One
September
Rafe
It had been two hours since I blew out twenty candles on the cake Ma made for me, but my ass was still parked in a chair at Restaurante Tipico.
It was always hard for me to get away from the Dominican joint that my extended family ran. I needed to be on a train headed back to Harkness College. But here I was at table seven in the back corner, rolling silverware for the evening rush, the same way I’d done my whole life.
“One more and then I’m gone,” I said to Pablito, my sixteen-year-old cousin. “I have seven o’clock dinner reservations. If I miss the four-thirty train, I’m screwed.”
“Big date tonight?”
“Yeah, it’s actually her birthday, too.”
“No shit?” Pablito grinned as he applied yet another of the self-adhering bands we used to hold the napkin around the knife and fork. “So I’m going to sling food all night and go home smelling like the fryer. You’re getting a nice dinner, a bottle of wine and then” — he made a lewd hand motion — “some happy birthday to you.”
Jesucristo. I was not about to share the details of this evening’s plans with Pablito or anyone else. “At least you got an hour’s worth of labor out of me.” I set a silverware roll on top of his pile.
“Don’t forget your present,” he said, casting an eye on the vintage money clip my mother had given me for my birthday. It was sterling silver with an art deco design. “I know why your Ma chose that for you.”
“Yeah?” I tucked it in my pocket. It was no mystery why Ma gave it to me. I loved old things. She’d chosen well, and I’d thanked her.
“No place to hide a condom.” Pablito snickered.
I had to grin, because the kid made a good point. But looking out for a dozen younger cousins was a part of my life, so I felt obligated to add, “You’re not supposed to keep them in your wallet, anyway.”
“Eh.” He shook his head. “Like it would matter.”
Check please. I could not talk about sex with my sixteen-year-old cousin. Not today of all days. I tossed one last silverware roll onto the pile and stood. “Tengo que irme.” Gotta run.
He returned my fist bump. “Go on, then. Back to the good life. Don’t think of us, the little people.”
I cuffed him on the head, then ran into the kitchen to kiss my ma goodbye.
She wished me a happy birthday, and I thanked her for the cake and the present. “Bye. I need to go. I’m taking Alison out tonight.”
She eyed me for a few seconds. “Sé bueno,” she said finally. Be good.
Cristo. I could swear sometimes she had telepathic powers. When my mother got pregnant at nineteen, my so-called father had married her. But when I was a few months old, he’d gone back to his people in Mexico for a family funeral. And never came back.
Since then, it had been just the two of us — plus about three dozen aunts, uncles and cousins — but my mother had always impressed upon me that sex made babies and that good boys had a responsibility not to get girls in trouble.
My mother would not approve of what I had planned for tonight.
“I’m always good,” I told her. True statement. I planned to be very careful with Alison. Every single time. (I hoped there were many times.)
Before I left, my mother unleashed one last bit of Catholic guilt. She asked if I was coming home for my cousin’s christening in November. (I wasn’t sure.) She reminded me they were shorthanded at the restaurant (a familiar guilt trip, since I’d decided to go to college outside of the city) and she told me to have a happy birthday.
That last thing I could do.
I kissed her cheek one more time and ran out of there.
The Metro-North train from 125th Street wasn’t crowded, and I got a seat to myself. After watching the grit of New York transform into the green of Connecticut, I pulled out my phone to call my girlfriend.
“Hi,” she answered sounding a little breathless.
“Hi, angel. Happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday yourself!” I could hear her smile coming through the phone.
“I made the four-thirty, so we’re still good for seven o’clock.”
“I was just thinking about you,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Yeah?” I hoped she meant it in a good way.
“I love you, Rafe.”
Alison had said those words before. But there was something so serious about the way she said them now. “I love you too, Ali.”
“Tonight is going to be great.”