Chapter 8

The binding holding the chain in place comes loose and snaps off the frame. Before Vanessa falls I dive forward to catch her, losing my balance and slipping on the grass. I slide onto my back like I’m stealing second base. She lands in my lap, swing and all, laughing and cursing and screaming at me.

I am so mad at myself. I just assured her something wouldn’t happen right before it did.

“Oh my God. Look. I told you. I told you my fat ass would break this swing! So embarrassing. Jesus.”

Her cheeks are bright red, her hair is streaming all around me, and I’m so hurt and worried inside that I don’t know what to do. Do I laugh, or do I say nothing? Do I make a joke, or do I apologize? It’s like I’ve forgotten what a human being would do in this situation, and all I can do is lie here underneath her, paralyzed.

She turns to see if I’m okay and suddenly the laughter in her eyes is gone, replaced by concern. I don’t want her pity. I try to slide away, out of her grip—this is too close, we’re too close. But she puts her hand on my arm and pins me to the ground with that straightforward Vanessa Velasco stare.

“What?” she says. “What the hell is wrong with you, Sal?”

“Where should I begin?” I ask. “I’m sorry.”

“For the swing?” She puts her hands on my chest and sits up in my lap. We’re still tangled up in the warm grass and when I look up at her, I think she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She looks me in the eye again. “I don’t care about the swing. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, when the opposite is true. I fake a little laughter. “I got a fine-ass woman lying on top of me. What could be wrong?”

Vanessa doesn’t buy it. “I talked to my grandmother about you.” She sits up straighter but for some reason—to torture me, I think—she doesn’t get out of my lap.

“And what did she say?”

“She says you’ve been a good boy since you got out of prison. Working. Keeping clean. Staying away from Ruben and your old crew.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Your face,” she says.

“What about it?”

“It doesn’t look like the face of a man with a clean conscience.”

“Do I look guilty?”

“No.” She stares at me a bit longer. She touches my cheek with the tip of her finger and it feels like a match igniting against my skin. “You look like you’re in pain.”

There are people who dance around what they mean and hide what they know. There are people who talk to you and ask you questions not because they care to know about who you are or what you feel but because they want to know how to exploit you, how to use you for their own purposes, and how to use your pain against you. Vanessa does none of these things. She gets right to the ugly part of the matter and shines a bright light on it. I suppose that’s what accountants are supposed to do. See where the numbers are wrong and shine a spotlight on them. To say, “Here’s where you’re weak. Here’s the hole where the money’s draining out. Here’s how to fix it.”

“So?” she says.

“So what?” My voice is quiet against her touch.

“Are you? In pain?”

For a moment, I have no words to answer with. Vanessa is smarter than me—she’s got the upper hand on me, and she knows it. My body struggles to find the balance between us. Without thinking too hard about it, I reach up and slide my hands through her hair. I can feel her warm scalp against my fingertips and a shiver runs through her. I rest my thumb softly against her neck and I can feel her pulse go faster, fluttering hard like a tiny heart against her skin. The neckline of her baseball shirt is wide and goosebumps break out across her chest. Her cheeks flare redder.

“No,” I say softly, “I’m not in pain.”

Suddenly, Vanessa slides back on her knees until she’s straddling me. Great. How can I bare my soul to a woman who’s straddling me? All the blood in my body goes straight to my dick. My brain can’t operate like this. There’s not enough blood in my body to operate both my brain and my dick at once.

With a groan, I slide out from under her and try not to immediately regret the rejection I can read in her eyes. To go easy on her, I take her wrists in my hands and pull her closer so that I can talk to her in a quiet voice.

“I’m not in pain,” I say again.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid,” I blurt out. Goddamn. Who admits being afraid? To a woman? To anyone? What the hell is wrong with me?

“Of what?”

“I went to see Ruben today. For the first time in a long time.”

She freezes and a hardness comes immediately to her eyes. “Are you getting involved again? Because if you are, you have to go. You have to find a new place to live.”

“Yeah, hold up.” I knew she would say that. “Don’t be like that. I’m not involved.” Yet.

“Then why—”

“I just had to pass on a message from someone in the neighborhood. I’m not slinging or banging. Don’t trip.”

She slides her hands out of mine but she doesn’t move away. “ ‘Don’t trip’? He’s a convicted felon—you both are. You’re in violation of your parole if you spend time together. You think I don’t know these things?”

“Calm down, will you? Nothing happened.” I reach forward and touch her again. Gently, so she doesn’t move away. Her hair is soft and straight, unlike mine. To make myself look more like a useful citizen and to hopefully impress my parole officer, I shaved off my goatee and started to grow out my hair. It’s coming in curly, just like my father’s.

“You know about my dad, right?” I ask.

She blinks. “Some. Not a lot.”

I sit up but I keep touching her. I have to keep my hands on her. Part of me thinks I’ll float away if I don’t. “Ruben and my dad came up together. Best friends from the beginning. Did you know that?”

Vanessa nods. “Everyone knows that.”

“About four months before I got out, I learned my dad was dead. It was hard for me to get any information in the pen. No one knew anything, and most of the information I got was just hearsay. Slowly, I put the pieces together. After my brother and I were locked up, my dad started using. Developed a low-key heroin addiction. It didn’t interfere with his duties to the gang, but it drained his cash reserves real quick. He stopped making mortgage payments. He pawned a lot of shit. Eventually he lost the house—our family house. To keep up his habit, he raised taxes on the dealers in his area without telling the bosses.” My stomach tightens as I say the words aloud. “Took a bigger cut for himself under the table.”

“That takes some guts,” Vanessa says.

“Nobody ever said Dreamer Rosas didn’t have some big-ass balls. If only he had the brains to go with them.” I sigh. “Of course the bosses found out. The first time, Ruben talked them out of green-lighting him, so instead they fined him, kicked him down a notch, and gave his turf to Demon instead. It was like a miracle—like he escaped death. But a few days later, someone heard him mouthing off about the gang and the Organization. Talking shit. Complaining.” I pause. “He might’ve been drunk—maybe high. Who knows? Doesn’t matter. The next week, he was gone.”

I don’t go into details. Vanessa is enough of an insider to know what I mean when I say he’s gone. Gone is disappeared, most likely shot and buried in a shallow grave in the Angeles National Forest—an ESHB special. No funeral, no body, no closure for the family members. Property frozen, neither here nor there.

“I’m afraid,” I say again, “because Ruben’s left me alone for six months. And now he’s calling me back.”

“What does he want you to do?”

“Same shit.” I don’t want her to know the details of the job with Slim.

“Like what?”

“Way back when, Trouble and I stole cars from nice neighborhoods and sold them to a chop shop. Nothing too heavy. Ruben liked our style—easy money for the gang, plus a little extra for us. In and out quick, no drama.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Until you were caught.”

I smile. “Right. Until we were caught.” What a fucking nightmare. I shake off the memory of the night my brother and I were brought in. “So my six months are up. Ruben’s calling me back in.”

“But what about you? What do you want to do? Stay clean or…get dirty again?”

“What I want has nothing to do with anything. It isn’t my choice.”

“Bullshit. You always have a choice.”

I look at her. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe growing up in the neighborhood and being married to a homeboy doesn’t mean jack. If someone wants to be sheltered, to close their eyes to the truth around them, they’re gonna be sheltered no matter what. Choice? If I had a choice, does she really believe I would have chosen this?

“Listen.” She leans forward and rubs my forearms, back and forth, bare skin against bare skin. “Grandpa Ben grew up on a cattle ranch. He told me about his cows. Big animals, hundreds of pounds each, a whole herd. One cow got out of line, started doing something it wasn’t supposed to do, all he had to do was call his cattle dog to get the cow back. Those dogs weren’t big. So you had this huge cow against one little dog.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“If the cow was smart, if the cow could see past its history, it would know that all it had to do was trample the dog to death and run. But Grandpa Ben said this never, ever happened. The dog would get low to the ground, bare its teeth, bark, and growl. And all of a sudden, in the mind of the cow, this little dog was a wolf again. The cow would become so afraid, it would rejoin the herd. Anything to avoid the little dog.”

“So are you trying to say that I’m a dumbass cow?”

“I’m not trying to say anything—”

“It’s not as easy as you think it is, Vanessa,” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “It’s not as complicated as you want it to be, Sal.”

I gather her hair off her neck and pull it back very gently. She lets me, tipping her chin up and exposing her neck. Her eyes never leave mine. Her lips part just a little. I can see the tip of her pink tongue in the shadow of her teeth.

“What do you mean by that?” I whisper. I can hear my own heartbeat, pounding blood through my body.

“I mean,” she says quietly, “my whole life people have been trying to tell me what I am. A nerd. A good girl. An honor student. A slut. A whore. A failure. They were wrong each time. No one else is going to tell me who I am. Never again.”

She’s right. But her situation is not my situation. “That may be true for you. For me, it is complicated.”

“The word complicated is nothing but an excuse to keep from thinking clearly and making a clean choice. It’s a coward’s word.”

“A coward’s word, huh?” Copying her earlier movement, I trace my fingertips over her cheek and down her beautiful neck. Her chest rises and falls. She takes a deep breath. “Tell me this, then,” I say softly. “Why are you allowing this coward ex-con to live on your property? With your grandmother and daughter in the house?”

“The money,” she says immediately.

“The money, huh?” I pull her hair a little bit. Her nipples harden through the cotton of her shirt. I’m so hard it’s taking all of my willpower not to strip us naked and do what we both really want to do. “And why are you allowing him to touch you like this, out here in broad daylight?”

She reaches forward and runs her hands over my chest, resting them on my shoulders. “Because I like it,” she says.

“What else do you like?”

She’s looking at me through half-closed eyes, staring down her nose at me as I pull her head back. She runs her hands down my shoulders over my arms. “I like it rough.”

Goddamn. Good girl Vanessa Velasco likes it rough. Of course she does. I lean forward until our faces are an inch apart. Her lips smell like fresh coffee. I imagine that they taste like sugar and cream. “And what makes you think I’d give it to you that way?”

“Because you like it rough too.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because this is turning you on.” She shifts her weight until my hard-on presses against her inner thigh. “I can feel it.”

I bite back a groan. She feels so good. “You got an answer for everything?”

“Not everything. But the questions you ask are easy.”

This is fun. Teasing each other, testing what the other is made of. A man would have to be out of his mind not to find Vanessa attractive on the outside. But that’s nothing compared to what’s on the inside. I’m fascinated by her and surprised by the fact that she appears to want to show me more.

“So how about this question?” I stroke her throat with the pad of my thumb. “Can I kiss you?”

Before she can answer, someone taps a car horn in the driveway. Both of us jump backward like teenagers caught making out. Vanessa scrambles to her feet and straightens her hair and clothes just as Chinita pokes her head into the backyard.

“Come on, lovebirds. Help me with these groceries.”

“¡Abuelita!” Vanessa stomps toward the driveway without looking back at me. “Why do you say things like that? It’s not nice.”

Chinita’s eyes scan me as I sit sprawled out on the grass. I lean forward to hide the bulge in my shorts, but not fast enough.

“Embarrassing, huh?” the old woman says, winking at me. “Come on, Salvador. Stop frowning at me and help carry these bags. Let’s put those big muscles to use.”

After I help Vanessa and her grandmother put away all the groceries, Chinita makes us an early dinner. While she cooks, I sit with Vanessa and Muñeca at the kitchen table. When he finally gets tired of barking at me, Chancla the evil wiener dog settles down on his bed by the back door and chews on what looks like a human femur.

Vanessa and I help Muñeca with her homework. The coloring sheets are bilingual: gato and cat, perro and dog. The little girl is in a Spanish immersion school because Vanessa wants her daughter to know both languages inside and out. I think it’s a good idea. Growing up, my friends and I spoke English outside the house and Spanish inside it, and to be honest we didn’t know either language that good. English we learned to make our teachers happy. Spanish we learned for everything else—Spanish was the language our parents used to yell at us when we disappointed them, the language they used to talk to their relatives visiting from Mexico, the language reserved for conversations about the big, important things. Topics like, “What are you doing with your life?” Or, “Why are you getting bad grades? Are you trying to give me and your mother a heart attack?” Or, “Why can’t you be more like your cousin? He’s got a football scholarship. What do you have? No-good friends?”

Vanessa and I watch Muñeca as she colors and hums to herself.

“Did you speak Spanish or English in the house?” I ask Vanessa.

“Both, but English more,” she says. “Chinita spoke English better than anyone I knew. Taught me proper grammar. How to be polite in the language.”

“Did she learn English from Ben?” I ask.

“From Ben?” Chinita howls with laughter. She’s carrying in a big pot of spaghetti to the table. “No way, José. I learned English in school. Back then, we weren’t allowed to speak one word of Spanish. If the teacher heard you, you’d get it. Pow! With a paddle. I spoke better English than Vanessa’s grandfather did. That Okie with his y’alls.” She brings out plates and forks. Muñeca carefully puts her homework in a folder and puts the folder in her backpack. Vanessa moves the crayons out of the way while I set the table.

“How did you meet Ben?” I ask.

“He was working in a garage downtown,” Chinita says. “He fell in love with me at a dance on the other side of the river.”

“Tell Sal where you were working at the time.” Vanessa flashes me that sideways smile.

“At a cracker factory. I guess I just got a taste for crackers!” Chinita’s laughter soon collapses into coughing and phlegm and for a second she has to excuse herself to the bathroom.

“She always tells that joke,” Vanessa says quietly, scooping some spaghetti into Muñeca’s bowl. On the napkin, Vanessa puts two gummy vitamins, just like before. “Take your vitamins, mi’ja.”

When everyone is seated, Chinita says a quick prayer and we eat. I have flashbacks to when I was a kid, a really little kid, when my mom and sister were alive and we used to eat at a table just like this one.

“Vanessa,” Chinita says, looking at both of us over the rims of her rhinestone glasses, “tell Sal why you don’t date.”

“¡Abuelita!” Vanessa says. “I’m not having this conversation right now.”

Chinita ignores that and turns to me. “She’s tried to date. Men from the Internet. She finds them on her phone. I told her it was a bad idea. It didn’t go well.”

“Abuelita, stop.”

“What was it, six, seven dates?” Chinita waves a ladle at me. “That’s a lot with nothing to show for it, don’t you think? Shaved her legs and everything.”

Vanessa puts down her fork and rests her forehead on her hand. “You don’t have to be so embarrassing.”

“What’s embarrassing about it? I’m just making conversation.”

I can sense that Chinita’s jokes are getting to Vanessa a bit more than they should, so I cut in. “I didn’t know you could date using the phone.”

“What?” Vanessa asks. She looks at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been locked up for five years. Phones are a mystery to me. Everything they can do nowadays. It’s like Star Wars or something.” I smile and Vanessa’s shoulders relax a little bit. “Why didn’t the dates go well?” I ask. “What was wrong with the guys?”

Vanessa sighs and picks up her fork again. “It’s not that they were all bad.” She glances at Muñeca. The little girl is busy trying to twirl spaghetti onto her fork and not paying attention. “For the most part, they weren’t crazy or weird or anything.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“It was me.”

“You?”

She nods. “I’m just not up for it, I think. I know I should get out there. But I’m so tired all the time. When I’m on a date, I don’t know what to talk about except my job and my daughter. I guess there’s nothing else in my life I’m excited about, and those topics aren’t good for casual conversation.”

“They’re not?” I ask.

“No, Sal.” She pushes the food around on her plate. “I’m so boring. I know it too. When I’m out, I try to be interesting. For example, lots of people like TV. Fine. I try to watch TV so I have something to talk about, but after the first five minutes, I’m asleep on the couch. I don’t have time to spend on entertainment, but some people live for it. The next episode of a show. The next concert, the next movie. That’s not a part of my life. So when a guy asks, ‘Do you watch this show? Have you seen this movie?’ I don’t have anything to say.”

“That doesn’t make you boring,” I say. “Not to me, anyway.”

When dinner is over but before I leave for work, I play Tinkertoys in the living room with Muñeca. I overhear Vanessa talking to her grandmother in the kitchen. They’re whispering, but neither one of them is good at whispering so I can hear everything they say.

“Vanessa, Muñeca’s in school now. Why don’t you go out and enjoy yourself a little bit? While you’re still young?”

“Young? Who’s young?”

“Stop it. You’re only twenty-two. I think you should go out and enjoy yourself. And not with those pendejos you meet on the Internet.”

“I can take care of myself, Abuelita.”

“Listen, I know you can take care of yourself. That’s not what I’m saying. Have a little fun. Get yourself a boy toy. You work and take care of your kid and that’s it. That’s all you know of life.” Chinita pauses. “You need some gas in the tank.”

“¡Abuelita!”

“What? It’s true. Ever since your grandpa passed away, bless his soul, I run on batteries myself.”

“¡Abuelita!”

“What? Hijole, you’re closed up down there by now. That’s not healthy.”

“Abuelita, stop!”

“You know, Sal’s not bad. He’s built like a truck. What about him?”

My ears perk up like a dog’s.

“No. Not Sal,” Vanessa says.

In spite of myself, my heart drops a little bit.

“Don’t you see the way he looks at you?” Chinita says. “Why not?”

“The Rosas family is pure trouble.”

“Sal himself was never trouble. Not really.”

Vanessa is quiet for a moment before she says, “That’s true. But trouble follows him around.” She’s not wrong.

“Who cares? He’s so handsome. Big too. I like ’em like that.”

“¡Abuelita!”

“What? Loosen up, Vanessa. Imagine? Oh, a big handsome man for my granddaughter.” Chinita switches to English. “He could get your motor revving at last. Grease you up good.”

“¡Abuelita!”

“What?” Chinita’s laughing dissolves into coughing. “It’s the truth! I’m just telling the truth.”

After I help Muñeca put away all her toys, I tap on the half-open door. Chinita’s left the kitchen and Vanessa’s sitting at the kitchen counter with a big textbook and a highlighter.

“Thank you again,” I say, “for dinner. And the talk.”

“You’re welcome.”

I don’t want to go just yet. I clear my throat. “I need your advice.”

“What’s up?”

“This is just hypothetically speaking, okay? It’s not real or anything.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“So, if a guy wanted to go out with a girl,” I say slowly, “but he didn’t think he had a chance in hell with her, should he still ask her out?”

Vanessa puts down her highlighter and stares at me. “Why is he so sure he doesn’t have a chance with her?”

“I don’t know. She’s just so…different from him.”

“In what way?”

“She’s responsible. She has big dreams, big plans. He’s just kind of”—I bob my head from side to side—“figuring things out.”

“Is he a good guy?”

I grin. “More or less.”

“Good guys are hard to find,” she says. “I think he should give it a shot.”

“But what if she says no? Won’t he look like an idiot?”

She shrugs. “There are worse things in life than looking like an idiot.”

“Like what?”

“Like not taking chances.”

We lock eyes. Heat licks my spine, and her cheeks turn bright red. When she looks back down at her textbook, I notice her breath is quicker.

“Thanks,” I say quietly. “That’s good advice.” When I open the back door, I realize I haven’t told her something important. I turn around. “One more thing.”

“What?” she asks.

“For the record, I don’t think you’re boring. Not at all.”

She smiles, and I leave on that very high note.