The Flowers (21 page)

I went into the office again, all the dead eyes on me and not seeing, the Goofy noses smelling, and I sat in his squeaking chair and fuck the rifles. I sat, it swiveled, it squeaked. If he even saw me in the chair, ever, then I could never do it. I decided! I went into the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel and came back and I opened the drawer like an oven and I took the envelope. I shut the drawer. My heart was crazy beating in my legs and arms and fingers. I was panicky. I hurried the envelope over to my spot in the bedroom I slept in but it was too much to put there, a lump not too fat but so serious it seemed like it.

I was behind the parking stalls, where the trash cans were, looking for a better hiding place. I wished I didn't do it but I couldn't put the money back because I'd even crumpled the envelope holding
it. It was like there was no way I could go back, I'd be guilty no matter. I couldn't think where to go, where to hide it.

“Sonny.”

My body jumped like it was him, even though the voice obviously wasn't.

“You taking the trash out?” Gina asked.

I said something but I don't know what.

“Are you all right?” She seemed to mean it.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You sure?” she said in a funny voice. She stood there holding a plastic garbage bag.

She didn't believe me, but I was positive she didn't see me drop the envelope.

“Yeah,” I said. “It's not trash day.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It's that he likes me to put them in the fewest containers.”

“O-kay.” She said it like that was two words.

“Let me take it for you,” I said. I looked in several containers. Then I put her bag in one and I picked up another bin and dumped what was in it on top of the one I put her trash in.

She watched. “Thank you then,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

There was no turning it around, no explaining. I wished I didn't but it was done. I couldn't give this money, say, to the twins to hold. I couldn't tell nobody. I was in that bedroom again and sorry. I stuffed the money between the two boyscout books.
Voilá.
Saying something in French didn't even make me smile enough and that I knew I was real fucked. Not much of a secret place but who cared. Because if they were going to look in this room, they'd find it no matter where I hid it. Then again, nothing was going to happen so fast. It could be a week, or two even. Then again, it was a good place in another way. It wouldn't be a place to look
first. I was not going to mess up. I knew how not to mess this up. I wasn't tired but I fell on my back and closed the eyes and I was safe deep inside a mountain and I could hear and not be seen. I could hear whatever I wanted. The wind calmed me, until it was pushed away by the other building's neighbors talking. I still couldn't tell what language they spoke, but their sound made me feel like I was going away. I went there. I was going to make a sharp turn, any second, like a turn too flat on a ground around it that was too flat too. I'd made it before. I could still feel this curve on me, when, going so fast, I went up what should have been a down. Then Nica's father's voice interrupted, and I could understand him as well as I heard him. He was asking where were his ironed pants, why didn't she iron better, how hard was it to iron? That cat outside started hissing and I saw a lizard staring back. I saw a spider at the top corner of the room's sliding glass window, still, hanging stick legs up from a thread. I got off my back, taller, shorter, ready, getting ready because I did it.

“Sonny. Up here.”

That was Cindy, leaning over the balcony and looking down. She was in something low-cut, and she wasn't wearing a bra.

“What?” I said.

“Come up,” she said. “Come over.” She was kind of whispering, kind of shouting.

I didn't want to do anything messed up. “Not right now,” I said.

“Sonny!” she said. “Come up here!”

“Not now,” I said again. “It's too late.”

“Sonny.” She started coming down the stairs.

I met her halfway and she took my hand. I didn't want that. But I went into her apartment. The TV was murmuring, the place was all junk and dishes and glasses again.

“You haven't visited me.”

“Cindy, I need to do some shit.”

“Come on.” She shook her body at me, then she put her hands on my pants. “I want to play.”

“Are you crazy?”

That made her back off.

“Sonny,” she said quietly.

“We're both gonna get shot.”

“That's not going to happen.”

“You're gonna get us both—”

“He's working late again tonight.”

“I gotta book, man.”

“Please don't.”

My hand was on the doorknob.

“Sonny, I'm broke. I'm lonely. I'm bored.”

She was sitting balled up, soft as a pile of pillows, as I opened the door.

“Will you come by tomorrow then?”

I only wanted to watch out safe behind the windshield, and what I was watching was Pink talking it up to a black dude, counting money the guy gave him, signing papers on the hood of a Lincoln I'd never even noticed before. They shook hands in some black way and the man got in and drove away. Pink talked to him with his hands, kind of nodding as the man went down the street to turn left.

He jumped in on the passenger's side, his white teeth even whiter than his skin. “Oh, yeah, it is a beautiful night, little brother. A beautiful, beautiful night.”

I was sure he was right.

“Ain't it so, ain't it?”

It was hard not to feel better because of him. I nodded.

“And what're you doing out here, my little brother?”

“Sitting.” I smiled. Made myself smile.

“You are sitting, aren't you?”

I nodded again.

“So you like your car here, don't you? I knew you would. You been driving it?”

“I can't drive it. Like I said before, I don't even got a license.”

“Oh come on! You been driving it, ain't you?”

“No,” I said.

“All right then,” he said. “All right, that's all right.”

“They'd both pop if I did,” I said. “My mom and Cloyd.”

“All right, yeah, I understand.” He sounded calmer, made a shift with what seemed like his body. “We all partnered up still, you know, about your stepdaddy.”

“To be honest,” I said, “I'm still not really sure. It's that I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“Ain't no nothing, no big nothing. Like I told you. You just keep me up on things, keep your eyes and your ears open. You keep me up on your stepdaddy.”

“What, though? I mean, keep you up on what?”

“Nothing, nothing. You know. If you hear something, if you see something.”

“Did he say anything?” she asked me. She stank of cigarettes and cocktails.

“About what?”

“He's still gone,” she said, talking as her eyes roamed. “He didn't come back. I don't know what I'm thinking.” Her body sighed all over. She plopped down onto that special favorite leather chair of his and she was taking off her high heels. They were bright blue, color coordinated with the baby-blue dress she wore. “I am so happy I got here first.”

I sat on the sofa, not sure what next. “You like that owl?”

She looked at it. “No,” she said. She looked at it longer, then she laughed. I listened to her laughter. “I guess I never thought about the owl. No, I don't like it, no. Tú no te gusta tampoco, you don't either, do you?”

I shook my head no, but not hard. I meant my question.

She was laughing. She laughed too much because she was drunk. She took off her earrings sloppy and tossed them on the coffee table in front of me. She rubbed her feet. “Why are you asking me that?”

“It's that it's kind of cool and I never seen an owl before this one, so I don't hate it. I hate the fish up there, and I don't like these duck lamps for real, even if what I think is how lots of people maybe would like it all. But that owl—well, I think I don't hate it but not how the Cloyd loves it, you know?”

“Ay, m'ijo!”

I shrugged. “I always call him that.”

She laughed. “Ay, m'ijo, we moved away, didn't we?”

She wasn't wanting me to answer.

“He stares,” she said. “He's like knowing what we do, isn't he?”

“Or she.”

“What?” she said.

“It could be a she. Neither of us knows what's a male or female owl.”

She laughed, too drunk again, and rubbed her feet. “Like an abuela! But abuelita no puede decir o hacer nada, can she?”

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Of course, yes. Are you, m'ijito?”

“I miss Goofy.”

She put a finger to her lips.

I nodded. “
Bon soir.
”

“Angelito's asleep,” she whispered, shaking her head in a good way, smiling, “but if we're calm, we can talk.”

“
Toujours,
” I said. “I'm always calm,
n'est-ce pas?
”

She looked at me like I was making it up.

“I said, ‘I'm always calm, right?'” I said
right
too loud.

She shushed me again, but she was still smiling. Talk French, make a smile. She was happy to see me. And then she took my hand, and she sat us on the couch. Some really dumb Mexican variety show was on TV. A woman in a nurse uniform swatted at the bedridden old man's hand grabbing at her butt when his ugly red-haired wife wasn't looking, the laugh track volume up high.

“You're not watching this, are you?” I asked.

She didn't care what I said. “I have a job to babysit,” she whispered.

“You already do that.”

“No, you clown. Over there.”

“Yeah? That's real cool. You're going to be rich.”

“You can come over. With me.” She was smiling like she was talking French.

“Of course. With pizza!”

She was a little girl in a white chiffon dress and black shoes and a pink ribbon. “But you do not tell!” She was a little girl.

“No, not possible.”

“They can't know.”

I wasn't sure which
they
she was talking about. I was feeling confused. I don't think I could get anything straight. Maybe something was wrong with me. Because I didn't understand. For example, why would I get to be there, in #7, just down the walkway, but not here, in #4, where I was anyways? And who would be watching Angel if nobody else could? I didn't ask questions, I couldn't. “But I don't think,” I decided to say, “those people, Bud and Mary, have a child.”

Really, I was sure they didn't. I was kind of sure she didn't know, but then it didn't matter if she didn't or her father didn't. She was always in this apartment. Even if she only got five minutes over there, it was better.

We were still sitting in front of the TV light and the noise, and it's what I wished for every day. Another program: a man holding a weeping woman. She was wailing so hard her hair shook. Nica shook her head and turned it down.

Instead, she talked, happy. Nica told me that in her pueblo above Xalapa, that big city below, their home was painted blue and yellow, and she loved the red flowers that grew against the walls. The fog rolled up to her and, since she lived on a mountain, sometimes she would stand in a cloud that lowered from the sky. She stayed with her cousins there. She missed going out and playing.

“Playing?” I asked.

Her eyes would never see into mine. As though to look straight at me was wrong. As her lips moved, I didn't see curve in them, only sharp-cut lines. Her nose too, they weren't for breathing, they were for someone to draw. She wasn't real. She couldn't be real.

Nica's mother was from Veracruz, from a big family. Her mother was the first girl in her family. She loved her mom. She still loved her mom. Her father? Her father she didn't know. This man, the man here, Margarito, he was not her natural father. He married her mother. He said he was from Mexico, the capital. Angel Fidencio was their child. She loved her baby brother Angel, she really did. She loved taking care of Angel. She said everything was fine. She said she liked living here in the apartment. Her mom had work, her stepdad Margarito worked, and it was good for everyone that she was here to watch Angel while they did. She hoped they didn't have another baby. She hoped that things would change eventually. It was not the first place she lived with them. It was different when they were alone, her mom and her, when
they came across. Yes, she loved to listen to her radio. When Angel was asleep and he was next to her, she could listen to it. He liked it too when she was next to him and he was awake or asleep.

The commercials were full of action and she was watching the TV, but it seemed like she was more near me, she was moving closer. Her hands could almost touch me again. The TV had a broken purple color in it, and her hands weren't real in the strange light. I wanted to kiss the not-real hands. I wanted to go to the not-real place with colors I didn't know. Like the world away from this city, if there was no smog, like where she grew up. Or if we were kissing and we were there, that black-and-white I knew. I was shaky, and I was happy. I was so happy I was next to her but I was also afraid to stay and didn't know where to go. Where was I going to hide that money? I was sad. I was fear and sadness except where I saw a glow on her, like in a saint's painting. The glow didn't come out of her but gathered around her, collected around her, came off her—or it was a light behind her that she was blocking, and its too-bright light was on the other side of her face, and so the fuzz was a circle around her.

She was happy that I was sitting with her too. She liked it that I was there! Still, I jumped up. “I better go,” I said suddenly. I needed to go. “It's pretty late.” She sagged, her body deep into the couch. I couldn't see what it was in her eyes, not directly anyway, because they didn't look into mine. “I don't want you to get in trouble with your family.”