The Empanada Brotherhood

by John Nichols

  “After she left did you receive any letters?”

  He shook his head. “She was illiterate. I remember that her hands were smaller than mice and very quick. She could pinch flies off the windowpane between her thumb and forefinger.”

  “What was her name?” I asked.

  “Teresa Mono.” He made a small gesture of dismissal and put away her photograph. He had trouble stuffing the chunky wallet back into his rear pocket. Then he said, “When she left me my heart was broken and I ran away from Argentina for consolation.”

  Roldán had worked in Bolivian coal mines. He started a restaurant in Lima, Peru, that was successful until he offended the gangsters who made his liquor deliveries. In Nicaragua he repaired tractors and other large machinery on a finca near the ocean. Then came Guatemala. There he owned a street cart from which he sold popcorn, potato chips, peanuts, and soda pop. The refrain he cried out all day long, every day for three years, was: “Poporopo, papalina, maní y agua!”

  The cocinero opened his first empanada stand in Mexico City. It kept him afloat for two years until he grew bored and purchased a bus ticket to New York.

  I said, “You’ve been to a lot of countries. You’ve witnessed many things, Roldán.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen a lot of shit, blondie.” He hefted another sweet potato, devouring it like an empanada. “Our planet is a truly remarkable pigpen. I have seen children with their throats slit in the gutter, and a man with a machine gun preparing to kill a woman. On a Nicaragua beach I saw a dead shark twice the size of a car. The Lima homeless sleep on cold streets in beds of piss, but there is a library more fabulous than a cathedral. More turkey?”

  “No, gracias.” I looked at my watch and got up to leave. I had to wash dishes at the Night Owl. Roldán shook my hand, telling me to go with God. I thanked him for the meal and for the stories. At the door he said, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow night at the empanada stand?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and then I blurted, “Listen, I’d like to meet one of the girls in Chuy’s book but I don’t know how to arrange it.”

  He said, “It’s simple. Ask Chuy when next you see him.”

  “Tengo vergüenza.” I felt ashamed.

  “Do you want me to ask him for you?”

  I nodded my head desperately, yes, and hurried down the stairs.

  Outside, a few flakes of dry snow were swirling and it had almost gotten dark. I scurried up MacDougal Street with my head bowed against the wind, gasping in big gulps of icy air. I felt as if I had jumped out of an airplane and pulled my rip cord, but I did not know if the parachute would open.

  9. Cathy Escudero

  When I met Chuy under the Washington Square arch it was snowing lightly. The big Christmas tree displayed hundreds of shining lights. A bum wearing a Santa Claus outfit stood beside a Salvation Army kettle ringing his bell monotonously. Fifth Avenue buses coughed out black fumes at busy shoppers who hurried back and forth around us.

  Chuy said, “Come on, we’ll catch a cab.”

  I had never been rich enough to hail a taxi in New York. It carried us up to Fourteenth Street, then west to the corner of Eighth Avenue. Chuy gave the driver a one-dollar tip. We entered a dilapidated building located mid-block and rode a ramshackle elevator to the fourth floor. Chuy said, “It’s rare for an Argentine to dance flamenco. But this girl is a true disciple.” Way down the corridor he opened a thick metal door and we stepped into a bare room lined by mirrors and with ballet barres about waist high along one wall. Seated against the far windows was a skinny young man in a thin coat and scarf and porkpie hat playing a guitar. The coils of a small electric heater glowed red at his feet.

  Cathy Escudero wore a black practice skirt and flamenco shoes and a baggy T-shirt knotted at her navel. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun. She was barely five feet tall but the clatter of her shoes sounded like thunder. Chuy patted my shoulder, wished me, “Suerte, nene,” and disappeared.

  I sat down against the east wall, clasped my knees, and let out a quiet sigh. I could see my breath on the cold air. Neither guitarist nor dancer acknowledged me. They were concentrating on the music and the footwork.

  Cathy moved abruptly, hard and choppy, with fanatical precision one second and then with a delicate and sinuous counterpoint the next. Her style was graceful but shocking. The guy played his guitar like hammer blows, then shifted into a poignant ripple. He and Cathy started and stopped in unison. The dance seemed angry and sexual and very fast. Some of Cathy’s hair shook loose and strands were pasted against her damp cheeks. She spun and stomped and built to a crescendo. The guitarist watched her every move like a fanatic planning an assassination. He was good, a Spaniard it turned out, and no older than seventeen.

  They ended with a sudden crash. I wanted to clap but resisted the impulse. Panting, Cathy said, “I fucked up the second llamada. I always fuck it up. I hate fucking it up.”

  She went to her purse on the floor and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. She gave one to the guitarist and called over to me, “Querés un faso?”

  “No, gracias.”

  Cathy leaned against a mirror, smoking, sweating heavily. In Spanish she told me, “My name is Cathy and this is Jorge. We’re both going to be famous. What do you do for a living?”

  I explained that I was trying to be a writer, but meanwhile I washed dishes at the Night Owl Café and unloaded trucks for the Houston Street Labor Pool.

  “I want to be rich,” she said. “My father is a janitor. I work at El Parrillón, a restaurant uptown on Forty-seventh Street. My mother sews cheap sweatshop dresses. They can’t even speak English. Before two years are over I swear that I’m going to be a star. I’m not a gypsy, but that doesn’t matter. I pity anyone who gets in my way.”

  When she finished the cigarette Cathy dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her shoe.

  “Let’s do alegrías,” she said to Jorge.

  He struck a hard, short note. She twisted into a lovely anguished shape—ready. Then they began.

  I sat quietly for an hour, enthralled and impervious to the cold. They repeated every move and each note a hundred times. They stopped, went back, tried once more. They went over and over it again until a troupe of diminutive pixies in ballet costumes chaperoned by an adult carrying a small Victrola and a bag of records took over the studio. I walked downstairs with Jorge and Cathy Escudero.

  On the sidewalk the girl shook my hand good-bye. “Come by whenever you want,” she said. “We practice three times a week at this hour. I like an audience. It gives me an edge.”

  10. Carlos the Artist

  Carlos the Artist often wore a cape, a black jersey, black pants, and black boots with elevated heels. He also worshiped Marcel Duchamp and the film Last Year at Marienbad. His paintings were surreal but good. He was slated for a show at an uptown cultural center next spring.

  Meanwhile, Carlos had been married three times and never officially divorced. Now he had a problem because his present wife did not work and remained at home all day long while Carlos tried to paint. She distracted him and they spent a lot of hours in bed. The artist sat around drinking and moping and complaining to her that he couldn’t make his art. Eventually—desperately—he approached me.

  “Oíme. Don’t give me any guff. I need an apartment tomorrow between three and three-thirty. Can I have your key?”

  “Why for only half an hour?”

  He shrugged. “That makes it more exciting.”

  “All right. I’ll drop off an extra key with Roldán after I finish my stint at the Night Owl. You can come by and pick it up when you need it. Be careful not to kick the manuscripts stacked across my floor.”

  “You have a friend for life, blondie. My house will always be your house.”

  The next day when I was due out of the apartment, Alfonso and I saw Francois Truffaut’s movie Jules and Jim. The mathematics professor was a movie buff and together we had already seen Breathless, Viridiana, and La Dolce Vita; also Black Orpheus, Rasho
mon, and La Strada. Alfonso knew the schedules at museums or out-of-the-way art theaters, and we usually attended screenings in the mornings or early afternoons—whenever the price was cheapest.

  When we emerged from Jules and Jim I felt confused and excited. I was enthralled by Jeanne Moreau and identified with Jules, the timid Oskar Werner character. The mood of that story about two men obsessed with the same woman made me uncomfortable. I knew I had witnessed wonderful secrets impossible to understand that were nevertheless integral to human relationships and tinged by enormous sorrow.

  Alfonso and I wandered around for a spell discussing the movie. We circled the Washington Square fountain a half dozen times and then watched some bearded guys moving their pawns and bishops at the southwest corner chess tables. Alfonso had on his thin yellow sarape and a shaggy purple scarf. It was sunny but cold.

  “Jeanne Moreau reminds me of my girlfriend Renata,” Alfonso said. “Yesterday I received another letter from her, the second this week. Five pages long. Threatening to enter a convent if we don’t get married soon. She sent a picture of herself in a bathing suit.” He paused. “My other girl, Sofía, is like Jules—she’s patient, she’s deferential, she’s understanding. Sometimes I despise her for that.”

  “I would fall in love with Jeanne Moreau,” I said. “I wouldn’t care what happened.”

  “Yes you would,” Alfonso said, patting my back. “Let’s go to Figaro’s for a peek at their cute new waitress.”

  We walked down Thompson Street, turned right on Bleecker, and stopped at the coffeehouse. The windows were blurry with condensation. We found a cleared area and peered inside at cozy people nursing hot chocolates while playing chess.

  Alfonso pointed. “There she is. The little blonde one. She speaks with a strange accent, I think from Boston. I wouldn’t mind screwing her just to get my rocks off.”

  I said, “Speaking of that, right now while we’re standing in the cold, Carlos the Artist is using my apartment to take out his frustrations on some poor waif while his wife probably sits at home ignorant of the whole affair.”

  Alfonso couldn’t care less. “In her letter Renata described ten ways she plans to have sex with me. She’s highly inspired in bed. Of course, it’s a trap. Though by comparison, making love with Sofía is like eating a lukewarm bowl of soup or reading Proust.”

  Somebody tapped my shoulder. It was Carlos with a sexy plump girl on his arm. Fifteen minutes ago she had been wearing red lipstick that was now smeared all over the painter’s five o’clock shadow. Carlos slipped me my apartment key, winked, and whispered, “A thousand thanks, amigo.” Then he and the girl stepped over a bum and sauntered off arm in arm, pleasantly exhausted.

  “I feel sorry for his wife,” I said. “It’s a rotten thing to do.”

  “That is his wife,” Alfonso said, adjusting his purple scarf with an energetic flourish.

  11. Ambition

  “Oh my, you’re back already?” Cathy’s eyes had a suspicious look. “It must be the perfume I’m wearing. Welcome to our humble studio. Please don’t clap or throw me plata until the performance is over, okay?”

  “Okay.” I sat on the floor far from them and wrapped my arms around my knees.

  Cathy said, “Do you know anything about flamenco, blondie?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Jorge reached one hand down to warm up at the heater beside his feet, then he extended the other hand. He was wearing his porkpie hat.

  “It’s not something I’m going to explain,” Cathy said. “You just have to watch us and learn for yourself. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said again.

  Raising her hands, she fiddled with her hair, tucking loose strands back into the bun. Out of boredom Jorge played a fast little riff that he would not have included while Cathy danced.

  She said, “And just so it’s clear, Chuy’s a friend of mine but I would never screw him, do you understand?”

  I nodded my head. “Yes.”

  “He has a lot of money, and sometimes he helps people. Who knows why, but there’s not a string attached. Some bastards are also sentimental if you play your cards right.”

  I nodded some more, like one of those dipper birds on the side of a water glass.

  Cathy spoke to Jorge so fast I didn’t catch a word. He immediately started playing a tune that I later learned was a Sevillana. Cathy liked to warm up with Sevillanas, simple folk dances that usually two women do together. Sevillanas have a brief introduction, followed by three short repeated stanzas, and a sudden finish. They all follow a similar pattern, requiring no great dexterity. Flamenco is very mathematical and for beginners there is not room for improvisation. Every move and every stroke must be learned by heart, requiring absolute precision.

  When Cathy was ready they became serious. They talked to each other and Jorge played in slow motion while she worked something out. They speeded up a little, and then they went even faster. Cathy grabbed the sides of her skirt and swished it, she gritted her teeth and frowned, concentrating furiously, and Jorge never took his eyes off her. To make it work they had to be in sync. Sometimes Cathy shouted “Otra vez!” right in the middle, and Jorge jumped back to the beginning without a hitch.

  I had never seen people working so hard to be artists.

  “Maybe when you publish your first book you’ll dedicate it to me,” Cathy said afterward, gasping as she pulled on some dungarees, then stripped her skirt off down and over them. “Do you think you will ever publish a book?”

  I shrugged, smiling self-consciously. “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know you’re fucked,” she said. “I know I’m going to succeed, not just in Argentina or New York, but one day also in Spain. It’s a fact, written in my blood.”

  And abruptly they left the studio.

  12. Shaken

  Walking home after that dance session I was shaken. My tenement stood four blocks south of Washington Square on the corner of West Broadway and Prince Street. The apartment cost $42.50 a month. As I climbed up to the fifth floor I thought: Nobody ever publishes a book unless they submit it to a publisher. But I was still afraid to do that.

  I sat in my wooden chair and stared at stacks of typing paper covering the floor. They comprised various drafts of my novels, also carbon copies of short stories that I sent out regularly. There was a pile of journals I had kept since high school. I did not own a filing cabinet. All told I had twenty different piles on the floor.

  I was obsessed. And I was in a hurry because I didn’t know if, or when, I would be drafted. Though the world situation was tense, I completely avoided news about the Cold War heating up. I just wanted to be a writer.

  One novel followed the last week on earth of an alcoholic Bowery bum. Another I considered my Scott Fitzgerald story, about the collapse of a Long Island robber baron family. My Carson McCullers tale unfolded in a small Vermont town during World War II. My college romance novel was almost slapstick and featured an outrageous female narrator.

  I typed at a cheap metal table painted to resemble wood. My machine was a small green Hermes Rocket that had cost forty dollars. I owned no TV or telephone or sheets for the tin bed that had come with the place when I rented it. My covers were an old army surplus sleeping bag.

  My paperback books occupied shelves beside the bed: Faulkner, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe. Every week I bought a couple more novels secondhand for a quarter each from stores over on Fourth Avenue below Union Square. If I wasn’t writing I immersed myself in literature. I really studied fiction, hoping to absorb its secrets.

  Yet how did you even approach a publisher?

  Picking up manuscripts, I riffled through them. Most had been started in school. The Vermont novel was in its third rewrite and still pretty rough. My robber baron epic was in its second rewrite, but too self-conscious. The Bowery bum tale lacked a complete first draft. However, the college romance had been through five incarnations and it was my favorite. Less ambitious than the others, but more co
mplete.

  Slowly, I scanned that book, whispering sentences aloud. I reread the last fifteen pages, which left me cold. How could this be? Nervously, I changed some punctuation and made other corrections. I wondered: How could you work so hard on a book and yet remain ambivalent?

  Then I decided to rewrite the college romance one more time, and after that I would attempt to get it published.

  13. Death of a Crooner

  My Argentine pals could not resist the lure of Rockefeller Center during the holiday season. Alfonso, Luigi, and I took a bus up there and walked around for an afternoon. We bumped into Eduardo, who tagged along with us as we ogled the enormous decorated tree and the gold statue of Prometheus. We gazed at rich people skating circles at the ice rink. In St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Luigi and Eduardo lit several candles.

  “Who are you lighting them for?” Alfonso asked.

  “I am lighting this candle for my own face,” Luigi answered.

  Eduardo said, “I am lighting this candle so God will strike down my wife, Adriana, with a thunderbolt.”

  “She’s not your wife, she’s your ex-wife,” Luigi reminded him.

  Alfonso lit one taper for Renata, his volatile Argentine lover, and another for Sofía, his pragmatic Buenos Aires girlfriend.

  “I’m playing it safe,” he explained. “Like Henry the Eighth.”

  We mingled with the crowds and ate hot chestnuts and bought four green cookies shaped like evergreen trees. Bells rang, carols played, and everyone had rosy cheeks. Alfonso showed us the building where Diego Rivera had done a mural that the Rockefellers destroyed because it depicted the face of Lenin. Eduardo complained that he hadn’t been laid ever since Adriana began dating the “pimp.”

  We went window-shopping up one side of Fifth Avenue to the Plaza Hotel at Fifty-ninth Street and down the other side toward Forty-second Street. Cheery colored lights blinked around displays of jewelry on beds of angel hair. I wanted to buy Cathy Escudero a Christmas present. I wanted to spend all the dollars I could earn over a year for a gold bracelet, a string of pearls, or a pair of diamond earrings from Tiffany’s or Van Cleef & Arpels.