The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

by Anjanette Delgado

“But notice how she only challenged the bitch part, Iris?” said Gustavo in a weak attempt to distract us from bickering, because when Iris wanted to dislike someone, there was no stopping her. “I think she knows something we don’t.”

  What I knew was that, as grateful as I was to Gustavo and Iris, I suddenly felt alone. Like being there but not, exiled despite having gone nowhere, existing in a space where no one could really meet me.

  “We’re sorry, Mariela, but what I don’t understand is why Hector?” asked Gustavo.

  See what I mean? Not even my friends were immune. Maybe I had taken them, their love for me, and even their socially liberal views about living and letting live for granted. Maybe they were secretly as disappointed with me as everyone else seemed to be.

  “I don’t know, Gustavo. Let’s just say I’m a big whore and be done, okay?”

  “No, what he means is,” said Iris, faux-smacking him over the head, “did you love him?”

  “Oh,” I said, realizing they were just trying to understand and, as my friends, deserved an answer to their question. “I never really found out. What I know is that he was there at a time when I needed someone, anyone, to be there, and if that’s love, then I loved him,” I said, surprised at how easily I could characterize my relationship with Hector to them, but fail when explaining it to myself.

  Gustavo nodded and said, “Okay, so, good deal then, let’s worry about what needs worrying, and that’s finding a good lawyer, you know, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? In case the police decide to keep harassing you when you have no fuck-you money.”

  We’d gotten to the fourplex by then, and I was about to get out of the car when Iris’s hand shot out like a retractable blade and grabbed me.

  “Uhn-uhn. Remember: The windows are watching. Chin up, back straight, shoulders down, boobs up, and always looking forward.”

  Gustavo parked in his space facing the building, but Iris didn’t let go of me until I’d smiled, straightened up, and stepped out of that truck with my bag of groceries determined to look like I’d nothing to be ashamed of.

  I kissed and thanked them and was about to go inside when I saw Abril and Henry walking toward us. Abril was wearing a black dress with a slightly flared skirt, and Henry had gray pants, a white shirt, and a black tie. I thought he looked adorable, and then I realized the direction they were coming from: the church.

  Of course. With a funeral delayed because of the autopsy, there must have been a mass for Hector at the Coffee Park Unitarian Church and nobody had told me, probably because the people who could’ve told me weren’t speaking to me, and the ones who were, well, let’s just say now I understood Iris’s and Gustavo’s insistence on doing groceries as far away as possible from Coffee Park on that very night.

  “Abril, Abril.” Iris waved to her, thinking she hadn’t seen us. But Abril didn’t hurry or acknowledge her. When she got to us, she stopped right in front of me and glowered as if she were about to slap me. Then she said, “I’m sorry, Iris. I can’t be a hypocrite and talk to her as if nothing were going on,” and kept on walking without a word to Gustavo. I looked at Henry being dragged away by his mother, turning back to steal a glance at me, his smile more timid than I’d ever seen it. The pain in my chest was so acute, I swear to you I think I heard the sound a lightbulb makes when it goes out: a swift pop followed by the sad tinkling of minute glass shards inside me.

  “So there was a memorial?” I asked, still watching Henry, wanting to have been at the church and, despite myself, having the nerve to be upset that Olivia hadn’t invited me to Hector’s mass.

  “Yes, there was a service, but it was organized by the nature center where the wife volunteered. They didn’t really invite anyone formally. Just posted it in a few places around the park. We thought it would be better for you not to go, so we didn’t tell you,” admitted Iris, picking up her grocery bags, one in each arm. “I’m sorry, Mariela. Listen, I’m going to go talk to Abril. She’s just still in a little bit of a shock. You know she’s not judgmental. The service must’ve freaked her out.”

  I had no idea what Abril was or wasn’t, but I said to Iris, “No, no. Don’t talk to her. Let her be. It’s okay.”

  And it really was, because in the split second I’d lived inside Abril’s angry stare, I’d seen something. Something that felt important: Abril and Hector, standing very close, facing each other. In my vision, there was tension, as if they were adversaries squaring off, not exactly what you’d get from new lovers. And yet, it was an electric tension that suggested something more between them. Could they have been having an affair too? I wasn’t sure if that clarified his death or confused it, but it would make her attitude and his sudden interest in ending our relationship just before he died that much clearer. Then again, could I trust this sudden vision? Was my sight coming back? I mean, I’d been able to hear Hector just that morning, hadn’t I? Could my efforts finally be paying off? Could Abril be the missing clue to Hector’s murder?

  But then I remembered how, in the weeks before his death, she’d been going out of her way to be friends with them both, Hector and Olivia. That wasn’t something a woman having an affair would do. And she’d gone to the memorial service. Maybe I was wrong after all.

  Iris hurried off after Abril and Henry, and I turned to wave at Gustavo before heading inside, but the sight of him stopped me. It’s amazing how instantly a lost love can change the arrangement of the pores on a person’s face. The corners of his mouth looked as if they held weights that were forcing them downward and misaligning everything else. His pupils were fidgety, like they belonged in blind man eyes.

  “It’ll be all right,” I told us both, then I ran inside with my bags, dropping them on the floor, taking off my clothes as I walked, and heading straight for the bathroom, already hearing inside my head the rush of warm water filling the tub, so desperate was I to sink my body into it, to forget this whole day, this whole week, this whole month.

  “Well, is about time.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhh!”

  It was Hector!

  “Oh my God, you scared the hell out of me!”

  “You need to use the bathroom?”

  So I really had heard the water filling the tub, and Hector really had spoken to me that morning, because how else could he be in my bathroom, fully dressed with his tan cotton scarf, khakis, and trench, but barefoot, only his head and toes sticking out of the clear water on each end of the claw foot iron tub I’d painted and glazed just last summer?

  “I can see you! Wait. What’re you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” he answered. “What else?”

  “They had a service for you tonight.”

  “Humph,” he said, looking away.

  “My God. It’s really you. I can really see you,” I said, staring at him, unable to believe I’d done it.

  “Yes. It took me a while to get, how you say? The hanging of it, but am working on it. Nice hair,” he added, nodding in the general direction of my bangs.

  “I’m so glad to see you, and . . . I’m so, so sorry, Hector.”

  “For war?” he said, still struggling to pronounce, or maybe it was me, struggling to understand.

  “For being so angry at you, for the things I said.”

  “I’m dead, Merry Ella. Who cares about that?”

  He had that right.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter now, and I’m glad you waited for me because I don’t know if I’m still in trouble, and I need you to tell me . . . how it happened.”

  “This is why I’m here,” he said, then going into what sounded like a lengthy explanation I couldn’t understand at all.

  “Okay, I hate to be demanding here, but I can hardly understand you. Maybe you can do something to—”

  “You want me to ‘learn English’?” he managed.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry about that. And anyway, what I actually s
aid was ‘learn to speak some goddamn English.’ ”

  “Very funny,” he said, though the word funny sounded like he’d said hunny, the volume of his voice was a few levels lower this time, and his reflection faded and trembled like the water he appeared to be soaking in.

  “Wait. Where’re you going?”

  “I’m still here,” he said from somewhere in, on, or below the bathtub, though I could barely see him, or the water, now.

  I’d have to focus to keep as much of his energy here if I wanted to get the truth about what had happened to him, but at least now I knew I could really do this.

  “Hold on,” I said, though I had no idea where exactly he might be able to go if he tried.

  I went to the bedroom, searched for the books I’d bought the day before, and picked up Raymond Moody’s Life After Life, scanning the table of contents for what had made me buy the book.

  “I no have a lot of time, Merry Ellaaaaaa,” he wailed, his voice even lower this time, as I came back into the bathroom with the book, and sat cross-legged on the toilet.

  “I’m trying to bring you forth again. Help me! Concentrate on wanting to be here.”

  “I am here. Please . . . just . . . help me.”

  “Of course,” I said, closing the book. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why you furry?” he said.

  I had to laugh a little.

  “I’m sorry . . . that you’re going through this,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here. Tell me what happened? I’ll be quiet. I’ll listen.”

  He didn’t answer. But I felt the coolness of his long, drawn-out sigh swirl around me like a gust of winter wind. It was the sound of a spirit beaten, perplexed, bewildered, like a dog after the blow he didn’t expect, all his life confident he was the apple of his master’s eye.

  “I do not . . . I do not . . . know how. I do not know why,” he said finally.

  “You don’t know how or why you died?” I asked, beginning to get him a little better by uniting the sounds he made in my head and translating them into words with the help of my intuition, which just meant what I felt he might be trying to tell me.

  “I,” he said, and then nothing. I waited a few seconds, listening intently, but nothing more came out of him.

  “Okay, listen, let me try to bring you closer. I can’t really hear anything you’re saying right now. But this is progress, so just hang on, okay?”

  No answer, but I thought I could still feel him.

  I went to the section in the book titled “Meditation and Mediumship.” It advised against coffee, alcohol, and heavy meals. I hadn’t had a heavy meal in days, so that was good, I guessed. It also advised lots of meditation. No wonder I could see him now! Ellie’s “outing” me as a mistress had resulted in less social, more silent days, even if I hadn’t realized it just then. Talking less must’ve made me light, spiritually and energetically. That and barely eating, plus the fact that in an effort to keep myself from going insane, I had meditated (actually prayed) more during the past six days than I had over the entire twelve months preceding Hector’s death. The book also said comfortable clothes were vital, so I took off my jeans and sat on the toilet again in my T-shirt and panties.

  “Trying to tempt me?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “I no have all day!” he said before doing more of his unintelligible mumbling.

  “Hang on. I can barely understand you.”

  I breathed in and out as the book instructed until I felt myself become heavy, as in stable and centered, like a tree securely planted right onto the toilet, my roots snug somewhere beneath the bowl, alongside the drainage.

  I concentrated on thoughts of love and imagined the bathroom bursting with beautiful pink and gold light, and as the light in my head and heart became brighter, my fear of death seemed to dissolve. Nothing else mattered beyond the moment.

  Then I felt a question inside, a question I was sure was not coming from my own mind: What was my intention? And the answer, swift, if clunky: Be love.

  Be love? How did you become love, exactly? And how could I do it before Hector disappeared again? How could I love Hector now that would be different from how I loved him before? And again, the answer came quickly from somewhere I couldn’t quite pinpoint, simple and true: By wanting to help him more than I wanted to help myself. By being unequivocal in my intention of love.

  The tears came then, marching to the rhythm of my breathing, warm and flowing down my cheeks like beads on a bracelet strung by the thinnest of silk strings. I remembered the sessions of my youth then. Some friend of my mother’s would sit in front of me and give me her hands, and I’d feel the pain that shook and slung her every which way, and I’d want to help, and immediately I’d feel, hear, or know something I wanted to say to her. It’s how it had always been. I’d just forgotten.

  I thought about Hector. I tried to remember something good. Books! He’d wanted me to learn things. He’d shared the thing he valued most with me. I had loved that. I could be grateful for that. I could . . . open my eyes . . . and . . . there he was, looking at me as if I were deader than he.

  “You’re back!” I said.

  “Where to go?” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Right. Listen. Tell me what I can do? What do you need?”

  “I need . . . you . . . to help . . . meeee to know,” he said as if I were learning disabled and he was losing patience with me.

  How can I tell you what was in my heart in that moment? It was all so ridiculous, and yet, there he was, asking for help, my memory of his face now bent and twisted in worry and pain, and I didn’t have to make an effort anymore. I just wanted to make it better, to help him rest. Wanting to help by seeing what someone else could not was the reason I was there, in that moment, and maybe the reason Hector and I had “crossed paths.”

  “I will help you, Hector. I just don’t know how. You can see how hard it is for me to see and hear you. I don’t know what more I can do.”

  “You have . . . have to tell me why . . . and how,” he tried.

  “Okay, I understand. Well, I think . . . the police think . . . you were . . . murdered.”

  “Moistened?”

  “No, murdered.”

  “Ass what I said!”

  “Anyway, that’s what they’re saying. But you have to tell me what you remember. Who did this to you?”

  “I . . . I . . . I saw . . . she haaaaated me.”

  “She hated you? Olivia hated you? Was it because of us?”

  Silence. I could still see him, but he wasn’t speaking, so, afraid I wouldn’t be able to bring him forth if I lost connection, I decided to ask my questions quickly.

  “Hector? Not sure if you can still hear me, but tell me all you remember last. Who was there? What did you see?”

  More silence. Then:

  “You look goot.”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  “Last night, you looked . . . good too. And hot. You were hot.”

  Did he mean . . . ? Wait a damn minute.

  “Could you hear me calling you? Tossing and turning all night?”

  He sighed and said, “Of course,” though it sounded like “off curse.”

  “So why didn’t you come to me until now?”

  “You had tears. Not my sing.”

  “Really? Women crying not your thing?”

  “You look goot,” he said, fading again.

  “All right, Hector, forget that and please listen to me. We don’t have much time. What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I . . . I know . . . she did this. I saw her . . . hate me.”

  “Who’s she? Olivia?”

  “But I don’t know how!”

  “Hang on!” I said to his fading outline, feeling the air lighter and lighter around me with every passing second. “Are you saying Olivia murdered you?”

  And then from somewhere in the empty, dry bathtub, came his ver
y distraught lament.

  “Just help me. Please.”

  “I’ll help you, Hector. I promise. No matter what, I will help you. Now, why did you go to the park?”

  Nothing.

  “Hector?”

  I was alone again and felt with certainty that he was no longer where I could reach him, at least that night. It was just me now, alone with my shock. Olivia had murdered him after all? But how had she done it? And why after all these years?

  There was just no other explanation. She’d known I’d go seeking for the letter and had given it to me to throw me off. She’d murdered him when she first found it. But how?

  I could understand why Hector couldn’t rest until he knew. But how come he didn’t know? He had to have been there. Had she somehow made him unconscious before she hit him with some heavy object? Had she injected him with something? I got up and headed toward the kitchen, knowing I’d be much better able to think after I’d eaten something and put my groceries away. Despite everything, it felt so good to have heard his voice, to have seen him, almost as if he were alive again.

  I’d just finished putting everything I’d bought away when someone knocked on my door. The police again? I was still in my panties, so I went over and looked through the peephole. A short guy wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a red baseball cap covering half his face stood on the other side.

  “Can I help you?” I yelled through the door.

  “Delivery.”

  “I didn’t order anything,” I said.

  “Mariela Estevez?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Well, this is for you. And it’s kinda steaming, so—”

  “But I told you. I didn’t order anything.”

  “Just the delivery boy here.”

  One could never be too cautious, so I slipped him a five-dollar bill through the slot tenants used to leave me notes or their rent, had him leave it next to the door, and leave, then opened up just enough to snatch the big brown paper bag into my apartment before locking the door again and tiptoeing back to the kitchen with it.

  There were many small cellophane and aluminum containers, the contents of each one written in cursive with a thin-tipped Sharpie. There was a milk shake cup holding what looked like a mango yogurt drink, a piece of pungent goat cheese, and a simple green salad that had been drizzled with some kind of fig-flavored vinegar. There was also a small baguette and a slender white fish filet that had been lightly grilled and smelled faintly of cilantro, garlic, and lime. At the very bottom of the bag, there was a flourless chocolate soufflé that filled my kitchen with the smell of fresh butter and a bowl of coconut soup with avocado, bacon, and a dollop of sour cream as garnish. Tied to it with raffia string was a note from Jorge: