Shooting Down Heaven

by Jorge Franco

  “What are you watching?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever,” I said. “Did she show you the video?”

  “She couldn’t find it,” Julieth said. “She’s still looking for it.”

  “Please excuse her. And excuse me too.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because I didn’t say anything when she asked who my girlfriend was.”

  “But we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “I know, but I acted like an asshole.”

  Julieth kissed me on the mouth and said, relax. I’m not ready to be in a relationship right now, I said. Relax, she said again, and gave me another kiss. We touched each other and took off our clothes. More than aroused, I was grateful to Julieth.

  67

  If you see a sign like that, one that says the best thing about a place is its people, you can be sure you’ve arrived in hell itself,” Pedro told Larry as they drove along in the 4x4.

  “So, nothing’s changed, then?” Larry asked.

  “Everything and nothing,” Pedro replied. He studied him for a moment and said, “The look on your face . . .”

  Very near the apartment, the food stands began. They were no longer the shoddily built stalls of Larry’s youth. Though the basic concept remained the same, they were now solid, attractive structures, picturesque purveyors of typical local gastronomy. They stopped at one of them, settled at a table, and Pedro ordered two double shots of aguardiente to start.

  “Well, you’re here now,” Pedro said. “You can get back all the time you’ve lost. If you put your mind to it, it won’t be long before you’re the same old Larry you used to be.”

  He raised his glass toward Larry in a toast, but he didn’t say anything, just downed the drink, holding his gaze triumphantly. The aguardiente gave Larry goosebumps. He shuddered and choked back a cough.

  “I’d forgotten the taste.”

  “You never forget how to drink liquor. It’s like riding a bike. Did you not drink over there?”

  “I learned to drink whiskey,” Larry said. “Cheap whiskey.”

  “Well then, you’re screwed. Whiskey’s expensive here,” Pedro said. “Want another?”

  Larry said no, but Pedro ordered two more aguardientes.

  “Last one,” he told Larry.

  Pedro grasped the nape of Larry’s neck with his broad, horny hand and said, “It’s not every day a guy like you comes back to this crap-ass country. We’ve got to celebrate it, receive you the way Libardo would have liked.”

  “I’m the one who’s going to be receiving Libardo. He came back from the beyond so we could bury him,” Larry said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Pedro said. “Your mom told me. All those years not knowing. It’s fucked up, huh?”

  Larry picked up the newly filled glass and, holding it near his mouth, said, “I never pictured him resting in peace under a tombstone or a cross. I pictured him at the bottom of a lake or being pulled along by a river, dumped in the middle of nowhere or in a mass grave.”

  He took a sip and pondered for a moment. All those people who left and never came back, who were heedlessly kidnapped in retaliation, who found themselves on the business end of a vengefully pointing finger that decided, this guy yes, this one no, that guy yes, and that one, and that one too.

  “How long has it been since you’ve gotten laid?” Pedro asked.

  In response, Larry tsked him. Pedro laughed and gave him a powerful slap on the thigh. Larry protested and took another sip of aguardiente. Pedro clapped him again, and Larry punched him in the shoulder. They both laughed.

  “You didn’t answer me, you rascal,” Pedro said, “but you look like a man in love.”

  Larry held his gaze for a minute.

  “What are you looking at, dude?” Pedro asked.

  Larry watched him a while longer, in silence, and finally said, “I have to tell you something that happened to me on the plane.”

  68

  We keep driving aimlessly. Inga wakes up and says she’s hungry. Julieth suggests she shouldn’t eat because she might vomit again. The food here’s really strong, Inga says, and Julieth says, no, honey, what’s strong is all the shit you’ve been drinking. The aguardiente has calmed me down a little, though I still can’t get the image of Fernanda and Pedro snorting coke out of my head. How long have they been doing that? Did Pedro get her into it? I head east, toward Las Palmas again. That’s where the airport is; I can’t leave, but I’d really like to.

  La Murciélaga isn’t crying anymore, but she hasn’t spoken since she said she wanted to die. She stares straight ahead as if hypnotized by the headlights. Where’s Pedro?, Inga asks. He’s still at Larry’s house, Julieth says. That’s not my house, I say. Why isn’t he here?, Inga asks. I think there’s a problem, Julieth says, and points at me. So where are we going?, Inga asks. Well, according to him, we’re going to fucking hell, Julieth replies. Oh, Inga says.

  They tell me their plan with Pedro the Dictator had been to go to a party organized by a friend of theirs named Lázaro. We were going to pick you up and then head there, Julieth tells me. Isn’t it pretty early still?, Inga asked. No, she replies, the party started yesterday. They’re really violent parties, she adds. In what sense?, I ask. Every sense, she says. On second thought, I say, but then I fall silent and don’t say anything else.

  After a while, I remark, “I think I’d rather go rest.”

  “You spent the whole day resting,” Julieth says.

  “If you only knew,” I say.

  “Then we have to go get Pedro,” Inga says.

  “I’m not going back there.”

  “What happened?” Inga said. “Did you have a fight with your mom? I didn’t realize. I was asleep.”

  She’s used the masculine form of the adjective, so Julieth corrects her. “You’re a woman, Inga.”

  “Do any of you know where my grandmother lives?” I ask, and the three of them stare at me in surprise.

  When Julio and I went to my grandparents’ place, I hadn’t paid attention; I’d had my eyes shut pretty much the whole way there. I was just thinking about the bag we were carrying in the backseat and how my grandparents were going to react. I hadn’t figured I’d need to go back so soon and under such circumstances.

  “Why are you looking for your grandmother?” Inga asks.

  “So I can stay there.”

  “Stop being such a drama queen, Larry,” Julieth tells me.

  “She lives in one of those white houses that are really close together.”

  Even La Murciélaga breaks her silence and joins the others in cracking up.

  “Oh, sure,” Julieth says. “That’s easy. Keep straight, I know exactly where that is.”

  La Murciélaga utters a delighted screech and then looks at me pityingly.

  “Oh, Larry, you’re a complete tool,” she says.

  “Take us to Lázaro’s place instead,” Julieth says.

  “Pass the booze,” La Murciélaga says, and asks, “Did they send the address?”

  “Yeah,” Julieth says, “but I don’t think Larry knows how to get there.”

  “I’m hungry,” Inga says.

  La Murciélaga takes a swig, shudders, and coughs.

  “I’m feeling a lot better, guys,” she says. “You don’t even know how awful I was feeling.”

  “Love you, Murci,” Julieth says. “Love you so much.”

  “Take us to Lázaro’s place and you can go wherever you want after that,” La Murciélaga tells me.

  “I know,” I say. “Let’s go back to my mom’s house, and one of you can go up and get my wallet and my grandma’s address.”

  “Larry, are you driving without your license?” Julieth asks.

  I left my head back at the apartment, along with my self-control and judgment. Or maybe
I left it all in London when I got the stupid idea to come back here. Or left it back in that time when Libardo didn’t exist, alive or dead.

  I’ll be starting another story with different people, because nobody’s the same now—not Julio, not Fernanda, not Pedro. Nobody.

  “I stormed out and left everything upstairs,” I tell them.

  “I need to eat something first,” Inga says, making the adverb feminine.

  When Julieth corrects her, Inga protests. “But you just said I’m a woman.”

  Julieth sighs. Grabbing the aguardiente, she says, “Well, when it comes to eating you’re like a man, Inga.” She peers at the bottle. “This is running out.”

  I try to retrace my route, but it’s all one-way, and there aren’t always corresponding streets running the opposite direction. They curve; those that go up don’t necessarily come down; they fork; they narrow and then widen again.

  “Help me find my way back,” I say. “Why doesn’t one of you drive?”

  “I’m drunk,” La Murciélaga says.

  “I don’t know the way,” Inga says.

  “Look for the freeway,” Julieth says.

  “Is that how to get there?” I ask.

  “It’s how to get to Lázaro’s party.”

  La Murciélaga switches on the radio, and it’s the same thing as always. A noise, a droning, the endless repetition of a syllable, a voice constructed in a studio to make us believe that somebody’s singing. A convincing argument occurs to me.

  “Let’s go back and get Pedro.”

  Everybody agrees. I have no intention of speaking to him, just grabbing my wallet and phone. Then I’ll catch a cab and these people can go to hell.

  One of them tells me to take this turn, another to take the next one, to turn around, to keep going straight, there are places I recognize, there are fireworks bursting in the sky, left over from yesterday or purchased for today. La Murciélaga searches frantically in her bag for her cell phone. Hello, she says, and immediately looks at me. It must be him, must be Pedro, but I can’t hear him over their instructions, turn at the next one, this is the wrong way, go straight and then turn around. We go up, we go down, we drive along avenues and streets. This isn’t the city I used to know—we were a large town bereft of God or law.

  “Stop,” La Murciélaga tells me.

  “We’re almost there,” Julieth says.

  “No, stop, Larry, nobody’s there,” La Murciélaga says. “Pedro isn’t there anymore.”

  I pull over and ask, “What about Fernanda?”

  “She’s not there either. They went out together.”

  “Where to?”

  “Pedro’s heading to Lázaro’s party.”

  “With Fernanda?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did he tell you?” I ask.

  “What I just said.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And for us to bring some booze and stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Just stuff.”

  Tonight can’t be like last night. I turn down the radio so I can think. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel. I don’t have Julio, I don’t have Fernanda, I don’t have Gran or Rosa Marcela. Or Charlie. And I don’t have papers or money or a phone or anything else. Just three women who might as well have escaped from a loony bin.

  “Give me the car, Larry,” La Murciélaga says.

  “I have to go get my things,” I say.

  “And who’s going to let you in? Do you have keys?”

  I don’t have keys. I don’t have anything.

  “No,” I say.

  “So?” La Murciélaga asks.

  “Larry, give her the car,” Julieth says. “You don’t have your license, and besides, you’re drunk.”

  “So’s she,” I say.

  “Yeah, but she’s got a license,” Julieth points out.

  “Let me drive, Larry,” La Murciélaga insists.

  I need to think, to come up with some options for getting out of here. I haven’t slept, I’ve been drinking and smoking pot, I have jet lag, I don’t know what to do. La Murciélaga opens the door and climbs out. We switch places.

  “No speeding, Murci, you’re fried,” Julieth says.

  La Murciélaga responds with a loud laugh and takes off.

  “Tell me where I’m going,” she says.

  “To the party,” Inga says. “They’ll have food there.”

  What could happen if we get stopped by the cops? Will it be enough for me to identify myself as Libardo’s son, the way it used to be?

  “Open your mouth,” Julieth tells me.

  “What?”

  “Open your mouth, doofus.”

  Julieth places a pill on my tongue and passes me the bottle so I can wash it down.

  “What was that?” I ask after I swallow.

  Julieth kisses me on the mouth and says, “Don’t ask silly questions, earthling.”

  69

  One morning I woke up late and found a woman sweeping the house. She greeted me with a friendly smile. She said her name was Lucila and that Doña Carmenza, my grandmother, had sent her. How did you get in?, I asked, and she told me the door was open. That she’d rung the bell anyway because she didn’t dare come in, but when nobody appeared, she started picking up. I couldn’t find any cleanser for the bathrooms, she said, and I used the little dishwashing liquid that was left to wash all the dishes. I peeked out and the kitchen was sparkling; it smelled clean. The living and dining room windows were open. Air was flowing through, and the sun was shining into the corners. Did you talk to my mom?, I asked. You’re the first person I’ve seen, she said, there’s not much I can offer you for breakfast, do you want something to drink? Is there any Coke?, I asked, and she said she’d go look. Before she left, I called to her.

  “Lucila, are you going to stay?”

  She hugged the broom and shrugged, looking around as if gauging the size of the house.

  “Well, that depends on the boss,” she said.

  I don’t know if she meant Gran or Fernanda. I didn’t ask. She’d have come here knowing what to expect. She would have known who we were, what was happening with Libardo. We needed her help so badly that I’d better stop pestering her with questions and let her get back to work.

  When Fernanda woke up, Lucila was already making lunch. Predictably, she threw a fit. Over my dead body, Fernanda said, and added:

  “Carmenza sent you so you can report back what’s going on over here.”

  “I was the one who told Gran we needed somebody to help us,” I said.

  “That woman never helps, Larry. All she does is make things more complicated.”

  I asked her to take a look around, to go into the kitchen; lots of laundry was already done, I said, and for the first time in many days, we were going to eat a homemade meal.

  “And she opened the curtains,” Fernanda remarked. “That’s just great.”

  She drew them again and asked me, what do you want? For people to keep snooping around? For not just Carmenza but everybody else to find out what’s happening here? And she said again, over my dead body, Larry.

  After a lot of arguing, the two of us reached an agreement. Lucila would stay until Fernanda found a replacement. In any event, she warned Lucila, “And no bringing gossip to that woman. What happens here stays here, understood?”

  Lucila murmured, yes, ma’am, as if she’d already committed some violation.

  Other warnings were: don’t ever answer the phone, this is a complicated situation, all calls are recorded; don’t go into my husband’s study; don’t open the door to anybody without asking us; don’t ask where I’m going or where I’m coming from, Fernanda told her, oh, and we’re going to put you on probation for a few days. Lucila agreed again, baffled by Fernanda’s acc
usatory tone.

  At least we could now sleep between clean sheets in neatly made beds, eat good food, and breathe fresh air, though Lucila barely had enough time to keep such a large house in order. In some fashion we started going back to normal, though when a person had been disappeared from a life, it could never be normal.

  Julio tried to encourage Fernanda to keep pursuing the plan she’d laid out with Cubides, the prosecutor. We started arguing about the recording of Libardo’s voice again, unable to come to a consensus. Fernanda insisted she wasn’t going to lift a finger to help him.

  “Why don’t you talk to that hussy?” she told Julio. “She can take over the plan. I don’t want to see him again.”

  Julio couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that Fernanda, out of jealousy, would let Libardo be killed. I argued that they, the people who were calling, didn’t have him, but at times I was gnawed by doubt. What if I was wrong? What if this was our opportunity to get him freed? Even though Fernanda had forbidden us to talk to our callers, once when Julio answered, he told Eloy we were holding firm, that Fernanda was sick but as soon as she got better, we’d be ready to resolve the situation.

  Though he made it up, he was right: Fernanda was sick with jealousy, so much so that several days later she called us together and told us, “I’m going to move forward, but only so I can make him sign divorce papers.”

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t object; I wasn’t willing to carry that guilt in case they were right. I was also hoping that if they were correct, when Fernanda saw Libardo, she’d be moved to change her mind. The fact that she was jealous meant she still loved him.

  The person who was most enthusiastic to see the plan in motion again was Cubides. Fernanda met with him again, but not at the house anymore, almost always at the casino.

  “It’s no secret I go there a lot,” she told us. “We won’t arouse anyone’s suspicions.”

  Another day she packed up Libardo’s clothes in suitcases and boxes. She gathered the documents scattered around the study, tidied them as best she could, and stored them in boxes that she marked “Libardo Papers.” When it was all together, she told us, “I hope I don’t see him. Lucky for me he’s going straight to prison. When you meet up with him, give him the folder we’re preparing and have him sign in the places we’ve indicated.”