3
César pulled the pen out of his mouth and its ballpoint touched the dry, white paper. As the black ink bled the first dot on to the page, he began to walk into Manny’s life. He scribbled memories, familial disputes, spans of solitude, intimate moments. He sketched Manny’s world, how he saw it, how he absorbed it, how he became a part of it. He sneaked around Manny’s childhood and grew up with him. He stood by Manny as he threw his fits. He withdrew with him into his teenage years. He sat in back on his Honda motorcycle and held on tight as they raced down Mexican Federal Highway 1 from Tijuana. He watched Manny drink belligerently on street curbs. He sat in silence at dawn with Manny. He walked various cities behind Manny’s heavy steps.
Hours passed. He kept writing down all the visions he was seeing, a life he was suddenly a part of. His heart was pounding. His eyes were glazed. He lifted the pen from the page and put it back between his teeth. Manny was the most fascinating man ever to have entered his life.
Manny, my latin psycho.
Manny, my beautiful boy.
4
Notes on Manuel (Manny) Rodriguez
BABY MANNY
Born in Tijuana, Mexico.
Wait, go back: his mother. She’s from the southern region of Mexico, near the Valley of Oaxacas. Her childhood—indigenous traditions, her grandparents, the People of the Clouds.
One day, out of nowhere, her mother leaves town. One day, out of nowhere, her father comes back to say he hopes she never turns out like her mother, then leaves town again. Her grandparents love her. But they are old. They pass on. People of the Clouds go back to the clouds. No more traditions. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, men keep coming by. Barely seventeen. First baby comes. Héctor. The father takes off. She’s got something though. Other men keep coming. Second child, Graciela. This papa’s gone too. Soon though another takes his place. ‘How’s a beautiful girl like you all alone?’ Then a third child comes along, Ignacio. Just as quick, this papa scampers. Another comes by. He says something like ‘What kind of a woman let’s herself live this way? You beauty.’ He says he’ll take care of her. Out of his ‘care’ the fourth child comes, Javier. Then suddenly, Jeckyll & Hyde. Goodbye romance, hello violence. She’s pregnant with her fifth. He says something like ‘That little shit ain’t mine. You’ve been whorin it.’ Now her forehead has a glaze of sweat. She’s got constant fever. Bully tries to kill the baby several times. Bully uses his fists. But she fights off his fists. That night she’s strong, superhuman, the way a mother protecting her child can be. He says he’s tired of her witchery, he takes all the money in the house and disappears. And fifth baby comes—despite all the efforts to beat it to death. Baby Manny.
The five children grow up in filth. Circus ways, spend a lot of time calling each other bastards (because none of them have fathers). Make up easily and laugh hard at each other’s ugliness with devotion.
5
BOY MANNY
Boy Manny grows up getting into trouble. Especially with the men that come by for his mother. Little by little, he develops a dark vibe. Little by little, the men stop messing with him. Little by little, adults and kids alike start to be afraid of Manny.
Soon his own mama starts to flinch when he’s around. She thinks maybe it’s her own fault, for pushing out a battered baby.
Manny can read her mind. He says, “Shoulda let dat peeza-shit pound me to death, Ma.”
6
TEENAGE MANNY
Teenage Manny’s got big dreams and a frightening smile. He gets his way. Fifteen and shows up one evening on a Honda motorcycle. Where’d you get that? His mom’s new man asks him. Nona yer damn bizness, bitch, he mumbles. Mom’s man puts down his beer. Mom’s man swings hard at Manny. There’s blood on the floor. Manny wipes his nose and gets his ass outa there. His Honda days begin. Rides home and if the man’s around, he takes back off again. Sometimes he’s gone for days, then weeks, then it’s his birthday. Sixteen and he takes off on his Honda. Tijuana River Valley. Across the border. Hangs out at Imperial Beach. Then moves on to San Diego. Soon, his track record starts. He moves around. Goes East. Las Vegas. New Mexico. San Antonio. Florida. Traffic violations, vandalism, theft, burglary, arson, assault …
US patroller stops Manny. Tells him to step off his vehicle. Manny lifts up his seat as if he’s getting off, but then just slugs the cop in the face. The cop falls over his own scrambling, right in front of the Honda. Before the cop can get up, Manny’s revved up the bike. The cop looks up. Too late. Manny rides his Honda over the cop’s arm and off, away. The cop’s screaming in the background. Blood orange sunset.
Now the law’s really angry with Manny. But he’s hard to catch. He’s not a US citizen. Plus, sometimes thugs want him on projects. Manny says “No thanks” every time. Manny don’t work for nobody. If the thug insists, Manny gets pushy. This way, thugs and cops alike don’t like Manny.
Women. That’s another story.
7
EUROPE/WOMEN
Manny’s fucked up so bad in the States that he’s gotta get out now. He goes to Europe ’cause some girl says, “come to Europe”. She’s obviously in love with him and obviously had a father who did stuff to her, ’cause she puts up with all kinds of stuff from Manny. Even asks him to do it to her. When she asks, it makes Manny uneasy. Sometimes he does it and sometimes he says, “Leave me alone.”
One night, a new girl keeps swirling on his lap. He’s sitting outside the bar. She’s trying to straddle him. “Yer fuckin up the view,” he says, pushing the girl away. She takes off her shirt. She’s topless and it’s winter, but she doesn’t feel the cold. She wants his attention. Manny just wants to look at the sky for a bit, alone. Watch the colours change. She keeps coming back. Manny keeps pushing her away. Until she doesn’t stand up again. She’s lying topless in the street, with her legs bent behind her.
Manny continues to sit there, watches the sky turn orange then blue then violet and takes swigs from the bottle. Then he stands up and leaves. The girl doesn’t move.
8
PARIS
Manny ends up in Paris. How? Not important. Same old thing. It’s springtime. He’s walking around alone. If he sees an ant, he picks it up on his finger and walks around with it crawling on his hand for a while. Then he carefully sets it down, back on its path.
Manny’s got a thing about ants. He doesn’t like it when people step on them. All insects in general, but especially ants. As a boy, he’d be screaming, “NO SE SUBA A LAS HORMIGAS!!” with his eyes almost popping out of that thin face as his mama’s man stomped on the ant routes and laughed at the crying boy.
Fast forward. Manny’s twenty-nine, and still has the same face as a teenager. He’s sticking around Paris now. Why? Simple. He likes the skyline. But the problem is he can’t stay out of trouble. In and out of police stations. Every time they have to let him go. “Ain’t got nuthin on me, man, I’m as free as da fuckin birds all up in dat sky.”
Back to the script: four girls have gone missing with same MO. Now a fifth’s been found. Again, Manny’s picked up by the French authorities. They are just itching to catch him for something. He’s obviously “up to no good” anyway, obviously “better off the streets”, obviously “safer for everyone if he’s locked away”. But proof, they need proof. Four girls. Now five.
Manny, did you do it?
Tell me.
My beautiful psycho. All alone in this world. No one believes you’ve got a right to live. Except for me, Manny. I do. I’ve never been happier since I met you.
9
César read over his notes. They felt like a pile of intimate love letters. Things he shared with Manny that no one else would know. It was true, no one else would or could know.
The actual information he received from his agent to prepare for the audition was quite sparse.
Manny is Latino (let’s just say a criminal, the writer probably thought). Manny is complicated (let’s just say psycho, the director simplified). Manny’s charged with doing
dark things to five young women (Oh, I know a good special effects make-up artist! the assistant most likely added). All the viewers want to see a guilty Manny, a beastly Manny, a punished Manny. But did Manny actually do those things?
(You’ll have to wait thirteen episodes to find out).
10
As César got into bed that night, he went over his mantra for tomorrow’s audition.
Word that makes Manny feel in charge: Bitch
Word that makes Manny nostalgic: Honda
Word that pushes Manny over the edge: Hormiga
Bitch, Honda, Hormiga
Bitch, Honda, Hormiga
César pulled the blanket up to his ear and curled tightly into it. In the darkness, he quietly repeated the mantra with his softly closing lips. He felt that Manny was in bed with him, holding him tightly, whispering lightly into his still-boyish ear.
Bitch, Honda, Hormiga
César smiled gently. Just as he drifted away, he whispered out loud: “Te quiero, Manny …”
At that moment, he felt a distinct wind blow into his ear canal and a man’s gritty voice whisper back, “Te quiero, César.”
XV
The window
1
Béatrice sang to herself in a half-voice because it was so late. She was in bed, trying to understand her day. She had woken up with a strange urge to cough, then when she did, out had come a name. In the afternoon, she had gone looking for a dress for her concert and ended up in a stark boutique with a woman who listened to the radio between stations. There, she had found her dress. There, she had tried it on. There, she had looked exactly how she had always wanted to look. Then, there was the woman, the name. There she was, Polina. Polina. The name, like the face, ran through Béatrice’s thoughts. Do-bee-do-bee doo …
A shard of moonlight lay on her cheek. The rest of the room was a landscape of bulbous shadows. As she hummed, most of the sound remained in her throat. Only the faintest breath from the movement of the syllables escaped, and seemed to form shapes in the dimness around her. Polina’s face returned to her. One eye, tilted and almost Persian. Eyelashes dark and stiff.
Polina was watching her.
Béatrice closed her eyes and felt quite strange in her body, as if she had gone to bed without undressing. She slid her hand beneath the covers and felt the warm skin of her stomach. She turned her head towards the window. She saw the bare branches in the night air. A wind blew and shook them. As they swayed, she thought she saw a shadow move across them.
Pogulyaem?
2
There was a knock on her door. The knob turned and let in a slice of light. A bare leg stepped in. For a moment, the figure did not advance. Béatrice waited.
“Bee …?” her sister’s voice came. “Bee …”
“What’s wrong?” Béatrice said.
“Bee … I can’t sleep.” Emmanuelle said like a kitten.
3
When Emmanuelle was a child, she went through a spell of bad dreams, which little by little discouraged her from the whole activity of sleep. She would sit in bed, her eyes gluey with fatigue, clenching her fists to stay awake. At the time, her parents had tried many things. Bedtime stories, night-lights, warm milk, change in routine, a safety blanket. Their father would sit in a chair at her bedside as her protector, you can sleep now, honey, I’m here. But he always fell asleep first and Emmanuelle would be left in the dark, clutching her blanket, staring at the silhouette-lump in the chair her father had become.
Emmanuelle’s dream was always the same. A man dressed all in black with a black woollen mask climbs into Emmanuelle and Béatrice’s shared room. Béatrice is not in her bed, because her bed is neatly made. As the man makes his way to Emmanuelle, she wakes up instantly at the disturbance of his footsteps. Emmanuelle immediately looks over at the door, ready to scream. Just as she is about to call out, the woollen man covers Emmanuelle’s mouth with his leather-gloved hand. The man lifts Emmanuelle out of the bed with one easy gesture and pulls her so tightly against his stiff chest that she can barely twist, let alone try to get free. Just as the woollen man is about to take Emmanuelle away through the window, her father and her mother both walk through the door into the room. They look blurrily at her. Emmanuelle tries to call out to them, but her mouth is shut tightly by the man’s hand. All she can do is snort through her nose repeatedly. Her parents’ vision sharpens and they take notice of their daughter in distress. Her father and her mother both begin to raise their hands up slowly. Their muscles appear to still be asleep. As their hands rise, so do Emmanuelle’s eyes. She follows her parents’ hands with utmost devotion.
When her father’s and her mother’s hands reach the level of their ears, they come to a stop. Emmanuelle holds her breath. She locks her eyes on their white hands which seem to be floating in the darkness. They begin to rock, dipping slowly to one side, then to the other. Emmanuelle stares and stares as if trying to decipher a foreign symbol, but then she realises. Her father and her mother are not telling the man to stop, they are waving her goodbye.
4
And so, for a while, Emmanuelle became a little insomniac. Her mother tried lavender extract on her pillow. She rearranged the furniture. She put thicker curtains over the window. Her father stayed by her side night after night. Still, Emmanelle’s eyes sunk deeper and darker from the lack of sleep.
She refused to talk about her dream to anyone except her sister. And Béatrice knew just what to do to keep safe from such men. She let Emmanuelle climb into her bed and pull her in close.
“Bee …” Emmanuelle whispered.
“Yeah?” Béatrice replied.
“Where were you, Bee? Why did you let the man take me away …”
Béatrice paused. She inhaled, then on the exhale began to sing softly. She pulled her sister into her side and tightened the covers over them both.
“Do-bee-do-bee doo …” Béatrice hummed.
Like a potion, the tune made Emmanuelle’s eyes heavy and her breath slow.
“Don’t let him take me away this time …” Emmanuelle mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.
“Do-bee-do-bee doo …” Béatrice assured her.
Night after night, Béatrice sang to her sister and put her to sleep. Over time the dream left Emmanuelle and she regained her confidence in sleeping alone.
The sisters kept their secret. But once in a while, the nightmare came back to Emmanuelle, and when it did, she went back to Béatrice just as she had done in her childhood.
5
“Bee …”
Although Emmanuelle was now twenty-eight, she came into her sister’s room that night and spoke with the same voice as the terrified and sleepless eight-year-old girl.
Béatrice pulled open the bedcovers and Emmanuelle climbed in. She curved her body inward and placed her face against Béatrice’s bare shoulder.
“Sing me something, Bee,” Emmanuelle mumbled into her sister’s warm skin.
As Béatrice began to hum, Emmanuelle closed her eyes and wrapped her arm around her sister’s waist. It wasn’t long before both sisters were asleep.
In their sleep, in this quiet room at the top of the house, Polina watched these two women over the bed. Telo, Nomer, Chiffre, Youpka …
XVI
Bitch. Honda. Hormiga.
1
In the northwest suburb of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, the morning is quiet. César is walking through the empty, white streets, following the building numbers with his eyes. Just don’t over-think it, he is telling himself as he walks up to the flat, grey building. He checks the plaque near the door for the Studio floor then buzzes in. “Second floor.” The doorphone spits out.
Upstairs, the tripod is set up, the assistant has made sufficient copies of the script, and the two technicians in loose, black jeans are closing the shutters on one of the overhead lights.
2
A woman with long, brown hair in a loose, silver silk blouse tucked into her high-waisted jeans is standing in the open door
. As she takes a step back, her heels make a click sound on the floor. She gives César a half-hearted smile with her thin, raspberry-painted lips, then turns her head back to the man swirling the coffee in his small espresso papercup and itching his greying sideburn.
“Marcel’s kid’s here,” she says.
The director looks up. He glances at César’s face, then takes a moment to review his body. He smiles, revealing two front teeth bent slightly into each other, as if he’d been punched in the face in his childhood.
“Well, well, looks like we got a little shit on our hands … Bravo, Marcel,” he says and nodded as if Marcel were in the room.
“The lights are ready,” a man says from the back.
“Did you mark the tape?” the assistant calls back, her voice with a tone of perpetual disappointment.
“Yep. Ready to roll,” the man replies.
“Do you want a coffee or something,” the assistant asks César.
“No thanks.”
“Okay then, let’s get you in here.”
3
César sat down on the cold metal chair in front of the bare table representing the “interrogation room” for the audition scene purposes. The other actor, playing the detective, had his strong, wide back to César, facing the wall, quickly going over some vocal exercises. “Dee dee dee. Da Da Da. AH AH AH.” The assistant came up behind César and pulled his arms down to the back of the chair. César immediately pulled away, and turned around, startled. The assistant held up the pair of handcuffs in her hand, sighed, and said in an annoyed tone, “It’s part of the scene …”
César flushed with embarrassment and let the assistant handcuff him to the metal chair. The woman rolled her eyes and twisted César’s arms down and around until his hands touched each other. She clicked the metal rings around his wrists and on to the bars of the chair. When the rings snapped shut, the cuffs hit the bar they were attached to, sending a buzz up the chair. He instinctively jerked and the cuffs cut into his wristbone. César’s elbow twitched in pain. He could feel the assistant growing irritated with him. His neck bent down apologetically.
The Natashas Page 10