Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

They were outside. Sal moved in front of her. “Where do you want to go?” he bluffed, pretending confidence she would go to lunch with him.

“I didn’t say—” She stopped herself. She didn’t want to play teenage games. “I’m going to the coffee shop.”

“Ugh. How about Japanese? It’s good for you. This is New York! You have to be adventurous.”

“I’ve had Japanese food before, Sal.” She laughed at him. He worked so hard at this male mastery. “You can join me at the coffee shop.” She walked off. He didn’t come along.

At the corner, she looked back for Sal. Sal was still where she had left him, caught between his pride and his desire to come. When Luke balked at where Nina wanted to go next, Luke would do the same: bluff and stay back until she moved decisively away, and then he’d come running.

The light changed. Nina almost didn’t cross, forgetting that she could abandon Sal, he wasn’t a three-year-old. So she moved on and, once in the coffee shop, felt some regret after all.

The coffee shop was jammed and noisy. She got herself a tiny table, and as she opened the menu, Sal appeared.

“Jesus, you’re stubborn,” he said. “What are you gonna have? Burger, right?”

Then he was off and chatting, talking about his fat pregnant sisters (that’s what he called them) and about Tad. Tad seemed to be his main concern. Sal was obviously envious of Nina’s job. He repeatedly asked what she had done to get it and flatly didn’t accept her answer that Tad had simply offered it to her, presumably on the basis of her work in class.

“Come on, you must have asked him if he had any jobs?”

“No, I didn’t. Never occurred to me.”

“Come on!”

“Okay, I paid him to give it to me.”

“That’s what Rosalie thinks. That you offered to work for free.”

Rosalie was one of the pair of girls who hung on Sal’s every word, trailing him through the hallways, giggling from the thrill by his presence. Nina smiled at the thought of Rosalie’s envy. She enjoyed its novelty. When was the last time someone was jealous of what she had?

“Don’t tell her I told you,” Sal said.

“Oh, she must have wanted you to tell me.”

“No! She likes you.”

Nina laughed. Sal seemed so familiar to her. He shouldn’t — was he like Luke? Like her brother?

“Really, she does! She just said that ’cause she’s jealous.”

“It’s okay,” Nina reassured him. He was fascinated by competition, but didn’t want to admit it caused bad feelings. Who was that like? Eric?

“Is it true?” Sal asked.

“Is what true?”

“That Tad doesn’t pay you?”

Nina again laughed at him. He waited for her to stop, as if it were a commercial message interrupting his favorite show’s denouement. “He pays me. Minimum wage. He doesn’t have to pay me. Some of them aren’t paid, they’re interning. But they get school credit for that.”

“That must be what Rosalie meant.” Sal ate his hamburger in four bites, his jaw dropping like a crocodile’s and swallowing chunks. Ketchup appeared at the corner of his mouth. “What a ripoff.”

“Sal, if you want to, you can look at everything as a rip-off.”

“’Cause everything is a rip-off.”

“Then nothing is a rip-off.”

“Huh?”

“Something has to not be a rip-off for everything else to be. If everything is a rip-off, then everything is equally fair.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit. That’s something rich people think to make them feel better ’cause they’re doing the ripping off.”

He was like Eric, just like Eric when Nina first met him: hungry, eager to make an impression, intrigued by her, disgusted by the rules of the game he so desperately wanted to win. Only then, Nina was young, and Eric’s view of life was new, and seemed refreshing: a forest cleared of the dead brush of her family’s hypocritical values. Her family pretended winning didn’t matter to them; but they talked of nothing but who was best skier, best squash player, best sailor, and they believed winners always deserved their victories.

“Never thought of that, right?” Sal said, pleased with himself, convinced he was teaching poor naïve Nina the way of the world.

“Are you going to hate your life if you don’t make money?” Nina asked.

“You mean, if I starve?”

“No. If you don’t become rich.”

“You mean, if I have to live in the Bronx like my parents and have fat babies who grow up to have fat babies?”

Nina laughed while she nodded.

“I’ll kill myself.”

Nina shook her head. “Give me a serious answer.”

“That is a serious answer, beautiful. You know, you are beautiful.”

“You don’t have to flirt with me, Sal.”

“Hey — I mean it. I’m not playing. You are beautiful.”

Sal was thrilled to be saying this. He sat straight up, at attention, his eyes glistening, his nostrils open, his mouth grave. She watched him, fascinated. He was a visitation from her past — Eric wooing her. Nina had utterly believed in Eric’s passion, had believed his romance was inspired by pure love for her. She thought she had won an old-fashioned chivalrous adoration.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Sal said, high on his feelings, skimming on pure sentiment. “I think about you all the time. I don’t want other women; they’re impure compared to you. I wish I could touch your hair, lie next to you in bed, and hold your hand. I close my eyes and see you.” He closed his eyes and kept them shut while he talked. “It’s like you’re not even human. I’ve never seen skin like yours — and your eyes! They glow like a cat’s and see right through me.” He opened and gazed at her. “Your eyes catch me and I have to follow them. I’m yours. I love you. I used to dream about making love to you. But I think I’d be too scared. I’m not good enough. But I can’t lie. Not telling you what I feel, just pretending everything’s normal. I love you. It’s so great to say it. I love you.”

Sal sat there, erect, awaiting her judgment.

But all she could think of was Eric. Young, bedding her. Young, marrying her. Young, impregnating her. And now, in only a few years, old and harassing her. Sal just wants to fuck me, Nina thought. Confirm his escape from his neighborhood, get a visa to somewhere else. She hadn’t thought that for a second when Eric courted her. Was the difference Sal? No, Nina was older, and knew better.

I wish I didn’t, she thought. I wish I could fall in love with this boy and be fooled all over again.

WHEN DIANE called to invite Eric and Luke over for a late-afternoon play date, and suggested they stay and order pizza, so the boys could have their first dinner together, for a moment, Eric thought, she wants to see me alone. En route, he dismissed that idea. Sure, Diane knew Nina would be working, Eric had told her about Nina’s schedule the other day in the park, but probably her husband would also be there.

He wasn’t. Although Diane was dressed casually, she was made up and looked alluring. She immediately offered Eric wine. There was a spread of cheese and crackers out on the coffee table. There were fresh-cut flowers in several vases, there was music playing, there were no toys strewn anywhere, and she told Byron to take Luke into his room and show Luke his new toy, Snake Mountain.

“Peter working late?” Eric asked as coolly as he could.

“Yes, there’s a big opening tonight. I guess I should have gone, but I didn’t feel like it.” She had a keen edge to her voice when, as Eric knew well, by the end of the day most mothers would have given up on cheerfulness. What was so exciting about having the father of your three-year-old’s best friend over for pizza?