Side Chick Nation

by Aya De León

  “What?” Dulce asked in mock outrage. “No room service? What kind of dump is this?” She spun on her heel as if she were going to storm out.

  “Please señora,” Zavier said. “I assure you, our five-to-a-room accommodations are very cozy.”

  Dulce scoffed. “Señor, I’m used to sleeping one hundred to a room. Plus, I hear you don’t have any cots or even floor blankets.”

  “No, señora, but we do have mattresses,” he said.

  “Probably with the dreaded box springs,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “I suppose I’ll have to accept that the García family has come down in the world,” she said.

  “Are you Dulce García of the Washington Heights Garcías?” he asked in mock admiration.

  “Yes, but don’t tell your society columnist,” she said. “I’m slumming it.”

  He laughed and put on a headlamp. “Let me show you to your room, señora.”

  The two of them took the stairs up to the third floor.

  Inside the room, he sat down at the small desk and turned on a camping lantern.

  “Make yourself at home. You want to take a shower? It’s gotta be short. Five minutes. No hot water.”

  “That sounds amazing,” Dulce said. “Do you, maybe have a pair of sweats I could borrow or something?”

  He looked from her body to his. He had broad shoulders, but a slender build overall. His shirts wouldn’t fit over her full bust, and his pants certainly wouldn’t fit over her hips and ass.

  “You know,” he said. “I’m gonna raid my boy’s clothes. I think they’ll fit better.”

  He gave her a t-shirt that said EL BOOGIE DOWN and a pair of clean boxers that would fit a much larger man.

  Dulce thanked him and disappeared into the bathroom.

  From the light of the lantern in the main room, she could see the bathroom would only be illuminated by a seven-day candle, sitting on the sink, which she lit.

  She closed the door and turned on the shower. The water was lukewarm, and she stepped in fully clothed.

  Grabbing the liquid soap, she lathered over her clothes, then peeled them off and rinsed them, one by one, washing her underwear last. Then she washed her hair and leaned back, rinsing her hair and letting the spray run over her face.

  By the time she turned off the water, it had been about six minutes. She wrung out her hair and clothes, and hung them on the shower rod, then dried off and put on the clean clothes.

  When she came out, Zavier was on the computer at the desk and didn’t even look up.

  When she lay down on the bed, the press of the soft, dry mattress against her back was so heavenly, that sleep washed over her like a sudden wave.

  Chapter 23

  When Dulce woke in the middle of the night, she heard snoring. The sound was coming from across the room. In the murmur between the loud inhalations, she also heard softer breathing coming from someplace closer. As she lay there, listening, she identified several different people. The snoring woman in the next bed. A man sleeping on the floor between the beds. Zavier had gotten the clothes from where he slept. It must be the Boogie Down guy.

  And then she felt a slight shift in the bed and realized she hadn’t been sleeping alone. Zavier lay beside her. A respectful distance on the double bed. His breathing barely a quiet whisper of air. There were four of them in the room?

  And then, as if in answer to her question, a woman got up from the other bed—not the snorer—and walked to the bathroom. Five of them. Just like when she was a little kid. Her sister, her brother, her two cousins, and her. Five of them. All in one room a lot of the time. Five different breathing rhythms.

  The woman closed the bathroom door and came back to bed.

  Did Dulce need to pee? No. She hadn’t drunk enough water.

  And then, before she knew it, with the comforting sound of four other pairs of lungs breathing, she fell back asleep.

  * * *

  In the morning, Zavier was shaking her awake.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “Our ride’s leaving in fifteen minutes.”

  Dulce blinked and nodded.

  In the bathroom, her clothes were damp but wearable. She changed and peed, only to feel a stab in her bladder. An infection? Maybe just dehydration. She’d have to see if Zavier had any water. She didn’t want to have to test the Obamacare.

  She ran her tongue across her teeth and her mouth tasted foul. She hadn’t brushed in days. She rinsed a washcloth and put toothpaste on the corner, then brushed her teeth the best she could with that.

  When she came back out, Zavier was packing his laptop and talking on his cell phone.

  She folded the guy’s clothes and put them on top of his duffel bag.

  There was nothing for her to pack except her water wallet, which had the passport, her phone, which was dead, and the keys to a storage space that was underwater.

  * * *

  In front of the hotel was a gray van with the driver chain smoking. He turned out to be a white American who didn’t speak Spanish. Fortunately, all the windows of his van were open, and most of the smoke blew past her. Meanwhile, the cigarette lighter was rigged up with ports for multiple cables, so she would finally be able to charge her phone.

  Most of the seats were full with journalists looking at different tech devices.

  “What are we waiting for?” Zavier asked.

  “Guy from the Washington Post,” the driver said.

  “Welcome to the fucking queue,” Zavier muttered.

  “The queue?” Dulce asked.

  “For transportation,” he said. “This is our unofficial carpool, a four-wheel-drive minivan to transport reporters from the major outlets.”

  “How are they managing to get all these places with the gas rationing?” Dulce asked. “People in the shelter were saying they waited in line like eight hours to get twenty dollars’ worth of gas. Not just for cars, but generators, too.”

  “It’s been really bad for locals,” Zavier said. “We have our own gas supply, but it’s limited. And it’s still hard to get through to so many places. Also, there are a lot of us, so each reporter can only get to a few locations during each day before curfew.”

  He began skimming throught the newsfeed on his own phone.

  As they waited, a young guy from the hotel approached them and reached through the van’s open window to tap Zavier on the shoulder.

  “Hey!” Zavier said jovially. “Qué tal?”

  “I might have a tip for you,” the guy said. “Something in the hills outside San Juan. I heard there’s a santera helping people bury the dead, like a Catholic priest.”

  “When did you hear this?” Zavier said.

  “Last night,” he said. “My wife heard it from a neighbor. I thought you might want to check it out.”

  “Definitely,” Zavier said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  Zavier wrote down the woman’s information, and the guy headed back to work.

  “Another piece of evidence about the death toll,” Zavier said. “A santera in the mountains burying the dead, and yet the official death toll was supposed to be only sixteen.”

  “Sixteen hundred?” Dulce asked, horrified.

  “No,” Zavier said. “Sixteen people dead. Total. Governor Roselló upped it to thirty-four day before yesterday. The Miami Herald broke the story that it’s still too low but—”

  Dulce’s mouth fell open. “How is that possible? I counted thirty-five bodies at the airport.”

  “You what?” Zavier asked.

  “Dead bodies,” Dulce said, and explained what she had seen.

  “And he was so eager to get you out of there that they detained you for five hours without any food and water. And then drove you all the way to the Lumineer?”

  She nodded. “No food. They did give me some water.”

  “Oh shit,” he said. “We need to get right on this. I’ll tell my editor I’m changing up my focus.”

  * * *

&
nbsp; During the ride, Zavier got on the phone with his editor, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, and several funeral homes. Then he asked her what seemed like a thousand questions, all the time murmuring in a low voice. Presumably because he didn’t want the other reporters to know what he was working on. By the end, she had gone from feeling like she had seen something important, to realizing all the things she hadn’t paid attention to: were there any markings on the truck? Did she see the names or ranks on on any of the military guys’ uniforms? What branch of the military? Zavier was nice about it, but she vowed to be more observant in the future.

  * * *

  An hour later, they were walking around the back of a funeral home. Dulce shaded her eyes from the bright sun at the back parking lot. “It was a truck like that, but bigger,” she said to Zavier. That she was certain of.

  The two of them were standing at the edge of the lot, surrounded by broken glass and debris. In front of them was a large truck connected to a diesel power generator.

  “Like a semi truck you’d see on the highway,” she said.

  “And there were thirty-five bodies?” he asked.

  “At least,” she said. “That was as high as I counted before the military guy stopped me.”

  “May I help you?” a man’s voice asked in Spanish.

  They turned to see an elder in a formal guayabera and slacks. He introduced himself as the funeral home director.

  Zavier introduced them as being with the New York Times. Dulce was a little horrified to have her position so artificially inflated. But she kept her expression neutral and attempted to look however a journalist was supposed to look.

  “The official count of deaths related to the hurricane is thirty-four,” Zavier said. “In your professional opinion, is that a fairly accurate estimate?”

  “There’s absolutely no way that’s right,” he said. “Based on the customers we’ve had so far and what I’ve seen in hurricanes before, I’d say it’s got to be in the hundreds. If not over a thousand.”

  “What are conditions like here on the ground for you?” Zavier asked.

  “The situation is impossible,” the funeral director said. “We have only so much space and resources. We try to send bodies to the morgues, but they’re overloaded as well.”

  “Is it true that the military is helping?” Zavier asked.

  “They haven’t helped us,” the director said. “That truck and that generator you saw? We’re paying for that. This is a family business. I don’t know how long we can hold out, but people are depending on us, so we’re doing everything we can. How am I supposed to turn away a family who just lost a loved one? Whose previous funerals we always handled? But we can’t afford to keep operating like this. The cost of running a generator twenty-four hours is going to bankrupt us. But what choice do we have?”

  Zavier asked several follow-up questions, and then he was getting ready to wrap up.

  “One last question,” Dulce said. “Of the bodies autopsied so far, of the women, are there any who have died as a result of violence?”

  Zavier’s eyebrows rose.

  “None of the bodies we’ve officially autopsied,” he said. “There was one . . . she was pretty young . . . we haven’t had a chance yet. I don’t know. There are a lot of ways to get bruises in a hurricane. But sometimes you . . . you have a feeling. Maybe.”

  “Thank you,” Dulce said.

  “We may contact you to follow up if that’s okay,” Zavier said.

  “Absolutely,” the funeral director said. “Whatever I can do to get the word out about the situation.”

  * * *

  When Zavier called the transport, they said it would be about three hours til they could pick them up. After some complicated negotiation, it was determined that Zavier and Dulce would walk to the morgue, which was about an hour away on foot, and then they could get a ride to another mortuary near the airport.

  On the way, Zavier reached in his backpack for rations: water, beef jerky, and some dried fruit. Dulce started to make small talk, but she realized he was focused on the environment around them. She followed suit. He took a few photos of ruined houses, flooded streets, and looted businesses.

  When they got to the morgue, the staff said the facility was overwhelmed with corpses. They had doubled up the bodies and were begging the authorities for additional refrigeration.

  “They can’t count someone as dead until there’s an official death certificate,” the morgue attendant said. “And then it has to be entered in the system. But the whole government is shut down. We’re just trying to survive. Half our workers can’t get here, and the coroner is short of staff, too. Everywhere is backed up with the autopsies. Every aspect of the process is moving slowly except the death rate.”

  The main attendant offered to show Zavier, who switched his phone into camera mode as the two men headed out of the room. Dulce stayed in the main office where another man was working at a laptop.

  “Can I tell you something off the record?” the man asked, looking up from the computer.

  “Absolutely,” Dulce said.

  “My neighbor’s niece called day before yesterday,” he said in a lowered voice. “Her husband had died during the hurricane and they live outside San Juan. We tried to send a morgue truck, but it couldn’t get through. I told her to just go ahead and bury him. People can’t even refrigerate their food or their medicine, let alone their dead.”

  “Can I quote you on that as an anonymous source?” Dulce asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said.

  She wrote down the quote and read it back to him for accuracy.

  “And would you like to interview my neighbor’s niece?” he asked. “Those roads were impassable for our trucks a couple days ago, but you might get through, especially now that they’ve been clearing the roads a bit more.”

  “Definitely,” Dulce said, and took down her name and address.

  * * *

  When the van picked them up from the morgue, Zavier asked about going to see the young widow outside of town. The driver said it would be another few hours before he would be back this way. But he had to come by the airport to pick up another journalist.

  “Perfect,” Zavier said. “Drop us at the mortuary in Carolina. We have some business at the airport. You can pick us up there.”

  They climbed into the van, and there was one other journalist in the passenger seat.

  “Mendoza!” the guy called. He was a tall and white. Mid-30s. He was looking back at Zavier, but he didn’t even look at Dulce or introduce himself.

  “You working on this death count story?” the guy asked. But it wasn’t really a question to get information.

  “Yep,” Zavier said, and looked back down at his phone.

  “Lucky you,” the guy said. “A morning at the morgue, huh?”

  “Mmm,” Zavier said noncommittally.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” the guy said. “I can do war zones, but I can’t do morgues. It’s like they’re just too dead.”

  “Can you show a little respect, man?” Zavier asked. “The whole island is in mourning.”

  “Oh come on,” the guy said. “It’s just gallows humor. We’re all in the same boat.” He called to the driver: “Hey! This is me just up ahead.” He turned back to Zavier. “See you back at the Lumineer.”

  And then he climbed out of the van. All as if Dulce hadn’t been sitting right next to Zavier the whole time.

  As they drove away, Dulce sucked her teeth. “I feel a little overwhelmed from all that eye contact,” she said.

  “What?” Zavier asked. “Did he totally ignore you? Act like you were a lamp or a bookshelf or something.”

  “Basically,” Dulce said.

  “He’s like the Mike Pence of reporters,” Zavier said.

  “The what?” Dulce asked.

  “It’s a journalist joke,” Zavier said. “This is your only warning. You’re about to be one of us, so you need to know our jokes
are corny.”

  “I could have predicted that,” Dulce said.

  “That guy really is such a dick,” Zavier said. “I guess I’ve gotten numb to it. Welcome to the world of journalism.”

  * * *

  The folks who ran the mortuary in Carolina said all the same things the other sources had said.

  As they walked to the airport, Dulce could see that even a day later, more of the expressway had been cleared.

  From outside the airport gate, Dulce was able to point out the area where she had been detained by the military.

  Zavier had brought binoculars. He looked through them at all the trucks. There was nothing that looked even remotely like the transportation of bodies from the day before. They did, however, have a bunch of boxes of FEMA supplies: water and what looked like food rations. They were sitting on palates, the sun glinting off the plastic they were wrapped in.

  As the two of them stood there, Dulce saw the bad cop from the day before. He was in a jeep that was exiting through a military checkpoint they had set up at the entrance to the tarmac.

  “That’s him,” Dulce said. “The guy who detained me. The passenger.”

  “Wait here!” Zavier said. He lifted the binoculars, tracked the man for a moment, and jogged toward the entrance.

  “Sergeant!” Zavier yelled. Through the binoculars, he had identified the man’s rank from his uniform.

  The guy looked up behind mirrored shades. Beside him, the driver was conferring with the guard at the checkpoint, studying a map.

  “Sergeant,” Zavier said, slightly out of breath. “I have several eyewitnesses that saw dead bodies being loaded onto trucks here yesterday. What can you tell us about those cadavers? Are they hurricane victims?”

  “No fucking comment,” the sergeant said.

  “And what about the FEMA supplies on the tarmac today?” Zavier asked. “Are those going to be distributed to the US citizens here in need of food and water?”

  “Goddamn media libtards,” the sergeant said. “What do you think? We’re gonna leave them to rot indefinitely? Relief efforts take time. They just arrived and we’re preparing the distribution routes now.”