we'll be arguing about our inability to have a child and I'll have to beg him for sex. You never thought your relationship, the one you'd been waiting all your life for, would be anything but magnificent. Clara did not rue the falseness of such optimism now; if anything, as she glided in to sleep, she found herself hoping for its improbable return.
Tito
People liked to point out how strange it was that Tito worked for a moving company when he himself had never moved. Until earlier that summer, the only address he had ever had was: Small Bedroom, Basement Apartment, 222 Seaman Avenue, New York, NY 10034. His parents put no pressure on him, their only child, to leave, and he knew that, as his father grew older and the demands of the job became harder for him, his mother was (even beyond the usual coddling Dominican mothers give their sons) increasingly grateful to have him around. There was a local kid, Nelson, a skinny teenager with big round glasses and a shaved head, who helped with the painting and the endless sorting of recyclables, but when it came to dealing with the tenants, Tito's father wanted them handled only by Tito or himself. Nelson, earnest and hardworking, spoke almost no English and the building was full of tenants who spoke nothing but.
Tito had his dream life, of course. That was how he survived the indignities and embarrassments of cohabiting with his parents at an age when everyone he had gone to school with had moved out, gotten married, sired children, or disappeared into the world. The posse of neighborhood friends he'd grown up with had crumbled away, rendering him the lone holdout.
Last Man Standing.
The only people he saw now were those kids' parents. He saw them in the supermarket and the liquor store, buying their gandules verdes, their bottles of Brugal, and their lottery tickets. He saw them inthe park, walking their dogs. They looked completely lost, as if life had gotten too easy for them now that they'd emigrated, raised their children in America, and made it into late middle age. What was left for them now? He sometimes felt that he was a stand-in for the departed. How quickly it had all vanished, the life he'd had in his teens and early twenties: the ball games at Yankee Stadium, the trips to City Island beaches and New Jersey amusement parks, the pickup basketball and touch-football games, the sledding in cardboard boxes on the hills near the river, the snowball wars fueled with beer and cheap brandy, the pranking and talking smack, the weekends out at the bars and nightclubs uptown and downtown, drinking and bullshitting and trying to meet girls. At the time, it seemed like it would go on forever, but one by one his friends had succumbed to other lives. Alejandro had been the first. He had gotten his crazy Grenadan girlfriend pregnant and moved to Staten Island, where her people owned a bunch of businessesâa bicycle repair shop, a car service, and a chicken joint. Jansel was next. He had finally married that girl Eva, the one he'd been chasing since the eighth grade, the one who'd always played hard to get with him. Eva had a job in a hospital in Englewood Cliffs and Jansel moved out to Paramus, where he was working part-time in the billing department of a Ford dealership. Meanwhile, Tito's distant cousin Hershel, always the least stable of the posse, had let his drug problem get out of control and started stealing from everyone. Watches, cell phones, rings, chains. One minute there, the next gone. Finally, someone got tired of it and called the police. Hershel had been in a halfway house in Long Island City, a place with a cheerful name and a seven o'clock curfew, until he'd fallen off the wagon. He was up top now, in the state pen. Also Edgar, who'd had a football scholarship to some school in the middle of the country before a doctor reset his broken leg out of line. Edgar walked with a limp after that and couldn't play football anymore. He worked nights as a doorman in a rich
Tito
People liked to point out how strange it was that Tito worked for a moving company when he himself had never moved. Until earlier that summer, the only address he had ever had was: Small Bedroom, Basement Apartment, 222 Seaman Avenue, New York, NY 10034. His parents put no pressure on him, their only child, to leave, and he knew that, as his father grew older and the demands of the job became harder for him, his mother was (even beyond the usual coddling Dominican mothers give their sons) increasingly grateful to have him around. There was a local kid, Nelson, a skinny teenager with big round glasses and a shaved head, who helped with the painting and the endless sorting of recyclables, but when it came to dealing with the tenants, Tito's father wanted them handled only by Tito or himself. Nelson, earnest and hardworking, spoke almost no English and the building was full of tenants who spoke nothing but.
Tito had his dream life, of course. That was how he survived the indignities and embarrassments of cohabiting with his parents at an age when everyone he had gone to school with had moved out, gotten married, sired children, or disappeared into the world. The posse of neighborhood friends he'd grown up with had crumbled away, rendering him the lone holdout.
Last Man Standing.
The only people he saw now were those kids' parents. He saw them in the supermarket and the liquor store, buying their gandules verdes, their bottles of Brugal, and their lottery tickets. He saw them inthe park, walking their dogs. They looked completely lost, as if life had gotten too easy for them now that they'd emigrated, raised their children in America, and made it into late middle age. What was left for them now? He sometimes felt that he was a stand-in for the departed. How quickly it had all vanished, the life he'd had in his teens and early twenties: the ball games at Yankee Stadium, the trips to City Island beaches and New Jersey amusement parks, the pickup basketball and touch-football games, the sledding in cardboard boxes on the hills near the river, the snowball wars fueled with beer and cheap brandy, the pranking and talking smack, the weekends out at the bars and nightclubs uptown and downtown, drinking and bullshitting and trying to meet girls. At the time, it seemed like it would go on forever, but one by one his friends had succumbed to other lives. Alejandro had been the first. He had gotten his crazy Grenadan girlfriend pregnant and moved to Staten Island, where her people owned a bunch of businessesâa bicycle repair shop, a car service, and a chicken joint. Jansel was next. He had finally married that girl Eva, the one he'd been chasing since the eighth grade, the one who'd always played hard to get with him. Eva had a job in a hospital in Englewood Cliffs and Jansel moved out to Paramus, where he was working part-time in the billing department of a Ford dealership. Meanwhile, Tito's distant cousin Hershel, always the least stable of the posse, had let his drug problem get out of control and started stealing from everyone. Watches, cell phones, rings, chains. One minute there, the next gone. Finally, someone got tired of it and called the police. Hershel had been in a halfway house in Long Island City, a place with a cheerful name and a seven o'clock curfew, until he'd fallen off the wagon. He was up top now, in the state pen. Also Edgar, who'd had a football scholarship to some school in the middle of the country before a doctor reset his broken leg out of line. Edgar walked with a limp after that and couldn't play football anymore. He worked nights as a doorman in a rich
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