Bronx Noir

The first time Iris saw the Jaguar, she told Pacheco, but he didn’t seem too interested. She noticed the Jaguar coming by at least two or three times a week. It would usually crawl over quietly, not far from her stoop. The windshield was tinted slightly. Iris could make out a young face behind the wheel, maybe a mustache. Not too sure if it was real or just soap opera. He would puff on a cigarette sitting like a sphinx behind the smoke. She could imagine those eyes, deep-set and pinned to her. The Jag was red slick and so heavy with mystical that she never dared go over to it.

“Maybe he’s that nut runnin’ around,” Pacheco told her when she spotted it again one night.

The Jaguar hummed just down the block, headlights off. Iris was glad he saw it too now, so maybe he wouldn’t think she was imagining it.

Pacheco grinned. “He’s lookin at’chu an’ thinkin how good you’ll look as pork chops!”

“Thass not funny,” Iris said, miffed at thinking of her mystery man as a murderer. Pacheco wasn’t the least bit entranced.

“He’s a cop or a nut,” he said on his way upstairs to dose her mother. “Stay away from him.”

Iris did. She was content to leave the dream alone. She loved the sensation of being watched. Many times she was the only thing on the stoop, only her, nobody else. One night she was hanging there with Yolanda, who had just dyed her hair red. Yolanda had no imagination, no sense of mystery. When Iris told her about the car as it sat up the block breathing soft, Yolanda walked right over to it, swinging her hips like a dare. Iris froze to the spot. She watched Yolanda lean down to the window, her yellowed birdlike face steaming as she turned and walked back to the stoop. The Jaguar growled and roared past.

“What did you do?” Iris asked, pissed off and worried that maybe the car would never return.

“I axed him if he wanted some company,” Yolanda said, shaking crunchy red from her face. “An’ you know what he say? He say, ‘Get away from my car.’ The bastid.”

For the next couple of days all Iris could do was worry about the Jaguar not coming back. If she heard a certain car roar she would run to check, sometimes doing rush jobs for fear of missing the car while she was with some trick. It was a relief when she spotted the Jaguar again, resting behind a group of parked cars. There was that mysterious dark shadow, the swirl of cigarette, or maybe she was imagining him behind dark glass. She would become aware of her every pore, every movement of her body like she was an actress on a stage working to always present her best side. There might be a radio playing—she would dance voluptuous teasing like a stripper in a cage. Whenever she heard that Jaguar growl its goodbye, something inside her would sink, as if her ride was leaving without her.

She could see his sharply featured face, the deep-set eyes, sweet long lips pursed around the cigarette. A trace of mustache, but baby face, never shaved. He was young, an ex—drug dealer tired of the daily kill. He had his money now. He didn’t need all this. He wanted to take just one thing with him on his ride out.

“I tell you, he’s a nut. Don’t think about it,” Pacheco scolded when he heard her wonder why the Jaguar hadn’t turned up for three days. “He gonna carve you up.”

Yolanda, sitting beside Iris, made an ugly grimace. “You such a fuckhead, Pacheco, man. You a pimp or what? Do ya job! Go out there an’ scare the fuck off.”

“Yeah, right,” Pacheco laughed. Iris puffed on her cigarette so shaky. “Like I’m gonna walk up to a Jaguar and scare the guy off. Like, that bastid could own this block an’ shit.”

“Drug dealer?” Iris pulled the pinky out of her mouth.

“Damn straight drug dealer. Or a psycho cop. An’ they both carry guns, right?” He laughed as he went upstairs.

“Jaguar” by Iris Robles

He made like he was a trick, when finally she went over to him. She liked his smell, something all spice and tree bark. She didn’t kiss tricks but she tasted his long smooth lips to kiss forever. Stayed in the motel for three days. “I don’t have to be anyplace,” he said, biting the crotch off her pantyhose. After that, she moved into his duplex on Long Island, where her mother would join them after she got through the detox program.

“Ma, you think tricks fall in love sometimes?”

They were watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Angie was in bed, pipe slipping from her hand. A misty white vapor floated.

“Uhhh,” she said, her eyes round as saucers.