The Empanada Brotherhood

by John Nichols

  Santiago made the pastelitos also. He didn’t have a business license because it was cheaper to pay off the cops and the city inspectors.

  I joined the two older men, relieving Roldán of his burden. With the cast on his arm it was harder for him to carry things.

  “You came along just in time,” he gasped. “I was getting tired. What are you doing up at this hour, blondie?”

  “I’m always up at this hour,” I said. “I’m a night owl, a murciélago, a vampire.”

  The cook laughed. “When I was young I used to stay up all night with my pals playing billiards or chasing women at the milongas. Believe it or not, I didn’t used to be such a hippo.”

  Santiago never said a word. For a baker he sure was morose … and skinny.

  We crossed West Houston which did not have a moving car visible in either direction. It always amazed me that Roldán could locomote at all. He walked sort of spread-legged and waddling like a penguin, puffing loudly, though he seemed pretty strong except when climbing stairs.

  At the kiosk he removed a padlock and opened the door, squeezed into the alley, flipped a light switch, lifted the gate on the counter, and accepted one box from me and stashed it in the refrigerator. He took the other box from Santiago, who spun right around and retreated down the block to West Houston, returning to work.

  Roldán handed me his portable TV so he could lock up. He’d forgotten it earlier. “I need television to sleep.” I followed behind him on the stairs; we took a while to reach his apartment. His Christmas tree was still up, decorated by tinsel and a string of little lights. Half the needles had fallen off and been swept clean, but the lights were still blinking. I set the TV down on the kitchen table.

  Roldán opened his refrigerator. “Do you need food, nene? What can I offer? Eggs? A carton of milk?”

  I said, “No, no, I have plenty.”

  “Well, you should have a girl,” the cocinero advised. “I worry about you. Late on a night like this they keep you warm in bed.”

  “Oh, I’ll find one someday,” I said.

  “All you have to do is start talking to them.” He closed the refrigerator door. “They don’t care if it’s nonsense. Every girl wants you to fuck her, I promise. It’s biology.”

  I nodded and smiled brightly, embarrassed, trying to back away without being impolite. “I know,” I said.

  “No you don’t. When a woman offers to buy you an empanada, you should accept and be grateful. She’s making a play for you. It’s an opportunity. Comprendés?”

  “Sí. Comprendo.”

  Roldán must have felt that this was a rare moment alone and thus very important. He came over and grasped the door handle. “Listen,” he said. “You’re young and good-looking, blondie. There’s a million fish in the ocean. It’s easy if you just relax. Don’t cripple yourself with fear or unreasonable expectations, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, backing away some more, looking at my watch. “But I have to go now,” I explained. “I’ll see you later, alligator,” I said in English, stepping over his threshold onto the landing.

  Roldán began a fatherly gesture toward me but arrested it, searching my eyes, apologetic.

  “After a while, crocodile,” he replied, also in English—another expression that I had taught him.

  Then he closed the door and I scampered downstairs to freedom.

  36. Say “Cheese”

  Aurelio Porta owned an expensive little camera and a tripod. He set up the tripod in the studio and took pictures of Cathy Escudero dancing. Sometimes he told Jorge to quit playing and ordered Cathy to freeze in a position so that he could expose it perfectly. The photographs would be used for publicity purposes. Cathy wore the blue flamenco dress she’d had on when I first met her last Halloween. It was robin’s-egg blue with splashes of yellow flowers, and with lacy white hems of almost snowflake design at the sleeves, at the neckline, and at the bottom of the skirt. The dress transformed Cathy into an ethereal critter. She loved the effect of it and of the attention being paid to her by the camera.

  After a while Aurelio told Jorge to cease playing altogether. It was better for Cathy to hold still in various poses even though that might sacrifice authenticity.

  “There’s nothing authentic about publicity pictures,” he said. “You can’t sell anything with the real deal.”

  “I am the real deal,” Cathy said, holding her skirt out in a wide fan shape with one toe pointed down at the floor.

  Aurelio scoffed, “That and a nickel will get you on the Staten Island Ferry.”

  “Jorge should be in the pictures.” Cathy went and stood beside her guitarist with one arm around his shoulders. “Che, put out your cigarette. Assume the position. Look like a genius. And remove that hat, please.”

  She lifted the porkpie off Jorge’s head but he grabbed it back. I had never seen his hair before. It was very dark, parted down the middle, and slicked flat against his head. He covered it up instantly with the hat.

  Aurelio said, “We don’t need any shots of the guitarist. This is about you, querida. You’re the star. Guitarists are interchangeable.”

  Cathy reared up. “Jorge is not interchangeable. Without him I am nobody. We belong together.”

  Aurelio straightened behind the camera. He was a little miffed, but smiled.

  “That’s not the way it’s done,” he explained gently. “In a publicity photograph all attention must be placed on the central attraction. You never see a shot of Frank Sinatra with his pianist. You never see a picture of José Greco with his band. The band is great but anonymous because it’s the dancer that our public has paid to see. The principal artist is everything.”

  Cathy pouted, then let it drop and began posing again. A moment later, though, she said, “I’m tired, that’s enough.” But she called over to me, “Dale, blondie. Come here. You too, Jorge. Let’s get one photograph of the three of us together. I want a picture for my scrapbook.”

  I jumped up and was all set to walk over to her side when Aurelio Porta cut me off short.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking remorseful. “I can’t do it. The camera is out of film.”

  “No it isn’t,” I said.

  “Yes it is,” he answered.

  37. Thanks for Listening

  Luigi and I helped lower the plywood shutter and set the padlocks, then we carried the portable TV and a crate of Cokes upstairs for the fat man. He invited us to stay and drink pisco while watching a late movie on TV. After five minutes Roldán fell asleep and began snoring. Luigi and I moved to the kitchen and killed half the pisco while Luigi never stopped talking. He told me about his old girlfriends Ana María, Esmerelda, and Carmen Ignacio; he described their physical attributes, their fashion habits, their ways of making love. Other girls he’d seduced and discarded were Sara, Isabel, Eva, and Mercedes. They had laughed when he tickled them; they had shouted gleefully during sex.

  “Before my accident, girls were very simple for me,” Luigi said. “Like picking flowers or gathering clamshells on the beach.”

  Now, of course, everything was different. “If I could have just one of those pibas back, any one, I would fall in love with her and stay that way forever.”

  I listened to him for an hour. Then I had to go home to work on my robber baron novel. Both of us were plastered.

  “I’ll come with you on the way to my place,” Luigi said. He shrugged into his bomber jacket and lit another cigarette, then went to the spare bedroom and grabbed a few C-ration kits from a stack of cartons in the corner. “You want any, blondie? They’re free.”

  “I thought the boss was marketing them for Popeye.”

  Luigi laughed. “You couldn’t give this dung away to a seagull. But it’ll keep you alive. Our large friend pays Popeye for at least five cartons a week. Then he gives it to desperadoes like me and Alfonso and Carlos the Artist and his wife who are starving to death.”

  I scooped up two kits, jamming them into my jacket pockets. Downstairs, the Figaro was
closed for its Monday morning cleanup. Chairs were stacked on the tables and a sleepy boy wearing a grease-stained apron was mopping the floor.

  As we traveled south on West Broadway, Luigi said, “The greatest problem for modern man is accepting his fate. I accept mine, yet no matter how often I labor to squash my former expectations they always crawl out of the grave and bite me. It’s frustrating, but I don’t believe in nihilism.”

  “What do you believe in?” I asked.

  He stopped, glancing both ways as if checking for cops, then grabbed my arm and stared at me piercingly with those clear eyes trapped in his melted features.

  “I believe in fucking,” he said, “but I’m terrified that I’ll die without ever getting laid again.”

  At the corner of West Broadway and Prince Street Luigi shook my hand, then he gripped both of my shoulders: “Thanks for listening, amigo. I bet you have problems also. How come you never tell us about them, blondie? Next time it’s your turn, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  38. Escape from Freedom

  Rain fell steadily on Greenwich Village.

  I was sitting alone in Figaro’s reading a dog-eared copy of Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm that Alfonso had forced on me. I looked up when La Petisa shed her raincoat and sat down opposite me, saying in English, “Hello, blondie, how are they hanging today?”

  Her sudden arrival caught me by surprise. She had on too much makeup but looked cute in her green Swiss hat, a crewneck sweater with an overlapped Peter Pan collar, black slacks, and red rubber boots. I haven’t mentioned this, but she worked uptown at an Argentine travel agency.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Happy as a clam,” she acknowledged, still in English. “I found myself a tiny sublet in Flushing. It’s great to be independent again. I don’t like depending on the kindness of strangers. What are you reading?”

  I showed her the book. “Alfonso insists. He thinks all Americans are philistines.”

  “Alfonso thinks his own mother is a philistine.” She snapped her fingers for the attractive blonde waitress from Boston. “I’ll have a cappuccino. And how about you, blondie? Would you like another hot chocolate? On me. I’m a poor little rich girl swimming in dollars and cents.”

  “I’m okay. Thanks anyway.”

  She said abruptly, “Why are you so passive, man? What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” I lied. “I’m just quiet, I guess. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, where do you live?” she asked, chipper again. “I don’t know anything about you. What kind of apartment is it? Why don’t you invite me over for a cup of tea? I won’t hurt you. I’m harmless. I’m just curious, that’s all. You’re so subdued at the empanada stand I don’t even know how well you understand Spanish.”

  “I miss a lot of words but I understand okay,” I said. “Where’s Popeye?”

  “He’s history already. Mr. Casanova couldn’t stop sneaking out to bang this toothless whale in a blue wig, so I said, ‘Hasta luego.’ Of course, the minute I did, Eduardo tried to jump my bones. But no thank you. He gives me the creeps because he’s a cuckold. Thank goodness he went last week to shoot a documentary film about voodoo in Haiti.”

  I said, “I’m amazed at all the stuff that happens to our gang.”

  She leaned forward. “So tell me, blondie. Why do you hang out at the kiosk anyway? Do you yearn for a Latin soul?”

  That made me laugh. I said, “Yes.”

  She laughed too. “You’re our little gringo mascot, aren’t you? Is your apartment far away? Cheers.” She clacked her cappuccino cup against my empty hot chocolate mug. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

  I said, “I’ve never heard you speak English like this before.”

  “That’s because we’re always with the illiterates, excluding Alfonso, of course. Do you have a girlfriend, blondie? I heard rumors about a flamenco dancer. Would you like to attend a movie sometime? How about West Side Story or The Misfits ?”

  “With you?”

  La Petisa glanced right and left. “No. I was thinking maybe with the long-haired dope over there wearing that macramé rug around her shoulders.”

  “I don’t know. I work every night on my writing. Ever since I got laid off at the Night Owl I’ve been dead broke.”

  “I already told you, I have money. What are you writing about?”

  “Just different things. Short stories and a couple of novels.” Why had I opened my mouth?

  “I wrote a novel once,” she said. “It was about all my different novios. And my cat was in it. I used to have a wonderful cat. His name was Trueno.”

  She clicked open her purse, taking out a note pad displaying the travel agency logo, and pushed the pad over to me. “Write down your phone number, okay? I’ll give you a call sometime.”

  “I don’t have a telephone,” I said.

  “Okay. Write down your address and I’ll stop by on a Saturday if you want. We could go to a museum. Have you ever seen the Degas ballerinas at the Metropolitan?”

  Signing my own death warrant, I carefully printed my address and pushed the pad back to her. She returned it to her purse without looking, then checked her wristwatch. Standing abruptly, she put on the raincoat.

  “Sorry to rush, kiddo. I have an appointment now. You can finish my cappuccino. Don’t worry, I don’t have cooties.”

  Then she leaned over and tapped Escape from Freedom. “Tell Alfonso that Erich Fromm is full of shit. Too much thinking spoils the broth. Fair enough?”

  “If you say so,” I said, and she winked at me.

  39. Coffee with Jorge

  You could see what was happening between Cathy Escudero and Aurelio Porta, but I went to the dance studio anyway. It felt bad, yet I couldn’t stop myself. Cathy liked an audience because it made her dance more intensely. I had memorized a half dozen of her flamenco routines and I could play them over in my head whenever I took a break from writing or if I was lying in bed unable to sleep. I knew every move of bulerías and all the llamadas. I could picture each graceful sequence defining the tientos introduction of her tango. Whenever I pictured Cathy dancing, I heard Jorge on the guitar. Together they were a great team.

  Other people came to the practices. A white-haired guy outfitted in a black turtleneck jersey was a friend of Aurelio’s and seemed like the archetypal Latin gigolo. An austere woman, probably late fifties, stood against the wall smoking cigarettes—her expression never changed. She wore a tweed jacket and slacks and pointy cowboy boots.

  After one session the two new people went off with Cathy and Aurelio in a taxi, leaving Jorge and me on the sidewalk high and dry in windy April weather.

  I recovered first, asking, “Querés un cafecito?”

  “Sí.”

  We walked over to the Downtown Café. At that hour of the afternoon it was almost deserted. We selected a booth and Jorge lit right up, offering me a cigarette I refused.

  “You really play well,” I said. It was the first time I’d given him a compliment. Unlike Cathy, he never asked for one and usually remained so distant that I rarely addressed him directly.

  Jorge shrugged and smoked his cigarette facing out the window.

  “Do you play for other dancers?” I asked.

  “No. Only for Catalina. I’m not good enough yet.”

  I said, “I think you are wonderful.”

  He shrugged again. “That’s because you don’t understand flamenco. I’m way down at the bottom of the ladder.”

  “I think you’re at the top.”

  Jorge glanced at me disdainfully. “I have a lot to learn,” he said in a tone that suggested we should drop it.

  “Do you go to school?” I asked.

  “No. I practice.”

  “How many hours a day?”

  “Maybe eight or ten.”

  “Don’t your fingers wear out?”

  He cocked his head and frowned as the tone of his voice changed completel
y. “If the soul is on fire the body never gets tired.”

  Our usual waitress had pretty green eyes and an attractive smile. She joked, “Howdy, boys. What’ll it be today? Two piña coladas with fresh shredded coconut and maraschino cherries?”

  I said, “Yes, plus a black coffee, please.”

  Jorge told me to ask her for coffee also. He had been a New Yorker for a year but was unable to speak one word of English, or to understand the simplest statement or interrogative in that language. He didn’t like talking to gringos, he was afraid of them. He wanted to keep himself purely Spanish for his art. Cathy had told me that Jorge was illiterate in his own language and could not read a note of music.

  “All musicians are idiots,” Alfonso once said. “The genius ones can’t even count to ten. I knew an Argentine guy with a lobotomy who could play the violin like a lost soul from paradise. You can shoot a true musician between the eyes and he won’t even blink.”

  Without Cathy as a buffer between me and Jorge I felt uncomfortable just as I had with Roldán at Thanksgiving. Jorge had no interest in asking about my life. He’d always tolerated my quirky Spanish, but now he grew impatient with my slow phrasing and butchered grammar.

  We finished our coffee and went out onto the sidewalk. Jorge carried his guitar case and had a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He had big ears and looked very childish under the porkpie hat. I shook his hand: “Adiós, muchacho—ciao.” He nodded and walked away, holding himself proudly and moving between pedestrians with confident arrogance. I had a longing to run after him and say something else, but how could I do that without triggering his scorn?

  40. Cataclysms

  By myself I went to another screening of Jules and Jim, the movie by François Truffaut. Maybe it would give me even more insights than it had the first time. So much had happened since then. I tried to pay attention to every move the characters made and to the words they spoke in French, which had English subtitles. I yearned for Jeanne Moreau the same way I yearned for Cathy Escudero. Moreau was so attractive, seductive, dangerous, and volatile. Jules and Jim were friends like Alfonso and myself. Jules was Austrian, Jim was French. Aurelio Porta was like the movie interloper, Albert, who, after being wounded in the First World War, consummated an affair with Jeanne Moreau, whose name in the movie was Catherine, another omen. Catherine was married to Jules and they had a daughter, Sabine. The story was very complicated. Catherine fell in love with Jim, Jules’s best friend. Sort of. She also had affairs with other men because she was tired of being married to Jules. Jules was desperately in love with Catherine. Jules and Jim loved each other, and Jim also loved a girl named Gilberte. Gilberte could be compared to my friend Alfonso’s patient lover, Sofía. Jim slept with other women, yet his principal girl was Gilberte, who suffered deeply when Jim became obsessed by Catherine. In the end, Jules, who seemed to be the weakest member of the trio that included Jim and Catherine, was the only one who survived.