have a lot more light in your apartment than I do, she said.
Which was a nice call. About all I had in the apartment was light.
I played Andrés Jiménez for her—you know, Yo quiero que mi Borinquén sea libre y soberana— and then we drank a pot of café. El Pico, I told her. Nothing but the best. We didn’t have much to talk about. She was depressed and tired and I had the worst gas of my life. Twice I had to excuse myself. Twice in an hour. She must have thought that bizarre as hell but both times I came out of the bathroom she was staring deeply into her café, the way the fortune-tellers will do back on the Island. Crying all the time had made her more beautiful. Grief will do that sometimes. Not for me. Loretta had left months ago and I still looked like hell. Having Girlfriend in the apartment only made me feel shabbier. She picked up a cheeb seed from a crack in the table and smiled.
Do you smoke? I asked.
It makes me break out, she said.
Makes me sleepwalk.
Honey will stop that. It’s an old Caribbean cure. I had a tío who would sleepwalk. One teaspoon a night took it out of him.
Wow, I said.
That night, she put on a free-style tape, Noël maybe, and I could hear her moving around her apartment. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have been a dancer.
I never tried the honey and she never came back. Whenever I saw her on the stairs we would trade hi’s but she never slowed down to talk, never gave a smile or any other kind of encouragement. I took that as a hint. At the end of the month she got her hair cut short. No more straighteners, no more science fiction combs.
I like that, I told her. I was coming back from the liquor store and she was on her way out with a woman friend.
Makes you look fierce.
She smiled. That’s exactly what I wanted.
EDISON, NEW JERSEY
The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no one lets us in. I bang on the front door and Wayne hits the back and I can hear our double drum shaking the windows. Right then I have this feeling that someone is inside, laughing at us.
This guy better have a good excuse, Wayne says, lumbering around the newly planted rosebushes. This is bullshit.
You’re telling me, I say but Wayne’s the one who takes this job too seriously. He pounds some more on the door, his face jiggling. A couple of times he raps on the windows, tries squinting through the curtains. I take a more philosophical approach; I walk over to the ditch that has been cut next to the road, a drainage pipe half filled with water, and sit down. I smoke and watch a mama duck and her three ducklings scavenge the grassy bank and then float downstream like they’re on the same string. Beautiful, I say but Wayne doesn’t hear. He’s banging on the door with the staple gun.
At nine Wayne picks me up at the showroom and by then I have our route planned out. The order forms tell me everything I need to know about the customers we’ll be dealing with that day. If someone is just getting a fifty-two-inch card table delivered then you know they aren’t going to give you too much of a hassle but they also aren’t going to tip. Those are your Spotswood, Sayreville and Perth Amboy deliveries. The pool tables go north to the rich suburbs—Livingston, Ridgewood, Bedminster.
You should see our customers. Doctors, diplomats, surgeons, presidents of universities, ladies in slacks and silk tops who sport thin watches you could trade in for a car, who wear comfortable leather shoes. Most of them prepare for us by laying down a path of yesterday’s Washington Post from the front door to the game room. I make them pick it all up. I say: Carajo, what if we slip? Do you know what two hundred pounds of slate could do to a floor? The threat of property damage puts the chop-chop in their step. The best customers leave us alone until the bill has to be signed. Every now and then we’ll be given water in paper cups. Few have offered
Which was a nice call. About all I had in the apartment was light.
I played Andrés Jiménez for her—you know, Yo quiero que mi Borinquén sea libre y soberana— and then we drank a pot of café. El Pico, I told her. Nothing but the best. We didn’t have much to talk about. She was depressed and tired and I had the worst gas of my life. Twice I had to excuse myself. Twice in an hour. She must have thought that bizarre as hell but both times I came out of the bathroom she was staring deeply into her café, the way the fortune-tellers will do back on the Island. Crying all the time had made her more beautiful. Grief will do that sometimes. Not for me. Loretta had left months ago and I still looked like hell. Having Girlfriend in the apartment only made me feel shabbier. She picked up a cheeb seed from a crack in the table and smiled.
Do you smoke? I asked.
It makes me break out, she said.
Makes me sleepwalk.
Honey will stop that. It’s an old Caribbean cure. I had a tío who would sleepwalk. One teaspoon a night took it out of him.
Wow, I said.
That night, she put on a free-style tape, Noël maybe, and I could hear her moving around her apartment. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have been a dancer.
I never tried the honey and she never came back. Whenever I saw her on the stairs we would trade hi’s but she never slowed down to talk, never gave a smile or any other kind of encouragement. I took that as a hint. At the end of the month she got her hair cut short. No more straighteners, no more science fiction combs.
I like that, I told her. I was coming back from the liquor store and she was on her way out with a woman friend.
Makes you look fierce.
She smiled. That’s exactly what I wanted.
EDISON, NEW JERSEY
The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no one lets us in. I bang on the front door and Wayne hits the back and I can hear our double drum shaking the windows. Right then I have this feeling that someone is inside, laughing at us.
This guy better have a good excuse, Wayne says, lumbering around the newly planted rosebushes. This is bullshit.
You’re telling me, I say but Wayne’s the one who takes this job too seriously. He pounds some more on the door, his face jiggling. A couple of times he raps on the windows, tries squinting through the curtains. I take a more philosophical approach; I walk over to the ditch that has been cut next to the road, a drainage pipe half filled with water, and sit down. I smoke and watch a mama duck and her three ducklings scavenge the grassy bank and then float downstream like they’re on the same string. Beautiful, I say but Wayne doesn’t hear. He’s banging on the door with the staple gun.
At nine Wayne picks me up at the showroom and by then I have our route planned out. The order forms tell me everything I need to know about the customers we’ll be dealing with that day. If someone is just getting a fifty-two-inch card table delivered then you know they aren’t going to give you too much of a hassle but they also aren’t going to tip. Those are your Spotswood, Sayreville and Perth Amboy deliveries. The pool tables go north to the rich suburbs—Livingston, Ridgewood, Bedminster.
You should see our customers. Doctors, diplomats, surgeons, presidents of universities, ladies in slacks and silk tops who sport thin watches you could trade in for a car, who wear comfortable leather shoes. Most of them prepare for us by laying down a path of yesterday’s Washington Post from the front door to the game room. I make them pick it all up. I say: Carajo, what if we slip? Do you know what two hundred pounds of slate could do to a floor? The threat of property damage puts the chop-chop in their step. The best customers leave us alone until the bill has to be signed. Every now and then we’ll be given water in paper cups. Few have offered
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