“A professor I had in law school told me,” Maximo began. He then told her of a law school view of housing in poor neighborhoods and he was pleased that her eyes showed so much interest in the subject. His hand rose and he gestured as he spoke and now, awash in knowledge, deeply proud of his ability to relate it to this woman and to hold her interest, he went into what he felt were the organizational weaknesses of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Oh, you can see he has to be an animal, Nicki reassured herself as Maximo spoke.
She must find it a relief, Maximo thought, to be away from all those morons in her house and be able to listen to some intelligent conversation. He than had a great thought about Section 235 housing and he was in the midst of it when she said to him, “Where were you born?”
“Huh?”
“Where were you born?”
“La Playa De Ponce.”
“Is that near jungles?”
“It’s right on the Caribbean.”
“They have wild animals near you?”
“There’s no such thing in Puerto Rico.”
“There isn’t?”
“No.”
“Do they have sharks in the water?”
“That they have. I don’t remember seeing any, I was too young. But it’s warm water. They have to be there.”
Maximo was sure he saw deep interest in what he was saying. It was, he told himself, the first time he ever had used this power he had, this special background, on someone like Nicki. He was in awe of his ability to enchant her mind, to bring such total attention out of an Italian girl on a subject as distant from her life as slum housing. Maximo was pleased with himself. Good Ivy League smugness seeped through him. The air in the coffee shop was sweet.
“Sharks make big bites,” Nicki said.
“Where were you born?” Maximo said.
“Hun’ fifth, first and second.”
“Harlem,” Maximo said.
“I loved it. I was there till I was fifteen.”
“Did your parents like New Jessey better?” This time she didn’t notice the Jessey.
“My mother hated it.”
“Then why did you move?”
“You know, the neighborhood changed.”
Maximo laughed.
“I say the truth.”
Maximo thought she was as open as the sea. He wanted to touch her.
“You know what I used to do growing up?” she said. “We lived on the fifth floor and my mother would throw my lunch money down to the street and she’d say, ‘Get milk and a sandwich.’ I’d say, ‘Yes, ma,’ then I’d run to the candy store, hun’ ninth and fifth, and eat potato chips and Coke. I never ate anything else for lunch when I was growing up.”
“It didn’t stop you from growing,” Maximo said.
“I bet you did the same thing in the Bronx,” she said.
“We lived on the fourth floor, but my mother never threw any money down to me on the street.”
“They’d steal it on you?”
“She didn’t have any to throw down.”
That he liked, a small ambush to display his command. And at the same time to recognize the past that had shaped him, a harshness, and to point to what he had placed atop it, something which she could surely see and be greatly impressed with as she sat across from him, this palace of high knowledge he had.
She looked at her watch. “Will you look at this? It’s six-thirty already.”
“So?”
“I’m late for dinner. I have to call.”
“My course starts at seven,” Maximo said.
“You’re not going,” she said.
“No?”
“Not tonight.”
“Where are we going?”
“You said you just got an apartment.”
“Yes.”
“That’s where we’re going. Just stay here until I call my mother.”
She went to the phone and told her mother that she and Angela had decided to stay in town and see a movie. Then she called Angela and said that she would need her first for an alibi, and then later for transportation.
They took the subway uptown, the number six line that has the narrowest of cars of the subway system. The interiors were so coated with graffiti, the windows blacked out by it, that Nicki felt she was inside a crowded truck. To her eyes, the graffiti meant a Puerto Rican with a knife. Maximo stared at it. He thought much of it was pleasing; certainly some of the red, blue and silver swirls from a spray-paint can were easier on the eye than the dingy municipal green with which all cars are painted. Maximo, however, knew that graffiti was the loser. Whites had been taught that it was evil and saw no imaginative lines. Maximo felt this was serious, for while people argued over graffiti, the undercarriage of the trains went unattended, the tracks uninspected and a system used by millions was becoming a danger to them. He thought about a class action suit against the transit system and he was going to lean over and tell Nicki about this, but the train was so noisy that he could not lecture her properly.
Nicki was looking at him and hoping that he was an animal. Then she stared at the graffiti and imagined how much work it would be to rub it all off. She stared at the faces around her. All were Puerto Rican. Turning her head, she found she was the only white on the packed train. The men all were small and dark and had mustaches and sideburns clipped so that they would resemble as close as possible Barbary pirates. The women had tired eyes, except for a group of younger ones who were laughing in a corner of the car. One of them, a white sweater around her shoulders, smoked a joint. She took a long drag and then talked happily in Spanish as the smoke came out of her mouth. Nicki’s eyes rose to Maximo’s face. He looked like a fucking movie star.
As Maximo led her up the stairs to his apartment on Pinto Avenue, the odor of stewed pork filled the hallway. Remembering the smell from the Puerto Rican apartments in East Harlem, she automatically regarded it as bad.
When Maximo got to his door, the dog began barking. “Para!” Maximo called as he turned the locks. The dog kept barking. “Para!” Maximo called in a louder voice. The barking stopped and was replaced by an anxious squeal.
As the door opened, the dog came leaping, tongue out, against Maximo’s chest.
“Bajate.”
The dog would not get down.
“Bajate!” Maximo snapped:
The dog got down and loped back into the apartment.
“Come here, boy,” Nicki said, as she stepped into the apartment. The dog did not move.
“Chevere!” Maximo said.
The dog bounded over to him and Maximo grabbed the furry neck and tousled it. “Chevere,” he said again. A few moments later, he said to the dog, “Adentro!” The dog looked at him. “Adentro!” Maximo yelled. The dog trotted into the small kitchen.
“I never saw a bilingual dog before,” Nicki said.
“He isn’t bilingual, he didn’t understand one word of English, didn’t you know that? He only understands Spanish.”
“That’s what I said. He’s bilingual,” Nicki said. Nicki turned and pretended to be inspecting the room. Bilingual, she said to herself, all bilingual means is Spic, doesn’t it?
“Don’t call him,” Nicki said, “I’m not here to pet dogs.”
Her eyes drew his face to her and as they kissed, she reacted first, controlling the kiss, her body moving, and when his hand ran over her body her arms tightened around his neck.
He took her by the hand into the bedroom, which had no window. As Maximo reached for the lamp, Nicki covered his hand. “No lights,” she said. She dropped her clothes on the floor and got into bed with her panties on, threw herself atop his chest and kissed him, then moved her legs in irritation when her knee prevented him from pulling the panties off immediately. As quickly as possible, she wanted him inside her, which, she knew, was all she was there for.
Always her husband had told her that he was the best in the world in bed, told her with this half smile that goes with perman
ent ownership, and she thought this to be true. But now as Maximo’s warmth flooded into her, she sounded and stretched in a long, lovely release, the most delicious, she was sure, of her young years.
Maximo had his head in the crook of her arm and she ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment of her husband’s boast. And I believed him, she said to herself.
He walked her downstairs and they stood at a phone booth on the night-empty street and Nicki went into the booth and called Angela and asked to be picked up. She gave Angela the address.
“You’re crazy,” Angela said.
“No, I’m not,” Nicki said. “Anybody who didn’t come here tonight is the crazy one.”
“Get inside! You’ll get raped!” Angela said.
“Oh, do you think so?” Nicki said.
They held hands and stood by the phone booth waiting for Angela. Across the street, two small boys came out of the door leading to the apartment over the sandwich shop. Immediately, a window flew open and a woman’s head came out.
“Aqui!”
The kids looked up and complained and the woman shouted again. Reluctantly, the kids went back inside the house.
“I feel sorry for them, they can’t come out,” Maximo said. “That’s how it was with me. If I was out of the house after five o’clock, my father went crazy.”
“I have to ask you something,” Nicki said.
“What?”
“Say the truth.”
“I will.”
“Can someone like you, even if you have thin lips, have a nigger baby?”
“I don’t think so,” Maximo said.
Her hand reached out and touched Maximo’s lip. “Open your mouth.”
“What for?”
“Never mind. Just open your mouth. Wider. Let me see your teeth. Like I’m a dentist.”
Maximo gritted his teeth. Using the light from the fluorescent bulb on the outdoor telephone, Nicki looked closely at Maximo’s gums to see if they were purple. She was relieved to see that Maximo’s gums were pink.
“What did you see?” Maximo said.
“No nigger babies.”
“Is that all you have on your mind?”
“Not now,” she said.
“What do you have on your mind?”
“The next time I’m going to see you,” she said.
“You will,” Maximo said.
“Right away,” Nicki said. “I want more of this right away.” She began to dance in the light from the outdoor telephone.
“I’ll call you,” Maximo said.
“Not at home,” Nicki said. “Just do it the same way you did it this time.”
“What if I want to see you on the spur of the moment?”
“So call Angela on the spur of the moment. If you call my house you’ll get killed on the spur of the moment.”
When Angela arrived, Nicki gave Maximo a long kiss and then jumped into the car.
“Soon you’ll be with niggers,” Angela said as she drove the car.
At Nicki’s house, Louis Mariani sat at the kitchen table in bathrobe and pajamas. “Where the hell have you been?” he said.
Angela grabbed her midsection. “Oh, I’m so hungry!” She opened the refrigerator, which was the best way to distract Mariani, who always dived for the box the moment he saw its light. The tactic was unneeded this time, for it was obvious that Mariani, staring at the phone, had concerns other than Nicki’s arrival time.
“What are you doing up?” Nicki said to her father.
“Send a moron out, you get what you deserve,” Mariani said, more to himself. He stood up and inspected the refrigerator. “Used to be, you said that the guy was so dumb he couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx. Now we got guys who can’t find a Puerto Rican in the Bronx.” He reached in for his favorite, cold spaghetti. “That’s worse than when you couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx. How could you miss finding a Puerto Rican?”
12
MYLES WALKED OUT OF Martin’s office and went to his desk, where Chita Gonzalez, her hair pulled tight against her scalp and into a long ponytail, sat smoking a cigarette.
“All right,” Myles said, sitting down. “You were present in the Myruggia the night Gigi and Victor were killed?”
“I see nobody killed.”
“We know that. They were killed after they left. But you were in the place when they were in the place.”
“This I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing them.”
“You were seen there at the time they were there.”
“I just came in that place for ten minutes. I was just looking for my boyfriend.”
“Who did you see in the bar?”
“I don’t know who I saw.”
“You didn’t happen to see Teenager there, did you?”
Chita put the cigarette in her mouth, shook her head no and took a long drag.
“Somebody told us that you said hello to Teenager in the bar.”
Chita blew smoke up at the ceiling.
“Teenager in jail.”
“Now you know he’s out.”
“How do I know he’s out when I just tell you he is in jail?”
“You didn’t see him that night?”
“Why are you asking me all this?”
“Chita, this is just between us. You’re helping me out. This is no legal matter or anything like that. You’re just doing me a personal favor. Nobody will ever know you were here. I won’t tell anybody I even saw you.”
“You want to talk to me, I bring a lawyer and you can talk to me.”
“Get all the lawyers in the world, Chita. You know in your heart that you saw Teenager in the bar that night with Gigi and Victor.”
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind. I know and you know.”
“I go home now.”
“Come on, Chita, do me a favor.”
“Want me to talk to you some more?”
“Yes.”
“Arrest me.”
“Chita.”
“No, you arrest me. If you don’t I walk out of here.”
Myles laughed. “Come on, Chita.”
Her chair scraped on the floor as she stood up. “Unless you arrest me, I’m going.”
“Hey, I’m not going to arrest you. We’re friends.”
“Bullshit.”
Chita Gonzalez walked to the door, pushed it open with her hip and was gone.
“I’ll call you later,” Myles said to Martin. He went out after Chita Gonzalez.
On the sidewalk outside, Chita Gonzalez threw her cigarette away and looked up the street.
“You waiting for somebody?” Myles said.
“I’m looking for a taxi,” Chita said.
“You won’t get one here,” Myles said.
He walked to his car and got in. Chita remained on the sidewalk. Myles got out of the car and called to her, “Say, can I take you to a cab?”
She looked up the block once more, shrugged and walked to Myles’ car.
“Where do you go?” Myles said.
“To a cab.”
“I was just wondering. It might be on my way.”
“Take me to Westchester Avenue?”
“Fine.”
He said nothing at first. She lit a cigarette and looked straight ahead.
“You work?” Myles said.
She nodded.
“Where?”
“A big office building.”
“Oh, that’s good. Where?”
“Downtown.”
“What do you do?”
“Secretary to a vice-president.”
“Pretty good.”
She said nothing.
Ahead were the rusting yellow pillars of the El tracks on Westchester Avenue.
“Which way do I turn?”
“I get out at the corner.”
“Tell me which way you’re going and I turn.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then stop
the car here and I get out.”
Myles pulled up to the corner. Chita pushed open the door and stepped out.
“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Myles said.
“Thank you.”
She slammed the door and walked out into the street with her arm up, looking for a cab. Myles turned in the opposite direction and started home.
Across the street, in the bar called The Palm, Santos Rivera, one of Teenager’s pushers, looked out the window.
“What is she doing riding in the car with this rat cop?”
He watched as Chita got into a gypsy cab and Myles drove off in the opposite direction.
Santos went back to his drink.
“Want some smoke?” Santos Rivera said.
“I have cigarettes,” Chita Gonzalez said. She went into her jacket pocket for Winstons.
“Just a few minutes more,” Santos said.
“My whole night is gone,” Chita, irritated, said.
She had intended to go to Manhattan, to Barney Googles’ on 86th Street, but as she left her apartment house at 8:30, Rivera had been at the curb in his Torino and he promised her something important, much money for a simple delivery. Chita had jumped into his car elated. In the hours since, however, all he had done was take her to three bars. Now he had her sitting on a park bench, and she still hadn’t earned a quarter.
“He isn’t even coming,” she said.
“I swear he’ll be here,” Santos said.
“What would he come here for?” she said.
“Because this is where he said.”
“And I will make money with this man?”
“Yes.”
The park was a quiet lake in the midst of noisy stone hills. There were about two dozen people, the males in basketball shorts mainly, and the women in jeans or terry-cloth beach outfits that barely stretched across any place important. One street lamp, the only unbroken one in the park, gave a pale light to one end of the basketball court. A high school kid who lived across the street from the park was taking shots. Johnny Benitez, smoking a joint and drinking from a quart bottle of Miller High Life, sat on the broken bench at the edge of the court. Benitez derided the kid for not going mugging downtown with him the night before. “Old Jews got money, man,” he said. The kid shook his head and ran through the dim light to the basket.
Chita Gonzalez, sitting with Rivera at the far end of the bench, scuffed her feet on the cement walk. Whole night gone doing nothing, she complained to herself.
Forsaking All Others Page 16