a cocksucker
a punk motherfucker
a fake-ass Dominican.
She claims:
you have a little penis
no penis
and worst of all that you like curried pussy.
(which really is unfair, you try to say, since Laxmi is from Guyana, but Alma isn’t listening.)
Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a baby’s beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.
This is how you lose her.
Otravida, Otravez
HE SITS ON THE MATTRESS, the fat spread of his ass popping my fitted sheets from their corners. His clothes are stiff from the cold, and the splatter of dried paint on his pants has frozen into rivets. He smells of bread. He’s been talking about the house he wants to buy, how hard it is to find one when you’re Latino. When I ask him to stand up so I can fix the bed, he walks over to the window. So much snow, he says. I nod and wish he would be quiet. Ana Iris is trying to sleep on the other side of the room. She has spent half the night praying for her children back in Samaná, and I know that in the morning she has to work at the fábrica. She moves uneasily, buried beneath comforters, her head beneath a pillow. Even here in the States she drapes mosquito netting over her bed.
There’s a truck trying to turn the corner, he tells me. I wouldn’t want to be that chamaco.
It’s a busy street, I say, and it is. Mornings I find the salt and cut rock that the trucks spill onto the front lawn, little piles of treasure in the snow. Lie down, I tell him, and he comes to me, slipping under the covers. His clothes are rough and I wait until it is warm enough under the sheets before I release the buckle to his pants. We shiver together and he does not touch me until we stop.
Yasmin, he says. His mustache is against my ear, sawing at me. We had a man die today at the bread factory. He doesn’t speak for a moment, as if the silence is the elastic that will bring his next words forward. Este tipo fell from the rafters. Héctor found him between the conveyors.
Was he a friend?
This one. I recruited him at a bar. Told him he wouldn’t get cheated.
That’s too bad, I say. I hope he doesn’t have a family.
Probably does.
Did you see him?
What do you mean?
Did you see him dead?
No. I called the manager and he told me not to let anyone near. He crosses his arms. I do that roof work all the time.
You’re a lucky man, Ramón.
Yes, but what if it had been me?
That’s a stupid question.
What would you have done?
I set my face against him; he has known the wrong women if he expects more. I want to say, Exactly what your wife’s doing in Santo Domingo. Ana Iris mutters in the corner loudly, but she’s just pretending. Bailing me out of trouble. He goes quiet because he doesn’t want to wake her. After a while he gets up and sits by the window. The snow has started falling again. Radio WADO says this winter will be worse than the last four, maybe the worst in ten years. I watch him: he’s smoking, his fingers tracing the thin bones around his eyes, the slack of skin around his mouth. I wonder who he’s thinking about. His wife, Virta, or maybe his child. He has a house in Villa Juana; I’ve seen the fotos Virta sent. She looks thin and sad, the dead son at her side. He keeps the pictures in a jar under his bed, very tightly sealed.
We fall asleep without kissing. Later I wake up and so does he. I ask him if he’s going back to his place and he says no. The next time I wake up he doesn’t. In the cold and darkness of this room he could almost be anybody. I lift his meaty hand. It is heavy and has flour under each nail. Sometimes at night I kiss his knuckles, crinkled as prunes. His hands have tasted of crackers and bread the whole three years we’ve been together.
—
HE DOES NOT TALK to me or Ana Iris as he dresses. In his top jacket pocket he carries a blue disposable razor that has begun to show rust on its sharp lip. He soaps his cheeks and chin, the water cold from the pipes, and then scrapes his face clean, trading stubble for scabs. I watch, my naked chest covered with goose bumps. He stomps downstairs and out of the house, a bit of toothpaste on his teeth. As soon as he leaves, I can hear my housemates complaining about him. Doesn’t he have his own place to sleep, they’ll ask me when I go into the kitchen. And I’ll say yes, and smile. From the frosted window I watch him pull up his hood and hitch the triple layer of shirt, sweater, and coat onto his shoulders.
Ana Iris kicks back her covers. What are you doing? she asks me.
Nothing, I say. She watches me dress from under the craziness of her hair.