The Empanada Brotherhood

by John Nichols

  Instead, Eduardo borrowed ten bucks from me. “I’m broke. I forgot my wallet.” That cleaned me out. “Don’t worry, blondie, I’ll give it back when next we meet at the kiosk.”

  Luigi halted dead in his tracks. A beautiful woman was approaching us, tall and brunette, wearing silver hoop earrings and a knee-length mink coat. Her hair bounced against her shoulders with great verve and she had an air of self-satisfied gaiety. She carried no packages so her arms were swinging freely.

  The burnt man spread his hands wide apart and, in heavily accented English, proclaimed to the universe, “Look at this beautiful woman!”

  The lady stopped, contemplating our comrade with a perplexed frown. Then she brightened, laughing. “And you are a beautiful guy.” She walked right up to Luigi, kissed him on the cheek—“Merry Christmas, little man”—and continued on her way.

  “What about me?” Eduardo called after her in Spanish. To us he moaned, “You see? Adriana has cursed me. When we were married I had a dozen chicas on the side. Now that I’m ‘free’ they ignore me because I’m a cuckold.”

  When we reached Forty-second Street Alfonso said, “Let’s go into the library.”

  We crossed the avenue. Two small boys were sitting astride one of the concrete lions while their father took a picture. Inside, Alfonso led us upstairs to the newspaper reading room. He checked out a New York Times microfilm and we gathered around him while he searched for the day that Argentina’s famous singer Carlos Gardel had died—Monday, June 24, 1935.

  An article explained that after a successful Bogotá concert, Gardel’s plane had taken off for Cali, via Medellín. The plane was a Ford tri-motor F-31 belonging to SACO, a Colombian airline. After refueling at Olaya Herrera airport in Medellín, the plane taxied onto the runway and collided with another aircraft, bursting into flame. Seventeen passengers died, five were miraculously saved. Burned beyond recognition, Gardel’s body was identified through an ID bracelet and dental records. He was seated next to the pilot and probably expired instantly. His band members, his secretary, and his masseur also perished. His English professor survived.

  We emerged from the library at dusk, riding the subway downtown to Astor Place. Over at the empanada stand Roldán had the sliding glass window partially open. A clump of mistletoe was tacked to the overhead frame above a string of flashing lights. His portable Victrola on the ledge was playing a record of Elvis Presley singing Christmas tunes. Gino and Popeye were lounging on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes and eyeing three NYU girls also listening to the music while they sipped coffee and sucked on Hershey Kisses from a basket Roldán kept on the window ledge. Gino had on a new Borsalino hat. Alfonso asked to replace Elvis with Carlos Gardel and the fat man obliged. Luigi chose the record, a scratched 78 that gave out a lot of static. The coeds trotted away. Collars up, shoulders hunched, hands thrust deeply into our pockets, we boys huddled together in a semicircle on the sidewalk listening to these words in Spanish:

  The clown, with all his funny faces

  and exaggerated smiles,

  is inviting us, dear friends,

  to enjoy the carnival.

  You can’t see by his smile

  all the pain that’s underneath;

  his face of frozen cheerfulness

  hides the awful truth.

  While we listened to this song, Luigi’s deformed features assumed a disturbing radiance. Pedestrians wandered by carrying bags of gift-wrapped presents. Soon it began to snow and the storm did not stop for two days.

  14. Moth to a Flame

  I woke up at three P.M. with an icing of white stuff on the window ledges. The fire escape outside my kitchen was frosted by dazzling meringue. I kneeled beside a clanking radiator and inhaled the warm bread odor from Vesuvio’s bakery. Thick snow was still falling and a premature darkness muffled the tenements. No trucks were unloading on West Broadway. A single pedestrian under a red umbrella scuffed along the center of the street. Two chairs outside the Sons of Italy Social Club had fluff piled five inches high. While I was sleeping the city had come to a standstill.

  I bundled up and hurried downstairs feeling buoyant and excited. I was due at the Night Owl at four. New York stifled by the storm was amazing. The lack of noise was eerie. I crossed Houston, prancing through unsullied snow that rose well above my ankles.

  The café had a CLOSED BECAUSE OF WEATHER sign on the door. So I kept going. Only a few sets of tracks crisscrossed the open areas of Washington Square. The Christmas tree under the arch was lit up and beautiful. No commerce plied Fifth Avenue where the awnings of fancy apartment buildings sagged beneath the weight of snow. A woman kept snug by luxurious fur stood uncomfortably with her arms folded while her Pomeranian shivered in a drift.

  I walked north pummeled gently by the insistent flakes. Traffic lights blinked from green to yellow to red and back again, but there was nobody to be directed across the intersections. Visibility was only a few blocks.

  I didn’t know I was headed for the dance studio until I arrived. On Fourteenth Street, halfway between Eighth and Ninth avenues, I heard Jorge’s guitar. They had a window open. When I showed up they were hard at work as if nothing unusual had submerged the city’s clamor. I arranged myself in a corner creating a puddle around me on the floor.

  Snow falling was reflected in the studio mirrors, which cast shadows over us like sunshine rippling underwater. Jorge played a slow tune and Cathy stretched languidly while bending into the dolorous shapes of her craft. Jorge’s fingers released pensive notes I had never heard. The guitarist and the dancer cast a delicate spell with their remarkable balancing act.

  Cathy went through a series of small hesitations; she inclined forward like a grieving widow, compassionate and tragic.

  Jorge stopped. Cathy was left hanging as he put aside his guitar; then his partner sank to the floor. They sat quietly, luxuriating in torpor. The one to break it was Jorge when he reached for a cigarette. Cathy said, “Dame un pitillo.”

  She lit it herself and exhaled deeply. A defiant shadow tweaked her features. They smoked in silence until Cathy asked me, “How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  “Vos sos loco.”

  “Yes I am.”

  She replied, “Did you publish a novel yet?”

  That startled me.

  “No … not yet.”

  Her shoulders sagged and she picked discontentedly at a blemish on the floor.

  “How did you guys get here?” I asked.

  When she glanced up at me Cathy’s eyes had a provocative twinkle.

  “We paid for a limousine.”

  On Fourteenth Street in the dark I wanted to shove her playfully and instigate a snowball fight, but Jorge tromped seriously ahead of us in measured rhythm like an ascetic holy man. Street lamps were dimmed by the storm: Flakes wiggled like twirling cells breeding under a microscope. Cathy hugged the heavy dance bag to her chest and hunched her shoulders.

  Jorge strode down into the subway entrance. Cathy paused on the threshold looking up at me. Her charming disconsolate face was ashen, her teeth chattered.

  “Adiós, gringito,” she said.

  “Adiós, Cathy.”

  Then she pattered down the steps, hurrying to catch up with Jorge while I waved good-bye like somebody in a movie.

  15. Spaghetti for Jesus

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve La Petisa said, “Luigi’s apartment is like no place I have ever seen before. It is the haunt of a lunatic, the product of a mind as burnt as his face.”

  “What do you know about Luigi’s apartment? You visited there with Gino?”

  We had met by chance on Bleecker Street and entered the Café Borgia for tea. The room was full to the brim with pink-cheeked last-minute shoppers. Outside, wind blew fresh snowdrifts down MacDougal and across Bleecker. I was happy because my college romance novel was going great but I was afraid to discuss it with anyone.

  La Petisa said, “Gino is too much of a slob for me. I would get ever
ything neat one minute, but next minute he would mess it up again. After one of our fights he tore all my clothes out of the closet and threw them onto the kitchen floor. Al final fue una joda despelote. Every time I put the toilet paper in correctly, he flipped it backwards. Then Gino threw me out and Luigi took me in. Of course, to sleep we use separate beds: It’s a platonic relationship. His place is warmer than Gino’s, but there’s a Buddhist altar and dozens of vulgar magazines on the bookshelves. In the bathroom are barbells that Luigi never uses. However, once a day a strange beast with a beard and hair down to its shoulders appears and spends fifteen minutes working out with the barbells. The beast is Luigi’s friend El Coco. And that guy really bugs me.”

  Looking up I saw Roldán’s nose pressed against the window and waved to get his attention. He walked around to the door and limped in. He was wearing an old raccoon coat, a knitted cap, and his face was half hidden by a woolen scarf. He sat down, unwound the scarf, unbuttoned his coat, and lit a cigar he’d just purchased at Johnny’s Italian Newsstand.

  “Qué carajo invierno!” he exclaimed. “I never experienced this in Argentina or Bolivia or Mexico City.”

  La Petisa patted his hand. “Listen, tomorrow everybody’s meeting at Fugazzi for dinner, correct?”

  “De acuerdo.” Fugazzi was a small Italian restaurant on Sixth Avenue a block west of the empanada stand. “I made reservations for fifteen.”

  “But should we really have an Italian dinner on Christmas?” La Petisa made a wry face. “I mean, what way is that to celebrate the birth of Jesus?”

  “A ravioli or a goose, what’s the difference?” Roldán shook salt onto his large palm and licked it. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Joseph and Mary sat down to a good spaghetti dinner after Jesus was safely asleep in the manger.”

  Alfonso came over to our table stomping snow off his shoes.

  “It was scampi,” he announced, unwinding his purple scarf. “I’m sure they had scampi or veal cacciatore that day. Maybe osso buco.” He took off a ridiculous red-and-yellow cap with earflaps and a bell at the tip. “Christ it’s cold outside.”

  He also removed an elegant pair of fur-lined leather gloves and slapped them onto the table.

  La Petisa warned the professor: “Don’t be blasphemous. God hears everything.”

  “Oh? And what does He think about you who goes to bed with Gino out of wedlock?” Alfonso called the waitress over, ordering an espresso.

  La Petisa said, “Hey, I’m a good Catholic. I go to Mass every Sunday. For two years after my father died I wore a black armband and went to the cathedral each morning to light a candle. And I’m living with Luigi now, since Gino threw me out.” She added: “Where did you get that woeful hat?”

  “It’s a Christmas present from my novia Renata in Buenos Aires.”

  “Her taste is in her ass.”

  “Oi.” Alfonso arched way back. “She’s got a lot more imagination than you do, shorty.”

  “What about the gloves, profe? Same piba? At least they look useful.”

  “They’re a gift from Sofía.” Alfonso tugged the gloves back on approvingly and flexed the fingers. “My other novia, the sensible one.”

  “Marry the gloves,” La Petisa advised. “If you marry that hat you’re a dead man.”

  16. Eskimos

  What a snowstorm! Roldán did not have a Christmas tree so we decided to buy him one. Two blocks south on Sullivan Street we located a few ratty shrubs corralled inside a wooden fence. A boy wearing an Aztec ski mask ran out of a bar to make the deal with us, then hurried back inside.

  We carried the tree home to Roldán’s apartment three floors above the empanada stand. La Petisa left to search for ornaments while Alfonso and the boss mixed hot rum toddies in a blender. We listened to a record by Edith Piaf. La Petisa returned twenty minutes later with colored paper, glue, gold paint, and Luigi, who was wearing a white Santa Claus beard full of snow. We clicked on the TV to a Perry Como Christmas special. I cut out snowflakes; La Petisa made bells and angels from the colored paper. Alfonso and Luigi fashioned elaborate paper cockroaches. There was a brief argument about the cockroaches. We snipped a tin coffee lid into the shape of a star for the treetop.

  Eduardo dropped by with a bottle of wine. He was already drunk because he’d seen Adriana and her fat “pimp” getting out of a taxi that afternoon. We ignored him. Eduardo never mentioned the ten dollars he owed me. Gino and Chuy also appeared and hugged everybody except Luigi, who almost snarled at Gino when Gino embraced La Petisa. The newcomers were all eager to share dinner with us tomorrow at Fugazzi. Chuy had a bag with two magnums of French champagne in it. We drank them, then bundled up and stumbled outside to sing carols. Snow was falling harder. As we walked up the middle of MacDougal Street old people leaned from their windows listening to our voices belting out holiday ballads in Spanish. A snowball landed on Luigi’s head; another one knocked off Gino’s new Borsalino. In retaliation we bombarded a third-floor window with snowballs.

  “Feliz Navidad!” Luigi yelled up at the windows.

  We tramped north on MacDougal, kicking apart clouds of white stuff. Eduardo cried, “I hate her! She’s a witch!” La Petisa said, “Oh grow up, you baby.” At West Fourth Street we turned into Washington Square and wandered around the park and through the arch onto Fifth Avenue and up to Eighth Street and back again. Chuy told Eduardo, “Forget her. I’ll find you a better one.” We continued down Sullivan Street to St. Anthony’s Church on the southeast corner across Houston. All the church lights were on and the crèche figures were covered by snow. The sheep had thick powdery fleeces. Joseph had a white cone on his head. A loudspeaker played “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” drowning out our voices, so we shut up and listened, huddling for warmth and stamping our feet alongside a dozen other Eskimos enjoying the show.

  Eduardo said, “I don’t want any of your girls, manco. I can seduce women by myself. Get away from me. You’re giving me escalofríos.”

  “Pipe down, all of you,” Alfonso ordered.

  Chuy shouted, “Oh my God—I almost forgot!” And he ran away through the storm, late for an important date.

  “We can’t come to the dinner at Fugazzi,” La Petisa admitted. “Tomorrow we’re dining with friends of the family in Queens. In fact, we should go now, Luigi. We’ll need plenty of sleep to deal with them.”

  Luigi balked. “I detest those self-righteous prigs. I’m staying right here with my pals so we can eat together mañana.”

  La Petisa walked off in a huff. Gino said, “I’ll go with her,” and he did.

  “Tu puta madre!” Luigi called after him.

  We traipsed east for another block and turned right, down to Milady’s Bar on the corner of Prince and Thompson Streets, one block west of my tenement. Alfonso, Luigi, and I played pool while Roldán and Eduardo talked with two college girls from Greenwich, Connecticut. The pool table was small and each rack cost a quarter. In a corner booth some happy drunken yokels sang “Silent Night,” the Italian version. At ten Eduardo departed with both the minas and the cook appeared at the pool table. By eleven, feeling sick from all the smoke, we left Milady’s and bought bagels and cream cheese at Miguel’s All-Nite Puerto Rican Deli on Spring Street. Church bells were calling people to midnight Mass.

  Back at Roldán’s apartment there was no leftover wine to drink and Luigi grew pensive. “I don’t mean to sound like a spoilsport, but that girl is all alone. I can’t leave her like that.”

  “She went with Gino,” Roldán reminded him.

  “That’s worse than being alone.” Luigi added, “She refuses to make love with me, but damned if I’ll let her bring that good-looking asshole to my place.”

  So he bid us adieu. That left Alfonso, me, and Roldán. The cook toasted our bagels and slathered on the cream cheese, and then added sardines and pickle slices. He and Alfonso were drunk. When Eduardo banged on the door we let him in. We brushed snow off his head and shoulders. “They laughed at me,” he whined. “They told
me to ‘drop dead.’ Nobody tells me to ‘drop dead.’ Look at me, I’m a man. I am a man.”

  Alfonso looked at him. “No you aren’t,” he said. “All I see is a jealous, paranoid hypochondriac.”

  That befuddled Eduardo. “What are you talking about, you fucker? What are you talking about?”

  Roldán said, “Easy, boys. Let’s not get personal here.”

  “What do you think, blondie?” Alfonso asked. “We need a neutral opinion.”

  “What do I think about what?” I stammered.

  When we awoke many hours later, all four of us joined up again and tromped through brilliant sunshine and snowy streets to Fugazzi for a lavish meal of spaghetti with clam sauce and Chianti wine. Three small tables were shoved together to accommodate us plus La Petisa, Luigi, Popeye, Gino, Carlos the Artist and his wife, El Coco, and Chuy and his accountant, Greta Garbo, all of whom had promised to join us. But none of them showed up. Caruso played during the meal. The waiter was an old Italian who could speak Spanish because he’d fought with an International Brigade during the civil war. He sat down beside us at the end to smoke cigars provided by Eduardo.

  We raised our wineglasses.

  And Roldán paid for everything.

  17. Santa, Baby

  The day after Christmas I went to the dance studio where Cathy Escudero and Jorge were hard at work, same as before. I pushed open the door slowly. Cathy stopped right in the middle of her dance and snapped, “Dale, gringo, either come in or go out, but don’t just stand there.”

  I hustled to the far wall and sat down with my shoulders hunched, as inconspicuous as possible.

  Cathy called over, “What did Santa Claus bring you for Christmas?”