PIG STORIES 5 NEIGHBORHOOD SEX LITERATURE SCOUNDREL

You sat in front of him. The coffee was strong, bitter, with grounds floating because the coffee maker's filter was broken. You drank and the heat went down to your stomach and from there it spread to the rest of your body like a transfusion of reality.

Dani was smoking, looking out the kitchen window. The window overlooked a narrow interior patio, a gray air rectangle between four brick walls where the neighbors hung their laundry and cats fucked at night. A clothesline crossed from side to side with three black briefs and a towel that had been there so long it was now part of the landscape.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked without looking at you.

"Yes."

"Lie. You were moving all night. You were kicking."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. It's your body processing. It will pass."

He was talking about your lost virginity like a mechanic talking about a car's mileage. With technical naturalness. Without sentimentalism. And that naturalness was exactly what you needed, because if Dani had been tender, if he had asked how you felt with a soft voice and concerned eyes, you would have broken down. You would have fallen apart right there, in that mismatched kitchen chair, with the coffee with grounds in your hand and your ass still throbbing to the rhythm of two different men. But Dani was not tender. Dani was practical. And his pragmatism sustained you like an iron structure sustaining a building that was empty inside.

"Are you hungry?"

"A little."

He got up. He opened the fridge. The interior light flickered, revealing a desolate landscape. A carton of milk that was actually expired. Half a package of turkey slices with dry edges. An unopened orange juice box. Three eggs on the door. A Tupperware container with something inside that had stopped being identifiable days ago. And four Mahou beer cans that occupied the entire central shelf as if they were the only thing that mattered.

"I can make you some eggs," he said, evaluating the contents with the same expression as a general evaluating a lost battlefield. "Or I can go down to the Chinese restaurant on the corner and buy something."

"The eggs are fine."

He took out the three eggs, a dented frying pan from the lower cabinet, and a stream of oil from a white-label bottle. He turned on the stove with a lighter because the electric igniter had been broken since before he moved in. The eggs sizzled in the hot oil, and the smell filled the kitchen, and it was a smell so normal, so homey, so Saturday morning, that something tightened in your chest.

Your mother never made you eggs. Your mother hardly cooked. At home, breakfast was a glass of milk with ColaCao if there was ColaCao, and if not, tap water. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes your mother wouldn't get up until two in the afternoon, and you would go to school with an empty stomach and a buzzing in your head that wasn't hunger but t...