A Fierce and Subtle Poison

by Samantha Mabry

  I resisted the urge to scratch at my own skin. “No. I was kind of disoriented that night.”

  “Believe me, Lucas, I understand,” she said. “And normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, bodies in the ocean come in contact with all manner of natural and unnatural objects, and when they wash up they’re typically bloated and nearly unrecognizable.”

  In the attempt to erase yet another sudden, unsettling vision of a dead Marisol, I slammed my eyes shut and pressed my palms into my eyelids. We were now just a block away from the festival. The drums were louder; their sound bounced against the sides of my skull.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Yes.” I opened my eyes and swiveled my head around to see the detective stabbing the air with her pointer finger. “Good question.”

  Together, we rounded the corner and entered the Plaza de Armas. It was exploding with life—a far cry from the hushed and nearly vacant church we’d recently left. There had to have been hundreds of people there, all shouting and laughing over the sounds of clinking beer bottles and drumbeats. Rows of white string lights hung overhead. Pink and purple paper lanterns tilted in the breeze. Over by the fountain, near where I thought I’d seen Marisol on the night of the hurricane, four women were dancing a bomba to the beat of the drums. They clutched the folds of their long, full banana-yellow skirts, exposing their expanse of fabric. They stomped and twirled and arched their backs the way bullfighters do when they strut for the crowd and taunt their bulls.

  A little girl about Celia’s age ran in front of us. She held a red ribbon high above her head. It fluttered in the air like her own personal comet.

  Detective Lopez leaned in so I could hear her over the crowd noise. “I wanted you to know that, as far as I’m concerned, Marisol’s case is still open. Same goes for Sara Fikes. Both of the girls were found in the same general area, and they were in a similar physical condition. What you said that night—about their bodies—got me thinking these cases might be more than your standard-issue drownings.”

  Mara Lopez paused again, this time to size me up with her clever, searching eyes. I knew she was gauging my reaction, studying the ways my facial muscles twitched, taking mental notes. It was obvious she’d not just found me out to relay information. She wanted something from me; she thought I was guilty of something; she’d always thought I was guilty of something. In her eyes, she was a hammer, and I was that one stubborn nail that would never slam into place.

  “I never said anything about their bodies. I only saw Marisol’s. You said on the news that her condition was consistent with that of a drowning victim.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “So what happened?” I demanded.

  “I’m still working on figuring that out, but in the meantime, if there’s anything you can remember—anything that pops into your head—that Marisol might have said or done that could help me out, be sure to let me know.”

  My response was flat, short: “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  She cocked her head, sharp like a marionette. “Well, you may think that, but there’s this thing called repression. We see it a lot with witnesses. It’s like you forget certain . . . details about an event, especially if those details are desagradable.”

  “I know what repression is.”

  “Is that right?”

  Yeah, that was right. And I hadn’t forgotten any of the details about that night, particularly the desagradable ones. I couldn’t forget them if I tried.

  She reached into her coat again, this time to produce a business card. Several seconds passed before I took it and shoved it in my back pocket.

  “Just think about it,” she added. “You’d be surprised how even the smallest detail can crack a case.”

  Just as she said crack the crowd erupted into applause: The bomba had ended. The dancers in front of the fountain stood frozen in triumph.

  “Is that it?” I shouted over the applause. “People are waiting for me.”

  “Your friends? I spoke with a couple of them. Ruben Reyes said you have a temper. That you broke down his door.”

  What the hell, Ruben?

  At this point I had choices: I could act meek, apologetic, shake my head regretfully and say that she and I got off on the wrong foot, that I wasn’t the insufferable snob she thought I was, that when it came to me and my dad, the apple fell far, far from the tree. Or, I could tell her to back the hell off, that I just went through a trauma and wasn’t going to play the part of the villain in whatever bullshit narrative she was constructing. Or, I could choke down my pride, force a smile, say thanks, tell her I would call if and when any deep, dark memories resurfaced and then wait for Mari and Sara’s cases to close so I could get on with my life.

  “Is everything all right, Lucas?”

  “Fine,” I said, looking La Lopez in the eyes and matching her patronizing grin with one of my own. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I remember anything.”

  I should’ve just stayed home. Even at one in the morning and with the light rain, the plaza was packed; bodies were crammed up against each other and into every conceivable space. Normally, I would’ve loved that, the wild crush of humanity, but that night it felt like I was drowning.

  After Detective Lopez left me, I milled around the edges of the crowd for a while. Just before the band kicked into a new song, I turned at the sound of a shrill whistle. It was Rico. He was waving his right arm over his head to try and get my attention from across the plaza.

  I sized up the number of bodies between myself and Rico and sighed. As I pushed through, the crowd seemed to give off a collective rumble. Fingers hooked my clothes. Arms and legs in mid-twirl flew out in front of me, whacking against my shoulders and my shins. The mingled, cloying scents of cheap cologne, sweat, and spilled beer flooded my nose.

  A woman laughed, high and loud, to my right, causing my head to snap in that direction. There, through the tangle of arms and legs and long skirts, I thought I saw a dark figure in a narrow alley between two buildings. I stopped and squinted.

  It was Dr. Ford. He was crouched down in front of the little girl I’d seen earlier, the one with the red ribbon. But now, instead of being displayed proudly in the air, the ribbon was hanging limply down by her side. Dr. Ford, dressed just as he had been earlier in the library, in his brown herringbone suit and dark wide-brimmed hat, was talking to the girl. She was smiling as if she knew him.

  “Lucas!”

  I spun around to see Rico. Next to him was Carlos. They both had bottles of beer. Rico’s looked fuller, so I grabbed it from him and took a long pull.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Rico hollered as he paddled his arms through the air, in a motion I took to mean that he wanted to head to the beach. “This sucks! Too many people!”

  He’d read my mind. The heat coming off the crowd was making me feel as if my fever was flaring back up, and I craved the shock of jumping into a cold ocean.

  Rico turned and began digging through the crowd. Carlos gave me a shove, my cue to lead the way through the masses.

  “Lucas! Lucas Knight!”

  I stopped short at the sound of Rupert Ford’s unmistakable voice, which caused Carlos to slam into me from behind and spill his beer all over my shirt.

  “Damn, Luke! Watch it.”

  “Go with Rico,” I shouted, after turning to see Dr. Ford cutting through the crowd. “I’ll find you guys at the edge of the plaza. Don’t leave without me.”

  Carlos shrugged before going on.

  As Dr. Ford got closer, I noticed the flush in his face and the moisture that rimmed his red eyes. He was still drunk. But beyond that, he was furious—his jaw was clenched, the skin there pulled tight. The cords of his neck bulged.

  He stopped in front of me, not bothering to hide his derision as he looked me up and down. “Is that a new shirt?”

  An unexpected tremor rattled up my spine. I didn’t even have to look to know that I was wearing
the shirt Isabel had let me borrow the night of the hurricane. Housekeeping must have taken it and washed it and put it with all my other clothes while I was sick. I reached up and felt around the collar, and sure enough there was the mend.

  “You are such a fool,” Dr. Ford hissed. “The more you come around, the more attention you draw, and the more suspicious people get. You realize that if these people find out about her,” he said, his eyes scanning the crowd, “they will draw certain conclusions. They will take either her or me away, and she will die. Is that what you want?”

  “I wasn’t planning on . . . ” I stammered.

  Dr. Ford cut me off as he leaned in closer and gripped my shoulder with his strong, lean fingers. I glanced at his wrist and thought I saw a rash there on his skin, just underneath his rolled-up sleeve.

  “As dangerous as you know Isabel to be, she is not intentionally so.” His breath was heavy with the smoky scent of scotch. “She truly hates the fact she has the capacity to bring suffering to others. I, on the other hand, could not care less. And because of that, I will cause you even greater pain than you have already recently suffered if you do anything that could lead to my daughter and me becoming separated.”

  Dr. Ford could’ve threatened me all day, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Thinking about what might happen to Isabel if people found out she existed, however, was enough to make me quake with fear.

  What had Ruben said when I’d gone over to his house after Marisol had died: that nobody wanted me around, that my being there made everything worse?

  Is that what I did to every situation I found myself in—made it worse?

  “I’m not going to tell anyone about her,” I said.

  “I saw you speaking to the detective.” Dr. Ford’s fingers dug into my shoulder. “Just now.”

  “That had nothing to do with Isabel. That woman hates me. You heard my dad. If she could pin every crime that happens in San Juan on me, she would.”

  “Maybe for good reason,” he shot back. “You certainly have a history of stirring up trouble and not considering the consequences of your actions.”

  “I’m not a criminal.”

  “Not yet.” Dr. Ford searched my eyes for a moment. His expression was like the detective’s: knife-wielding, crafty, hunting for ways to make means justify an end. He finally released my shoulder and gestured to the far end of the plaza. “I believe your friends are waiting for you.”

  I said nothing, but stared for a moment at Dr. Ford’s bloodshot eyes and the lines that spidered from their corners. There was nothing I could say. An apology would’ve rung hollow with him—a promise would’ve done the same. Like the detective, he hated me and would always hate me for breaking into his world.

  Someone—a stranger, an obliviously happy festival-goer—bumped into my shoulder, and broke my standoff with Dr. Ford. He stayed put as I turned and began to snake my way through the crowd to where Carlos and Rico were waiting with an idling taxi. They were yelling at me to get a move on. Behind me, in the plaza, the band ended another song, and another cheer rose up.

  “Who was that?” Carlos asked, climbing into the cab.

  “No one. A friend of my dad’s.”

  Carlos let it drop; for him, it was a good enough explanation.

  On the way to the beach, as Carlos and Rico sang along to the cab’s radio at the top of their lungs, I was preoccupied by thoughts about Dr. Ford’s arms, blotched and inflamed, with tiny white blisters dusting his skin like rock salt. I’d seen those blisters on my own skin after I’d fallen into Isabel’s courtyard. They’d come along with a burning fever and delirium, slurred speech and bloodshot eyes. When I’d gone back to the hotel and looked at myself in the mirror, I’d looked . . . deranged. Tonight, Dr. Ford had looked the same.

  Isabel could do that to a person—mar them inside and out, tip and tilt them from their core. She could, of course, also do much worse.

  Fifteen

  I’D MISSED THE ocean—I hadn’t realized how much. I stripped off my shirt and my jeans, tossed them in the sand, and sprinted toward the surf in my boxers. The water, I noticed as I plunged into it, seemed off: strangely cold, with a slightly fungal scent and a less salty taste on the tongue. The recent storms must have brought new water in from far away.

  Rico and Carlos were shouting nearby. When I looked over, I could barely make out their heads bobbing up and down and their arms flailing as they tried to dunk each other. I stayed where I was, floating on my back and letting the cold water soothe the memory of my once-burning skin. The seaweed that the storms had uprooted grazed against my legs and my back. I imagined they were the fingers of dead men.

  Eventually the three of us raced through the water, parallel to the coastline. It was a dirty fight, and one that I would have won had Rico not whacked me in the face with his fist. I saw stars, swallowed a mouthful of black salt water, and thought for moment that my nose had been broken.

  Almost thirty minutes later, we were laughing, bone-tired, as we pulled ourselves out of the ocean and back onto the beach where we swatted at stray mosquitoes and stumbled around to find our clothes. Carlos tripped over a beach chair and fell face down in the sand. When he tried to get up, he tripped and fell again. The more he told us to shut up, the harder we laughed.

  When I finally got back to my room at the hotel, it was nearly dawn. I cracked open Dr. Ford’s book in bed, but it almost immediately slipped from my hands and landed on my chest as I fell asleep.

  In the morning, I woke feeling a pinch on my face. I slapped my cheek, but the mosquito was quick. He flew over to the nightstand, where he landed on the dumb cane leaf. He took a few light steps, exploring with his slender proboscis. Then he froze. His legs actually seemed to crack in half before he tipped over dead.

  Outside my door, I heard the sounds of mild chaos, mostly the hustle of feet, commands given in harsh whispers, and the squeals of carts being pushed swiftly across the mezzanine.

  Another mosquito landed on my arm. This one was slower, already fat. I was able to smash it against my skin, where it left a bloody streak.

  On my nightstand, my phone rang. It was my dad, telling me that breakfast in the courtyard was cancelled. He asked me to join him in his room, where he had already rung for room service.

  “The mosquitoes are back,” he said before he hung up.

  Every few years, from the islands to the east, millions of mosquitoes make a giant journey for their tiny bodies. Like ships, they follow the winds and the tides. Once they reach San Juan, they bounce from one thing with blood to another, attacking stray dogs as they run yelping for shelter under cars and zooming down gutters and sewers for lizards and rats. They cause the cats to howl and seek shelter up trees. They squeeze their way through the nets and screens designed to keep them out, burrow down into the folds of blankets, and find warm skin.

  A few years ago, hundreds of Puerto Ricans died of the dengue plague. The mosquitoes infected people with poison that caused their faces to swell to the point where their eyes were visible only as slits. People bled from their mouths and noses; their very own blood turned to venom.

  Back then, everyone stayed indoors and went crazy. The authorities came on the news and told us the solution was to get rid of standing water. I’d laughed. It’s like they didn’t even know the composition of their own island.

  I had a different solution. I rubbed my arms, legs, and neck with cedar and eucalyptus oil—a trick I’d gained from the wise señoras—before throwing on jeans and a plaid button-up over my white T-shirt. I was almost to the door when I stopped and spun around. With my hands wrapped in toilet paper, I tore up the dumb cane leaf and flushed it down the toilet so that the housekeepers wouldn’t accidentally touch it if and when they came into my room that day.

  Out on the mezzanine, the brief chaos had settled. It was quiet. There were only the faintest human sounds behind sealed doors. I squinted into the bright morning sunlight, and everywhere were tiny black bodies hovering, le
aping over and across one another, diving like kamikazes.

  My dad’s door was seven down from mine and around a corner. He must have heard my shoes hitting the tile as I ran in his direction, because he opened the door just as I reached it.

  “It’s bad,” he said, simultaneously fastening the latch behind us and slapping a mosquito off his wrist. “They’re saying it might be worse than last time.”

  I collapsed into a chair and poured myself coffee from a French press. On the other side of the room, facing me, the television was muted but tuned to the local morning news show.

  My dad took a seat across from me and raked a hand through his hair. “I hate being stuck here.”

  He raised his coffee cup to his lips, and I couldn’t help but notice how different he looked. Unlike himself. His hair was dirty and separated into clumps from yesterday morning’s application of pomade. He may have been wearing the same pants and shirt from the suit I saw him in last night in the library.

  I dipped my head to hide a sly grin as the question formed on my lips: Rough night?

  Instead, I asked, “So, how did your dinner go?”

  “Oh, fine.” My dad sighed as he rubbed his right temple in the attempt to massage away a hangover. I’d been there.

  He picked up a piece of toast and started spreading mango butter on it. A mosquito landed near his left collarbone. It crept around some and then stopped. My dad failed to notice. I leaned over and slapped it away.

  “I saw Dr. Ford in the plaza last night,” I said. “At the Festival de San Juan.”

  My dad took a bite of his toast and then chewed it with a look of consternation.

  “Huh. He told me after dinner that he was heading home. Perhaps he got detoured. Did you get a chance to speak to him?”