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  He had the nerve to try to call me at work the next day with a big story about how he doesn’t really love his wife anymore. She’s dying of cancer, he tells me, so he has to stay with her until she passes away. He says he stays with her out of pity. And I tell him that any man who uses the word “pity” to describe how he feels about his dying wife deserves to have someone take him up in a plane and throw him out without a parachute. I went ghetto mad on him, too. I might as well have been La India. Quién tu te crees, eh? Tu te crees muy hombre, eh, muy macho así, eh, pero tu no sirves pa’ na’, tu eres un sinvergüenza, un sucio, no tienes corazón, no tienes na’, y no te creo na’ que tu me dice’ ahora, oi’te? No te creo na’. I hung up. He didn’t call again.

  The phone rings now, and I let it go one, two, three times. The machine picks up.

  “Usnavys.” It’s Juan again. “Look. Just pick up, okay? I drove by your place and I saw your car and I saw the lights on. I know you’re home. Just talk to me. We have to talk about this. We can’t just keep pretending we don’t have a problem. I love you.”

  I leave the phone alone and try to concentrate on the movie. My tenant is thumping around upstairs. I know what it is. I wish I didn’t. What the hell does he do up there? That boy be ugly and cross-eyed with a damn Jheri curl, and he gets it more than I do. Next time I get a house and renovate it, I’m going to renovate the ground floor, so I don’t have to hear someone else’s business all night long.

  The FBI agent wants me to move to Texas, right? I hate Texas, girl. You ever seen it? It’s like someone took a butter knife and smashed that place down flat. It smells like oil everywhere, oil and garbage. I have been there exactly three times to visit him, and there is nothing for a woman like me in Texas. I don’t mean to discriminate or generalize, m’ija, but when he told me there were Latinos everywhere, I thought maybe I could live down in Texas after all, but I’ll tell you what, I need to be around Caribbean people. Those Mexicans down there are so quiet, especially the women. It’s like a different world. They look at me like I’m crazy every time I open my mouth and the men all think I’m Jamaican. There’s no culture down there. You can get a whole hell of a lot of house for not very much money, it’s true. He told me he wanted to buy me a great big yellow brick house outside of Houston in something called “Sugarland.” That’s what I mean. I don’t want to live somewhere called Sugarland. He sent me these brochures with drawings of the houses they’re building over there. They were beautiful, m’ija, with big staircases, chandeliers, and three chimneys each. You know what they charge for that? It’s less than what I paid for this dump in the middle of the ghetto, okay? He told me he was in the process of buying one of those big dollhouses and he wanted to put the deed in my name to prove how much he loved me, how crazy he was about me. That boy is freaky, too. He likes big women. That’s what it is with him, I think. He wants my body. He’s the first man who ever bought me sexy underwear. He likes to look at me. It’s crazy! He’s a skinny American man, really light Italian, and even though he tries as hard as he can, he doesn’t understand how important my culture is to me. There’s nothing really wrong with him, but he doesn’t have what I really need, m’ija, which is a Latin man, and even better than that, a Puerto Rican man. I’d even take a Cuban man. A man with sabor. Ain’t no way you gonna get a Puerto Rican woman like me down there in Texas with an American man like that in some big house in the Sugarland suburbs. I would die. I need some beans with my rice, tu sabes. I need subways and museums and urban life, you know what I’m saying? So he’s nice and everything, he’s got money and he’s even told me he wants to go to medical school and get into forensic science, but can you see it? Me an FBI doctor’s wife living in Texas? Huh-uh. I don’t think so. So we ended that.

  So, so disappointed. I’m disappointed in everybody. I’m disappointed in Lauren for seeing that drug dealer. What’s the girl thinking? She courts self-destruction. I have no idea why, really. She’s pretty smart, reasonably good-looking. But with her it’s one horrendous fall after another. I’m getting tired of scraping her up. I expect to see her in the hospital next, with bullets in her from a drive-by. I feel so sorry for her sometimes, accomplished woman like that and she thinks she has to be down with a bad boy just to prove that she’s as Latina as the rest of us, because her skin is so white and her Spanish sucks. She has this complex about it, you know. That’s just plain sad. He’s no good. Amaury got so many women around my old neighborhood we used to call him Arabe, because he had a harem.

  And then there’s Sara. Pobrecita.

  And Elizabeth. What’s wrong with people? You don’t like who someone sleeps with, don’t think about it. It’s not your bedroom. It’s not your business.

  There’s the damn phone again. “Navi, it’s me, Juan, I’m down at the T station on the pay phone. I’m coming over and you better answer the door.”

  Ay, Dios mío. I don’t need this right now. My hair is nappy. I don’t have any makeup on. I’m in my robe and slippers. My breath smells like yellow rice and chicken. Why does he do things like this? I want no drama, like Mary J. Blige. All I want to do is veg out with my arroz con pollo and my pasteles and my café con leche. I need somebody here to massage my feet, you know, but not Juan. I need a man man, m’ija. Why is it so hard? I’m not going to answer the door when he comes. That’s all there is to it.

  I finally find an old black and white movie on the romance channel, something with Ingrid Bergman. I set the remote on the glass coffee tabletop, held in place by the white base sculpted to look like Roman columns and a big orb. Even this coffee table reminds me of Juan. His mom has one just like it down in Spanish Harlem. Why is it that everything I have done today has reminded me of him? I went to get my hair done, and there was a man waiting to have his hair cut who looked a lot like Juan, glasses and the goatee. At the takeout restaurant they’re playing Michael Stuart, his favorite salsa singer. Every little thing. Every little thing today reminded me of the poorest man in the universe.

  The doorbell starts ringing. I haven’t had the doorbell replaced yet, either, so it makes that dying gazelle sound that makes my skin crawl. He doesn’t just ring it once, either, he rings it, like, a thousand times in a row. Over and over and over. The thing with this house is that the doorbell isn’t ringing just in my part of the house, but in my tenant’s part of the house, too. So you can hear after a while that they stop getting busy upstairs and my tenant starts stomping down his stairs to see who’s at the front door.

  I wrap the robe around me as tight as I can and open my front door and walk out into the shared stairwell and see my tenant there, naked as a jaybird except for a ratty white towel around his waist, standing in the freezing cold with the door open, cursing at Juan.

  “You stupid idiot,” he’s saying. “Don’t you know how late it is around here? You don’t have to ring the doorbell so many times, man, just calm down and somebody will come. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Juan looks past him at me and tilts his head to the side, almost in defeat. “Navi,” he says in Spanish. “Let me in?”

  My tenant sees me and turns and stomps past me back up the stairs. “Tell your friend not to be so annoying,” he says. He has a lot of nerve. I think I’ll raise his rent.

  “What do you want?” I say to Juan.

  “I just want to talk, Navi.”

  “Talk? It’s ten o’clock and you come over here uninvited, like Robert Downey Jr. on a crack high. Go home,” I say.

  “Please, Navi, can I come in and talk to you for one minute?”

  He’s wearing the same coat he’s worn for the past five years, a black jean jacket with a plaid flannel lining. It can’t be warm. No gloves, of course. No hat. It’s in the forties out there. He’s all wet, like a stray. This cabrón has lived in New York and Boston his whole life and he still won’t splurge on a decent coat. Look at him shivering there like a wet dog. What’s wrong with that boy?

  I sigh. “Come in, but one minute is all you get.”<
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  Even with all of this, though, I have to admit I’m glad to see him. He looks handsome. He looks healthy, his cheeks glowing pink with the cold, and he looks strong, even if he is skinny. I wish he’d get a good coat and a good hat, maybe even a cell phone so I wouldn’t feel so scared about wanting him to hug me on the couch on a night like this when all I want is to watch movies together. He hurts me every time I see his poor, sorry behind.

  “Why don’t you have a decent coat? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Let’s save the criticism, okay?” he says as he walks through my front door into my living room. He reaches out and shuts the door himself, something I’ve never seen him do.

  “I’m not criticizing you.”

  “Yes, you are. You always are. That’s what you do best, Navi.” He’s smiling in a confident, crazed way I’ve never seen.

  We sit down, me on the couch and he on the matching green leather love seat. He looks at the aluminum and paper food containers all over the coffee table.

  “Looks like it was good,” he says with a laugh.

  Because I was raised properly—even if we were poor—I offer him something warm to drink. There’s no food left.

  “No,” he says. “I want to get right to the point here. You haven’t picked up your phone, and that’s fine. You don’t want to talk to me, fine. But I want you to know one thing, Navi: I love you.

  “I hate the way you constantly complain about me, and I hate the way you look at me like I’m dog excrement and I hate the way you think you can always find a guy who’s better than me, and I hate the way you have another man waiting in the background so you can hurt me. I hate the way you blame me for everyone who’s ever hurt you in your damn life. I’m not your dad. I’m not your brother. I’m me. And you know what? I’m sick of all your other men hanging around all the time. Just admit that you love me. You honestly do. Don’t you? Tell the truth. That’s what it is.”

  I don’t know what to say. He’s right. I know he’s right. But I don’t want to give him the pleasure of knowing he’s right. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe.”

  “Ha!” He stands up and starts striding around the room like a crazy man. I have never seen Juan like this. “Don’t you understand what we’re doing here?” he asks. “You love me so much you don’t want to let me love you. You get it? You’re so complicated, woman, it took me a decade to figure you out.”

  I feel tears coming. He just said something I didn’t ever want to hear. I don’t want to cry in front of him.

  “Don’t you get it? All these clowns, all these doctors and whatever you’re waving around in front of my face, these guys are just a front. You have never loved them the way you love me. Admit it. You pretend to let them in because you know they can’t actually hurt you the way your dad hurt you. I’m right, huh? You’re crying because I’m right, admit it! I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been all these years thinking you were in love with those idiots, and that you just kept coming back to me because you didn’t have anyone else to pound on. And me, being so crazy about your stupid Puerto Rican ass that I just took it and stuck around. You know what? I haven’t even kissed another woman in ten years, Navi. I haven’t looked at another woman, I haven’t thought about anyone but you. It’s almost killed me, almost made me crazy. All those times you’re just insulting me like I don’t have feelings, you know? And I just stand there like a chump and take it. The only reason you ever did any of it is because I’m the only one who really sees you, huh? I’m the only one who knows that you aren’t some pampered girl like all your little friends. I’m the only one who gets it that you’re like George and Weezy, movin’ on up. And you hate me for it and you love me for it because no one else will ever understand you like I do. Tell me I’m lying, Navi, tell me it’s not true.

  “Yeah. See? You can’t.”

  Oh, my God. He’s making me cry.

  “Your minute’s up,” I say.

  “My minute just started, Navi. You listen to me. It’s me, or it’s them. You can’t have it all anymore. I’m not going through anything like Rome again because of you. I would die for you, you know that? I actually would. We’re almost thirty. I want to have kids with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I want to retire to Puerto Rico with you. So what will it be. Me, or them? Them, or me? It’s up to you. I’ll give you five minutes to think about it, and then I’m out the door and either I’m coming back here with an engagement ring, or I’m never coming back here again.”

  “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “You guess?”

  “I am, okay? I am. I know I can’t get you as nice a ring as you want, and I know I won’t wear the right thing to the wedding and you’ll make fun of me. I know that. Yes, I’m asking you. Look. I’m getting down on my knees right here, right by this ghetto tacky coffee table you think is so nice, this ugly table that makes me sick to my stomach, and I’m begging you. Usnavys Rivera, will you marry me? Will you marry a nice, honest, badly dressed man like me? I’ll never cheat on you, I’ll never lie to you, I’ll be a good father, I’ll do everything for us, and I’ll love you now and forever, just like I have for the past ten years. Navi, what do you say? Marry me? Quit screwing around with me and marry me already. You know you want to.”

  “You’re taking up my five minutes running your mouth.”

  “Fine. Okay? Fine. Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to go upstairs and fix that leak in your stupid bathroom ‘cause I can’t stand it anymore, the drip and the drop, ‘cause that drip and that drop is as loud as that stupid new pink fur coat you’ve been wearing everywhere. Where is it? In this closet right here?”

  I start to get up to stop him from opening the closet.

  “No, you just stay right there. Ah ha! See?” He laughs. “I love you, you stupid ghetto girl. You don’t even take the damn tag off. That is so sad. I know my jacket is sad, and you may not like my JCPenney shoes, but at least it’s all paid for. Now I’m going upstairs, and when I get back you’re going to have an answer for me. Okay? Here I go. I’m going upstairs now. Bye.”

  I stare at the movie. And I cry. I cry and I cry. I cry the full five minutes until he gets back.

  “Well, so what is it?” he asks, grease all over his hands. I don’t hear the drip anymore. He’s fixed the sink.

  “It’s not a real proposal without a ring,” I say.

  “Fine.” He holds up his hands, like a police officer telling a crowd to get back. “Fine. Stay right there.”

  He scrambles away and comes back from the kitchen with a bread twist tie, shaped into a ring. “This will have to do for now,” he says, fumbling and dropping it and picking it up again. “And it probably doesn’t matter because I know you’re going to be as disappointed with any real ring I get you anyway as you are in this, so here. Just take it. Take it and realize that it’s never the ring that matters. It’s the man and the woman and their love for each other and the fact that they could lose their rings forever and they’d still be devoted to each other. Do you understand that, Navi? Take the damn ring. Now what’s my answer?”

  “This ring sucks,” I say.

  He laughs. He lifts his arms above his head and yells at the top of his lungs. “I love you, woman! Isn’t that enough?”

  I think about his question. He’s not going to like the answer. “No,” I say. “It’s not. It’s not enough.”

  Juan crumbles. He puts his hands over his face and when he looks up, there are tears in his eyes and black oil smudged on his cheeks. He looks at me, and then turns toward the door.

  “You made your choice,” he says. “Now I’m making mine.”

  And he leaves.

  Ay, m’ija. I didn’t think he’d do that.

  April Fool’s Day is one of the cruelest holidays in our cultural lexicon. When else do we so gleefully dash the hopes of those around us? I usually try to avoid talking to people on April Fool’s Day, but this year, I had to make one ph
one call—to my friend Cuicatl. Remember her? The rock star formerly known as Amber? Yesterday, April Fool’s Day, I happened to see a copy of this week’s Billboard magazine, brought to my attention by one of the music writers here at the Gazette. And there on the cover was my girl, Cuicatl. The article said pre-sales of her soon-to-be-released album have exceeded expectations, and a couple of important rock critics hailed her as the next big thing in American pop. I couldn’t believe it, and called to congratulate her. She assured me it was no April Fool’s joke, and I almost choked on my joy—and envy. The lesson here for all of us: Never give up.

  —from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández

  cuicatl

  GATO AND I stare at the Billboard magazine. It’s open to the Latin charts page, and there I am, Cuicatl, at No. 1 for single and album. I flip to the Hot 100 chart, and there I am again, No. 32, with a bullet. That’s out of all the albums in the nation, English or Spanish. I sip my tea, turn to Gato, and we kiss.