Olga Dies Dreaming(22)
“So, that said…” Matteo took another sip of his drink. “I have to ask. How did your parents feel about your … anthropological studies of the white elite?”
She felt her cheeks redden with anxiety at the direction this conversation was taking. As if he knew what she was thinking, Matteo continued.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going through your drawers or anything.” He put his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. “All I did was look at the stuff that was out in the open. You can’t be mad at a brother for being observant. Well, maybe you could be, but generally, it’s not socially acceptable grounds for anger.”
She exhaled and took another sip of her drink.
“Okay. Fine. Hit me. Ask what you really want to ask.”
“Well, I guess I did. But I can get more specific. It appears, based on that photo you keep out on top of your desk, that your parents were members of the Young Lords Party—one of, if not the singular, large-scale paramilitary pro-socialist Puerto Rican political protest organizations in American history. The Puerto Rican equivalent of Black Panthers. They were dedicated to toppling a capitalist, racist society, bringing social and environmental justice to inner-city minorities, and, of course, liberating Puerto Rico. And now, you, their daughter, seem to have found a way to make a living—a living that, despite the shoddy construction of your apartment building, seems pretty lucrative, if I may be so observant, but, if I may further observe, is a living reliant upon embracing the very people and values that your parents were trying to topple less than a generation before. So, my question is, how do your parents feel about that?”
A moment of thick silence passed between them. Olga stared at Matteo, her face blank. La Lupe was coming from the jukebox, and in the distance the sound of a motorcycle crew out for a summer night ride. Olga slapped the bar top and hopped off her barstool.
“You know what, fuck you.” Her hard-suppressed South Brooklyn accent jumped off her tongue as her chest and neck grew hot with anger. “Fuck. You. I really don’t know who the fuck you think you are, judging me, or what kind of fucking wack idea of a date you have in your head that you text a bitch nonstop for a week trying to get together, drag me out to bumblefuck Williamsburg just to take up my time by insulting me and how I make my fucking—”
Matteo grabbed her waist with one arm and, with his other hand, took hold of her hand, which seconds before had been shaking in his face, and kissed her. Intellectually, Olga knew that this was a cheap ploy to calm her righteous anger, but physically, she felt a surge that made the walls of her vagina contract, sending a charge up her spine, relaxing her shoulders, loosening her neck until her head dipped back in full surrender. Her intellectual resistance melting in recognition that this was why she had shown up to bumblefuck in the first place.
“Listen,” Matteo said, when they finally broke apart. He took hold of her hands in his and caressed them as he looked into her eyes. “I’m going to ask you to try and suspend disbelief for a moment and hear me out here: I’m not trying to diss you. I’m really not. My time at college was wasted. I did not learn the ways of the people of New England. I have no tact. I’m just genuinely curious about you. It’s not every day I get to meet a smart, sexy Brooklyn girl. That’s why I’ve been blowing up your phone and trying to drag you out to dive bars since we met. I just want to get to know you. I’m not good with small talk. I ask bad questions. I’m a bit of an asshole. And who the fuck would I ever be to judge you and the values of your profession? I’m a native Brooklynite earning my living as a fucking Realtor in gentrified Brooklyn. So, please, sit and let’s just get to know each other a little bit, okay?”
Olga looked at him and sat back down. She could hear kids outside squealing in play and wondered if it was possible that somewhere in the borough of Kings adults still opened fire hydrants for children to dance in on hot summer days.
“Let’s change the topic,” he said. “Why don’t you ask me a question? Anything you want to know.”
She looked around for a second and back at him, trying to glean something she couldn’t articulate. She felt a bit out of her element.
“Yeah,” she finally said. “You play dominos, you know the salsa classics, and you certainly seem to be a regular here. But, I don’t think you’re actually even Puerto Rican. Am I right?”
Matteo put his hands on his heart, his face grimaced.
“Ah! You’ve called me out! You really do know how to poke a man where it hurts. I didn’t pass the smell test. Damn. What gave me away?”
“Honestly? You know too much of our history. Dead giveaway. This begets another question, though. We’re a wonderful people and all, but why do you want to be one of us so bad in the first place?”
“That’s a longer answer that requires more rum and some better music, but let’s get ourselves sorted and then I’m more than happy to tell you.”
They spent the next forty-five minutes taking turns picking songs that the other simply “had to hear” and nursing another glass of rum, telling stories of Old Brooklyn, discovering common ground they had shared while never quite crossing paths: the Kids days of Washington Square Park, hanging out at Fat Beats, Sundays at the Tunnel. People that they inevitably knew in common.
Eventually, Matteo told her the story of his Jewish mother and Black father and their divorce, after which his father faded into his native Los Angeles, leaving his biracial son with his white mother in South Slope, Brooklyn. When he would play in the street with the other kids on the block, people always assumed that little Matteo, with his lightly freckled café-con-leche skin and tight head of curls, belonged to the Puerto Rican family who lived next door, and after a while, Matteo kind of felt the same way. He would be at all their family gatherings, sometimes dragging his mother, sometimes alone. He learned to dance, he learned to play dominos, he even learned how to cook.