Monstress

by Lysley Tenorio

  All that became of their kiss was longing. Fortunado began counting off days and weeks since it happened, believing that enough passing time would blur the night into one that perhaps never happened at all. But it only brightened in his mind, and when months dragged into a year and then another, it was an absolute truth: once, long ago, they had kissed. On nights when Vicente caroused in bars with easy women or purchased hours in a Chinatown brothel, Fortunado would lie awake in bed, so restless that he kicked away his sheets, dressed, and walked down the empty blocks of Manilatown to the Embarcadero, where he would stand by the rail and look out at the Bay Bridge, which was nearly finished. Its progress was evidence that the world still turned forward, leaving behind a night when he was truly happy, and the moment he was utterly and finally known.

  “I hate the bus,” Vicente said, sorting through a pile of mismatched socks. “The seats hurt my back. No buses, Nado.” He never wondered where they were going, only how they would get there.

  “We won’t take a bus,” Fortunado said. He stood at the dresser, gathering their California ID’s, Social Security cards, and passports, then stuffed them into a yellow envelope, along with a letter from the West Oakland Senior Center, where tenants would be temporarily housed if the eviction happened. There was no plan beyond that; some might return to another San Francisco facility, others to Daly City or San Jose.

  “Amtrak is faster. We’ll take Amtrak, right?”

  Fortunado sealed the envelope, wrote their names across the flap. “I’ve got the tickets,” he said, “don’t worry.” He looked up at Vicente, and saw that he had shaved only the right side of his face. He was careless with his grooming these days: he might remember to change his undershirt but not his underwear or socks; when he showered, he would forget to rinse the soap from his body, then go through his day with white streaks of dry soap on his arms and neck. “You didn’t finish,” Fortunado said.

  Vicente looked in the mirror above the sink, brushed his thumb against his cheek. Beneath the lightbulb above, his stubble look thorny and white, as though painful to touch.

  “Here,” Fortunado said, “I’ll do it.” He filled the sink with water, took out a disposable razor and shaving cream from the shoe box beneath. He lathered the left side of Vicente’s face, wiped his hand dry, then stepped behind him.

  “Don’t cut me,” Vicente said.

  Fortunado shook his head. “I won’t.”

  The sirens were much louder now, police shouted threats of arrest through their megaphones, but in the hall, the protesters continued: Block the front door. Check the roof. Hurry. But when Fortunado leaned in, he could hear the razor slide gently down Vicente’s skin, the drops of water trickle from the faucet, and the night was quiet again. When he was younger, he had yearned for this closeness, ached for it, and now that Vicente could no longer care for himself, these were the necessary gestures of their everyday lives. And Fortunado welcomed the responsibility, secretly cherished it. Duty fulfilled desire, as best it could.

  Vicente flinched. There was no blood; Fortunado had barely nicked the skin. But as Vicente wiped away the shaving cream from his face, Fortunado saw a spot of red, reflected in the corner of the mirror: the time on the digital clock, its numbers backwards and inverted, urgent and glowing. 12:03 A.M. The next day already, and Fortunado realized he hadn’t packed a suitcase of his own.

  1936. June. Two years in the city and nothing had changed. “What a life,” Vicente said, passing a bottle of Du Kang to Fortunado. They were on the fire escape, exhausted from a double shift, and he was drunk. “Two hotels. One where I work. One where I live.” Fortunado drank and passed the bottle back, but instead of drinking Vicente turned the bottle upside down and let the rest spill through the grate. “How can you stand it,” he said, and climbed inside as if he didn’t want to know the answer.

  Then, only a day later, there was a girl.

  Her name was Althea. Vicente was on the seventh floor of the Parkdale, hurrying to the elevator, when a maid called out, holding a gold button between her fingers. It had fallen from his blazer, and she insisted on sewing it on for him. “Guess where she fixed it,” Vicente said to Fortunado later that night. “In the Berlin Deluxe.” He spoke like he was bragging: the Berlin Deluxe was the hotel’s grandest suite, but still under renovation after a room fire six months before. “She had a maid’s key, and sometimes she goes there just to smoke a cigarette and look at the view. We sat by the window, for almost an hour. No one even saw us.”

  Except for the Berlin Deluxe, Fortunado had entered every guest room in the Parkdale, but just far enough to unload bags and luggage. He was never invited to look out the window, to gaze at the hotel’s famous city views. “What was it like?” he asked.

  Vicente looked at him and shook his head, as if what he saw was beyond Fortunado’s imagination. “You could see everything,” he said.

  The following Sunday, coming home after another double shift, they saw Althea on Columbus Street. She was standing in front of a Chinese clothier, looking at the window display, a mannequin clad in black velvet, surrounded by boxes wrapped in silver paper. Behind it was a framed map of America, and Althea stared at it, as if studying all forty-eight states. “Planning a trip?” Vicente asked.

  She turned toward them. Her red hair fell past her shoulders, and a lime-green scarf was tied loosely around her thin, pale neck; she was like no maid Fortunado had ever seen. “I’m just looking back at home, ” she said, tapping her finger on the window. “Toward the middle, right there. Wisconsin. That’s where I’m from. Mount Horeb. A tiny place.”

  “Do you miss it?” Vicente asked.

  She shook her head. “Girls back there get married, have babies, and then they’re stuck. If I’d stayed, that’s what I would have become.”

  Vicente took a step forward. “And what are you now?”

  She smiled playfully, as though Vicente had asked a trick question. “I’m new,” she said. “Like you. Like everybody here.” She took a small tin box of mints from her purse, and offered one to Vicente. “What about you,” she said, “do you miss home?”

  “I don’t really think about it,” he said, then took a mint. Only when Fortunado said hello did Vicente finally make proper introductions.

  The sun had set but the night was still warm, so Althea suggested a cold beer at a nearby tavern on Fourth Street. They walked down Kearny, crossed over to Third, and below Market the sidewalks narrowed as the crowds thickened; Fortunado fell several steps behind but could still hear Althea talk about living in San Francisco, how quickly everything moved—the streetcars, the people, even time. But life dragged too: her boardinghouse room was stuffy and dim, the walls and single window unable to keep out any noise, barely a comfort after long shifts at the Parkdale. “Sometimes I stay awake all night, no matter how tired I am,” she said.

  Vicente nodded. “I stay awake too.” They walked so close their arms could touch.

  Fortunado stopped, and as they moved farther down the block he recognized the slight zigzag in Vicente’s step. It was the way he moved the night they met at the Dreamland, and now he recognized Althea too. She could be any Dreamland girl, but there was a difference: when Vicente looked at her, she looked back at him.

  They were half a block ahead now. Fortunado decided to leave, to return to the I-Hotel or make his way to the Embarcadero, to its darkest, emptiest spot. But then a stocky, pink-faced man stepped out of a bar, his sleeves rolled up and shoes untied, and stumbled toward Vicente and Althea, raving about brown men taking white women and white jobs. He grabbed Vicente’s shoulder and turned him around, put a finger in his chest. Vicente stepped back, tried walking away, but the man took him by the collar and shoved him against a storefront window. He threw a punch, and Vicente fell.

  Fortunado ran to Vicente, fists clenched, ready to fight. But the man was too quick, too strong, and he grabbed Fortunado by the shoulder and pushed him to the ground. He heard his name—Nado—and when he looked up Vicente w
as back on his feet, punching the man in his stomach. “I’m not scared of you,” he said, “I’m not scared.” With every blow he said it, until Fortunado pulled him off.

  They hurried back to the I-Hotel, ran up to Vicente’s room. Fortunado went to the window, checking to see if they’d been followed. “We were just walking,” he heard Althea say, “that’s all.” But he knew the truth, and saw it reflected in the glass: Vicente and Althea on the edge of the bed, his arm around her shoulder.

  The last thing left of Manilatown was the I-Hotel, and the human barricade was crumbling. Fortunado watched protesters fall to the batons of police, handcuffed and dragged away, and those still standing were not enough: a group of officers finally broke through, charged the front entrance with sledgehammers in hand. Behind him, Vicente slept atop the covers facing the wall, his coat and shoes already on.

  In the hall, someone with a megaphone told tenants to keep their doors locked, block them with whatever they could move, so Fortunado went to the bureau, pushed it toward the door. But it was heavier than he thought, and he could feel his rushing heartbeat, the sweat on his face and neck. He stopped, took a breath, and just as he meant to try again he caught sight of something he had seen a thousand times before: the empty space on the floor beside Vicente’s bed. Fortunado lay there once, and he remembered how well he had slept, how Vicente’s coat had kept him warm. It was their only night together in the I-Hotel.

  In the street, in the hall, they continued: We won’t go. Save the I-Hotel. He had heard it all day and night. He had heard it for years, an entire life.

  He had strength left to barricade the door. To block the police out. To trap themselves in. Instead, he moved away from the dresser and undid the chain above, the lock beneath.

  It was 2:11 A.M., and every few seconds Vicente’s arm shook and his head jerked, as though fighting in a dream. Fortunado went to him, placed his hand on his shoulder, and even after Vicente grew still he kept it there. This was the I-Hotel’s final morning, so Fortunado allowed himself this moment and lay down beside Vicente, their bodies back to back, touching. Then he closed his eyes but stayed awake to make the last hours feel longer than they were.

  Days after the tussle on the street, Vicente would tell the story to other I-Hotel tenants. “White guy, real big,” he said, “and I showed him.” He punched the air as he reenacted the scene, but instead of applause and admiration all he received was a warning. Stay away from her. It’s not worth the trouble. He called them cowards and stopped telling the story.

  At the Parkdale, he began taking lunch with Althea. Fortunado would catch them by the loading docks sitting together on upturned crates, sharing the butter-and-olive sandwiches she packed each day. If she worked late, Vicente insisted on waiting for her, and together they would walk to their cable car stop. Their supervisor warned them about fraternizing among staff, guests stared and whispered, but Vicente always said it: “We’re not afraid.”

  Fortunado said nothing, swore he never would.

  The heat of the summer stayed through the fall. One late Sunday night, Fortunado, Vicente, and Althea sat at a corner table in the Manila Rose Cantina beneath a slow-moving ceiling fan, trying to cool themselves with glasses of pilsner. They drank in silence, ordered more pitchers than they could finish, and when they were done Fortunado was light-headed; he could see drops of sweat fall onto the paper-covered tabletop. He hadn’t felt this warm since Stockton, during those noonday hours in the fields.

  Althea undid her scarf, dabbed her face and neck. “Let’s go to the Dive,” she said, “the three of us.” Except to clean it, employees were forbidden by Parkdale policy to be near the hotel’s pool, and it was close to midnight now, long past its closing. But then Althea pulled a set of keys from her purse and jangled them in the air; three times a week she collected towels from the changing rooms, and she had gone for a quick, late-night swim before. “No one will see us,” she said. “No one will know.”

  They entered like trespassers, went down the back stairs to the pool. Their footsteps echoed as they walked along its blue-tiled perimeter, and the water’s surface shimmered green from the lights below.

  Vicente and Althea undressed and left their clothes in a neat pile on the floor. They were naked and unashamed; they had been this way before. Althea entered the pool and Vicente followed, and together they swam out, resurfacing in the deep end.

  Fortunado removed his clothes. He descended the three steps into the pool, the water rising slowly to his waist, his chest. He whispered Vicente’s name but heard no answer, so Fortunado took a breath and held it, submerged. He moved forward, opened his eyes, and in the watery haze he finally found Vicente, swimming beneath the surface. He had seen his body before—when he changed out of uniform at the hotel, or barged into his room to borrow a shirt—but never like this, so bare and open, arms held out as if to welcome him, to beckon. Underwater, they were the only two, with no world above to interfere, so Fortunado moved closer, unafraid. But he mistook buoyancy for the ability to swim; suddenly there was no floor beneath him, and as he sank he reached and kicked, as though trying to climb water.

  It took both Vicente and Althea to bring Fortunado back to the surface, to the safety of the shallow end. They held his arms but he swiped them away, then staggered out of the pool, coughing with each breath. “I’m fine,” he said, and as he gathered his clothes, he watched Vicente and Althea swim away, then disappear in a depth he would never brave again.

  They finished swimming, dried themselves and dressed, hurried to the stairwell. But Vicente and Althea continued past the lobby toward the upper floors. They had planned to collect unfinished bottles of wine left outside guests’ doors, and drink them in the Berlin Deluxe. “I’ll see you back at the hotel,” Vicente said.

  “When?” Fortunado asked.

  “Later tonight.” Vicente looked at Althea. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “You’re not supposed to be there.”

  “No one will see us,” Vicente said. “And so what if they do?”

  Vicente stood four steps above but he seemed much farther, and Fortunado kept his hand tight on the rail, as if letting go meant falling. “You’re not supposed to be there,” he said again.

  Vicente took one step down, reached for Fortunado’s shoulder. “Go home,” he said. Then he and Althea left, their footsteps growing fainter as they continued up the stairs.

  Fortunado exited the stairwell into the empty lobby. He left the Parkdale, and walked down the long hill of Powell Street toward Manilatown. It was early Monday morning. Kearny Street was deserted. Buses had ended their run, no autos drove past, and the one other person on the street was the old Filipino sitting on his top step, staring longingly at the moon.

  He entered the I-Hotel, went up to his room. He stood by his window and stared out at the blank billboard on the rooftop across, thinking about Vicente and Althea in the Berlin Deluxe, beholders of a view he could barely imagine.

  One night a week in the Berlin Deluxe became two, sometimes three, and Vicente and Althea remained undetected. They would arrive after midnight and leave before dawn, then return in uniform to the Parkdale only hours later, ready to work. But these nights left Vicente tired, which made him tardy, and Fortunado would cover for him with flimsy excuses—a stomachache one morning, a toothache the next. Weeks of this passed, and Fortunado was done. “I won’t lie for you anymore,” he told Vicente. They were on the seventh floor of the Parkdale, waiting for the elevator.

  “Sorry, Nado.” Vicente yawned, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll wake up earlier next time.”

  “Next time. Have you gone crazy? What if the boss finds you there? Or the police? What do you think they’ll do to you if they find you with a white girl? This is your life, Vicente.”

  “The police can shoot me. Throw me in jail. I’m not afraid, either way.” The elevator arrived, and they entered. “That room is good for Althea and me. A man and a woman deserve their own place.”

  “You’re
the bellboy. She’s the maid. You don’t live there. There’s not even a bed.”

  “We don’t need a bed.” Vicente winked, then gave Fortunado a quick punch to the arm.

  “Don’t,” Fortunado said.

  Vicente laughed, tousled his hair, hit him again. “Stop,” Fortunado said, and Vicente smiled, made another fist. But now it was Fortunado who threw a punch, one so strong that Vicente stumbled backwards, and Fortunado hit him again. Vicente got to his feet, pushed Fortunado against the wall and held him there, his hands on his collar, knuckles grazing his neck. They had not been this close for years.

  “We kissed,” Fortunado said. He held on to Vicente’s wrists, aching to tell more: how he slept close to the wall just to hear him breathing on the other side; how he kept the tickets from the Dreamland in his pocket at all times, a memento from the night they met; how home could only be wherever Vicente was. But more words felt like drowning, so he took a breath and repeated the one thing he knew to be an undisputable truth. “We kissed.”

  Vicente freed his hands from Fortunado’s. “Once,” he said. There was no anger in his voice or on his face, only apology.

  The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened and Vicente stepped out, then closed again. Fortunado had never struck a person before, but there were times in his life he wondered what it might be like, and now he knew: the force of everything you are in a single gesture at a single moment; the hope that it will be enough and the fear that it won’t. No different than a kiss.

  The protest was fading. Fortunado lay on his side facing the window, the room like a dream: for a moment, he could believe that a final night never passed, and a life in the I-Hotel never happened. What if, he wondered, that was someone else? But then he felt the slight shift of Vicente’s body against his own, and Fortunado wiped his eyes and rose from the bed, put on his coat.

  He gently shook Vicente’s shoulder. Vicente turned toward him, blinked until he was awake.

  There was no sledgehammer, no kick to the door; it simply opened, and in the hallway two officers stood, arms at their sides and no weapons in hand. “We’re under orders to evict you,” one of them said. “Please come with us.”