When Tito Loved Clara by Jon Michaud Page A

sunshine, pretending to read a newspaper. About an hour after the final bell, she walked by with one of the other Word Club girls, Yesenia Matos, and he followed them, keeping his distance. At Broadway, Yesenia climbed the stairs to the subway while Clara turned and walked south toward the bridge. He followed, catching up with her on the span as a train made its cacophonous passage over them on the elevated track.
    â€œI was beginning to think you didn't like me, Tito,” she said.
    They walked home together by the same evasive route they'd taken before, talking and joshing each other about the mix-up on Good Friday. Clara's mother, in one of her fits of piety, had made them go to Mass. That afternoon in the park Tito kissed her for the first time. It was on the path in the woods as they descended toward her house. He was motivated by a sense of desperation, a sense that she might contrive ways of avoiding him on Fridays the rest of his life. If nothing else, he would at least have this one kiss. How modest that aspiration seemed to him later, but how immense it seemed to him at the time. He took her by the hand and pulled her close, fully expecting to be struck across the face. She gave no resistance, opening her mouth to his. Tito tasted icing sugar on her lips—a dissolving sweetness—along with traces of lip balm. He felt her warm breath against his cheek. When he finally pulled away, she smiled at him. “See you next week,” she said.
    F OR THE REMAINDER of the spring, Tito did not have any trouble finding Clara on Friday afternoons. Even after school ended in late June, they maintained their schedule. He worked both weekend days so that his Fridays would be free for her. He moved furniture, hung out with his boys, ate meals with his parents, listened to music, read his comic books, exchanged bullshit with Nelson, did his daily pushups and sit-ups, watched the Yankees on TV, went to a couple of lame parties, but all of it was just a means ofdistraction until Friday afternoon came around again. To minimize their chances of being seen together, they took to arriving separately in the forested part of the park. These dates, as Tito liked to think of them, soon turned into extended sessions of kissing and reaching into each other's clothes. The warm weather conspired to make things easier for them—thickening the greenery of the wilder sections of the park, inviting Clara to go barelegged in skirts and short dresses, the inciting sight of her brown skin on display. They explored each other as much as possible under the cover of the park's flora, but the lack of privacy kept them from going as far as Tito would have liked. There remained always something elusive about Clara. He was increasingly aware of her imminent departure for Cornell. He had tried to talk about it with her, saying that he would visit her at college, promising to do whatever it took to carry their relationship forward, always seeking signs of assurance from her. But Clara inevitably stopped these entreaties by kissing him or taking his hand and placing it over her heart. As much as he loved those gestures, they did not allay his fears—if anything they heightened them. Tito became convinced that the only way to ensure that they would stay together beyond September was to sleep with her. They were both virgins and he believed that sex would somehow create an unbreakable bond between them.
    In August, an opportunity finally presented itself. His mother and father were going to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary with a week at a resort in Punta Cana. Tito took the time off work to be available for the building's tenants. There was an empty apartment on the third floor. He'd repainted it earlier in the month and helped his father install a new refrigerator. In the refrigerator now was a bottle of wine and some of the food his mother had left for him. The apartment's layout was unconventional, with a bedroom right by the