This Is How You Lose Her(4)

I wanted to know why.

She closed her eyes like she was embarrassed at herself. Forget about it, she said, moving her hips under me. Just forget about it.

—

I DON’T EVEN want to tell you where we’re at. We’re in Casa de Campo. The Resort That Shame Forgot. The average asshole would love this place. It’s the largest, wealthiest resort on the Island, which means it’s a goddamn fortress, walled away from everybody else. Guachimanes and peacocks and ambitious topiaries everywhere. Advertises itself in the States as its own country, and it might as well be. Has its own airport, thirty-six holes of golf, beaches so white they ache to be trampled, and the only Island Dominicans you’re guaranteed to see are either caked up or changing your sheets. Let’s just say my abuelo has never been here, and neither has yours. This is where the Garcías and the Colóns come to relax after a long month of oppressing the masses, where the tutumpotes can trade tips with their colleagues from abroad. Chill here too long and you’ll be sure to have your ghetto pass revoked, no questions asked.

We wake up bright and early for the buffet, get served by cheerful women in Aunt Jemima costumes. I shit you not: these sisters even have to wear hankies on their heads. Magda is scratching out a couple of cards to her family. I want to talk about the day before, but when I bring it up she puts down her pen. Jams on her shades.

I feel like you’re pressuring me.

How am I pressuring you? I ask.

I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.

Time to yourself, I say. What does that mean?

Like maybe once a day, you do one thing, I do another.

Like when? Now?

It doesn’t have to be now. She looks exasperated. Why don’t we just go down to the beach?

As we walk over to the courtesy golf cart, I say, I feel like you rejected my whole country, Magda.

Don’t be ridiculous. She drops one hand in my lap. I just wanted to relax. What’s wrong with that?

The sun is blazing and the blue of the ocean is an overload on the brain. Casa de Campo has got beaches the way the rest of the Island has got problems. These, though, have no merengue, no little kids, nobody trying to sell you chicharrones, and there’s a massive melanin deficit in evidence. Every fifty feet there’s at least one Eurofuck beached out on a towel like some scary pale monster that the sea’s vomited up. They look like philosophy professors, like budget Foucaults, and too many of them are in the company of a dark-assed Dominican girl. I mean it, these girls can’t be no more than sixteen, look puro ingenio to me. You can tell by their inability to communicate that these two didn’t meet back in their Left Bank days.

Magda’s rocking a dope Ochun-colored bikini that her girls helped her pick out so she could torture me, and I’m in these old ruined trunks that say “Sandy Hook Forever!” I’ll admit it, with Magda half naked in public I’m feeling vulnerable and uneasy. I put my hand on her knee. I just wish you’d say you love me.

Yunior, please.

Can you say you like me a lot?

Can you leave me alone? You’re such a pestilence.

I let the sun stake me out to the sand. It’s disheartening, me and Magda together. We don’t look like a couple. When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets. Magda’s been a star the whole time we’ve been here. You know how it is when you’re on the Island and your girl’s an octoroon. Brothers go apeshit. On buses, the machos were like, Tú sí eres bella, muchacha. Every time I dip into the water for a swim, some Mediterranean Messenger of Love starts rapping to her. Of course, I’m not polite. Why don’t you beat it, pancho? We’re on our honeymoon here. There’s this one squid who’s mad persistent, even sits down near us so he can impress her with the hair around his nipples, and instead of ignoring him she starts a conversation and it turns out he’s Dominican, too, from Quisqueya Heights, an assistant DA who loves his people. Better I’m their prosecutor, he says. At least I understand them. I’m thinking he sounds like the sort of nigger who in the old days used to lead bwana to the rest of us. After three minutes of him, I can’t take it no more, and say, Magda, stop talking to that asshole.

The assistant DA startles. I know you ain’t talking to me, he says.

Actually, I say, I am.

This is unbelievable. Magda gets to her feet and walks stiff-legged toward the water. She’s got a half-moon of sand stuck to her butt. A total fucking heartbreak.

Homeboy’s saying something else to me, but I’m not listening. I already know what she’ll say when she sits back down. Time for you to do your thing and me to do mine.