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  Your life’s like something out of a fairy tale, he said. Like something out of a novel.

  You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, said Aja.

  * * *

  • • •

  Their apartments sat stacked, one on top of the other. When James left Aja’s, he took a right toward the staircase, passing four doors, three windows, and the kids—Karl and Dante and Nigel—stroking the fútbol, along with their mothers watching them kick it; and the Guadalajarans on the railing, who leaned, sipping their 40s, reminiscing about adolescence, all lies, mostly; and then there were the delinquents skipping school, smoking cigarettes, nodding along to Joy Division, Ice Cube, and sometimes Selena; until James scaled the staircase, hooked another left, and dipped into the unit adjacent to Benito’s, our resident queer. Aja took the same route in the opposite direction when she left his apartment. That happened less often since he mostly came to her. On her way down the railing, though, she would sit with the cabrones, tapping her foot to “Como la Flor,” kicking the ball across the balcony, before a word with the women huddled over the veranda. They’d riff on whatever gossip was marinating that afternoon, before she slipped back into her own apartment, at the turn of the evening, where she showered, swept, wept, started dinner for Paul.

  In this way, Aja’s super-secret liaisons with the whiteboy upstairs weren’t exactly a secret at all. They weren’t even that scandalous. We’re talking about that part of town called Alief, above the sixty-acre mansions, despite ours actually being the worst hood around. The worst. In the years we’ve been here, we’ve seen coke wars, turf realignments, the usual school zoning violence, and shootouts—and that one time, in the nineties, with the cracker offing black folks by the Jack in the Box. Some of us still remember the way people walked, like they all had sticks up their asses, like the guy who’d stuffed them there was just around the corner. Mr. Po could tell you about cops cruising the gates. Esmerelda Rivera has photos of the rats as fat as trees.

  But the neighborhood’s changed. With our not-legals shuffling in, people who don’t have time for the violence, people whose only reason for bouncing was to get away from the violence, we’ve mellowed out, found our rhythm. Slowed down. You can raise a kid in the complex. Start a garden or some shit. We make an ugly family, mostly brown and cross-eyed and crippled. Renaldo’s son plays spin-the-bottle with Jameelah’s daughter five doors down, and Bridgette brunches with Lao twice a month on Tuesdays. Kim Su’s niece’s marriage collapsed when it turned out she was a stud, and Peter George’s son, the burnt one, is doing time for packing. All of the Rodriguez daughters are pregnant, the Williams girl is in college, and little Hugo’s hustling for an internship at NASA.

  Basically we can’t keep a secret for anything. Rumors glide through the complex like vines. But the one person who should’ve known about James and Aja, the one their opus would’ve actually mattered the most to, didn’t. Or couldn’t. At least not for a while.

  But when Paul did find out, it wasn’t from her. She was better than that. It might not be fair to say that she loved him. That might not be true, considering the circumstances. But we knew she liked him enough, or felt indebted, if not protective.

  Which might be better than love. It might be easier to put some reins on.

  And anyways, she took precautions. Changed her panties before he got home, showered. Set the stoves, cooled the room. Let him kiss her on the cheek. Asked about his day. Massaged the motherfucker’s shoulders, when she thought he might like that. Let him take her to bed, although she probably came hours earlier, except it was different with Paul, it was always different.

  It just was.

  And every night, every night, the last words he said were Aja, are you happy?

  And Aja always, always told him she was.

  * * *

  • • •

  So we did it. We told him.

  We’re the ones who opened our mouths.

  But not all at once. We’re better than that.

  Denise whispered it from the lot. Harold mumbled it in the hallway. Gonzalo belched it and Neesha sang it and Marilyn prayed for a flash of intuition.

  All of us, the whole complex, watched from the railing, smoking, while Paul bumbled up the stairs in scrubs. Exhausted.

  And, the thing is, we liked Paul.

  We liked Paul.

  We liked Paul.

  But we spoke as one. A single cry, and then another. LaToya and Rodrigo and Caramella and Tyrell. In the laundry room, from the parking lot. From both ends of the stairwell.

  Your wife is sleeping with the whiteboy above you, we said. She does it during the day, while you break your back downtown.

  Straight out. To the point.

  When Paul didn’t immediately react, we said it again, slowly, pointing toward the apartment.

  Gerard cracked his knuckles. LaToya slowed it down.

  Right above you, we said. While you work.

  It wasn’t our first conversation. He knew us all by name. But you’d be stretching the truth to have called us friends, to call us anything other than what we were—just the neighborhood.

  We worked our way in as we got to know him.

  Appeasing Paul. Pleasing Paul. Fresh off the boat but amiable Paul. We’d seen his type before, had watched this country swallow them whole.

  But now, we still crowded around his door, to see how it all turned out. To see if he’d storm the bedroom. Bring her out by her hair. Or maybe he’d turn the pain on himself, fling himself from the balcony, set himself on fire, pull out his very own eyes.

  What he did was go home. He locked the door. He sat down to dinner with Aja.

  When she asked about his day, he said he’d heard the strangest thing.

  We never told Aja it was us, and she never once asked.

  We’re not the ones who matter here—only her, only her.

  * * *

  • • •

  But Aja felt bad about the whole damn thing. Or at least that’s what she said. In her weekly haunts with the ladies on the corner, they’d scold her, after they’d gotten the details. The Who put What in Wheres.

  It got to her though. That feeling. The one she’d only seen in movies, heard sung on the radio, that weak-in-the-knees, palm-on-your-forehead, ay, papi, what have I done.

  So Aja was on one of her marathon vents, where she blamed her childhood, her folks, and her people back home, when we finally had enough of it—and we asked her, honestly, why she didn’t just tell Paul herself.

  We said surely it would be better that way.

  We knew that it probably wasn’t.

  But we watched the neighborhood play out below us. In the yard, Nigel laid a feint on Dante with the fútbol. Mr. Po carried geraniums from the lot. When the ball ended up at his feet, he kicked it so hard across the complex that Dante swiped at the flowers, cussed him out, damned him back to Taiwan.

  Aja lit another cigarette. She watched the street too.

  Maybe, she said, and even then we regretted it.

  * * *

  • • •

  No one knows exactly how it all went down, but we’ll do our best:

  Aja, was all he said when he caught them. He’d actually walked in on them right after the act. She’d never tell us what it was like, but scandal transcends languages, cultures, generations.

  There was the shock on their faces at actually being caught. The shock on his. Confusion. Bewilderment.

  And then everything else.

  All we know for certain is how he’d said her name.

  All breathy, like it was his final word.

  * * *

  • • •

  The investigation wasn’t much, which is to say there wasn’t really an investigation. Sure, the same cops we always get showed their faces. Officer Ramirez, Officer Brown, Officer Only
amonthontheforce. Said hello to everybody, waved up and down the complex, gave a long whistle once they finally reached the body.

  Ramirez knocked on doors while Benito and Kim stood over Paul, who hadn’t packed up his shit, or caught the bus, or sped halfway across the state (even with the killing crusting on his own two hands, he wasn’t a bad guy. We couldn’t have called him a bad guy).

  You all right, we asked, and Paul only nodded.

  Ramirez hit every apartment. But of course there weren’t any witnesses. And of course nobody’d seen the signs, but he wanted to get it on paper.

  Documentation, he said. That’s how we do it in this country.

  A noxious joke. But we laughed regardless. Ha! Ha ha! Ha.

  * * *

  • • •

  Eventually they made it to Aja’s. Told her she didn’t have to report anything then, but at some point they’d be bringing her in.

  She said that was fine but to fuck off in the meantime.

  * * *

  • • •

  The medics passed through to flip James on a stretcher.

  The whole thing was done in like an hour, maybe two.

  * * *

  • • •

  A little while afterwards, the hallway filled up again, with all of us who hadn’t had a story just moments before. Shouting all at once. Riffing on how this one couldn’t believe that the cops had come, how that one had no idea where her papers were anyways, how the other one had a warrant for his own arrest, and wasn’t he glad that they weren’t there for him.

  We lamented Paul. We chastised Aja. We shook our heads at the whole damn thing.

  Whiteboy slumming, what could you expect.

  It was dark before everyone slunk back home. Shouting and laughing and filling in the blanks.

  * * *

  • • •

  She moved out soon after that. Did it during the day. We only caught her because she’d been taking out the trash.

  There was our girl, scaling the staircase, in sweatpants and a sweater. Makeup smeared halfway down her cheeks. Hair here there and everywhere.

  But beautiful, still.

  We asked where she was going. She said she didn’t know.

  Home, we said, and she shook her head.

  Just somewhere else.

  * * *

  • • •

  And so Aja wasn’t present for James’s funeral. A week before they closed the case, long after Paul was in chains.

  No family flew down to claim the body. No crying mother at the coroner’s. No wincing aunts decrying our ghetto. No protests, no media, not even a gaggle of friends.

  James’s departure was a quiet one, or it certainly would’ve been. Because his desires were untainted. Self-propelled. Without accommodation.

  He was, despite everything, still one of us.

  So we put our heads together.

  We pulled the change from nowhere.

  We plugged Big A for the quarters under his bed. We asked Mr. Po for some of his flower money. We drilled Gonzalo and Erica for a little of their comp-pay. We pestered Juana for some alimony, and Rogelio for his overtime, and the three Ramirez daughters for their baby shower stash. We poked Charlie for those international checks, Adriana for her allowance, Neesha for her government check, and Dante for his lunch money. Nigel and Karl for the pennies they stole. LaToya for those side jobs, Benito for his Hazelwood, and Hugo for the paystubs he’d been cashing on the West Side.

  We hung streamers from the balcony. Grilled wings from the first floor. Plugged speakers, pitched goalposts, sipped liquor, raised arms.

  And from the viejas to the juniors to the Filipinos to the black folks, we danced, danced, danced, to the tune of that story, their story, his story, our story, because we’d been gifted it, we’d birthed it, we’d pulled it from the ashes. Aja was Aja and Paul was Paul and James was James and James was Paul and Aja was James and they were us, and we told it, remixed it, we danced it from the stairwell, and we hung it from the laundry, and we shook it from the second floor, until our words had run out, until our music ran dry, and Five-0 shut it down on account of the noise.

  610 NORTH, 610 WEST

  1.

  For a while our father kept this other woman in the Heights. It was tough luck seeing him most nights at best. He’d snatch his keys from the kitchen counter, nod at all of us at once, spit something about how he had business to handle, and of course he never thought to tell us what it could be but we figured it out. We adjusted accordingly.

  This was back when Ma’s sisters still checked on her weekly: phone calls after dinner, occasional visits on Sunday. Before they finally cut her off for hooking up with a spic. They told Ma it was one thing to live with a liar, and another to give him babies, but coming home to those lies every night was demeaning.

  At the end of the day, they couldn’t accept it.

  At the end of the day, Ma told them they didn’t have to.

  But those first few weeks she waited up for our father, because she didn’t want to see it and you know how that goes. At work she kept busy counting tips by the register. Refilling baskets of silverware. At home, at night, she kept Javi and Jan and me starving while she cleaned the place solo, wiping and mopping and washing the linoleum. Then the four of us sat around bowls full of whatever’d been left in the kitchen—pots of chicken and chorizo and beans on the burners—and we’d stare at the plastic with our hands in our laps like they’d show us whoever kept Ma’s man out in the world.

  She’s gotta be white, said Javi. He’s already got a nigga. Otherwise, there’s no fucking point.

  She could be Chinese, I said. Or mixed. She could be like us.

  Why the fuck would he leave home to go back home.

  Doesn’t matter what she looks like, said Jan. The point is that he’s gone.

  My brother waved that away. He didn’t even look up.

  We spent whole days guessing. At what she looked like, where she stayed. Javi swore our father’s puta was a model. Or an actress. But for the longest time I held out for something more domestic.

  I painted her as a hairdresser. Maybe a dentist. A vet, although a year ago our father’d drowned the dog because none of us ever walked it. These conversations usually ended up with Javi smacking me down, pinching the fat on my ribs. Wondering how I could be so stupid.

  Whenever summer hit, Ma kept us in the restaurant. We lived on the building’s second floor and ran the business below. But whenever June hit, her usual staff begged off, blaming the lack of AC and ice water on hand, so Houston’s sun had them out drinking 40s on Navigation, which left Javi and me sweeping, killing roaches, stomping the tile lining the doorway. Jan disappeared into the neighborhood for hours, citing work, and then friends, until she stopped giving reasons altogether. Sometimes Ma just stood at the register, watching the two of us, and I’d wonder whether she saw her sons or replicas of her husband. But it only lasted a minute before her brow completely settled, and she’d point toward some invisible spot we’d missed right under the table.

  Why the fuck would he be tripping over a mutt, said Javi, and when I didn’t have an answer for that he chalked it up to dumbness.

  She’s definitely white, said Javi. She’s definitely pale all over.

  And she’s probably got a fat ass too, he said.

  Eventually Ma spoke up. Caught our father in the doorway, called him a bastard to his face. A wetback. And the one night my brother finally opened his mouth over breakfast, asking Ma why she didn’t just drop him already, our mother reared back her elbow, crashing her palm into his cheek, before she settled her fingers right back onto the cutlery.

  Javi slumped across the wood, crying into his knuckles. I sat beside him, kicking at the chair.

  It was the last time Ma ever hit him. The one time I’d see him cry. But when our father saw the b
ruise in the morning, Javi only told him he’d had a scrap.

  We were prepping in the back kitchen. Ma was still in her bedroom upstairs. We’d heard the shouts when he made it home late last night, the fists smacking against the wall.

  After enough time had passed that I’d forgotten about the lie, our father asked Javi if he’d won.

  My brother curled his lips, testing the wound with his tongue.

  Of course, he said. No doubt.

  And our father cracked his wrists, staring into the sink.

  Let me tell you a secret, he said. That’s all that really matters.

  2.

  Nowadays she doesn’t come across as one of those women who dupe themselves, but back then Ma wore it all on her face. That was the worst thing. You could spot it across the block. And not because he left us—that shit could happen to anyone; and it did end up happening to us, eventually—but for the years leading up to the break, she thought she’d be the one to reel him back in.

  My father was a handsome man. Wore his skin like a sunburnt peach. He was someone who could sing, who actually had a voice worth listening to. He’d pace around the restaurant, beating his stomach like a drum, humming the corridos he’d never taught us way back when. He’d flip me over his shoulder if he found me at the sink, carrying me away, convinced that it was the last place a boy needed to be.

  Es solo para mujeres y maricones, he said, because the real men of the kitchen were out killing pigs or whatever.

  But you, he said, you’re like your old man. Hierba mala nunca muere.

  Then he’d drop me back onto my toes, kicking my ass with the flat of his foot.

  Ma said that kind of wildness put boys in the dirt. But then our father’d grab her, too. Back when things were still good you wouldn’t catch them again for hours after that, which left Javi and me up front, tending to the customers, counting receipts.