The Return (2 page)

CHAPTER II

LENNY MANDEZ had a hilltop home with a view. Unfortunately, the house rested on a weed-choked plot of land between a slum and a ghetto. The surrounding area was covered with aged oil wells that creaked so badly in the middle of the night it sounded as if the house were under attack from an army of arthritic robots. The latest earthquake had actually made some of his neighbors' homes stand up straighten The whole area looked as if it had been thrown together for the express purpose of violating every code in the book.

Lenny's home had two bedrooms for the cockroaches and a bathroom for the real nasty creatures. Still, it wasn't a bad place to have a party, Jean thought, as long as there was enough booze and dope. Fortunately, that was never a problem with Lenny. Intoxicants followed him the way ants beat a path to the food across his kitchen floor.

Lenny Mandez was twenty, but if his age was measured by mileage rather than years, he was ready for retirement. He had joined his first gang while walking home from kindergarten. He was in juvenile hall for stealing a car he didn't know how to drive when he was thirteen. But that two-year stint inside sobered him some, and Lenny returned to public school and graduated from high school last year. He had a full-time job now, working as a mechanic at a gas station owned by an uncle. He owed allegiance to no particular gang, but had friends in all the wrong places and made as much money dealing drugs as he did tuning engines.

Jean knew he was trouble, she was no fool, but she took solace in the fact that he didn't like being a pusher, anymore than he liked the idea of returning to prison. He told her that he was trying to change, and she could see that he was. He took a couple of night classes at the city college—general ed stuff. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life any more than she did. They had that in common, at least.

She had met him through the late Sporty Quinones, who, at the age of twenty, had still been trying to get a high school diploma. They had been introduced in the middle of the street, literally, and for a moment, when she'd looked into his dark eyes, she forgot about the oncoming cars. There was passion in his eyes, she sensed, as well as danger. She wondered if that's what it took to turn her on—the possibility of a bad end. He had a great body; she had seen a few in her day.

He had heavy muscles, generous lips, and wore his straight black hair long onto his shoulders. He had taken a hip tone with her. "Hey, baby, I heard about you. Heard you were hot. What do you say we get together tonight?" Of course she had told him where to stick it, and he had laughed, reverting to a more subdued tone, which she was to learn was more normal for him. He had taken her to the movies that night, and they had necked so hard in the back row they had turned a PG Disney film into a hard R erotic mystery. That was what she liked most about Lenny —the mystery. Even after six weeks of dating, she still had no idea what he was thinking. At Sporty's funeral, as his best friend was lowered into the ground, he hadn't changed the expression on his face. He could have been staring at the sky for all the emotion he showed.

Jean ended up getting Lenny a Los Lobos tape, which he slipped into the boom box as soon as she and Carol arrived at his house, and cranked up the volume.

Jean assumed that meant he liked it even though she hadn't had a chance to wrap it. He gave her a quick kiss and handed her a beer and she sat on the couch in the living room with a bunch of people she hardly knew and the party moved forward as they always did. There was alcohol, pot, music, laughter, and cursing.

She and Carol cornered a hookah loaded with Colombian Gold near the start of the festivities and each took four hits so deep into their lungs that they could feel their brain cells leaving on the sweet cloud of smoke as they exhaled. They both began to laugh and didn't stop until they remembered they had nothing to laugh about, which was an hour later. So the first part of the party passed painlessly. Even though Jean got loaded regularly, marijuana often had an undesirable side effect on her psychology. The moment her high began to falter, her mood sometimes plunged, so rapidly that she felt as if she were sinking into a black well. In other words, the pot bummed her out as surely as it made her laugh, and this was one of those unfortunate times when, after an hour of giggling, she felt close to tears. But since she seldom cried, and never in front of other people, she just got real quiet and tried not to think. She didn't want to know she was in a place she didn't want to be with people she didn't care about and who didn't care about her. That her whole life was headed in the wrong direction and that it wasn't going to change because that was just the way the world was. That she was pregnant and didn't want a baby and didn't want to have an abortion and didn't want to end up like her mother.

It was this last thought, spinning around in her head, that caused her the most grief. And the weird thing was, her mother was one of the few people in her life she actually respected. Come midnight, though, when the party began to thin out, and the dope began to filter from her bloodstream, her depression lifted sufficiently so that she was able to talk again.

At the time she happened to be sitting on the end of Lenny's bed watching as Darlene Sanchez used the cracked mirror precariously attached to the top Lenny's chest of drawers to replace a few loose braids. Darlene was Hispanic, but wanted to be black; a formidable task, to be sure, since she was naturally whiter than Carol after makeup. Sporty Quinones had been Darlene's first non-African American boyfriend, a fact that was somewhat at odds with her reputation of having slept with most of the juniors and seniors in the school.

But who was counting, colors or numbers. Darlene was hot, no debating that.

"How are you feeling, girl?" Darlene asked, gazing at her in the mirror.

"I'm all right," Jean said.

"You looked like hell all night."

"Thanks a lot."

"No, I mean your mood." Darlene lifted a few strands of hair above her head and, in the blink of an eye, braided them. Her braids made her look pretty scary when she wore them just right. Her long painted fingernails were just as bad. They reminded Jean of razors dipped in blood. Darlene added, "You look like someone just died."

Jean realized she had a can of beer in her hand and took a sip. "Someone just did."

Darlene acted pissed. "Great! You had to bring that up. I'm here to have a good time, and you have to talk about Sporty."

"I wasn't talking about him." Jean shrugged. "In this town someone dies practically every hour."

"Yeah, right. God, what a downer you are."

Jean burped. "Sorry."

Darlene waved her hand. "It doesn't matter. I don't mind talking about him.

We're going to talk about him later anyway. We're going to have a little meeting when the party's over, Lenny and I. You should stay for it."

"What kind of meeting?" Jean asked.

"You'll see."

"I came with Carol. Can she be there?"

Darlene seemed exasperated. She could change her expression quicker than most people inhaled. "That girl. She doesn't know what she is. Do you know what she said to me this evening?"

"I can guess."

"She said, 'You know, Darlene, there are two sides to everything. You don't know what belongs on front until you check the behind.' Can you believe she said that to me?"

"I don't even know what it means."

"It means, dope head, that she's still trying to get in my pants. Lenny tells me you're straight as an arrow. How can you have a dyke as a best friend?"

"It's easy. She's not a dyke to me. She's a great girl."

Darlene paused. "Have you two ever done it?"

"Done what?"

"Had sex, for godssakes! Have you?"

"No. Carol's not interested in me that way."

"What is she interested in then?"

"She's my friend. She needs friends as much as straight people. Maybe more.

Maybe you should try being her friend rather than always badmouthing her."

"Maybe she should quit hitting on me first," Darlene said.

"She's not hitting on you. She's just flirting with you. You should be flattered."

"I'm not. She makes me nervous. She makes me feel like I might be ajoto and not know it."

"Maybe you are a joto, Darlene." Jean allowed herself a rare smile. "Anybody who goes around with a head looking like a snake fest has got to have something wrong with her."

Darlene laughed. "Hell, you're probably right." She finished with her hair and turned around. "How do I look?"

"Am I the right person to ask? I just told you. You look great."

"Thanks. You want to go get something to eat?"

"You mean, leave the party?" Jean asked.

"Yeah, I mean leave the party. You can't eat any of the rot in Lenny's refrigerator. We can hit the Jack-in the Box down the street and be back in twenty minutes."

Jean shook her head. "You go ahead. I don't feel very hungry."

Darlene sat on the bed beside her friend, concerned.

"Really, are you all right, Jean?"

Jean shrugged. "Yeah, I'm just tired."

"Are you and Lenny getting on all right?"

"Yeah." Jean paused. "I think so. Do you know something I don't?"

Darlene hesitated. "No." She stood quickly. "I'll be back soon. Remember that meeting. I want you there."

"I won't be there unless Carol's there. She's my ride home."

"Aren't you going to spend the night with Lenny? It is his birthday, after all."

"No," Jean said. "My mother would freak."

Darlene seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. "That's what mothers are for."

Darlene left. Jean continued to sit on the edge of the bed and sip her beer. She studied herself in the mirror. It was only then she remembered the dream she'd had that morning. It had been wonderful yet simple, painful to wake from. She dreamed she was floating above her house and that just a few blocks away she could see a colorful amusement park, the rainbow of shimmering lights illumining her insides as much as the neighborhood. The feelings of the dream had been more important than the actual events. She knew that if she would just fly over there, she could enter that place of constant fun and excitement.

Where there were people who cared and things to do that meant something.

And in the dream she was being given that choice, to leave her house, her life, and never return. Why had she awakened? She sure as hell hadn't said no to the offer. Now the memory of the dream made her sad. Made her sad that it was gone, forever.

After some time Lenny entered his bedroom. He had on his black leather jacket; he seldom took it off, even on nights as warm as this. His long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. They had talked little all night.

Conversation wasn't big with either of them. They were better just sitting and watching a movie together, or smoking a joint, or making love. She had assumed they'd have sex tonight since, as Darlene said, it was his birthday.

But now she had to wonder if she could talk herself into the right mood. Lenny sat on the bed beside her and leaned over to give her a kiss. She kissed him back—sort of. He sensed her lack of enthusiasm and drew away.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing." She touched his leg. "How are you doing?"

"Good. Great party, huh?"

"Yeah. That was great dope. Where did you get it?"

He shrugged. "The usual sources. Where did Darlene go?"

"To Jack-in-the-Box. She was hungry."

"We have pizza in the living room," Lenny said.

Jean forced a smile. "It's on the living room floor. I think Darlene worries about hygiene."

Lenny chuckled; it sounded forced as well. "Then I don't know what she was doing with Sporty. That guy had equipment that needed to be machined to get clean."

"Was he that bad?"

Lenny paused and stared at her. "I don't know. He just told me so many stories."

"About so many girls?"

Lenny nodded. "Yeah. You must have seen how he carried on at school?"

"Yeah, he got around some, I guess. When Darlene wasn't around."

"But they weren't going out that long," Lenny said.

"Really? I thought it was a few months."

Lenny continued to watch her. "Something's bothering you, Jean. What is it?"

She lowered her head. "Well, there is something I wanted to tell you. I should have told you earlier, but I was afraid. But I don't know if this is the right time, either."

Lenny sucked in a deep breath and became still. She sensed his rigidity more than saw it because she continued to keep her head low. Finally he let the breath out.

"Yes?" he said softly.

"I'm pregnant."

The two words seemed to float out of her mouth and into a vacuum. The room became a bowl sitting on some troll's table, and they were breakfast. She raised her head and saw that Lenny had closed his eyes. A vein pulsed on his forehead. It looked as if it might pop if the pressure wasn't released soon. She wanted to say something to make him feel better like I'll get rid of it or maybe the test kit was wrong. But she doubted he would have heard her at that moment. His mind seemed to have fled to a place where there were no words.

Finally, though, he opened his eyes and looked at her. His expression was strangely blank.

"Are you sure?" he asked softly.

"Yes." She paused. "I'm sorry. Lousy birthday present, huh?"

"I've had better. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"It's up to you."

"No, it's up to both of us." She felt a painful lump in her throat. She had taken her hand off his leg, and she wanted to put it back, to hug him, maybe kiss him again. But they were like two strangers sitting in a cheap motel room. At least that was how the two people in the cracked mirror looked.

Jean regretted having started the conversation in front of their reflections. It made her feel more lost. How did she really feel about Lenny? She had told him she loved him; he had told her the same. But those were just words. She didn't believe she could love him because she didn't know what love was. She didn't even know if there was such a thing, if it wasn't all hype. She added, "We can keep it or we can get rid of it. I'm not going to force it on you."