Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “What propaganda?” El Mago asked. He sounded more curious than concerned.

  “That rock music. The president said it ought to be censored, that it leads to anarchy. I for one agree. They closed the singing cafés, but what good does that do if people can still listen to this shit as they please?” El Güero said, and Elvis thought if El Güero could, he would have wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and rolled around the floor to emphasize his point.

  Yeah, they’d closed a harmless bunch of singing cafés like the Pau Pau where all they did was play silly cover songs. You couldn’t even dance at a fucking café, and still the cops went and pulled people out of there when they felt like it.

  He didn’t think anyone should get ruffled about a few songs; it wasn’t no sign of anarchy. He’d looked up that word one time and there was nothing, but nothing, that applied to Elvis. Besides, everyone knew that the rich kids in Las Lomas hired bands like Three Souls in My Mind to play at their private parties and they listened to whatever the fuck they wanted while sipping their rum-and-Cokes, so it didn’t seem fair to him that a few got cake and others got shit. But no one paid him to speak his opinions, so Elvis stood, hands deep in his pockets, all quiet.

  He’d steeled himself for this all day long, filling his head with words and songs and facts—the guitar on Elvis Presley’s first album was a Martin D-28; a haruspex was an ancient priestess who examined the entrails of animals—and he didn’t interrupt El Güero, not one single time.

  He’d get his turn before El Mago, and he didn’t want to spoil it with theatrics.

  “Boy, let us go for a walk,” El Mago said after a while, and Elvis simply nodded and obeyed.

  El Güero looked positively giddy at that command. Elvis didn’t bother grabbing his jacket; he simply followed El Mago down the stairs.

  “I want you to explain why you disobeyed my orders,” El Mago said when they reached the street. “You were supposed to wait for a van to pick you up if someone was injured.”

  “He would’ve died if we’d waited, sir. He was banged up real bad.”

  “But that is not the reason why you stole a car and drove him to a doctor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am trying to determine your motive. Was it because El Gazpacho is your friend? Because you thought I would be upset if a unit member died? Or because you did not think my reaction would matter? Explain yourself.”

  Elvis didn’t know what El Mago expected him to say. It seemed to him that when you’ve been sharing meals and assignments with a dude for months on end that you owe it to the guy to at least try and get him some help and not let him die like a dog in the street.

  El Gazpacho called Elvis “brother,” and sure, maybe it was a quick endearment, but it also meant a little something. Bro, you know.

  My bro.

  Comrades in arms and all that, except that sounded maybe a bit commie, and El Mago didn’t like no commies. So he frowned, thinking hard as they walked slowly, rounding the corner.

  “You gotta have some loyalty in this world,” Elvis said at last. He was looking straight ahead so he couldn’t see El Mago’s expression when he spoke; he didn’t want to see it lest he spot something nasty behind his eyes. Elvis was trying to stay cool, but he felt nervous.

  “Loyalty.”

  “Seems to me.”

  El Mago was quiet. “You never quite cease surprising me, Elvis,” he said. “Loyalty. A valuable commodity. It seems in short supply these days.”

  Elvis raised his head at that, despite his nerves, and glanced at the older man. He thought there was something melancholic about El Mago right then. He’d only seen him like this a couple of times. He kept his secrets, El Mago. He had to, Elvis supposed. You couldn’t go around spilling everything, showing each and every emotion.

  They had stopped next to a newspaper stand. El Mago turned toward the magazines and papers, staring at the photos and the headlines.

  “The operation got out of hand the other day. Your unit did not, in fact, muck up too much. But other units and their leaders lost control. In a day or two the president is going to order a public investigation into what happened.”

  “What’ll happen?”

  “Some people will have to go. The chief of police and the mayor will not last beyond next week, I am sure of it. Public relations, you know? There might be some reorganizing of the units. Everyone is jumpy, fingers are being pointed. It is a dangerous time.”

  Elvis nodded. He didn’t know where that left him, but he didn’t dare ask. Then, as if reading his mind, El Mago turned to him.

  “You will stay with El Güero and the Antelope. I want you to remain at the apartment and keep a low profile, as you have been doing for the past few days.”

  “El Tunas and the others…they’ll also come around?” Elvis asked, because his unit was normally bigger than just them. They cooperated with the two other little groups. The twelve of them together.

  “It is just the three of you. The others are needed elsewhere. For now, if there is an assignment, you will be the leader.”

  He’d dreamed of leading a unit and the perks that came with that, like the car and having your own gun. Not that he was particularly a weapons guy, but it seemed pretty cool to have a good handgun to strap to your waist—it’s not like you could get a sword and call yourself a samurai, even if he’d like that better. Plus, if you wanted to climb up, if you wanted to make anything of yourself, you had to be a unit leader.

  It was the first step to becoming someone like El Mago.

  However, the senior operative was El Güero, and one would have expected him to take the lead.

  Elvis opened his mouth, wishing to point this out, and then quickly closed it, self-preservation wisely urging him to shut up. If El Mago had made up his mind about him, there was no point in asking for explanations, plus he was simply glad he had not been dismissed from the Hawks.

  El Mago turned around, and they began walking back to the apartment. “You have a question?” El Mago said, and the smirk on his face made Elvis realize that he knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

  Elvis slid his hands out of his pockets and grabbed the crumpled pack of cigarettes in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Uh…El Gazpacho, how’s he doing?” he asked, both because he genuinely wanted to know and because asking about El Güero’s seniority would have been stupid.

  El Mago frowned. “He is injured.”

  “Yeah, but how’s he feelin’?”

  “He is in bed with a bullet in his gut, how do you think he feels?”

  “Just wonderin’.”

  “Well, do not,” El Mago said curtly. “Head back, boy.”

  Elvis nodded. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and crossed the street toward the apartment while El Mago went in the opposite direction. He hoped he hadn’t fucked things up by inquiring about El Gazpacho. But that night El Mago phoned and officially informed El Güero and the Antelope that their new unit leader was El Elvis. Elvis celebrated quietly. With his headphones on, he listened to “Eleanor Rigby” and drank Fanta.

  4

  ROUTINES PROVIDE MEANING, that’s what Maite believed; therefore she tried to stick to her own patterns. Monday through Friday routines were fairly easy since work dictated her behavior. The weekends, however, were wide open. There were plenty of chances to flounder, to sink into tedium.

  Saturdays she got up an hour later than usual, fixed herself a cup of coffee, and drank it in the company of her parakeet. Around eleven she stepped out to buy the groceries at the tianguis that popped up in a nearby park. There she ate a bite at one of the food stands before dragging her market bag, now filled with vegetables and fruit, back home and buying a newspaper.

  That day, however, she hurried her purchases, eager to return to the apartment building. She had spent half the night awak
e, imagining what her neighbor’s apartment would look like. She could have headed there at the crack of dawn, but she knew how much better it was to stretch out the moment, to let it linger on the palate. As she shopped she wondered about the color of the drapes, the type of furniture she’d find. Between the stalls with ripe bananas and tomatoes, she daydreamed.

  After tucking away the groceries, she finally allowed herself the chance to turn the key and walk into Leonora’s apartment, slowly closing the door behind her. She absorbed the place, just standing in the living room, her hands pressed against her stomach.

  The curtains were blue, made of denim, and they were drawn closed. Maite flicked on a light. A paper lampshade bathed the furniture with a soft, yellow glow. Leonora had less furniture than Maite, but she could tell it was of a better quality than her own. In a corner there was a peacock rattan chair piled with canvases and the couch was covered with a long, tasseled cloth stamped with a butterfly pattern. A low table and two couches served as the dining room. Canvases were also propped against the walls.

  Maite looked at the paintings and found them dull: splashes of red with no possible meaning. She was more interested by the photos on a shelf. Leonora and her friends appeared in a variety of poses. There was one shot where she was draped over a man’s lap, a cigarette in her hand, her head thrown back. Maite stared long and hard at that photo, lingering on the man’s handsome face.

  A fat tabby rubbed against Maite’s legs, and she shooed it away, irritated by the animal. She wished to finish exploring before getting down to the mundane tasks of feeding the animal and cleaning up its shit.

  She went into the bedroom and saw that Leonora kept her mattress on the floor. The red silk bedsheets were crumpled and balled up in the center of the bed, and on the floor there was an ashtray. There was booze too, bottles of expensive wine, and a pair of dirty glasses forgotten in a corner. A ceramic Buddha and a plate with half-burnt incense sticks had been arranged atop a pile of books, but for all the Bohemian décor you could smell the money. It was visible in a very modern glass-and-brass table, the quality of the glasses and dishes, the finely carved wooden box where Leonora kept colorful pills, a bag filled with marijuana, and another one with mushrooms. Gold bangles and designer sunglasses were carelessly scattered around the floor, along with cheap bracelets with wooden beads.

  The apartment reeked of money and pot, of pricey wine bottles left open and spoiling, souring the air.

  Maite riffled through Leonora’s closet, pressing a green velvet jacket against her waist and glancing at the tall mirror with a silver frame leaning against the wall. A long, cream dress with embroidered flowers, completely unlike anything Maite owned, mesmerized her, and she also pressed that against her body, sliding her hands across the delicate fabric. She looked at the label and decided it must command an exorbitant price. But she couldn’t take clothes. Once she had stolen an earring from a tenant on the second floor, but only one, so that the woman would think she had simply misplaced it. Clothes and jewelry were too conspicuous. Besides, Leonora and Maite were not the same size.

  She put the jacket and the dress back in the closet and walked into the bathroom. Leonora’s bathroom mirror had a white plaster frame with tiny white flowers. Maite grabbed the vintage silver hairbrush resting on the sink and carefully brushed her hair. On a shelf above the toilet she found a jar of face cream and several tubes of lipstick. She tried one on.

  It was a gaudy pink, meant for a younger girl. It aged Maite, added years to her face, and she wiped her mouth clean with a Kleenex, disgusted by the sight of it.

  She ventured back into the living room and crossed her arms, again looking at Leonora’s pictures, again fixing her eyes on that one shot where the young woman had her head thrown back. The man in the picture was wearing a tie and the corners of his mouth were crooked into a charming smile. Now that was a handsome man. He even looked a bit like Jorge Luis, if Jorge Luis hadn’t been a black-and-white drawing. Leonora might have gone away with that man, or another equally good-looking one, for the weekend. She must be throwing her head back and laughing now.

  Maite spun around.

  There wasn’t anything she wished to take. Sometimes it was like this, a struggle. Other times she would walk into a room and she would know at once what she wanted. It had to be something personal, something that reminded her of that particular apartment, so that later she might easily conjure the space in her mind. That was the key.

  She had stolen before, stolen from department stores and shabby corner stores, but it had never given her joy. It was a mere compulsion that left her restless and unsatisfied. It had taken her a while to figure out that what she sought was not the object in question, but the thrill of possessing a secret. As if she had been able to peer into the most intimate recesses of a person’s mind and pulled open a hidden compartment.

  She’d stolen an old Italian lace fan from the lady with the blind dog on the fifth floor and a broken violin bow from the busy mother on the third floor who was always chasing after one of her children. At one point they’d all asked her to water their plants or feed their goldfish, and she’d slipped into their homes quiet and smiling, trying on their shoes, using their shampoo, eating one of the bonbons in a box. The stolen item was the punctuating mark at the end of her adventure, the flourish on a signature.

  The cat was meowing. Maite walked into the kitchen. She found the cat food tins next to the stove and opened one, distractedly dumping it into the cat’s bowl. Leonora had left a cardboard box above the garbage can. She peered inside it, found nothing but old newspapers, and moved the box aside so she could throw the tin away. When she was putting the lid back on the bin she noticed something white in the corner.

  Maite moved the garbage can away. It was a small plaster statuette of San Judas Tadeo. It had a crack running down its side, and the girl had taped the bottom of it with yellow masking tape. It was rubbish that she’d forgotten to throw out, like the old newspapers.

  Maite held up the statuette, running her fingers over the smooth hair of the saint.

  She wrapped the statuette in a newspaper and walked out of the apartment, careful to lock the door and ensure the cat didn’t follow her.

  Back in her home she put on music. The Beatles played as she unwrapped her new treasure and placed it in the little brown chest in the bottom drawer of her dresser where she kept all the items she’d stolen. Everything felt right. It had been a good day.

  Sunday, she went to the movies, which was a mistake. She preferred romances and comedies, but it seemed to her these were in small supply these days. She wound up watching a Japanese action film as a couple next to her kissed each other, oblivious to the world. The popcorn she’d bought tasted stale, and someone smoked in the row in front of her while a samurai faced off against a one-armed foe on the big screen. She shifted in her uncomfortable seat. By the time she stepped out of the theater it was raining, and she crossed her arms and hurried across the street, trying to protect her head with a newspaper but giving up after a few blocks.

  After the high of the previous evening she could already feel herself sinking into an unpleasant low. It went like that for her, up and down like a roller coaster. Why did the world have to be like this, she wondered as she waited for her bus. Gray, unpleasant. In the comic books everything had a certain cheer, even if the pages were all in black-and-white. And the next day was Monday. The thought of the office with the dull clacking of the typewriters made her grimace. Two days of rest were not enough to wash away the tedium of her work week.

  Maybe she should look for another job. Check the help wanted ads, actually make it to interviews. There were better firms out there. She didn’t even have to limit herself to working for a law office. Perhaps there was a more exciting position available somewhere else. A publishing company. That sounded classy. Surely all her reading would come in handy there. True, she mostly read comics,
but they counted as something, and she did have several classics from the Sepan Cuantos collection. Furthermore, she had gleaned enough about sophisticated fashions from the magazines that she wouldn’t stand out in such an environment. Oh, she’d chuck away the sensible shoes and the brown jackets for something with a little more pizzazz. At a place like that some glamour wouldn’t be unexpected, would it? Just a smidgen of it.

  Or she would look at those Learn English at Home records she hadn’t touched in a while and really get into the lessons this time. She could be a bilingual secretary and command more money. She might even work for a diplomat. An ambassador! Weren’t all the nice embassies in Polanco? This, too, would require sophistication and perhaps even a bit of travel, but Maite was willing to fly wherever she was needed to support the important work of her bosses.

  Wouldn’t her sister die of envy then?

  She was eager to put her plan into action. As soon as she got home she checked the paper for suitable jobs, but after a little while she grew discouraged by the many times the phrase “twenty to twenty-eight years old” appeared. Even when she was within the specified age range, all the very best jobs seemed to want more than she had to offer, and there was that other phrase too: “excellent presentation.”

  Pretty. That’s what they meant. Everyone wanted pretty girls, or at the very least, put-together girls. It wasn’t that Maite looked like a slob, but her clothes never quite fit her right. Her mother said it was because she didn’t have proper undergarments and explained that in her day you wore a good quality long-leg girdle, not just pantyhose. But it wasn’t that. It was that the clothes were cheap, they weren’t tailored for her, a seam came apart here and there, and the colors were wrong. But she never seemed to be able to pick the right thing. Like that time she’d saved and saved and bought the cream-colored blouse with the frilly high collar at the neck only to get home and realize that she looked ridiculous, like a no-neck monster.