I wave at her. Less at her and more at the outline of her, the figure that drags upward toward the ceiling. I lift myself off the stool and gather my footing, walking toward the door like it’s hiding something glorious behind it. I swing it open and step out onto the street. I know almost immediately that it’s gotta be after ten because Oakland’s shut down, all the lights turned off. The only people on the streets are the ones who live there. That’s what it’s gonna be like for us—Marcus and me—pretty soon. No escaping the sidewalk.
The windchill enters my body, slips under my shirt right to my belly button. Sometimes I think about where my belly button might lead to. Like if it goes to the stomach, joins the slosh of cherry red up in there, or if it’s connected to my womb.
The door to the club swings open behind me and Polka Dot is there, his hair loose from its gel in a way that looks more natural on him, like he wasn’t meant to be that tied up.
“Hey.” I’m not even sure he’s talking to me until he says, “Gray shirt,” and I have to look down at what I’m wearing to understand that he means me. I try to smile at him, but my mouth is buzzing and I think it turns up lopsided on my face, which he laughs at, a low laugh, one that never really reaches its climax.
“Yeah?” It’s the only word my lips can form at this point, the only coherent sound.
I don’t remember the last time a white man voluntarily talked to me, let alone followed me out onto the street, but I don’t got enough space in my head or my stomach to question it because the red drink feels like it’s overflowing in me.
He cracks another smile, just like he did in the sweat of the club. “Look, it’s late and I don’t want to have to pretend we aren’t here for the same thing.”
He’s speaking, but the only thing that I can absorb is the way the wind keeps whipping his hair back. I don’t know what he’s referring to and I don’t have enough energy to try to figure it out.
“I know a spot,” he says.
“A spot?” My knees feel increasingly less reliable with the sloshing inside me.
I don’t know if I follow him because it’s cold and I think he might be taking me out of the line of wind or if the past couple days and the drinks have made me somehow want this man, a hunger for some warmth taking over every part of me that might still have had enough of a sense to step back, find a bus or a crowded street. Don’t matter why I do it because the fact is, my feet keep on moving. I guess they’re moving too slow, though, because Polka Dot takes hold of my hand and drags me toward a building.
The building is large and, when I look up, the top of it isn’t even in sight. He leads me straight to the elevator and we get inside. I haven’t been alone with a man other than Marcus since I was fourteen and a boy tried to teach me how to give him a hand job in a bathroom stall at school, but then our chemistry teacher’s shoes appeared in the other stall and he couldn’t get it up. When the elevator lifts us, the liquid does something at the base of my stomach, catapults upward, makes me feel like I swallowed the ocean.
The elevator dings and I’m expecting some office or maybe even this man’s apartment, some place filled to the brim with cash. Instead, we step out and we are outside again. Except, this time, the sky is closer to us and there’s a garden spread out, bordered in cement walls.
“Where?” I can only seem to make a singular word. He doesn’t respond, but pulls me closer to the edge of the wall. The whole garden is deserted, trees branching out, a pond standing still in the center, and I think we might be on the rooftop of this never-ending building.
Close to the edge of the wall now, he pulls me in. When he kisses me and then comes up for air, his silhouette is an outline against the sky. I haven’t been kissed in years and it is slimy, wet in a way that makes me wish he’d wipe his mouth.
He kisses me again and soon he has traded places with me, pushing me up against the cement so I am leaning against the sky, into it. He unbuttons my pants and the wind is suddenly holding me, along with his hands, clawing at my skin. He turns me around, bending me over, and my cheek is pressed to the cement, but if I look out the corner of my eye I can stare down at Oakland spread out in front of me, see a single siren light out there: too far to hear, but the neon flashing cannot be missed. Before I even realize it’s happening, he pushes into me and the only thing I feel is the cherry liquid still filling me up, still drowning me in it. I’m not even participating, just letting the sky soothe me as it happens, and I don’t know how this can be the first time I’ve felt a man’s penis inside me and yet it’s so dull I’m not even sure I’m here.
It doesn’t take long before it’s over and my pants are back up. He puts his belt back on and doesn’t look at me again, just pats his pocket, and I think he’s referring to his wallet.
“I’ve only got a couple hundred on me.” A couple hundred. Bucks. This man trying to pay me. His fingers press a roll of money into the center of my palm and even though some part of me knows I probably shouldn’t, I take it, close my fist, every inch of me shivering, teeth chattering, and he doesn’t say anything else, but he reaches up and removes a scarf from his neck, placing it around mine instead. He doesn’t even say goodbye, at least I don’t hear it, before he has returned to the elevator and disappeared.
I need to piss. The ocean all swelled up inside me.
I stumble toward the pond, slipping out of my shoes and pulling my pants off, then wading in. I let it all out, my body streaming like all plugs been lifted with those bills, that red liquid coming out yellow into the pond and I don’t know how bodies can consume one thing and produce another, but I guess tonight gifts us every kind of anomaly. I pull up my pants, slip my shoes back on, and make my way to the edge of the roof, looking out over the city to the way the fog parts just enough for me to see the bridge in the distance, all the hidden things showing themselves, and when I inhale, I don’t smell piss or cigarette smoke or weed. I just smell remnants of the red drink still lingering on my breath.
I met Camila the same night I met Polka Dot, when I was wandering home, trying to figure out how to get back to East Oakland when the buses weren’t running no more. Marcus and Alé weren’t answering their phones and I was freezing, lips cracking. I didn’t know what I was doing, stumbling toward the sound of the freeway.
A car pulled over in front of me, black and shiny, and this woman climbed out from the backseat, removed her coat, leaned back into the car to give it to somebody I couldn’t see, and shut the door before the car pulled away. Her extensions were bright pink and matched her outfit, the dress matte and tight. The way she walked made me think of the way you walk when the wind is pushing against you: determined, swaying.
I stood there in my gray shirt and that scarf still hanging from my neck, trying to pretend I wasn’t staring, but Camila saw everything through those lashes, saw everything bordered in that kind of curiosity that crawls out the eyes and sucks you in. She strutted up to me, and said, “What you looking at?” I probably would have started punching or running if anybody else had said this to me, but the way she spoke wasn’t enticing me to fight; it was like she thought it was funny, like I was standing in a crowd where I didn’t speak the language and she was the first one to see my tongue.
“Nothing.”
“You a baby ho, huh?” Camila’s lips curled, revealing clear braces that I didn’t catch before she was this close. “Listen, you ain’t gon’ make much just wandering the streets like this. Escorting where the real money at. I got me a pimp too, and I bet he’d take you on if I asked. Point is, nobody gonna take you serious out here like this and, I’m tellin’ you right now, nobody gonna do shit if you get hurt. You hear?”