Once I felt Pedro’s fingers, like curious mice, play in the plunging juncture. But he took them away.

When I was coming, the place right above my knees got hot. The heat went on up my legs. The skin between my balls and my ass tightened. I wanted Pedro to tickle my nuts now, but he didn’t. So I thought about his scum in there, around my dick. The slow explosion in the groin pushed all the air out of my lungs.

“Shit …” Pedro drawled. He reached between us again. I was so sensitive it hurt. So I rolled off.

Maria tried to grab me. As I got free, she said something in Spanish. Pedro hit her—he hit for her chin, but she twisted away and he just got her shoulder. He laughed. “Big, dumb cocksucker,” he said. Maria sat up and pulled her skirt into her lap over her pussy. First I thought she wanted to cover herself, but she kept her fist there, as though it felt good. Or maybe it didn’t.

She looked at my cock and sucked in her bottom lip.

She ran one hand to her knee, like she might reach and pick it up. Most of her nails were flecked with pearl-colored polish.

“What you doing?” Pedro asked.

“It don’t look like yours,” she said.

“A lot of guys, Polacks and Jews and stuff, they cut off the front part. He’s circumcised, is what they call it,” Pedro explained. “It’s still pretty fucking big, ain’t it.”

“Not that.” Maria arched her fingers on her knee, like a kitten on new jeans.

“He’s like a fucking mule,” Pedro said.

“The hair,” Maria said. “Yours is black and his is yellow. On your head, I mean, yours is curly like a nigger almost, and his is all soft. But down there—”

“What?” Pedro said.

“His and yours, it’s tight and rough on you both.”

“So’s yours,” Pedro said. “I ain’t no fucking nigger.” He pulled up his cuff to scratch the place behind his ankle. He didn’t wear socks with his sneakers. His heel was like a pole of dirt. He stopped and frowned. “Would you fuck with a nigger?”

But Maria had picked up her skirt and was shaking it out in her lap.

The next day Pedro met me in the street. “Hey,” he said, “you suck it good, you know? And Maria, she like it a lot, a big one you know, shove in her pussy? These guys around here, I bet they gimme a quarter for a piece of pussy. And we got too many, see, you suck, hey? You could sleep downstairs there anyway, instead of up on the roof. You could look out for the place when I ain’t there. We could do a lot of business off that dumb cunt, huh?”

Later I was coming out the hall and saw Pedro and Maria sitting on the front steps, their backs to me. His shoulders were moving a lot as he talked. Though I couldn’t see her face, I could tell she was chewing on the middle fingernail she let herself bite.