She was rocking, pressing her clitoris with a knuckle, hunching intently toward the wall. Every time Valerie's girl made another moan, she trembled with joy. Her labia had flushed the reddish-orange of molten copper. The empty needle hung from her like a breast sucked dry as she hunched forward, masturbating furiously.
She smiled and swayed for a long time. Then she turned to look at the man. Defiantly she said: Have you ever been in love?
No, the man said.
Oh, she said. I was just curious.
Slender like candles they let their hair down beneath the trees. He knew that. Hurrying down the tunnel of fingernails, he saw their legs glisten in the rain. He prayed, his hands a knife to cut away sin from his face. But he could not stop knowing.
Under the night I'll help you, his friend said.
He replied: I'm afraid.
Not enough, or you'd have prayed me away! Tomorrow I'll find you. Tomorrow, in the night.
Tomorrow was a morning of shards in the dark dirt, an afternoon of rainbow laundry on white roofs, an evening of children peering over gates. Then tomorrow grew as dark as the sweat under a woman's breasts.
Wide yellow crosswalk-lines sweated yellow in the yellow light. On the corner, a man raised a roof-tarp as if for a market. Girls grew from the sidewalk like nighrfruits, growing up from pink stalks and roots, with hair for flowers. Jiggling their purses and smiling, they tolled the night in the bells of their skirts. With open arms, they leaned into the black windows of cars to ask directions.
Across the street two men were already waiting, one with his hands in his pockets, the other squinting ahead. A third came, tapping his feet, wiping his nose. The corner by the phone booth had a standing army of men whose shirts and jeans seemed bleached, yet bright.
The boy's face was pleasing like a waxed peach as he stood on the night corner, tapping a pack of cigarettes against his palm. His friend was instructing him. His friend said: This little knife is to kill the hearts of all the pretty amigas, so that they'll love me. And this belt, my novia gave it to me, to bind me to her kisses. But I escaped. And this blue bracelet, a young girl wove it to tie me to her side. But I go where I please.
His friend was a squat brown rain idol with round holes in his mouth. His friend's skull glared ahead like headlights.
Another girl left her taxi, crossed slowly, let down her hair beneath the trees. Across the street, the madam opened a red notebook.
Slender like candles they stood on the narrow sidewalk which was their tightrope, and faced the passing cars. Tree-shadows passed through their flesh. Their high heels or knee-high black shiny leather boots glistened. Another taxi pulled up.
The truck with loud music stopped. The woman bowed her head slowly, but didn't trouble to uncross her arms.
In a voice like jellyfish collapsing, his friend said: That one's yours.
Oh, well, the boy said apologetically, she belongs to herself. .
She's nothing but a pair of buttocks.
Everything has a mind, the boy whispered, afraid to look at this friend he contradicted. Everyone has a mind. Everyone has hands to work and make something good—
The idol laughed. — I have no mind. She has no mind.
She stood in the street like silverware gleaming in darkness. Behind her, a girl licked a Popsicle like a long red chili. For a moment it seemed that she licked her own tongue. She was the woman's daughter.
His friend nudged him. — How much? the boy said.
A hundred fifty thousand,* the woman said.
A hundred.
No. (Her pale white face shook.)
You win. Come with me. No, no, first give me your mouth.
She kissed him listlessly, like the trickle of a silver earring among black hair. Her kiss tasted of the penises of men long dead.
Triumphant, the idol swarmed into the air to infect the whole world. She did not see that, but her daughter screamed. (The madam wrote a cross in the notebook.)
Now the boy was bold. He took her by the chin. — I said come with me.
Wherever I go, my daughter goes also. She's afraid without me.
Come with me.
She undid her necklace of heavy plates of dark silver — smooth, almost buttery to the touch; they rang on the glass floor. The daughter turned her back. Knowingly she played with the silhouettes that vanish behind walls. So the pretty sisters used to play, noiselessly, in the clay rooms of old Egypt, after their god-brothers had taken them to wife.
The boy was not a boy anymore. He leaned back smoking, so that the round stone of his ring rose into the world. Smoke came out his nose. Again the mother cooled him with mercury tears of silver on whitestone, while the daughter turned her back. His friend was leading them by arm and waist to the culmination at the stall of green-lit bones.
What's the young girl's name?
I won't tell you, Señor. She's nothing to do with you.
The daughter turned her back.
Do you both have minds? he said. The longer I'm with you, the more your minds elude me.
