiful mother of yours?” Max asked.
“Come on,” Alfredo said. He stood staring at the magazines, his back to the counter. “Why you wanna know?”
“It’s called making conversation,” Max said.
“She’s fine.”
“And your father?”
“He says hello, actually.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. It’s just something people say. It’s called being polite.”
“And the gorgeous Isabel?” Max said. “Who—I hope you don’t mind me saying—puts blood in my penis. How is she? Seven months along now, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Six,” Alfredo lied.
“Great, great,” Max said. He leaned forward on his stool, his elbows on the counter, and got to the good stuff. “So what you gonna do when your brother gets home?”
Alfredo groaned. “You’re as bad as the rest of them.”
“I’m worse,” Max said. He grinned, his false teeth gleaming. They were bright white, these teeth, and while most fogies opt for at least some slight discoloration—chompers artificially stained by artificial packs of cigarettes and artificial cups of coffee—Max went with the ivories. A smile that dazzles. He said he couldn’t figure out why anyone would choose—would pay!—to look old. The teeth shared tenancy with a perpetually refreshed set of marshmallows, always two, one in each cheek. They started as a punishment, quickly became a trademark, and now, all these years later, they were one more boyish affectation. He claimed that his mother used to stuff his mouth full of marshmallows to keep him from talking, but, clearly, it never worked. “Humor me,” he told Alfredo. “Soon as you see your brother—what do you do? What you got planned?”
“Noisemakers,” Alfredo said. “Pointy hats. A piñata maybe, although I don’t know if I wanna put a bat in his hands.”
“Probably not.”
“No,” Alfredo said. “Probably not.” He scanned the titles in the magazine rack, looking for the latest issue of GamePro, the video game monthly. He wasn’t looking for himself—if he was going to read a magazine, it’d be Baseball Weekly or the Source—he was looking for Winston, across the street in the Alleyway, guarding the stash. “Tell you the truth,” Alfredo said, “I don’t really have a plan. Drugs. I’m trying to find a package of drugs for him. Winston thinks it’s a nice gesture.” He couldn’t keep himself from shrugging, from keeping the self-pity out of his voice. “Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it too much.”
“Maybe you should start,” Max said.
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
“I would,” Max said, sweeping his arm out, gesturing to the unplugged deli-meat slicer, the unsold roach hotels, the unsold squeeze bottles of Fox’s U-bet Chocolate Syrup, the unsold naan next to the unsold hot dog buns, “but my business isn’t as interesting as yours.”
Separated by age and ethnicity, Max and Alfredo are unlikely friends, but both men love to talk, and gabbers will always find each other. The Batista family used to own this store, used to live in the little railroad apartment set up in back. (You couldn’t beat the commute.) But after Jose Sr.’s accident, they sold the place to Max, who reversed a neighborhood trend and became the first non-Arab, non-Korean, non-Latino to purchase a bodega in over twenty years. Not that he called it a bodega. He insisted instead on the anachronistic “candy store,” the term connoting for him a bygone borough of egg creams, pitched pennies, Koosman’s Mets, and the ’64 World’s Fair. When Alfredo started peddling reefer on the sidewalk, it must have challenged Max’s sepia vision of The Way Things Were—but as a functioning New Yorker, he quickly adapted to The Way Things Is. It helped of course that they enjoyed each other’s company. Max liked coming up with schemes, and Alfredo liked shooting them down.
“This is what you do,” Max said.
“Great,” Alfredo said. He found the issue of GamePro and plucked it out of the rack. “Let’s
hear it. Lay it on me. Tell me what to do.”
“Poker,” Max said. He folded his arms triumphantly across his chest.
“Poker,” Alfredo said.
“You tell Jose—”
“Tariq,” Alfredo corrected.
“You tell Tariq you’re throwing him a welcome home party. These meshuggener types? They’re easily flattered. Trust me, I know. You tell him you’re throwing a party in his honor, but not the kind of party with noisemakers and pointy hats. A poker game, okay? We do it under the store, in the basement. Move some boxes around. Get a nice green felt table from Costco. Yeah? We’ll invite over some of your friends, invite over some of his friends. Crack open some beers. It’ll be beautiful.”
“And then what?” Alfredo said. “We charge all the players fifty bucks a head? House keeps ten percent of all winnings?”
“Ten percent seems a little high, if you ask me.”
Above their heads Max’s idea spread its wings, and Alfredo took aim.
“I don’t know about poker,” Alfredo said. He thought his friends would actually love to participate in an underground poker game, but he wanted to punish Max for sticking that schnoz of his where it didn’t belong. “Guys I know? If they play cards, they’re doing it on the Internet.”
“That’s not the same,” Max cried. A marshmallow quivered on the tip of his tongue. “Where’s the camaraderie on the Internet? Where’s the bullshitting?”
As Alfredo moved toward the door, he held up the GamePro. “I’m taking this,” he said.
“It defeats the whole purpose, the Internet. There’s no stories.”
“Sorry, Max. The poker’s a dud.”
“It’s a better idea than your piñata,” he said with the fat, lower-lipped petulance of a child.
“The piñata was a maybe,” Alfredo said. “It was always up in the air.”
He laughed at his own joke, as he had a tendency to do.
“Where you going with that magazine?” Max asked him, but he’d already escaped. The door slammed shut behind him.