Chapter 10 - First Time

The key was in his jacket pocket before he found her.

That was the part he would think about later. The motel came first, cash and no ID across the counter at the desk, a twenty for the deposit on the remote, Room 9 because it faced the parking lot instead of the expressway and the difference in decibels was small but real. He stood ten seconds in the doorway with the lamp on and the window unit running. His eyes went over the bed and the ceiling's water stain, tracking the curtain gap letting in the sodium-orange off the Bruckner overhead. Exits: one door, one window, both functional. Then he went back to the club. He found Cami in the corridor after her last set, her bag on her shoulder and the Hurston paperback visible at the top.

"I have something to show you."

She looked at him with none of her usual scanning, free of any room-reading or floor-calibration. It was the look she used when she had already decided.

The key came up out of his pocket.

Her hand took it from his and held it for a second. "Okay."

That was how they got here.

Room 9. The window unit hummed, and she went straight to it and turned it off. "That sound," she said, not asking. He moved to the wall heater, a coil unit bolted under the window, and turned the dial. The heat took a minute to arrive, not yet warm. Inside, the room smelled of industrial cleaning product over the faint mineral of concrete walls. The lamp threw its cone of yellow light over the bed, leaving the corners dark.

Her bag went on the nightstand. She took out her hair, the pins dropping onto the nightstand surface one by one. Her curls fell loose, crushed on one side from the set and still holding the heat of the club. The bed took her weight at the edge, and she looked up at him. He had not moved from near the door. The key sat in his jacket pocket now.

"Come here," she said.

He went.

The springs announced weight and position, but they ignored it. The mattress shifted under him as he sat, and she was already turning toward him, one knee drawn up on the bed, her hand coming up to his face. She did it specifically. Her thumb went along his jaw, finding the line of it, taking the shape.

Keeping his eyes on her was the harder part. He had stood inside Ricky's office without flinching, but this was harder.

"Estás nervioso." Not a question.

"No."

The corner of her mouth moved. "Teo."

"A little."

"Yo también." Her hand dropped from his jaw to his shoulder. "Mira. That's not bad. That's just what this is."

He kissed her.

The pressure she gave back matched his and then shifted it. Her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck and pulled him in, and the kiss stopped being exploratory. It was a decision. His hands, which had been doing nothing useful, found her waist, the fabric of her dress warm from the set. Her exhale went into the kiss, and something in his chest loosened without his permission.

They fell into it.

Every movement was awkward, but she did not need it to be smooth. The dress had a zipper he found by feel and managed wrong twice before she reached back and did it herself, matter-of-factly, rolling her shoulders so the fabric slid down. Underneath was warm skin and her, and his forehead went against her shoulder.

"Hey."

"Yeah."

"You good?"

"Yeah. I'm good."

"Estás segura?" His word in her mouth, the gender flipped back.

His breath went out. "Yeah, Cami. Yeah."

"Bien." Her hands were in his hair. "Then stop thinking and come here."

He came.

Her skin was warm and then warmer. The room narrowed to the hollow of her hip and the curve of her waist, her back arching as she guided him. His hands were learning her and she was letting them learn. A sound came low in her throat when his mouth found her collarbone, and it landed in his chest before it reached his ears.

A sound in Spanish from her, short of his name. It was speech bypassing language, and his hands answered it.

Outside, a truck moved over the Bruckner expansion joint with a deep, echoing thud. Inside, the wall heater built the room back to warm. The heat and noise stayed outside, far from where they lay. Her hip was under his hand. Her weight was against him. She moved without the stage in it, no angle for the room, no distance.

"Mira." Both her hands came up to cup his face and make him look at her. The same look she had given him in the Honda the first night: straight, nothing managed. "Aquí. Stay here."

He stayed.

The lamp's cone did not reach the far corner. A gap in the curtain let in the Bruckner's sodium-orange in a bar across the floor, touching nothing else. The springs took each position change, but neither of them stopped long enough to care. He found what she needed by her direction and by his own attention, and she was specific about it. Her hands guided him. Her body said unambiguous things. She left the club's performance outside.

She said his name. In Spanish, quiet, in the register she kept for when they were the only two people in any room.

His forehead went against hers, their breaths matching.

"Cami." Her name when he did not need to say it.

"Aquí. I'm right here, papi."

The part of his mind running no matter what his body did tracked the gap. The collection run, Machete's voice on the money logic, and the man in apartment 3B were his week. They lived in his hands along with what they did now, the body the same body.

She arched against him, her hands pressing into his back, pulling him in, and then she came apart. Her breath went sharp. Her body contracted around him. The sound she made was not his name, but he took it as his. His face went into her hair. She smelled like the club's heat and, underneath, something hers alone.

Several seconds passed before either of them moved after he let go.

"Teo." Her hand flat on his chest, steady, finding his heartbeat.

"Yeah." His own voice came out low, unfamiliar to himself.

"Ven aquí."

He already was.

The wall heater had done its work. The sheets had been cold earlier and now were not. She lay on her side facing him, her head resting half on his shoulder, her arm across his chest. She had put it there without asking. His arm found the angle keeping her close.

The Bruckner did not stop. Traffic ran constantly on the Bruckner, never stopping at this hour. Trucks and private cars did the overnight run, the expansion joint groaning under each heavy load. The sound was different from the expressway out of the Honda's parking lot, more present here, the room's forty feet of concrete wall taking all of it and handling it without effort.

Sleep had not arrived yet for her. Her breathing was too deliberate.

"I brought food."

She lifted her head slightly. "What?"

"Rice and chicken. From the window on Willis Avenue. It's in the bag." The bag sat near the door, far enough from the bed that neither of them had thought about it for the last hour and a half. "It's probably cold."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. The real one, from her shoulders, which arrived in his chest before it reached his ears, the small motion of the laugh moving through her arm across his chest before her face showed it.

"Rice and chicken."

"You said you hadn't eaten since six."

"That was the corridor."

"I know when you said it."

She lifted herself up onto one elbow and looked at him in the lamp's indirect reach. Her curls were loose and compressed on one side from the pillow. He had seen this look on her once or twice before, late in a conversation she had not planned to be in.

"Teo."

"It's cold. I'm just saying."

"We should get it." Said without moving.

"Yeah."

They both stayed still. The bag was near the door, and the room was warm. Outside, a truck shifted gears on the service road, laboring through the downshift, and was gone.

"You ever stay somewhere like this before?"

"No."

"Me neither." Her head went back down, properly on his shoulder this time. Her breath came against his collarbone. The weight of her head was more than he had expected.

"The ceiling has a water stain."

"I know. I saw it when we came in."

"Top right corner. Looks like a state. Maybe Colorado."

Her eyes went to the ceiling. "Florida. Look at the part sticking down."

He looked. "Hm."

"Florida," she said again, with some satisfaction. Her hand moved against his chest, flat and still. "What do you do when you can't sleep?"

"Count things. Or look at what's in front of me."

"And right now?"

The ceiling's water stain was Florida, and outside, the expressway ran. The lamp's cone ended at the mattress's edge. A bar of sodium-orange lay on the floor from the curtain gap. His eyes touched each thing and found no threat in any of it.

"This."

A small sound came from her, not a word. After a while her breathing changed, the deliberateness going out of it, her breathing becoming longer and less managed. He waited until he was sure. Then his eyes went back to the ceiling and sleep did not come.

The water stain pulled his attention back.

His attention moved idly when nothing required it. It looked like Florida, or a peninsula taken at the right angle—an old record of where water had been once.

His eyes left the stain.

Cami's breathing was slow and regular. The Honda had been a parking lot, and this was a room with a locked door. In the Honda his hands had stayed where they were. Tonight his hands had not stayed where they were, free of regret, and it kept him awake.

A lot of things in his life had been arranged by staying careful. By watching the room. By watching his hands. By watching the exits. He had been careful about Cami too, careful enough to keep the Honda between them for forty minutes on three separate nights, without anything changing.

His hands had been on the wheel, then in his lap, and now lay here.

He was not going to be able to be careful about this.

In Ricky's parking lot he had sat under the sign with its dimmer R and tried to make the pieces hold still. What the job cost and what it gave back. Where the money went. Cami and the work belonged in separate compartments. Careful was the answer because the risk was known.

The risk was known better now and it was not going to change anything.

She moved slightly in her sleep. Her arm tightened across his chest without waking her, a reflex, and then relaxed. His hand went over her hand, flat, resting there.

The expressway ran outside. The bedside lamp was turned down to its lowest, still enough to see by. A gap in the curtain let in the streetlights, and her head lay heavy on his shoulder.

His eyes went to the ceiling.

The food was cold in the bag by the door. They would eat it before they left. She would eat with the focus of a person who had not eaten since six, and she would look up with rice on her fork and say, flat, "Stop," and he would stop. The whole of it sat in front of him before it happened. That was new.

He knew her well enough.

The sentence ran twice in his head, hitting differently the second time. Her schedule at the club, the days she worked and the days off, the first set lighting her up, the third set making her economical. The precise order of her tells when she was tired: a small adjustment of her weight, a slight slowing of her speech, the patience she manufactured for whatever was in front of her. Coffee black, but not after nine. The laugh from her shoulders first and her face second; the short laugh was the real one. Kensington, not Philly when she meant Kensington. Sunday at nine on a number she did not list in conversation, Abuela Luz on the other end. The Hurston novel twice, which was her standard for a book worth carrying.

His eyes went to the ceiling.

That was the thing. Machete he knew, but Machete belonged to the work. Fernando he knew, but Fernando belonged to home and the bottle and the couch. What he knew about Cami was something else. The something else had no use except this. Lying here at three in the morning with the Bruckner outside and her arm across his chest, the math began and ended with this.

He was not going to be able to be careful about her.

Careful had been the word. The thing he had meant: do not let the warmth in the Honda become warmth in a room with a locked door. A room with a locked door was a different register.

The room with the locked door was the one he was in.

The breath went out through his nose, slow, so as not to wake her. Her hand lay under his. The ceiling's water stain was Florida, and outside, the expressway ran. The feeling in him had no name. Something braced for months had stopped bracing. It had stopped.

A long time went by with the ceiling above him.

Sleep did not come.