Forbidden Fruit (4 page)

She turned and faced him, her eyes and cheeks wet with tears. “I would do anything for you, Victor. Don't you see? You're the best thing I've ever done. The best thing in my life.”

She cupped his face in her palms. “Promise me you'll stay in school.” She tightened her grip, her gaze on his intense. “Promise me, Victor. It's important.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I'll stay in school. I promise.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, but he saw that her mouth trembled. “You always keep your promises. You always have, ever since you were old enough to make them to me.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder how you can be so honorable, coming like you did from Willy and me.”

She made a move to lower her hands; he caught them. “I'll take care of you someday,” he said fiercely. “You won't have to put all that crap on your face, you won't have to work the way you do now. I'll take care of you,” he said again. “I give you my word on that.”

“V
ictor, darlin', I'm off.”

Santos tore his gaze from the small black-and-white TV on his dresser to glance at his mother. “See you.”

She hooked her purse strap over her shoulder. “You going to get up and come give your mama a kiss?” He made a face, and she laughed. “I know, you're too grown-up for that now.”

She crossed to him, bent and planted a light kiss on the top of his head, then threaded her fingers through his hair. “You know the rules, right?”

He tipped his face up to hers and arched his eyebrows in exaggerated exasperation. “How could I not? You repeat them every night.”

“Don't be a smart ass. Let's hear 'em.”

“Put the chain on,” he said in the sassiest voice he could manage. “And don't answer the door for anybody. Not even God.”

She rapped her knuckles against the top of his head. “And don't leave the apartment. Except if it's on fire.”

“Right.”

“Don't you look at me that way.” She narrowed her eyes, all traces of amusement gone. “You think my rules are a big joke. But take it from me, there are some real creeps on the streets. And if the creeps don't get you, the state will. Merry, from down at the club, lost her kid that way. Social Services found out she left him alone at night and took him away.”

“Yeah, but Merry's a doper and her kid's only six.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. “It's not going to happen, Mom. You worry too much.”

“Is that so, Mr. I'm-fifteen-and-know-everything?” Hands on hips, she leaned toward him. “When I was your age, I was damn cocky, too. I sure as hell never imagined I'd have to make a living by shaking my tits and ass for a roomful of strangers. I didn't even know women like me existed.”

She shook her head, her expression sad suddenly, resigned. “That's one of the things life teaches you, darlin', one bad choice can screw up your entire life. Remember that the next time you think you know everything.”

Santos knew the mistake she was talking about—hooking up with Willy Smith, getting pregnant by him. Her family had disowned her, and Willy had taken to using her for a punching bag. Bad choice, all right. A real doozy.

He swallowed hard. “I'll be careful, Mom.”

“You do that.” She touched his cheek with her fingertips, lightly, lovingly stroking. “I couldn't bear to lose you, Victor.”

He opened his mouth to say the same to her, then feeling silly, he swallowed the words. “You won't,” he said instead, covering her fingers with his own, squeezing them. “You're stuck with me.”

She smiled and motioned with her head toward the front door. “I've got to go. You know how Milton is if I'm late.”

Santos nodded and followed her to the front door, watching as she walked down the hall. When she reached the top of the stairs, she looked back at him, smiled and waved. A lump in his throat, he returned her smile, then closed the door. He reached for the safety chain, then stopped, taken by the urge to run after her and give her the hug and kiss she had asked for earlier, taken by the sudden and overwhelming need to hold on to her, the way he hadn't allowed himself to in a long time, to hold on to her and tell her he loved her.

What would he do if he lost her?

He opened the door and started into the hall, but caught himself short, feeling more than a little bit silly. He was too old to cling to his mother the way a baby would, too old to need her coddling and reassurance. He laughed to himself. All her talk of losing him, all her worries and warnings, had momentarily unnerved him. He laughed again. Next, she would have him believing in the bogeyman and the kid-eating monster in the closet.

With a snort of amusement at his own imagination, Santos fastened the chain, and made a beeline for his room. He dug his shoes out from under the bed, put them on, then sat to wait.

He checked his watch. He would give his mother a ten-minute head start before he left to meet his buddies. He met them every night at the abandoned elementary school on Esplanade and Burgundy, at the northern edge of the Quarter.

His mother's words filtered through his head, the ones about Social Services, about her fear of losing him, and he pushed them away. His mother worried too much; she treated him like a baby. He had been meeting his friends this way for the entire summer and weekend nights during the previous school year. He always made sure he beat his mother home; he, like all the kids, steered cleared of both the cops and trouble. And as he had promised his mother, he was always careful. He had never even come close to getting caught.

Exactly ten minutes later, Santos unlocked the door again and headed out into the hallway. Moments later, the hot New Orleans night enveloped him. He muttered an oath. Nine-thirty at night and it was still hot.

Santos brought a hand to the back of his already damp neck. That was the thing people didn't get about New Orleans summers, the thing that made those long months nearly unbearable—it never cooled down. Sure, other places got hot during the summer, some got hotter. But those places got some relief when the sun set.

New Orleans remained at the boiling point, May through September. In August, they were all nothing more than human crawdaddies. The tourists he talked to acted so surprised by the heat. Invariably, they asked how he stood it. New Orleanians didn't “stand” the heat, they just got used to it. To his mind, there was a difference.

Santos lifted his face to the black sky, and breathed deeply through his nose. The air may not have cooled, but in the last few hours it had changed, the Quarter with it. He found the difference both subtle and glaring—like the difference between natural light and neon, between the scent of flowers and perfume. Like the difference between saints and sinners.

Indeed, the shoppers and businesspeople had disappeared with the day, making way for the night people. Night people came in two varieties, those who lived on the fringe, and those who lived on the edge. Fringe people were people like his mother, ones who didn't quite fit into the standard, all-American, Norman Rockwell mold, though they wished they did. Those who lived on the edge did so by choice, because they liked the life.

Music, bluesy and sad, trickled from an open balcony somewhere above him, from another the sounds of sex. Santos jogged past them, ducking down an alley, choosing the less-traveled streets, careful to avoid the paths his mother might choose, careful to avoid being seen by anyone who might report back to her.

From a corner restaurant came the clatter and clank of pots and pans, the enticing smell of boiling seafood. Santos passed behind the restaurant, then wrinkled his nose as he dodged a particularly ripe garbage bin. Nothing like a day or two in the heat to transform crabs and shrimp from enticing to sickening.

The school in sight now, he slowed his pace. It wouldn't do to be seen running in this neighborhood—with the amount of poverty and crime here, the cops were always cruising the area, always on the lookout for a young male fleeing the scene.

Santos circled around to the back of the school. After making sure nobody was watching, he ducked behind a row of wildly overgrown oleander and sweet olive bushes. There, as he knew he would, he found a window propped open with a brick. He hoisted himself up to the ledge and swung inside. From deep within the building he heard the sound of laughter; his buddies had already arrived. He dropped to his feet.

A match flared. Startled, Santos swung around. A kid called Scout—so named because he was always on the lookout for cops, pushers, winos or anyone else who might intrude on the group—stood in the corner, his amused expression illuminated by the match's flame.

“What gives?” Santos asked, frowning. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Scout lit a cigarette, then tossed the match. “Sorry, man. You're late tonight.”

“I got hung up with my mother.”

“Drag.” Scout pulled on his cigarette, then blew out a stream of the acrid smoke. He indicated the length of iron pipe propped against the wall beside him. “Glad it was you. For a minute, I thought I was going to war. Got to protect our turf.”

And he would have, Santos knew. Most of the kids Santos hung with, including Scout, lived on the street full-time. They were runaways, either from their families or the foster-care system. A few, like Santos, were neighborhood kids who didn't have adult supervision at night. They ranged in age from eleven to sixteen, and the group shrank and swelled in size on an almost daily basis. New runaways joined the group, others moved on or were caught and returned to wherever—or whomever—they had tried to escape. Santos and a handful of the others had been part of the group since its beginning.

“Where is everybody?” Santos asked.

“Homeroom. Lenny and Tish lifted a bag of crawfish from the back of a truck. They're still hot. They were thirty minutes ago, anyway.”

Santos nodded. “You coming?”

“Nah. I'm going to stand watch for a while.”

Santos nodded again and started for the area they called homeroom. Because the school was so large, they had selected four rooms to be their regular meeting places and had given each a name—drama club, arts and crafts, sex ed. and homeroom.

Homeroom was located on the second floor at the end of the main hall. Santos made his way there, picking around rubble and weak spots in the flooring. As he expected, he found the group gathered around the bag of crawfish, laughing and talking as they shucked, sucked and generally made pigs of themselves on the stolen mud-bugs.

Razor, the oldest of the group, saw Santos first and motioned him in. Nicknamed Razor for obvious reasons, he had been on the street the longest of anyone in the group. He was a good guy, but he didn't take any crap from anybody. Living on the street did that to a kid. Toughened him. Santos figured Razor wouldn't be hanging out with them much longer. At sixteen, he was ready to move on.

“Nice score, Tish, Lenny.” Santos exchanged high-fives with the two teenagers, then took a seat on the floor.

Conversation flowed around him. Social Services had picked up Ben again and sent him back to his foster family; a pimp had cornered Claire and had tried to scare her into tricking for him; Doreen had caught Sam and Leah making out; and Tiger and Rick had left New Orleans, planning to hitch their way to the good life in southern California.

After a time, Santos noticed that there was a new girl with them tonight. She sat just outside their circle, joining in neither the talk nor the crawfish, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Santos nudged Scout, who had joined the group and taken the place on the floor next to him. He motioned the new girl. “Who's that?”

The other boy followed his gaze. “Tina,” he said. “Claire brought her. She hasn't said more than two words since she got here.”

“She new to the street? A runaway?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

No “think” about it, Santos decided, cocking his head slightly as he studied her. She had
lost, alone,
and
scared to death
written all over her. She kept her eyes downcast and repeatedly bit down on her lower lip, as if to keep it from trembling. Whatever she was running from, he would bet his meager summer earnings that it was pretty bad.

He felt for her, the way he did for all his friends. Over the years, they had told him stories that made his daddy's beatings seem tame. Santos peeled a crawfish and popped the tail into his mouth. He tossed the head and shell onto a pile of others, and reached for another. Every time he heard a new kid's story, he appreciated his life—and his mother—more.

He thought of the discussion he'd had with his mother earlier that day, remembered her shame at his knowing that she sometimes hooked. She just didn't get it. She might not be Mrs. C from “Happy Days,” but she loved him. They might not have much, but they had each other. And his friends made him realize that in this mostly rotten world, having someone, having love, was something special, something worth holding on to.

The crawfish gone, the group began to shift, some splitting into smaller groups, some of the kids heading out to the streets, some crashing. Tina didn't move; she sat as if frozen to the spot. Frozen by fear, no doubt. By uncertainty.

Santos stood and made his way across the room to her. “Hi,” he murmured, shooting her an easy smile. “I'm Santos.”

She lifted her gaze to his, then dropped it once more. “Hi.”

Her voice was soft and sweet and scared. Too soft, too sweet for a girl on the streets. It would harden up fast, just as she would.
If she was going to survive.
He sat down next to her, though careful to leave plenty of distance between them. “Your name's Tina. Right?”

She nodded but offered nothing more.

“Scout says Claire brought you in.” She nodded again. “First thing you'll learn about us,” he said, smiling, “is Scout knows everything. The second thing is, we're a good group. We watch out for each other.”

When she still didn't look up, he figured she would rather be alone. He started to his feet. “If you get in a jam, let me know. I'll do what I can to help you.”