ERICA #2
“Besides,” I go on, because apparently I’ve decided honesty is the theme of the day. “They’d rather be at a bar doing tequila shots off each other’s forearms. I want games. I want carnival food that I’ll regret eating. I want…”
I stop myself half a second too late.
“You want?” He’s not letting that go. Of course he’s not.
I want you. Obviously I want you. I have wanted you since you caught my wrist in May like it was nothing, like lightning speed reflexes is just a skill you keep in your back pocket, and I have been doing an outstanding job of not saying that out loud, so let’s keep that streak alive.
“I want to ride the Zipper until I throw up,” I say instead. “Is that so wrong?”
“Devastatingly specific answer.”
"I can be overly graphic sometimes."
We do the Zipper. We do the ring toss, which he wins on his second try and hands the stuffed eagle to a kid nearby like it’s second-nature, and that does something unfair to my heart rate.
At the strongman game, a carnival worker with forearms like ham hocks makes the mistake of egging Jeremiah on, and within four swings a small crowd has gathered to watch a professional hockey player demolish a rigged high striker.
The bell doesn’t just ring. It detaches.
It sails off into the dusk in a slow, tragic arc, and the carnival worker stares after it the way you’d stare at a piece of your own soul leaving.
Jeremiah wins a second stuffed eagle, roughly the size of a golden retriever, and gives it to me.
“Had I known it was your birthday, I’d have something better for you.”
But I squeeze the plushie, pushing down tears, because nobody has ever done something like that for me before.
Not even my dad (who is a good dad despite being a criminal), because my childhood was spent at poker games and small grifts, and the only time we’d ever go to a carnival was for the easy pickings.
“I love it,” I say, and I mean it.
At one point in the day, he does not seem to register that four separate beautiful young women have already recognized him and are filming from behind a funnel cake stand. I notice it like I’m on recon and can’t help it. Old habits don’t take a holiday just because it’s my birthday.
“You’re famous,” I say, nodding at our small, unofficial paparazzi corps.
“Occupational hazard.” He presses his hand at the small of my back and guides me somewhere away from his adoring fans. “You’re surprisingly unbothered by it.”
“I have a good poker face,” I reply, which is the truth, but he laughs like he thinks I’m the cutest thing in the world. I could get used to this.
We keep walking when a kid barrels out of the crowd like he’s been shot from a cannon. Maybe ten years old, and he skids to a stop about six feet from Jeremiah like he’s hit an invisible wall.
His mother is a few steps behind, hovering at a respectful distance.
“You’re… you’re Jeremiah Precio,” the kid says, like he’s confirming it for the record.
“Last time I checked.” Jeremiah crouches, drops to one knee on the pavement, funnel cake grease and all, so they’re eye to eye. “What’s your name?”
“Mason.” The word comes out barely above a whisper, and then Mason just stalls. He stares at Jeremiah like he’s forgotten every other word he owns.
His mother closes the distance and rests a hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Sorry, he’s normally not this quiet.” She laughs, a little breathless. “He’s a huge fan. Watched every second of the Olympics, I mean religiously. He’d love it if you signed his jersey.”
She already has it in hand, a West Stars jersey pulled from her bag, a Sharpie tucked against it. “He’s not wearing it. Too hot today.”
“I’d be honored.” Jeremiah takes the jersey, still kneeling, and smooths it flat against his leg. He signs it slow and deliberate, like it deserves better than a scrawl.
Then he holds it out to Mason, and that’s when the kid’s whole face crumples and tears flood down his cheeks.
Jeremiah doesn’t stand. He just opens his arms from where he’s kneeling, and Mason shuffles straight into them, tears running down his cheeks, jersey clutched between them.
“Hey.” Jeremiah’s voice goes low. “Thank you for coming to say hi to me. That took guts.”
When they finally pull back for the photo, Mason is still fully starstruck, cheeks wet, and he poses anyway with the biggest, toothiest grin I’ve ever seen on a human being, his whole face gone red. It’s the cutest thing I have ever witnessed in my adult life.
Mason’s mother mouths thank you at him over her son’s head. Jeremiah just nods and smiles.
He stands and ruffles Mason’s hair before we keep walking.
“That was really sweet,” I finally manage.
“I love kids.” Jeremiah says it like that settles the matter, like he hasn’t just wrecked me a little.
Boy Scout doesn’t begin to cover it.
A while later, we eat kettle corn out of the same bag, which feels more intimate than it has any right to. We talk about nothing, and everything, for what might be two hours and might be four, because time has apparently stopped being a real thing that applies to me today.
“Tell me something about yourself,” I say at one point. “Something… quirky.”
He scrunches his nose. “Quirky?”
“Yeah, you know. Something that doesn’t make its way into the sports page. Maybe something embarrassing. I’ll go first if it helps. I have to sing the alphabet song in my head every time I brush my teeth. Once through for each quadrant of my mouth. It’s a ritual now. Even as an adult.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” he says. “Like you’re timing yourself.”
“Exactly. Now your turn.”
He thinks for a bit then says, “Well, speaking of songs, when I was a kid, I thought the first line from the national anthem was ‘Jose can you see?’ and I always wondered what Jose was supposed to be looking at.”
I find that endearingly amusing, and that opens the conversation to all sorts of memories.
He tells me about growing up in Mexico City, about a Jr. Kings program and an abuela who runs the family like a small, terrifying government.
He talks about her like you’d talk about a benevolent dictator, equal parts reverence and fear, and I get the strong impression he’s been swatted with her wooden spoon more than once and lived to tell the tale.
He talks about her amazing cooking. Sunday dinners that run four hours minimum.
A cousin who once smuggled actual fireworks into a pinata at a christening and set off somebody’s sprinkler system.
“Does your mom cook too?” I ask, already craving his grandmother’s tamales.
He snorts. “My mother has never cooked a meal in her life. She barely eats solid food during pilot season.” A small laugh escapes him, something almost fond sneaking in under the sarcasm.
“She’s a pilot?”
“She’s an actress.”
“Ohhh,” I say suddenly feeling stupid for not understanding what pilot season means.
“She was a telenovela star, mostly, back when the parts still came in. The idea of her standing at a stove is…“ He shakes his head, laughing again. ”Genuinely the funniest thing you’ve said all day.“
“But that must have been the coolest thing, your mom being a TV star.”
“Not really.” He says it easy, no weight to it, like he’s reporting weather somewhere he doesn’t live anymore. “She didn’t want anything to do with me. I once overheard her say having a kid cramps her style.”
“Oh no she didn’t!”
“It’s actually not the worst thing she’s ever said, to be honest. She was all about moving up in her career.
She gave me up as a baby and my dad had full custody.
I lived in Mexico City with him. But he’d send me to Miami to spend time with my mother every summer.
The whole summer, and I’d only see her in passing once or twice. ”
Now I really feel bad for bringing it up. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ah it’s no big deal. My dad has very serious opinions about work ethic, and honestly? I got the better deal.” He shrugs, nothing performative about it. “I don’t carry it around like some sad violin thing. It just is what it is. Worked out fine.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think your mom made the best decision for you, even though it was for selfish reasons.”
“I think so, too.”
“Even though you didn’t get to rub elbows with movie stars growing up. But I guess you’re a celebrity now so…”
“Oh there were plenty of celebrities at my dad’s house. He’s a producer for TeleMundial. It wasn’t uncommon to see directors, actors, sportscasters, you name it, in my living room on a random Tuesday.”
“Hmmm. I think you had a weirder childhood than me.”
He laughs and insists I give him my complete history and I tell him what I can without sounding like a complete hobo.
I tell him about how we lived like gypsies in a trailer for a while until we finally settled in Bay Ridge (if you can call it settling).
I tell him about Vin’s Diner with the best pancakes on the East Coast, carefully avoiding every detail that would send him running for the hills.
He asks what I actually do for a living and I say “logistics,” which is not, strictly speaking, a lie.
“Logistics for what industry?”
“Boutique. Very niche. Mostly inconveniencing big bad corporations.”
He studies me a second too long, like he’s working up to something. “So pickpocketing,” he says finally. “It’s just a hobby of yours?”
Okay here it is.
“Oh, I’m totally not a pickpocket.” I say it easy, like a woman with nothing to hide, which, to be honest, I hire Rue for that job so there.
“Just watches off the wrists of unsuspecting hockey players,” he deadpans.
I suppose this was an inevitable conversation. Addressing the elephant in the room, so to speak. Can we go back to talking about absent mothers, please?
“You caught me on an off-day.”
“Because usually you’d get away with it.”
“I was going to give it back!”