Hot Sur

by Laura Restrepo

  “Why would you bother?” was all she said to me, but I suspect that deep down the gesture had moved her.

  After a while I asked, “Do you want me to go?” And she asked, “Where?”

  “To your trial, María Paz. I want to go with you.” And she accepted, but accepted without much excitement, and so we remained there, acting like strangers. Me from a simple and calm world, she from one shaken by drama; me with a secure future, she with her fate hanging by a hair; me looking at her from between the ears of the White Rabbit, she sitting on the bronze mushroom beside the Mad Hatter; the two of us finding no way to break our deafness, or our muteness, because we had failed to articulate what we had wanted to say from the moment we met. In any case, I felt exhausted, defeated, convinced by that point that I had invented everything, that all that give-and-take at Manninpox had been unilateral, that any give had a corresponding take that was just a figment of my imagination. Standing there, it occurred to me to ask, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” The riddle posed by the Mad Hatter in Carroll’s book. I guess I asked it because what else was there to say with us just standing there. María Paz knew how to respond: “I give it up. What is the answer?” she said. Exactly what Alice says. She must have read the book at least twice, because she knew exactly what I was talking about and kept to the script perfectly. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” I replied, just as the Mad Hatter did. Bingo! There was the magic, the connection, the key to the door that was closed until that moment.

  Then finally we laughed, as if we had suddenly recognized each other. We hugged. Holy shit, what a hug, the great, long hug of two people who become one, using four arms to press in, to amass, until they find that they no longer want to let go. Her face buried in my chest, my face buried in her hair, a long-expected, long-awaited hug from eternity to forever. I mean, it was the hug of a lifetime. Things between us began to proceed as before, or much better than before; arguably, we moved the second stage of a narrative, which graphic novelists call “things go right” and that comes after “conflict begins” and before “things go wrong.” By now, we were starting to float in the bliss of “things go right,” and she told me she wanted to know something about my world because I had shared hers during my days at Manninpox, but she did not know anything about mine except what she had imagined from the few facts that I let seep in.

  “We can do that later,” I said. “For now it is important you rest and get ready . . .”

  “Perhaps there is no later,” she said. “I want to do it now.”

  I asked her if she wanted to visit Dorita, and it upset her because she thought I meant my girlfriend. I explained that Dorita was not my girlfriend but the girlfriend of the suicide poet, and that she and the poet were the protagonists in my series of graphic novels. I suggested we visit the Forbidden Planet on Broadway, which sold manga and anime, retro and modern comics, pop-culture items, Japanese figures, and T-shirts and hoodies, and where both vendors and patrons were fans of my novels. I explained that Forbidden Planet was a heaven for nerds, a nostalgic corner that smelled of lost childhood, where children who were no longer children went to look for toys. It had been one of my places of worship and a great showcase for my Suicide Poet and His Girlfriend Dorita. She agreed to go but said she wanted to eat something first.

  We went into the first diner on Madison Avenue that we passed and ordered spinach omelets and salad, and she began to recount, from beginning to end, the implausible events that led to her release from Manninpox and the multitude of things that had happened since. All of it was very emotional, and I thought she was going to break down and start weeping, but she didn’t: my girl was beyond tears. Though the trial was to take place the next day, we did not say anything, not a word, not mentioning it as if to not tempt fate. But, finally, the topic had to be addressed; it was unwise to continue avoiding it.

  “The only thing that’s important now is the trial,” I said, very aware that it was not the best way to approach the issue. She remained firm and did not answer. Instead, she talked a lot about Sleepy Joe, her brother-in-law, and confessed that she had also been his lover. She harped so much on this guy, it made me feel lousy, because at the time, she seemed interested only in him. And what a story she told, a folksy and spooky version of the drama of Paolo and Francesca, the two kin who become lovers and dwell in Dante’s hell. The difference was those two had been killed by the husband, while in this story the husband was dead. According to the description María Paz offered of her brother-in-law, I saw him as a sexist, an abuser of women, an ultra-Catholic, an uneducated and violent man . . . an ordinary person. And then, I saw him for real. Speaking of the devil or its semblance. At first, I saw it in the eyes of María Paz, the flash of panic. She was facing the entrance to the diner, and I was on the other side of the table, facing the back of the room.

  Suddenly she saw something, or someone, who appeared behind me, and the color drained from her face. I turned to look toward the door and saw this somewhat handsome thug with a hostile, sullen, pissed-off look on his face. He was white, muscular, and supple, but show-offy, cocky, wearing very tight jeans, the kind you have to put on using plastic bags, topped off with an ostentatious belt buckle that signaled he was ready to whip anyone. He avoided looking our way, though it was clear he saw us. He passed right by and sat at a table a few feet away with his back to us.

  “That’s him,” María told me, grabbing her bag and getting ready to run out of there.

  “Him?” I asked, although I had guessed already. “Who?”

  “Him, Sleepy Joe,” she murmured his name as if it were an evil spell, and I, very nervous, was only able to respond that she should calm down. I suggested she should not let her fear show.

  “What did he do to you that you get like this?” I asked several times, but she didn’t respond. She pretended to continue to eat but couldn’t even swallow one bite; it was obvious that she was not all there. I only had a view of the man’s back, and I noticed how he passed his hand through his ashy, dirty hair every once in a while; but then he turned as if wanting to catch my eyes. And I couldn’t avoid them, those eyes, inexpressive, fucking cold eyes devoid of feeling. At that moment, I realized that he was your typical neighborhood hoodlum, a good-for-nothing, but I sensed something very dark dwelled inside him. This poor devil could become the devil himself, I thought.

  “What’s up with this horrible guy?” I began to ask María Paz, but she got up and dashed out of the diner before I could finish speaking.

  She hurried up Madison Avenue with me trailing her, and pushed through the heavy glass door of an upscale boutique, running all the way to the back of the store like a soul possessed. In the shoe section, I finally caught up and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Why is he following you?” I asked.

  “Because he wants some money he thinks I have, but I don’t have it. Partly because of that, and partly because he loves me.”

  We ran back to my bike and got on to try and lose this loser: a blurry sequence of turns and skids, me and María Paz going around in circles in the city, feeling this animal on our heels, disappearing into alleys and passageways to shake him off. Meanwhile, I was trying to get María Paz to explain things to me, to get me up to speed about this threat, this mystery. The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water, that unlike when we were behind walls of Manninpox, where I didn’t have to deal with the crimes she may have committed, here, in the real world, in the streets of New York, I was getting the whole package, the girl and the consequences, the girl and her past, the girl and her true story, the one that she had not wanted to tell me in the writing exercises I assigned for class—me insisting we should call the cops on Sleepy Joe, she insisting we could not.

  “That son of a bitch is harassing you,” I said almost furious. “Why don’t you just fucking turn him in?”

  She refused without offering any explanations, so I just tried to convince her
to spend the night in my studio, where I knew I could take care of her. I told her I would sleep on the floor and she could have the bed so she could rest, that the following day I would make her breakfast. Then a nice hot shower that would leave her feeling like new, and I would take her on my bike to Bronx Criminal Division, escorting her safe and sound right up to the door of the courtroom. For some reason she refused. Unbelievable, just like a woman. According to what she told me, the only reason why she couldn’t stay with me that night was that she had clothes for the trial stashed away in some other place, and she wanted to look good. “We’ll get the clothes and then I’ll take you home with me.” I begged her, but she made the whole thing difficult, too much of a big deal, and there was no way to convince her.

  “If everything goes well tomorrow, we’ll take off wherever we want to go,” she promised me, “but if things go the other way, well then, they go the other way.”

  I knew that phrase was going to play in my head all night; I wasn’t going to be able to shut my eyes for fear of dreaming of the places I would take her if everything went well, the secret beaches, the cabins in the woods, Prague, Istanbul, Santorini, or Buenos Aires. But all those dreams would be overshadowed by the threat of this fucking shit Sleepy Joe. I would have to ask her for a few more details, tell her to paint me a more complete picture, so I wouldn’t have spent that most important morning in her life wandering around. Because she assured me she had a place to stay, I let her go against my wishes. The best I could do was to promise her that the following day I would be there in the first row, keeping her spirits up. I could not stop her from getting off my bike and running down the subway steps into the bowels of the city. She hadn’t given me a phone number or an address where I could reach her in case of an emergency. “What for?” she said. “We are going to see each other in a couple of hours at the trial.”

  The following day, I arrived before there was anyone in the courtroom, all dressed up in suit and tie, and I sat in the first row like I had promised her. A pair of attendants came in to install microphones, move some chairs around, and do whatever else, their steps echoing in the empty chamber as they left.

  María Paz was still not there. A little while later, other people started coming in, guards, a lawyer, a very peculiar old man who I imagined was her lawyer, everyone, except her. The minutes passed and she did not arrive, my nerves were a mess, everyone else was just looking at their watches. There was no sign of her. I chewed my nails to the nubs and no sign of her. It sounds unbelievable, but María Paz never came. For some reason she never showed up. Never showed up to her own trial, forcing the judge to declare her in contempt and issue an arrest warrant, setting the powers of the law after her. What the fuck had happened?

  It was the strangest thing and I racked my brain trying to come up with reasons for such a disaster: 1) Sleepy Joe had found María Paz and killed her. 2) Sleepy Joe had found María Paz and kidnapped her. 3) María Paz was running from me and she went looking for Sleepy Joe because deep down she was still in love with him, and they decided to flee the country together. 4) Somebody else did not want María Paz to testify and offed her. 5) María Paz hit her head and came down with amnesia like in the movies. From the moment I left the courtroom, all those reasons kept turning in my head, driving me crazy.

  I remembered the manuscript from the day before and I returned quickly to St. Mark’s, dashed into the studio, took out the pieces from the pocket of my leather jacket, cleaned them up as best as I could, spread them out on my desk and began to tape the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle that was about life and death, and I almost couldn’t shuffle because my hands were trembling so hard. It was dark by the time I had something that I could halfway read. The story in that manuscript was alarming, like everything about that woman, but in the end, it shed no light on what would have led her to miss her trial.

  There was nothing to do. I had run out of hope. María Paz had lost herself again in the world, and I had no other option but to wait, night and day, until I heard from Juanita on Facebook again or some other sign reached me. If that happened, then María Paz was still alive. In more optimistic moments, I imagined her as a fugitive, hidden in some hole looking for a way to contact me. Although it could be that by that point she could be in a bikini wandering the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, in the arms of the criminal Sleepy Joe. I was desperate, checking my e-mail and Facebook all the time, reading the papers to see if there was any news of her arrest or even her death. Anything was possible, and I was in a bad state, completely disconcerted, with absolutely no appetite, and consumed by anxiety.

  I’m writing this in a hurry from the Catskills. This afternoon I have to leave for Chicago, and I want to write down the recent events, now that I have finally been able to reconstruct everything. I don’t want to let another day pass, so I don’t forget any of the details. What else can I do? It’s the dark part of this job. María Paz was going to be the heroine of my next series of graphic novels; the poetry before all, as Hölderlin said. In the end, the hand follows the heart. After our meeting in the park and running from Sleepy Joe, María Paz went to some place in Queens, to the home of her friend Juanita, an ex-coworker, who had the clothes that María needed to wear for the trial. Juanita caught her up on all the hot gossip from work, made sure she had a good night’s sleep and a full breakfast, helped her dress, and said good-bye to her at the door with a big hug. “Good luck, my dear,” she said. She didn’t go to the trial because she couldn’t miss work, but that night she waited for her at the Estrella Latina, the best place in town, where they were going to celebrate by partying all night long.

  “Can I bring a friend?” María Paz had asked her.

  “A friend? There is a friend? Great. What’s his name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Ha. A lot of rug munchers in these women’s jails. So then your friend is a woman?”

  “He’s a man, silly. A gringo. Rose is his last name.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “You’ll see for yourself. If they don’t throw me up in jail again.”

  María Paz got to East 161st Street with plenty of time to spare. When she got out of the cab, the tight skirt ran up her legs, and she noticed the driver sneak a peek. Outside the courthouse, she tidied up her outfit, wet the ends of her fingers with her tongue, and pushed back a lock of hair that kept falling obnoxiously over her forehead. Following Pro Bono’s instructions to the letter, she had tied her hair up in a tight bun. She looked very distinguished, Juanita had told her, she seemed Andalusian. “A big-eared Andalusian,” María Paz had responded, pointing to her ears that jutted out of her head, according to her like the fins of a shark. It was a beautiful day, chilly sunlight and a blue sky, but she felt as if she had a dark cloud hanging over her. The feeling didn’t bode well, but nevertheless she made her way resolutely across the plaza toward the central building of Bronx Criminal Division. She strode toward the place courageously, although she thought it was an absurd courage, because it was leading her straight to her doom. Yet, she kept moving. Whatever would be would be; she was ready for it. In the end, it was all the same. Today was her day. If there were any justice in this world, things would turn out okay. But whoever said there was any justice in this world? She had given this a lot of thought and concluded that justice was just a sham, a shadow-puppet show put on by society to avoid dealing with the issues, a kind of theater that had nothing to do with ascertaining the truth. She would have liked to have felt strong, optimistic, confident, beautiful. Her lawyer was the best in town, and she was wearing a dark suit that looked amazing on her, surprising even her when she caught the reflection of her svelte figure in the glass windows. Crazy, she thought, finally I look a little bit like Holly; I had to go through all that hell just to look just a little bit like her. She clung to the two-thousand-dollar Gucci purse as if it were a shield, and she thought that wearing the pink scarf was a herald of her imminent victory. On
her neck was the broken coin necklace given to her by her mother, Bolivia, when she had left for America, on her finger the wedding ring given to her by her deceased husband. Both pieces of jewelry been returned to her when she left prison, but today she felt as if the amulets were not working. Rub them all she wanted, but they were powerless. “Wish me luck, Gregory,” she told Greg. “Don’t go abandoning me now because I cheated on you, you know how much I have already paid for that.” “Help me, my beautiful mommy,” she told Bolivia as she crossed the esplanade, “if you are with me at all, you have to help me.” María Paz had gussied herself up the same way her mother had many years before when she went to meet the official from the immigration office to get her green card, and María wanted to believe that this time things would come out just as well. It would be just if they came out just as well, so much effort couldn’t have been in vain, so much struggle to conquer America could not end in tragedy. “Come on, Bolivia, lend me your strength, help me, Mommy, this is your mission, don’t forsake me now, don’t let your dream end in a nightmare.”

  “Mommy? Greg?”

  Nothing.

  “Mommy? Greg?”

  No one responded.

  Today, my dead are dead, María Paz thought.

  For days she had been meticulously studying the dossier Pro Bono had given her, all the instructions of what to say and what to keep quiet. Everything she had to say was memorized, but the words weren’t hers, nothing of what she was going to say in that courtroom room was what she really thought. Pro Bono had warned her that the outcome of that day would depend in large part on her, by her ability to radiate a bright light, her ability to seem transparent and reliable. That will be hard, she thought, very hard to radiate a bright light in this fucking bleak mood. Because deep down she knew they were going to break her. What kind of verdict can you expect from people who don’t know her, who don’t like her, who don’t care about her? And why would someone like her expect justice? She, who had experienced firsthand the arbitrariness of it all? She had to be optimistic, as Pro Bono had advised and I had insisted. Me, Cleve Rose, known to her as Mr. Rose. But all she felt was fatigue, a tremendous fatigue that had no cure.