Statehood

It's your 12th birthday and you're halfway through your fifth O'Doul's. You're keeping score, kneeling on the stool beneath the blackboard, ready to dodge any dart that bounces off the wire. At Duffy's, the bar is also the front desk. Your father sits there, telling stories. He's the only local in a crowd of expats, and they all listen to him. "Washington," he says. "Supreme Court. The World Series of lawyers. I kicked ass." "Cassius Clay," he says. "KO'd Coopman in five. I was there. Ringside." "Raúl Julia," he says. "We sang at the Chicken Inn. The two of us. Calypso. Before he was famous. And then he died." He always bows his head after Raúl Julia. He stretches his thumb and index and cups his forehead. His hand shields his face like a visor. He points at a soggy San Juan Star headline. Any headline. "This," he says, "is why Puerto Rico should be a state." He's got a winner on the dartboard, but if no one tells him he's up, he'll keep talking all night. You know he'll keep talking all night.

You imitate the shooters when the bar is empty. You know everybody's style. Warren Z. holds the dart up to his forehead like he's a sailor on the lookout post. He's got a wooden leg. Nobody knew about it until a dart bounced off the bull's-eye rim and stuck to him, through his jeans. He just kept walking, dart stuck to his leg, feeling no pain. Pete Gibbons does a double take: He touches the dart to his cheek and opens his mouth. From a side angle he looks like a video-game ninja that throws up darts. His wife, June, never hits the dartboard. Instead, she hits the wall. The Camel poster. The blackboard. The scorekeeper's stool. Once, she punctured the red part of the neon Budweiser sign and made it bleed. You don't keep score when she plays. No one does: It's too dangerous. Jimmy Joe Baker stands on one leg and trembles. Dirty Dave clacks his tongue three times before each shot and his bad breath sprays out. Oscar Beefeater holds his gin and tonic in one hand for balance. Norm, the bartender, lets the darts explode out of his wrist. "Wrist," he says, trying to teach you. "Wrist, wrist, wrist." He grabs your wrist in his hands and moves it back and forth like a fulcrum. "Wrist!" he says. "See? Wrist." He's one of the worst shooters. Your father brings his dart back over his shoulder like he's throwing a football. He owns Hammer Heads. You own Hammer Heads. Everyone owns Hammer Heads. Warren Z. sells them. He's also a bookie and the darts league president and a real estate agent. He looks like a weasel.

The shooters take turns buying you O'Doul's as a reward for keeping score. Pretty Pat, one of your father's girls, gives you a 20 for your birthday. She tells you to bet it on the illegal video slot machine. If you win, you keep half. If you lose, you lose nothing.

Your father has four girlfriends. You keep their names straight. You never let on that you know what you know. "So discreet," your father tells his friends. "This kid, he'll juggle six skirts someday." In English class the nun asked everyone to describe themselves using one adjective. "Pretty," Nicole said. "Fast," Edgardo said. "Smart," Julio said. "Discreet," you said. "Discreet?" the nun said. You winked. "You know," you said, "discreet." She sent a letter home to your mother, and that's when you forged your first signature. Your mother keeps busy bending and rebending clothes hangers, trying to record the perfect answering-machine greeting, flicking all the light switches on and off 22 times after putting her mama's-boy new husband to bed.

Pretty Pat tells you which buttons to push and how many times. You hit all fruits. You hit three triple bars across the middle and play the bonus round. You keep trying to hit the cherries, the ones that pay the best. You play till after the croupiers file in from the hotel casinos, which close at three. You lose everything. Duffy's never closes.

On the way to Pretty Pat's she stops to pee in the Banco Santander parking lot. There's a soft couch at her place. You've slept on it before. Your father tosses you a pillow. "No sweat, Tito," he says. "You'll pop those cherries someday." He steps into the bedroom and shuts the door. Laughter leaks through the door frame. The next morning your father asks if you saw Pretty Pat peeing by the bank. If you saw her. The glowing relief. The almost (continued on page 130)Statehood(continued from page 76) pleasure. You nod. "How her eyebrows," your father says, "unraveled." You keep nodding.

You're spending December with your father while your mother's on her honeymoon. You haven't seen him since the divorce. Fourteen months, and he shows up in a Bronco with a glove box full of country music. Boxcar Willie. Moonshine Willy. Willie Nelson. He sings their songs out loud, badly. "Why," you ask, "are they all named Willie?" His building is beside Andy's Cafe, where they sell drugs instead of coffee. It's across the street from Duffy's and Burger King and the TraveLodge. He's got a caved-in double bed, no sheets, no visitors. Many sirens pour through the windows at night, compliments of Andy. Sometimes you visit your grandfather in his mansion. Your father brings him chocolates from Domenico's and waits for him to die. You go to Duffy's every day. Your father always takes the Bronco, because after midnight the Burger King is open only for drive-through. Duffy's has an early-bird breakfast at six, and the late-shift hotel workers come in. Sometimes you're still there. Sometimes your father rear-ends Mitsubishis at the drive-through. "Whiskey River," Willie sings, "take my mind."

Happy hour is from four to six, both A.M. and P.M. Matilde, the owner, won't give you your O'Doul's at two-for-one because they're nonalcoholic. She busts your father for legal advice and gives him a drink as a consultation fee. She refuses to give refunds for the pinball machine. A full rack has only eight ribs on Tuesday, Rib Night. On Wednesday five mixed drinks get you a half-priced appetizer. On Thursday the San Juan oldies station broadcasts live from the dart room. They have a 20-song lineup and Duffy's is always tuned in. At any time of day there's a 10 percent chance they're playing "My Girl" by the Temptations or Del Shannon's "Runaway." You hate Thursdays. Monday is darts league night, new to Duffy's. Your father was a Reef Crabber until your mother had him arrested at the Reef Bar & Grill for refusing to pay child support, and he was too embarrassed to ever go back. He was a Dun-bar's Viking until Phil Hunt pointed at you and said, "Who's this little prick and what's he doing here on league night?" and your father hit him with a bar stool and got 86ed from Dunbar's. Norm, the bartender, started the Duffy's Devils, and he keeps telling his teammates that the secret's in the wrist. They're in last place. The other teams call them the Wristies. "Tito!" your father jokes, "Wrist! Wrist!" He makes a masturbating motion with his hand. He's a Devil.

Frankie bartends on weekday afternoons and league nights. She's got fake tits. "Go," your father tells you. "Give her a hug. Feel them." She's another of his girlfriends, but she's not like the others. She's your friend. She knows what's going on. She lives in one of Duffy's guest rooms with Linda, a waitress. Sometimes you take naps on her bed. Sometimes she looks after you while your father is out with Sherry, girlfriend number three. Sherry is married to Counterfeit Bill. Counterfeit Bill says he was asked by Reagan to run for governor of California, but he was too busy inventing a kind of packaging foam. In her room Frankie teaches you five-card draw. Seven-card stud. Six Back to Five. Pregnant Threes. She teaches you Free Enterprise. Take It or Leave It. Guts. Murder. She hands you a bottle of strawberry Boone's Farm. "Don't tell," she says. "I always wanted a kid." There are two beds and HBO and a stained hair drier screwed into the wall. "Ante in," you say. It's your pinball allowance against her tips. You never take anything if you win. "Ask me anything you want," she says. "Anything."

You're the official Devils scorekeeper because your math is better than everyone else's. You solve arguments. "Tito!" they say. "Two triple 18s and a 20?" "One-twenty-eight," you say. "Tito!" they call again. "Five 17s and a bull's-eye?" "Wrist!" you say, and they all laugh. "One-ten," you say. "One-ten."

After the Devils get skunked, you shoot by yourself while your father fucks Frankie in her room. Late into the night you walk back and forth, from line to board, shooting, retrieving. If halogen lights could tan, you'd be blistered. Your Hammer Head flights flash by like hubcaps. You develop your own style. It's not all about the wrist. It's elbow. Stance. Finger placement. Follow-through. It's practice. It's vision.

•

On Christmas Eve your father takes you to Plaza Las Américas shopping center. He makes you stand in front of the giant imported pine tree in front of Woolworth's. The stifling scent floods the mall's ducts. The red letters of Woolworth's shine into the fountain, and it looks as if they've sunk to the bottom. "Look at the tree," your father says. "And close your eyes." You do everything he says. "Tomorrow," he says, "we'll be right here again. In front of this tree. Tomorrow." You open your eyes. He tells you not to ask any questions. On the way to Duffy's you tell him how much you hate all the Willies.

Your mother's mama's-boy husband's son is obsessed with Super Nintendo. After school starts up, he comes over every weekend. "Be nice to him," your mother tells you. "His mother is a lesbian." They've put bunk beds in your room. You have to eat pork chops every Friday because it's the kid's favorite. You're watching the Cubs on WGN Chicago: tie game, bottom of the ninth, Sandberg at the plate. "There's a drive!" the announcer yells. "It might be! It could be! It—" Your mother's mama's-boy husband's son turns on Zelda. You scream. He screams. You hit him. He hits you back. You pull Zelda out of the Super Nintendo and toss it over the balcony, 11 flights. Everyone agrees it's a good idea you start spending weekends with your father.

On Saturday mornings you play football on the beach. Your father has a good arm but no depth perception. He lost an eye in high school. The glass from his glasses splashed into the pool of his retina. It was a drinking accident, a brawl. "The background is always flat," he says. "I don't know what a sunset looks like." In the afternoons you watch college football and eat french fries at Duffy's. Norm lets you control the remote. At night you shoot with the shooters. No one calls you "that little prick."

At four A.M. you tell your father you're tired and he tells you that you have a brother. He's a day older than you. His name is Pepito. He's half Japanese. He has a black belt in karate. Also, he's a better dart shooter than you. Also, he can throw the football farther. Also, he's invisible. "Invisible?" you say. "Or imaginary?" "How dare you," your father says. "How dare you say that about your brother when he's sitting right there." He gestures toward an empty stool. He waves at the empty stool. Then he speaks to it. "Don't worry, Pepito," he says. "Tito doesn't mean it." "Tell him," you say, "that I say he's an asshole." Your father turns toward the empty stool. He waits five seconds. He starts laughing. "Oh, Pepito," he says. "Pepito, I can't tell Tito you just said that about him. He's my son too, remember? And yes, you may be right, but I just can't repeat what you just said. It's just too hurtful." Your father turns back to you, grinning. "Tell him," you say, "to go fuck his father."

•

In school you get all A's. This is never a problem. "Your English," the nun from English class says, "is remarkable." During class you practice your dart-shooting style with a pencil and she thinks you've raised your hand. She happily calls on you. You tell her it's all one big mistake. "What's the mistake?" she says. "Everything, Sister," you say. "Everything's a mistake." Some girls suddenly have breasts and older boyfriends. You start buying condoms at Duffy's men's room for a dollar and selling them at school for two. Everybody wants one, especially the older boyfriends. You make friends with the eighth-grade class. You make the basketball team. You forge everybody's parents' signatures when they get in trouble. Your mother quizzes you the day before tests. She throws the notebook at you if you don't know the answers. There are many sponges in her sink. One for spoons. One for forks. One for knives. One for pans. One for plates. One for spatulas. One for the other sponges. They are color-coded. "Goddamn you," she says, "if you mix them up."

You gamble the condom profit against Frankie. She serves you Boone's Farm with ice when she's working and you're discreet about it, acting like it's Hawaiian Punch. Frankie doesn't live at Duffy's anymore. Her roommate, Linda, left Puerto Rico. Everyone wa-wa-wa-wa-wonders why she went away, but you know why it was. You were at your father's the Sunday morning he got the call. No one knew Linda was pregnant: not your father, not even Frankie. She needed someone who spoke Spanish to deal with the adoption. Your father rushed her to the hospital, Johnny Cash on the tape deck. "I fell in," he sang, "to a burning ring of fire." You were there when the nurse brought the baby by mistake and Linda put her hands over her eyes. "Take it away," she cried. "I don't want to fucking see it!" A local celebrity couple with connections got the baby. "Blond, blue eyes," the doctor told your father in Spanish, smiling. "You sure you don't want it? Those are very, very hard to come by."

Frankie now lives in her boyfriend's trawler at San Juan Marina. His name is Troy, and they've been together for 12 years. She tells everyone they have an "open relationship." You don't know if there's such a thing as a closed one. Your father sits with Troy at the bar, telling stories. "The eye," your father says, "I lost in Nam." Troy asks him where he was stationed. "I," your father sips his drink, "don't like to talk about that."

Frankie keeps feeding you Boone's Farm on the rocks. You finger your Hammer Heads' points inside their case, in your pocket. You can't shoot till the league game ends. You can't be in the league till you're 18: There was a motion to make an exception. The team captains were on your side. Your father convinced the bar owners, all but the Reef and Dunbar's, and they've started letting you play in their weekend tournaments. Warren Z.—bookie, dart salesman, real estate agent, league president—made the case against you. "No exception for Tito," he said. "Then we'd have to let in every underage kid who wants to play." He said it as if there actually were other underage kids who wanted to play. Your father started calling him Weasel, and it's caught on. "Hey, Weasel," people say, "you got this week's lines?" You pull your darts out of the case. Frankie is serving Weasel a vodka tonic. She shoots you a wink. You wink back. Weasel is wearing beige Dockers over his wooden leg. You can't remember which leg it is.

Eenie, meenie, minie, moe: You think this will be funny. You shoot a Hammer Head at his left leg. Before it lands, you shoot another. He screams. He screams again. Everyone looks at you and you can see yourself, reflected off a rusted mirror that has a beer bottle drawn inside it, and you know exactly what everyone is thinking. Who the fuck do you think you are, laughing at jokes you don't get? Who the fuck do you think you are, you little prick?

•

Matilde has removed the dartboard and put a bumper-pool table in the space. Everyone refuses to play bumper pool. Your father hates Matilde more than ever. June Gibbons was killed by a drunk driver in front of Duffy's. The drunk driver was a rich 18-year-old girl with a father in the Senate. She got off scot-free. The San Juan Star staff writers can't let it go. The First Murder, the "Viewpoint" headline says, Is on the House. Your father holds up the paper. "This," he says, "is why Puerto Rico should be a state." Pete Gibbons sits on the corner stool beneath the TV, saying nothing. Your father is helping with the civil suit. In the old dart room the scorekeeping blackboard now says Rules for Bumper Pool at the top. Matilde filled the whole thing out in laborious cursive. It took her an entire afternoon. One night you erased everything but the title. Beneath Rules for Bumper Pool you wrote "Bump. Bump. Bump. Bumpetty Bump. Then bump again." Matilde is still searching for the culprit. She can't find a good bartender from two A.M. till 10. Outside there's a drought and it's the hottest summer anyone remembers. The ceiling fans do lazy laps. Matilde is a sweaty trigger.

Your father's foot slips on the gas and his Bronco wrecks another Mitsubishi at the Burger King drive-through. He signs over another check to some teenager, happy to trade a taillight for a few hundred: no questions asked, no numbers exchanged. The drive-through workers call this "the Bronco lottery." Drawings are at least once a month. Afterward you and your father sit on the caved-in bed, munching Whoppers. "Why," you say, "do these gringos come here? Why Puerto Rico? What do they want?" Your father finishes chewing and swallows.

"Nothing," he says. "And that's why." He says Norm was a big shot at Microsoft until his son OD'd. He says Linda got pregnant by a married man in Texas and couldn't bring herself to abort. He says Pretty Pat's husband left her for a Prettier Pat. He takes another bite. "Who are these people?" you want to know. Your father shrugs his shoulders. "What about Frankie?" you say. "That," your father says, a bite of Whopper tumbling in his mouth, "I don't know." He swallows and sips his Coke. "But there's always something."

In nine months you've won more than $500 in darts tournaments. Your father says Pepito has won more than $10,000, but he competes internationally, he's in a whole different league altogether. The trophies all say your name, the date, the bar and the sponsor, usually a beer brand. You're a better shooter than your father, but you can't beat him one-on-one. Your father says Pepito always kicks his ass. You bring home a new trophy almost every other Sunday. Your mother arranges them by date. By height. By beer sponsor. Domestic and imported. Before she goes to bed she opens and closes all the cupboards, cabinets, closets. "What are you looking for?" you ask. "Nothing," she says. "Go to sleep."

You don't like Captain Liz, girlfriend number four. When your father goes home with her, you ask to stay with Frankie. After her shift you walk to San Juan Marina and she holds your hand. Troy is asleep in the V-berth of the trawler. You sit in the flybridge, drinking Boone's Farm. You start playing with the steering wheel. "Your father," Frankie says, "I thought he might have been someone for a second." You push the depth-finder button on the console. It lights up: nine feet. "Mira!" she says. "I'll be right back." She climbs down the ladder and into the boat. Mira is the only Spanish word she knows. The tone in which she says it sounds like scolding. She returns with a small jewelry box. She pulls out a joint. She lights it. You take a swig from the bottle. "Here," she says. "It's the best shit they've got at Andy's." You take a drag. This is the one thing your father told you not to do.

"I feel," Frankie says, "like I could tell you anything." You look up at the sky. You cough. There are never any stars in San Juan. "Do you think I'm pretty?" Frankie says. "Yes," you say. "I used to be," she says. "Why," you ask, "are you here?" You hand her the joint. She takes a long, slow drag. "I don't think," she says, "you want to know." She gives the joint back to you. The bottom of the sea is nine feet below you, but you're much more than nine feet above it. She tells you she was raped in the Everglades. She tells you Troy tracked down the rapist. She tells you they dumped the body somewhere between Fort Lauderdale and Bimini. You don't say anything. Her eyes blaze, dry, through the smoke. She says she's happy she got it off her chest. Then she asks if you'd like to see it. "What?" you say. "See what?" "Oh," she says, "my chest."

On Christmas Eve you return to Plaza Las Américas. Woolworth's has become Macy's and the fountain beneath the Christmas tree is not wide enough to reflect the entire blue M. "Close your eyes," your father says. "Remember how just yesterday I told you we'd be standing here again today? That was just yesterday. And tomorrow we'll be back again. In front of this tree. This same tree." The year is a cascade of instants you suddenly can't recall. On the way home you look out the car window and try to freeze the moment. A torrent of streetlamps. A billboard for Tele-Once's evening news. Merle Haggard on the stereo, "Going Where the Lonely Go." Your father's hands gripping the wheel. His wrinkled knuckles. You vow to remember it forever.

•

At 13 you become a nationalist. You start reading political philosophy. Your mother arranges the books alphabetically. Bastiat. Berríos. Bolívar. Burke. You buy T-shirts with portraits of patriots and poets on the front. Albizu Campos. Martí. Fidel Castro. Corretjer. You start using the phrase Yankee imperialists. "What have I done," your father says, "to deserve this?" You don't let each other finish sentences. You are both unyielding and blind. "Why," your father says, "can't you be more like Pepito?" "You mean you don't want me to exist?" you say. "Well," he says, "if that's what it takes to get you to stop wearing Che Guevara on your chest, then yes, I don't want you to exist." Then he says, "But don't think for a second that Pepito isn't real."

Your father has moved in with Captain Liz. There are two bedrooms and one is sometimes yours. Your rich grandfather isn't dead yet, and your father is running out of cash. He gives consultations for free drinks. His specialty, once civil rights, becomes DUI law. Captain Liz's husband is in jail. Together they smuggled dope from South America in a 24-foot Pearson, but she was never charged.

The dope paid for the apartment. She wants everyone to know she really is a licensed captain.

You still get all A's in school, but your mother lets you study by yourself. You start dating a girl a year older than you. You skip a few darts tournaments to take her to dances. Movies. Minigolf. Sometimes, on the weekends, you stay with Frankie in the trawler and get high and mess around. Sometimes you don't think anything is real, that there's a camera in every corner of your room, where the ceiling meets the wall, filming your every move. Your mother skips around the house so as not to step on the cracks of the tiles. She no longer cooks pork chops on Fridays: The husband has moved back in with his mama.

Norm calls your father at Captain Liz's and says it's an emergency. You drive with him to the station, Billy Ray Cyrus on the tape deck. Matilde is under arrest for having an illegal video slot machine at Duffy's. She grips the bars of the holding cell. "A cigarette," she says. "I need a cigarette." There are lines running through her face and bags under her eyes. "So," your father says, "you want a cigarette?" He pulls out a pack of Marlboro Lights. "How bad do you want it?" He slides a cigarette out of the pack and holds it up. "What do you want from me?" she says. He clutches the cigarette between his thumb and index finger and dangles it just outside her reach. "I want you," he says, "to get rid of bumper pool."

You've won eight straight games of Called Cricket against your father when Counterfeit Bill, your father's girlfriend's husband, walks in. "Is Matilde here?" he says sneakily, and she's not. He asks your father if he can have a moment. They sit at the bar. Bo Diddley leaks out of the oldies station. "I need some legal advice," Bill says. Your father lights a cigarette. He orders a fresh drink. "I love the fried shrimp here," Bill says. "You ever had it?" Your father shakes his head. "Last night," Bill says, "I asked Matilde if she would give me some of her batter, the kind she uses for her shrimp, so I can make it at home for me and Sherry, and she said yes, to just ask the bartender for it when I left. And then when I left, around three, I asked the bartender for my batter, and the bartender told me to go fuck myself. So I told him to go fuck himself. Then he kicked me out, pushed me out the gates. This was all in front of people, you know. All those guys from the casinos were here. My wife was here. It was fucking humiliating." He looks as if he's just about to cry. "Bill," your father says, "the bartender's new. He probably had no idea what the hell you were talking about. Matilde probably forgot to tell him, that's all." "I don't care," Bill says. "I want to sue. I want you to take my case." Your father looks at you and rolls his eyes. "Sue on what grounds, Bill? Tell me, what's your case?" Bill's hands snake through the air. "I was humiliated," he says. "I want punitive damages. Don't you think I deserve something? I mean, what do you think?" Norm looks at you from behind the bar and shrugs his shoulders. Your father takes a sip of his drink. "I think you batter grin," he says, "and bear it." Norm bursts out laughing. Bill stands up and kicks his stool. He calls your father an ambulance-chasing asshole. A shameless motherfucker. Your father says nothing. You can hear the Bo Diddley lines falling from the ceiling between Bill's curses: Got a tombstone head and a graveyard mind / "Dirty cocksucking spic." / I lived long enough and I ain't scared of dying / "Son of a spic whore." Your father doesn't move, his arms perched on the bar like surrendered weapons. Bill kicks his stool again and it falls apart. Then he leaves, sobbing. Hey, hey—who do you love?

The next day, when you walk into Duffy's, Matilde is pacing back and forth, talking to the cops. There is a pool of blood on the men's room floor. The steel towel rack has been ripped off the wall, and it is bent and bloodstained, jutting out of the trash can. The two A.M. bartender is nowhere to be found. A policeman soaks up a sample of blood. "Counterfeit Bill?" you say. "Maybe," Matilde says. "Norm said he made some scene the other night." She hires someone to clean the mess and calls the San Juan Star to place another ad for a bartender-receptionist. "I," she says, "have just about had it with this shit."

•

Your basketball team makes it to die finals of the McDonald's Tournament. You're down by two with three seconds left. Your father and your girlfriend are there. You introduced them before the game. Somehow the ball ends up in your hands, and you miss at the buzzer. "Pepito," your father says, "would've hit that shot. Then the team would've won." You look away. "Well," you say, "it's a shame he's not real." Later that night you ask him what he thought of your girl. "You're wasting your time," he says. "Pepito already fucked her." On your next date you threaten to leave her if she won't have sex with you. When she bleeds, Pepito dies. You try to forget her name, but it follows you down every hallway.

When you walk into Duffy's, Matilde is singing along to the radio. She is tending bar and gives you and your father drinks on the house. There are no bags under her eyes and no lines running through her face. "What," your father says, "are you so fucking happy about?"

"I sold," she says. "I sold this shithole to the TraveLodge." Your father looks as lost as a child. You look around. On the walls are rusted mirrors with die names of beers written inside them. There is a dartboard whose black numbers have turned white and a pinball machine that tilts if you look at it and always a 10 percent chance of die Temptations or Bo Diddley or Del Shannon singing in the background, and 16 rooms with HBO and stained hair driers screwed into the wall. There are coasters that look like giant hosts, chipped and stacked by the lemon bowl, welcome to paradise, says a sign behind the bar. no bullshit, says another, unattended children, says die last, will be sold. You look at your father. You smile. You're trying to remember how long it's been since you were a child.

Playboy's College Fiction Contest Winner

You're spending December with your father while your mother's on her honeymoon.