Latin Moon in Manhattan: A Novel

by Jaime Manrique

  “I don’t believe it for a second,” snapped Carmen Elvira, slapping her knee. “Gabo would never do that. He’d never betray his country; he’s one hundred fifty percent Colombian.”

  “But he’s lived in Mexico for thirty years,” Olga insisted.

  “So what?”

  “His children were born in Mexico,” Olga expatiated.

  “I don’t care what the National Enquirer prints,” Carmen Elvira scoffed, chugging down another aguardiente. Her speech was becoming slurred. “Gabo and Colombia will always be one, indivisible.”

  “Yes,” Irma seconded her. “Like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  The theological turn of the conversation warned me it was time to split. “I got to go,” I said. “I have to go visit a friend.”

  Always the gossip, Carmen Elvira inquired, “Claudia?”

  “No, my friend Bobby.”

  “Bobby Castro? Is it true he has AIDS?”

  I stood up. “Yes, he’s dying. Thank you for the delicious lunch. It was … nice to see you all,” I said. Now that I was standing, I realized the aguardiente had gone to my head; my feet were wobbly, and the ladies and the room swam in front of my eyes. “And I’m really … pleased to be a member of The Parnassus.”

  “Wait,” Olga said. “I promised Lucy a couple of pasteles.”

  Irma said, “Send her some figs. They’re really fresh. My cousin brought them from Bogotá yesterday. These are Buga figs, Sammy. Be sure to tell that to your mother; she adores Buga figs. Actually, take all of them. I have plenty more at home,” she finished magnanimously.

  Minutes later, after another aguardiente for the road, and carrying a supermarket bag filled with Colombian delicacies, I staggered into the afternoon sun.

  4 Mothers and Sons

  It was a ten-block walk from Olga’s home to Bobby’s apartment. The scene with The Parnassus women had unsettled me; memories that I had suppressed long ago were becoming exposed. Or maybe it was just the aguardiente, or the fact that I was ambling down the shady streets of Jackson Heights on a placid summer afternoon, going to see my oldest friend who was dying of a disease that seemed the product of a science fiction horror fantasy. At any rate, all kinds of freaky thoughts crept into my head.

  Colombia is known as—among Colombians—The Country of Poets. Any Colombian worth his salt is at least a closet poet. It was our love of some poets—and our hatred of the Spanish Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez (whose “Platero and I” we ridiculed cruelly)—that had brought Bobby and me together.

  There are a couple of things I ought to clarify. I was born in the town of Barranquilla and, at age seven, after Father ditched us, we moved to Bogotá. However, four years later, in pursuit of a man she had the hots for, Mother moved back to Barranquilla. That’s where Bobby and I met, at Colegio Americano, an American Baptist school that took all the rejects of the Catholic schools, in the hope that we’d all become militant Baptists. Bobby and I were chubby, unathletic, and loved movies and books. I was convinced that Bobby was a genius. While I barely managed to pass, Bobby made straight A’s. He was a brilliant mathematician, and wanted to be a writer or a painter. He read books in both English and French.

  On Saturdays, and during school vacations when I remained in the city, I’d go to spend the day at Bobby’s house. I’d arrive early in the morning, and we’d usually play chess until lunchtime. Then we’d go to the patio, where we sat under the guava trees and read books aloud, especially Hamlet, which we never tired of rereading. It was at that time that Bobby encouraged me to enter a declamation contest, which I won. For the next few years, I entered, and won, many of these events. Bobby served as my coach. We favored the poetry of José Asunción Silva, a romantic, morbid suicide; and also the poetry of Porfirio Barba Jacob, Colombia’s poet maudit.

  Bobby and I came from different social backgrounds. His mother was an executive secretary for Cola Román, a soda pop company, and they lived in a modest house in a blue-collar neighborhood. I, on the contrary, was the son of a wealthy man. After Father left us, he had been generous with Mother, so we didn’t have to worry about money. Also, Mother’s lover was a high-ranking official in local government; he was director of the state brewery. We enjoyed luxuries such as a limousine and a uniformed driver. Most adolescences are unhappy, but mine was particularly miserable. I hated school, my classmates, and the town of Barranquilla. Books and movies were my only refuge; and Bobby, Claudia Urrutia, and my sister were the only young people I felt close to.

  As I walked into a section of Jackson Heights that consisted mainly of small apartment buildings, I could feel the supermarket bag shaking in my hand. The closer I got to Bobby’s home, the more upset I became. My last visit with Bobby had been at the hospital in May. Then, I thought he’d never leave the hospital alive. What was left of Bobby was in a respirator, so he couldn’t talk. He looked like an extraterrestrial creature, with a big head and a shrunken body. His eyes, which had sunk a couple of inches into his face, were open, but unfocused. It was obvious to me that they were not looking at anything. I sat for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the bouquet of yellow roses I had brought him, aware of the noises of the different machines and of the nurses in white gowns and white gloves who entered and exited the room.

  By the time I arrived in front of the brick apartment building where Bobby had moved over a year ago, I was feeling pretty frazzled. I lit a cigarette and stood at the entrance, wondering whether I should go in or postpone the visit. But I knew that Bobby wasn’t going to be sticking around much longer. The possibility that he would again not recognize me at all upset me still further. I felt guilty that over the long period of his illness, I hadn’t been by his side more often. I climbed the steps that led to the buzzer system. I was about to press the button for his apartment when a voice behind my back called, “Hey, Sammy.”

  Turning around, I saw my nephew on his bike.

  “Gene, what are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “I went by the crazy ladies’ house and they told me you were coming here. Man, those women are a trip and a half.”

  “Anything wrong?” I asked, walking down to his bike.

  “What’s that smell? Are you loaded?”

  “I had a couple of aguardientes. That’s all.”

  “Yeah? Well, it smells like a couple hundred to me. You smell like … like … like …”

  “It’s the pasteles,” I said, pointing to my bag.

  “Oh, okay. Can I ask you a favor? I’m working until late tonight, and I rented a couple of movies. Could you take them home for me? I could lose them, going around on the bike.” He reached into the basket on the bike’s handles and handed me two plastic cassettes.

  “Rocky Rambo Dumbo,” I teased him.

  “Man, I told you. I hate that shit.” Suddenly, there was a loud metallic beep. “Got to beat it, man. That’s my beeper.”

  “What kind of deliveries you make, anyway?” I asked, noticing a bunch of white envelopes in his basket.

  “Can’t talk now. I’m late. Thanks for taking the movies home for me.” He lowered his sunglasses and put on his headphones. Grabbing the bike’s handles, he shouted, “See you tonight at Saigon Rose. It’s the big night, eh? Congratulations. Claudia’s a cool chick. Take care. Say hi to Bobby,” he called out, and zoomed off, pedaling furiously.

  The Claudia situation, I realized, was seriously out of control. However, there was nothing I could do about it now. Putting the movies in the shopping bag, I rang the buzzer.

  I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. After years of visiting Bobby in swank lofts and apartments, coming here felt like going back ten years in time, to when Bobby still lived in Queens, working during the day and going to school at night.

  A new nurse opened the door. I explained who I was. She informed me that there was nobody at home, except Bobby, who was asleep. “Mr. Martinez,” she said as I headed toward Bobby’s room, “Mr. Weisberg [Bobby’s lover] called to say he
won’t be back until six o’clock, and I really have to go home. Would you mind taking over for me until he arrives?”

  Being alone with a dying person made me nervous, but I said I would gladly stay. We went into the bedroom where Bobby was sleeping. The room was tidy and cool, and Bobby’s body was covered with light blue sheets. On a wardrobe was a vase with red roses. The shades were open, and the afternoon light streamed into the room. And yet, there was something icy about it. Death had Bobby in its bony grasp already, as the French would say. On Bobby’s night table was a large tray crammed with medicine bottles. However, I was relieved to see that he wasn’t on a respirator. The nurse pointed to a card with phone numbers I should call in case of an emergency. Then, matter-of-factly, in the calm, blank manner of people who deal with death on a daily basis, she removed her plastic gloves, gathered her things, and left. I took a chair and sat next to the head of the bed. Three machines were hooked to him. One to his nose, one to an arm, and the last one (which leaked a greenish liquid that looked like mint liqueur) attached to a patch on his skeletal chest. The patch itself looked rotten, like putrid flesh. Bobby’s hair was longish and had obviously gone unwashed for several days. I sat a foot or so away from his face and now I could study it in detail, something which on prior occasions, when he had been awake, I had been too self-conscious to do. He was beginning to look like a recently excavated mummy. The skin between the eyebrows and eyelashes had sunken even further than the last time I had seen him, so that even in repose his eyes bulged like golf balls. The skin that covered them seemed translucent and thin like a spider’s web. The eyes remained open a third of an inch, so that only the whites of his eyes showed. His entire face, including his parched lips, was peeling off in white, crispy flakes. He had become a monster.

  Bobby’s faint, irregular breathing frightened me; I felt sad, depressed. It was hard for me to believe that this was the Bobby I had known since childhood. For a while I had hoped that a miracle would happen, but now it was clear that Bobby was going to die. What disturbed me most about it was how quiet, how undramatic it all seemed.

  At his death, Bobby would be taking with him a big chunk of my life’s memories. Even when we had been apart, we always kept up a correspondence. After I moved to America, I didn’t see him for four years, until one morning when he showed up unexpectedly at our home in Jackson Heights. I hardly recognized him; he had grown tall, willowy, extroverted. He stayed with us for several weeks. Right away he informed me that he was gay—this was in the late seventies—and that he couldn’t stand living in Colombia as a homosexual. He had come to the United States, he announced, to be “a free fag.” I was still struggling to come out of the closet but when Bobby appeared again in my life I understood that I had to move out of my mother’s house if I was ever going to accept my sexuality. His example was very important to me in this respect.

  He got a job working in a factory that made plastic ashtrays, moved into an attic not far away from us, and enrolled at Hunter College, where he took evening and weekend classes. His main goal at that time was to move into Manhattan as soon as possible.

  After I finished my B.A., I decided to return to Colombia, where I hoped to settle permanently. Bobby warned me that as a gay man I wouldn’t be able to adjust. He was right: two years later, I returned to the States. By then, Bobby’s fortunes had changed. He was now the manager of the plastic ashtray factory and a partner as well, had finished his B.A. with honors and enrolled in the N.Y.U. Graduate Business Program. He moved into a loft in SoHo. The building had gone co-op and he purchased the loft, which he converted into a beautiful place decorated with art and antiques, his new hobbies. He was also involved in a multitude of business enterprises, and was beginning to become extremely successful in his investments. He bragged his portfolio was worth almost a million dollars. Bobby became infatuated with the American dream. His goal was to be a millionaire by age twenty-five.

  I resented his material success, his handsome and successful boyfriend, his possessions, his trips all over the world. Ironically, the freedom he had sought and enjoyed in America was the very thing that was killing him. Bobby was proud of my writing and encouraged me, but he disliked the fact that I was a poor poet.

  In the early 1980s, he was on his way to becoming a Wall Street tycoon. He purchased a luxurious condo behind the World Trade Center, became thinner, more polished and elegant, took elocution lessons, and was the very image of the immigrant made good. Sitting next to him, it occurred to me that we were the first generation of immigrants who had skipped the ghettos altogether, who had been able to go directly to the suburbs and to college, who could return to our homelands for weekend trips. Our homelands were so near, by jet, that in spite of our adaptability and American ways, we did not feel the need to shed our Colombianness.

  I decided to turn on the TV, hoping to catch an afternoon baseball game. Remembering the two movies Gene had asked me to take home for him, I took out the two plastic cases. They had no labels on them, which was peculiar. I turned on the TV set and opened one of the plastic containers. Inside I found a plastic bag full of a white substance. I unzipped the bag, stuck my finger inside, and tasted. It was pure, uncut cocaine. A bag of cocaine that was worth a fortune. “Shit,” I uttered.

  “What?” a voice said behind my back. I turned around.

  “Sammy, are you all right?” Bobby said in English.

  I was astonished to see him speaking. “Bobby, I thought …” The words choked in my throat. I hurried to his side and sat on the edge of the bed. I felt overjoyed: I thought I’d never see Bobby conscious again.

  “Oh, how nice. You brought me a present,” he said pulling his hands from under the blanket and touching the bag in my hands. His smile was like an open fan. “You brought me cocaine. But I could never snort all that coke even if I lived to be a hundred years old,” he said, examining the bag. “Are you trying to become a yuppie overnight?”

  I explained how I had come into possession of the cocaine. I pulled out the other plastic box. It contained only Marlon Brando’s Last Tango in Paris.

  “So he makes home deliveries,” I said.

  “This is Jackson Heights, you gringo. Not Times Square. I’m constantly getting flyers under my door. If I weren’t about to croak, I’d love to take a hit. But go ahead; don’t let my deathbed scene stop you from getting high.”

  “I gave up drugs, Bobby.”

  “Good for you. It only took me ten years of lecturing you before you finally caught on. I see you haven’t given up alcohol. What’s that smell—aguardiente?”

  I gave him an abridged version of my induction into The Parnassus. Bobby looked amused, and struggled to pull himself up in bed, coughing like a lawnmower cranking without oil. His face became cherry red. I looked in the direction of the tray of medicines. “Is there anything I can get you?” I asked, when his breathing had settled a bit.

  “Actually, yes. Here, help me to remove this thing,” he said pulling out the plastic tube in his nose. He handed it to me and asked me to turn off the oxygen tank.

  “Should you be doing this?” I was alarmed.

  “Sammy, it’s just oxygen. But I’m breathing okay without it, aren’t I?”

  I did as he told me. I was fidgeting and a tic began to twitch under my left eye. I wished that Bobby’s lover would show up; I didn’t want to be alone with Bobby in case his condition deteriorated suddenly. He asked me to help him sit up on the bed with some pillows behind his back. I was astonished at his weightlessness, and when I placed my hands under his armpits, his arms were thin and light, like breadsticks. Settling in his new position, Bobby said, “What does this remind you of?”

  I was too muddled to think; I shrugged.

  “Camille, you dummy. Remember how we used to play Camille during religion class?”

  “We did?”

  “Ave María Purísima pues,” he said, affecting a Medellin accent. “I don’t know how you can be a writer with such a lousy memory. I sure hope
you’re not planning to write anything about me after I’m gone. Don’t you remember we used to play Marguerite Gautier? We’d take turns coughing, and we’d imagine we were dying of consumption. Remember how Profesor Rincón—I swear he had a crush on me—for the most part ignored us. But one afternoon we must have pissed him off more than usual because he called on you. In that wonderful baritone voice of his he said, ‘Mr. Martínez, since you seem to know so much about this subject that you don’t even have to pay any attention to what I’ve been saying, would you be kind enough to explain to the slower students in class the meaning of Jesus Christ’s immaculate conception?’ I thought you were gonna shit in your pants; you looked whiter than chalk but you said, ‘I hate to say it, sir. But in my opinion it means that St. Joseph was a cuckold, the Virgin a whore, and Jesus a son of a bitch.’ Sammy, you used to be incredibly funny. I don’t know what happened to your sense of humor.” Bobby cackled, slapping his hands on the bed. I laughed too, until I remembered that my wisecrack had gotten me expelled from school for fifteen days.

  “And who was our heroine?” He continued with his nostalgic vein.

  “Vanessa Redgrave,” I offered, remembering how we loved her in the life of Isadora Duncan.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no,” he chanted. “Close, but not quite right. Maybe this will help.” He made a V with his arms; the pajama sleeves dropped to his elbows, revealing his emaciated extremities. “Now you remember?”

  I shook my head.

  “Diana Ross, you fool.”

  It might have been funny if he hadn’t looked like a death camp survivor. It was a horrible sight. The only part left of the Bobby I had known was his humor.

  “Okay, it’s like this,” he said. “I’m scared shitless of dying, but I keep telling myself that it’s important to die with a good attitude. You know what I mean? If there is an afterlife (and I sure as hell hope there isn’t; one life is enough for me, thank you), I don’t want to start it feeling sorry for myself.”