f (foundling) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-04-07 04:45:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, cristián martin-argüelles |
Narrative: Cris M
Who: Cris Martin-Argüelles
What: narrative
Where: Marvel, his place
When: hours after this
Warnings/Rating: violence
Maybe it was the guy's body language, kinda hunched over, like he was lurking, trying not to be seen, like maybe he could be better kept by the shadows of late evening if he lost a couplea inches. Maybe it was that and the camera he had slung around his neck, a thing too big to be a tourist's, like he was some kinda professional photographer—a professional photographer who was standing too close to the gate that led up to Cris' door, couched in on himself in a way that was familiar. He listed from foot to foot, a guy with nervousness in him like a nest of bees, and Cris could read that from halfway down the block, where he'd stopped with sneakers gumming on crumbling cement, muscles falling quiet as his jog slowed to a standstill, his breath bright on the air. Déjalo ir. He clung to too much. He needed to let it go. Pero él lo conocía. The familiarity… it put pictures in his brain of the same guy, like dizzy-colored polaroids: thick glasses, white, close-shorn brown hair, generic, middle-aged, average height—the same guy he knew he saw at Teresita's school sometimes when the bell rang. The guy who would be on the flat green of the playground in the nearby park when the snow receded like gums from the teeth of the playsets and los niños came out in droves, wild packs, some with parents, most without, given the neighborhood's demographics. And the guy, always with his big, chunky camera, thing up to his glasses, shutter clicking, and Cris watching him from the bench, or from behind the wheel of his car as he picked up Teresa, or with his hands on the chains of her swing as she laughed in front of him, dark hair streaming, glinting, he imagined, on the digital screen of that camera. Maybe it was something else, not the shuffling, not the curl of shoulders under corduroy. But whatever it was, it didn't much matter. Cris saw the camera and he had his teeth on his bottom lip as he walked the rest of the leg to his house, fingers squeezed into the flesh of his palms. Déjalo ir. He was gonna let it go. The guy coulda just been in the neighborhood. He coulda been a parent, even though Cris never did see any kid come up to him ever at school or the park. But, whatever, he was gonna let it go. He was gonna go inside, lock the door, take a shower, and probably try to get some more sleep, since the couplea hours he got before his run had been full of tossing on the sofa. He was gonna keep his tablet somewhere far outta his reach, maybe upstairs in his room, so he wouldn't let himself write to anyone while he was still on edge, his head still bruised and scabbed from the day before with Sam, no worse for wear than his pulverized feelings.—Necesitaba desahogarse. He was still tense, but he'd done the gym thing, he'd slept, he'd let Lou know what was going on, and he was trying to keep it together. Five o'clock shadow rough on his jaw, hair loose and black, and in nothing more than sweatpants and a pullover, like he couldn't be bothered with his actual running gear, Cris was just trying his damndest to keep everything together until he had to go pick up Teresa for el Domingo de Ramos. Keep it together, let it go. It weighed on him—everything that had happened. It always did. The rift in his mind where Sofia slipped out, to his tongue, and to the girl on the curb, and where Sam had been shoved to the same precipice with the same intent, and he'd dragged her back, and she was only sorry she'd done it with him there. He knew his reaction had been extreme, selfish, and he needed to apologize. He needed to tell her, he got it—why she wanted to do it, he got it wasn't about him, he was bad at this, all of it, and that he would listen. And he needed to do just that, to listen. Listen, keep it together, déjalo ir. Just get inside. Everything was fine. "Tu hija—" Unnatural Spanish, and that was all it took. Two words. Pero no pudo dejarlo ir. The guy knew about his kid. The guy, skulking by his house, knew about his kid. "My daughter, chomo?" Cris was on the guy in half a second, hand up to push at the lens of the camera raised up against him like the muzzle of a gun, buffeting him back. "What d'you know about my daughter? Huh? You followin' me? What do you know about my daughter? Who are you?" A struggle ensued. The guy tried to take a picture and all that got him was his own camera slamming back against the plastic lenses of his glasses, shoved, cracking against white, veined eyelid, until Cris could get it from him and break it on the starched cement between them. The gringo threw a wild, blind punch that broke skin above Cris' right eyebrow, stunning him with a burst of stars, like gas on a wildfire. What the fuck?—Enraged, he grabbed the guy by the corduroy collar, holding him up, as he slammed his fist into that petulant face again and again and again, keeping him within reach even when the guy's knees gave and he whimpered and he said, please, please stop, please. "You come to my HOUSE?" Cris didn't know what he was yelling, only that he was. People started to gather. He heard steps, gasps, but none of it felt real. The only thing there was was the bloody split of skin beneath his battered knuckles where they bounced off of the guy's cheekbone, crushing into his teeth beneath. There was the guy begging. There was ragged breath and there was Cris screaming at the man he was beating to a pulp. It all came out, a deluge. "YOU ASK ABOUT MY KID?" He didn't hear the sirens. He didn't even hear the voices telling him to stop. It was a hand to his shoulder that sprung him. Sir, step back! By then, the two men were on the ground, Cris on top of the guy, retreating at the touch, bruised fingers finding the shine of his badge on his hip to tell them, "I'm on the job! I'm on the job!" Everything was roaring, rushing, loud in his ears, and he fought against the cold, drowning clasp of handcuffs, and he felt like he couldn't breathe again. His stomach hurt, and he had to be practically forced into the squad car bumped up against the bloodied curb in front of his house where the photographer was out cold as paramedics fixed his head in a brace and passed a flashlight in front of his eyes, testing pupils. He pushed against the window that closed him in, shouldering the door, like maybe he could get out, his veins full of boiling blood and rage. The squad car broke away from the crowd, lights on, and Cris kicked the grate that separated him from the officers in the front. Pero no pudo dejarlo ir. |