Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (18 page)

“Those are not big enough,” Aida crowed, barging into the entryway. “Carajo, Michael.”

“Look, that’s all they had. I don’t know what you want me to do. I’ll use the twelve goddamned pounds of—”

“Who do you think you’re talking to with that language?”

“Sorry.” I looked at Nunzio. He was finally smiling. “I’ll use the twelve pounds of foil that Jackie made me buy to make a pan for you, okay?”

“Smart-ass.” Aida glared at me before turning to Nunzio. He removed his hat and averted his gaze, but she bustled over with a huge grin.

“Nunzio! I haven’t seen you since you were a skinny little thing!”

“Yeah,” Nunzio’s smile returned. “Yeah, I came over for Christmas and you were here one year. You felt bad I didn’t have any presents and tried to give me money to go to Rite Aid and buy myself something.”

“Poor baby. You want something to eat?”

I could sense Nunzio was about to say no, so I gave a furtive shake of my head.

“Uh, yeah, I could eat,” he replied.

“Good, good. Jackie, Michael’s cousin, was just talking about you. Do you remember her?”

Before Nunzio could give an affirmative, Aida looped her arm through his and guided him to the kitchen. I knew she would poke at his lanky frame and dub him flaquito before giving him a predinner meal. It would inevitably lead to an interrogation about why his parents had left him alone on Thanksgiving.

Satisfied that Nunzio was being indoctrinated in a positive way, I entered the living room to deal with the inevitable shitshow of my male family members trying to coexist in the same room.

My father and his brother John had hardly tolerated each other for as long as I could remember, but after John’s wife walked out on him, they’d made an attempt to bond.

The Rodriguez family didn’t have luck when it came to significant others. Both John and my father had driven their wives away, and Aida’s husband had died of cancer only a handful of years after they’d gotten married. She’d never had any kids of her own, which was why she was so active in her brothers’ lives. More often than not, she acted in the role of peacekeeper when John and Joseph drank a little too much and shit got too real.

But they hadn’t reached that stage. Yet.

The two brothers sat side by side on the sofa with identical glares fixed on a football game. Raymond was half-turned in the armchair by the window with his phone clasped in one hand.

“You’re missing the game,” John barked. He cast me a sidelong glance, disapproving even though he had no qualms about reaching for the beer I was still sheltering under my arm.

“I don’t give a flying fuck about the game.”

The degree of scorn in John’s expression heightened to blistering.

Raymond shook his head, clearly thinking I was an idiot. “Is Zio here?” he asked.

“He’s in the kitchen with Titi.”

“Ask him if he’s up for some Black Ops later. I borrowed a controller from Chris.”

He sounded exactly like one of my students, and that facet of his personality was getting more grating as time wore on.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on top of that, Ray.”

“You better. I don’t get to chill with him these days.”

Raymond sounded genuine, and I almost felt bad for being annoyed by his request. If there was any ally better than me to defend Nunzio, it would be Raymond. Even if he talked shit every once in a while, Raymond had always been keener on Nunzio than he was on me. He’d trade us if he could.

“I’ll see what he wants to do,” I said. “He just got here, and Aida has already dragged him into the kitchen to fatten him up.”

“Oh. He’ll be there for a while, then.”

The game went to commercial, and Joseph turned his glassy eyes to me. “Why don’t you bring a girlfriend home for Thanksgiving for a change?”

John snorted into his beer, still staring at the television. It was amazing how such a low, petty sound, could make my hackles rise. A witty retort waited to be unleashed from my mouth, but I settled for a wintry silence.

“Naw, he has too many different chicks to just pick one,” Raymond butted in. “If he brought one over, she’d get the wrong idea.”

The statement washed over me and left me blank, but then the meaning sank in, and my attention snapped to my brother. He was thumbing at the screen of his phone, not looking at me or our father, and appeared to have released the lie without giving it much consideration.

I didn’t know what to make of it, and judging from the cloud of confusion ghosting over Joseph’s countenance, he didn’t either. But he was already dangerously close to sliding down the slippery slope of drunk-before-dinner, and probably couldn’t make the connection between Raymond’s claim and the obvious lack of evidence, since I’d never brought a girl home for any length of time at any point in my life. It did shut my uncle up, though.

The football game resumed, and some of the tension bled out of me. Joseph and John shouted in a mixture of Spanish and English, yelling at the game and then debating with each other about every random thing that transpired. Meanwhile, I sat next to Raymond, trying to catch his eye while doing my best to pretend I gave any sort of damn about football. I largely failed.

I threw in the towel on trying to get my brother to make eye contact and went back to fantasizing about my bed and a book. The day was panning out as I had expected—uncomfortable, long, and full of awkward moments and tense exchanges that drew an iron curtain between me, John, and my father. It was only a matter of time before the side-looks and smart comments escalated into something that couldn’t be ignored, and by then we would all blow up like Hiroshima.

The best option for avoiding fireworks was to avoid alcohol, but Joseph broke the label on a bottle of Brugal, and the first stone was cast.

By the time the sun retreated from the blanket of clouds that had masked the sky all day, the volume of our voices had risen, and I had a nice buzz going. At some point Nunzio and my cousin Jackie joined us in the living room, but Raymond whisked Nunzio away to play Xbox before he got the chance to pick up on the thickening tension. I was left alone with the two elder Rodriguez men, and only John’s daughter to run interference. When my phone vibrated in my pocket, I was grateful to have a distraction.

How’s your holiday?

David.

Sucks. You?

It could be better…. I’m in CT with my parents. Is Nunzio with you?

Yes, how did you know that?

He told me.

Any number of scenarios would have led to the conversation of Thanksgiving plans coming up, but something told me Nunzio letting David in on that detail had been deliberate. I rubbed my chin and wondered, not for the first time, what Nunzio’s deal was when it came to David.

The more thought I put into it, the more it seemed like he’d been cockblocking from the start. Even the threesome had been out of character. That night in the club, Nunzio had swooped in and inserted himself as soon as David and I had started to talk.

These days he claimed to not even find David attractive, but more than that, he went out of his way to be outright hostile to the kid.

My phone vibrated again.

Do you want to meet up tomorrow?

I stared at the words, fingers hovering over the screen, but I ultimately put my phone away without typing back. I didn’t know if he wanted to have lunch or suck my dick, and I wasn’t in the mood to come up with a response for either proposition.

“Who’s sending you messages?” Joseph jerked his chin at the phone.

“Somebody.”

“A woman?” Joseph took my lack of a response for an affirmative and went on. “I don’t understand why you spend the holidays with that maricón and not a woman.”

The casual disrespect of my father’s words boiled my blood.

“You shouldn’t say that, Tío,” Jackie scolded. “Nunzio is like family.”

“I don’t mean anything by it.” Joseph waved his hand and added a dismissive flick of his fingers, but his shoulders were stiff beneath a sweatshirt that smelled of sweat and a double dose of annoyance. Once upon a time, the sideways cut of his dark eyes and an ominous edge in his cigarette-hardened voice would have backed me into a corner until I said whatever it was he wanted me to say. But now, I matched his mean mug with one of my own. He didn’t miss the coldness in my expression.

“You always have to find a reason to be angry with me, don’t you, Michael?”

“Keep your mouth shut about Nunzio if you don’t want me to get upset. He’s more family to me than you are.”

“I bet,” John grunted.

Jackie put her hands on John’s shoulders and dug her fingers in.

“I’m going to say this once.” I stood and looked between my uncle and my father. They were five years apart but bitter and hateful in varying shades, with quicksilver tempers to match. “If you want to be in this house, you will respect my friends. Especially one that I’ve known for twenty years and has had my back every fucked-up step of the way. He was the one who helped me with funeral arrangements when you were out drunk and worrying about the will,” I spat, pointing at Joseph. “And while Raymond was too traumatized to leave his room.”

“I didn’t say anything about him. I just wonder why the hell you always have him around and not a woman.” Joseph grabbed his glass and drained it, eyes flitting to Jackie like he wanted her to get a refill but knew better than to ask. The glass dropped back to the table smeared with greasy fingerprints. “You’re telling me your mother never asked why you’re always alone?”

“Maybe she did, but she didn’t judge me for it.”

“What about you am I judging? I didn’t say anything about you or your life. I only asked a question, and you jump down my throat, rushing to defend his honor.”

“Because as far as I’m concerned you’re nobody, and I don’t owe you a fucking explanation,” I said.

A slurry of Spanish swears crept out of Joseph’s mouth. His leg hopped, fingers gripping the arm of the sofa, and he looked two seconds shy of flying into a rage. The curtain of tension was lifting, but in a way that would ensure a battle instead of an armistice.

I wanted to break it down and explain that every time he called Nunzio a faggot, every time he used words like maricón or pato, he might as well have been spitting his hate at me. The worst part was my father failed to understand that hate said in a joking tone still shriveled and hardened my heart. Even if I never told him I was gay, and even if he never directly aimed his insults at me, he would lose all respect for me if he knew. It was evident by the wary way he kept Nunzio at arm’s length and had always muttered to my mother that she should keep us apart.

My father exhaled slowly and glanced up at Jackie. She hovered behind the sofa, supremely out of place with her pink sweater, rosy cheeks, and waist-length curls—a school girl stumbling into the middle of a brewing bar fight.

“What time is dinner ready?” Joseph gritted out.

“Soon,” she replied, relief in her voice.

“Fine. I’m getting another drink.”

Joseph wobbled when he got up, teetering to the side before he regained his balance. I could tell he was upset just by looking at his profile, and the way he strode out of the room with slow deliberate steps drove the point home.

“You’re not fooling anyone, Michael,” John said once my father was out of earshot.

“Jesus, Daddy, can’t you leave him alone?” Jackie hissed. “Why did you want to come to his house if you’re going to keep bullying him the whole time?”

“Don’t worry about it, primita. It’s only bullying if I gave a fuck about what he or my father thought.”

John didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the amount of fucks I had left. He waved me out of the way of the television.

Jackie muttered an apology to me, and I dropped a kiss on her head. She was no more responsible for her father than I was for my own.

I jogged up the staircase to seek out my wayward brother and friend. I found them in Raymond’s bedroom, sprawled on the bed and focused intently on whatever game they were playing. They were surrounded by a cloud of sickly sweet smoke and illuminated only by the glow of the television.

“Jesus, Nunzio. Really?”

“What?” The word came out in a wheeze, surrounded by billowing smoke.

I fought the urge to stand in front of the television to fuck up their game.

“You really had to smoke up with him? Now? I already got my pops talking shit to me about you being here.”

“Why?” Raymond bolted upright like my words had jammed a lightning bolt up his ass. “Zio always comes around on the holidays.”

“Yeah, when Mami was here. Now that dickhead thinks he’s king of the castle and keeps throwing underhanded comments.”

“Like what? Want me to go—”

I held up a hand to thwart my brother’s charge down the stairs. “Relax. Let Jackie and Aida tell them a thing or two. I’m tired of fighting.”

“Jackie?” Raymond considered me, his mouth pulled to the side. “What’s she going to do? She’s dumb as a box of rocks. We could straight up have a brawl, and she’d sit there like an oil painting until someone got shot.”

It was a struggle to mold my face into disapproving lines. “That’s not nice, Ray.”

“I know it’s not. That’s why I said it.”

Nunzio dug his elbow into Raymond’s side. “Hey, she’s sweet. Don’t be a jerk.”

“Whatever.” Ray passed the pipe to Nunzio. “What the hell is he busting your balls about, anyways?”

“Same old crap. Pops has forever been trying to imply that Nunzio is slowly turning me gay.”

“So just tell him you was gay even before you met Nunzio.”

Raymond said it just as Nunzio started to toke. He sucked too hard on the pipe and went spiraling into a coughing fit.

I gaped at my brother. Now it was my turn to do a rendition of an oil painting. I willed my brain to jump start, but all I managed was a vague “huh?” while Nunzio wheezed and slapped his hand against the mattress.

Raymond rolled his eyes. “You must think I’m an idiot. We used to share a fucking room. Also I used to follow you everywhere when I was a kid. You don’t think I never noticed you going up to the rooftop or behind the bathrooms at the pond?”