Surviving Santiago (21 page)

I've gone this far before, and a lot more, with Max. We were stoned and awkward and silly. Frankie moves his body and hands like someone older, someone who knows how to make a girl feel good. Whatever didn't happen with Sofia Méndez must have happened with someone.

The CD ends and goes back to the beginning. Frankie kisses me again. The pisco has faded, but he still tastes sweet like fizzy soda.

He stands, takes off his sweater, and goes to switch the CD. I suddenly have a craving for chocolate chip cookies. I suggest we make the package we bought last week.

When I hop up from the sofa, I wobble. “Easy, love,” Frankie says, rushing over from his CD collection to steady me.

“Am I that wasted?” I wonder how much pisco he poured into my glass. I thought I watched him carefully, but maybe he's one of those magicians who can somehow distract a crowd to make it look like they're pulling coins out of their ears and rabbits from their hats.

“Low blood sugar,” Frankie says. “You're not used to drinking.”

I drop back on the sofa, surprised at how hungry I am. When Papá drinks, he usually doesn't like to eat at all, and after he knocked back nearly a dozen
piscolas
the night of my first date with Frankie, he was off his food for days.

Frankie, though, takes care of the cookies—and me. From the living room I watch him cut the frozen dough into neat quarters and set them on the oiled baking sheet in a perfect grid. Evan would be totally impressed. The smell of baking cookies makes me dizzy.

I think I fall asleep because the next thing I know, Frankie is kissing my forehead and holding the cookies in front of my nose, the way a paramedic would hold smelling salts under the nose of someone who's passed out. Behind me, the TV flickers, and I make out English dialogue and the screeching of brakes. I bite into a warm, soft cookie and let the chocolate chips melt on my tongue.

“What the doctor ordered?” Frankie says.

“I think you like taking care of me.”

“Better than you know who.” His experience shows, but I don't want to tell him that because it would keep reminding
him of his dying father. And I can't let myself get this way again. I don't want to end up like his father—or mine.

Turning slowly toward the TV to keep my insides where they belong, I recognize
Back to the Future
. I take a deep breath and zoom in on Frankie's eyes. “I want you to know I'm sorry. About not trusting you when you said there was nothing between you and Sofia. Papá—”

“What did he do this time?” Frankie's voice suddenly turns hard.

“He called Sofia's father. My aunt made him do it. But the guy didn't know who you were.”

Frankie groans. “I need to get out. Go somewhere else and start all over.”

“I'm going to have my mother and stepfather bring you to Wisconsin.”

“Please. The sooner the better.”

Two years. When he's done with the army and I finish high school. And we'll visit each other before then. But can he wait that long? Can I?

I push up Frankie's undershirt, press my face against his smooth chest, and stroke the fine hairs on his stomach. If Papá and Tía Ileana join us on the camping trip, we won't have any privacy. And Frankie is so much more experienced than Max. He could make me feel so good. He's already made me feel good.

At the end of last summer, Max and I tried. We smoked a lot of weed and made a lot of stupid condom
jokes to stall for time. Petra told me it hurt the first time she did it, and I expected the same. The first stab of pain made me cry out, and it either scared Max or he'd smoked way too much because he couldn't go on. And that made me sort of no longer a virgin and him sort of no longer interested in me. He said I made him feel like a failure, even though I never told anyone what happened—or didn't happen.

“I love you, Frankie,” I whisper into his warm skin. With cookies joining the
italianos
in my stomach, the too-strong
piscola
is starting to wear off. But my limbs still feel anesthetized, and my body is telling me to let him make me fly.

“I love you, too. I'm so happy I met you.” He holds me tighter and rocks me back and forth. We've hit a quiet part of the movie, where Marty and Doc are having a heart-to-heart. I've seen the movie so many times I've practically memorized it.

I peer over Frankie's shoulder at the VCR clock. It's already four thirty. Less than four hours until I have to go home. Ninety minutes after the demonstration started. “You think they'll have the demonstration on TV?”

“Nah. They never do. It's like it doesn't exist.”

“That's terrible. All that work for nothing.”

Frankie strokes my hair. “They know the rules. You wonder why they bother.”

And if they didn't bother, Papá would have more
time for me. More time to take care of himself.

“Forget about the demonstration, Tina.” Frankie's lips caress my neck, then inch lower, lower. I stretch his undershirt over my head and nuzzle his stomach. “We're going to get away from all this. Soon.”

I want to get away now. And I think sex with Frankie will be ten times better than weed and pisco. I reach up and tickle his ear. “Let's do it.”

“Not all the way. Just part of the way,” he says. “You've had too much to drink. And so have I.”

I giggle. “And you don't want me telling my aunt you got me drunk and took advantage of me.”

“Something like that.”

With Max it never felt the way it does with Frankie. First comes the little jolts of electricity, the swirling in my stomach, the weightlessness of my arms and legs. The roller-coaster dizziness returns, even more thrilling than before, as if I don't have a care in the world and will never hurt again. I was wrong. This isn't ten times better than weed and pisco. It's a hundred times better.

“You like it?” Frankie asks as I'm toweling off my sweat in the bathroom. The door is open, and he smokes a cigarette.

“It was awesome.” But I'm greedy. I want more. “Let's go all the way.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?” He's not a little boy like Max. It occurs to me that he didn't plan this. He doesn't have protection.
And if I go home pregnant, it will screw up everything for both of us. “Don't they sell condoms here?”

Maybe not. Tía Ileana said it's a very conservative country—and not just politically.

“Yes, but I have to stay here.”

I take the cigarette from his mouth and drop it into the sink. “It will only take a few minutes, right?” He nods. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him, pressing myself to him, skin to skin.

I glance at the clock. Just six. The TV plays white noise,
Back to the Future
done and auto-rewound.

“I don't have to be home until after eight,” I remind him.

He steps into the living room and gathers his jeans, undershirt, and sweater. “Okay, be back soon.” He smiles. I think he's drooling.

When he leaves, I wrap myself in a towel and peer outside through a crack in the curtain. It's already dark, and the streetlamps cast a yellowish glow on the sidewalk. The street is jammed with cars, trucks, and buses, their tail lights growing brighter as they hit their brakes, then fading back to dark red when they sit, stuck in rush hour traffic. I try to spot Frankie's motorcycle, but at least six of them weave among the cars, and three of the riders wear helmets like Frankie.

The phone rings. Could it be news about his father? Expecting that Frankie would want to know if his father is dying for sure, I hurry to the kitchen to answer it.
Even though it would ruin our plans.

“
A . . . Aló
,” I say.

I hear silence.

I say hello again.

There's a
click
and a dial tone. Probably a wrong number. I blow out my breath.

Minutes later, Frankie returns. He tosses a small box on the table, drapes his motorcycle jacket over the back of the sofa, and strips off his sweater and undershirt. “Showtime. You choose the music,” he says.

“‘Mastertarium.'” I swing the towel, as if I'm a bullfighter waving it in front of the bull.

He sorts through the cassettes, finds the bootleg with the concert medley, and holds it out to me. “This one?”

The phone rings again.

C
HAPTER
19

F
rankie drops the cassette and runs to the phone. The clear plastic case shatters.

“Aló.”

My watch is in the pocket of my jeans, lying on the floor, but I estimate thirty seconds.

“Yes, sir, I'll be right there.”

I count off another twenty seconds.

“What call?” he says into the phone. “You must have dialed the wrong number.”

“Oh, yeah, Frankie,” I shout. “Someone called while you were gone, but they hung up.”

Frankie says, “No, sir, I'm alone. It was just the TV.”

I clamp my mouth shut. Am I not supposed to be here?

It seems like forever before Frankie speaks again. “You said between ten and eleven. It's not even seven. What happened?”

Another long pause.

“What about Rambo? Our meeting?”

A shorter pause. “Yes, it was her.”

My heart speeds up. I hold my breath, listening.
“Her, too? Why don't I take her home?”

Rambo? A meeting?
This doesn't sound like a sick father.

I blink and hug myself tight. No more fooling around. He
has
to take me home.

“That's, uh, going to be hard to handle. Especially if I have to wait for Rambo.” More silence, then Frankie says, “Yes, sir. I'll take care of it.”

In the next instant, he appears beside me, clutching his T-shirt. “Can you be any more stupid, Tina?” His face reddens.

“What do you mean?” Acid burns my throat.

“Get dressed. Now.” He yanks his undershirt over his head but doesn't tuck it in.

The phone call—I should have never picked it up. “Wait! I'm sorry!” I reach for his shoulder, but he jerks away. “Are you taking me home?”

He bends down and flings my bra in my face. It makes me ashamed of my nakedness. “Dress warm,” he says. He throws the rest of my clothes at me on his way to the stereo, where he slams
Ride the Lightning
into the CD player and turns up the volume on “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

While he puts on his turtleneck and leather jacket, he jerks his body to the song's rhythm as if performing some kind of bizarre ritual—as if he went out for condoms and joined a cult instead. I expect the people in the next apartment to bang on the wall or call the police.

As soon as I'm dressed, he shuts off the music and pulls a dark gray wool blanket from a closet. “Come on,” he says. When I don't move right away, he clamps his hand around my upper arm and drags me out of the apartment.

“Stop! You're hurting me!” But he doesn't let go. His jaw is clenched. “What's going on?” I ask over and over.

No answer. He snaps his fingers while we wait for the elevator. My heart pounds so hard my whole chest aches.

Outside, the night is damp but not cold. I don't know why he told me to dress so warmly. He hands me a rope, several bungee cords, and the blanket, then hurls the plastic crate from his
moto
and one of the helmets into the bushes next to his grandmother's building. My arm still aches from where he grabbed it. He puts on the other helmet, leaving nothing to protect my head except the hood of my sweatshirt. I fumble with the things he handed me. I really have to hold on to him now. He guns the engine.

I expect him to take me to Papá's house, but we speed north. “You're going the wrong way!” I shout over the engine. He acts as if he doesn't hear. We still have time before my curfew, but if he's taking me on a surprise trip, it's not a nice surprise.

We race past the lights of downtown into a rundown neighborhood, through dark
poblaciones
lit up only by the
cantinas'
neon signs, passing gangs of kids and stray dogs. My head feels strangely light without the helmet.
My scalp and ears go numb in the raw wind. Frankie pulls up to a one-story cinderblock police station.