“What have you done with her?” Felix said, helping himself to garlic olives, pretzels, and beer.
“She’s just gone away flor a few days.”
“Mouth acting up again?” Felix’s teeth were capped, Regino was sure of it. “You ought to bring your kisser over to my station. I’ll have Dad take a look at it. You know, put it on the scope. Prob’ly just needs a little grease.”
That was it. Regino opened his mouth as wide as it would go and let out one clear, crisp note so high and sweet and ethereal, it gave Felix a nosebleed.
“Cut it out!” Felix said, trying to stanch the bubbling brain-blood gushing down his lavender silk shirt.
But Regino liked his sudden talent and continued to sing. Felix became woozy and fell to his knees. Blood began seeping from his ears. It was as if his head were in a microwave oven. He was sure he would be dead soon.
“Bastard,” he said and lost consciousness.
When he awoke, Felix was lying on a small cot inside Isabel’s pantry. Cans of tomato sauce and lima beans scowled at him. His head throbbed miserably. He could barely see. His nose and ears had been stopped up with wadded-up bulk cotton.
“Regino?” he said.
Regino looked in through the little window in the door, his eyes smiling viciously.
Later when Felix was able to walk, Regino helped him to his Escalade and, through the use of sparse erudite body language, told him to go straight to hell.
“I’m going to report you, you bastard!” Felix said as he threw the car into reverse.
“I’ll sing.”
Regino opened his mouth, about to reach for the note that could make the saints weep. Felix screamed and blasted backward out of the driveway, taking a neighbor kid’s tricycle with him.
“Pendejo,” Regino said and went back inside to order a meatball sandwich.
Regino called the manufacturer of his mouth and explained to the customer service representative in Manila about the singing. The agent claimed he never heard of it and referred Regino to some electronics company in Singapore. After repeated calling across several continents, Regino gave up.
Apparently, the singing was an undocumented feature of the mouth. It was not referenced in any of the manuals he’d received, and it wasn’t a malfunction. It was cruel magic.
Regino remembered reading somewhere that the inventor had gone mad, and he decided to pay the man a visit. Helping himself to Isabel’s credit cards, he booked a flight to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he knew Mr. Vrolo was recuperating.
Though Vrolo was only fifty—the same as Regino—he looked ninety. His hair was close-cropped and white. His eyes were a kind of blue metallic china. Intense, seeing everything and nothing. Set beneath a thunderhead of wiry eyebrows and brooding beetle-browed unforgiveness.
“You’re wearing my mouth,” Vrolo said. “Tell me, have you sung lately?”
The inventor was apparently having a private joke at Regino’s expense. His eyes gamboled like cold, blue flames.
“I have sung a strange and wonderful song,” Regino said. “But I don’t know why. And it hurts people.”
“Yes, it does.” Vrolo’s look became discerning as if he were sizing up Regino for the job of Savior of the World (for which there just happened to be an opening). “And?”
“And I almost killed my cousin Felix.”
“Good. But you really ought to learn to control it,” Vrolo said. “To refine it. It comes to you raw, you see, filled with promise and dread. But it can be taught to be useful. You’ll see.”
“I don’t know what you mean. What are you talking about?”
“It’s the Angels’ Song. I discovered it by accident.”
“You mean, the mouth?”
“Yes. It’s programmed in. Part of the works. Can’t function otherwise. Company knows nothing about it, the fools. It’ll kill.”
Regino looked on in a kind of gentle horror born of dark desire as Vrolo opened his mouth and let out a soft, elucidous whisper of a note, so light and killing it made a doddering, palsy-ridden old man in the corner of the room dance like Fred Astaire momentarily, then collapse into a viscous liquid coma.
“There now. Get the hell away from me and let my madness alone. Wait! Have you seen any bright lights?”
Regino stumbled out of the day room as orderlies rushed in to help the old man who was by now quite dead. His mind crammed with possibilities, he flew home to practice.
Felix didn’t like what he saw. There was Isabel on a ladder, painting the front of the house. She seemed to be smiling. He adjusted the huge headphones padded with drugstore gauze and got out of the car.
“Everything looks perfectly normal to me,” said his friend and fellow Rotarian, Police Captain Putzmeister.
“What?”
“I said everything— Oh, never mind.”
They wandered up the walkway, Putzmeister admiring the house and Felix glowering with a loathing suspicion.
“Hello, Aunt Isabel!”
She nodded and smiled some more, then continued painting a world of her own. Regino answered the door wearing a new cashmere sweater, wool slacks, and four hundred dollar shoes. He was heavier and had a rosy goose liver pâté disposition.
“Uh, Regino, this is Capt. Putzmeister. He’s here to drag your guilty ass off to jail.”
“Hold on now, Felix,” Putzmeister said, chuckling amiably. “Nobody’s dragging anybody anywhere. This is America. May we come in?”
Graciously, Regino admitted them and stopped to check on Isabel. “Don’t forget under the eaves, mami.”
“I won’t, sweetheart!”
The house was different. Felix gawped at the new furniture, expensive electronic equipment, and serigraphs on the wall depicting lusty European women in compromising positions dominated by swarthy, slick-looking men wearing tuxedos and holding bullwhips.
“What’ve you done to her?” he said. Regino gazed sympathetically at Putzmeister.
“Uh, Felix seems to have the idea you’ve, uh, ‘done’ something to your mother. Heh-heh. You know, threatened her or something.”
“What?” Felix said.
“Look, will you take those damned things off!” Putzmeister yanked the headphones off Felix’s head.
“Ow!”
“Now, I don’t know about you, Felix. But I see nothing wrong here. Everything looks just fine to me.”
“No, no, no! I told you in the car. It’s that voice. He’s done something to her. With the voice! Look at all this stuff!”
“Hm. Uh, Mr. Lopez, do you sing?”
Regino smiled self-consciously. “Why, yes, Captain. I was just getting ready to practice when you came in. Do you like Schubert?”
“Are you kidding? I love Schubert!”
Confidently, Regino went to the new grand piano and slid out a drawer from underneath the keyboard. Then, he put in a disc. The piano began to play “Ständchen.” And Regino, his mouth no longer plagued by software glitches, serenaded the two men—but mostly the cop—in German.
He performed the deep abiding sadness that Putzmeister had never heard before. He intoned the closeness of it, the heart’s gentle yearning. He sang the hell out of it.
When it was over, Putzmeister blew his nose and wiped his eyes. “That was beautiful! As fine as anything Fischer-Dieskau ever recorded.”
Felix didn’t hear because as soon as Regino had opened his mouth, he jostled the headphones back on. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Lopez. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother, Captain. Come over for dinner sometime, and I’ll sing some more for you. I’m working on Verdi.”
“What a talent!”
Outside, Isabel had fallen off the ladder and broken her arm. A jagged piece of bone bathed in a pink film was sticking out of the skin in an altogether unwholesome manner.
Felix ran to her. “Aunt Isabel!”
“Oh, my,” she said and fainted.
After returnin
g from the ER, Regino decided to give his mother the rest of the day off. Then, noshing on cold salmon and imported beer, he thought of ways to perform his microsurgery on more people.
Vrolo was right. You had to learn to control the voice. In its feral form, it could ruin a person—drive him out of his mind. But purified, it could perform delicate alterations of the brain’s structure, accomplishing what lobotomists had only dreamed of.
Like a delicate laser, you could focus the instrument on specific areas of the brain. You could dissect here, cauterize there. You could make a violent person calm, a milquetoast bold, a domineering land shark with a taste for blood sweet.
Regino didn’t want his mother destroyed. Far from it. After all, she had all the money, and he needed her to continue writing checks. So he read anatomy books and practiced on neighborhood dogs and cats. At first, the wretches died of madness. Then, he learned to think sweet thoughts. That helped some, and they only bled to death from brain hemorrhages.
After months of work, he was ready to try it out on Isabel. She had returned only a week before, tanned and rested. She had lost weight and intended to file charges against her son for assault and battery. Somehow, though, she never got around to it. Once surrounded by the familiar objects of her ivory life, she settled down.
But she was still abusive. She needled Regino and laughed cruelly at his attempts to better himself. She wondered how much Felix made last year after taxes and how many girls his strapping teenage boys were having sex with. She thought she and Felix’s family ought to go on a cruise together.
It was during The Bold and the Beautiful that Regino made his move. Surprisingly, it didn’t take long. Just a few seconds here at the commercial break, a few seconds there. By the time the program was over, Isabel was different. And the best part: she didn’t appear to notice the change.
Regino had only to sigh in her direction, and she would fix him a meal fit for King Edward. He kissed her, and she pulled out her checkbook to write any amount he wanted. She tucked him in at night and ironed his underwear in the morning. He had it made.
Now, there would be girls at the house and music and parties. He had only to use the voice. And politics! Why not? He could run for mayor and live in a big country house. Then governor, then President of the United States!
These were only some of the things Regino dreamed of in his room at night as he savaged himself. He thought of monumental decisions vis-à-vis the fate of the world. Trips to the great capitals. Thunderous applause. Too bad Vrolo went loopy. Poor bastard. He just didn’t have the stomach for it.
But why waste time with small-town politics? Why not get it over with and do everyone? Oh, this was great. He had to think. Why not go on the radio—no, television—and sing in the horrible, sweet voice that would bend men, women, and children to his will? They would worship him and give him things just as the defeated, simpering Isabel lived to do.
Oh, this was devilish. Regino wished he could tell Vrolo so they could laugh together over it. Why not call him?
“Mr. Lopez, I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Vrolo has passed away.”
“What!” he said, collapsing on the bed.
“It was very sudden. We’re all still a bit shaken.”
“B-but how...”
“Well, seeing you’re a friend, I’m afraid he killed himself. In the hospital bakery. You see, we had been letting him work there the past few weeks. It seemed to relax him.
“And one morning we found him in the ginormous mixer twisted in and around the beaters. He-he’d been making musical bread!” She was crying all over again. “It took the firemen hours to get him out. Of course, the service was closed casket.”
“Stupid fool!” Regino said and hung up.
He hated Vrolo. The thought of him sickened Regino. He wanted to rip someone’s heart out. Fortunately, Isabel was out buying him a black forest cake.
Now, all of his energy—every waking moment—would have to be spent planning his coup. How could he get on television? A commercial! He could buy time just like the beer and diaper companies did. But his commercial would have to be broadcast nationally. And it would have to run on all of the major networks at the same time. That would take lots of money.
He went into his room to work out his plan. He didn’t even come out to eat. The next day, he called all the networks to find out their advertising rates during prime time. Hundreds of thousands of dollars! Well, you have to spend money to make money. After this, he would reap millions.
Regino hadn’t even considered the cost of making the commercial. He knew nothing about advertising and would have to hire someone. And what about the video crew? If he sang, they would go berserk right there, and the commercial wouldn’t get made.
He became depressed. He started drinking more and eating less. Even the vacuous, accommodating Isabel couldn’t cheer him up. She even offered to call up strange girls for him. It was no use.
Regino spent all of his time in his room planning. He didn’t bathe or open the windows. The air got rank. Somehow, he would have to pull it off. He would have to equip everyone on the set with gauze and headphones. And when it came time to edit the commercial, the editor would have to be protected. There were other considerations, too. For instance, what about the technicians who programmed the commercial each night for broadcast. Where did it all end?
After weeks of calling and planning, Regino emerged from his room gaunt and lifeless. He had poured his heart into his work. The result was four three-inch binders of notes and six cardboard storage boxes of backup material. He was ready.
“Mami, I need seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Can you get it for me right away?”
“Of course, Regino. Anything you say.”
She pulled out her checkbook, and his eyes sparkled. People who said money wasn’t the answer were idiots.
“When’s dinner?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the grocery store has cut us off. And so has the butcher. I meant to tell you, but you were so busy with your work.”
“What!”
He grabbed her checkbook and saw all of the checks she had written over the past several months. Grocery, meat market, department store, art gallery. Each amount was entered neatly and the balance updated. But at some point, the balance had dipped below zero and there were no subsequent deposits to bring it back up.
Regino’s heart felt thick and painful. All this time, his mother had been buying him things and never admitted that her money—all of the money they had in the world—was gone.
As he flipped frantically through the pages of the check register, the lights dimmed, then went out altogether.
“Well, that’s the power company,” she said.
“Call someone! Get it back on!”
“The phone’s been dead since Tuesday.”
“Let me think, just let me think!”
He needed the old Isabel—the conniving one. She would know what to do. She would take charge. But he couldn’t risk it. He might do irreparable damage, and he would have to explain a dead mommy. Felix would like that just fine.
“Tell me, mother,” he said. “Isn’t the house paid for?”
“Why, yes.”
“And can’t we borrow against it to pay off some of these bills?”
“I suppose. But shouldn’t someone be working? I mean, the bank normally likes to see at least one employed person.”
“You could work. You could clean houses or something.”
She smiled and patted his cheek. “That doesn’t pay very much, Regino. But if you want me to, I will.”
“No, you’re right. Besides, you’re old.”
“Yes, I am. And I’m sorry about that, Regino. Shall I kill myself? I will if it’ll help. Now, where did I put that meat cleaver?”
“What? No! Just shut up and let me think!”
Regino’s first day on the job was impossible. Felix treated him like pus and
loved every minute of it. But there was no choice—he had to go on somehow. This was survival.
Felix had cosigned with Regino on a thirty-year mortgage at Isabel’s insistence. And just to show there were no hard feelings, he gave Regino a job busting tires. But Regino had to sign a contract in the presence of attorneys promising he wouldn’t sing, hum, or whistle within five miles of Felix or his family. Hungry and desperate, Regino agreed.
As he pecked at his lunch, Regino dreamed of how one day he would sing loud and strong, and bust Felix’s smiling head right open for him. He dreamed of raising the seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for his commercial and ruling the entire free world.
Lunch. On a tight budget, Isabel did spiritual things with Spam. But Regino just couldn’t choke it down.
A Proper Revenge Takes Time
It must’ve happened when my head hit the bar. I was sure one of my teeth was loose now. Rolling my tongue over and around it, I pushed and prodded it as if it were an unwilling dog. Then, in one sickening, submissive sigh, it shifted. I heard a small sucking noise. Then the salty taste of blood. I could feel the sharp-edged bottom of the crown with the tip of my tongue. The tooth was bad.
I had tried to brace myself with my forearms, but I slipped on a puddle of beer and reeled forward. He was right on me again, too. I had no choice but to fall.
The whole side of my face ached as I drove away, repeatedly checking the rear-view mirror. My lips were purple and swollen. My right eye looked like a raisin surrounded by morbid purple plaster. I don’t even remember how I made it out of that dive after I cut him; it all happened so fast.
It was late. I hadn’t seen any cars for a long time as I flew up Interstate 15 through Barstow—the opposite direction of where I needed to go. My head hurt worse now, and all I could think about was getting a drink and some sleep. But I had to get out of there—far away—from that sleaze bar I had had the bad luck of walking into. Was that the CHP up ahead?
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