Bodega Dreams (18 page)

“Come with us, bro!” Bodega wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

“Yes, do come,” Vera interjected.

“Where you guys going again, Central Park?” I didn’t want to go but had no way of getting rid of them. I wanted to ask them how old they were, just out of spite. But then I thought that people in love should act however they want. Especially Bodega and Vera, who I realized just then were from a different time.

I pictured Bodega back in those days so young, flying with invisible wings. Thinking that freeing an island from U.S. control could be done with passion and intellect. I pictured Bodega gazing into the eyes of the teenaged Veronica and telling her that nothing could be better than the two of them just lying in the Central Park grass, holding each other and merely existing. I pictured Veronica going home to meet her friends on the stoop to talk about her liberator, this Izzy. Her liberator who was first going to free her from her mother, then free Puerto Rico, and later they would both sail back to America like conquistadors in reverse. They would arrive in New York Harbor and Latinos from all five boroughs would be there to greet them. I pictured her telling all this to her friends until they were so sick and tired of it that Veronica herself began to question her liberator until finally the day arrived when she gave Bodega the ultimatum, the Young Lords or her.

“Yes, Central Park sounds good, and then maybe to the Palladium later tonight, Izzy?” She whispered the last part.

“Wherever you want to go,” Bodega told her, and then took a swig. “Just imagine it and I will take you there.”

Vera was right. Bodega was still the same, believing he could recapture what had been lost, stolen, or denied to him and his people. As if the past was recyclable and all he had to do was collect enough cans to
make a fortune and make another start. When they arrived at my place plastered, I felt happy for them. Especially for Bodega. His cellular phone, which must have been tucked somewhere in his blazer, kept ringing but he never heard it. He was living in a universe of two, feeling invulnerable.

“I hope you guys know that the Palladium doesn’t exist anymore. They tore it down.” I had no idea why I said that to them. It was the stupidest thing to have said, and considering I was the only sober one I should have been the one with insight.

“Oh, pooh,” Vera pouted, and then got happy again. “Let’s just go, go, go anywhere and do silly things and drink a little more and I want you to teach me how to smoke a joint. You never taught me how to smoke a joint, Izzy. You said you were going to teach me how to roll and smoke but you always put it off.”

“I’m sorry, I was stupid back then, I thought that women shouldn’t smoke joints.” When he said this her eyes lit up.

“Do you have guns, Izzy?” A spark of mischievousness appeared in her eyes.

“Guns?” Bodega was lost. “What about guns?”

“I want to learn how to fire a gun,” she said.

“Why?”

“I always wanted to. Like wanting to roll a joint.”

Bodega smiled as if this was a part of Vera’s street education that had been denied her. A piece of her being that had been dormant all these years and it would be he who would revive it.

“I always wanted to,” she repeated. “And now I’m back.”

“Yes, now you’re back,” he said, and for the first time they stopped talking and just stared at each other.

“Yes, now I’m back,” she said softly, and then took off her engagement ring. A big beautiful rock that you needed to wear shades to look at. A glare that blinded you and brought visions of sunsets and golden sands. “Keep it,” she said, handing it to me. My heart jumped.

“I can’t take this,” I said to her, knowing full well I could. The ring was still warm from the heat of her hand. All I knew was I had never held anything that expensive in my life.

“I don’t want it. I never did,” she said, her eyes still on Bodega.

“Take it!” Bodega said to me. “I’ll buy her one bigger than that. One with a diamond as big as the Palladium.”

They stood there facing each other and for a second I thought they had reached that stage of intoxication where silliness gives way to melancholy and self-pity. When everything and nothing brings you sadness. They embraced and I thought the weeping would start. But then they broke apart and started to walk away from me as if I had never been there. They walked down the stairs holding hands, taking gulps of champagne, and singing,
“En mi casa toman Bustelo! En mi casa toman Bustelo!”
They sang, drank, laughed, and sang some more.

A
FTER
Bodega and Vera left I went back to bed. All I can remember of the rest of the afternoon was waking with Blanca next to me. She had arrived home tired, hadn’t even bothered to take her clothes off, and flopped down on the bed. Blanca is not a light sleeper, so I got up thinking I didn’t have to be very quiet.

“What’s that bottle of champagne doing in the kitchen?” she mumbled.

“Wha’?”

“The champagne. What’s it doing in the kitchen?” I told her. “When did she arrive?” I told her that, too. “Who’s this Izzy?” With my help she remembered. “Oh, that’s the guy she was going to marry but didn’t.” Her voice conveyed complete exhaustion. She shifted her body into a more comfortable position. I was happy that she didn’t really care and happier still that I had not used Bodega’s name but rather his old one, Izzy, keeping her from making a connection.

I went to the living room, opened the window, and took the ring that Vera had given me out of my pocket. It was as I remembered it when she’d placed it on my palm; just as radiant, golden, and heavy. The inside was engraved
For My Wife, Veronica.
Not anymore, I whispered to myself. This is my wife’s now.

Then I thought, no woman wants another woman’s ring. But the
diamond was huge, so that took care of that. But then Blanca would read the engraving and know whose it was, so that was a problem. What about sending it to an engraver to scrape the inside, get rid of the dedication? But Blanca would still ask me how I’d got it. I found it? Nah. So that left me with the truth. The truth was all I had and Blanca believed in the truth. To her the truth would set me free. I hoped that it would at least let us keep the ring. So I waited for Blanca to really wake up. When she opened her eyes, I showed her the ring.

“We have to give it back!” she said without hesitating.

“She doesn’t want it.”

“They were drunk, Julio. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Look, your aunt never wanted to marry this guy,” I said as Blanca held the ring up to the light.

“She loves this Izzy guy. Always has. You should have seen them, they were like kids.” Blanca stared at the ring. She liked it, but her conscience was a strong judge. I wanted her to have it, so I lobbied as hard as I could.

“No one will know.”

“God will know,” she said, taking her eyes off the ring to glare at me as if I had personally ripped the ring off God’s finger.

“Yes, but He knows everything, so why even bother? No disrespect, but since He knows everything, even the outcome of our lives, why even have Him be an ingredient in this discussion? Look, she gave it to me. It’s like throwing it away and me finding it. Can that be bad?”

“Yes, you’re right, let’s leave God out of this because you know nothing about God. And we didn’t find it,” she said, clamping her lips together firmly. “If my aunt doesn’t want the ring, the right thing to do is to give it back to the man who bought it for her.”

“Why!”

“Because it’s his ring.”

“Not if he gave it to her. If he gave it to her, that makes it her ring and if it’s her ring she has the right to give it to whoever she wants.”

“This is wrong, Julio.” Blanca gave me back the ring. “Return it.”

“NO! I’m keeping it. If you don’t want it then I’m pawning it. We have at least four or five months’ rent here.”

“Give it back. He gave it to her as part of a promise. She broke that promise so she has to give it back!”

“Blanca, come on—”

“I’m not going to be a part of this, Julio. Pastor Miguel Vasquez and Claudia come on Friday …” That did it. That day I said things I shouldn’t have ever said, or at least not the way I did.

“You know, Blanca, you really light me up when you get this way. You constantly knock me about being sexist and whine that all Latin men have some sort of sexism in them and that you feel as if your intelligence is being ignored when I do certain things, even though they are for the good of the family, may I add—”

“Julio—”

“No, let me finish. Then you come up with this shit about sin and your church. And see, Blanca, you can’t fully believe in that book”—I pointed to the bookshelf where Blanca kept her Bibles—“because it’s the most sexist book ever written. Yet you get on my ass and say I disrespect you when I sin, when I do things that I shouldn’t do, like when I smoke a joint here and there, when I want to keep a ring that was given to me, but”—I was on a roll—“when you go to church you get disrespected all the time. The women are treated as if they were just there to glorify their husbands, their children, and their pastor.” And with that remark, I saw Negra in Blanca’s eyes. I looked around for things she might throw at me.

“You know nothing!” she erupted. “Let me tell you, Julio, just because I believe in God doesn’t make me a weak woman! My mother was strong. She paid the bills, she made the decisions, she fixed up the house, and she still went to church.”

“Oh please, Blanca, your mother never had your education. Even her sister Veronica only got lucky and married well, in terms of money, that is. But if they’d had your education maybe they’d have done other things with their lives. You are going to be your family’s first college graduate and you know things they don’t. You were influenced by ideas your mother never knew existed. When you complain that you’re gonna feel awkward graduating with a big belly, I know what you really mean. You mean people are gonna think, ‘She may be smart, but she was stupid enough to get herself knocked up.’ But when you go to
church it all changes. They like you pregnant and you like them to like you pregnant.” Blanca just smirked, crossed her arms, and looked at me with the confidence of someone who had plenty of ammunition for a counterattack.

“
Qué bonito
, eh.
Qué bonito.
You are lecturing me about what it is to be a woman balancing her intellect and her faith. When all you really want is to keep some stupid ring for the cash.”

“It’s not just about a ring, Blanca. You get mad at me for, as you put it, leaving you in the dark. But you know I read that entire Bible and rarely did any of the men tell their wives what they were going to do, they just went and did it.
That’s
the book you live by. Me, I know that’s wrong. I know I should tell you things because I know you can help me. I know that you’re good for me. And I know you’re smarter than me.” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean it, Blanca. You’re smarter. But at times I think that the things I’m going to tell you will clash with that book and so it’s better not to tell you. Either way, I lose.” I wanted to go for broke and tell her other things. Like, I knew who killed that reporter. But I just couldn’t. She would send Sapo to jail and maybe leave anyway.

“Blanca, why does me becoming Pentecostal have any bearing on you getting your privileges back? On you playing the tambourine in front of the congregation? Why do they look at me and my faults and not you and your merits?”

“Because it was my decision to marry you. Therefore I am responsible. It makes sense. Listen, if I’d cared more about playing the tambourine in front of the congregation than for you I would’ve never married you. I would have married a believer. But I didn’t, right? I married you. I know that the pastor can be wrong at times. The pastor makes mistakes. But God doesn’t. And He knows that I care for you, and if it was wrong to have married you then I just hope His mercy is truly bottomless. There is no sin that can’t be forgiven.”

“Never mind, I don’t want to talk to you when you start preaching.” I started getting my books ready for that night’s class. There was a small silence. After I packed my knapsack, Blanca stepped in front of me. She crossed her arms again.

“I saw Negra today.”

“So what? Look, don’t you have class tonight?”

“She was beat up pretty bad.”

“Victor?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Hey, Blanca, I got my own marital problems—”

“Stop it! Just listen! She’s in the hospital and she told me to tell you to get in touch with someone named Bodega.” My heart jumped. I stopped what I was doing and looked Blanca in the eyes. I wondered what Negra had told her. “She said that you would know this Bodega. And that this Bodega would take care of Victor, because he owes you. And you owe Negra.”

Have you ever had that feeling, like when you were a kid and had played hooky all last week and thought you had gotten away with it, and then at the most pedestrian of times, let’s say when you are making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or just watching TV, your father comes with a letter from school in one hand and his belt in the other. And your head feels like it’s on fire and your mouth feels as dry as a saltine.

“I know something is wrong, Julio.” Blanca was calm. Blanca was always calm, especially when she had the upper hand. Her eyes would be steady and her face expressionless. Only her lips would move when she needed to talk. “Is there something you want to tell me, Julio?”

“You know those two, Blanca. They’re schizo. One day they’re like Punch and Judy and the next they’re Romeo and—”

“Bodega,” she said. “That was the man Enrique took you to see that night. And don’t you lie to me. I’ve heard his name too many times since then. They say he owns these buildings. They also say other things about him. Some good, some bad.”

“Yeah, I heard them too, so what?” I brushed past Blanca to make believe I was going to get something from the fridge.

She followed me. “What do you have to do with him?”

“Nothing.” I opened the fridge but there was nothing in it I wanted. I closed it and there was Blanca in front of me. “I’ve got nothing to do with him.”