“You said you didn’t want to.”
“I said I didn’t ask.”
“My God.” She pushed her hands into her wild black hair. “What are we fighting about?”
“I’ll go.” He turned for the door.
“Roque, I don’t have what it takes for this.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “For what?”
“For what’s happening, right now, between us.”
“And what’s that?”
“Stop it!”
“Stop what? I’m serious.”
“This game you’re playing. This
“Huh.” He struck a pose. “This thing.”
“If you want to talk about what happened with your uncle, we’ll talk. But there’s something else going on and I just don’t have what it takes to deal with it right now.”
“Maybe I should come back when you do.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She was shouting. But he’d become invested in seeing her cry. Somebody, somewhere was supposed to cry.
“I’m just saying, maybe I should come back. Tonight’s, you know, not good.”
The rutting cat cried out from the dark again. Mariko said, “No. Please don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want you to leave and not come back.”
The cold knot in his chest dropped like a stone into his stomach. “What are you saying?”
“We both knew this couldn’t go on forever.”
“I didn’t know that.” He wondered if that was true. “The guy who left-”
“Here it comes. I knew it.”
“I love you.”
She brought herself up short in the middle of an unpleasant laugh. “No, you don’t. You just like the way it sounds.”
“Why are you insulting me?”
“I’m telling you the truth. If that’s insulting-”
“The truth? Agents busted into our trailer today, looking for my cousin. They almost got into a shootout with Godo, I mean they were
“Things are different now. You know that.”
“My uncle’s in a cell someplace. At least, that’s the best I can hope for. But in a few weeks, maybe less, he’ll be on a plane to El Salvador, not much me or my aunt or anyone else can do about it. And we kinda need Tio’s cash input at the moment. Money’s kinda tight.”
“Maybe it’s time you thought about a job.”
The tone, he thought, so snide, so bogus. “Okay. You’re right. I should go.”
“And not come back.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t? I said it-I can’t take this, okay?” A tear scrolled down her cheek. He reached out to hold her but she tore herself away. “Get out!”
“Why are you-”
“Get!
She looked around, saw the empty wineglass on the floor and stooped to pick it up. Cocking her arm, she readied herself to hurl it.
“Put it down.” He turned and without looking back walked out the front door. She slammed it behind him but didn’t turn the lock. He wondered at that, lingering on the porch. Shortly he heard it, coming from inside, not the sound of weeping, something else, something much different, a sudden thick crashing, the splintering hollow thud of earthenware smashing against wood. By the time he snuck back in, came up behind her in the long narrow hallway, she was ankle deep in clay shards, face in her hands, shoulders heaving. And then the shelves were bare, he thought, the words sounding like a line from a fairy tale.
He picked his way through the debris, noticing how the fresh-grave smell was even more pronounced now, wrapped his arms around her, whispering her name as he nuzzled her hair. Listening to her shallow sobs, he thought: But this was what you wanted, right? Someone somewhere crying.
Hours later, when he rose from her bed to head back home, he asked himself what it meant, to bed this woman he cared for so much when she wouldn’t look at him, when even during sex the tears didn’t stop-unable or unwilling to climax, turning away from him as he pulled out short of climax himself, burying her fist in her mouth and her face in the pillow, steeled to his presence but no longer demanding he go.
Six
ROQUE SLOWED TO A JOG AS HE NEARED HUNTINGTON VILLAGE. Fog drifted off the wetlands, hazing the streetlamps. The screech of a blue jay answered a distant car horn.
He wondered if the agents had come back hoping to wrap up the prior day’s business, snatch the few stragglers who’d eluded them-like Happy, who hadn’t been seen anywhere around here since, Christ, when, two years ago? The prospect of a confrontation, ordered to show ID, forced splay-legged against the chain-link fence with its thorny bougainvillea, it momentarily distracted him from what had just happened with Mariko.
He’d meant to comfort her; she’d remained inconsolable. The woman who made him feel smart, capable, a lover, a man, she’d peeled back the layers of his ego to reveal a whole new level of fuckup. He felt out to lunch, dishonest, guilty. He felt eighteen.
His chest heaved from the run as he peered through the fogged-in darkness, edging toward the trailer-park entrance, checking for sedans, clean-cut cops in bulky raid jackets. The maze of trailers sat quiet and mostly dark. The air smelled of pine and sewer muck. You go back soon, he told himself, you make sure she’s okay. You stay until she talks to you.
The tinny clamor of wind chimes grew louder as he neared the trailer; he saw lights up front. Tia’s awake, he thought, one more thing to tweak his guilt. Godo would be too, of course. I’m gonna catch hell, he thought, for leaving him alone. Okay. Fine. Unlocking the door with his key, he eased it open, stepped inside. Glancing at the breakfast nook, he stopped short.
“Close the door,” Happy said.
He was sitting next to Tia Lucha at the kitchenette table, his face bearded and stern, looking like a saint from some old Dominican prayer card. The beard was new. Always lean, he seemed gaunt now, eyes bulging from their sockets like small black plums. The rest of his face composed itself into a wary, tight-lipped scowl and his body seemed coiled, ready to bolt or lash out. He wore jeans, work boots, a plaid flannel shirt. His black hair was cropped short.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
Happy’s long-fingered hands clutched a mug of Tia Lucha’s Nescafe, which he raised halfway to his lips before answering. “That’s a long story.”
“When did you get here?”
Tia Lucha piped in:-
Roque was stunned. “You knew?”
–
She seemed dazed, even fearful, an effect enhanced by the day’s first smears of thick white makeup, which
