still lives

The omen comes in the ruin of a robin’s egg on the sidewalk: fractured blue splattered with the pink makings of a flightless thing. A plum membrane of skin stretched over eyes like bruises. I make the mistake of looking back at this small disaster, and then the calamity of it fingers the threads of my morning. I believe omens demand swift sacrifices: I tilt my paper cup of coffee onto the sidewalk, letting it splash around my feet. Then I hurry to work, the air thick with the crooning of mourning doves and those long blue shadows before the sun rises.

This early, the highway trembles with the clattering of trucks. I walk past lampposts papered with signs offering to buy houses for cash. I pass the auto shop, Yolanda’s Beauty Salon, the tailor, then the cheese block of a house where I live with my mother. Doña Zepeda’s dog, a blighted Chihuahua named Princesa, yaps at me from her yard, baring her violet gums and two rows of awful little teeth.

The panadería sits wedged between a Korean supermarket and a botánica. With fingers stiff from the morning chill, I unlock the iron grate, then the door. The kitchen is thick with the smells of yeast and cleaning vinegar. I keep the lights off and get the ovens going, hoisting trays out of the proofer. I work myself into a soreness, lining the trays with loaves and plump white rolls like upturned bellies, mixing the dough and fillings for the pan dulce, slicing the loaves. My mother comes in when the first rays of morning light lick the walls. Blinking sleep from her eyes, she switches on the lights and the radio, runs a hand through my hair, and sets to work.

 

At lunchtime Omar comes into the kitchen with a yellow-tipped carnation for my mother.

There’s no need for all of this, she says, placing the flower in a vase she set out with fresh water this morning. She hands Omar a bundle wrapped in tinfoil, adding, Always the gentleman.

Yeah, he’s a treasure, I say, as he flips his eyelids inside out at me behind her back.

At the register Omar squeezes his narrow hips onto my chair with me, pushing me to the side. A woman with a cardigan buttoned up to her neck stares in open disapproval. Catching her eye, Omar grabs my jaw and presses the tip of his tongue to my cheek.

Fuck off, I say, elbowing him in the stomach as the woman’s eyes widen.

He brings out the hot bundle of tinfoil and peels it back to expose the buttered tip of a torta, brimming with spiced pork and cut lettuce. My stomach rumbles as he takes a bite, and he brings the sandwich up to my mouth next.

Have at it, flaquita, he says.

I shake my head, and he shrugs and makes quick work of the meal. Some days he sticks around to watch anime with me behind the counter, but today he’s in his work clothes—a pair of dark cargos and the tangerine BusyRabbit polo.

Off to paint drywall? I ask.

Not this time. I’m assembling a crib for a perky little working mom, he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Will I see you tonight?

You’re going to get the shit beaten out of you if you keep messing around on the job, I say.

He flashes me a smile. I doubt it, he says. Her husband works a double shift.

 

I was in my third year of college when my grandfather died and left my mother some money. She quit her job as a clinic secretary and opened the panadería. Shortly after that, I dropped out of school. My mother put up an acceptable protest but was all too happy to have me back, my room waiting for me exactly as I’d left it three years prior.

There is another panadería three blocks from ours, with more variety and better hours, but last spring my mother had Omar set up free Wi-Fi, and that was it: suddenly we had people in at all hours of the day, gossiping and lingering between the shelves. We got a bargain on a used coffee machine, set up a little table under the awning, hired Jacinto to help in the kitchen part-time, and started selling tortas. My mother swears it’s the tortas that keep people coming, but the truth is, people come to stream shows and video-call and update their dating profiles and bet on soccer matches. You can always count on a sucio watching porn at the back, and occasionally someone comes in and asks the whole shop to keep quiet so they can hear their girl on the other end of the line.

 

We sell out of tortas three hours before closing time. I slouch behind the counter, watching a show on my phone and turning away the occasional hungry straggler. I try to ignore the sense of ill ease that has hung over my day since the morning.

The bell dings, and a couple come inside dressed in matching Carhartt. Our panadería is high enough in Yelp rankings that we get a steady trickle of Silverlake hipsters every week. The man walks up to me without consulting the cases or the menu. He pronounces the names of each bread with exaggerated care, like I’m about to dish out a gold star for his Spanish. His upper lip is hidden behind a thick mustache, waxed and combed to a dark, wormlike mass. As he orders, the girl loiters restlessly, clacking the bread tongs together in rapid succession. Her dungarees ride low on her hips, the creamy skin of her stomach rising above the waistband of a pair of men’s briefs. I want to tell her to put the fucking tongs down, but my mind is on the tip jar, so I play nice. I fix my face into a smile and tell them to have a fantastic day, then turn back to my episode of Chainsaw Man as soon as they’re gone.

At five a family comes in and puts in one of those nuclear orders where every child picks three more pastries than they can eat. Then we close shop. Jacinto turns up 107.5 FM, mixing dough and singing along to Rocío Dúrcal. My mother harmonizes with tuneless vigor, scrubbing the trays as I sweep the floors.

On the walk home I reach for my mother’s hand, brushing a finger against her palm. She twines her fingers into mine.

You were gone early this morning, she says.

I couldn’t sleep. I stepped out for a coffee.

No me gusta pensarte andando por la calle a esas horas. Why are you paying for coffee when we’ve got a perfectly good machine at work?

I say nothing. At best, our panadería’s coffee tastes like backwash; at worst, jet fuel that melts steel beams.

 

After my father left, I set aside a pocketful of firsts, so that he wouldn’t feel he had to play catch-up when he returned. I never learned how to jump rope. I didn’t ask for stories at bedtime. I didn’t wear my favorite shirt to school.

The feeling first materialized on the bus home from school, a dread that sped my heart to an engine sputtering its last. I found that some days I had to gulp mouthfuls of air just to fill my chest. The sacrifices became a necessary habit, like a prayer before a flight. I stopped hitting a piñata before it broke. I never ate the last scoop of ice cream. I paused movies fifteen minutes before their ending. The dread was assuaged, and I learned.

To this formless gray entity I give my smallest and most acute delights. I leave the juiciest bit of chicken skin untouched on my plate, step away from the last hot stream of water in my morning shower, skip the song I’ve been wanting to hear. A safeguard against entropy.

Our house holds its breath for better days, the furniture sheathed in plastic and the good dishes tucked into a cabinet. We bring paper plates to the couch and spoon dollops of Northgate ranchera onto reheated chicken.

I’m starving, but the morning’s omen hangs over my head. Fasting is the most reliable sacrifice to hold back the bad. I take five slow bites and get up to toss the rest. Hunger hones me, dispels thoughts tinged with dread.

We watch television for a couple of hours, then my mother goes to her room to call her sister. I stay up a while longer watching infomercials. I wake up at three with my hair in my mouth and my body under a blanket my mother must have placed over me. I cannot remember what I dreamt, but it left dregs of anguish so intense that I shrug the blanket off, afraid to sleep. My phone has a text from Omar from less than an hour ago. I check on my mother: a dark lump in her bed. I shut the television off before the woman on-screen is done shoving the length of a celery stalk into a juicer.

 

The studio isn’t truly Omar’s. Like his car and his clothes, it once belonged to his brother, who is now a big-time producer in Miami.

There’s an old couch with small nicks in the leather, white foam blooming from minute wounds. A modest interface, a keyboard, the guitar he used to pick up girls back in school, a stand mic. LED strips pulse in programmed patterns of turquoise and purple. Empty beer bottles and nips line the wall, a trophy case of our dumb drunken nights.

Omar sits in the good chair, fiddling with the keyboard. I watch him: the blunt profile of his jaw, the thickness of his neck, the bovine eyelashes. I like to see him lost in thought, attuned to the sounds like a bird to gusts of wind. He is halfway pretty, and his voice takes you the rest of the way. It’s satin smooth and not precisely masculine. Sometimes I imagine speaking my words in his voice. Sometimes I imagine myself in his long, lanky body.

He pulls up a chair for me and passes me a joint thin as a chicken bone. The bud is smooth and skunky, and it hits almost at once, shucking the brittle edges off my thoughts.

Good shit, isn’t it? he asks, kissing the top of my head, a flat smack. Take another hit. Get yourself comfortable. I’ve got something to show you.

His voice is all bluster, but he tugs at a hangnail with his teeth. He’s nervous, which means he’s serious about this track.

I take another hit and make a show of leaning back on the chair, closing my eyes.

OK, I say, lay it on me.

I hear his fingers on the keyboard. Silence. Then the first notes of a piano, a haunting progression that unfurls over cybernetic synths. The melody swells and dips, its siren call ceding to the hiss of snares, the distinctive percussion of reggaetón—pa-para-pa, pa-para-pa.

Omar pauses the track, and I open my eyes, find him watching me eagerly.

Sound familiar? he asks.

I shake my head. Omar looks disappointed.

It’s from Ghost in the Shell, he says. I thought you might like it.

A week ago I decided to start Omar on the anime classics. In between mowing a lawn and assembling a minibar, he spent his lunch hour watching the film with me: his head on my shoulder while cyborgs vaulted from soaring chrome towers and twitched in their sleep as they received data from the dark ports lodged in their skulls and necks. As Omar watched, I became increasingly self-conscious, wondered if he was bored, if his mind was elsewhere.

He starts the track back up. Now that he’s pointed it out, it’s impossible not to hear the film’s evocative score, rain-slicked and solemn. When the track ends, a silence stretches between us, loaded with his expectations. I’m surprised to feel my eyes prick with tears. I don’t trust myself to speak, don’t know what to say without embarrassing myself.

It still needs a vocal riff, says Omar. I was thinking we could record one.

Surely he has something already in his library. But this is his way of bringing me in, of making me feel part of the process.

Omar is one of only three people in my life, while his own life is rife with names and appointments, missed calls and fleeting encounters. The thing that sets me apart is that I’m always around. Omar’s old friends are trying to make it in other neighborhoods, working office jobs and building families. Omar doesn’t need to ask to know when I’m home, when I’m working, when I’m out walking at night.

He sets up the mic before my mouth, places the headphones back over my ears. Then he leans into the microphone and moans, Oh! Oh! Oh! I laugh, adding a deep Uuuuugh, and a Yes, baby! Omar grunts, then in falsetto adds, Faster, faster, just like that! I get up and pick him up off his feet, and he screams. We curse each other, tussle until we knock over the mic.

When he plays the recording back, our curses and my laughter sound joyous, bigger than the moment itself.

This shit’s all useless, says Omar, smiling.

His phone lights up with a call, an unknown number. He lets it ring, screws the top off a nip of Honey Jack.

You’re not gonna check it? I ask.

Omar winces as he downs half the nip. I know exactly who it is, he says, reaching for his phone. Nothing interesting.

He plays the voicemail.

It’s Francisca, I know you’re there. You’ve always got your fucking phone on you. I know you better than you know yourself, you miserable sinvergüenza.

Omar’s face doesn’t change. The voice on the phone softens.

If you want to break things off, I’m chill. What I can’t handle is going from having you inside me, sleeping with our foreheads pressed together, to this total fucking silence. Tell me we’re done. Have the basic decency to call me back.

This isn’t the first voicemail he’s shared, nor the first time I’ve seen the smug set of his eyes, like he’s a cat dropping a mouse at my feet. I wonder if he thinks of me as a fellow cat.

Did you think I’d find that funny? I ask.

Don’t tell me you’re buying this shit, says Omar. She was always hiding texts from her ex, telling me these stories about hanging with her girls. I’d bet you anything the guy’s dropped her again. She’s just looking for some validation.

I frown. He lights the joint back up and offers me a conciliatory hit.

I’m not high. Not really. I could take another hit to smooth myself out, chase that velvet feeling, but I shake my head. Another small pleasure for the void. Omar shrugs and finishes the roach.

Even buzzed, I can feel it at the edge of everything: a heaviness, a grayness that thumbs the fringes of this moment.

 

Today I have given up coffee entirely, and my head throbs in withdrawal. Omar comes in at lunch with a flower for my mother, stands in line behind a girl in a white denim jumpsuit.

I’ll have a coffee and one of these, she says, handing me an oreja. Flakes of puff pastry peel off and fall on the counter. They were my dad’s favorite; my mother bakes a surplus of them when she’s feeling sentimental.

As I ring the girl up, I feel that she is watching me. She has the eyes of somebody who’s used to being picked on—sharp and mean. The rest of her face is sweet, cheeks high and ruddy like a doll’s, broad mouth, snub nose, silver ring glinting from her left nostril. Her bleached hair is tucked behind her ears; a greasy strand trails over her cheek.

I was here the other day? she says.

Oh, I say, as I pick out coins from the register. I remember you, all decked out in Carhartt like you were off to the construction site.

She blushes—a particular combination of embarrassment and pleasure that sets off a thrum in my own body.

I’ve been back here a couple of other times, she says. You’re not particularly observant when you’re watching Naruto.

Even as I speak, I can tell from the mischievous twist of her mouth that she already knows:

It’s not Naruto, I say. There’s millions of animes other than Naruto.

Right. Well, I keep making the nightmare drive to stand around and see if you’ll look up from your screen. I was starting to think I’d read you wrong.

Read what wrong? I ask.

She puckers her lips. I’ve spoiled her banter. The handful of quarters is a ripe weight in my hand.

I want to give you my number, she says.

From behind her, Omar catches my eye, his eyebrows shooting upwards.

What about your boyfriend? I ask, thinking of the man with the caterpillar mustache.

She takes a sip of her coffee, grimaces at the taste, places it delicately back on the counter.

Otis is a coworker, she says. Then: So you’re the jealous type.

Not at all, I say.

Good, she says, because I am. What’s your name?

Leo.

I’m Juneau.

As I hand her the change, my fingers linger on the soft flesh of her palm.

 

After the morning shift, my mother and I switch positions: she works the register while I work the kitchen. Jacinto has his hands full with the oven. I set to work making the marinade for tomorrow’s pork. Omar leans on the counter, smacking loudly on a torta.

I like her, he says. She’s your type.

I don’t have a type.

You do, but you wouldn’t like to hear what it is.

What are you saying? Say it with your chest.

I’m good, not interested in dying today. I have things to take care of.

You have a date?

Sure.

Make sure you fuck with the lights off. You don’t want her to see the face you make when you come.

He walks up to me and puts his face close to mine, chomping on the wet mess of his meal.

Motherfucker! I hold him off, my arms straining, and when he laughs, I feel a spray of warm spittle on my face. I shove him, and he knocks a tray of conchas to the floor, scattering sugar and crumbs all over.

Hijos de su pinche madre, says Jacinto, breaking his usual silence. He’s a large man with small features, like they were scooped out of a child’s face onto his big head. Suddenly he’s towering over Omar, who tries not to cower. He wipes his hands on his apron, grabs the broom from its hook beside the door, and shoves it onto Omar’s hands.

I return to making tortas as Omar sweeps in tight-lipped contrition, the two of us avoiding each other’s eyes. I chop peppers and tomatoes, pound garlic to a paste. I peel carrots in long strokes, wipe orange ribbons off the counter with my palm.

When I look up, Omar is watching me with something like tenderness.

It’s pretty, he says. The way you pile ingredients together. It’s like those little paintings of fruit in bowls.

You mean still lives?

He rolls his eyes. We both got what I meant, so why’d you have to flex on me?

It’s just like Omar to see beauty in a tangle of carrot ribbons on the counter. There is an aesthetic principle in most aspects of his life: from the way he mixes a beat to the way he neatly parks his truck. In school his meticulous nature and tenor voice led girls to believe he was prettier than he merited, and also to a swirl of rumors regarding his sexuality—rumors that were quashed when he was caught in a car with the vice-principal’s girlfriend.

After he leaves, I catch myself neatly grouping ingredients: A head of garlic with a bushel of cilantro. A posy of flag-colored peppers, lemon rinds, and a fistful of cloves. I take pride in my little arrangements, consider their shapes and colors on the counter as if Omar might walk back in at any moment. Jacinto catches my eye, and I busy myself with chopping. Sometimes I want so badly to be the person Omar imagines me to be.

 

Jacinto works full-time on Wednesdays, and I get the day off to tag along with Omar on his BusyRabbit appointments. We split the pay on bigger jobs like cleaning out garages and loading moving vans. I ride shotgun in his beat-up pickup, westbound past houses with impossibly lush lawns and down tree-lined streets that smell like flowers and wet grass, sprinklers wasting curtains of water on the hot pavement.

The key, says Omar, is to work efficiently enough not to get called out, but slow enough to milk an extra hour.

We pull up to a two-story Spanish Colonial, freshly painted in glowing white. The air is cool with a sea breeze. Leaves rustle, and a bluebird chirps overhead.

We park next to a silver Audi. As I unbuckle my seat belt, my stomach grumbles loudly. I keep my eyes glued to the dashboard, blood rising to my neck.

Let’s grab some lunch on the way back, says Omar.

I’m good, I say.

He looks like he wants to say more, but he drops it.

Inside, the house is all soft angles and gauzy light, white walls, a roof pierced by wooden beams. Leather furniture crowds the living room, set atop a lush rug. On a handsome coffee table is a chemistry set of glass lamps with exposed bulbs. Beyond French doors a pool shimmers in the midday heat.

I bend down to unlace my shoes, but Omar laughs at me, steps right onto the hardwood with his dirt-encrusted boots.

You’re not a guest, he says.

A large box leans against the bare wall, a blue post-it stuck to the cardboard. Omar rips the note off the box, scans it quickly, then groans. Inside the box are panels of pine and brackets of brass-painted steel.

It’s a floating entertainment center, he says. They’re a bitch to build. Sexy on the outside and cheap on the inside.

Like you, I say, dodging a smack.

We lay newspaper over the floor and carefully set the parts on top. Building the piece takes the better part of an hour. I’m lightheaded from hunger, and my fingers are clumsy. Twice Omar has to reach over to stop me from screwing a part on upside down. Omar exchanges the plastic hardware for metal screws from his toolbox.

Are you going to call that girl from the store? he asks.

I don’t know.

I think you should. Who knows. You could fall in love.

What do you know about that? I ask, hammering the hundredth tiny nail into the cardboard backing.

Omar shrugs, and I feel my eyes widen.

You’ve been in love? I ask. Carla?

Not that mess. Remember Elena?

I nod, but there’s not much to remember. It was the quietest Omar has been about a relationship: no boasting about the fucking, no bitching about the fights. I figured he was bored or cheating. I feel a weight in my chest—not jealousy but hurt that he didn’t tell me.

Why her? I ask.

You know me, he says. I usually couldn’t care less if a girl is pissed, or if she calls me back. With Elena, I don’t know. I just felt like my life would go to shit if I didn’t know that we were cool.

He gets up and begins to pencil measurements onto the wall.

Omar’s parents are in love—a kiss-with-tongues kind of love. Always fighting, making up, accusing the other of infidelity. Omar once told me he was sure they both were cheating just to keep things interesting between them.

Omar himself believes in God and marriage and the whole package deal. At night he prays on his knees before bed like Mickey Mouse in a Christmas movie. He wants to get married in the same church where his parents were married, where he was baptized. He wants a wife who will dress their kids in their Sunday best and greet him with a kiss and dinner on the table when he gets home.

Omar is silent now as he works—a sad, weird silence that makes me restless. I don’t know what to say to lighten the mood.

Let me try the drill, I say, but he brushes me away irritably.

Go play, he says.

I shove him, but I’m content to snoop around.

A hallway leads to a pristine kitchen tiled neatly in peaches and cream. It’s hard to believe anybody has ever soiled the counters with food. I press a button on a chrome espresso machine, watch the caramel stream pour from the spout, pooling on the little tray below and filling the kitchen with a sweet aroma. From the living room comes the sound of the drill. Before I can change my mind, I send a text to Juneau, asking what she’s doing this weekend. Then I turn off my phone and head back to the living room.

For all its beauty, the couch is hard against my back. I lift a blanket with “Berkeley” embroidered across it, finger the buttercup letters.

You know, says Omar from his spot on the floor, you’ve never talked to me about school.

There’s nothing to talk about, I say. Dread coils in my chest again.

I figured some shit had happened to you there, and that’s why you came back.

Nothing happened, I say. That was the problem. It was gray half of the year and lonely as hell. Parties ended at eleven. People tried to make up for having nothing to say by pushing these “real” conversations, going in a circle asking shit like “When did you first lose faith in your parents?”

That’s whack, he says. But you don’t sound like you hated it. You kind of sound like you loved it.

I’m telling you I was sad and bored to death.

All I’m saying is I know you. You don’t get all worked up about shit you don’t care about.

I wouldn’t tell him this, but what happened is I got greedy. My grades were good. I spoke in class. I slept with pretty girls. I made friends. I danced and kissed strangers and drank until I forgot that I don’t like to hear myself speak. Desire pressed me so tightly to the world that at any moment it might have crushed me. I didn’t question the prolonged buoyancy I felt. I didn’t forgo any joy.

One day I woke up, and the world was slightly askew. As time went on, I felt it tilting further off-center until I couldn’t get through a conversation without forgetting what the other person had said. A full day would pass, and I’d realize I’d missed my lectures. Halfway through speaking I lost the motivation to finish a thought. The easiest thing to do was lie still. Six dead months, bloated and gray.

When my mother bought the panadería, I came home, and eventually life sharpened back into definition. Now I don’t want much more than to belong to the six-block radius that is my universe, to my mother, to Omar. These last couple of years have been a lucky streak, and I’m terrified to break it.

© Jodi Bosin

Alone in my room at night I write to Juneau: Thinking of your little white jumpsuit. It was pretty.

Within a couple of minutes she writes back: Just pretty?

I type slowly, delete, start over.

I’ll have to take another look. When can I see you again?

I’m house-sitting for a producer in Manhattan Beach tomorrow night, then going to a friend’s show. Wanna come along? We can pregame with the producer’s fancy liquor.

What kind of show?

Indie group called One-Eyed Sally. They’re playing in this lesbian bar off Sunset. The drinks are good, and my friends will like you.

My encounters with women have always occurred in private, contained spaces: long afternoons in dorm bedrooms, quickies in the back seats of Subarus, movie sessions that roll past the credits. I’ve never been to a lesbian bar or hung out with a group of queer people. The thought sends a nervous thrill through my body, and I want it almost as much as I’m afraid of it.

I accept her invitation, and she types back immediately, her message generously laden with smileys and exclamation marks.

I know only two types of desire. One is self-disintegration: wanting another body to exist at the expense of mine. The other is when it’s enough to look at someone and to have them look back. To know I am being refracted in some part of their mind. Neither lasts beyond the moment—I’ve never wanted much else.

I put down the phone and try not to linger in the feeling, try not to think what I’ll have to feed the void to compensate for this unbridled burst of joy.

That night I spread a blanket on the floor and lie on it with Omar’s sweatshirt over my belly. I hope a good night’s sleep is enough of a trade-off.

I wake up at one, cold and with a stiff back, and I wander the street for a couple of hours. Then I open the shop, measure and mix dough before my mother arrives to pop the first batch of bolillos in the oven.

 

The day’s a wash. People walk the aisles on their phones without purchasing anything, and my mother doesn’t have the heart to kick them out. Neither do I. We throw away most of the morning’s labor. I’m tired. I can’t tell if it’s the lack of sleep or the slow creep of something else.

 

Against my better judgment I consult with Omar on what to wear for my date. His voice on the phone is shrill with humor.

Baby, why are you asking when we both know you’re gonna wear some tired old flannel, that sorry pair of boxers, and those jeans that disappear your ass?

I am wearing precisely that. I rip off the flannel and dig around my ancient pile of clothes, fishing out a dark tank.

Can I borrow your leather jacket? I ask.

Come on over, he says.

 

His jacket stinks of weed and his dad’s cologne, but I like the way it frames my shoulders. Omar makes a big show of hyping me up like he’s sending me off for my first day of school. I sit on the couch with my backpack at my feet, picking at the foam as I wait for Juneau to text the address. My thoughts are sluggish with hunger and nerves. When my phone finally pings, it takes two tries to read the words on the screen.

Omar sees my expression. Oh, baby, he says. What is it?

When I answer, my voice sounds high, strange: She says she’s caught something. She’s in bed with a fever. Says she’s really sorry, that she was looking forward to this all week.

Omar sucks his teeth.

Man, she didn’t even try with an excuse, I say. I shrug off Omar’s jacket.

I’m sorry, flaquita, he says. It’s not your fault. Silverlake girls think they can do whatever they want. Se les ha caído Dios. They wanna claim East LA without fucking with East LA. I bet she was born in Massachusetts or something.

He ruffles my hair.

None of that face, he says. Let me pour you a cup of something. I bet it wasn’t even good pussy.

He pours two cups of rum: his neat, mine topped off with orange Crush. He doesn’t drink soda because he wants to “keep shit tight,” but he always has these little eight-ounce cans of Crush in the fridge because he knows it’s my favorite.

I take a sip, the burn of the liquor going straight to my empty belly.

Fuck, I say.

Omar produces a slice of pizza from the minifridge, congealed cheese matted with unidentifiable toppings.

Is that from last week? I ask.

Shut it and eat, he says. I can’t remember the last time I saw you eat something.

I shouldn’t, but the hunger is turning my disappointment into some monstrous emotion, so I reach for the slice. It tastes like cardboard and salt. Omar watches me chew. I’m starting to feel the liquor, and I try not to think of what just happened, try to shunt away the feelings for when I’m alone. I grasp desperately for something to talk about.

As if he can hear my thoughts, Omar says, I added our riffs to the track. Do you wanna listen?

I nod, and he leans forward and types on the keyboard. The room thrums with the familiar synths, the swelling piano refrain. The drums pick up, and then a new sound comes in, a tangle of voices compressed into a garbled melody.

Is that us? I ask.

Yes, can’t you tell? That’s your ugly laugh right there.

I can almost pick out Omar’s falsetto from my incoherent grunts, or maybe that’s his own voice, and mine is the softer tone underneath. It’s strange, but it works: the reggaetón snares and the tinkling of the piano, our voices forced into the shape of the song.

Omar pauses the track and looks at me for a verdict.

Sweet, I say.

Thanks for the feedback, he says. You should write for Pitchfork. What’s on your mind? Are you still bummed about that girl?

I shrug. It takes all my energy just to reach out to someone, I say. Then I do, and nothing works out. I want things to be easy and simple for once.

Omar takes a long sip of his drink.

I don’t think you want anything to work out, he says. It would force you to do things differently. I get the sense that you’re happiest when shit’s on the rocks. Then at least you know where you’re standing.

Should I take love advice from the guy who thinks eating out is going to eviscerate his manhood or something?

“Eviscerate.” You’re so smart. Did you go to college?

You don’t even know what you’re missing out on, I say. I pour myself another drink. What do you think’s going to happen when you eat a woman out? I ask, warming up to the subject. Your dick’s going to shrivel up?

He gets up, grabs my backpack from the floor, unzips it.

What’s all this for? he asks.

Put that down, I say, too late. He tosses out the harness, then produces the blue silicone cock, his eyes widening.

Damn, Leo. You bring this to a first date?

I feel blood rise to my face. I like having the option, I say.

You’re wild. He considers the dildo, turning it over in his hands. It’s cool, he says. Smurfian.

Put it down, cabrón. I reach for the dildo, try to keep my voice light, but he sidesteps me with ease.

You know, he says, this is nice and all, but I bet it doesn’t measure up to the real thing.

I don’t know how much you think you’re packing, but you don’t even come close, I say, finally snatching the dildo from his hands.

Omar sits back on his chair.

That’s not what you’ve said before, he says.

We only bring it up when one of us wants it to happen again—a tentative prelude.

My only frames of reference are you and this one, I say, placing the cock back in the bag.

He knows this already, but I know it will make him feel good to hear me say it out loud.

Tenderly I pick up the harness from the floor. The leather worn soft. The click of the buckles.

Doesn’t it feel a little funny? he asks.

There’s no derision in Omar’s face, only curiosity.

I forget it’s not a part of me after a while.

Let me see.

We have seen each other naked dozens of times, but I still feel trepidation. I take another sip of my drink and pull down my pants, hoist the strap over my boxers. As I slip the cock into the ring, I avoid his eyes. I tug the harness fast to my hips.

Come closer, he says. He cups his hand around the head of the blue cock. I place my hand on top of his, threading our fingers together and sliding them over the shaft.

Omar grabs my face and kisses me, his mouth bitter with rum. I take his shirt off, press my mouth to the coarse hair of his chest, trace slow circles over his hips with my thumb. He grabs my wrist, taking my fingers into his mouth, watching me through half-shut lids. I curl my fingers into his mouth, bringing him eye to eye, and I feel the hum of his moan against my hand. I take my fingers from between his lips, and he sighs.

Fuck me, he says.

I shake my head, but I’m slick. I’m shocked at myself, like this is happening to someone else.

Do you have lube? I ask.

Wait here.

He disappears into the bathroom, and while he’s gone, my thoughts start to cool.

He comes back with a thin bottle. When he sees my face, he sits on my lap and kisses the soft place between my ear and my jaw.

Leo, he says into my ear. Fuck me.

He pulls my shirt off, and then his mouth is on my breasts and I want to slow down, but instead I kiss him hard, my hand gripping his hair, testing to see how much force he will let me get away with.

Get up, I say, and he complies, a soft, yielding look in his eyes.

When I ease into him, he lets out a sharp gasp, laughs a little.

Are you all right? I ask. I stroke a line down his spine, spread my palm over the small of his back, bracing my weight.

Just go easy on me, he says, lifting his head to look at me. I push his head down, press his cheek against the table. Sounds begin to leave our bodies, but I can’t hear myself, only his voice.

 

I leave Omar’s studio at dawn. He offered, but I did not let him make me come, did not lie on the couch with our sweaty bodies pressed together, did not talk. I had already taken too much. This was an unwarranted pleasure, and I have nothing of equal value to throw into the void.

The clouds are pink and gold, the houses washed in an apricot glow. The morning peacocks its colors, like the last bloom of a cut flower.

I think of the smell of Omar’s skin; how, afterward, his body wilted in my hands; how he looked a little dazed as he reached to kiss me.

I walk straight to the panadería, smelling of rum and sex, and wash my hands in scalding water, the pain one last useless offering.

 

It happens midmorning: all at once a profound exhaustion pushes me out of my body. Then I’m not in the world. A gray lethargy settles over my thoughts. It feels as if I’ve forgotten how to blink or breathe, and I’ll never get back to when I could perform these functions without thinking.

The white lights of the bakery degrade everything they touch. A man with a glistening forehead lingers between the shelves, phone close to his face, kneading himself under his slacks. A mother smacks the side of her little boy’s head, and his cheek turns a dull red. Children fondle bread, dirt under their nails and sugar gumming their sweaty hands. I handle bills gone soft and smelling faintly of piss.

My phone buzzes with a text from Juneau.

Feeling much better today. I don’t know what it was, but I’m sorry it spoiled our plans. Still haven’t heard back from you.

My mother’s vase stands empty as the day slogs by.

 

That night I don’t try to sleep. I wait until my mother goes to bed, and then I walk. The night air is muggy and stale, the streets empty. I text Omar, and he calls a minute later.

Hey, flaca.

I’m on my way to yours.

Ah, actually . . .

I stop walking.

Do you remember Raquel, he says, with the little belly chain? She’s coming over tonight to check out the studio.

Omar, I say, I need—

I’m sorry, baby, I’ll catch you later.

I’m only two blocks from home, but suddenly I’m exhausted. I kneel on the ground, press my cheek against the asphalt.

 

Omar does not show up for lunch the next day. My texts go unanswered. I call him when I get home, afraid that it’ll go to voicemail, that I’ll become another voice in the chorus of desperate women, but he picks up.

Hey, he says. I had a job out in Westwood. I got lunch here.

Is everything all right with you?

Sure, he says. He doesn’t ask about me.

I needed you yesterday, I say.

Did you?

I was having a bad day, I say. A real bad day. But you’re out there fucking someone and then fucking them over, like you always do.

Right. That’s all me, and you’re just putting up with it.

All I’m saying is I needed you, and you weren’t there.

How was I supposed to know? You’d have to talk to me about whatever the fuck goes on in your head for me to know something was wrong.

Is this about the other night? I thought we were just having fun.

He doesn’t speak. I can hear him breathing. Then he says, I don’t get why you’re acting like every other bitch out there, calling me and shit.

Fuck you, I say, with sudden venom. Go fuck yourself.

Sure thing, Leonor.

I think about our fingers twined over blue silicone. I imagine telling him that his music isn’t shit, that he’s wasted his life, that he amounts to nothing. Just as quickly as the anger flares, it dissipates. I’m left holding the phone, a slight tremor in my hand.

 

My mother knows I’m not sick, but she makes a vat of watery chicken broth anyway and brings bowl after bowl of it to my room. I lie in bed, dizzy from the smells of garlic and broth and my own stale breath. Now that I can sleep, it does not feel like a choice.

My screen lights up with texts from Juneau.

When can I see you. We could get a drink after your shift. Look you’re not cute enough to ghost me. Alright maybe you are. You could at least text me back.

The messages eventually stop. I delete them, but cannot bring myself to delete her number. I can’t imagine it as a concrete possibility: That I would have gone out with her and her friends. That she and I would have raided a stranger’s liquor cabinet and slowly inched closer over his furniture. Days pass, the daylight hours unwelcome gaps between sleep.

 

Flaquita, can I come in?

I don’t answer. He comes in anyway. I wonder if my mother called him or if he showed up of his own accord, driven by guilt or pity.

He opens a window. It reeks in here, he says.

Fuck off, Omar.

Baby, you need to get some air. Wanna go for a walk? We can throw some pebbles at Doña Zepeda’s ugly dog.

I’d like you to leave me alone.

Omar sits on the edge of my bed. He places a hand on my head. When I don’t push it away, he runs his fingers through my hair, scratching my scalp. The sun is pressing through the window, warming the side of my face.

I don’t think this is going to go away, I say.

What is it? he asks. What’s going on?

I’m just tired.

Omar gets in the bed, nudging me to the side. He grunts: Damn, you really do stink.

Fuck you, I say half-heartedly.

I came to apologize.

Please don’t, I say. I can’t imagine wanting anything less than that.

I didn’t know things were getting bad, he says.

I turn and reach my arms around his back. He lets me, slotting his body against my hips. My face is in his hair.

Sometimes I feel like I know you better than anyone, he says. Other times I feel like I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re thinking. I don’t know when you want me around and when you don’t. I don’t know what you feel after we fuck. You’ve never even told me if you like my music.

A surge of sharp, terrible shame. The feeling is so sudden, so full that I cannot speak. I tighten my arms around his chest. We lie in silence for a while, his breathing slowing.

Of course I love your music, I say.

Omar turns to face me. It’s strange seeing him after a week. We have not spent this much time apart in two years, and I swear his face has changed minutely.

I’m always waiting for you to come tell me you’re starting your life back up, he says. That you’re leaving.

Leaving to go where?

He shrugs, and I laugh, because he makes it sound like a choice. Like life doesn’t take the putty of who you are and mold it beyond your recognition.