When Tito Loved Clara by Jon Michaud Read Free Book Online Page B

just so you know. I still walk with a limp from it.”
    â€œGlad you're not holding it against me,” she said.
    With her papers gathered and returned to their binder, they headed south along Broadway. “So, were you at the Word Club this afternoon?” he asked.
    â€œMaybe,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you guys do in that club?”
    â€œYou mean after we're finished with the sex toys?”
    He blushed. “Yeah, when you put the dildos away.”
    She drew an invisible zipper across her lips. “I took a blood oath. They'll kill me if I tell you. Then they'll kill you, too.”
    â€œThanks for looking out for me,” he said. They walked along for a moment without saying anything. He'd daydreamed about talking to her many times, and now here he was—talking to her.
    â€œSo, where you going to college?” he asked. There was no question of
if.
    â€œCornell,” she said.
    The name meant nothing to him. “What? Not Yale?” he asked, pronouncing it with a Spanish accent:
Jail.
    â€œI no smart enough for Jail,” she said, copying his accent. “Besides, Jail no giving me no moneys.”
    â€œWhat about the other
muchachas
?” he asked.
    â€œOh, jes,” she said. “They going to some good schools: Pre enstone, Wasser, Breen Marr, En Why Joo.
¿Y tu, Señor?
”
    He shook his head and dropped the accent. “I've got a job lined up.”
    â€œA
legal
job?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œThat's good,” she said. “Better than most of the fools around here.” And he was grateful that she spared him the same lecture he'd just gotten from the teacher. Tito liked to read—comic books, thrillers, pornography—but the thought of studying, of taking tests and answering questions in a classroom for four more years, made him queasy. Clara's proficiency at academics now rendered her all the more remarkable to him. It was the same admiration he felt for acrobats and chess masters, people who excelled at things he had no interest in.
    Crossing the Broadway Bridge, they discussed the best way toget to her house. The feud between their fathers was dormant but still acknowledged in the neighborhood, and it would be best for both of them if they were not seen together. Tito was cheered by the underlying assumption that they would walk all the way together, that she wasn't going to ditch him. Any lingering animosity seemed to have been forgotten. He said he didn't want to go down Seaman in case his father was sweeping in front of the building. Clara didn't want to walk on Broadway, in case one of
her
father's cronies was eating in El Malecon. In the end, they went up through Park Terrace and Isham Park, hurrying across Seaman well south of his father's building and walking through the forested part of Inwood Hill Park to a path that led down and out of the trees at Payson Street.
    â€œYou better stay here where my mother won't see you,” she said when they were walking down the path, the trees thinning as they neared the street. “She's already going to kill me for being late.”
    â€œWait,” he said. “Maybe you want to come out with me on Saturday?”
    â€œI can't. I work in my father's store.”
    â€œWhat about Sunday?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œOh,” he said, downcast.
    She smiled. “But you can walk me home next Friday,” she said.
    â€œFriday?”
    â€œYes. And one more thing. You can't tell anyone about me going to Cornell.”
    â€œIt's a secret?”
    â€œYes. Everyone thinks I'm going to Hunter. Even the parents.”
    â€œI won't say anything,” he promised, enjoying the privilege of her secret.
    â€œThank you,” she said, and turned away to walk down the path and out of the park.
    The Lugos owned one of the single-family homes that werescattered among the crumbling Art Deco apartment buildings of Inwood. It was a three-story brick wreck with boards in