This Is How You Lose Her(37)

Don’t be a crazy person, you say, glaring. I’m not fucking anyone. Clearly.

That night you are allowed to touch Paloma’s clit with the tip of your tongue but that’s it. She holds your head back with the force of her whole life and eventually you give up, demoralized.

It tasted, you write your boy in Panama, like beer.

You add an extra run to your workout, hoping it will cool your granos, but it doesn’t work. You have a couple dreams where you are about to touch her but then the bomb blows NYC to kingdom come and you watch the shock wave roll up and then you wake, your tongue clamped firmly between your teeth.

And then you are coming back from Chicken Holiday with a four-piece meal, a drumstick in your mouth, and there she is walking out of Pathmark, wrestling a pair of plastic bags. You consider bolting but your brother’s law holds you in place. Never run. A law he ultimately abrogated but which you right now cannot. You ask meekly: You want help with that, Miss Lora?

She shakes her head. It’s my exercise for the day. You walk back together in silence and then she says: When are you going to come by to show me that movie?

What movie?

The one you said is the real one. The nuclear war movie.

Maybe if you were someone else you would have the discipline to duck the whole thing but you are your father’s son and your brother’s brother. Two days later you are home and the silence in there is terrible and it seems like the same commercial for fixing tears in your car upholstery is on. You shower, shave, dress.

I’ll be back.

Your mom is looking at your dress shoes. Where are you going?

Out.

It’s ten o’clock, she says, but you’re already out the door.

You knock on the door once, twice, and then she opens up. She is wearing sweats and a Howard T-shirt and she tenses her forehead worriedly. Her eyes look like they belong on a giant’s face.

You don’t bother with the small talk. You just push up and kiss. She reaches around and shuts the door behind you.

Do you have a condom?

You are a worrier like that.

Nope, she says and you try to keep control but you come in her anyway.

I’m really sorry, you say.

It’s OK, she whispers, her hands on your back, keeping you from pulling out. Stay.





8


Her apartment is about the neatest place you’ve ever seen and for its lack of Caribbean craziness could be inhabited by a white person. On her walls she has a lot of pictures of her travels and her siblings and they all seem incredibly happy and square. So you’re the rebel? you ask her and she laughs. Something like that.

There are also pictures of some guys. A few you recognize from when you were younger and about them you say nothing.

She is very quiet, very reserved while she fixes you a cheeseburger. Actually, I hate my family, she says, squashing the patty down with a spatula until the grease starts popping.

You wonder if she feels like you do. Like it might be love. You put on Threads for her. Get ready for some real shit, you say.

Get ready for me to hide, she responds, but you two only last an hour before she reaches over and takes off your glasses and kisses you. This time your wits are back so you try to find the strength to fight her off.

I can’t, you say.

And just before she pops your rabo in her mouth she says: Really?

You try to think of Paloma, so exhausted that every morning she falls asleep on the ride to school. Paloma, who still found the energy to help you study for your SAT. Paloma, who didn’t give you any ass because she was terrified that if she got pregnant she wouldn’t abort it out of love for you and then her life would be over. You’re trying to think of her but what you’re doing is holding Miss Lora’s tresses like reins and urging her head to keep its wonderful rhythm.

You really do have an excellent body, you say after you blow your load.

Why, thank you. She motions with her head. You want to go into the bedroom?

Even more fotos. None of them will survive the nuclear blast, you are sure. Nor will this bedroom, whose window faces toward New York City. You tell her that. Well, we’ll just have to make do, she says. She gets naked like a pro and once you start she closes her eyes and rolls her head around like it’s on a broken hinge. She clasps your shoulders with a nailed grip as strong as shit and you know that after, your back is going to look like it’s been whipped.

Then she kisses your chin.





9


Both your father and your brother were sucios. Shit, your father used to take you on his pussy runs, leave you in the car while he ran up into cribs to bone his girlfriends. Your brother was no better, boning girls in the bed next to yours. Sucios of the worst kind and now it’s official: you are one, too. You had hoped the gene missed you, skipped a generation, but clearly you were kidding yourself. The blood always shows, you say to Paloma on the ride to school next day. Yunior, she stirs from her doze, I don’t have time for your craziness, OK?