The Painting of Porcupine City (31 page)

I smiled and put my arm around his shoulders. “I’m sure it’s going fine. I bet the kiddo’s as tall as his dad and he won’t fit out through little Cara. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“Thanks.” He looked around. “Where’s Mateo?”

I started to explain and then just shrugged.

We waited. Robbie bought Jamar a Snapple and it sat on the floor unopened, sweating. After a few minutes I got up to stretch my legs, walked over to the window, looked out. There wasn’t much to see, just the building across the way, a FedEx truck parked on the street beside a mailbox someone—not Mateo—had tagged in silver marker. I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone to text him, and it made my boxers pull taught and sharp against my pubic hair—someone’s dried come still there. I realized I was still wearing last night all over me, hadn’t even brushed my teeth. God only knew how I looked, with my burned cheeks and tired eyes.

HEART IS BROKE. That’s what it said on the wall outside the hotel; that was the message the maintenance guys were scrubbing away. HEART IS BROKE. That’s what he’d written after leaving. I wondered, did he have to run before finishing it? Or was he purposely trying to offend my copyeditor sensibilities? Or did he mean exactly what he wrote? Not
broken
at all but literally
broke
: poor, destitute, bankrupt. And whose heart did he mean?

I looked at myself in the glass, at my burned cheeks and tired eyes. I knew he meant mine.

I was lowering my phone back to my pocket when I heard a shriek, something that can only be called a shriek, and it made a swallow of saliva catch in my throat and my balls pull up tight inside me.

It was Jamar and my first thought was just never to turn around. To stand here forever. I looked at the reflection in the window of the room behind me, trying to prepare myself at least a little before I turned. And when I did turn I saw a flash of white coat and the blur of Robbie leaping forward with his arms out, but mostly what I saw was Jamar, Jamar’s knees knocking together and Jamar melting down to the floor, the folded blue johnnie billowing out around him.

I took my arm back

from the girl called Shelly and put both hands over my face. Squeezed my eyes shut, tried to keep my breathing going, tried to keep from vibrating right through the chair, or melting, or exploding, or wailing, or dying. Stood up and my phone fell off my lap and went skittering across the tile, and through blurred vision chased after it after kicking it once by mistake and then stuffed it in my pocket and found once more the blue guideline on the tile and followed it around corners around gurneys to the lobby and spun through the wide revolving doors and the cold air steamed on my burning wet cheeks.

But I know her
, I kept thinking over and over.
But I know her
.

I kept it together in

the cab but started crying again the moment it pulled up outside of our apartment. I realized that I absolutely didn’t want to go into our apartment. That was when I finally called Mateo, but there was no answer. I tried three more times. Then I called Mike, and I got him right away.

A hand touched my shoulder

tenderly. I didn’t turn my head but opened my eyes and saw purple fingers splayed against my collar bone. The purple fingers slid gently down my chest, met a clean hand on the other side. They entwined against my sternum in the same place they had once pressed a smear of motor grease. And then a scratch of stubble against my cheek as a chin settled on my shoulder. Hair tickled my ear.

“I heard. I’m sorry, Arrowman. I’m so very, very sorry.”

I briefly imagined my response and some kind of conversation following, but the words to say it were nowhere to be found—my language was gone. Instead I reached up with both hands and threaded my fingers through the ones against my chest, and in response to this welcome he moved in, hugged me harder. And my floodgates opened and I started to cry.

But this was a dream, except for the crying. I awoke with wet eyes in Mike’s loft, the ceiling a few feet from my face. I had all my clothes on, even my shoes, and Mike’s arm encircled me.

Marjorie pulled open the fridge

to get Phoebe a strawberry milk night-cap. When she turned she noticed Phoebe standing near the kitchen table, a creased sheet of paper in her hands, her mouth scrunched in concentration as she tried to decipher the writing.

“What do you have there?” Marjorie said.

“It was under the puzzle.”

“A note?”

“It’s from Mateo, I think,” Phoebe said.

Marjorie went over and held out her hand, trading Phoebe a glass of strawberry milk for the paper. It said:

Gone to SP. Tell Miss I’m sorry for missing the dancing show. M.

Across the street and across

the T lines, across power lines, across phone lines, past train stations, gas stations, fire stations—on the other side of the city in an apartment on the third floor of a three-decker, I sat by myself.

In the apartment there were no sounds of babies laughing or crying. There were no sounds of Cara giggling. There were no beeps of camera or heavy footsteps of Jamar twisting to record every moment of this first day.

He had taken the infant—a horrible healthy boy—to his parents’ house in Waltham. The apartment was quiet. The only sound was the bubbling whir of the fish tank in my room. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and watched the colorful, translucent bodies flickering across the fish-tank light. I put my phone to my ear again to call Mateo, and again there was no answer. And suddenly in a flash of comfort it came to me: the idea that I could go out and fuck. That it would be just that easy—would fill my head, would occupy my mind, would kill the night. A few keystrokes on my laptop. A text message, maybe two. An email. And the night would be full.

I watched the fish swim around. And in the glow of the light, by the base of the tank stand, behind a shoebox of CDs, I saw two cans.

Thinking: I can fuck. Or—

I reached and picked up one of the cans. Popped the cap and, for no particular reason, smelled the valve. Put a finger on it and wobbled it back and forth, not enough to spray, but almost.

P A R T

F O U R

The Night Would Be Enough

São Paulo wind rushed over

him, washing him of the smell of the plane. São Paulo wind and the sour-sweet smell of the driver’s mahogany skin. Over his t-shirt the driver wore a flapping meshy smock, bearing like a soccer jersey a big yellow
24
. Mateo, through his helmet, couldn’t hear the flapping over the
rrmmm
of the motorcycle.

The city streamed by in a blur as the motorcycle devoured the street. The familiar city: buildings, restaurants, little shops were the same. Push-cart vendors were the same too—some were even in the same places. The crippling morning traffic was letting up now and the traffic was only bad—the driver navigated it boldly, once driving a whole block on the sidewalk, shooting back a warning to Mateo to hold tight when they jumped the curb.

When they made it out of the city center the traffic mellowed and Mateo was able to ease his grip on the bike and relish again the taste of the air in his mouth.

At last he patted the driver’s shoulder and made a motion with his hand and the driver slowed and pulled to the edge of the street, put his bare foot down to steady the bike.

“Obrigado,” Mateo said, and when the driver told him the fare he put into the boy’s hand some crumpled reais from the stash he had kept in his dresser drawer 5,000 miles away. He took off his helmet and handed it back to the driver, who stashed it and sped off.
Rrrmm
away into the summer morning the way they had come.

Mateo stretched, shook out his helmet-hair, jostled his backpack and let out some slack on the shoulder straps. His butt was numb, his fingers stiff from clutching. The moto-taxi ride somehow felt longer than the plane ride. Whenever he came back he had to realize all over again just how big SP was. You could drop Boston into São Paulo six times and SP would still have room for overnight guests. That’s land area. In people, you’d have to multiply the population of Boston eighteen times before you got close to the number of Paulistanos in SP.

But this area, his neighborhood, on a winding cobblestone street called Rua Giacomo in the neighborhood of Vila Madalena, reminded Mateo a little of Boston’s North End—not because it looked much like the North End but because that was the closest point of reference Boston had to offer. The way Marlborough Street in Boston reminded him of Paris, and how something about the edge of the Charles River, down by the Science Museum, made him think of Toronto.

But Boston and São Paulo were his two cities—the two he’d branded himself with—and his comfort in each fed off his comfort in the other. They both felt like home. He liked the North End’s curvy, narrow streets, its stone pavement and its old men who sit in lawn chairs on the sidewalks, passing time in loud voices—because it reminded him of Vila Madalena. And here, the colors and the cooking smells and the voices reminded him of all the dark mornings he’d gone into Bova’s, the twenty-four-hour bakery near Prince Street, 5,000 miles away, for warm bread and cookies on the nights when his work took him near there.

He liked these cities because he liked the way they felt when he painted on them.

The tall walls that divided Rua Giacomo from the houses that abutted it looked different now—they’d been painted over again and again in the two years since he’d last been home. Layer upon layer in stories of paint. He wondered if perhaps the street had not always been so narrow. If you sunk a knife into the wall, just how deep would it go? How many layers of paint would it pierce?

He hiked his backpack up on his shoulders and walked up the street. His neighborhood was shaped like an S, a snaking canal of street weaving between residences that stood on the other side of the high walls. It was the perfect place for painting because it was out of the way and the walls made a ready canvas—and because no one in the neighborhood ever seemed to mind. Well, they minded if they caught you in the act—old people especially would throw little rocks until you ran away—but the paintings that appeared overnight were greeted like any other part of a new day, as ever-present and changing as trees.

A spot where one of his own tags had been now sported a huge tropical bird rendered in neon blue. It was signed TUCANO. He wanted to add something next to it, to take the spot back. His palm began to itch. His hand craved a can. No spraypaint allowed in his carry-on; he was twenty hours away from his supplies. All he had was a marker.

He put his backpack down and was digging to find the marker when he noticed a guy, blond and wearing shiny aviator sunglasses, coming down the street, his white button-down shirt open and flapping against his chest—and Mateo’s attraction recalibrated to love of a different kind when he realized it was his cousin. Vinicius was on the other side of the street, and when he was about to pass Mateo, Mateo said, just loud enough to be heard, “
Pssst. Primo
.” And stood up smiling.

Vinicius stopped short, stepping out of one of his flip-flops. He pushed his big sunglasses up over his wavy hair and squinted at Mateo. “É você?” He had a spray of dark freckles across his tanned nose. “Primo Mateo?”

“Yup,” Mateo said with a grin. “It’s me.”

«Just wanted to make sure,» Vinicius said in Portuguese, «before I maul a stranger!»

He bounded across the street, nearly getting clipped by a scooter buzzing by. “Haha!” A clap on Mateo’s shoulder tugged him roughly into a hug and a hard, quick, scratchy kiss landed on his cheek. “Oh!” Mateo smiled against his cousin’s hair and then returned the fast, hard kiss.

Vinicius held him at arm’s length and gawked. “O que você está fazendo em SP?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I told you I was coming, didn’t I!”

Vinicius frowned and shook his head and smiled. “Em Português, primo. The English of me is fuck. You know.”

With his shaggy blond hair and mischievous grin Vinicius looked like he should be carrying a surfboard under one arm and a stolen purse under the other. His features were sharper than Mateo’s, and his hair was unique in their family—Mateo had always given him crap about it, saying blond hair like that was proof he was adopted—but there was clear relation in their eyes. Vinicius had corneas of the same striking green as Mateo.

«You messaged me last night...,» Vinicius said.

«And told you I was coming.»

«Well I didn’t fucking believe you, primo! I thought you were fucking with me. Or drunk!»

«Heh.»

«When did you decide to come? You could’ve given us some warning! Shit!»

«About a half hour before I messaged you.»

Vinicius looked at the sky and shook his head. «Homeboy’s in fucking SP. Your mom’s gonna flip!»

Mateo blushed. Vinicius grabbed him again and tried to pick him up.

«OK, OK.»

«Ha!»

«Somebody painted over me over there,» Mateo said, catching his balance and swiveling away from Vinicius, but with Vini’s arm still clamped over his shoulder. He lifted his chin at the wall. «Who’s the toucan?»

«That would be Edilson. You remember him? From up the street.»

«Edilson Soares? Little Edilson?»

«He’s good, huh?»

«Not bad. I guess. For a toy.»

«Haha, don’t pout like that! You go away, this is what happens. You gotta stay here if you want to protect your turf.»

«Maybe I’ll take the spot back.»

«You can try. Not sure
I
would. Little Edilson’s not so little these days.» He floated his hand flat a few inches above Mateo’s head.

«I’ve been gone a long time, V.»

«Not so long.» He squeezed Mateo’s shoulder. «Not so long between cousins.»

«My mom leave for