roberto & nia

03. robert+nia

when the clouds swallow the sun in their cottony white mouths, and carpenter fields' residential Drunk Man, cornelius barnes, wakes up from his all-day slumber at eight o'clock to crawl out from his hole in the ground and stagger around the streets, robert decides to close up shop for the day. he balls the twenty one dollars in his fist, shoves it in his pocket, and dumps all leftover lemonade onto the road, flood gates opened, drowning ants and dead leaves with its power. he allows himself to fell like a little god; this the only natural disaster he could control. 

if catherine were here, she would narrow her eyes and dig her fingernails deep into his palm so they almost drew blood, so the imprints of her nails lingered for a while, so that if he were a weaker boy, maybe he would cry. 

she'd say, you know what this is? this a result of years of ingrained masculinity, of a deep-seated need for dominance and male assertion. like your mom always says–machismo. that, and your aries in mars. you're a piece of shit, robert. and he would nod, inhale all her words and her butchered pronunciation (matchizmo) like a new oxygen–in this moment he would take this as his truth, that he really is piece of shit, and he would hate himself for it–but then she would smile and wrap her fingers in his and kiss his cheek, her red lips heavy and quick, and he would forget all about it. 

catherine is a lot of person–there are some people like this, who take up more space than others and exist even when they are not there. the air develops muscle-memory for a whole individual. like right now–robert is walking on the sidewalk to his house, and his feet are aching, and he is not rich like he thought he would be at eight-thirty p.m. after hours of working, he is still almost-poor, and his skin is burnt in some places and probably somewhere someone has just died, or is about to–and simultaneously, while all these things are occurring, in the back of his mind, he is thinking of catherine, of her sayings, of her omnipresence in his world. how she is very near certainly not thinking of him, because catherine has other things to think about, like college, and the state of global affairs, and evil men, and other far away things that she clings so closely to.

she was too smart for him. this robert had known since they had first met, when she knocked on his door for two minutes until it was opened and attempted to sell her self-made books ("the role of white women in chola culture: a reflection") to his mother, speaking in her elementary school brand of white man's spanish until his mother had cursed her out and slammed the door. he had thought she was beautiful, even then, in the midst of her doing ugly things, over her mother's shrill voice repeating pinche gringa, with her fringe brushing above freckles on her nose, short and angry–his heart had thrummed low and mighty in his chest. 

• • •

on their first date, catherine had picked him up in her father's pickup truck and driven him to a restaurant somewhere deep in suburbia, where everything but the vehicles the residents drove were white, and wealth hung like a natural fragrence in the air. robert itched in places he couldn't scratch, sitting in that car, recognizing nothing and no one. an itch eased only slightly by his girlfriend's forearm periodically lying against his on the middle compartment. he held three amaryllises in his left hand and counted their petals as distraction. once they reached the parking lot, robert handed them to catherine. 

"flowers for my flower," he mumbled, his chest full of brimming, infectious affection, so in love it dripped from his fingertips and pooled at his feet, at his cleanest sneakers, made fresh by pungent bleach and dryer sheets he stole from the laundromat. 

he had had dreams about catherine–humdrum dreams about following her to the nail salon or library or home for dinner on thursday night that still glowed like fireflies in jars in his head. so vivid, so nearly, sweetly real he could feel the soft of her skin underneath his palms even at night, even when she was far away and fast asleep.