The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [18]
“The can of beer has to be in the paper bag. Right up to the rim,” he goes on. “So when you take a swig your bottom lip touches the paper, not the can. And that little bit of paper gets soaked with the beer. And you taste the brown paper bag as well as the beer.”
It’s not because she doesn’t want a beer that she’s resisting. She likes beer, and the way he describes it actually makes her gulp with anticipation. But for some reason she suspects that Javier doesn’t like beer, that he would never even think of wanting one if he didn’t happen to be sitting on a Harvey Street stoop on a Saturday night, the same way he’d probably opt for a piña colada on a tropical vacation or a Pernod in the bar at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
“It’s not a good precedent, to forgo the tallboys,” he explains. “Things like that have consequences. People who sit on stoops without tallboys come to bad ends.”
“Like what?” she says.
“They end up donating kidneys. Filling out place-mat puzzles. Rooting in cockfights.”
“So go get a beer. I’m not stopping you.”
“No. You’ve got to have one too. It wouldn’t be right with just me drinking. We’ve got to sit here and be like two synchronized pistons. Slow-motion-like. Me drinking, you pausing. You drinking, me pausing. That’s just the way these things are done.”
She closes her sketchbook. “Hey, Javier, what do you say we go get some beer?”
“Check.”
They get up and walk to the corner store, which Javier refers to, with due reverence, as a bodega. Apparently this bodega is part of Javier’s ritual as well. He talks about what a good bodega it is, how it’s one of the last of its kind, well lit but not overlit, how the narrow aisles are stocked almost all the way to the low ceiling, allowing you to shop with a feeling of privacy and even intimacy.
“They put the little cookie bags up there on the top shelf,” he says, pointing. “If you see them, it’s only by accident. They’re almost out of reach, even. That’s great, really great.”
“Why?”
“It’s so innocent. Everyone knows you put the impulse items right by the counter. They teach you things like that in grade school nowadays. But it works here, don’t you think? It makes you feel secure. It’s exactly where your parents put the cookies, way up in a jar on the top shelf behind the bag of flour and the box of oatmeal.” Javier gazes moonily at the bright packages.
“Is that where your parents put the cookies?” she asks.
“My parents? No. We didn’t have cookies.”
For a moment his face goes slack, losing its hyperintensity, becoming, she thinks, what it must really look like. It’s a strange face, sad and a little beautiful, even, every feature—eyes, nose, cheekbones, lips, chin—a little too big or too long, like an Eastern Orthodox saint’s. But then he smirks, and his eyes dart at her puckishly.
“I was raised by Gypsies.”
He picks a can of cat food off the shelf. “Filet mignon–flavored. Take a look.”
The cat on the label is wearing a miniature robe, tall gray wig, and crown, in the style of Catherine the Great.
“There’s actual filet mignon in it,” he says.
“That’s kind of sick.”
“Cats are there to be indulged. That’s their function: to receive the love and devotion we never fully gave our parents. Not like dogs. Dogs are there to give us the love and devotion our children will never fully give us. You’ve never seen a dog wearing a tiara on a dog-food