Come Together, Fall Apart Page 5

  “Okay,” I say, and he pats my knee.

  Afterward, I take the urn with me. Jano has already said, without any discussion, that he will keep it at his house, but in my mind it’s inconceivable that it could belong to anyone but me.

  Holding the urn in my lap, I take a taxi straight to the bay, passing billboards and wire fences, fields of overgrown grass freckled with tiny flowers and small fires, ramshackle houses and brittle palm trees.

  When we get to the bay, I pay the driver. He has a stern face and he simply nods before shooting off into the gathering darkness. I carry the urn to the rocks and sit down, balancing it beside me. I take off the lid and reach my hand in, letting my fingertips graze the dust. Then I cover it again. I sit there for hours, my bottom growing damp from the glaze of water clinging to the rocks, and look out for anything I can see.

  DRIVE

  1.

  In my dream, we are driving so fast the car sprouts wings—giant, bony, feather-covered wings—and we are flying like gulls, steady, just above the glossy surface of the pavement. Everyone is laughing bubbles and confetti and the wind laces its fingers through our hair and streams it back and we can’t feel the cool air against our faces because it is so gentle that it cannot be felt.

  But when I tell Beto about my dream he laughs and says it’s finally official: I am one seriously fucked chica.

  I go to slap his arm but he grabs my wrist before I even come close. He looks me in the eye, little glints of green sparkling at me, all playful, and says, “But you’re still my chica, you know. You’re always mine.” He’s grinning so it lights up his face like he’s in a contest with the sun and I can’t help but stroke his sideburns with my free hand and smile back. I start tripping kisses down his neck until he picks me up and takes me to the bed where we stay, trying to get closer, in each other’s skin, all afternoon.

  2.

  I work at Mattito‘s, trying to talk anyone who will listen into buying a dishwasher or a blender or a new television. There’s one other girl, Yanina, in my department, but we work different shifts. I’ve been here for two years; before this I was mowing the grass in a cemetery and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and burnt by the sun, so this was a step up. Still, it’s not great. The way I see it, appliances are a hard sell in a country where most people fill a plastic tub with soapy water and wash their dishes by hand or string their clothes out on a line to dry, and those who don’t, have maids to do these things for them. To my boss, Señor Contreras, though, all of this means Panama is the perfect market for appliances because he thinks the only reason people do things by hand is that they don’t realize there’s an easier way, and that’s where I’m supposed to come in.

  Mattito’s is in a strip mall on a busy street, two lanes both ways with aluminum pedestrian bridges at every corner to deliver people safely from side to side. Buses and trucks and black taxicabs and motorcycles roar past at all hours, honking and swerving through traffic. On one side of us is a beauty salon that does way more business than we ever will, and on the other side is a guy who sells rugs out of a storefront that used to be a popular restaurant until the owner was reported to have ties to Noriega and the whole thing was wiped clean by American soldiers.

  I’m walking around, straightening the price tags on the dryers, when Beto calls me on his cell to tell me he’s scored some premium stuff His supplier gave him a tiny bag like some kind of year-end bonus.

  “Oye, I’m at work,” I whisper into the phone.

  “Then don’t be at work,” Beto says.

  3.

  I meet him at his apartment above a lingerie store on Avenida Central and I thank God for the millionth time that I know at least one person in this city who doesn’t still live with his parents. The mannequins in the window of the shop are a mess, wigs sliding off their bald heads, bras ill-fitting around their plastic breasts. Beto has names for them—Yasmine and Josefina—and whenever we walk by he waves to them or asks them how things are going today or compliments them on maintaining such nice figures, so I kind of think of them as real and I smile at them before I head upstairs.

  Beto’s sitting on the floor reading the newspaper when I come in. Or else he’s pretending to read it, which is something he does sometimes so people will think he’s smart when in reality he’s just looking at the ads for the department stores to see the models in their big underwear like bags up to their ribs. Viejo underwear, but he thinks it’s kind of hot.

  “I knew you’d show,” he says after I walk over to him and kiss him on the head. He wraps his arms around my calves so that my knees buckle and I nearly fall on top of him.

  “Only for an hour,” I tell him.

  “Bah.” He nuzzles his face into my thighs and then pulls back. “I had a dream,” he says, looking up at me. “Those washing machines grew legs and walked out of the store themselves and then they grew arms and knocked on peoples’ doors and begged for homes and the people asked where they were from and the máquinas told them Mattito’s and the people said, ‘I will keep you and tomorrow I will take my money to Mattito’s and pay for you,’ and the washing machines were happy because now they were sold and they knew that meant you, who was their favorite person, would get a nice raise and you wouldn’t have to go back to work all day.” He laughs and how I love the sound of that laugh like a spring bubbling out through his mouth.

  “Now who’s fucking loco for real?” I say, steadying myself with my knees against his shoulder and running my fingertips along the strands of his bristly dark hair.

  4.

  When I get home that night, my mama’s snoring on the couch. She has a body like a big yam—everything fleshy and sweet—and I stand over her, trying to imagine how my own body will turn into that one day. She tells me it’s going to happen, that eventually I’m going to blow up and fill out into a shape like her, but I think that’s only if I have kids, which I’m not planning on doing. Beto and I have already talked about it.

  My mama had four kids. Two died before they were even a few weeks in this world, another is a girl, gone off to who knows where but I never knew her, and the fourth one is me. My papi’s in the city, in some ghetto barrio somewhere. I see him out sometimes but he never gets around to acting like my father so I’ve finally learned to stop trying to act like his daughter. The last time I saw him was at a restaurant where Beto and I went for chicken. He was at the bar watching a horse race on TV. He nodded and gave a wave when he saw us but it was in a way that made me know he didn’t want me to come over or anything. He was with some other hombres. So the whole night Beto and I sat out on the patio eating our chicken and I watched my papi’s back through the window and tried to will myself into thinking of him as just any old man with a skinny hunch and a chin pointy as a spade and graying hair. Beto kept saying the whole situation was shit. But really, I told him, it wasn’t so bad. There are two ways you can go in this life: Either a whole family, twenty people or whatever, stick together and live all in one house like a big pod, or else everyone’s spread all over, like seeds, and you each replant yourself and make a new life on your own. One’s not better than the other, I don’t think, but they each require certain adjustments.

  5.

  Señor Contreras informs me that we haven’t sold a single appliance in seventeen days. The executives at the department store headquarters are getting nervous and making threats about getting rid of the appliances department in our location.

  “Is it really just us?” I ask.

  He’s a roly-poly man with greasy hair combed straight back. The only clothes I’ve ever seen him wear are a tan suit paired with a lemon-yellow shirt, and I wonder sometimes whether he squeezed out of his mother in that suit and whether he will die in it. I can tell he wants to answer yes because he thinks that might scare me into working harder. But finally he sighs and shakes his head.

  “No person wants to buy appliances,” he says, as if he were the one who invented appliances and is taking it as a personal affront.


  It’s like this all over the city. People don’t want to change or else they can’t afford it. A few months ago two new highways opened here. The south highway runs through the city and is supposed to ease up traffic everywhere else except that it doesn’t go exactly where anyone needs it to and it costs up to $3.00 to use it. Who’s going to pay to drive on a stupid highway when the other roads are free? The north highway costs the same and was built mostly to connect the airport to the city, so it was pretty obvious from the beginning that it was mainly for the tourists. To us, that highway was a rejection. On the old route, visitors would have seen the billboards for Café Durán and Daewoo and Adidas and they would have seen people with umbrellas at bus stops and walking the streets with shopping carts. They would have seen stray dogs darting like tadpoles over broken streets and unpaved shoulders overgrown with plants. They would have heard corrugated metal gates grinding down at the end of the day and horns bleating their impatience and men whooping at the women walking by. They would have seen real life here. But I guess real life is often unsightly, so they built a highway straight into the heart of the city to keep tourists away from what’s real, away from the heart of us.

  The speed limit on both highways is an insane eighty kilometers an hour, a speed unheard of in a country where being in a car either means being mired in a sea of traffic or navigating small dirt roads. The very thought of shooting around in a car that fast scares the shit out of everyone.

  The highways and appliances, they’re all very modern, you know. And they go basically unused.

  6.

  When I was seven my papi took me out driving. We were in El Rompio, where the dark green plants on the side of the road swayed over us like ballerina arms, and he put me on his lap in the driver’s seat and let me steer the car down a dusty stretch while he worked the pedals. I remember it so well because that was the last time I touched him. My whole self was right up on him and his arms were around my waist and I could feel his breath against my ear when he told me to turn more or to hold on tighter. He had this aftershave that smelled like cinnamon milk, and for a long time after that I went to drugstores all over the city, twisting caps off aftershave bottles, trying to find that smell again. My mother was back at a roadside bodega. I knew she was probably standing there wringing her hands, praying that we didn’t crash or drive off straight into the sea. And I loved that feeling—my papi and me together like bandidos, bumping over the gravel in the scorching midday sun, shredding the earth beneath us as we went. Most memories might be like water, but some are like wood—so solidly there that you can feel them and smell them and wrap your hands around them, and for a hundred years they will never go away.

  7.

  I spend a long time getting ready in the morning. I’m the kind of girl who walks down the street trying to get stared at as much as possible without actually being whistled at. Beto’s all, Why do you care, Marisol? You want me to whistle at you? I’ll whistle at you until your fucking ears fall off your fucking head. And even though I can see his point and I’m for real not trying to pick up other guys, I just think it might be nice if I could. Anyway, my mama, who doesn’t much like Beto since he has no job to speak of and since he doesn’t live with his family—which she says shows a lot of nerve and disrespect—she’s the one always buying me lipsticks and eyeshadows from the Supermarket Rey and leaving them on my bed. She gets seriously wrapped up in those commercials that advertise a product that will give you perfect skin or lashes that extend all the way to the moon. “You’re so young,” she says. “You have to take advantage before you turn into an old woman.”

  “You still look good,” I tell her but she sweeps away the words with her hand.

  “You still have time to get a man,” she says.

  “I have one.”

  “You have a cabrón.”

  “Mamá!” I wail.

  We get in this fight all the time. And whenever we do, it sends me straight to Beto.

  8.

  We’ve got a customer walking around in braided Italian loafers, his arms crossed. He’s looking very earnestly at one of our top-of-the-line refrigerators. It’s got an ice maker, which is really the big selling point because ice is essential in all this Panamanian heat and at every party you have to buy big bags of it and bang them against the floor until the ice inside crumbles into little cubes that you can slide into your guests’ glasses. An ice maker would be a real savior to someone who could afford it.

  Señor Contreras is perched in a loftlike area above the store where he’s always sorting things like receipts and inventory sheets. There are tilted mirrors all around the store so that from where he stands, he can see what’s going on at any moment. He’s looking down at me now like he’s about to start throwing things if I don’t pounce on this customer soon, so I walk over casually and ask if the guy needs help with anything.

  “How much do you charge for delivery?” he asks, and I have a hard time swallowing for a second because if he’s asking about delivery already, this is serious.

  “Twenty-five dollars,” I tell him and he nods.

  There’s some more back and forth on the details—I dutifully point out the ice maker—and eventually he’s ready to sign for a new refrigerator. It’s almost too easy.

  And then, because I’m on some kind of real high about it, I suggest that maybe he wants to look at a new dryer. I don’t know anyone on the planet who actually owns a dryer but I’m feeling like maybe today is my lucky day so why not ride it out?

  The guy smirks at me and says, “Ever heard of the sun?”

  He starts laughing and I pray to God that to Senor Contreras it looks like we’re having a good time down here.

  “I just thought—” I start.

  “You know what? Forget all of it,” he says. “I don’t need a new refrigerator like I don’t need a dryer.”

  And that’s it. He’s headed for the door. I follow him a few steps and even call out, Señor, Señor, but he’s ignoring me, so I just try to act casual and wave to his back as he’s leaving. There’s no getting around the fact that I fucked up, though. That sale would have been two months’ rent. But he’s gone.

  9.

  That night Beto and I make it good. It’s impossibly hot in his apartment so we decide to take a cold shower together. We try a little in the stall but we keep slipping and not being able to find a good spot so eventually we get out, still streaming wet, and go to the bed. Beto runs on his toes to the other room to get the fan. When he plugs it in he aims it toward us and sets it on high. I have this image of beads of water scampering over my skin. They lose their shape and splay out over my shoulders and my back and my calves, trying to outrun the wind. In their wake, they leave me covered with goosebumps and it’s this combination—Beto’s fingers stroking between my thighs and the sharp coolness pricking at my skin—that sends me over in a way I’ve never experienced before.

  Afterward, we’re lying on the damp sheet and staring at the stucco ceiling together. The best thing about Beto’s apartment, besides the fact that it’s his, is that the streets around here have all been made into pedestrian walkways so it stays close to quiet most of the time. Tonight is no exception. We lie there for so long without speaking or moving that I wonder if Beto has fallen asleep. He often does and I always cover him with a sheet so that the mosquitoes don’t get to him in the night, and then I kiss him and leave quietly because my mama doesn’t let me stay over. But now I turn my head just in time to see his hand, which has been resting on his chest, move as he raises his fingers to his nose.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I can smell you,” he says. He holds his fingers there and breathes in, closing his eyes and smiling, until finally his hand drops away.

  10.

  Sometimes, at night, I go out walking. This is long after the neon signs throughout the city have blinked out, but before the panaderias start their lonely business of rolling dough in the early half-light of morning. No one know
s I go, or maybe they do and they don’t mention it, but I do it because it’s the time when I feel the most alone in the world but it’s also the time when I feel most intimately connected to it. Like the hour confers some kind of clarity of vision in which everything appears to me in its true, naked state, and everything in this city makes sense to me, at least for a little while.

  I’m just past a church when I see my father. He’s sitting on the arm of a bench, breaking seeds with his teeth and eating whatever’s inside. A plastic bag hangs from one wrist. It’s the strangest feeling whenever I see him—like seeing the love of your life, the one who left you, when you’re just out doing errands, trying to keep up with the business of the everyday. You half want to run and jump on them and bury your face in their neck and hold on forever and you half want to turn away, shielding yourself.

  I’m about to walk closer when he sees me and yells out, “Tienes plata para un viejo?”

  I wonder if he’s drunk.

  He yells out, please, any money I can spare, and we’re staring at each other under the moon but to him I’m just anybody.

  I turn around finally and walk back the way I came.

  11.

  A few more weeks and Señor Contreras tells me it’s over. I’m secretly relieved to hear this because it means no more tirelessly pushing things on people that they don’t really need.

  “Can I be moved to cosmetics?” I ask. I’m thinking how much my mama would love that because I’d probably get a good discount, but Señor Contreras is staring at me with his small eyes and it’s then I know I’m not getting it. It’s not just that I’m being transferred to another department or something. I feel like my head’s made out of cement when I realize what’s happening.