Smelia
I married my husband because I had nothing else to do. Imagine, a twenty-five year old woman with no kids, no college, and no other baggage to weigh her down. That was me. After a three - month romance filled with pink roses and exotic chocolates delivered to me on a weekly basis, my husband placed a three-carat diamond with rubies at each side of the stone, on my finger. I married him willingly and loved him half-heartedly.
We lived in his seven bed roomed, three story house on the corner of Appleton and Eve Street. The backyard was a garden with exotic plants and any fruit tree I could think of. It was the only thing that I could stand about that drafty house. I sat in the backyard, even on cold, snowy days, imagining that my life seemed more jovial and appealing.
Every night, while comedians told obscene jokes on the late show making me laugh, my husband crawled on top of me an attempted to reach some erotic gratification. He had a determined mission: to impregnate me with a son.
On some nights, I watched the late show from over his sweaty shoulder, and muffled my laughs while he heard bells ringing in his ears and climbed Mt. St. Everest during his strenuous orgasms. On others, I just counted the apples on the ceiling wallpaper. I counted two hundred. I basked in the joy of seeing my crimson friend each month. Like clockwork, my husband asked me if I was pregnant. I jovially told him no. He seemed sad for while, but once again turned our bedroom into a stud farm. One time while cleaning in the den, I found a pamphlet about sperm count from some sperm bank downtown. It only added to my speculations. My husband was sterile and could never bind me with a child.
Sometimes, he’d see my boredom and get mad. On the way to church one Sunday, after another lackluster love encounter the night before, he told me something that my ears and heart should have regarded.
“ No little girls for us,” he said, “ only boys to carry my blood. And if I leave this world, tomorrow, you will never find true love like me, ‘cause I love you and that kind of love don’t come around too often.”
Then it happened.
While dropping off a bank deposit one snowy day, he dropped dead of a heart attack. At his funeral, I did not cry. I just stood there when they lowered my sixty-five year old husband’s body in the ground.

Nicky
She was beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could make an angel mad. She worked at a salon, doin’ hair, laughin’ with everybody, bein’ nice. I delivered a pepperoni and sausage pizza to the place and saw her. She saw me see her. Her name was Farrah. A month later, we were married. Another month later, she was knocked up. Farrah, my wife, quit the salon and stayed at home. She told me that the doc said it was best for her to stay off her feet. I went to work everyday, earning the bread and she stayed at home, talkin’ on the phone, watching those cheesy stories about rich people who never work, who never truly fall in love.
Nine months later, she pushed out my son, Ryan. We fought over the name. I wanted him to be a junior with my name, Niccolo Giovanni Perez. She said no because his mother was white and he looked white. Well hell, I’m sort of white, I mean my Pop was Puerto Rican and my mother was Sicilian. Then she said she wanted the baby to have an American name. What’s an American name? She also refused to go back to work. She wanted Ryan to have at least one parent at home. I agreed and picked up some more hours at the pizzeria.
Then her mother came in from Boston on a surprise visit. She almost crapped a brick when she saw that her new son-in-law was Italian and Hispanic. She played it off though, by asking about my family and about my job. I overheard Farrah and her mother talking about me one night, while I faked sleep.
“ Leave him.” She told my wife.
“ Why?”
“ Thank God this child doesn’t look…”
“ Look how, Mom?”
She sighed, “ Like him.”
“ Him?”
“ That man.”
“ I cannot believe you, him, as you call him is my husband and Ryan’s father.”
“ Come back home, we’ll pay for college and you can raise Ryan right. This town is too…”
“ Too filled with spics?”
Farrah walked off somewhere and never said anything to me about that night. Two weeks later, after Ryan turned three months old, Farrah found out she was knocked up again.

Smelia
I had to take over my husband’s furniture store. I knew nothing about running a business, but tried to learn something from his snotty business partners. Every night after, trying to sell sofas and lamps, I went home to my lonely house. I stopped cooking and ate only ice cream and cereal. I tried to sleep in my king size bed, but something stopped me from sleeping there. Was it my husband’s ghost? Did he discover my true feelings for him? Did he know that I mocked him when he tried to disperse his seed inside of me night after night? No, I hoped not. One day while I walked downtown on a break, I saw a dress that my husband promised me, but died too soon to purchase it. I stared at the black dress, with the plunging neckline through a misty store - front window. I smiled as I thought of him making me model it for him in our house. I felt eyes watching me. I met them across the street. This guy stared at me and I returned the uncouth gesture. He stopped after about a minute and returned to the pizza restaurant.

Nicky
I saw this Black chick today. She made me stare at her. Something odd about that chica, something…. She had the coolest thing that I can’t describe. It made me curl inside out and look from another direction. What chicks do to guys. What that girl did to me.

May - Smelia
I walked past the dress shop, hoping to buy that dress. It was gone and in its place was a pink dress.
“ Hey,”
I turned around. It was that guy from the pizza place. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and a cigarette in his other. He smiled at me.
“ May I help you?”
“ That pink dress is on sale.”
“ You work here?”
“ No, do you?”
“ No.”
“ That black one has been bought and paid for.”
“ Doesn’t that mean the same thing?”
He chuckled, “ I guess it does. I’m Niccolo.”
“ Well Niccolo, I’m Smelia.”
“ Unusual name.’
“ I’m an unusual person.”
We both laughed.
He took me to his restaurant and introduced me to everyone. We joked and had a good time. I liked Nicky. I hadn’t felt so….

Nicky
That’s how it began. I had a pregnant wife, a baby boy and a girlfriend. Smelia made me feel…. Something inside of me was awake and breathing. She took me to her house and showed me her garden. In the dead of winter, flowers and other plants grew and stayed alive. Smelia picked a pear off of a tree and ate it. She smiled and took my hand.
“ You wanna do it?” she giggled.
“ Sure.”
Right there in the cold, we did it.
“ I’m married.” I told Smelia, after we made love.
“ I know.”
“ Really?”
“ And that doesn’t bother you?”
“ No, not now,” she said, “ I know that you’re here with me now. That counts, Nick.”
“ My wife is pregnant and I have another baby, a boy.”
Smelia sighed, “ Is there anything else?”
“ I love you.”
That’s when I decided to use my brain. After Farrah had the baby I was going to leave her. I was going to always be in paradise with the woman I loved.
Smelia
Nicky and me had a plan. It was simple. He was going to leave his wife after she had the baby. Then we’ll live in my house and get married. The only hard thing about the damn thing was that we had to stay away from each other the last part of the summer. Farrah was nine months gone and that baby would be dropping out any day. I tried to keep my end of the bargain. I sat in the garden, picking out wedding dresses and deciding what to do when the time finally came. Nick stopped calling me and coming over. I couldn’t function one day without the remembrance of his hands on my body or his hearty laugh ringing in my ears. His soul was etched on mine.
I could not do it. I walked to his apartment building on Perspent Avenue. It was an unusual cloudy day, but there was scent of rain anywhere in the air. I strolled by St. Dominic’s Cathedral and heard the church bells ring.
“ That’s odd,” I said to myself, “ those bells haven’t ringed since my husband’s funeral.
I finally got to the building and saw Nick leaving for work. He saw me and smiled. I started to run toward him, dodging innocent bystanders and cars to get to him. I jumped in his arms in one of those dramatic overtures you only see in black and white films. We hugged and kissed as if nothing nor no one could see us in the middle of the street, in broad daylight.
“ Nicky,” someone called out.
I stopped and turned around. It was a blonde woman with a baby in her arms and a lunchbox, looking at us, shaking.
“ Farrah,” he whispered.
“ Farrah?” I stood back dumbfounded and scared.
The whole world stopped. The crowd seemed blurry and fading fast away like a person trying to cup freezing water in unsteady and unfastened hands. Nicky slowly departed from me and raced across the street. The woman saw him and ran off with the baby. I only stood there while people jeered at me. The bells from the church were louder and much more vivid. I was too pre-occupied to hear tires shriek and Nicky cry out like a wounded animal.
A truck pulling out of a warehouse near their apartment killed Farrah, blonde-haired Farrah. Nicky’s son was injured, but miraculously lived. I ran home and cried for hours. What had gone wrong? What evil demon cut the lifeline that held my fortune? Why did she have to die? I went to the cemetery after Nicky refused to talk to me or return my phone calls. I took a bundle of flowers that grew in my garden with me.
He stood over the fresh, earthen grave looking down and crying. I didn’t approach him. He stood under a tall apple tree. Its fruit must have been rotting because the flies and other insects picked at it. The day was hot and the stale scent of the fruit drifted over the yard. His gray eyes met with mine, but hurriedly returned to his wife’s grave. I walked to him.
“ You shouldn’t be here.” He said.
“ I know, but I have to see you.”
“ That’s just it, Smelia,” he sighed, “ we can’t see each other no more.”
“ I know.”
“ Maybe if things were different, I could…”
“ I know that we shouldn’t have, but what’s done is done.”
He looked at me, “ Is that what you think?”
“ Yeah.”
“ My god, my wife is dead, my unborn baby died, and my son is hurt. And all you can say…”
“ I love you and I know in my heart that a love like doesn’t…”
I caught myself just then and realized what I was saying. I remember my husband’s words.
“ I have to go.” He said through tears.
Nicky caressed my cheek and kissed it, “ Good-bye.”
I was the first one to walk away. I looked back every now and then. The final time, I saw Nicky underneath that massive apple tree. I looked at the bundle of flowers in my arms. They had all wilted and died.