Mala Gente- Incomplete

Bad People.



Brown, warm, spitting salt; after dark the animalitos come out and ride the waves, bite at the seamless, shining blue. Minute and exquisite pain.

---

Later, they walked and watched as crabs sidestepped gracefully over sandmites, the latter jumped up in frenzied patterns, nipping at the scent of blood.

Into the receding sun he said, "Your skin smells like gold."

---

It wasn't how it used to be. In pairs and drunk groups of three or four, the exiles tripped along the edge of the surf. They careened into hard-tipped gray-yellow grass, scraped the paint off the Pepsi signs, broke pace. A green and purple pick-up, that white stripe; in their wake, a vast tide of used condoms and bottle caps and orange peels. It wasn't how it used to be.


"Some of it has to be us."

"No one here uses condoms."

The way she said it, with an edge of faithless bewilderment, made him look at her, "Why are you thinking so much, Guapa?"

"We don't-"

There was a thin line of red bumps along the delicate skin of her collarbone.

"It's like fucking a plastic bag."

She laughed and stared out at the beach. At the dancing pink and cream silhouettes. At a long, slow moving shadow on the horizon. Pinga Monstro. Distance muffled his high, lilting giggle.

"Here he comes," she said.

Now he laughed and almost absently reached out to touch her, touch the thin line of red bumps.

The skin there was smooth, slippery, "It itches?"

"It hurts."

"More when I touch it?"

"More."

But he didn't stop.

The tall boy approached, a blue soccer jersey wrapped expertly around his head, Olympia no se limpia. Painfully thin, as he moved, the hard crest above his eyebrows, his atlas, the ball socket at his pelvis, pressed hard against his surface, pushed pulled at his skin, all tense and taut and smooth and worn. His hips clicked beneath dirty green shorts.

"Que pao, Big Barrio?" a smile on his voice.

"Nada, nada, tio."

"Y usted, Guapa?"

"Nada, nada, tio."

"Bueno, bueno," he said, and sat down in the sand at her feet, leaned hard against her knees.

His hands curled into her toes, his head in her lap, he looked up into her face, "Quiero provar te."

Big Barrio turned away, turned toward the banana leaves.

This was how it always was.

"No," was all she could think to say; mosquitoes took long pulls at her extremities, "No."

"Bueno, bueno," and he smiled again, out into the wind.

She saw against the glossy black, above the brown, wrinkled point of his nipple: a series of flat, round scars.

From the edge of the surf: screams and splashes and huge arcs of sand.

---

She watched the green trace stars against the purple. Hard, narrow triangles, skinny, fickle pentagons. She held her breath and it continued, fearless, slender bright against her pillow.

Exhaling, a sudden rush of warm air, she closed her mouth quickly and rolled off the bed. There was an audible slap as she hit concrete.

"Lixia."

Lixia breathed in the silver-lined scent of urine and cum.

"Lixia."

Above her green and bright and slender flew in endless parabolas, chasing her warmth, dancing in the downdraft of the ceiling fan.

"Lixia, are you-" through the door, "-she might be dead."

"Lixia."

There was a slight air of hysteria; the keys scraped against the coconut wood, once, twice, before they found the hole. And it opened.

"Lixia!"

Exhaling, a sudden rush of warm air, clouds of yellow and gray.

---

She knew who it was and called out into the dusk, "Noel."

---

"Why are you on the floor?"

"A bug."

"Jesus."

There was more confusion than concern, more embarassment and disappointment.

"Get up."

And she said, "No," but meant, "I can't."

She pressed her face harder into the floor, kissed the cool of it. She could still hear the green and bright and slender hot in her ear.

"Why are you doing this?"

And she said, "I can't."

---

"I'm sorry."

And the monstrosity of his erection, the great and thin and crooked mass of it, coming at her out of the black, coming into her out of the gray: that was it, of course, that was why-

"You're sorry?"

"I'm sorry."

That was why they called him Pinga Monstro.

And she could have laughed, but the smell of piss and static was still cold in her nostrils. She sneezed, but no better.

"What's wrong with you?"