I cook breakfast, usually just eggs scrambled with fresh peppers, onions, and tomatoes, and beans, the refried black beans that are so special here, and sometimes fresh cheese made locally, and fresh tortillas that I get from a man on the path. I smoke the local cigarettes. I buy fruits and vegetables from indigenous women, enraptured by their freshness and lack of pesticides, mangoes and papayas and pineapples, several different kinds of bananas, tomatoes as sweet as plums, bell peppers as crisp as corn chips. I pick out strange new items to sample: pitaya, güisquil.
When I swim, I swim toward the volcano, breaststroke, eyes open both below and above the water, and as I surface I feel almost amphibious, staring at the volcano—ageless, older than man—and dream in my waking life of a time when jaguars roamed the highlands and monkeys still lurked in the trees. It wasn’t that long ago, I am told. I feel as if I have fallen backward in time.
A week here is like a lifetime in the States. Only a week since the man appeared at my door again and told me that Balam’s body was shipped to the States, only a week since I sent word to Chinatown. A week here can change your mind about everything—about life, about the reason for it, about why yours turned out the way it did. I see it all around me—gringos who came for a weekend and stayed two years, travelers who were on vacation and decided to quit their jobs, loners who met someone and changed the entire trajectory of their lives. Anything is possible in a place such as this. And like all extremes, the opposite is equally true—nothing is possible in a place such as this.
I’ve been dreaming. Sleeping without alcohol has opened my unconscious, and my dreams have overtaken me, inoculated me. Always, I am dreaming of her. Of a love that could drive a man to kill another. I am dreaming of a woman I barely know, a woman so beautiful that I shiver at the thought of her, at the memory of her touch.
I am waiting for her. When she arrives, I will be here. Waiting.
Acknowledgments
This book was born in South San Francisco, raised on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, and revised and edited in Brooklyn and New Orleans. Thanks to my associates and accomplices in all of the above, particularly:
Thanks to my father, Duane Spinelli, for letting me slide on the rent on his childhood home in SSF for a couple of months while I was first imagining Ashley. This book owes so much to that house. Thanks to my Uncle Steve, my cousins (the Wrecking Crew), Patricia Dixon (RIP), and my grandparents, Burnell and Margaret (RIP), for making that time so memorable. Thanks, Mom, for always taking us to California.
Tremendous thanks to mi hermano Balam Sapper for letting me steal so liberally from his life, and for all the feedback and suggestions. Thanks to everyone at the lake who supported and distracted me during my working sabbaticals. Raising a glass to Nikki Lane, Eva Zeppa, and all the chuchos. This book owes much to that place too.
Thanks to Robert Lee for encouraging me to finish the book once I figured out where it was going, and for design counsel; to Will Kenton for always being both supportive and critical; and thanks always to Mike DeCapite for encouragement and off-line advice beyond odds. Thanks to Meghan Carey Kates for bringing it home once again with the stunning cover design. Thanks also to Kimberlee Hewitt for help with photo retouching, and to Elizabeth Fox Poff for all the work on 13spinelli.com.
Thanks to Daniel Maurer for taking an interest in me and putting me on the Bedford + Bowery team.
THANK YOU, Aaron Petrovich, for taking a chance on a book by a random guy at BookExpo America, for loving it, nurturing it, and demanding it be better than it was. Thanks to Johnny Temple for publishing it, and to Ibrahim Ahmad, Johanna Ingalls, Susannah Lawrence, and everyone at Akashic for all the hard work.
Most of all, thanks to my wife, Ronit Schlam, for her efforts as publicist and editor, and for encouraging me to keep putting myself out there. I wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise. I hope you enjoy this book (the one the moms can read).
Grateful acknowledgment to Bitter Fruit by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, which is recommended reading for anyone interested in the atrocities in Guatemala perpetrated by the United States in the 1950s.
Additional acknowledgment to SFGate for details on unsolved murders in the Bay Area:
Zamora, Jim Herron. “S.F. on Grim Pace to Set Homicide Mark in ’96.” February 7, 1996.
Sward, Susan. “SLAYING UNSOLVED/Cops Explore Connections, Coincidences in Natali Death.” June 4, 1997.
“EAST BAY/Oakland Man Slain—Parked in Own Driveway.” August 19, 1997.
And to the New York Times for the Michael DeVine story:
Dillon, Sam. “On Her Guatemalan Ranch, American Retraces Slaying.” March 28, 1995.
Dillon, Sam. “Guatemalan Chief Tells Colonel to Sue.” March 30, 1995.
BRADLEY SPINELLI is the author of the novel Killing Williamsburg, and the writer/director of the film #AnnieHall, which the Village Voice called “fascinating.” He contributes to Bedford + Bowery and lives in Brooklyn.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
©2017 Bradley Spinelli
ISBN: 978-1-61775-498-2
eISBN: 978-1-61775-505-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935082
All rights reserved
First printing
Akashic Books
Brooklyn, New York
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Website: www.akashicbooks.com
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