Junot Diaz - Drown

Probably a fucking banker. What’s the first name?

Just an initial, C. Clarence Pruitt sounds about right.

Yeah, Clarence, Wayne yuks.

Pruitt. Most of our customers have names like this, court case names: Wooley, Maynard, Gass, Binder, but the people from my town, our names, you see on convicts or coupled together on boxing cards.

We take our time. Go to the Rio Diner, blow an hour and all the dough we have in our pockets. Wayne is talking about Charlene and I’m leaning my head against a thick pane of glass.

Pruitt’s neighborhood has recently gone up and only his court is complete. Gravel roams off this way and that, shaky. You can see inside the other houses, their newly formed guts, nailheads bright and sharp on the fresh timber. Wrinkled blue tarps protect wiring and fresh plaster. The driveways are mud and on each lawn stand huge stacks of sod. We park in front of Pruitt’s house and bang on the door. I give Wayne a hard look when I see no car in the garage.

Yes? I hear a voice inside say.

We’re the delivery guys, I yell.

A bolt slides, a lock turns, the door opens. She stands in our way, wearing black shorts and a gloss of red on her lips and I’m sweating.

Come in, yes? She stands back from the door, holding it open.

Sounds like Spanish, Wayne says.

No shit, I say, switching over. Do you remember me?

No, she says.

I look over at Wayne. Can you believe this?

I can believe anything, kid.

You heard us didn’t you? The other day, that was you.

She shrugs and opens the door wider.

You better tell her to prop that with a chair. Wayne heads back to unlock the truck.

You hold that door, I say.

We’ve had our share of delivery trouble. Trucks break down. Customers move and leave us with an empty house. Handguns get pointed. Slate gets dropped, a rail goes missing. The felt is the wrong color, the Dufferins get left in the warehouse. Back in the day, the girlfriend and I made a game of this. A prediction game. In the mornings I rolled onto my pillow and said, What’s today going to be like?

Let me check. She put her fingers up to her widow’s peak and that motion would shift her breasts, her hair. We never slept under any covers, not in spring, fall or summer and our bodies were dark and thin the whole year.

I see an asshole customer, she murmured. Unbearable traffic. Wayne’s going to work slow. And then you’ll come home to me.

Will I get rich?

You’ll come home to me. That’s the best I can do. And then we’d kiss hungrily because this was how we loved each other.

The game was part of our mornings, the way our showers and our sex and our breakfasts were. We stopped playing only when it started to go wrong for us, when I’d wake up and listen to the traffic outside without waking her, when everything was a fight.

She stays in the kitchen while we work. I can hear her humming. Wayne’s shaking his right hand like he’s scalded his fingertips. Yes, she’s fine. She has her back to me, her hands stirring around in a full sink, when I walk in.

I try to sound conciliatory. You’re from the city?

A nod.

Where about?

Washington Heights.

Dominicana, I say. Quisqueyana. She nods. What street?

I don’t know the address, she says. I have it written down. My mother and my brothers live there.

I’m Dominican, I say.

You don’t look it.

I get a glass of water. We’re both staring out at the muddy lawn.

She says, I didn’t answer the door because I wanted to piss him off.

Piss who off?

I want to get out of here, she says.

Out of here?

I’ll pay you for a ride.

I don’t think so, I say.

Aren’t you from Nueva York?

No.

Then why did you ask the address?

Why? I have family near there.

Would it be that big of a problem?

I say in English that she should have her boss bring her but she stares at me blankly. I switch over.

He’s a pendejo, she says, suddenly angry. I put down the glass, move next to her to wash it. She’s exactly my height and smells of liquid detergent and has tiny beautiful moles on her neck, an archipelago leading down into her clothes.

Here, she says, putting out her hand but I finish it and go back to the den.

Do you know what she wants us to do? I say to Wayne.

Her room is upstairs, a bed, a closet, a dresser, yellow wallpaper. Spanish Cosmo and El Diario thrown on the floor. Four hangers’ worth of clothes in the closet and only the top dresser drawer is full. I put my hand on the bed and the cotton sheets are cool.

Pruitt has pictures of himself in his room. He’s tan and probably has been to more countries than I know capitals for. Photos of him on vacations, on beaches, standing beside a wide-mouth Pacific salmon he’s hooked. The size of his dome would have made Broca proud. The bed is made and his wardrobe spills out onto chairs and a line of dress shoes follows the far wall. A bachelor. I find an open box of Trojans in his dresser beneath a stack of boxer shorts. I put one of the condoms in my pocket and stick the rest under his bed.

I find her in her room. He likes clothes, she says.

A habit of money, I say but I can’t translate it right; I end up agreeing with her. Are you going to pack?

She holds up her purse. I have everything I need. He can keep the rest of it.

You should take some of your things.

I don’t care about that vaina. I just want to go.

Don’t be stupid, I say. I open her dresser and pull out the shorts on top and a handful of soft bright panties fall out and roll down the front of my jeans. There are more in the drawer. I try to catch them but as soon as I touch their fabric I let everything go.

Leave it. Go on, she says and begins to put them back in the dresser, her square back to me, the movement of her hands smooth and easy.

Look, I say.

Don’t worry. She doesn’t look up.

I go downstairs. Wayne is sinking the bolts into the slate with the Makita. You can’t do it, he says.

Why not?

Kid. We have to finish this.

I’ll be back before you know it. A quick trip, in out.

Kid. He stands up slowly; he’s nearly twice as old as me.

I go to the window and look out. New gingkoes stand in rows beside the driveway. A thousand years ago when I was still in college I learned something about them. Living fossils. Unchanged since their inception millions of years ago. You tagged Charlene, didn’t you?

Sure did, he answers easily.

I take the truck keys out of the toolbox. I’ll be right back, I promise.

My mother still has pictures of the girlfriend in her apartment. The girlfriend’s the sort of person who never looks bad. There’s a picture of us at the bar where I taught her to play pool. She’s leaning on the Schmelke I stole for her, nearly a grand worth of cue, frowning at the shot I left her, a shot she’d go on to miss.

The picture of us in Florida is the biggest — shiny, framed, nearly a foot tall. We’re in our bathing suits and the legs of some stranger frame the right. She has her butt in the sand, knees folded up in front of her because she knew I was sending the picture home to my moms; she didn’t want my mother to see her bikini, didn’t want my mother to think her a whore. I’m crouching next to her, smiling, one hand on her thin shoulder, one of her moles showing between my fingers.

My mother won’t look at the pictures or talk about her when I’m around but my sister says she still cries over the breakup. Around me my mother’s polite, sits quietly on the couch while I tell her about what I’m reading and how work has been. Do you have anyone? she asks me sometimes.

Yes, I say.

She talks to my sister on the side, says, In my dreams they’re still together.