Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

by Daniel José Older

  So I don't trouble much with the others. They're fine, I'm sure. They have their occasional meetings, every few decades or whatever, and sometimes I pass through, but mostly, eh, I could go without. There'll be a day when we're all together again, I'm sure. Whatever it is we're holding these stories for will come to pass and we'll convalesce and compare notes. Until then, though, I'll just make my café, eat my mushy stuff, and mind mine, thank you very much.

  At least, that's what I would do, if I could shake this feeling. Okay. I rise, supporting myself with one hand on the table, and pad across the apartment. I say pad because I'm wearing these slightly frayed pink slippers, and when you walk around in slippers, you're padding. I hear the dust shuffle beneath them and think I'd better sweep up soon. When I reach the window, the one next to the couch, my mind starts moving fast.

  I scan the rising and falling buildings beneath me and realize that whatever's gone wrong, it's gone wrong with Hyacinth. It's a fact I'd been actively trying to ignore, but when I let my mind relax over the cityscape the knowledge just swims right to the surface. Hyacinth is my elder by decades. She's prim and proper to a fault, down and dapper with all the protocols. She's unshakable. I'd say it's even come between us some over the years; I simply tired of her being so thoroughly her all the time, and I'm sure she feels the same about me. Truth is: We're probably too much alike to be around each other for very long, but there was a time I damn near worshipped that woman. Anyway, she's the last of my sisters I'd think would fall prey to some simmering stupidity. Or whatever this is... What I need is a way to see things that are going on in Hyacinth's real physical world, because all this psychic-ether shit is great but only takes you so far.

  Beside me is a desk with a computer on it that my niece brought me and I never bothered to set up. Really, what am I going to do with it? I don't type. I have no need for company that's not flesh and blood. I thanked Janie profusely – it was very touching how she said, "Now we can keep in touch!" all excited like – but then I never set it up. My bad, as they say.

  Now though, I eye the sleeping contraption with new interest. They have ways of doing things these days, I know. This internet is full of surprises. Perhaps I could send an email of some kind and find out what's going on. Or whatever it is people do on those universal airwaves. Twit? Twat? It doesn't matter; it might work, and right now I don't have much else to go on.

  Juan-José is standing there when I open the door of my apartment. He's wearing that beat-up old Yankees cap and the same humongous headphones and wrap-around sunglasses as always. He's got a little plastic yellow flower and he holds it out to me, trying to smile with that toothless caved-in gap where his mouth should be.

  I really don't have time for this. I crane my neck and yell "Mirta!" towards the next floor up. "Miiirtaaa!"

  "¿Qué pasó?

  "Juan-Jo se escapó."

  "¡Ay carajo me cago en la madre de Dios!" Mirta yells back. Then she punctuates with a curt: "¡Coño!"

  I step past Juan-José as Mirta's flip-flopped feet storm down the stairwell.

  * * *

  Benjamin is on the phone when he opens the door, probably with one of his boyfriends back in Wisconsin or wherever. When he sees me he wipes the irritated look off his face very quickly and says, "Hold on a sec, babe." Then he furrows his eyebrows. "Fine! Look... I said hold on. Can you...can you wait? For two seconds, please, my neighbor just... Look!" He looks down at me apologetically. "Look, just hold on. Can I call you back? No? Fine, then hold on."

  "It's okay," I say, and turn to shuffle back to my apartment. Maybe I sag my shoulders a little more than necessary. Perhaps I frown some and shake my head.

  "No, wait. Babe, I'm going to call you back and we'll finish this later, okay? Fine. Yes. Goodbye." He lets that irritation slide out in a long sigh while staring at the cellphone and then composes himself. "How are you, Ms. Cortázar?"

  "I'm fine, Benjamin. I'm sorry to trouble you but I remember you said once that if I ever needed help setting up that computer I should come knocking?"

  Benjamin is wearing a puffy vest over a superman t-shirt. He's got on sweat pants and a baseball cap sits on his wily brown hair. I was wary of him when he first moved in, mostly because he wears vests and sweatpants at the same time, but he's a genuine enough soul with his little greetings in the hallway and nervous politeness. He looks puzzled for a second. I can see his mind wavering back and forth between me and the cellphone and finally he scrunches up his face and says, "Sure, hang on one sec. Lemme just send a text." He taps away at the keypad, disappears the phone into one of his vest pockets and follows me across the hall to my apartment.

  After the pleasantries and obligatory offering of coffee, Benjamin gets this very serious look on his face and sets to work. He's a computer something-or-other, it's what he does, and you can see that even a simple task like this grants him a certain determined vitality. While I watch, another story surfaces. It's a difficult one, and I wonder briefly if it's a foreboding sign before giving myself over to it. A young girl, Brazilian, who'd had a very terrible childhood. She's killing, systematically killing people who hurt her, one by one, but none of the peacefulness she'd hoped for comes when it's all over. She's just empty. There's something at the end, before it fades out, a little glimmer of hope there, some hint of her new life, but it's fleeting and when the story's over I feel empty too, and very sad.

  "You okay, Ms. Cortázar?"

  I snap out of it. "Of course, Benjamin. How's it looking?"

  "Um, almost done actually."

  It's impressive: A whole cascade of wires goes from the screen to the keyboard to the big bulky box on the ground and then a few more connect to a smaller black box with lots of blinking lights on it. "That was quick."

  "Well, you know." He looks pleased with himself. "It's what I do." Then a little buzzing noise erupts from his vest and he scowls and pulls out his phone. He taps another message into it, frowning, and apologizes without looking up.

  "It's fine. You sure you don't want any coffee?"

  "No, thanks, Ms. Cortázar."

  "Benjamin?"

  "Hm?"

  "Do you think, will I be able to be connected to the internet, when it's all setup?"

  He laughs a little and puts away his phone. "Of course! It's already mostly done and what I can do..." He slides into the wicker chair I'd set up by the desk and reaches down to flip a switch somewhere. "...is set you up with your own wireless network. Let me see..." The computer lets out a heavenly chime and blinks to life. How sweet!

  "This network setting-up thing, it would take a while? I hate to be impatient but there is actually something with some urgency I need to deal with."

  Benjamin turns around in the chair to look at me. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yes yes, just a friend of mine. She might be in trouble. It's complicated."

  "I see." Of course he doesn't, but okay. "Well, then, I can connect you through my own wireless and that'll be quicker, since your router is already set up."

  "Okay." Whatever that means.

  * * *

  I used to be so proud when people would mistake Hyacinth and me for sisters. We didn't even look that much alike, but we're similarly complected and both slender and have a spry quickness. I didn't really understand who she was or why she seemed so interested in me at first, I was just awed by her easiness with the whole world, that supernatural calm she carried. Then came the Night of No Return.

  I don't remember a lot about it except there was so much music playing and I was surrounded by women. More women than I'd ever seen. They were all shapes and sizes, so many glorious shades of brown and speaking so many different languages. I remember feeling smooth, ready for whatever may come, and realizing I had clicked at least momentarily into Hyacinth's perpetual state of elegant ease.

  I'm sure I knew somehow that nothing would ever be the same after that night, and I'm sure I didn't care. I felt those tambores radiating through my body, whispering their s
ecrets. The guitar let out an ocean of notes, dancing with me as I strode through the crowd behind Hyacinth. An enormous woman was playing a horn of some kind; it let out raw, guttural moans that sounded like the swoons of lovers in the act.

  We came to a chalk circle where the crowd had cleared some space. A very, very old woman lay on cot propped up on some pillows in the middle of the circle. She was smiling, watching the beautiful tide of womanhood swirl around her, and when I approached she winked at me and said something in a language I didn't understand. No one had to tell me the old one was dying – it was written, in the most peaceful way possible, all across her wisp of a body. "Lay down," Hyacinth said, nodding at an empty cot beside the woman. "This is how it all begins."

  * * *

  Ben says, "Ha!" which apparently means I'm connected to the internet and now fully a part of the 21st century. A page appears on the screen with little animated characters and colorful letters.

  "So this is the world wide web I hear so much about," I mutter.

  "You should be all set, Ms. Cortázar." I let a moment pass and Benjamin turns around. "Unless you need something else done?"

  "I do. But I don't know how to explain it. I'm sorry to trouble you, I know you have other things going on."

  "Oh, it's no trouble at all." He takes out his phone and makes a face at it. "Just drama, you know. What do you need to do?"

  "Well, I have a friend..." Already this sounds like one of those horrible stories you tell a late night call-in show that's really about you. "...And she's in trouble. I think. Well, I know someone's in trouble, and I think it's this one friend of mine."

  "Oh."

  "Sorry to be so vague."

  "How?"

  "What?"

  "How do you know someone's in trouble?"

  Because the knowledge is a cancer creeping through my insides. Because I know things. Because it's true. "Ah. It's hard to explain. Maybe one day. But my friend: If I could somehow, I don't know... Check on her. Is there an email that could do that for me?"

  Benjamin does some things with his face that I assume mean he's trying not to laugh. Nice kid. "Not an email, necessarily, but maybe an app." He turns back to the screen, his eyebrows arching in concentration. "I wonder..."

  "Maybe the app could ask someone else's email if she's okay?" I suggest. He's too deep in thought to answer that one so I just let him do his thing.

  "There's this one app," he says, a few hmms later. "It not only links up with satellite imagery of a particular location, that's pretty basic Google maps shit, uh...excuse me."

  "Oh, it's fine, Benjamin, I curse all the time."

  He visibly relaxes. "Oh. You can call me Ben, by the way, only my mom calls me Benjamin anymore."

  "Ben, okay. Do you want a beer?"

  He chuckles. "It's nine-o'clock in the morning."

  "I know that."

  "Well... Sure."

  "Go on," I say as I pad across the room to the fridge.

  "Oh, well this app, it's super secret actually but I know some of the guys developing it. Still pretty new and probably vastly illegal, but anyway, it hacks into all the security cameras in the vicinity and can actually give you a semi-complete 3-D map of what you're looking at. Pretty amazing shi-stuff, uh, shit." He finishes with an awkward giggle.

  German really fucked up the English language. A beer? I mean, it's simple, so that's nice. But nothing compares to cerveza with its mischievous regality. Cerveza. It's dignified. I hand Ben a cerveza, a Presidente in fact, which perhaps is not the most dignified of them all, but not bad. He nods and takes a sip. When he finishes a crown of foam ejaculates from the spout and spills onto his sweatpants. "Oh, shit," he says, "I'm sorry."

  "They're your pants not mine," I laugh, padding back to the kitchen for some paper towels.

  "Alright let me see if I can bring this app up."

  I give him the paper towels and the address of Hyacinth's Queens apartment and he clacks away for a few minutes.

  I'm getting itchy. The terribleness trembles along my spine; it's a jagged clanging that won't go away. Deep breath. Stifle impatience. Breathe.

  "Pow!" Ben yells. There on the screen is a whirling image of Hyacinth's building. I say whirling because it looks as if a helicopter is circling the place, panning every possible angle with startling accuracy.

  "Amazing," I gasp. "Tell your friends they have made a very excellent app."

  Ben laughs. "I will." He gets out of the chair and I sit, narrowing my eyes at the screen. Hyacinth lives on the third floor, I believe. Her living room window had a fire escape outside and view of the... There! I lean even closer to the screen and the image becomes blurry, full of fat, ungainly squares. But there's something there.

  "Can you, Ben, can you make it clearer?" Not so frantic. The poor boy will get scared.

  He leans forward and does a few things with the mouse. The image stops rotating and swooshes forward toward the spot I was glaring at. First it's still all messy and then, by some means of that weird digital magic, it resolves into a crisp, perfect picture.

  "My God," I whisper. Probably, Ben doesn't see it. It's just a tiny sparkling sliver, like a thread of silver caught in the sunlight. It outlines the form of a man standing perfectly still on the fire escape outside Hyacinth's window. A taker. This one would be the look out. That means that at least one other is either on the way or already inside. This is much, much worse than I thought.

  "What is it?" Ben asks.

  "Nothing," I say. The lie is plain, though. Ben reads the horror on my face but doesn't say anything

  I stare at the screen for another few seconds, making sure I saw what I saw. "What's the quickest possible way to get to Queens?"

  "The G train, I guess, but you'd have to take a bus to the station. Um, you could take a cab but it'd be pretty expensive I think." Stupid New York City public transportation. Ben considers something and then says, "Or we could take my super-scooter."

  I'm a little put out that an adult man has something called a "super-scooter," but listen, I'm in point A to point B mode, so I don't really give a crap what he calls it as long as it moves faster than the B48. And then we're downstairs in the basement storage area and Ben is pulling a tarp off something quite huge and there it is in all its glory. If a Harley Davison had its way with a prehistoric swan, nine months later you'd have a Super Scooter. "Technically, it's a personal hovercraft," Ben is saying as he once-overs it with an old rag. "But you know, they call it the Super Scooter I guess 'cause it sounds cool."

  "I didn't know such a thing even existed." I'm trying not to sound like too much of an awed schoolgirl, but the thing is amazing.

  Ben looks around and cranes his neck towards me. "Technically, it doesn't yet. But I know some people who know some people in the tech world, and...this is basically a prototype of something that'll be on the market a few years from now. I'm not really supposed to have it at all, just holding it as a favor for a guy. And I kinda swore I wouldn't ever go joyriding on it, but...you said this was an emergency, right?"

  We just stare at each other for a couple of seconds and then I nod ever so slightly.

  "Well, hop on." He sits on the cushiony seat and pushes forward to the edge so there's room for little me. I am frail, older than anyone imagines. Still, there's some room for thrill-seeking left in me. I'm both terrified and feverishly exhilarated by the thought of putting my life in this strange, skinny fellow's hands. I put my own wrinkly old hands against his torso to steady myself while I mount the thing. It hums and vibrates like a living animal beneath me – not an altogether unpleasant experience, I have to admit. Ben clicks a button, the metal gate crunches open and we swoosh out into the sunlit streets.

  At first I can't breathe. Or maybe I don't want to breathe, or just plain forget. Everything is moving so fast around me, these streets I know so well just blur past and are gone. And then I realize I'm smiling. Hugely. I must look like a babbling moron, the wind flushing through my old face, my gray and w
hite hair dancing miraculously behind me. I'm zooming through the streets of Williamsburg at mach 10 holding for dear life onto a 6'3 130 lb white boy from Wisconsin. The universe does indeed bring you to strange places.

  "You must have wonderful joyrides on this thing with your boyfriend," I say once I catch my breath.

  "Oh. I'm not gay."

  For a few moments all we hear is the wind whipping alongside us, the occasional horns of midday traffic. "Oh."

  "That was my girlfriend Diana I was um talking to on the phone earlier."

  "Of course."

  Maybe it's better if I don't speak. We zip along side streets and alleyways 'til we're in Polish Green Point, mostly quiet little houses and occasional butcher shops and bakeries. Then, very suddenly, we're flying, literally flying across the Pulaski Bridge. It's a tiny one, as far as New York bridges go. There's some industrial business going on down by the canal, along with the obligatory declaration of love and territorial dispute graffiti. The water is crisp in the midday sun and all the factories and parking lots sparkle dazzlingly along the surface. And then it's all over because we're in Queens, blasting past some warehouses and then cutting through traffic beneath the 59th Street Bridge.

  Stories are rising up inside me. They're agitated; maybe they sense the danger. Whatever it is, they need to stop. I can't concentrate when I keep getting whiffs of chocolate, whispers of rain against a window, stomach-clenching jolts of passion and indignation. I close my eyes and will them to back up off me for a bit, smile as the scattered threads of life settle back into place.

  "Ms. Cortázar?"

  "Yes, Ben?"

  "We're here."

  * * *

  The door to Hyancinth's apartment is ajar so I ease it open and poke my head in. It's much worse than I thought. The room is a mess, but not the kind you find after a struggle. There are piles of food-crusted dishes, discarded tissues, crimpled up papers. The blinds are pulled and the whole place seems dusty and grim, like you have to wade through the air. Hyacinth has been wallowing. I step in, bracing myself against the fetid smell of neglect, and gingerly cross toward the bedroom.