Lot

Eventually, I finally asked her what she got out of reading these books by old dead men, what the words on the page had to do with her. The kind of question an idiot asks. But she took it seriously, she pursed her lips.
It’s just another way to talk to the dead, she said.
It’s another way to make a way, she said.

after lunch, she’d slip into Nikki’s shelves, with the Bolaño and the Woolf and the Calvino and the Foucault. She flipped through Chekhov. She nosed through Tanikawa. She threw a long-lost copy of Huck Finn at the wall.

Some days Gloria told me stories. She told me about the red-light district in Kingston. About the palms in Ocho Rios, which bent inwards like arches. About how roads sank in the hill country, how she’d found jewelry in the mud. She told me about trips to London, to São Paulo, to New York, and how the World Trade Center memorial had made her feel mortal, like she didn’t matter at all. She told me about beaches in Antigua where babies drank the water. About the seagulls in Haiti, how she’d fed them, how they’d thanked her.

despite everything, she found time to read—she spent some of the money she was saving for a lifeline on books. She hit the resorts; she discovered Milton; she worked the coast; she discovered Rimbaud; she bought some heels; she discovered Babel; she took care of her skin; she discovered Rumi; she tried not to catch the clap; she discovered Borges; she caught the clap; she discovered Allende; she waited it out; she discovered Plath; she tried not to catch anything else. There’d been a baby named Dylan, she’d named him after the poet; but one day Dylan died, and of course she couldn’t find the father. She couldn’t even have guessed what he looked like.

Now that I’ve rolled around and had some lovers I can tell you a secret: the difference between people with the wildness in them, and people like us, is you usually can’t tell until it’s past too late. It’s just too much a hidden part of them. Days and months and years’ll pass before a person reveals themselves—and then all of a sudden they’ve fucked the postman, or left the gas on, or stuck their hands in your child’s pants.

And so Aja wasn’t present for James’s funeral. A week before they closed the case, long after Paul was in chains.
No family flew down to claim the body. No crying mother at the coroner’s. No wincing aunts decrying our ghetto. No protests, no media, not even a gaggle of friends.
James’s departure was a quiet one, or it certainly would’ve been. Because his desires were untainted. Self-propelled. Without accommodation.
He was, despite everything, still one of us.
So we put our heads together.
We pulled the change from nowhere.
We plugged Big A for the quarters under his bed. We asked Mr. Po for some of his flower money. We drilled Gonzalo and Erica for a little of their comp-pay. We pestered Juana for some alimony, and Rogelio for his overtime, and the three Ramirez daughters for their baby shower stash. We poked Charlie for those international checks, Adriana for her allowance, Neesha for her government check, and Dante for his lunch money. Nigel and Karl for the pennies they stole. LaToya for those side jobs, Benito for his Hazelwood, and Hugo for the paystubs he’d been cashing on the West Side.
We hung streamers from the balcony. Grilled wings from the first floor. Plugged speakers, pitched goalposts, sipped liquor, raised arms.
And from the viejas to the juniors to the Filipinos to the black folks, we danced, danced, danced, to the tune of that story, their story, his story, our story, because we’d been gifted it, we’d birthed it, we’d pulled it from the ashes. Aja was Aja and Paul was Paul and James was James and James was Paul and Aja was James and they were us, and we told it, remixed it, we danced it from the stairwell, and we hung it from the laundry, and we shook it from the second floor, until our words had run out, until our music ran dry, and Five-0 shut it down on account of the noise.

So Aja wanted to tweak her English (and not just english, but English english, the language of money, the kind we hear in banks) to pull a job as a librarian, or a secretary, or a hostess up north—although really, truly, she’d have mopped vomit at Burger King—because she’d seen on the TV that our public spaces were quiet, and on her island, at that time, quiet was a commodity.
Which is when it happened: she was imagining the sound of nothing when Paul finally made his move.

And how did I
Get back? How did any of us
Get back when we searched
For beauty?
GARY SOTO
and wouldn’t it be nice / if things fit / the way they were
supposed to / wouldn’t that be something / worth dying for.
PAUL ASTA