Olga Dies Dreaming(112)
But Olga was too busy beaming at him to engage in a philosophical debate about capitalism. She felt something that she remembered was desire begin to tingle in her.
“Matteo Jones, why didn’t you tell me that you were a superhero?”
“Because of the money?” he asked. “I’m happy to—”
“No! Not the money. Are you kidding?” she asked genuinely. “Because you’re saving me—all of us—from being washed away. You’ve put down little anchors, even if it’s just a few. Even if we’re just little dinghies floating in this big sea. I didn’t think I could love you more.”
“Oh yeah?” Matteo asked with a smile.
“Or, frankly, find you hotter.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Have you ever fucked in the Christmas room?”
“Girl,” he said as he crawled closer, “what we’re doing is making love.”
SEPTEMBER 23, 2025
SOL LIBRE
Olga had just walked out of the bodega and onto Fourth Avenue when she heard her phone ring. She’d lingered, drinking her coffee and gossiping with Sammy for longer than she intended and was now running late, so when she saw that it was her brother, she hit ignore.
She was genuinely delighted when he had met Marcus, truly happy when they fell in love, and ecstatic when they got engaged, but if she had to talk to him one more time about his fucking wedding plans, she was going to shoot herself. She was happy to put on her old hat and lend a hand, but he was worse than the worst of her brides, or grooms for that matter, fixating all of his attention—and calls—on micromanaging the music selections. He and Marcus had picked a song with “meaning” for everything: the usuals, like walking down the aisle and first dance, but also the ridiculous, such as pairing songs with food courses like one would do with a wine. Each time Prieto would send another request to the DJ, he would call his sister so that she could assure him that yes, that was a good selection and yes, she would stay on top of the DJ. Which she had zero intention of doing because at the end of the day, he’d be having too good a time to remember what song was playing in the background when he was served his braised short ribs.
Milagros had a cold and the pre-K teacher told Mabel she had to keep her home, but since the gallery was usually pretty quiet on weekdays and on Mabel’s way to work, Olga offered to watch her so Mabel wouldn’t have to miss a day of work.
“If only Julio wasn’t a piece of shit,” Mabel lamented, “then I wouldn’t have to bother you.”
It wasn’t a bother, and frankly, Olga was happier to babysit than to have Mabel involve Julio too much in Milagros’s day-to-day life. They weren’t married for more than three years before Mabel realized he was spending money faster than she could make it, but never managed to keep a job for long enough to actually bring anything in. Then Mabel got pregnant, right as the coronavirus pandemic began. Stuck in a house with Julio for nearly a year, she quickly discovered that she didn’t have the energy for two babies and, just before Milagros was born, she moved out of the apartment in Bay Shore and back to Fifty-third Street. Christian had, as Olga suspected, missed Manhattan living and, having gotten on his feet, used this opportunity to find a place uptown in one of Matteo’s newer buildings. Olga had encouraged him to start investing in other vanishing neighborhoods and he’d found a music store and a Chino-Latino restaurant that he wanted to be sure “we can take our kid to if we want.”
He had said that when they were still trying, of course. Before Olga decided that the process—the nightly injections in alternating ass cheeks, the daily “monitoring” visits requiring early morning schleps uptown, the constant false hope—was too exhausting. She felt, she told her therapist, that she had only recently become content with her life and herself and didn’t want to become fixated on chasing another imagined love. For Matteo’s part, he assured her, he was relieved. Not that he didn’t love kids, but he was happy not to have to share her with a baby. To Olga, that felt very honest, and put her mind at ease knowing that she hadn’t disappointed him. Slowly, they had been getting rid of furniture, replaced all the old TVs with one flat-screen (Olga liked to watch the news in bed), and had recently sold his collection of Vibe magazines to a twenty-four-year-old cryptocurrency miner who was obsessed with golden-era hip-hop. Olga decided that she didn’t mind if the thing he still wanted to hoard was her time.
The gallery was in Gowanus, in a corner building of Matteo’s that used to house a tire shop but was vacated when the owner died. Olga had been inspired by Matteo’s Brooklyn salvation project. She remembered her earliest days in Fort Greene, filled with these fabulous Black and Latino artists, and wondered where they had gone. Then she remembered why she herself had abandoned her art and had the idea to start a nonprofit gallery. The proceeds from each sale split between the artist and a foundation that helped artists of color with emergency expenses. She had gotten the gallery a fair amount of publicity and, on the weekends and at their annual benefit, many of her former clients and other New Brooklyn residents came. Olga enjoyed using her old skills to steer them towards the pricier works. She had named it Comunidad.
As she approached the gallery now, she saw that her brother was once again calling.