Chapter 12
She woke sandwiched between Sabrina and Vince, Dominic shaking her shoulder gently. Letty struggled to sit up, rubbing at her eyes. He held his hands out to her and she took them, using his support to stand, wobbly on the bed between them, and he lifted her under the arms. She wrapped her legs around his middle andher arms around his neck, yawning as he clasped his hands beneath her butt and carried her into the hallway.
The room Dominic had reserved for them was large and pretty, different from the one he’d initially thrown Letty and Mo in, and she wondered if Jesse was sharing that other room with Mo and Leon. Dominic was in boxers and a tee-shirt and socks, bumping the door closed with one stocking foot. He eased himself back down onto the bed with Letty on top of him, clinging to him, still all warm and limp from sleeping.
He nudged her forehead with his own, making her face him and nipping gently at her lips. She smiled and opened herself to his kiss, allowing his tongue to delve deep into her mouth, searching, tasting, setting her heart aflutter. It never changed. Every time he kissed her, she flew, and every time he pulled away, she fell.
“I didn’t do anything with her, Letty,” he murmured, planting wet, booze-scented kisses across her throat. “You think I’d need to go out and find some skanky piece of ass like that after I spent all day fuckin’ you? She’s got nothin’ on you, Let. She’s got nothin’ on you.” His voice was like honey, warm and dripping with sincerity, soothing, reassuring, and she believed him.
“But she wants to get on you, Dom. She’s been trying to get on you for weeks.”
“Yeah, but it’s not gonna happen. So don’t worry about it.” He kissed her again and closed his hands on her ass, pulling her closer. “Don’t worry about it.”
“All right, I’m not worried about it.” She grinned as he took her knuckles to his lips and kissed them, and when he pulled up on the hem of her jersey, she let him take it off. He went for her tanktop next and she distracted him, pulling away and lying on her back beside him. She lifted her hips off the mattress and shimmied out of her thong, letting her legs fall open in obvious invitation. He smiled, rising to his knees and rolling a condom down over himself, shoving his pants and drawers to his thighs.
His eyes were open as he pressed into her body. Open and black and intense, watching her face, watching what he was doing to her, and his gaze made her breathless. Those fathomless ebony eyes were murder, smoldering out from beneath heavy hooded lids. His strokes in and out of her were long and smooth, stoking a slow fire, taking his time, biting at the mauve peaks of her nipples through the ribbed white cotton of the wifebeater until she couldn’t keep still or quiet anymore, her fingertips digging into the freshly-shorn suede of his scalp as she gasped out her release.
A shower, a change of clothes, a check-in call with Ruben, and it was time to head back to the show. Letty didn’t blow dry her hair. It felt good hanging wet and heavy against her back, and she wore a baggy white tee shirt with the DT logo screen-printed on the breast pocket, black boots with flames on the toes, faded blue flares. Her back was still a little sore, so she decided free-ballin’ was the way to go.
Heading into the hallway, she flagged down Sabrina and Vince as they got into the elevator.
“Where you goin’?” Letty asked.
“Continental breakfast,” Vince beamed.
“Yeah, girl, we’re goin’ to eat.” Sabrina looked as tired as Letty felt. “You wanna come? Where’s your guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s in with Leon,” Vince said, his hand over the elevator door to keep it open. “And Emanuel and Susana. Trying to wake up Mo.”
Letty smiled, sympathetically. “She’s prob’ly so sick. Where’s that room at?”
Sabrina pointed at a door that was open just a crack, and Letty nodded, giving it a shove.
Mo was half awake, curled up and hugging her pillow to her front, scowling blatantly with her eyes shut.
“Come on, MoMo,” Leon purred, in that rough, gravelly voice. “You don’t wanna stay here all alone while the rest of us party.”
“Yes, I do.” Mo’s squeaky little voice. The Morales voice. All the Morales sisters talked like Minnie Mouse.
“Let,” Leon said, pointing at Mo with an expression on his face that said ‘You got this.’
“Hey, Mo.” Letty shook her. “Get up and take a cool shower. You will feel 100% better. ‘S’what I did.”
“Leame alone.” Mo buried her face in the pillow. “Why can’t everyone just leave me alone? I’ma big girl. I can stay here by myself.”
“Mo.” Dominic spoke that one syllable, all rocky baritone, and it filled the room. “The bus is leaving. If we’re not out of here in a half hour, we have to pay for another night. Let’s. Go.”
“No.”
Leon sighed, and Susana was laughing as Emanuel went into the adjacent bathroom and turned the cold water on full-blast. Leon lifted Mo out of the bed, pillow and all, and hauled her into the bathroom, depositing her unceremoniously under the icy onslaught.
“Come on, you guys, that’s not funny,” Letty hollered, over Mo’s shocked and belligerent howling. Let shoved past Leon and Emanuel and took a few swings at them to get them out of the bathroom, then turned and helped the spluttering, angry Mo to her feet. She grabbed a towel and wrapped Mo in it, as she wore only a matching pink bra and thong set from Vickie’s. Now drenched and dripping, the silky material may as well have been cellophane. Letty shot an evil glare out at the boys and Susana and slammed the door in their faces.
“Got your guard dog in there witcha, Mo?” Leon shouted, and Mo rolled her eyes, then, loudly so the boys could hear, she commanded,
“Kill, Letty. Kill.”
Let slapped her, grinning, and then assumed the role of tough bitch again. “Show’s over. Go away. We’ll meet y’all downstairs.”
Letty stood in Dom’s arms as he accepted his giant trophy for Best of Show, smiling in the dazzling sunlight, and the blonde chick from school was out of sight and out of mind. Dom was the winner. Dom was soaring. And he’d made an absolute killing dragging the MR2’s shiny ass in the face of everyone else there. She didn’t ride back in Sabrina’s Explorer, and not because Brina wouldn’t allow it, but because Dom wanted her with him, riding shotgun and listening to his ideas for next year’s project. It would be flashier, gaudier. Red, maybe, or green. And it was going to be an RX-7.
Ruben was dribbling a basketball in the street out in front of Quino’s place when they returned, and Letty told Dom she’d see him in the morning.
“Hey, you. You’re supposed to be at the sitter’s.” Let took off Rube’s baseball cap and put it on her own head, smiling down at him and knowing the light of that smile wouldn’t reach her eyes.
“Quino came and got me this morning,” Ruben said.
“Uh-oh. Was he pissed?”
“Nah. Drunk. He gave me five dollars.”
Letty snorted, shaking her head. “Must be rough.”
“I didn’t spent all of it. You c’n have the rest if you want.”
“Psh. No, boy, keep your money. What’s he up to now?”
“I don’t know.”
He was on the couch in the living room, pants unzipped, belt unbuckled.
He was in some drug-induced daze, another belt hanging loosely around his
upper arm, and a girl was lying draped over his lap, naked except for a
black cotton skirt, which was tangled around her waist. She was maybe as
old as Letty. Maybe not. Latina, Puerto Rican, probably, she had clouds
of dark hair hanging over Quino’s legs and to the floor. Letty stood frozen
a minute, staring, as Quino dropped the hypodermic out of his hand and began
to play with one of the girl’s breasts.
“Don’t look, Ruben,” Letty choked, taking her younger brother by the hand and tugging him toward the stairs. “Don’t you look. Your papi done lost his mind.”
She sat with Ruben on her bed upstairs, letting him thumb through her old import magazines while she combed out and re-braided his hair.
“How was the show?” he asked.
“It was pretty damn good.”
“Dom win?”
“Hell yeah, Dom won. No one was even close.”
“Aight den,” he said, and she sensed, rather than saw, his smile.
“You like to hear that, ey, little boy?” She roughed up his head, and he laughed.
“Hell yeah, I do. He get a big trophy?”
“Damn near big as you.”
“Can I go down and see it?”
“Tomorrow, aright? Tomorrow after school we’ll stop by there and you can see it.”
“Did you beat the shit outta someone?” Rube asked, and Letty could feel his eyes on her knuckles.
“Watch your mouth and mind your business.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Don’t worry about shit that ain’t yours to worry about, Ruben.”
When she had finished his hair, she went out to sit with her legs dangling over the side of the stoop, drinking one of the half-empty beers out of Quino’s refrigerator. He and his Lolita were still on the couch, neither of them anywhere close to consciousness. She pushed her hair out of her face and closed her eyes, drawing to mind the smell of her grandmother’s kitchen in San Juan. Drawing to mind the look in Dominic’s eyes the first time he’d made his way into her body. Drawing to mind the sweet smile on Ruben’s face when he’d been just a tiny baby. Melting away everything that was in that moment and making it what she wanted it to be.
Her reverie was broken when she heard a car turn onto the street, and she opened her eyes to see that it was a squad car. Tucking the bottle of beer behind her, her heart caught in her throat. Quino was in there with a heroin hypo stuck in his arm and a fifteen-year-old across his lap and Ruben was upstairs playing vids, and here she was, seventeen years old with beer on her breath. She felt as if she would shit herself as the car rolled to a stop directly in front of her, and she affixed her dark, dull scowl on the blonde officer who climbed out.
“You Leticia Linares?” the cop asked, and Letty recognized him. It was Officer Dougan. She’d tangoed with him before.
“What about it.”
“Your parents at home?”
“No,” Letty said, and it was the truth.
“You know Gabby Forester?”
“No.” Again, the truth.
“Well I have taken a statement from her. She came down to the station with herparents and turns out she’s missing a tooth and has some nasty bruises. You have any idea what that’s all about?”
Shit. That fucking blonde bitch had gone to the cops.
“No,” Let said, and turned her glare down the street at Dominic’s house. Leon was in the front lawn dicking around with the lawn mower, and must have sensed her gaze, because he looked up, then.
“No? Those are some nasty bruises on your knuckles, kid. I think you better come with me to the station so we can talk.”
“Oh yeah?” Letty turned her eyes back on him, cold and bored.
“Yeah. I need to get your side of the story so we can look at things. Why don’t you get in the car.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I think you should. It would be in your best interest to cooperate.”
Letty wanted to tell him that Ruben was there, that she couldn’t come with him because her kid brother was inside and there would be no one to watch him, no one to take care of him, but she knew that if she did that, they would go in and pull Ruben out and they would see Quino, and that girl…And she just wasn’t in the mood for the shit to hit the fan.
“I don’t happen to give a shit what you think,” she said, cool and calm, in a voice made husky by exhaustion, and looked back at Leon. Leon pointed to his own eyes with the index and middle fingers of one hand, then pointed at her with the same fingers, and made a back and forth motion between them. She nodded. He had her back. When the cop turned to see what she was looking at, Leon was gone. Gone inside to tell Dominic. Gone inside to tell Vince, Mia, Sabrina…everyone. Ruben would be taken care of.
“That’s a big mouth for a little girl. You do realize you’re talking to an officer of the law.”
“Oh yeah?” She feigned amazement and childish, wide-eyed awe. “I can hardly believe it, Mr. Policeman. How noble and handsome you are in your snazzy uniform. Lemme drop to my knees and suck your dick while I’m at it.”
“All right. I’ve had enough. You’re coming down with me.”
He reached for her, and she made a mistake. She kicked him in the face.