Cars on Fire

by Mónica Ramón Ríos

  In other words, you strip people’s words of their meaning in your novels?

  But you have so many printed words hanging up in elegant frames. They speak for you. All those titles on the shelves that declare your identity, your profession, your knowledge, your ascent up the social ladder. And your designer clothes broadcast the money you’ve got at your disposal. Besides, that voice of yours, so steady and controlled, is remarkable in someone so young. If you devoted yourself to prostitution, you’d be a consummate professional.

  I’m not sure I can help you.

  Years ago, I lost interest in my work for a while. When I opened a recently published novel, I’d see that it was something I’d read many times. But then I started to appreciate the pleasure of rediscovering the same thing over and over. It’s a feeling that some of my more devotedly careerist colleagues have never even experienced. Many of them truly believed that the discipline was all about being disciplined.

  She froze as if she’d thought of someone.

  Do you write every day?

  I can be disciplined, yes. But I’ve always liked to do lots of different things at the same time, and all of those activities have always struck me as equally important, no matter how unproductive they may be. I can’t imagine writing without that impulse. How can you take time to write if you’re struggling to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head?

  But you don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  Once again, she ignored my interruption. How, she continued, if you’re answerable to so much pressure in this world? If you have to satisfy the demands of coworkers, bosses, students? Isn’t our session almost over?

  But you left this sack on the coffee table.

  Maybe I want to feel like I’m running out of time. Maybe my sense of well-being depends on it. Patience isn’t my forte.

  Maybe you don’t want to be my patient, I wanted to snap, although I was distracted by a trace of Grand Cru by Romanée-Conti drifting out of the little leather bag.

  I hated sitting in your waiting room. Please don’t make me do that ever again.

  You didn’t find it comfortable enough?

  A waiting room is never comfortable enough. It’s designed to be miserable. Waiting isn’t purgatory, it’s hell. All those vapid magazines, that pensive music, those chairs that make your legs sweat.

  You read the Bible.

  I’m from Latin America, doctor. Even if we don’t read the Bible or Dante, we know everything about those books. Who among us can say they understand every word ever written? No one, ever.

  So you don’t think literature is important.

  It depends on what you want to do with it.

  Offer someone money, for example?

  I’ve offended you. Is it too small a sum?

  On the contrary. Wasn’t your intention to destroy something between us before it had even begun?

  To what end?

  To transform the possibilities for interrelation that this office allows.

  There’s a limit to what money can control.

  But it’s a binding contract, this money.

  Like every signed piece of paper in the world. Do you have any of my novels?

  Would you like to sign it?

  I want to know which one you decided to read.

  I hesitated for a moment. But I was already on my feet, fastening the two buttons on my jacket, as my tailor had instructed me. I pulled out a volume concealed behind the psychology manuals, and she took it, adjusting her glasses. She read the title as she cracked her nightmarish knuckles, revealing crimson-painted nails through the lace webbing of her gloves. She flipped through the pages as if reviewing the content of a book she’d never seen before, analyzing its properties to determine whether it was worth buying or not.

  Are you satisfied with it?

  Are you?

  It’s a good novel, like any other.

  You won that prize for it. It made you who you are today.

  Maybe it made me into this novel.

  Your work is very powerful. Why do you feel the need to treat it with contempt?

  For the same reason why anyone treats anything with contempt. I told you at the beginning of the session. Maybe it’s the caws of the crows in the morning, maybe it’s the snow I see through my window, maybe it’s because I talk as if I were giving one of my lectures.

  Are you talking about your life or about literature?

  Is there a difference?

  I spied another tangled lock of black hair in a corner of the office.

  One of them is your job.

  When I first moved to this country, countless decades ago, I remember reading about how art as life had ended when the last poets died out. But that’s not true. Journalists don’t understand it, scientists don’t understand it.

  And you expect me to understand it.

  Maybe if you take the money.

  We can talk about it in our next session, I told her, and I tucked the bills, except for two, back into the little sack. The leather was incredibly delicate to the touch. Please don’t forget this, I urged, holding it out to her.

  She didn’t take it. She was busy stuffing herself back into every article of clothing she’d scattered over the chair. It took her some time to put on her jacket with its little hooks, her wool shawl, her leather coat with its four rows of buttons, and then her various belts and sashes, an industrially woven scarf, a pair of leather gloves that fit over her lace ones, and then the feathers for her hair and her hands. As she adjusted her hat, I was finally able to shake the anxiety that had overtaken me at the first glimpse of her nest-like bun. And so, entirely covered up, she looked at me and said, See you next week, then went out, sweeping away the stray curls strewn across my office floor with the long wool tassel of her scarf.

  She’d left the money. I sat down to examine the contents of the sack. As the sun vanished and the city lights shone onto the streets and the river like stars of the underworld, I took out a box and wrote her name on it, stacking it on the shelf along with all my other patients’ boxes.

  Dead Men Don’t Rape

  En el año 2020, escribí for the man with hands like a squirrel:

  Mr. Speechifier, Vice-President, members and members of the members; people peering through jail-bars, through border-fences, through TV screens; my fellow citizens and those who are citizens no longer: I am here to inform you that the financial crisis has evaporated into thin air and that, having excised 45% of the illegal, semi-legal, and not-apparently-legal population, the state of the union is stronger than ever. The purification of the citizenry has left us with an unprecedented surplus. I know many of you are ruefully wondering what we’re going to do with all the crates of meat products accumulating in our ports, all the fruit rotting in the trees, all the trash accruing in our streets, all the unattended children, their diapers shat, babbling an English straight out of a 1940s Hollywood film. And I’m here to tell you this: the job before us has never been so easy. All we have to do is import people. With our kindness spread across our faces and a few bucks clutched behind our backs, we get to choose: the bait shall be our butcher shop. Gentlemen, ladies, let’s not forget: successive invasions of the United States have created a favorable environment for our culture to flourish like radiata pine, burgeoning from within the souls of foreign individuals and societies. Today I’m here to make promises: we’ll use our white purchasing power to import workers with university degrees so that they may exercise all the occupations that you folks would reject: street-cleaners, housekeepers, cooks, nanny-goats, drivers, security guards, mailmen, builders, secretaries, students electrified by politics so that all of you will at least have something to write about. We’ll import hyperqualified personnel and make sure they’re assigned the very worst jobs. We’ll corrode them from within, we’ll suck out all their strength, we’ll obliterate their self-esteem, we’ll pay them insufficiently. They’ll be looking for quite a lot of jobs, so we’ll import just a few—and they’ll come
on ships, they’ll come on planes, they’ll come on buses, they’ll come on foot, eager to be assessed, stock-marketed, their parts ready to be invested in shares. Any disheartened friend is a friend of ours. A defenseless enemy is obliging and affectionate. We’ll only have to be vigilant in our own beds, because that’s where they usually strike, dagger in hand. We’ll defend ourselves: we’ll contain them in special cities, where we’ll furnish them with entertainment and retrograde ideas so that all of you, queridos compatriotas míos, may feel adequately liberal. These imports will be your round-the-clock friends. We’ll give you the opportunity to make brown-skinned, heavy-accented buddies and thus protect your sense of self-righteousness. Our friendship is our finest weapon. We’ll greet them with projectiles concealed behind our grins. This year, you’ll be proud to be yourselves. You’ll never notice that you were the ones who pierced their souls from within. Remember: an American citizen is always a citizen with a clean conscience.

  In 1987, I have 241 speeches left to write. We met when I moved to a poor Seattle neighborhood and first entered the classroom, not knowing a word of English. I detected Selene and Mia in the back row. They were the only girls who didn’t have straightened hair and nails polished the same pink as their lips. Theirs were black, their eyes shadowed cornflower blue, their hair disheveled. I took a seat nearby. I nodded and stammered as I did in Spanish. They exchanged glances and spoke to me in low voices, drowsy-eyed, moving their fists.

  In 1988, I have 232 speeches left to write. One day I came home late at night from school, after languishing at Mia’s house and fiddling with the instruments that belonged to her brother, the rapist. My house was empty. I could only hear the neighbor knocking on the bathroom window. I opened it, pointing a knife at him. Keeping a few steps’ distance, he told me that los blancos had taken my mom when she defended the neighbors from la migra. No one had intervened on her behalf. They’d all stuck their heads in the sand, frightened by their false social security numbers and homemade papers. My mom didn’t have papers, either, and they kicked me out when I went to see her at the police station. I only managed to talk with her when a long-distance operator put me through.

  En el año 2018, escribí for the man with the face of an eel, the skin of an egg, eyes like an owl:

  Mr. General Secretary, Madam President, distinguished delegates amid the mob, and all the rest of you. Today this country commemorates the seventeenth anniversary of the attacks that plastered the front pages of newspapers across the globe. Since then, the enemies of humanity have continued their campaign to destroy the free world. Some years ago, I sat among you all and listened to unseemly plans for the war against terror, policies that advocated for peace. But wars aren’t won with peace, peace isn’t the end of war. I stand before you today to reaffirm our self-esteem, both within and beyond our borders, both within and beyond our empire. As I deliver this message to you, I’m very proud to be accompanied by the generals of our militias and the leaders of the pro-weapon citizen associations that have long been a pillar of our quest for liberty: the NRA, the NMA, the NTA, the NBBA, the NNBA, the NSGA, the NKA, and the NNWA, all fighting for the right to bear and use rifles, missiles, bombs, nuclear bombs, handguns, knives, punches, and ninja stars modified to ergonomically fit the hands of Teutonic descendants on this side of the northern Atlantic.

  In 1991, I have 197 speeches left to write. Selene and Mia didn’t move in with me, but they often slept over at the empty house and read my poems and songs when I left to work at Bicho’s bar. When winter came, we got into Selene’s car and loaded it up with the instruments that belonged to Mia’s brother, the rapist. A month later, we performed our first song from the stage at Bicho’s. We shouted Mia’s brother’s name and the names of the cops who’d taken away my mother as if we were christening a bullet.

  In 1992, I have 123 speeches left to write. We released our first EP, There’s a Dyke in the Pit. My guitar roared like a chainsaw and Selene’s voice barked into the microphone. Mia’s epic drumming opened the final song in our concert for the press and Selene’s botched Spanish thundered our cover of “Me gusta ser una zorra.” From the platform, we watched the motorcyclists coming in, naked women tattooed onto their arms. They shoved at the bodies in the audience as they accumulated at our feet and jostled like livid cattle. Until my guitar smashed over the head of Mia’s brother, the rapist, who now wore trashy clothes and had a swastika inked on his shoulder. That night, in jail, I wrote the song “Dead Men Don’t Rape,” wanting to give strength to Mia, who was lying on the floor of the cell with a black eye and bloodied face.

  En el año 2016, escribí for the man with trumpeted lips:

  I stand here today, proud of the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed upon me, mindful of the misguided actions of those who have come before us and of the corrections I myself must make. I am honored, not humbled, to stand here, following the tradition of so many great men. La historia de la libertad: it is a story of flawed and fallible men, united across generations by a grand, enduring power. In these last months of the campaign, we’ve seen countless lies slung about by the liberal press, lies against me and the ideals for which men like myself get out of bed every morning, determined to confront the chaos permeating our society. Ideals that the seditious are intent on annihilating. I’m here to tell you that the life of a man with money, young or old, college student or president, will never be destroyed by twenty minutes of error, by a grope at the body of a woman offering herself up to him as she walks down the street. El pueblo americano ha dicho: what is a man supposed to do in the face of such beauty? This administration guarantees men’s right to exhibit their impulse, their desire, the most superficial thoughts and the most profound. Hemos dicho: this administration will defend the rights of the Tylers and the Connors, the Donalds and the Patricks. Make no mistake: we will remember their names and forget that their victims ever had one.

  In 1993, we released our single “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” We watched women crowding against the counter, clutching quarters from the tips they’d earned mere hours before. We’d brought 200 copies. We sold them all. The next week, with rank armpits and shaggy legs, everyone chanted in chorus:

  No, my revenge is death, ’cuz you deserve the best

  And I’m not turned on by your masculinity

  Dead men don’t rape.

  I don’t have pity, not a single tear

  For those who get joy from women’s fear.

  As she sang, Selene stared into the eyes of Mia’s brother, the rapist:

  I’d rather get a gun and just blow you away

  Then you’ll learn firsthand: dead men don’t rape.

  In 1994, I still have many speeches left to write for a man who’d sooner leave me speechless. I got a call. Selene’s voice was hoarser than usual. They’d finally found Mia. She hadn’t been tripping, as she often did. She hadn’t enjoyed it. They’d found her body tortured and wound-ravaged. Her face expressed pain. Mia’s brother was at large and they’d only managed to find one of his friends, tying him to a chair in the basement. We left him dying in the hospital. The pain I felt the night of Mia’s funeral instantly multiplied the next day, when I learned that Selene had been in a car accident. In search of Mia’s brother, the rapist, her car had been pushed off the road by motorcyclists whose wheels left skid marks on the pavement.

  This story is dedicated to Mia Zapata, raped and murdered in 1993, and to Susana Chávez, victim of a similar crime in 2011. Este cuento no está terminado. Esta venganza is to be continued.

  Invocation

  Cars on Fire

  People always said heat waves weren’t what they used to be. Every morning the humidity crawled in from the swampy gardens, seeping through the mosquito nets and into the mattress. The bedroom’s discomfort would ignite and he’d have to put it out with the hose from the house next door. Just before waking, his dreams would turn vivid and resume whatever had happened the night before. This-guy—symptom, loner, trudger—
thinks mornings are strange, out of place.

  As he descends the stairs, he’s met with the occupations his father used to threaten him with, like a line-up of ghosts: this-beggar reading tarot cards on a bench in the square. This-numbskull selling water bottles on the corner of Atlantic and Nostrand. This-busybody reading a book, sprawled out on the sidewalk, covered with that blanket that this-guy, this-animal, stepped on yesterday as he made his way home from work on East 11th. This-guy stumbling, feeling the city’s pavement under his back. Dirty streets scorching in the sun.

  The concrete boils. He sees it in the celestial wakes that rise up from the asphalt and the smell emanating from the piss-puddles trailed by the garbage trucks as they cut across the city with their sculpted workers on board. The sidewalks are vaguely sticky. The block-dwellers now occupy their front steps. Some have brought out chairs and fan themselves with the pages of half-read newspapers. Others water plants to refresh them, and also the moss that reaches like a jungle up through the fence and the red brick walls. He closes the gate behind him, a heavy backpack slung over his shoulder. He seems to be hearing his father’s recriminations, his practical voice. This-guy—dog, gringo, milksop—can’t bear it.

  The street is silent for a moment before the cicadas chime in again. They’ve been complaining for months now. The interjected rip-rip sound of the broom was only an interlude: a bus, the beeps of construction trucks in reverse as they drill into wet ears and houses with renovated façades and wealthier inhabitants. Meanwhile, the shouts of people seeking shade beneath the elms, bare feet, shorts clinging to ass-cracks, pants hanging from hips, sleeveless T-shirts, muscled chests abandoning their shirts atop their bicycle seats, clothes translucent with sweat, thick, braided hair gathered as far away as possible from their bodies, which cook in the sun. No one is spared.