THE DEALER'S GIRLFRIEND
2010; Wiley; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tyr.2010.0063
ISSN1467-9736
Autores Tópico(s)Globalization and Cultural Identity
Resumo1 1 2 Y T H E D E A L E R ’ S G I R L F R I E N D P E T E R L A S A L L E Celia was pretty high, coked up, the night she called the toll-free number for Christian International Children’s Fund and became the sponsor for the child in Rio de Janeiro named João. It all gave her something to do, and if she used to start crying for no reason when sitting around alone at the condo there in Austin at night, not interested in any more TV, not interested in any more coke, she had a reason now, she told herself – poor João. Every month that summer she used a credit card to send the money to Christian International, and sometimes she would just stare at the photograph of João they had sent her. It showed João, almost too scared to fully smile, eyes very big, teeth very white, standing in green flip-flops and dirty red shorts and a white T-shirt on a street of dun-colored dust and a few stucco buildings at what seemed to be an intersection in the favela where he lived; there were a couple of mop-headed palm trees in back of him and also a guy on a motorbike who seemed to have stopped in the street to watch the kid, little João, being photographed like that. She had looked at that photo – it came in a sort of corny greeting-card folder, edged with gilt – who knows how many times, who knows how long, to be honest. She didn’t go to the 1 1 3 R clubs with Tommy anymore, and, in truth, Tommy told her that he had to do his work at the clubs, often meeting ‘‘clients’’ there, and she should understand that. It was what paid the bills for their condo in Northwest Hills, and it was what allowed her to shop at the ritzy Arboretum Mall with its Neiman’s and its Saks – though buying a five-hundred-dollar red-silk dress didn’t really make any sense if you weren’t going to wear it to one of the clubs on Sixth Street. (She had met Tommy when she was still a student and before she dropped out of the University of Texas, an English major, and Tommy had always assured her that, of course, he had made his ‘‘move’’ on her that first night at the club because she was the ‘‘knockout of a blonde’’ that she was, tall, willowy; but later he told her, very seriously, that it was something else that kept him pursuing her at first, how she seemed so much brighter than other girls he had known, also shy in a good way, he would say. Tommy had begun dealing in high school, and after some classes at Austin Community College that didn’t add up to much and then working unsuccessfully for a fly-by-night new-homes builder as a salesman, he went back to dealing full time. Tommy had a pretty good regular clientele that included lawyers and brokers, and even one Austin city councilman, though once Celia moved in with Tommy, he assured her it would be only a matter of time before he got out of the business; he said he knew it was a dead end – Tommy told her he would give her a better life.) In any case, buying another new red-silk dress or not, Celia really didn’t want to go to the clubs anymore. She sometimes would have her sister over and cook dinner for her when Tommy was o√ doing what he had to do. And there were two other girls, Valerie and Amanda, whose boyfriends were dealers , too. They sometimes showed up to watch a video on Saturday night, all of them talking and doing some coke; with dealer boyfriends , they were more or less in the same situation as she was, Celia knew, and they had to be careful. At least Tommy wasn’t as paranoid as Valerie’s boyfriend, the tall, handsome Mexican...
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