but then I just spun the wheel, pulled up to a gas station, made the call, and the next thing I knew I was at the house where he had grown up. His mother too sick to come out of her room, and him looking as thin as I’d ever seen him. Suicide suits me, he joked. His room nerdier than him, if that was possible. X-wings and TIE-fighters hanging from the ceilings. Mine and his sister’s signatures the only real ones on his last cast (the right leg broken worse than the left); the rest were thoughtful consolations from Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and Samuel Delany. His sister not acknowledging my presence, so I laughed when she walked by the open door, asked loudly: How’s la muda doing?
She hates being here, Oscar said.
What’s wrong with Paterson? I asked loudly. Hey, muda, what’s wrong with Paterson?
Everything, she yelled from down the hall. She was wearing these little running shorts—the sight of her leg muscles jiggling alone made the trip worth making.
Me and Oscar sat in his room for a little bit, not saying much. I stared at all his books and his games. Waited for him to say something; must have known I wasn’t going to let it slide.
It was foolish, he said finally. Ill advised.
You could say that twice. What the fuck were you thinking, O? He shrugged miserably. I didn’t know what else to do. Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.
It went like that for about half an hour. Only one thing sticks out. Right before I headed out, he said: It was the curse that made me do it, you know. I don’t believe in that shit, Oscar. That’s our parents’ shit. It’s ours too, he said.
Is he going to be OK? I asked Lola on the way out. I think so, she said. Filling ice-cube trays with faucet water.
He says he’s going back to Demarest in the spring. Is that a good idea? She thought about it a second. That was Lola for you. I do, she said. You know best. I fished my keys out. So how’s the fiance? He’s fine, she said blandly. Are you and Suriyan still together? Killed to even hear her name. Not for a long time. And then we stood there and stared at each other. In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain’t no fucking Middle-earth. I just nodded my head, said, See you around, Lola, and drove home.
That should have been the end of it, right? Just a memory of some nerd I once knew who tried to kill himself: nothing more, nothing more. But the de Leons, it turned out, weren’t a clan you could just shake of.
Not two weeks into senior year he showed up at my dorm room! To bring over his writings and to ask me about mine! I couldn’t believe it. Last I heard he was planning on subbing at his old high school, taking classes over at BCC, but there he was, standing at my door, sheepishly holding a blue folder. Hail and well met, Yunior, he said. Oscar, I said, in disbelief. He had lost even more weight and was trying his best to keep his hair trim and his face shaved. He looked, if you can believe it, good. Still talking Space Opera, though—had just finished with the first of his projected quartet of novels, totally obsessed with it now. May be the death of me, he sighed, and then he caught himself. Sorry. Of course nobody at Demarest wanted to room with him—what a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are)—so when he returned in the spring he’d have a double to himself, not that it did him any good, he joked.
Demarest won’t be the same without your mesomorphic grimness, he said matter-of-factly.
Ha, I said.
You should definitely visit me in Paterson when you have a reprieve. I have a plethora of new Japanimation for your viewing pleasure.
Definitely, bro, I said. Definitely.
I never did go by. I was busy, God’s Truth: delivering pool tables, bringing the grades up, getting ready to graduate. And besides, that fall a miracle happened: Suriyan showed up at my door. Looking more beautiful than I ever saw her. I want us to try again. Of course I said yes, and went out and put a cuerno in her that very night. Dios mio! Some niggers couldn’t have got ten ass on Judgment Day; me I couldn’t not get ass, even when I tried.
My negligence didn’t stop O from visiting me every now and then with some new chapter and some new story of a girl he’d spotted on the bus, on the street, or in a class.
Same ole Oscar, I said.
Yes, he said weakly. Same ole me.
Rutgers was always a crazy place, but that last fall it seemed to be especially bugging. In October a bunch of freshman girls I knew on Livingston got busted for dealing coke, four of the quietest gorditas around. Like they say: los que menos corren, vuelan. On Bush, the Lambdas started a fight with the Alphas over some idiocy and for weeks there was talk of a black-Latino war but nothing ever happened, everybody too busy throwing parties and fucking each other to scrap.
That winter I even managed to sit in my dorm room long enough to write a story that wasn’t too bad, about the woman who used to live in the patio behind my house in the DR, a woman everybody said was a prostitute but who used to watch me and my brother while my mom and my abuelo were at work. My professor couldn’t believe it. I’m impressed. Not a single shooting or stabbing in the whole story. Not that it helped any. I didn’t win any of the creative-writing prizes that year. I kinda had been hoping.
And then it was finals, and who of all people do I end up running into? Lola! I almost didn’t recognize her because her hair was ill long and because she was wearing these cheap blocky glasses, the kind an alternative whitegirl would wear. Enough silver on her wrists to ransom the royal family and so much leg coming out of her denim skirt it just didn’t seem fair. As soon as she saw me she tugged down the skirt, not like it did much good. This was on the E bus; I was on my way back from seeing a girl of zero note and she was heading out to some stupid-ass farewell party for one of her friends. I slopped down next to her and she said, What’s up? Her eyes so incredibly big and empty of any guile. Or expectation, for that matter.
How have you been? I asked.
Good. How about you?
Just getting ready for break.
Merry Christmas. And then, just like a de Leon, she went back to reading her book!
I poked at the book. Introduction to Japanese. What the hell are you studying now? Didn’t they throw you out of here already?
I’m teaching English in Japan next year, she said matter-of-factly. It’s going to be
Not
You’re right, she said, turning the page irritably. Why would
We let that sit for a sec.
That was a little harsh, I said.
My apologies.
Like I said: it was December. My Indian girl, Lily, was waiting for me back on College Ave., and so was Suriyan. But I wasn’t thinking about either of them. I was thinking about the one time I’d seen Lola that year; she’d been reading a book in front of the Henderson Chapel with such concentration I thought she might hurt herself. I’d heard from Oscar that she was living in Edison with some of her girlfriends, working at some office or another, saving money for her next big adventure. That day I’d seen her I’d wanted to say hi but I didn’t have the balls, figured she would ig me.
I watched Commercial Ave. slide past and there, in the distance, were the lights of Route 18. That was one of those moments that would always be Rutgers for me. The girls in front giggling about some guy. Her hands on those pages, nails all painted up in cranberry. My own hands like monster crabs. In a couple of months I’d be back in London Terrace if I wasn’t careful and she’d be off to Tokyo or Kyoto or wherever she was going. Of all the chicks I’d run up on at Rutgers, of all the chicks I’d run up on ever, Lola was the one I’d never gotten a handle on. So why
