The Flowers (6 page)

“I sell my sweetheart now, you make a five-dollar commission.” He turned his head back to me with a smile that made me want to buy a car from him. “Whadaya say?”

“You don't have to.”

“Now you stop that and take what I'm offering. You my good luck, see?”

“Okay then, sure.”

He stepped toward the man with an outstretched hand, and I took the dolly back to the toolshed.

Cloyd was over by the front window, swirling what was left in his whiskey glass, no ice cube.

“He was talking to you?”

I made a yes look and walked to the big window.

“What'd he say?”

“That he's selling that car,” I said.

“Selling a car.”

“That's what he said.”

“That one? To that black man?”

I didn't answer. I stared out the window too. There they were out there, talking next to the T-Bird, the passenger's door open, Pink bent over the top of it, almost laughing, talking it up, the man sitting inside with his legs on the curb.

“He's working some angle.” He drank the rest. I already knew Cloyd didn't like black people. He didn't say so, but it wasn't like you needed to ask.

Cloyd turned away from me and started walking toward his office, when he spun back around. I noticed that the laces on his work boots were untied. I thought, that's what he does when he's getting drunk.

“Let me tell you something.” He was way louder than he needed to be. It didn't even seem like he was talking to me.

I made a turn to his face, which seemed mad, but I saw the empty whiskey glass. He had it low and was gripping it more like he was about to throw it, rolling it in his hand. I'd turned my head away from the window but didn't move my feet. I waited for him to go on, but he didn't.

It was like he was chewing, his mouth full, and he had to swallow before he could talk. Then the office phone rang and he rushed to get it.

“What happened?” my mom asked, almost in a whisper. She probably couldn't help but hear him talking to me. He was in his office being too loud with someone on the phone. She said it more nervous than she had to. She was holding a hairbrush. It seemed like she came out of their bedroom, and I couldn't tell if she was coming or going. She was all sprayed and decked out, maybe a new dress and new heels, like she'd be when she was going out on a date or even shopping.

“Nothing,” I said.

He was in his office now. You could hear him too easy on the phone.

“Why is he so … you know?” she asked.

“Why would I know?”

“Were you guys talking?”

“A long time ago already,” I said.

“De qué?”

“Nothing.”

“Sonny, I hear him.”

“I think it was about French,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She went over to the front window too and started squinting out there. “Did you take his trash out?”

All she had to do was look.

She started seeing what was going on outside. “It was about aquel hombre, wasn't it?”

They were still out there, and the hood of the T-Bird was up, though they weren't even near to looking inside. “I dunno, Mom, okay?” I took the long way around her for the bedroom.
I was mad at her. I don't think I'd ever been so mad at her before. No, I didn't really like this husband of hers—the Cloyd, the Hernández twins were calling him, a lumpy wad that held it together—but that wasn't it, because I didn't care about him no more, bad or good. And even though I knew it was his decision about Goof, I blamed her and her only. I wasn't gonna say nothing about it unless one of them brought it up. What for? I wanted to show God how I was a man, not him and not her. But yeah I was so mad at her for letting him get away with it. I mean, I could understand why a dog shouldn't live inside an apartment with no yard, but couldn't she at least fight this dude a little about it? If she didn't care how I felt, didn't she care any about Goof? Didn't she even miss Goofy a little? Didn't she think I would?

For a while my room was being neat. That could be because I didn't have so much to mess up. My mom never picked up after me at home, before we moved here, except maybe once every few months, if somebody was gonna be coming over. For a minute she did almost every day. She even made my bed. I didn't think it was for good reasons. More some game. I don't think she was too happy. I was sure she would want to bust anytime. It's how she was. I put my blanket—that's what I slept with, a blanket, no sheet, and it was the same blanket I used at home, which she'd folded and left at the foot of the bed—under my head instead of the pillow, and I watched the ceiling instead of the television. And I listened. When I didn't hear my mom or them, I just listened harder. The curtains were closed, but the window wasn't. I heard the yelling from upstairs. Once I got used to it, I didn't have to listen harder, it just got louder. I wasn't sure if I couldn't make it out because it was in Spanish, or I wouldn't have been able to hear it anyways, even if it were in English. I used to feel better about talking Spanish. My mom used to speak it a lot more, and I used to hang out with
my grandma, who didn't speak English, and I could talk with my primos who lived there with my tíos, but that all stopped once Grandma died. I never saw my cousins no more after that either. And then my mom only talked Spanish when she had to, which mostly she didn't have to, or maybe to say something to me in my ear when people were around. So I never spoke it either, never really tried. But I still could understand it, mostly, so I was listening.

The Spanish came from where that girl lived, in #4, which was a two-bedroom. I'd seen her like twice, and one time was while I was sweeping and I saw them around the TV. I saw her through the screen and window so good it was like she leaked through the mesh. She looked back at me too. Since I never saw her where I went to school, I thought she might go to St. Xavier's. I was sure she was my age, or close. She had a baby brother or sister who cried. Her family practically never went out, and she didn't either, not even when they went grocery shopping. Her parents both worked at night, swing shift, and they always went together.

The loud male voice up there, almost always yelling, didn't really stop, just went from closer to farther away, but a radio came on, and it was steady, and though it wasn't on very loud, it covered up the man's voice, her dad. She was listening to the same station I liked, the hits station, so I like listened to it with her and imagined her listening next to me. I liked her. She would like me, she had to. She was really pretty. Uu-ee pretty, made my stomach do circles. Like I said, I saw her twice, and that one time I knew she saw me back.

“You just check her shit out,” one of the twins said. We were walking the tracks, going home slow, avoiding the worst grease puddles, kicking dented cans and throwing dirty rocks at them, seeing who could keep themselves balanced on top of the rail longest.
“Look her up, look her down. Nod your head like a brother, like bad, you know?” He nodded his head slow, bobbing his head to the right, squinting his eyes, even though he had his glasses on.

The other twin was polishing his glasses with the bottom of his white shirt. They both wore the same short-sleeve white shirts, no tails, ironed too, almost every day. It was almost like they had a Catholic uniform, but the color of the slacks changed, and the pants didn't always match each other in style but the shoes were shined, both pairs black wingtips.

“I think I'd be getting more worked up for la güera, bro,” he said.

“Who you talking about?” his brother asked.

“La blondie,” he said, “who lives right upstairs from este Sonny. Remember he told us?”

“Oh yeah, that's right!” his brother said, like it was all as easy as that, and then he turned to me. “You see her again yet?”

They made me laugh all the time because they talked so smart but they were so fucking stupid. They knew as much about sex as they did these girls in the apartment building. I couldn't believe I told them anything.

Like, for instance, about the nudie magazine I ripped off from the mailbox. It's because it came in a brown wrapper and I thought I would, you know, take it. It was sitting there, and nobody was around. The label was addressed to the man in #2, a one-bedroom. He was Ben and he lived with Gina and they pretended to be married and Cloyd told my mom he knew they were only shacking up. Cloyd didn't care because they paid the rent on time and had professional jobs—he wore a suit and tie and left early. They were like “with it” people and, curtains always closed, they were either at work or closed up in there watching or listening to a complicated music system and a big television connected to it—I saw the TV one time because I passed by when their front door was open. If they were home, you could hear one or the other. So
yeah, really I already knew who the magazine belonged to when I was bagging it. It was that I was supposed to take out the pile of throwaway ads no one ever wanted that the mailman put there for everyone. And the magazine in the wrapper could look like trash, because of that brown wrapper. That's what I would've said if someone saw me take it. That I threw it away. Both the twins were so impressed with my story they could barely shake their heads. Like doing shit like this was so dangerous. They both thought what I did was way fucking wild.

I was taking off the screens and cleaning them with a stiff brush and putting them back. It was the latest job Cloyd said I should do. So far it was easy, even on the second floor, because they were at eye level, but I hadn't been to the backside of the building yet. I would have to get those screens high up from a ladder. It was the thing I was asked to do this week. Cloyd was even saying—though not exactly, I admit it—that maybe I'd be paid something when I got it all done. I wanted him to, but the thing was it wasn't about money for me. Or only. He didn't have to know I didn't mind doing it anyways.

“Hey, cutie boy! You trying to sneak in on me while I'm in the shower?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said.

Cindy was standing there with a towel wrapped around her, her hair and shoulders dripping wet. I was brushing the screen of #3 from her window. She'd pulled back her curtains to talk to me; then she drew them wider with the cord. The glass pane was already slid all the way open. She was smiling a lot.

The towel wrapped around her was short and her thighs, which I could see a lot of, were still drippy wet too, but I was too uncomfortable to look too long. I took the screen, which had been leaning against the stucco wall, into my free hand, and pulled it up next to me.

“I'm probably supposed to tell you before I take the screen off. It's that I'm cleaning them.” I showed her the brush in my other hand.

“I see that now. I was hoping you were just going to come in and say hi to me.”

I laughed kind of a nervous ha-ha-ha.

“Do you want a coke?”

“Sure.”

“Then you have to come in,” she said, turning away from the window and opening the door.

She walked toward her kitchen. I watched her moving away, shower water dribbling down her legs, and then go into the refrigerator and bend down some and get me a soda. I was still standing outside, the screen in one hand and the brush in the other.

“You can come inside and you can even sit down,” she said. Then she smiled sexy at me again. She popped the can for me and put it on the built-in breakfast counter. “I'm gonna go dry off and put something on.”

I went over to where she left the coke. She didn't shut the bedroom door all the way, and from where I was I could see where she was. I didn't think I should let myself find out more, and I didn't either.

“Go sit down and make yourself at home,” she said from the bedroom.

The couch was this old one, both too saggy and too hard at the same time. I might not have noticed that if I hadn't been living in Cloyd's. His furniture felt brand new, even when it wasn't. Maybe old enough but never sat on. The cushions were hard in some better way. Our old furniture at home was about halfway between his and hers. Which meant her stuff was really gacho, really raggy and stained. I sat on the front edge of the couch and sipped.

She came out barefoot, in shorts with a drawstring and a white blouse. She was still not completely dried off, and she was taking the towel and rubbing her hair in it with both hands. I liked her hands and the way the light shined against the nail polish on the tips of her fingers.

She sat down on a stuffed chair that maybe went with the couch. The material on the set was worn, but at least there were no tears, though it seemed like it could rip any second, and I didn't want to be the one who did it. The TV set was the only thing brand new.

“It's nice to have someone here,” she said. “I never get any company.” She put the towel down. “Nobody except my sister. She comes over, sometimes a lot, sometimes less. Lately it's less because she's mad at me. I don't have any friends, not one!”

I wasn't sure what to say. I almost thought of telling her that the only friends I had since we moved were the twins.

“It all depends on whether or not she has a job,” she said, “or, if she does, what shift it is.”

“You're married though, right? That's not alone.”

“Yes.”

“Well, like, he's around then.”

“
When
he's around,” she said with a little nastiness.

“He's not here a lot?” I asked. I don't think I had seen him, but I did hear him. Since they were directly upstairs, you knew when he was there. We probably didn't hear her so much because, like now, she went around barefoot.

“He's here when he's not out.”

“At work?”

“Well, yeah. But lots when he's out with his friends and drinking and who knows. He's here when he wants something, like sex, or to sleep, or to eat, or to drink, or to have more sex with me once in a while.”