"That's your job," Riley reminds me.
I grunt. "Where's the rest of the herd?"
"Oh," Calloway throws his translucent arms up in the air. "They're long gone, stampeded out across the Atlantic Ocean a few days ago."
"Great." I finish my drink, grab my walking stick and head for the door.
"Where you off to?" Riley calls after me.
"Gotta sleep off this rum and figure out what the fuck to do."
* * *
I wake up the next afternoon to the sound of Victor and Jenny's grunting, passionate reconciliation. It's almost as comforting as their bickering – a sweaty, breathless reminder of life amidst all this death. Outside, the sky flirts with the beginnings of night. I'm trying not to think about my date with the giant prehistoric ghost in the park, but it's not working. I'm not comfortable being on the same planet with that thing, not to mention subduing it. And I like even less the thought of turning it over to the Council's probing curiosity. But Riley's right: It is my job. I let myself out quietly, without disturbing the festivities and head to the Puerto Rican spot for my coffee.
The park is mostly shadows. A few sad lamps let off eerie glows; pathetic little constellations that reach out into the woods. Now that I'm expecting it, the lack of anything supernatural at all is jarring, a scream of white noise. How do the living bear it? I wrap my fingers around the walking stick which conceals my ghost-killing blade. It is my only comfort right now, and I pray that I won't have to use it.
The police grunts are gone but, as if to prove their utter disregard for the rest of the world, they've left behind a little makeshift cop memorial to O'Malley's arm. It features a few corny snapshots of him, a candle and some empty liquor bottles. If I hadn't promised myself that I'd walk as slowly and calmly as possible, I would scatter it into the weeds. I make each move matter; inch forward at an agonizing pace. The momma will come, but she won't come angry. I find my spot, a few feet from Delton's grisly stain, and wait.
* * *
I wake up from pleasant dreams of a beautiful dark skinned Puerto Rican woman who only wants to stare into my eyes, and find I'm looking directly into a tower of ghostly fur. Momma mammoth has arrived. She's standing about five feet away, studying me. I close my eyes again; make a concentrated effort to suppress the urge to run and vomit at the same time. I breathe deeply until my heart rate returns to the melancholic six beats a minute that I'm used to. I open my eyes again and she's still there. She raises her furry trunk towards me. I let it explore my whole body. The trunk makes little snorts as it probes my cane, then proceeds up to my face. It's wet and smells foul like Delton did. But I am alive. She's not trampling me, yet. Perhaps the rage has subsided some.
Slowly, I raise my hand out, palm to the sky. The snout snorfles its way through my fingers and then retreats back to its owner, apparently satisfied. "I'm going to take you out of here," I say very slowly. "I'm going to break the barrier." She just stares at me, her humongous body rising and falling like a furry tide. "To find your herd." Maybe I'm imagining things, but she appears to perk up a little. Her breath quickens. Of course, she was alive millions of years before anyone thought to say 'herd,' but a halfie can hope.
I take a step backwards, beckoning with my hands. "C'mon," I say in the friendliest voice I can muster. "Come to the edge. I'll take you to freedom." It's hard to say that word, knowing that where I really have to take her is quite the opposite of freedom, but I'm trying to push that out of my head for now. Getting all sappy doesn't make this job any easier. "C'mon, Mama."
I think what really gets me is her first step forward. I keep cooing, "C'mon, Mamma, come to freedom," but by the time we've reached a full stride towards the edge of the park, tears are streaming down my face. I will never be able to explain why. We keep walking along, a strange night procession through the park; me crying and cooing, waving my hands in little circles towards myself and the ghost mammoth lumbering along cautiously.
When we reach the stone wall around the park I try to collect myself. I wipe my eyes with my sleeves like some chick on a talk show and take a few deep breaths so I can stop making those damn little hiccupy sobs. "I'm sorry," I say to the mammoth. "It's been a rough week." She's glaring furiously at the Council's force field. Surely, she has already made more than a few unpleasant attempts to escape.
I pull my spirit-killing blade out of its walking stick sheath and the she-mammoth lets out that ear-shattering shriek and rears up. Her legs kick the air a few inches from my face. I take two steps back and slash behind me with the blade, trying to feel out the damn force field. I'm cutting air. She lands and I swear New York must be registering a minor earthquake. Her tusks are aimed right at me, two great translucent curved swords reaching out to run me through. She stomps forward.
I slash some more, and finally feel that satisfying pressure against the blade that means I've found my mark. The force field gives way, ripping open around us. The great ancient matron stops mid-charge and regards the air that was once her prison wall. A crowd of relieved phantom park critters trickles back in through the new tear. The mammoth watches them scuttle past and then she looks at me. I make a show of sheathing my blade and step over the wall so she sees it's alright.
"See?" I say. "It's safe now. C'mon. Come over. You're free. You're going home." Damnit – the word home chokes me up again but I recover quickly. She's huffing and puffing as she reaches her trunk cautiously towards the wall. When nothing happens she takes a step forward. Then another. "C'mon, ma, c'mon," I say. She lumbers out and then we're standing on Eastern Parkway at four o'clock in the morning, me and my new friend the momma mammoth.
I'm trying to figure out how we're gonna make it to Prospect Park when I feel her warm trunk wrap tightly around my waist. Panic sweeps across me like floodwaters. I can't breathe. I can't move. I can't even see straight. The whole world turns upside down and then I'm deposited gently onto her mountainous back, looking down on the street. I catch my breath and right myself, reaching one leg down along either side of her body. If God or whoever brought me back to life just so I could live this moment, it was worth it. I take two firm fistfuls of ghostly fur and the momma mammoth jolts into a run. Without regard for which streets are populated or who might see us, she barrels headlong down the parkway.
The Council of the Dead has a very strict rule: Do not involve humans. Don't fuck with their lives, don't appear to them if you're a ghost, don't let on that you can see ghosts if you're not one. In short: Leave the greatest mystery of the afterlife a damn mystery. But the Council of the Dead also kidnapped Delton Jennings, covered him in mammoth shit and sent him off to be trampled. So if tonight a few nocturnal stragglers are startled to see a dapper and ecstatic gray-skinned Puerto Rican fly past with tears in his eyes, I could really give a damn.
The wind ripples fiercely around me, cleansing me of all doubt and indecision. What is left is pure exhilaration. We gallop down the Parkway, cut a left across Grand Army Plaza and burst like a furry ghost rocket into Prospect Park. We rush towards the turnoff that would lead to the waiting arms of the Council and their infinite imprisonment. I could urge the mammoth that way. She trusts me now. Instead, I smile as we thunder past.
The Park is alive around us. The morning birds twitter a high pitched symphony and the city forest ghosts erupt into a flurry of activity as we pass. We break out of the wilderness and speed down Ocean Parkway at a steady ass-breaking cantor, through Midwood, Gravesend and over the Belt Parkway. Ahead is the infinite Atlantic darkness. I take a deep breath of ocean air and laugh out loud. Some doofy joggers pass and try to ignore me, the crazy laughing man floating in the corners of their eyes.
When we hit sand, she's walking. Her body heaves up and down beneath me. I pat her gratefully. Then I grab hold of some fur, dangle down along her wooly flank and drop onto the beach. Side by side, we stroll to the edge of the water. I imagine a whole army of ghost mammoths, thundering out across the waves somewhere, but all I see is darkness and a f
ew stars. I don't have to tell her to go on now; after a brief pause, momma mammoth launches herself out onto the water. I plant my ass in the sand, light a cigar, and watch her flickering glow disappear into the night. There will be hell to pay in the morning – eyebrows raised, forms to fill out, suspicious interrogations. But all that is tomorrow. Tonight, for the first time since I died, I feel alive.
Salsa Nocturna
People say that all geniuses die in the gutter, and I've made my peace with that, but this is ridiculous. Anyway, it's a boiler room, but let me start at the beginning: The whole gigging around at late night bars and social clubs really began drying up right around the time the great white flight did a great white about face. Mosta my main night spots shut down or started serving cappuccino instead of El Presidente. Two of my guys moved to PA. Things were looking kinda grim, to be honest with you. I mean, me – I knew it'd work out in the long run – it's not that I'm an optimist, I just know certain things – but meanwhile, the short run was kicking my ass. Kicking all our asses, really.
So when my son's girl Janey came to me about this gig at the overnight center, I had to pay her some mind. Janey's a special kid, I gotta say. I couldn't ask for a better woman for Ernesto either. She keeps him in line, reminds him, I think, where he is from, that he's more than that fancy suit he puts on every morning. And she makes us all laugh with that mouth of hers too. Anyway, she comes to me one morning while I'm taking my morning medicina with my café con leche and bacon, eggs and papas fritas. I always take my high blood pressure pills with a side of bacon or sausage, you know, for balance.
"Gordo", she says. My name is Ernesto, just like my son, but everyone calls me Gordo. It's not 'cause I'm fat. Okay, it's 'cause I'm fat. "Gordo," she says, "I want you to come interview at this place I work on Lorimer." You see what she did? She made it look like I would be doing her the favor. Smart girl, Janey.
I eyed her coolly and put some more bacon in me. "They need someone to watch the kids at night and later on, maybe you can teach music in the mornings."
"Kids?" I said. "What makes you think I want to have anything to do with kids?"
* * *
There's two kinds of people that really are drawn to me: Kids and dead people. Oh yeah, and crackheads on the street but that hardly counts because they obviously have an agenda. Kids seek me out like I'm made of candy. They find me and then they attach themselves to me and they don't let go. Maybe it's because I don't really buy into that whole, 'Aren't they cute?' shit. I just take 'em as they come. If I walk onto a playground, and I swear to you I'm never the instigator, it's like some memo goes out: Drop whatever game you're playing and come chase the fat guy. Family events and holidays? Forget it. I don't really mind because I hate small talk, and if there's one thing about kids, they give it to you straight: "Tío Gordo, why you so big?"
And I get real serious looking. "Because I eat so many children," I say.
Then they run off screaming and, usually, I give chase until I start wheezing.
It beats How's the music business? and Oh, really? How interesting! Because really and truly, I don't care how everyone's little seed is doing at CUNY or whatever.
I'm not bragging but even teenagers like me. They don't admit it most of the time, but I can tell. They're just like overgrown, hairy five year olds anyway. Also, notoriously poor small talkers.
* * *
Janey told me exactly how it would go down and exactly what to say. She's been doing this whole thing for a while now, so she speaks whitelady-ese like a pro. She had this Nancy lady down pat too, from the extra-extra smile to the cautious handshake to the little sing-song apologies dangling off every phrase. Everything went just like she said it would. The words felt awkward in my mouth, like pieces of food that're too big to chew, and I thought that Nancy was on to me right up until she says, "That sounds terrific, Mr. Cortinas."
"You can call me Gordo," I say.
* * *
It's called a non-profit but everyone at the office is obviously making a killing. The kids are called minority and emotionally challenged, but there's a lot more of them and they show a lot more emotions than the staff. It's a care facility, but the windows are barred. The list goes on and on, but still, I like my job. The building's one of these old gothic numbers on the not-yet-gentrified end of Lorimer. Used to be an opera house or something, so it's still got all that good, run-down music hall juju working for it. I show up at 9 p.m. on the dot, because Janey said my sloppy Cuban time won't cut it here so just pretend I'm supposed to be there at 8 and I'll be alright. And it works.
They set up a little desk for me by a window on the fifth floor. Outside I can see the yard and past that a little park. I find that if I smoke my Malagueñas in the middle of the hallway, the smell lingers like an aloof one-night stand 'til the morning and I get a stern/apologetic talking to from Nancy and then a curse-out from Janey. So, I smoke out the window.
It's a good thing that most of the kids are already sleeping by the time I arrive, because even as it is I can feel my presence course through the building like an electrical current. I can't help it. Occasionally a little booger will get up to make a number 1 or number 2 and not want to go back to bed. I make like I'm gonna slap 'em and they scatter back to their rooms. Soon they'll be on to me though.
* * *
A little after midnight, the muertos show up. They're always in their Sunday best, dressed to the nines, as they say, in pinstriped suits and fancy dresses. Some of them even have those crazy Spanish flamenco skirts on. They wear expensive hats and white gloves. While the children sleep, the muertos gather around my little desk on the fifth floor foyer and carry on. Mostly they dance, but a few of them bring instruments: Old wooden guitars and basses, tambores, trumpets. Some of them show up with strange ones that I've never seen before – African, I think – and then I have to figure out how to transpose whatever-it-is into the piano/horn section arrangement I'm used to.
Look, their music is close enough to what I'd write anyway, so either they're some part of my subconscious or it's a huge supernatural coincidence – really, what are the chances? So either way I don't feel bad jotting down the songs. Besides, I started bringing my own little toy store carry-along keyboard and accompanying them. 'Course I keep the volume low so as not to wake up the little ones.
There's a jangle to the music of the dead. I mean that certain something that's so happy and so sad at the same time. The notes almost make a perfect harmony but don't. Then they do but quickly crash into dissonance. They simmer in that sweet in-between, rhythm section rattling along all the while. Chords collapse chaotically into each other, and just when you think it's gonna spill into total nonsense, it stands back up and comes through sweet as a lullaby on your mami's lips. Songs that'll make people tap their feet and drink melancholically but not realize the twisting genius lurking within until generations later. That's the kind of music I make, and the dead do too. We make it together.
* * *
But tonight, the muertos didn't show up. They never scared me. If anything they kept me company in those wee hours. But this? This silence, made me shiver and feel both like I was being watched by a thousand unfriendly eyes and all alone in the world. I looked down that empty hallway. Tried to imagine my brand-new-long-lost friends making their shadowy way up towards me, but it remained empty.
Just to have something to do, I made the rounds. Each troubled young lump in its curled up spot. Some nights when I don't feel like doing my music, I read their files. Their twisted little sagas unwind through evaluation forms and concerned emails. Julio plays with himself at meal times. Devon isn't allowed near mirrors on the anniversary of his rape. Tiffany hides knives in case the faceless men come back for her. But night after night, they circle into themselves like those little curl-up bugs and drift off into sleep.
One bed, though, was empty. The cut out construction paper letters on the door spelled MARCOS. A little Ecuadorian kid, if I recall correctly. Untold horrors. Rar
ely speaks. The muertos being gone was bad in a supernatural, my immortal soul kind of way and Marcos being gone was bad in a frowning Nancy in the morning, lose my job kind of way, and I wasn't really sure which was worse. I turned and walked very quickly back down the hallway. First I spot-checked all the rooms I'd already passed just in case little man was crouching in one of the corners unnoticed. But I knew he wasn't. I knew wherever Marcos was, there would be a whole lot of swaying shrouds with him. Remember, I told you sometimes I just know stuff? This was one of those things. Besides, I don't believe in coincidence. Not when kids and the dead are involved.
When I got to the end of the hallway, I stood still and just panted and sweated for a minute. That's when I heard the noise coming from one of the floors below. It was barely there, a ghost of a sound really, and kept fading and coming back. Like the little twinkling of a music box, far, far away.
* * *
To the untrained eye, I appear bumbling. You can see my blood vessels strain tight to support my girth. These hands are ungainly and callused. For a man who makes such heart-wrenching, subtle melodies, I am not delicate. But if you were to watch me in slow-mo, you would then understand that, really, I am a panther. A slow, overweight panther, perhaps, but still, there is a fluidity to me – a certain poise. I flowed, gigantic and cat-like, down the five flights of stairs to the lobby, pausing at each landing to catch my breath and check for signs of stroke or heart attack. Infarto, in Spanish, so that in addition to perhaps dying you have the added discomfort of it sounding like you were laid low by a stinky shot of gas.
The lobby is covered in posters that are supposed to make the children feel better about having been abused and discarded. Baby animals snuggle amidst watercolor nature drawings. It's a little creepy. The noise was still coming from somewhere down below, definitely the basement. I wasn't thrilled about this, was hoping the muertos had simply gathered in the lobby (perhaps to enjoy the inspirational artwork) but can't say I was surprised either. I opened the old wooden door that leads down the last flight of stairs and took a deep breath. Each step registered my presence unenthusiastically. At the bottom, I reached into the darkness 'til my hand swatted a dangling chain. The bulb was dim. It cast uneven light on a cluttered universe of broken furniture, file cabinets and forgotten papier-mâché projects.
Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection Page 3