“Light and slightly bitter?” He was suddenly up close behind her, his erection brushing the back of her robe. He reached around her for the mug. “Don’t you worry about me; I can fix my own coffee. Go do your thing. Just going to drink my java and charge up my phone and I’ll be on my way. You’re not the only one with shit to do.”
This last part he said playfully and pinched her cheek for good measure. She stared at him. Who was this naked hoarder?
* * *
OLGA COULD FEEL him looking at her things while she showered. Her color-sorted bookcase filled with tomes that had whispered to her soul. She imagined him staring at art on her walls: the Barron Claiborne print of Biggie Smalls, the framed Puerto Rican flag she paid too much for on eBay despite her doubts about its authentic role in the failed ’50 revolution, a framed Beats, Rhymes and Life album cover. She felt a shiver down her back at the thought of him gazing at the photos on her desk. Her at her college graduation, looking fraught with anticipation. The portrait of her grandmother she had taken back in high school. Her brother getting sworn into Congress; how she beamed with pride. The black-and-white shot of her parents on the subway, the one that was burned indelibly into her eyeballs, of them leaning on each other, exhausted after a day of protesting. The signs that had rested on their laps are cropped out of the shot, but she didn’t need to see them to know what they said. Viva Puerto Rico Libre and Tengo Puerto Rico en mi Corazón. Her mother, beautiful and young, her face, as always, makeup free, a scarf stylishly wrapped around her head. Her father with his smooth brown skin and mustached face, his beret and army jacket covered in protest buttons. Her heart raced imagining Matteo staring at these photos, his mind forming questions that his mouth would soon bring into the air. She could not imagine discussing her parents with this stranger, especially not this morning.
Though still covered in soap and mid-leg-shave, she shut the water off. She put her robe on as she ran from the shower, leaving a trail of water behind her. “You need to get out of here!” she shouted as she entered the living area. “You can’t be touching my things.”
Matteo was not, as she had imagined, thumbing through her books or staring at her photos. He was fully dressed, overstuffed knapsack already on his back, standing at the sink rinsing the two coffee mugs. He shut off the water and dried his hands with the dish towel.
“Whatever’s clever, girl. Wash your own dishes!”
He walked past her dripping-wet self and patted the arm of her damp robe.
“Ciao,” he called to her as he walked out the door.
THE PRICE OF MANGOS
Prieto Acevedo woke up before dawn resolving to have a good day. He ran a few laps around Sunset Park, got his daughter Lourdes up, fed, and ready for the ridiculously bougie Art & Talent Day Camp his sister had paid for, and then, despite the heat, donned his suit jacket. This morning’s agenda included what he considered the best part of his job: greeting his constituents on their way to work.
When he first ran for public office—City Council nearly seventeen years ago—he did this every single morning from the day he announced until the election, working all the N and R stations along Fourth Avenue within his district. The party leaders would tease him: “Acevedo, you realize you’re a Democrat in Brooklyn running for an uncontested seat, right? Just keep breathing till election day and you’ll win.” But Prieto didn’t want to just win. He wanted people to feel good about voting for him. These were his neighbors, after all. People whom, if he didn’t know personally, he’d seen around the neighborhood his whole life. His whole friggin’ life. People his grandma used to know, who would come to their house so she could do alterations on their party dresses. He wanted them to know that he wasn’t just a guy collecting a paycheck; he was one of them. They could come to him with their problems. He wore the suit not because he wanted to look like a politician, but because he wanted them to see that he took them seriously.
Of course, running for office and being in office were very different things. After he got elected to City Council, he tried to work the stations once a month. Once he got elected to Congress （again uncontested, the seat virtually grandfathered to him by a mentor） his chances to do these meet-and-greets were even fewer and farther between. The stress of going back and forth to D.C., of maintaining two households. To say nothing of the sheer bullshit and internal politics of the job, of donors, of people who weren’t donors but tried, with great pressure, to wield influence. There were days when he felt so jaded and down. Pushed into a corner so tight he could hardly breathe. But today was not going to be one of those days. No, the days when he got to do this, to shake hands and hear about people’s lives and needs, these were the days when he remembered why he got into this game in the first place.