Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The - Junot Diaz [78]
Qye Dios te bendiga, she said. Still looking ready to jump out of a window if need be. Gave her his number, Just in case, but she never called. He wasn’t surprised.
Drove so long and so far on some nights that he would actually fall asleep at the wheel. One second he was thinking about his characters and the next he’d be drifting, a beautiful intoxicating richness, about to go all the way under and then some last alarm would sound.
Lola. Nothing more exhilarating (he wrote) than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.
PART II
Men are not indispensable. But Trujillo is irreplaceable. For Trujillo is not a man. He is…a cosmic force…Those who try to compare him to his ordinary contemporaries are mistaken. He belongs to…the category of those born to a special destiny.
La Nación
Of course I tried once more. It was even stupider than the first time. Fourteen months and Abuela announced that it was time for me to return to Paterson, to my mother, I couldn’t believe what she was saying. It felt like the deepest of treacheries to me. I wouldn’t feel that again until I broke with you.
But I don’t want to go! I protested. I want to stay here!
But she wouldn’t listen. She held her hands in the air like there was nothing she could do. It’s what your mother wants and it’s what I want and it’s what’s right.
But what about me!
I’m sorry, hija.
That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.
I wasn’t mature. I quit the team. I stopped going to classes and speaking to all my girlfriends, even Rosio. I told Max that we were through and he looked at me like I’d just shot him between the eyes. He tried to stop me from walking away but I screamed at him, like my mother screams, and he dropped his hand like it was dead. I thought I was doing him a favor. Not wanting to hurt him any more than was necessary.
I ended up being really stupid those last weeks. I guess I wanted to disappear more than anything and so I was trying to make it so. I fooled around with someone else, that’s how messed up I was. He was the father of one of my classmates. Always after me, even when his daughter was around, so I called him. One thing you can count on in Santo Domingo. Not the lights, not the law.
Sex.
That never goes away.
I didn’t bother with the romance. I let him take me to a love motel on our first ‘date’. He was one of those vain politicos, a peledista, had his own big air-conditioned jípeta. When I pulled my pants down you never saw anybody so happy.
Until I asked him for two thousand dollars. American, I emphasized. It’s like Abuela says: Every snake always thinks it’s biting into a rat until the day it bites into a mongoose.
That was my big puta moment. I knew he had the money, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked, and it’s not like I was robbing from him. I think we did it like nine times in total, so in my opinion he got a lot more than he gave. Afterward I sat in the motel and drank rum while he snorted from these little bags of coke. He wasn’t much of a talker, which was good. He was always pretty ashamed of him self after we fucked and that made me feel great. Complained that this was the money for his daughter’s school. Blah blah blah. Steal it from the state, I told him with a smile. I kissed him when he dropped me off at the house only so that I could feel him shrink from me.
I didn’t talk to La Inca much those last weeks but she never stopped talking to me. I want you to do well at school. I want you to visit