3. Lina
THREE
Lina
I’ve spent this entire summer trying to craft New and Improved Real Life Lina.
There are typically two different Linas at one time—Work Lina, and Real Life Lina.
Work Lina is a boss-ass bitch who fucking crushes it at her job. She manages the safety and well-being of a building full of one thousand (actually, nine hundred and ninety two, at last count) humans—adults and children. She’s on her feet hustling from seven a.m. to seven p.m. and eats bad school ratings for breakfast with a shark-like smile on her face.
New and Improved Real Life Lina just wants to take an edible and sit on the couch in her underwear and watch Bridgerton , knit, or tend to all the tomatoes she’s growing on the roof of her building. And then later, maybe snack on said tomatoes when she gets the munchies from said edible, all while knitting and watching Bridgerton in her underwear.
We failed at New and Improved Real Life Lina this summer.
Instead, we had Actual Real Life Lina. Actual Real Life Lina signed up for summer school again, turning into Work Lina from eight a.m. to twelve p.m. Actual Real Life Lina also told the superintendent’s office that she would handle PS 2’s summer budgeting and finance and organization for the new school year, since she was already in the building for summer school, and they hadn’t yet found a new principal. Which means Work Lina hung around until around four p.m. Then, when Actual Real Life Lina finally had a chance to take that edible, she went home to care for her elderly mother or volunteered at the church soup kitchen instead.
But at least none of this included coming home to care for her forty-year-old toddler. Anymore.
Oh well. I have three more weeks to try. It’s probably too late to grow tomatoes, but I can probably do everything else. I could take an edible at Oliver’s aunt’s place on the beach. That sounds like ideal edible circumstances.
There’s only three more weeks until I have to report back to the building for the new school year, and I told the new PTO president I’d meet with him and his daughter in an hour, so for right now, I’m trying to wrangle School Year Work Lina back for a bit, shaving my legs and actually doing my hair.
Superintendent Daniels called me yesterday to tell me they are still working ‘diligently’ to find a new principal, but after the fiasco that was Courtney Thomas, the district office wasn’t willing to take any risks. They had to be absolutely sure.
Which really meant “fuck you and all the extra work you’ve put in for the last year or so, Ms. Sanchez. Keep doing it until we make sure we don’t fuck up again.” It almost makes me want to throw my hat in the ring. Do it all and actually get paid for it.
But New and Improved Real Life Lina wouldn’t do that.
But here I am anyway, replacing my razor cartridge and putting product in my hair and mascara on my lashes. Putting on a Professional Tank Top and Pants—linen, because it’s still a thousand degrees out. I look at myself in the full-length mirror in my room. I put on some weight over the last few months, so busy that I didn’t have any time to go to the gym or run or anything. I like it. I look good. I turn around. My ass won’t quit. Too bad it’s on a luxury yacht break.
I stop by my mom’s on the way out. She lives downstairs, on the first floor of the building my family has owned since the sixties, when Park Slope was inhabited by Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Latin American families before becoming the playground for upper middle class white families and their strollers.
“Hey, Mai,” I yell on my walk through the door.
She’s sitting in the kitchen doing a Sudoku. “? Qué lo qué ?” she answers, tilting her head up to accept my cheek kisses. “You look nice. I didn’t know school started already.”
“It doesn’t start for two more weeks. I’m just meeting with someone.”
“Mmm,” she says, while going back to her Sudoku. “I hope you’re getting paid for that.”
I ignore this. “What groceries do you need for the week? I’ll grab them on my way home.”
She puts her Sudoku down and takes her glasses off, eyeing me. “I have legs and a cart, you know. And the grocery is half a block away. Also, I don’t know if you know this, because you’re always so busy doing things for everyone, but grocery delivery has become a thing. All my friends use it.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s my job, Mai. I do things for people. I’m literally a public servant. But anyway, I’m already gonna be out. And you have to pay a fee and tip for delivery. And then you’ll have to carry all the bags from the front door to the fridge?—”
My mom tilts her head, pointedly eyeing the ten feet of distance between the front door and her refrigerator. “Relax, mija . It’s fine. Stop hovering. I’m fine. Let me be.”
“I know you’re fine, Mai, I just want to help?—”
“Why don’t you help yourself by going out and doing something for… oh, I don’t know. Yourself ?”
“I want to do things for you, Mai, you deserve it—” Our voices are getting louder and louder.
“Enough,” she says. “I made my own choices. I want you to make your own. For yourself. Not for me, not for Mike, and not for your school,” she says firmly.
I check my phone. I’m going to have to Uber now so I’m not late. I order one. “I love you, Mai, and I’m going to help you and take care of you until one of us drops dead. So get used to it. I’ll grab stuff for that chicken you make. Oh, and sancocho. Maybe mac and cheese?”
My mother mutters a string of Spanish curses under her breath. I only recognize a few.
My phone dings. I take Mai’s face in my hands and kiss both her cheeks. “Love you.”
“ Te amo ,” she grumbles.
The fifteen-minute ride to Fort Greene lets me answer some work emails on my phone. Resumes for the P.E. teacher position Elias vacated earlier last year. Educational consultants begging for money. Supply orders. I fire off reply after reply, and by the time I look up, we’ve stopped outside the coffee shop.
“Thanks,” I tell my driver, stepping out and donning Work Lina like a well-worn suit.
The cafe is just around the corner from our school, one of those ‘mid-century modern’ cardboard cutout ones with the wood and the Edison bulbs and the iron accents that look the same as all the other ones in the same style. It’s already packed full of screaming children and worn-out parents. It’s a gorgeous morning, and the sun is shining brightly through the windows, illuminating all the families inside, everyone including…
Like magnets, like last week in the yard, our eyes meet and click together, above and beyond and through masses of people.
In that moment, boss-ass bitch Work Lina melts into a puddle and becomes someone I don’t like, someone I thought I’ve grown up from—Old Lina meeting a tall, dark, handsome, tattooed man. Luckily, I recognize the signs of this, as one may recognize the signs of a stroke. Brain mush? Check. Panties wet? Check. Feeling generally slutty and ready to drop everything at his behest? Check.
But I’m prepared now, so I’m able to steel my back and rebuild boss-ass bitch Work Lina one vertebra of my spine at a time, extending it, building a fortress out of stone around my more soft, vulnerable insides. I send him a cool, calm, collected smile and a nod, like ‘yes, hey, I recognize you,’ but keep it moving, not bothering to clock his reaction. I scan the rest of the families in the cafe, wondering who the PTO president and his daughter are while marching up to the counter to order a latte. Unfortunately, that’s where he’s sitting, but we’re building Boss-Ass Fortress Work Lina, so it doesn’t matter. Keep it moving.
However, there is a slight construction delay.
This occurs when I move closer to him and realize that tall, dark, handsome, and tattooed has a miniature, lighter-skinned, adorable, non-tattooed little girl version of himself seated in the chair next to him.
The sight is jarring for several reasons. He’s a fucking dad (?!), first of all. This grungy, gorgeous hunk who could be the reigning champion of an underground boxing or MMA club is a dad —to a tiny slip of a girl wearing chocolate and bits of muffin all over her cheeks and in her ear and bangs with a pink tutu skirt and a shirt seemingly made entirely out of glitter. Her legs are dangling a full foot off the ground, both shoes are untied, and she has a book the size of her torso open on the table in front of her with pictures of tanks (the combat vehicle, not the top) and… is that Eisenhower?
Oh no.
I pay for my latte and stand waiting off to the side, with my back to them, cheeks getting hot, blood rushing into my ears. There’s no way.
I hear the little girl first. “Is that her, Daddy?” she whispers.
Shit.
It takes him a moment to answer. “I don’t know,” he whispers back, and it’s extraordinarily unfair that even his whisper is hot, and I can imagine him whispering “is this for me?” while peeling my pussy apa…
I’m fortunately distracted by his continuing, “I recognize her from Tito Ollie’s… oh,” he pauses, making the same connections I am currently making. “You’re the one who goes to the school, Frankie,” he finally whispers to his daughter. “Do you know what AP Sanchez looks like?”
FUCK. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
“What if I said something really loud,” she whispers really loudly, “like, I sure do love PS 2 and I can’t wait for you to be the president of the parents, Daddy ?—”
All right, Work Lina. Time to work.
I turn around and turn on my most professional smile. “Dominic?” I ask, looking directly and forcefully into his eyes. This may have been a mistake, however, and I should probably have looked at his nose instead, because the moment we make eye contact this close together, I feel my stone fortress halt all construction and begin to crumble.
My eyes flick down on their own accord to his (very empty) ring finger. They flick back up in time to catch him doing the very same thing to my left hand, and then this man who looks like he could belong to a Filipino motorcycle club or maybe a straight up gang blushes , and it would be adorable if I weren’t really fucking confused.
His eyes and his hair are dark, practically black, but with the sun shining into them like this, they turn a deep coffee brown. He clears his throat. “AP Sanchez?” he says, standing like some sort of gentleman and not the guy who might start the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert.
This is fine. This is work. Keep it moving, Work Lina. “Lina, please,” I say, with a smile so wide that I probably seemed deranged. Don’t scare the child, Lina . I put out my hand to shake his, and this is yet another mistake, looking at and feeling his large, warm hand envelop my own, feel his rough skin against mine. His intricate tattoos go all the way down to his hands, stopping right at the wrist, and I have the sudden urge to trace the patterns with my tongue. I notice he is looking at our conjoined hands with either bewilderment or the same sort of horniness. I yank my hand away, turning to his daughter. “What’s your name, hon?”
“Francine Flores,” she answers proudly. Franthine Floreth , actually, because she has the best lisp. She hops down from her chair, a small cloud of glitter exploding from her shirt and onto her father’s pants. He doesn’t bat an eye. She also stands politely, like a politician or a lady or maybe a knight in glitter armor. This teeny girl takes my hand and shakes it, too, with a strength and a confidence that’s atypical for someone her size. “I’m gonna be in kindergarten,” she says. I immediately like her.
“It’s really nice to meet you both,” I say. “Can I sit?”
I’m worried for a second that Francine will run around the table and do something ridiculous like pull out my chair for me, but luckily they both sit down.
“What are you learning about?” I ask Francine, gesturing to her book.
“Generally, or specifically?” she wants me to clarify. She mangles the pronunciation of both words.
“Both, if you’re offering.”
“I’m learning about World War II, but Daddy just told me about German inflation.”
I look at Dominic, who shrugs. “What do you remember about German inflation?” he asks her, and his voice is even more jarring than this situation I’ve currently found myself in. It’s gentle, on the quieter side, yet deeply intense, like the sunrise on a tranquil lake.
She looks up at the ceiling, looking identical to her father while doing so. “You said that… during World War II, Germany needed lots of money to pay for the war, so they made lots and lots and lots of money super fast.” Francine thinks about what to say next. “But… then…” she struggles with this next part. “Everyone in Germany got really poor?”
Dominic and I go to answer at the same time, but he backs down with a look of surprise.
Luckily for me, explaining things to children under the age of ten is a superpower of mine. “Alright, let's think about it this way: imagine you have a special sticker that everyone at school loves. If you only have one or two of those stickers, they’re really special, and people might trade you something cool, like a fancy toy, to get one. But what if, all of a sudden, you got a huge box with thousands of the same stickers. But then everyone else in the school got a big box too. Now those stickers aren’t so special anymore because everyone has so many of them. So people wouldn’t want to trade their toys or anything special for just one sticker. They might say, ‘If you want to trade, I’ll need one hundred stickers instead of just one.’”
Understanding shines in her eyes.
Something resembling shock shines in her father’s.
“So,” she says, nodding with absolute certainty. “The Germans had stickers.”
I wait for more.
She stares.
I wait for some more.
She stares some more.
“Close,” I finally offer.
Dominic chuckles.
“Can I ask you something? Did you read that all by yourself?” There’s no way a five-year-old could read the word ‘Germany’ or ‘inflation’ or even ‘war,’ if we’re being honest.
“Nope,” she answers confidently. “I can’t read. I just look at the pictures. And then I get Daddy to read these big words that are super big,” she says, while pointing to the bolded headings of the subsections. “They tell me what the pictures are about. And he tells me about them.”
I blink. “Cool,” I manage.
Dominic clears his throat. “So, Lina,” and I love the way my name sounds in his mouth, “I’m assuming you know Ollie from work?”
“Yes,” I say in my most professional voice. “I was his AP for five years. We became close friends. He’s great.”
“You know Tito Ollie?” Francine asks me.
“Sure do. Although he hates when I call him Ollie. I do that to mess with him sometimes. I didn’t see you at his new house last weekend, Francine,” I tell her.
“Frankie, please,” she says, the same way I did earlier. Just kidding. I think I’m obsessed with this girl. “I was playing video games with my cousins in Tito Ollie and Tita Georgia’s room.” She looks at her dad before turning back to me. She leans in. “I was taking advantage because I’m not allowed to play video games,” she whispers.
This enigma of a man sighs. “It was a special occasion. You can play when you’re with your cousins. As long as there are no guns.”
Frankie gives me a look that implies there were indeed, many guns.
“Are you a real cousin or a fake cousin?” I can’t help but flirt with this man who may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says LINA’S TYPE .
He smiles shyly, the corners of his eyes and that full, luscious mouth settling into those well-worn lines. I die a little. “Real cousin. One of the few. My dad and his mom are brother and sister.”
“We live upstairs from Lola Gloria and Lolo Ben,” Frankie informs me.
“Ooo. I call her Mama Flores. She’s really fun.”
They give me identical smiles, and Frankie takes the lull in the conversation to go back to her light Saturday morning picture book perusal of the Axis powers in North Africa.
My name is called by the barista, and in one smooth movement, like water flowing around stones in a river, Dominic pushes his chair back, stands up, and strides to the counter, giving me the new opportunity to look at him from behind. He’s tall, taller than my five ten, lean muscle rippling across his wide back and tapering down to a narrow waist, like a runner or maybe a swimmer. He might be considered lanky, gangly even, if it weren’t for how graceful he was, how in control he was of his body. Every inch of his black t-shirt and black jeans are covered in glitter.
He turns, my drink in hand, and catches me staring at him. He blushes again, pink under his golden brown skin. What is this creature?
“So we wanted to meet with you today to see what we could do to help before school started,” he says in that serene voice, placing my drink in front of me and sitting down again. “Jean gave me a whole list of things I should do before the school year started, and one of those things included reaching out to you. She said she wasn’t sure if they’d hired a new principal yet.”
I take a sip of my latte, a little taken aback. “The superintendent’s office has yet to find a new principal, unfortunately. Who’s Jean?”
“Jean was last school year’s PTO President. I was just elected in June.”
I wince. I should have known this.
He sees and is immediately apologetic. “Jean told me you probably had a lot on your plate,” he says gently. “I imagine you had to, you have to, step up and take the reins. I’ve seen it happen in my line of work, too. I’ve had to do it myself. It’s a lot,” he finishes, with no ounce of condescension or mansplain-iness.
This simple acknowledgement somehow makes me want to cry. And for him to hold me while I do so. I blink it away. “It’s no excuse. Jean and you and the entire PTO are an incredibly important part of our community. I truly apologize for not being in touch. It won’t happen this year.”
He frowns, but it’s a frown that conveys ‘concern’ rather than ‘displeasure.’ “You haven’t really had to take over all the principal’s duties, have you?”
NooOO , I want to answer like a toddler. “I’ve been doing what’s best for the PS 2 community. But hopefully, we’ll have a new principal soon,” I reply diplomatically instead.
Dominic’s dark eyes search my face with the expertise of someone who frequently has to untangle emotions. “Okay,” he says simply.
I let out a breath. “I don’t think you should worry about anything right now,” I tell him. “I think you should just enjoy the rest of your summer with your daughter.”
He frowns now. “But this is my job. I’m supposed to be doing this. I want to be doing this.”
In the corner of my eye, I see Frankie with her finger in the book, her mouth attempting to soundlessly shape a word. “Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot,” I tell her, after glancing down at the page. “German Air Force.”
She beams at me then looks back to the page to investigate his outfit.
“You really don’t have to,” I repeat to Dominic. “It’s?—”
“What if I run some ideas past you, and you tell me if I should do them or not?” he cuts in.
I blink.
“What if I set up a table on the first day of school with the rest of the PTO? Maybe we could share important information about the PS 2 community with new families? Like how to login to all the student accounts, or that app we use to communicate with teachers?”
Does not compute.
“I can set up a Back to School happy hour for families.” He thinks for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. “There’s that bar by the school that should fit a lot of people?—”
“Tim’s?” I clarify, referring to the dive that all our teachers go to on Friday nights.
“Yeah, Tim’s,” he says, looking at me and smiling again. “Teachers go there too, right? Maybe it could be a Back to School night for everyone. Families, teachers, admin.”
There is still a very real possibility that this man may be in a gang, even if he’s the shy, sensitive, gentle member who plays ‘good gang guy’ while his gang-mate plays ‘bad gang guy’ before they straight up torture a prisoner for information (this is what gangs do, correct?). With knives or scalpels, obviously, because the Flores household seems to be staunchly anti-gun. Anyway, there is no way in hell that a man like this is going to accomplish all of those Back to School events, so I shrug, my hopes staying firmly on the ground. “That all sounds great, if you can swing it. I’d be happy to help.” Translation: I’ll just do it for you.
“I can swing it,” he tells me confidently. “Would it be all right if I texted you with any questions? Or any more ideas I may have? Could I have your number?” The tips of his ears turn red after this last question leaves his mouth.
My first reaction is fuck yes followed by hell no followed by get your fucking act together, Work Lina. “Sure,” I say, and I recite my number to him under less than ideal circumstances.
“Thanks,” he says, his ears still red. “I’m texting you now so you have mine.”
I hear it ding in my bag. “Awesome.” I take one last sip of my coffee. “Well…”
He glances at the time on his phone. “Shit, sorry we’ve taken so much of your time. We should go too, Frankie,” he says, nudging his daughter, who is now looking at pictures of Pearl Harbor. He frowns. “I don’t know about this page, Frankie.”
“Why?” she immediately shoots back. “There are no guns in this photo.”
“I’d argue that there are many, many guns in this photo,” he mutters under his breath, taking the book and putting it into a sparkly purple backpack. “We have to go grocery shopping for the week, remember?”
She hops down in another puff of glitter. “Oh yeah.” She turns to me. “Do you wanna come grocery shopping with us?”
“Uh—” both her father and I begin at the same time.
“I’m sure AP Sanchez is extremely busy,” he then says, while I, for some inexplicable reason, think of my mom and ask?—
“The one two blocks from here?”