When Tito Loved Clara (40 page)

Tito's heart was pounding so hard that his neck and biceps quivered. He felt feverish, overstimulated. He took a drink. Holding up the bottle, he saw that he'd downed more than half of it.

“Breathe,” he said aloud. “Just breathe.”

Once, in his early days with Cruz Brothers, when he was still on the trucks, still lifting heavy things all day long, he had come close to hyperventilating. He and another grunt, a fat, sweaty Puerto Rican kid named Cleber (pronounced
clever,
to everyone's undying amusement), were taking an antique dresser up the stairwell of an elevatorless prewar building on St. Nicholas. The apartment was on the sixth floor and they'd already made countless trips, everything carried up by hand. Idiotic with exhaustion, endorphins, and falling blood sugar, Tito had started laughing between the third and fourth floors of their climb. He was leading, which was harder on the back but also safer should one of them lose their grip or their footing—an occurrence that was increasingly likely as the day wore on and fatigue came into play. He'd lost count, even then in his early years with Cruz Brothers, of the number of broken fingers, sprained ankles, dislocated shoulders, black eyes,
fat lips, and unexpected dental dislodgements he'd witnessed. He had a sense that something bad was going to happen on this ascent of the stairwell. The dresser, even without its drawers, was
heavy.
About halfway up the fourth flight, he and Cleber against all common sense had started shouting out comparisons, trying to one-up each other.

“This thing's heavier than a fucking piano.”

“Heavier than Ozzie Cruz after a night at the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Heavier than Ozzie Cruz's wife after a night at the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Heavier than Ozzie Cruz's
mami
after a night at the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“Heavier than my
cojones.
”

“Heavier than a goddamn
matrimonio obligao,
” said Cleber. Heavier than an arranged marriage. It was something Tito's father often said when hauling garbage out to the curb and, in that moment, it seemed like the funniest thing he had ever heard.

“Stop laughing!” said Cleber. “You gonna drop this mother-fucker on me.”

That only made Tito laugh even harder.

“I'm serious. Cut that shit out.”

“
Matrimonio,
” rasped Tito between guffaws. “
Obligao!
” Cleber was right. He was laughing so hard, he couldn't hold the damn thing. It was impossible to lift heavy objects when you were laughing. Guys on the trucks were forever trying to get each other to drop stuff by cracking jokes. If Tito let go now, the dresser would rumble and bounce down the stairs, squishing Cleber like a water balloon under a brick.

“I'm putting this shit down,” said Cleber, lowering the legs of his end onto the steps. There were tiny metal wheels on the feet of the dresser. Still laughing, Tito squatted to bring his end down, but he couldn't hold it and let his side of the dresser drop the last three
inches or so, chipping out a piece of the stone on the lip of the step. Relief released a new burst of hilarity from him. Now that his well-being was no longer endangered, Cleber was laughing, too.

“You shouldn't have started that shit,” said Cleber, finally winding down. “Damn you for starting that shit when we're carrying something like this.”

Tito had laughed so hard that he was coughing. He felt unable to breathe; his cough was turning into a choke.

“You all right, man?” said Cleber.

Tito was still coughing. He was not in control of his own body. It was an amusement park ride.

“You're turning red, Tito. Stop that,” said Cleber.

But he couldn't stop. His cough was as uncontrollable as his laugh had been. He waved his hands, signaling distress, signaling that he was drowning. Cleber girded his jeans around his thick waist and squeezed past the dresser, climbing the stairs to reach Tito and slap him on the back. That didn't help. Finally, in desperation, he slapped Tito across the face, knocking him against the dresser. There was a silent, suspenseful moment in which Tito stopped coughing and the dresser, its tiny metal wheels set in motion, became unmoored from the step. They both grasped at the shiny, lacquered wood on the dresser's top, but it was too late. Down it went, teetering and bouncing noisily on its minuscule wheels like a rampaging, drunken rhinoceros, smashing against the wall of the third-floor landing, the wood splintering and buckling on impact.

There was another long moment of silence—one beat, two beats—as Tito and Cleber looked at the wreckage of the antique dresser and then at each other.

“Damn!” they said simultaneously, and began to laugh all over again.

T
ITO FELT THE
same loss of control now. He could not inhale properly. He could not get air into his lungs. There was no
Cleber here to whack him on the back, to slap him across the face. There was no one here to tell him to take it easy, that everything would be all right. Because everything wasn't going to be all right. Either he was going to kill himself or he was going to walk back out of this park into a life he didn't want, into a permanent hangover, into an existence without Clara. He tried to calm himself, tried to slow his breaths, to deepen them, but no, he was going to die right here, he was going to suffocate himself and fall dead on the cobblestones. This is not what he'd had in mind at all. He had to do something. Dropping the bottle of whiskey, he ran down the path, running as fast as he could, trying to outrun his panic. He thought he heard someone shouting, then thought it was the wind in his ears, then realized that it was his own voice, his own freaked-out shriek wailing into the dark. He caught his toe on a stone and fell forward, belly flopping on the path, his chest and his chin striking the ground.

That did it—knocked the panic right out of him. He could breathe again. Lying there, feeling the epicenters of pain in his knees, in his torso, in his arms, on his chin, he admired the process.
How could we take this so much for granted?
he thought.
Breathing. All day, all night. We just assume it will keep happening.
He rolled over, lying on his back, breathing, looking up into the branches over the path. He rubbed his chin and looked at his fingers—blood. The branches beyond his bloodied hand were winding around each other, circling and spinning. Fuck. He was piss drunk. Slowly, he stood up, steadying himself against the slender trunk of a tree. He was now so far into the park that it would be faster to get out again by going forward, ending up at the soccer fields on the river by the foot of Dyckman Street.

He staggered on. He could hear the water now, the gentle wash of the river against the rocks below, the wash of traffic on the park-way and the bridge. Here was Spuyten Duyvil and the mouth of the lagoon. Another fact he had learned while researching the history
of Inwood for his Fridays with Clara was that the course of the Harlem River had been altered a century or more before, turning part of Manhattan into part of the Bronx—only it was still considered part of Manhattan. He'd often thought that that was where he should live, in that weird part of the Bronx that was not part of the Bronx, on that part of Manhattan that was separated from the rest of Manhattan. The citizens of that little neighborhood had protested being relegated to the Bronx. They wanted to continue to believe in the dream that they were part of Manhattan. Here he was, still thinking of living—of where he should live. That meant something. He descended a fork of the path that went down to the outcrop of rock overlooking the lagoon. There, below him, on the left, was the Hudson Bridge. He could see the traffic coming and going. Across the river were the apartment buildings of the Bronx. He'd moved furniture in and out of most of them. To his right, the darkness of Inwood Hill Park, the ball fields and playgrounds with the backdrop of the neighborhood. He could see his father's building, and he imagined that one of the lights he could see was the once empty apartment where he and Clara had made a home for an afternoon. Here's where he could do it—within sight of all that, within sight of his entire life. The railing was low enough that all he had to do was lean forward a little too far and he'd topple off the edge and into a short fall that would end either on the rocks at the base of this little cliff or in the waters of the Spuyten Duyvil. Since he could not swim, they amounted to the same thing. He wanted a drink. He wished he still had his bottle. He leaned against the railing with his hands and hypnotically followed the progress of a car's headlights across the bridge and then another car's back in his direction. Like the ball in the game of Pong.
Blip.
Manhattan.
Blip.
The Bronx.
Blip.
Manhattan.
Blip
—

“I hear you was looking for me,” said a voice behind him.

Tito turned and there was Raúl standing on the edge of the trees, holding the bottle of whiskey he had dropped in his panic.
At first he was more astonished by the bottle's survival on the path than he was by Raúl's unexpected appearance. Unsure whether to believe his eyes and well aware that he might be hallucinating, Tito said, “What?”

“I hear you was looking for me.” Raúl took a step along the little path that connected the overlook to the main cobbled walkway. Tito heard the crumple of dirt, twigs, and leaves beneath his boot. Not a hallucination. Could his imagination be that vivid? Or was it just the alcohol? “This is some good shit,” Raúl said, drinking from the bottle as if it were a can of cola.

“It's strong,” said Tito, still worried that he was actually talking to himself.

“Mmm,” said Raúl, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Raúl was dressed in his regulation homeboy outfit: a pair of baggy jeans, a muscle shirt, unlaced Timberlands, and a black Yankees cap worn askew. But something was off about him. It was like he was sleepwalking, like he was part of a dream.

“I hear you was looking for me,” said Raúl. “Here I am. What you want?”

“It's OK,” said Tito. “I got what I needed.” Not sleepwalking, he corrected himself. Not dreaming.
High.
He had a hand on the railing, the drop into the river at his back.

“Yeah, I hear you took that bracelet from my girl.”

“
Your
girl?”

“Deysei. She's my girl. That's my baby she's carrying.”

“I didn't know she was—” and then he stopped himself, putting it all together, the throwing up, the stomach pain. Of course. But
Raúl
? Really? He must be dreaming this. There was no way.

“You got that right,” said Raúl. “I fucked her good. Her mami wasn't giving me none, so I fucked her baby. She didn't want to at first, but I talked her into it. Girls who ain't got no father, they the easy ones. All you got to do is say a few nice things. They looking for a man to love them. And you know what?”

“What?” said Tito.

“She was a better fuck than her mami, too, under all them clothes. You ever fuck some sixteen-year-old pussy?”

“No,” said Tito.

“You gotta try that shit. Young pussy is sweet pussy. I'm telling you.
Sweet.
”

“She's keeping the baby?” Tito asked.

Raúl snorted. “Ain't my problem.”

Tito didn't say anything. Now that he'd decided that Raúl was probably real, he was trying to gauge if he could run past him and make it back onto the path. But things were unsteady. Things were still spinning a little. He couldn't quite focus. Could he outrun Raúl? Raúl was faster than he was, Tito guessed, but Raúl was also high. Could you run fast when you were high? Was it like trying to lift heavy things when you were laughing? Tito didn't know. He'd never tried it. Raúl was wearing boots, Tito thought. Unlaced boots that would slow him down. But then he glanced down at his own hard-soled funeral shoes. A wash.

“I hear you was looking for me,” said Raúl, taking another drink and coming closer on the path. If Tito was going to make a move, now was the time. The closer Raúl got, the harder it would be to get past him. But Raúl kept coming in his stomping monster steps. The chance was lost. “I hear you was looking for me,” he said again.

“Not anymore,” said Tito. It was how you got rid of a salesman. Keep refusing. It was how people got rid of him, how Clara had gotten rid of him. Don't waver. Don't give in. Keep saying no. It was how you got out of a dream. You opened your eyes. Raúl was just a couple of feet away now, at the gap between the two benches. Tito could smell him, the whiskey, the body odor, and something scorched, like the smoke from an extinguished match. Raúl sat down on one of the benches, his legs turned to the side, blocking the narrow space.

“What, you telling me you don't want the money I took, too?” Raúl looked up at him.

“No,” said Tito. “The client didn't ask for the money back.”

Raúl held up the whiskey bottle to see how much was left and laughed. “ ‘The client.' Shit. Listen to you. Talking like the Man. That was always your problem, Tito. You always do what people tell you. You want to be a good boy, don't you? But you know what? You leave money like that lying around when you got strangers in your house, you deserve to have it stolen. I
needed
that money. I had to find myself a place to live.”

“Yeah,” said Tito, stinging from what Raúl had said. “I heard your girlfriend left you.”

Raúl rose suddenly and Tito braced for an assault. But Raúl was just standing up to vent. “She didn't
leave
me,” he said, spitting. “She left the fucking country, didn't she? Can you believe that shit? Going back to that hellhole when everyone over there trying to get here.” He looked at Tito for confirmation. “I said, can you believe that shit?”

“No,” said Tito.

“Bitches, man. You got to be careful around the bitches.”

“Yes, you do,” said Tito, trying to play along.

“Damn straight. We got to drink to that,” said Raúl, handing the bottle across. Tito took that bottle and swallowed a slug, figuring the alcohol would kill whatever germs Raúl had left on the mouth of the bottle. He was worrying about germs. Yes, he wanted to live.