Breakaway (19 page)

When I left the apartment, instead of turning to walk down the hill toward the diner, my feet carried me to Mario's house, along a path so familiar I couldn't have strayed from it if I tried. His building was part of the same apartment complex as mine though his family lived in a small brick duplex instead of an apartment. It was an unseasonably warm day, the temperature near seventy degrees, so the inner door to their house stood open and just the screen door was shut. A small grill sat out on the concrete patio, the smell of cooking meat sharpening my hunger. My stomach ached and I could taste acid at the back of my mouth.

I let myself in without knocking and walked into the kitchen where Mario's mom stood over the stove talking on the phone in such rapid Spanish I understood only scraps of the conversation. She waved when she saw me and a minute later ended her conversation.

“
Hola,
Jason,” she said, making it sound as if my name had three syllables instead of two.

“Hey, Mama,” I said as I bent down to accept her kiss and hug. She smelled like the marinade of her meat and an earthy scent. “Is he here?”

She waved a dismissive hand in disgust. “He here. In his room. I no like that boy Travis he hanging around with. He bad boy. You want something to eat?” she asked as she lifted the lid from a steaming pot of rice and started spooning it onto a plate without waiting for my answer.

Primo, Mario's dad, was seated at the dining room table over a plate heaped with sliced steak and beans, his glasses hanging toward the end of his nose. His wife called him Primo, as a joke, a way to poke fun at the fact that even if he called himself the head of the family, she was the one who ran the household. The kids called him Primo since it was the only thing they had ever heard their dad called in the house, though sometimes Mario's sisters called him Papi. I had known him since I was a little kid and had always just called him Primo too. Mario's mom could call him Primo in that ironic way she had, making a joke every time she used the word, and it kept him humble.

“Hey,
mi hijo
. She's making me loco.” He said this last part in a voice loud enough that his wife could hear him from the kitchen. “Mario was brought home by the police last night. Drunk out of his mind is what I tell her, but I know he was on something else.
Colocado
.” Stoned. Primo wasn't so easy to fool as most parents. It figured he would know what Mario was up to.

Primo worked in a restaurant and spoke much better English than his wife. I had sat at this table many times listening to Mario's parents yell back and forth to each other between the dining room and kitchen in rapid-fire Spanish. I used to always think they were arguing and wondered why Mario didn't ever seem concerned about it. After a few years I began to realize they just put on a good show but probably had a more functional relationship than any other married couple I had ever met.

I experienced a momentary twinge of guilt about Mario getting busted. Not because I felt bad about leaving Mario to his fate the night before at the party. He deserved whatever trouble he got for being a dumb-ass. But I hadn't really thought about Mario's parents when I left him behind. If nothing else, I could have tried to keep him out of trouble for their sake. Especially since they always worried about their resident alien status. Mario and his sisters were all citizens, since they were born in the United States, but his parents still only had green cards.

“She's worried,” Primo continued. “Doesn't like that
hijo de puta
Travis. I tell her not to worry so much. Just boys. It's what boys do.”

“I hate that guy,” I said as I began shoveling food in my mouth. “Travis. He's a dick.” Primo and I both used language we wouldn't use if Mario's mom were in the room. If she heard me using bad language, she would pinch me, hard, on the soft fleshy part under my arm. It hurt like hell. “I don't even hang out with Mario when he's with that guy.” Which was never now that Mario hung out with Travis virtually 24-7, though I left that unsaid. I held my tongue about the drugs and Mario blowing off the team and school lately, since I wasn't a rat, wasn't going to tell his parents the truth. If he kept going the way he was going, he would get busted for real eventually. He'd get his own ass in trouble without me meddling.

When I finished eating I stood and took our plates to the kitchen and started to wash them. “Such a good boy,” Mario's mom said as she nudged my hip. “Now you go. You talk to him. Give him some sense,” she said as she nodded toward the basement door.

“He doesn't listen to me any more than he listens to you,” I said, but she just shook her head and turned back to polishing the worn linoleum counter to a dull shine.

Mario's bedroom was the cramped basement room that also housed the boiler, water heater, and washer and dryer. The upstairs had only two small bedrooms where his parents and two younger sisters slept.

As I opened the basement door the smell of stale pot smoke mixed with incense hit me right away. The basement was dark, the sound of music the only evidence someone was below.

“What's up?” I called out before I reached the bottom of the stairs.

Mario was reclined on his bed, the television on but muted, the music coming from an old CD player that rested on a stack of milk crates.

“Hey, Jaz.” Mario's voice, but different. He didn't get up when I came in, just kept his gaze fixed on the television. The Ronaldinho poster that once held a place of honor above his bed had been covered by stickers of some bands I recognized, some I didn't.

“What's going on, man?” I asked as I shifted a pile of dirty laundry off the one chair so I could sit. “Primo says the cops brought you home last night. Your mom's flipping out.”

“Man, she's always flipping out about something,” Mario said as he folded one arm under his head like a pillow. “I barely even remember getting home last night, but she tried to drag my ass out of bed this morning to go to confession and Mass.”

Even though our conversation was totally natural, no different from a million other conversations we'd had over the past ten years, there was an uneasiness between us now that I couldn't shake. Or maybe I was the only one who felt it. Mario didn't seem to remember seeing me at the party the night before and I didn't bring it up.

“She wants me to talk to you,” I said as I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Give me a break,” he said as he picked up a dirty sock from the floor and tossed it at me. “Is that why you came down here? To take sides with them and give me a bunch of shit?”

I plucked the sock off my lap and tossed it in the general direction of the washer and dryer. “She's worried about you. And you're acting like a selfish little prick. You think I wouldn't give anything to have a mom and dad who actually gave a crap about me?”

“Is that what this is about?” he asked, incredulous. “I'm supposed to be grateful because my immigrant parents work so hard to give me a better life? Man, if you want to buy into their little piece of the American dream, be my guest. They've always liked you better than me anyway. Mama's boy.” His little speech was practiced, like he had already thought it through, or performed it for others.

A few months earlier the things that Mario was saying wouldn't have made me angry. I would have laughed them off or given him shit right back. The fact that he was so determined to hurt everyone around him made me want to walk out and never look back.

I leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees as I tried to cool my anger before I spoke again. “Man, I'm not giving you shit because you went to a party or because you had a good time,” I said, keeping my eyes on his face though he refused eye contact. “You and I both know that someone who doses on the kind of shit you've been taking can't be trusted.”

“Why the fuck are you even here then?” he asked.

My hands were clasped in front of me and I was squeezing them together so tightly, the skin at the point where they met had started to turn white. I dropped my head and shut my eyes as I took a deep breath and fought to keep from pounding his scrawny ass against the wood paneling.

“You know what, man? I have no fucking idea why I'm here,” I said. As I stood I realized I wasn't really angry with Mario. I was sick of his shit, sure. Sad to lose my closest friend, maybe. But too tired to give a fuck. I had my own problems.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The void on the team left by Mario was now a daily reminder of how strained and awkward things were among my friends. Jordie and Mario never spoke to each other as far as I knew, and I barely saw Mario at all. Occasionally I would still drop in to see his mom and would share a meal with his parents, but usually Mario wasn't there. He had stopped going to church, and every time he was home was fighting with his parents. Mario's mom grew more and more depressed about it, to the point where I could barely stand it. Once she even got up from the table and left the room because she couldn't keep from crying in front of Primo and me.

“Mi hijo…,”
Primo said, then paused for a while as he chewed his food and stared at the print of the Virgin Mary that hung at the top of the wall full of family portraits, a pyramid of pictures with the Virgin Mary at the top and, just below her, Mario's paternal grandparents, who had died in El Salvador without ever seeing Mario in person.

“It's good you still come,” Primo said finally. “You must always come. Understand?” he asked, and I knew what he was saying. Mario was lost to them, the same way he was lost to me. I was the son who still ate dinner with them.

In the middle of the wall, under portraits of Mario's parents, aunts and uncles, and older cousins, was a picture of Mario, a school portrait from when he was about twelve. His black hair was cropped close to his head, his front teeth enormous because his face hadn't grown into them yet. In the photograph, Mario was wearing his Ronaldinho jersey from when Ronaldinho played for Barcelona. Mario still owned the shirt as far as I knew. Once upon a time he had worn it several days a week.

 

 

I stayed to work at Bad Habits until close one Wednesday night. Chris and I didn't discuss it, but since the place was slammed when the end of my shift came I just stayed on and kept working, helped the late-night bar-backs clean the floors and bathrooms after the last customer left.

At the end of the night when I was getting ready to leave, I stopped by Chris's office where he sat drinking a beer and counting out his cash drawer.

“I'm out of here,” I said, “unless you need something else.”

“No,” he said, and took a swig of his beer. “Hey, thanks for staying, Jaz. We'd still be cleaning up if you hadn't stuck around. Here,” he said, and held out a couple of folded twenties to me, a share of his tips.

I took them with quiet thanks and pushed them into my jeans pocket. Chris put the cash from his drawer in the safe and I waited as he locked the office door and put the key back in its usual hiding place.

The guys who had all just finished their shifts were sitting at the bar, having their shift drinks and chewing the fat. Chris's friend Ahmed, who he had known since high school, sat at the bar with the rest of them. Ahmed's tight black T-shirt strained against the muscles in his arms and chest. His stomach had started to round a bit with middle age but he and Chris lifted weights together on a regular. It was hard to tell if Ahmed had started to lose his hair or if he just chose to keep his head shaved clean, but he wore a slick black goatee. Ahmed's dark skin had not started to wrinkle at all while Chris, the exact same age, had laugh lines around his eyes and deep creases flanking his mouth.

“Hey, it's the kid,” Ahmed said as I slid onto the barstool next to him. He held out a hand to shake mine and clapped me on the back with his other hand. I tried not to wince from the slap to my back. He balled his hands into fists and pretended to punch me first in the kidney and then in the shoulder, his fists landing gently. To Chris he called out, “Hey, man, I'm the oldest friend you got and this is what you give me when I order a beer?” He held up the bottle of cheap domestic beer, his nose wrinkled with distaste.

“You can order whatever you want,” Chris said as he held his hand out in an expansive gesture to indicate all the bottles behind him. “But if you're expecting to drink for free, then yeah, that's what you're drinking.”

“All these years of friendship,” Ahmed said, then leaned an elbow on the bar and took a swig from his beer, “don't mean shit.”

“All these years of friendship is how I know what a cheap bastard you are,” Chris said. “You order like Jay-Z, but you tip like DMX during his crack phase.”

I laughed at that and Ahmed cut me a warning look. “Man, a brother can't get any love in this place. I'll remember this next time you show up at the club, begging to get in to see one of those cracker bands you love so much.” Ahmed gave me a wink as he waited to see if his comment would elicit a rise out of Chris.

Chris set a beer on the bar in front of me. A beer I really didn't want because I was so tired from school all day, hitting the weight room in the afternoon, and then a solid seven hours of manual labor. I was so tired I was just trying to work up the energy to walk home.

Hoping Chris or Ahmed would offer me a ride if I stuck it out, I sat on one of the barstools along the wall, watching while they shot a game of pool.

Ahmed pulled a small bag of weed out of his pocket and some rolling papers and started to roll a joint.

“Hey,” Chris said with a gesture toward me, “what're you doing? Not in front of the kid.”

“My bad,” said Ahmed, and slipped the half-rolled joint into the plastic bag before shoving it all in his pocket.

“What?” I asked Chris. “You worried about being a bad influence or something?” To Ahmed I said, “Believe me, people do ten times worse shit at parties all the time. I'm not into it.”