Normally that would be a no-go, but Noemi is not only nice, she’s also kinda fly. One of those hot moms and you’re excited for the first time in over a year. Even standing next to her while a hostess looks for menus gives you an erection.
Sunday is her one day off — the Five-Baby Father watches Justin that day, or better said, he and his new girlfriend watch Justin that day. You and Noemi fall into a little pattern: on Saturday you take her out to dinner — she doesn’t eat anything remotely adventurous, so it’s always Italian — and then she stays the night.
How sweet was that toto? Elvis asks after the first sleepover.
Not sweet at all, because Noemi doesn’t give it to you! Three Saturdays in a row she sleeps over, and three Saturdays in a row nada. A little kissing, a little feeling up, but nothing beyond that. She brings her own pillow, one of those expensive foam ones, and her own toothbrush, and she takes it all with her Sunday morning. Kisses you at the door as she leaves; it all feels too chaste to you, too lacking in promise.
No toto? Elvis looks a little shocked.
No toto, you confirm. What am I, in sixth grade?
You know you should be patient. You know she’s just testing your ass. She’s probably had a lot of bad experiences with the hit-and-run types. Case in point — Justin’s dad. But it galls you that she gave it up to some thug with no job, no education, no nothing, but she’s making you jump through hoops of fire. In fact, it infuriates you.
Are we going to see each other? she asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you.
It depends, you say.
On what? She is instantly guarded and that adds to your irritation. Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom?
On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon.
Oh classiness. You know as soon as you say it that you just buried yourself.
Noemi is silent. Then she says: Let me get off this phone before I say something you won’t like.
This is your last chance, but instead of begging for mercy you bark: Fine.
Within an hour she has deleted you from Facebook. You send one exploratory text to her but it is never answered.
Years later you will see her in Dudley Square but she will pretend not to recognize you, and you won’t force the issue.
Nicely done, Elvis says. Bravo.
You two are watching his daughter knock around the playground near Columbia Terrace. He tries to be reassuring. She had a kid. That probably wasn’t for you.
Probably not.
Even these little breakups suck because they send you right back to thinking about the ex. Right back into the depression. This time you spend six months wallowing in it before you come back to the world.
After you pull yourself back together you tell Elvis: I think I need a break from the bitches.
What are you going to do?
Focus on me for a while.
That’s a good idea, says his wife. Besides it only happens when you’re not looking for it.
That’s what everybody claims. Easier to say that than This shit sucks.
This shit sucks, Elvis says. Does that help?
Not really.
On the walk home a Jeep roars past; the driver calls you a fucking towelhead. One of the ex-sucias publishes a poem about you online. It’s called “El Puto.”
Year 3
You take your break. You try to get back to your work, to your writing. You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco and one about a bachatero — all of them suck pipe. You get serious about classes and for your health you take up running. You used to run in the old days and you figure you need something to keep you out of your head. You must have needed it bad, because once you get into the swing of it you start running four five six times a week. It’s your new addiction. You run in the morning and you run late at night when there’s no one on the paths next to the Charles. You run so hard that your heart feels like it’s going to seize. When winter rolls in, there’s a part of you that fears you’ll fold — Boston winters are on some terrorism shit — but you need the activity more than anything so you keep at it even as the trees are stripped of their foliage and the paths empty out and the frost reaches into your bones. Soon it’s only you and a couple of other lunatics. Your body changes, of course. You lose all that drinking and smoking chub and your legs look like they belong to someone else. Every time you think about the ex, every time the loneliness rears up in you like a seething, burning continent, you tie on your shoes and hit the paths and that helps; it really does.
By winter’s end you’ve gotten to know all the morning regulars and there’s even this one girl who inspires in you some hope. You pass each other a couple of times a week and she’s a pleasure to watch, a gazelle really — what economy, what gait, and what an amazing fucking cuerpazo. She has Latin features but your radar has been off a while and she could just as likely be a morena as anything. She always smiles at you as you pass. You consider flopping in front of her — My leg! My leg! — but that seems incredibly cursí. You keep hoping you’ll bump into her around town.