The Soup and Sorrow Digest

Ricardo talks to Elena

It was quiet again in Elena’s apartment. The sky was reflecting blackly through tectonic plates of clouds, silvered black over the pallid moon, all black in the far reaches of the horizon above the serrated edges of the cityscape. And under this hypethral gloom, toddlers were crying from next door. High giggles overshadowed the low retorts of “I don’t get what so funny.” Ricardo, seated in the balcony, was sketching bucolic houses and their front row of rhododendrons and the lawns without sunspots of dead grass. The drawings looked yellowed and bleary under the incandescent light. It would not do as his idyll in the black night. He put his pencil down on his lap and flumped back into the lumpy comforts of the backrest. The chill quivered in the air and in his tumbling memories, Selena’s face was luminous with tears. His breath caught in his throat, but memory would not stop with its knives: the sober mien of Benito’s, his own parlous predicament so well foretold by a drug addict. He did not want to think or feel. Rather the night and its still do his feeling. Rather the distant cries and the distant laughter carry the weight of pain.

Suddenly he stirred and thought it should not matter. He should march to his parents’ house and sleep in his bed. Jésus was well and good. Why should he have to wait for precious feelings to heal? It was his house too.  It was his family too. A dastardly sentiment possessed him, thrilled him with a rise as he imagined a stand off against his parents. The words he would say burdened in his heart, weighted his tongue. He had been soft about this—a wimp, a faggy wimp.

But just as suddenly feeling vacated his heart, and his hands deadened on his lap. He saw himself shrink small before Benito’s quiet glare.  There was the tenebrous sense of failure flooding him, drowning him. The little things, the spats over his lack of seriousness, exhortations against his petulant temper, the battles over sense versus wild action. Selena had counseled him too many times to be like his Papi, “Be patient, take your time, think first, don’t rush now, Mi’jo.” And those words circled down the dark staircases of his spirit, and he wagged knees fitfully as the laughter hailed louder, cries resounded more powerfully.

What was this bullshit about patience and careful thought? Rushing to hasty judgment, spitting forceful threats, Papi was just like he was. If he forced his way home, Benito would belligerently tackled him to the ground and bundle him out the door. Tiger balls. These adults demanded one thing and did another.  

I’m really going to be homeless. The thought felt tired and exhausting; he could only take a slow languorous breath and hope something to zap him out of his piddling existence. There had to be a way. Somewhere in the stars eyeing him coldly there had to be a way back home.

It was eight pm when the front door burst open. Elena whirled into the room in a half crapulous state fraying with unfinished plans. She dumped her bag on the table, flipped off her gel shoes and cried, “Oh shit, you cleaned up the kitchen, you did not have to do that. I’ll have to get you a churro.”

“Never mind,” Ricardo droned. “Hey, we need to talk.”

“Fuck, I’ll be late for Cindy’s dinner party.” Late was rather expressly late as she fought to open the zipper of her jeans fly right there in the living room.

“Damn, Mi’ja, why do I have to see your fat ass,” Ricardo said.