Wrong Thing (4 page)

He had something else to think about first. He had bought some speed from a dealer at an unusually low price, and made a serious profit when he sold it. Then he'd found out why it was so cheap, when some of his customers came to him and said the stuff must be Alka-Seltzer or something, that it had no effect. He'd called the guy he'd bought it from and said he wanted his money back. The guy kept saying okay, but he never paid up.

On Sunday night, the Kid went to the guy's home. He lived in a shared apartment on Don Cubero Alley, just off Cerrillos Road. It was snowing, and the Kid sat in the Aztec Cafe and drank a hot cider before making his visit. When he'd finished his cider, he left the Aztec and walked along Cerrillos. He liked the dark and the streetlights and the wind blowing the snow and nobody else around. Sometimes it felt as though he liked everything. He walked up Don Cubero and found the apartment. He knocked, and the guy came to the door.

His name was Jeff. He was white, around twenty-five, and always seemed to be about to laugh when he dealt with the Kid.

“Oh, hey,” he said, when he saw the Kid. “Come on in.”

“No, thanks,” the Kid said. “I don't have time. I just came to tell you not to worry about giving me the money back. Shit happens.”

“For real?”

“Yeah,” the Kid said. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and drew it across Jeff's face, left and right, ripping deep. The edge of the blade was serrated so that it would leave a permanent mark wherever it cut.

“Ohshitshitshitshitohgod—” Jeff's face opened up, came apart, his mouth got huge, wide, and he started to move without knowing whether he was trying to back away or turn and run or defend himself, while the Kid just stood there holding the knife.

His roommate came out of the living room. “Oh, fuck. I'm calling the cops.”

“You do that, homes,” the Kid said. “If you want what he just got. You call the cops.” Then he looked at Jeff. “And if you say a word to them, I'll come back and cut your fucking ears off.” He wiped the blade on Jeff's shirt and walked away.

“Oh, man,” said Jeff's roommate. “Oh, man. He cut you. He really cut you.”

“Lock the fucking door in case he comes back,” Jeff bawled. His roommate went to the door. Just before he closed it, he saw the Kid walking away from the apartment, walking against the snow.

On Monday evening, the Kid went to Lisa's house. It was around seven. He knocked on the door. She opened it, and she was dressed the way she usually was, her make-up carefully applied. “Come on in.”

They went straight to her bedroom. She put a CD in her stereo and hit the play button. This was around the time that Mexicans were getting out of the habit of calling blacks gringos and starting to identify with rap, so the album was
The Chronic.
“You like this?” she asked the Kid.

“Yeah.” He took off his shoes and they lay on the bed.

Bow-wow-wow, yippee-o, yippee-ay, Doggy Dogg's in the mutha-fuckin' house . . .

“Did you miss me?” she said.

“Yeah.” The Kid wanted to kiss her, but he didn't know how to start, didn't know how long they had to talk before they could do anything else.

Lisa put him out of his misery. She snuggled up to him and kissed him on the mouth. They kissed for a while, and the Kid was afraid he was going to come in his pants. He didn't last much longer. They took their clothes off, and when the Kid saw Lisa's naked body, the precome was dripping from his cock. He was lying on his back. As soon as she touched him, he spurted into her hand.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don't be,” she said. “I like it.” She looked into his face as she rubbed his come into her tits. He was hard again in minutes. They made out for a while, then Lisa said, “You want to do me?”

“Yeah.” The Kid wasn't sure. He looked at the size of his cock and couldn't imagine how it would fit into her. He was afraid it would hurt him or her.

She made to straddle him. The Kid said, “We need to get a rubber or something . . . ”

“I'm on the pill.”

“You been with many guys?”

“Not many. You think I'm a ho or something?”

“I just asked.”

“You're the fifth. I take the pill for heavy periods.”

“Oh.”

“How about you?”

“Do I take the pill?”

“Am I your first?”

“No.” He never knew if she believed him.

His cock got soft as she tried to pull it inside her. “What's wrong?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

She sucked on his cock for a little while. It got hard again, but softened when she tried to fuck him. “You nervous?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He was looking at his soft cock, not at her.

“It's okay,” she said. “C'mere.” She put her arms around him and guided his face to her tits. He kissed the left one. “Suck it,” she said. He did, and she stroked his hair and bit his ear, moaning a little. She lay back and moved his head down her body, letting him lick her navel, then pushed him down farther until he was licking at her cunt.

He was afraid he wouldn't like the taste, but he did. He pushed his tongue inside her and she came right away, grinding against his face so hard it hurt his nose. When she was quiet again, she pulled him up on top of her and kissed him. His cock was very hard, and she got it into her wetness just by pressing against him. He let out a small whimper that somehow seemed very loud, and clung to her.

The Kid and Lisa were together a lot in the next few weeks. They'd go see movies, sit around coffeehouses or hang out at Tommy's place. The Kid began to think of her as his girlfriend, though they never talked about it that way.

One night they were at Tommy's. A lot of people were smoking, and the Kid didn't smoke. Neither did Lisa. They decided to go outside.

There was nobody in the yard but them. The Kid put an arm around Lisa and kissed her. She kissed him back, opening her mouth and reaching for his tongue with hers. But then she stepped away from him.

“I don't want to do this anymore,” she said.

The Kid didn't know why, and he didn't ask. He was too frightened.

“Okay,” he said.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It's okay.”

“I'm going back inside.”

“Okay. See you later.”

He did see her, usually at Tommy's, sometimes around town. She always said hello, but that was it. Pretty soon, the Kid stopped going to Tommy's.

Something had changed in him. I don't know what it was, because the Kid never knew what it was, and he wasn't someone who'd have tried to figure it out. It had something to do with Lisa, but it wasn't all about her. The Kid started going to see boxing shows, and he went to a gym and sparred a little, but he wasn't that good at it and he never fought a competition. It was just because Lisa had done it. Then that got old for him and he pretty much forgot about her, except for the sex. But something had still changed. He had never really minded the way his life was, and now he did.

His sister had a recording of Abba's greatest hits, and would play it constantly. The song “Chiquitita” was on it. When the Kid heard it coming from her room, it always conjured a picture in him of a young blonde woman wearing a woolen hat. Snow behind her. There was no reference to such an image in the song, so he probably got it from hearing that Abba was Swiss or Swedish—he was never sure which, and he wouldn't have known the difference anyway.

That winter, inside his head, he kept singing that song to himself. Or rather, the fragments of it that he knew. All the guys he knew thought Abba was pathetic, music for little girls and gay men, but he thought the song was beautiful. “Chiquitita, tell me what's wrong/ You're enchained by your own sorrow/In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow/. . . Chiquitita, tell me the truth/I'm a shoulder you can cry on/Your best friend, and the one you must rely on.” That gorgeous guitar, and the melody so sad. And her voice so caring, so concerned. The Kid wanted her to care for him.

It mattered to him now that his family didn't. For the first time, he began reading fiction, the stories in his sister's teen magazines, stories of true love in which lonely, hurt people always ended up being saved.

Nobody saved the Kid. But nothing could stop him from dreaming about it. He started cutting school, and, so he wouldn't meet anybody who knew him and might tell his parents, he'd walk out of the barrio and into the suburbs. The trees would be huge and bare of leaves and coated with frost. He'd trudge along, curled up inside his head, singing “Chiquitita” to himself. He'd imagine the blonde woman in the snow was singing for him, because she loved him and couldn't stand to see him hurting so much. She was telling him that he had to trust her, that she was on his side and wanted to be with him, no matter what anybody else thought or said.

He'd sometimes go into a store or cafe to get something to eat, and sometimes the store clerk or waiter would ask if he shouldn't be at school. At fifteen, he looked younger. No, he'd say, he was doing some kind of project. One time, he was crossing the Plaza in the center of Santa Fe, and a landscaping crew was working on the gardens. One of them, a guy in his twenties or thirties, looked at him and said, “You cutting school?”

“No. I've got the day off”

“So how come you've got a bag with your school books?”

“This ain't my school bag. There's no books in it.”

“Let me see.”

“It's none of your business.”

“Little fuck!” The guy walked towards the Kid, dropping the rake he'd been using. The Kid turned and ran, sprinting hard, swinging his arms. When he stopped and looked back, he saw that the man hadn't come after him. He was talking to one of his workmates. If it hadn't been in the middle of the day, in front of witnesses, the man would probably be dead.

T
he Kid found some advantages in his parents not caring about him. It meant he could do anything he wanted. They would only have cared about his cutting school because it might have gotten them in trouble. The Kid never knew if they realized that he was dealing drugs. But they must have known he was doing something illegal, because he didn't have a job and he had more money than most of the kids his age who had jobs. But they just told him, over and over, that if he ever brought the cops to their door he would never be allowed back in their house.

When he was sixteen, he paid twelve hundred dollars for a clunking old 1977 Chevy Impala. It looked ready for the scrap yard, but it had a very good engine, and girls liked it. He'd drive around Santa Fe in the evenings, sometimes parking on one of the streets off the Plaza, walking up to the Plaza and hanging out there with his friends, making the rich kids nervous. In Santa Fe, the main activity for kids at night is driving around trying to find a party. On weekend nights, he'd often drive to Albuquerque, go to an all ages show, or just cruise around.

The Kid was making better and better connections in the drug industry. He was becoming known in places that he'd never even heard of, places South of the Border. The narcos knew of him as somebody who would be big in the life, a child who terrified adults.