San Juan Noir

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San Juan Noir Page 4

by Mayra Santos-Febres


  “We’ve got the Barrio Obrero panty-snatcher,” the young officer says into his walkie-talkie. “Don’t let Rivera leave—we need him to open the file.”

  And then Chin pictures the screwdriver again. He remembers it disappearing into the hedges surrounding Angelito’s patio. What he can’t remember is if he wiped off his prints before throwing it away.

  Invisibility, he prays in silence, but his wish is immediately annulled by the blinding flash of a camera.

  TWO DEATHS FOR ÁNGELA

  by Ana María Fuster Lavín

  Plaza del Mercado

  chewing aspersions

  and spitting on bodies until the soul is soiled

  —Anjelamaría Dávila

  The first time I saw someone die was also the first time she and I came face-to-face. Her eyes met mine, then she turned around. She walked away to the rhythm of salsa in Taberna Los Vázquez; her footsteps and the old musicians’ cadence entranced me. In the distance, someone called her with a voice very similar to my own: “Mita, c’mon.” There, for an instant, we saw each other. She opened the door to another mirror. I was certain I was no longer alone.

  * * *

  It was December 28, Innocent’s Day, and that night I’d gone to the little plaza in Santurce to meet up with my friends Omar and Margarita, who were celebrating their honeymoon. They’d set me up with a blind date, which, as usual, was shit. The aforementioned Don Juan, named Beto—Bert in English, like the stupid Sesame Street character, of course, not like Beto, the gorgeous singer of La Ley—passed the time reading me high-minded poems: If Borges did this, if Che Meléndez did that . . . I recalled another poet, who looked like a pigeon filled and about to burst with Vaseline. They found that bastard dead in the Plaza las Américas parking lot. I laughed to myself. My friends thought my blind date was making me nervous.

  The night continued with a long monologue about Beto’s studies in comparative literature and languages. I spaced out, remembering my last ex, a professor of English at the university who constantly talked about himself and about his ex-wife who’d taken his apartment and lived there with another woman and three cats. Beto had the same tone of voice and the same smugness. The chatter of this date was just as insufferable. “And that’s why I hate cats,” he said. I went to order two drinks. I looked at the clock. We’d been talking for forty-five minutes. Another guy who hates cats, I thought. He must’ve also been dumped for being an idiot.

  “Why do you hate cats?” I asked him when I got back. He started to tell me about the cats of Cortázar, some other writer. Of course, then he complained about his last girlfriend, how she slept with her cat and how the cat’s hair on the bed disgusted him. I thought about taking my revenge against his idiocies. I also thought about Mita, who disappeared down the street to the rhythm of the pleneras.

  My friends were sitting and kissing among the avocado trees on the little plaza, and I asked Beto for a triple shot of vodka on the rocks. He’d had a shot of B-52 and I’d had a whiskey on the rocks. Alcohol helps me move apathetically in the face of cretinism. He continued his monologue, culminating in another of his poems. This was the vilest, most damned Innocent’s Day in my whole life. As tends to occur, he began to get clingy, cheesy, cunning. I remembered what my mother once told me: there are some men who are just like a bottle of beer—from the neck up, there’s absolutely nothing.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “No, I live nearby down Canals, turn on Primavera, and keep going to Estrella, straight up to Bayola.”

  “Look, beautiful, it’s dangerous for a woman to go that way alone, I’ll walk you. Besides, the night can’t just end so quickly.”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to comprehend that he was fucking up my night. What a cesspit of a man. “I’m leaving now,” I told him.

  “Don’t be silly, it’s still early. C’mon, Ángela, don’t be mad.” The poet moved closer, almost grazing his chest against mine, running his hand across my hip.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll walk you. Really, it can be dangerous.”

  “Let’s go then, but be quiet and don’t touch my ass.”

  I picked up my pace. We were passing under the graffiti-covered bridge, and in the distance I saw Mita disappearing into the shadows. I smiled. Beto was beside me, he stroked my back, resuming his monologue, and brought his hand down to grab mine. I felt the brush of his lips against my neck, like a poltergeist. I pulled away and shoved him. He fell down in the street and groaned. He was drunk, and when he tried to stand up, he slipped and fell again. Unfortunately for him, a car was passing by at full speed, and it hit him.

  I hid around a corner at the end of the bridge. I’d heard the crunch of his bones, his moan mixed with the whisper of blood escaping his mouth. The driver had fled. My soul took flight too, escaping through my throat. I hurried to my apartment, assuming the worst, imagining his body crushed like a trampled dove. I was so scared that I thought I was dying as I tried to open the door to my apartment.

  I poured myself a glass of wine and stayed in the little room with my computer. I looked at my hands, which shook, and drank, drank, and shook. I got a text from Margarita asking where I was. I replied that I’d escaped from Beto because he was a waste of time, that he’d gone to buy some drinks at Velázquez, and so I’d left. Margarita texted me that she thought she’d seen him talking to some friends of hers. Could he be alive? Impossible. I didn’t tell her what’d happened­, danger disappears if you ignore it. I wrote: Don’t set me up on any more blind dates. She replied with a sad face and told me good night, the next time she’d find me someone more fun.

  I kept drinking wine and writing. My hands, fallen into insomnia, kissed psychedelic shadows that wrapped themselves in the silence of the pathetic memories of that night, of old exes and future loves, until I fell asleep. I got an unexpected text, an ex who wanted to see me, he was drunk, no doubt. I dreamt again about the poet’s blood, about Mita, and about a poem dancing in my bedroom.

  * * *

  I woke up at sunrise with the sensation that it all had been an illusion. I was confused. The whispers of loneliness suffocated me. I opened the door of my apartment and saw a dead dove. I closed it quickly and slid the little chain. Terror gripped my spine. I looked at my phone: no calls. I turned on the news: they weren’t covering the poet’s death. And yet, I expected that they’d come to arrest me any minute. I ate a light breakfast and wrote all day long, as well as the next day and the next, trying to free myself from my amputated memories.

  * * *

  I didn’t leave my apartment until New Year’s Eve. Mami had called to have me come over on New Year’s with them. I went as far as the door, lay down to peek below it, saw nothing. My hands shook, I made it into the hallway. In the area in front of the building’s entrance, some kids were playing with a ball, and Doña Cleo, the lottery ticket vendor, gave me a number for free. I went to a nearby supermarket that had a cafeteria, and I ordered rice with chicken, potato salad, and the newspaper. I texted Margarita and she replied that she was in New York with her cousins.

  I took out my notebook so I could write while I ate, and I remembered the voice that’d called to Mita, so similar to mine, almost my own voice—the moment that I knew I wasn’t alone. It isn’t loneliness that suffocates me, but the recycling of pasts, the shadows of the witching hour, my Aunt Mabel reproaching me for not marrying or having kids, going to a party and right away someone asking about my ex, or why I don’t have a boyfriend, or why I work in a bookstore when I could be a university professor. What’s suffocating about loneliness is other people. For a few seconds I felt bad for Beto, but I rid myself of the feeling quickly. Some memories bring negative consequences. I kept writing.

  I listened to my neighbor, girl of the eternal dubi dubi, who was protesting into her cell phone because she’d called the salon and they d
idn’t have a single appointment available to dye her hair and fix her nails. “The biggest tragedy since Fortuño lost the governorship,” she said. I couldn’t write anymore. I got up, wanting to tell her what I really thought: Who do you think you are? Do you think your life matters to anyone? Instead, I went to buy some wine and cheese to take to Mami’s house. In the hallway, I ran into the neighbor girl and muttered, “Cunt.”

  I went down Calle Loíza toward the intersection with San Beto. There was an AMA bus at the stoplight. I looked at the window. There was a girl there, reading; she lowered the book and looked at me with a slightly surprised smile. My reaction was the very same smile and a powerful attack of arrhythmia. The light turned green, the bus continued on its way, and I continued on mine toward San Beto. One by one, my footsteps sank into the memory of the woman in the window. She looked just like me, I was certain. I felt a little light-headed and sat down in the parking lot across from the synagogue. I lowered my head. I was sweating, a cold sweat. I opened my eyes and Mita was sitting beside me. I tried to touch her, but she moved quickly off toward a nearby Catholic school, and I headed on to the condo where Mami lived, just past the children’s hospital.

  That night I rang in the new year in Mami’s apartment, with my three brothers, their wives, and my nieces and nephews; also Julio, a neighbor from Spain who was a cook at a pizzeria in Hato Rey. The kids watched YouTube videos on a tablet, my mom prepared rice and beans, and my brothers and sisters-in-law talked about their jobs, inescapable even on vacation. Their lives are as small as their offices, like worlds all their own where the rest of us are invisible.

  Mami was sad because January 1 was the five-year anniversary of our father’s death, and she cooked to forget. She runs a little business where she sells carrot and amaretto cakes at the bookstore on Ponce de León. Mami respects my individuality, so she doesn’t ask questions about my life. She’s also the only one who reads my childish stories. I told her that I thought I’d killed a boy. She laughed as if I’d delivered a Cantinflas monologue, and said, “You wouldn’t even kill in your dreams.” She gave me a kiss and poured two cups of coffee-flavored Pitorro.

  Julio, also invisible to my brothers and their wives, was on the balcony. I poured him some of the Pitorro and we chatted for a while. He talked about new pizza recipes, about a Dominican lover he had three years ago who’d slather him with coconut oil before they made love. As we drank more, we reached a complicit silence. We looked out at the city from the balcony, and I told him about the woman I’d seen who was identical to me, that I thought I’d killed someone, and even about my two encounters with Mita. Julio told me that sometimes nightmares mix with memories and these memories are all we have left when everyone’s abandoned us. We hugged and gave each other a light kiss on the lips. We’d always wanted each other, but never found the synchrony in our lives to be together. That’s our destiny, we, the others.

  Julio began to grow pale. He clenched his jaw, his eyes seemed to be popping out of their sockets. He pressed his chest and was sweating as if it were noon on a summer day. He grabbed my shirt and I started to scream for Mami and my brothers. Julio vomited on me, pissed himself, and collapsed to the floor. I tried to stand him up, I took his pulse, I gave him mouth-to-mouth. Nothing. At last, my brother Alberto came and helped me try to resuscitate him. My sister-in-law Teresa called 911. The ambulance arrived twenty minutes later. Julio died at my feet of a massive heart attack, in an ocean of vomit and piss.

  * * *

  It was very late when Mami was finally, after a few tranquilizers, able to fall asleep. I left silently. The street was deserted, the fog from the cool morning hung in the air, mixing with the smoke from all the fireworks that had roared, bidding farewell to an unforgettable year. It’s nice to walk in the early morning. Those seconds spilled into the air incessantly, just empty games, spells armed with lies, like stopping the breath of a dead man to give last rites to another illusion.

  Mita appeared in the dark alley that took me from Calle del Parque to Avenida de Diego. I told her that Julio had died before ringing in the new year. I cried a little. She looked at me. We continued on our way and a vagrant vomited on the curb. I caught him just as he was about to fall, and sat him down. He looked like a zombie; he fell asleep like that. I left him a container with a little bit of rice and beans, two pasteles, and a drumstick. Mita rubbed against my legs. She also was a creature of the night.

  Another resident of the street slept on the sidewalk in the light of Pizzeria Macabre (the name that my ex had given it). There, three musicians played their last notes among Medallas and cigarettes. The flute player offered to buy me a drink. He told me that his home was the night and loneliness was his lover. The New Year’s Eve celebrations intoxicated us with greater nostalgias than the alcohol. I said goodbye to him and took a couple bottles of beer in my backpack. Mita was waiting for me and we went on our way in silence. I was ready to invite her to come stay with me if she wanted. But after opening the condo door, I looked back and she was already gone.

  * * *

  I woke up after midday. I was weak; I had a coffee and sat down to write. I remembered that I might’ve killed a man, that these days death was caressing my footsteps. I also remembered the girl who looked like me. Seeing myself in the mirror of death or the mirror of another life, parallel to my own maybe. Just seeing myself confronting the possibility of being someone else.

  Already nightfall, I got a text from Margarita telling me to be careful, not to go walking at night, that she’d had a nightmare in which I was attacked by a woman. At that moment, they knocked on my door. Two police officers. They asked me if I knew Beto Matías and Angelina Fabrani. I said I’d gone out with Beto one night in Santurce. They asked me where I’d been that night. I told them. They asked me if I was Angelina Fabrani. I said my name is Ángela, last name Fuentes. They asked me to accompany them to the precinct on Calle Hoare with my ID. There I learned that Beto and Angelina were suspected of beating a vagrant, a woman, and a cat that morning, and leaving them to die, bleeding out, dismembered. They showed me a photo and I started to cry. It looked like Mita and the vagrant to whom I’d given the food.

  After four or five hours, they let me go. I called Mami on my way home. She was calm. I continued walking, with the feeling that I was being followed. I picked up my pace. I called Margarita. She didn’t answer; neither did Omar. I sensed footsteps almost on my heels. A hand touched my shoulder. When I looked behind me, I saw myself. The other me laughed with a voice similar to mine, but it wasn’t my laugh.

  I pushed her and started to run, then looked back. There was no one. I ran down Ponce de León to Calle Canals. I continued to my building without stopping. At the pizzeria on the corner there were two patrol cars and an ambulance. I approached. There was a black shoe on the ground, a case on the other side. I picked it up; it contained my friend’s flute. I went as close as the onlookers and police would allow.

  The man’s nose was broken, under his bare feet the blood formed a pool. His left eye was about to pop, a piece of his glasses stuck into it. He called to me and I went to him. I hugged him and cried. He said, “Be careful, my girl.” He passed out, then they took me away from him and put him in the ambulance.

  A hand blew me a kiss from a car that passed slowly by. I was sure that it was the other me; I heard her mocking laugh. I tried to run after her and I slipped. I stepped in the enormous pool of the flute player’s blood and sank into an immense darkness. It smelled like death. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting in one of the booths in the pizzeria. One of the musicians, my violinist friend Javi, had bought me a vodka with orange juice. He smiled, with traces of bitterness in his expression, and said: “You fainted when you tried to wave to someone.” We drank together, but almost without talking. I kissed the corner of his lips, and he hugged me tightly against his chest. We kissed softly, those kisses recovering something of our lost humanity, or the last hidden orgasm before dying. We said goodbye with a nod. He didn�
��t get up.

  Walking home, my footsteps sank into the asphalt. I lowered my eyes but couldn’t see past my knees, my feet and legs were beneath the street. I got to the stairway with my waist almost touching the concrete. Mita was sitting in front of the door to my apartment. Her tongue flicked across the tip of my nose. At last I started to feel like I’d recovered my body. For a while I forgot the past hours, but not the smell of blood. Mita lay down on the sofa. I poured myself some wine and turned on the computer. I had to write to recover. I had the sensation of living different lives.

  * * *

  I returned to myself. My fingers fell between the moldering memories, between my thighs too; I was touching myself, I recognized my lips, my clitoris. I masturbated as I wrote, and my blood moaned metaphors. Maybe each word could rescue me, splitting apart every scar of my fears. The words and my body melted together, the living words, my hot cunt. I could feel that other me kissing my neck, her hands playing with my nipples; I got even more wet. I thought about how that other me had to be that Natalie, and about Mita, and about all the deaths too. The two of them were always nearby when they occurred. That other me, could it be possible? My pussy convulsed, my other hand wrote automatically on the keyboard. At last I could cry out.

  * * *

  In the morning my cell phone woke me. It was Javi, the violinist. He asked me how I was feeling and invited me to breakfast. He told me that the flute player had died shortly after arriving to the hospital. While we were talking, I saw Mita jump off the balcony. I lived on the first floor, but it was still dangerous. I dropped my cell phone, ran after her, but couldn’t see her anymore. I went back to the phone and asked Javi if I could come over, because I was feeling really messed up. I got a text from Margarita saying I should call her as soon as possible. I ignored it.

 

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