In a second, Mateo felt alert to the scene in the room. There was beanpole tweaker reaching hungrily for the pipe and pulling off his shorts and leggings, shotgunning smoke with Freakshow, mouth to mouth, back and forth; Carrie, naked, legs spread, looking at Mateo in a stunned, fried daze on the rug. Freakshow doffed his clothes, right down to a black jockstrap, and stroked his nipples, licking his lips and sitting back wide on the futon couch. Beanpole shoved a DVD into the player, then the thirty-two-inch screen exploded with the orange-tan flesh and pounding techno music of gay porn. Mateo’s eyes felt, after hours of heavy-liddedness, like they were widening so fast, they were about to pop out of his head. He was freaked out and horny at the same time; he pulled off his jeans and started stroking his now-limp dick, then running his hands through his hair.
“Holy shit, oh holy shit,” he kept saying. “What the fuck, what the fuck!”
Carrie was reaching for him from the floor, her eyes wide, too. “Mateo, come here,” she said. “Hold me.”
“I can’t yet,” he answered idiotically. He looked desperately at Freakshow.
“We need to balance you out,” Hector said. He went into his little black box and pulled out some tiny baggies, pulled out a key. He gave first Carrie, then Mateo, then the beanpole, and finally himself a giant bump of something — then of something else from another bag. He put them away.
Whatever Hector had given them, Mateo could instantly feel it working; the wild overstimulation was subsiding and he was descending into a semiparalyzed pool of ecstasy. Hector was guiding Carrie and Beanpole toward the futon, doing that tender hush-hush thing he could do so well.
“Let’s all get close,” he said. They were all naked now; the room was spinning slowly into a horny, mellow, gooshy lull. In a second, Carrie was straddling Mateo, holding him so tight, working her way down onto him; right alongside the two of them, Beanpole was doing the same on top of Hector.
Holy shit, Mateo managed to register, they’re gonna fuck right alongside us. His heart was pounding, but pleasurably; his eyes were closed, but when he opened them he realized he no longer had any idea where he was. Freakshow had given them all acid or mushrooms or ketamine or MDMA or some combination; when he looked searchingly into everyone’s faces, he saw only his own and hers. Hers, the snapshot. Ah yes, he thought, he was back in the sweet spot! Carrie had gotten him inside her now. She had her head bowed down around his neck.
“Oh, don’t do that, oh, don’t do that,” Beanpole was chanting as he went up and down on Freakshow, clearly meaning just the opposite, as they were echoed by the men on the TV screen. Mateo had a flickering realization that the night would probably not end well.
“Ysabel,” he said very clearly, right to her face, as she looked down over him. “Ysabel Mendes.”
Usually, he hated to think her name, let alone say it out loud. God, where had it just come from? Well, she was right there in the room, looking into his face! He kept fucking Carrie, his eyes closed. When he opened them, maybe minutes later, he saw that Beanpole was alone on the futon, looking startled, tossed aside. Mateo scanned the room wildly. Freakshow, naked, was standing across the room, just staring at him, horrified, his hands to his face.
Mateo’s eyes bugged out. He couldn’t help laughing. “What the fuck, Freakshow? Get back here, you’re freaking me out.” Carrie rode Mateo wordlessly, her head dead on his shoulder, a damp spot growing on the futon where they were joined.
But Hector didn’t move for several more seconds. Then, wordlessly, Hector was putting on his clothes, grabbing his wallet and the keys to his rental car.
“You’re fucking leaving?” Mateo asked. Alarmed, he pulled Carrie off him and stood up, so fast he fell to his knees. The room was spinning and stretching; it felt like a funhouse one minute and a horror show the next. The techno music from the porn filled his entire head and wrapped around his brain in strange ways. Freakshow was walking out the fucking door! Where the fuck are you going? Mateo tried to call to him, but he couldn’t — instead, Mateo found himself crawling toward Hector, terrified he was leaving.
You can’t leave me now, Mateo tried to say, but could not. He watched the last of Hector’s construction boot as he closed the door behind him. Mateo reached for the door, opened it, crawled and stumbled down the hallway of the apartment, but Hector could still somehow run, and he did.
Mateo watched Hector from the window in the stairwell as he drove away. Sunlight was emerging. Mateo was naked, stinking and sweating, in the stairwell where anybody could find him. Carrie and the beanpole were back in the apartment, with all the drugs, doing God knows what. You should go back inside, he thought from somewhere far away. A huge part of his body and mind were screaming to resume the animal coitus. But he was paralyzed, standing and staring out at the street. He couldn’t muster a fully formed thought. Eventually he started masturbating. He watched a stray morning jogger pass. How much time had slipped away? Minutes? Hours?
Then he heard distant sirens. Were they really sirens? Yes, they were. And they were getting closer. But Mateo still couldn’t move. With fascinated detachment, he watched the ambulance pull up in front of the apartment, disgorge itself with paramedics charging up the front walk with all their gear. He could hear the commotion on the floor below as they buzzed every buzzer. He finally determined to turn around and go back inside the apartment, and when he did, shuffling naked down the carpeted hallway, he was met with the team of five EMTs.
Eleven. Monsters Aren’t Friendly (1997)
There he was, alone. That was the first thing Milly thought when she saw him, in the playroom of the Catholic boys’ home in Fort Greene where she’d agreed to meet her mother before lunch. There were other boys about twelve feet away, all of them black or brown, all of them four or five years old and involved in an elaborate game of toy-car smashup, but this boy whom Ava had standby guardianship over until he someday found a real home, whom Ava had said she wanted to check in on, lay alone on his stomach, on the bright orange carpet in the cheerful room full of sunlight and bright-colored pictures on the walls and primary-color beanbag chairs, and drew scary, hairy creatures with dark Crayolas on white craft paper. The first thing Milly noticed about him was his riot of glossy black curls.
Milly and Ava knelt down beside him. “Emmy, this is Mateo,” Ava said. “Mateo, this is my daughter, Millicent.”
“Hi, Mateo,” Milly said. “What are you drawing?”
For several seconds, Mateo didn’t stop his work. Then he glanced up at them both quickly. “Monsters,” he said.
“Oh, wow, monsters!” Ava exclaimed. Her nasal Queens accent pierced the room, Milly noticed. “What kind of monsters are those, Mateo? Are they friendly ones?”
Mateo looked up at Ava and rolled his eyes, which made Milly giggle a bit inwardly. “No,” he said flatly. “Monsters aren’t friendly.”
“Some monsters are!” Ava insisted. “What about the Cookie Monster?” God, Milly thought, her mother was being so loud. “You know who the Cookie Monster is, right?”