The Empanada Brotherhood

by John Nichols

She kept holding on to my hand as we hurried across to the west side of the street where she felt safer.

  Cathy stopped abruptly in front of the Cedar Tavern and asked, “What were you doing, following me? Are you crazy?” Finally she let my hand go and rubbed the dampness from her cheeks and eye sockets. “I almost had a heart attack.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t following you. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to scare you, I swear.”

  In Washington Square, Cathy sat us down on a bench near the children’s play area. She reached into her tote bag, fumbling for lipstick and a compact, and went to work on her face. She brushed on powder, used a mascara pencil, and applied the lipstick, talking throughout the process.

  “I don’t have money so I steal,” she explained. “I steal all my clothes. I steal everything. I steal food. I stole this lipstick, I stole these sneakers. I don’t care. Everything I earn that doesn’t go to my folks goes to my art. I pay my dance teacher. Jorge couldn’t steal a pencil so I have to support him. He’s helpless. You’re almost like him except you have parents, and I bet they have money. If you’re shy like Jorge you’re dead in this world, blondie. The vultures will pick you to pieces in a minute. There. That’s better.”

  She rubbed her lips together and observed her face at different angles in the compact mirror.

  “Damn, you scared me,” she said again.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again.

  “Quit saying you’re sorry all the time. Girls hate that.”

  I shut up.

  “I can’t ever afford to get caught,” Cathy said. She still looked like a frightened little girl. “If they catch you and you’re a foreigner you’re dead. They send you back to the trash bin. I hate this country because it’s so vindictive.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Cathy looked at me.

  “Are you still writing books?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad. Don’t ever stop.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” Cathy kissed me lightly and stood up. “Enough hysterics. You can walk me to the subway.”

  She glanced around a final time to make sure no police agents were stalking us. There were kids in strollers, dogs on leashes, old men reading newspapers, couples on the grass, squirrels in the trees, but no cops.

  Cathy held my hand all the way over to the Astor Place subway entrance where she patted my cheek, gave me a hug, then drew back and said, “You can’t come to the dance studio anymore, blondie. Aurelio doesn’t like it. No matter what I say he thinks you’re a rival. I’m sorry.”

  She added scornfully, in English: “He doesn’t know nothing about girls.”

  Then she said “I love you” in Spanish, squared her shoulders, and vanished underground.

  Dumbfounded, I stared at the subway entrance.

  When I got home there was a note with the travel agency logo on it stuck in my door. It said:

  I stopped by to say “hello.” But

  you weren’t here. Too bad, you

  lose. Call me at work sometime.

  Ciao,

  La Petisa

  50. The Gift

  I went to the hospital with Roldán when they were going to remove the cast from his arm. He needed an interpreter along to translate and help fill out the forms. At St. Vincent’s an emergency room intern sawed off the cast and put it in a bag. He gave the fat man a tube of cream to rub onto his wrist and forearm. We stopped at the business office to settle up. A groggy bureaucrat asked me questions that I translated for Roldán who answered back and I told the bureaucrat, who wrote down the answers. A half hour later the paperwork was complete. Who knows how, but the cook escaped without paying a cent.

  On the sidewalk we halted for a moment, blinking our eyes against the bright sun and the noisy bustle around us. My chubby friend bent his arm up and down, twisted his wrist, and flexed his fingers in and out. They were stiff, the muscles atrophied. His hand looked weird and tiny at the end of such a fat arm.

  “Soon it’ll be better than new,” he said. “They did a good job. That’s what I love about America.”

  We strolled at a leisurely pace to Sixth Avenue where the fat man paused at a flower vendor and purchased a dozen colorful carnations.

  “Who are the flowers for?” I asked.

  “For me, blondie. I deserve them.”

  We crossed the avenue and stopped at Johnny’s Italian Newsstand for a cigar, then went down MacDougal to the empanada kiosk. It was shortly after one P.M.

  “Come on up if you want,” he said. “I’ve got a ham and some lemon meringue pie.”

  No thanks, I told him, I wanted to return to work. So I handed over the paper sack holding the two pieces of his cast.

  “Why don’t you keep it?” Roldán said. “You’re the writer. Perhaps you will make me famous one day.”

  I was surprised and deeply moved. “Really? You mean it?”

  “Qué va.” He gestured impatiently. “What do I want with stupid memorabilia?”

  “Okay. Thanks a lot.”

  “A pleasure,” he said. “I’m happy to be of service to you, Señor Hemingway.”

  Roldán shook my hand and went inside and climbed the stairs. It was painful to watch him through the glass door puffing at every step. If he met somebody they had to back up until he reached a landing where there was room to pass.

  When I got home I laid both pieces of the cast on my kitchen table, poured a glass of milk, and contemplated the plaster of Paris creation. Everybody had signed it: Alfonso, Carlos the Artist and his wife, Gino, Eduardo, La Petisa, Chuy, Santiago Chávez, Greta Garbo, Luigi, and Popeye and even Eddie Ortega … but not Adriana, who had refused to sanctify anything contaminated by her ex-husband’s John Hancock.

  I spent ten minutes inspecting the cast, trying to decipher the salutations. La Petisa had drawn a funny little face with horns on top. Alfonso had written, Sos un hombre, Patrón. Eduardo had put, Suerte, gordito! Greta Garbo’s said in English, Good luck, baby! Luigi and Popeye signed their names with a baroque flourish. And Carlos had taken up the most space with an elaborate sketch of a nude woman riding a large wingèd phallus. I couldn’t read his handwriting.

  Then I fitted the two halves together one atop the other and wrapped them carefully in newspaper, Scotch-taped the newspaper tightly shut, placed the bundle in a paper bag, and set the bag on the highest shelf of my kitchen cupboard for safekeeping.

  51. Rock of Gibraltar

  Cathy Escudero visited the empanada stand again, this time with Aurelio Porta. He had on a Panama hat, a tailored pin-striped suit, and tasseled loafers. She wore a blue velvet jersey, a black skirt, and high heels—very elegant. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders making her look truly sophisticated.

  Alfonso, Carlos the Artist, and I hustled clear of the alley to let them in. Then we hung around on the sidewalk at the window. Everywhere pedestrians wearing short-sleeved shirts were talking and laughing.

  Roldán said, “Hello, beautiful. Whatever you want, I invite you. It’s on the house.”

  Cathy smiled, delighted. Men were always giving her stuff for nothing. She leaned over the counter and kissed the patrón, leaving a red imprint on his sweaty cheek. She ordered a beef empanada, a dulce de leche, and a Coke. Aurelio Porta asked for black coffee and a quince pie. Roldán clicked on his fan to blow away some of the smoke.

  “I’m so happy,” Cathy announced. “Aurelio and I are engaged. We’re going to be married this June in Uruguay. The wedding will be at a big country club where Aurelio plays polo. A week later I’m going to open at La Taberna Gitana in Buenos Aires. We’ll visit Patagonia on our honeymoon. Look at my diamond ring. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  She held it up, her fingers spread wide for effect.

  Alfonso said, “It’s bigger than the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  Carlos asked, “How much did a boulder like that set you back?”

  Cathy kis
sed the diamond affectionately. “Two hundred and seventy-three dollars. It’s from Tiffany’s. Aurelio gave it to me yesterday. To celebrate, we had dinner at the Stork Club. I’m so in love with him I could dance right out of my skin.” She kissed Aurelio’s earlobe and tweaked his chin and ran her hand through his long curly hair.

  Aurelio smiled.

  “My novio has a ten-room house in Montevideo,” Cathy continued. “And a black Citroën automobile. He’s going to teach me how to drive the car and ride horses and shoot live pigeons at the country club.”

  Roldán passed over the empanadas, the coffee, the Coke, and the dulce de leche. He also picked up a stack of paper cups and handed one to Aurelio, one to Cathy, and one to each of the rest of us. From under the grease bin he fetched a half-empty bottle of red wine, pried the cork out with his teeth, and poured each of us a splash. Then he raised his cup, saying, “Here’s to the boda.”

  Everyone repeated in unison, “Health, love, money … and all the time in the world to spend them!”

  “I am going to be married in a dress of red velvet,” Cathy said. “I will carry two dozen white roses for my bouquet. My flower girls will wear white satin with elbow-length gloves and beautiful opaque stockings. There will be an orchestra and the best flamenco guitarist in Montevideo—Enrique Barrón. I will dance alegrías at my own reception. The champagne will come from France.”

  We all stared at the dancer, hanging on to every word. She was shining like an autumn maple leaf made even more radiant by rain. If huge ruby ribbons carried by naked cherubs with pink wings had appeared over her head nobody would have been surprised.

  After Cathy and Aurelio Porta left the kiosk we moved back inside the cozy cubicle. Roldán emptied the dregs of his wine bottle into our cups. We tingled from being seduced by Cathy’s youthful enthusiasm.

  Alfonso lifted his cup. “Here’s to the lucky couple. They certainly deserve each other.”

  We drank to that.

  52. Counting Sheep

  I was stunned by Cathy’s news.

  Even when you see it coming for months it catches you by surprise.

  I walked home to Prince and West Broadway and climbed the stairs toward my apartment. There was an odor of garlic and cooking oil on the second landing. Higher, through a door opened a crack, I heard people talking about food in English with Italian accents. But I didn’t feel hungry.

  Sitting in the dark at my own apartment window I gazed down at Prince Street. It was quiet, the storefronts dark, the garbage cans lined up for collection tomorrow. Faint jukebox music came from Milady’s Bar on the Thompson Street corner, and the warm bread smell arose from Vesuvio’s bakery. Beyond the black silhouettes of water towers atop neighborhood tenements the night sky glowed a misty pink. Midtown skyscrapers seemed very distant. The blinking lights of an airplane were headed toward La Guardia.

  I could not relax and stayed up for hours, fidgeting, pacing between my kitchen and the bedroom. I wanted to kill myself, but how? I leafed through books by a handful of famous writers, reading a few paragraphs or a few pages, unable to concentrate. For a while I tried to type, a mistake; I gave up impatiently. I almost kicked apart the manuscripts piled neatly across my floor, but didn’t. I tore all the rejection slips and postcards off my bulletin board, crumpled them up, and fired them one by one into the wastebasket. I even took a bath but couldn’t sit still long enough to enjoy it. So I made a cheese sandwich and drank three cups of instant coffee as I contemplated Prince Street again. Nothing happened, though, not even a taxi drifted by.

  Then I looked for the note La Petisa had left in my door but I couldn’t find it. It was not in my wallet, nor tacked to the bulletin board, nor on my typing table or a windowsill, nor atop any of my manuscripts, nor in any pocket of my shirts and pants or my jacket. Shit. It was just gone, period.

  Okay. I put on my jacket and knitted cap and went downstairs to the sidewalk. I prowled north on West Broadway which was deserted. I felt miserable, like a fool, a patsy, a clown. I wanted to walk over to the East River and jump off a bridge. So long, blondie. Splash! Me and Virginia Woolf. All the metal city trash baskets were filled to overflowing. In a doorway between Houston and Bleecker a bum was conked out, one leg bent underneath himself at an awkward angle. The Grand Union in front of the NYU projects was dark. A man and a woman holding hands walked by me headed south. “I didn’t like it,” she said. “You weren’t paying attention,” he replied.

  A cop car idled beneath the Washington Square arch, its headlights turned off. A guy was walking a large dog on the diagonal through the park. I circled the empty fountain afraid of those officers who might be watching me, invisible inside their dark cruiser.

  If they’d known what I was thinking they would have jumped out and tackled me, clapped on the cuffs, thrown me into a dungeon, and left me there to rot.

  I traveled south on Thompson Street because I didn’t want to pass all the shuttered-up seedy clip joints on MacDougal or see the empanada stand. The deserted area during the wee hours looked shabby and cheap. It sure fit my mood. I heard a cop’s horse clip-clopping west of me. A taxi with its OFF DUTY sign illuminated went slowly past. Steam leaked up from a Con Ed grate. Concrete slabs were broken at a construction site circled by yellow warning tape. I almost stepped on a dog turd.

  Fuck this city.

  I climbed back to my apartment and sat in the dark some more looking out the window. No lights were lit in the buildings across from me so I could not even be a voyeur. I couldn’t be anything. My writing stunk. I had no money. I was still a virgin. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  After a spell of thinking like that I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, literally counting sheep. Just for spite I counted over three thousand, which wasn’t easy. There’s no logical or acceptable way to deal with heartbreak. Then I fell asleep.

  53. Insults

  When Eduardo learned that Luigi had “eloped” with Adriana he went crazy. Arriving at the empanada stand black with rage he rambled on about betrayal. He accused Roldán, Alfonso, Carlos the Artist, and even me of aiding and abetting the romance. “I want to garotte all of you cowards with my bare hands.” He called us fairies, said Roldán was a “fat old pederast” and Alfonso was “a diminutive queer.” For good measure he called Carlos a “lascivious sodomizer.” Though he tried to pick a fight with everyone nobody gave him the satisfaction. Finally he broke down, tearfully accusing America of destroying his life. “All us muchachos were insane to leave Argentina.”

  It made him delirious to think of Adriana captured by the arms of that ugly dwarf. What an insult to his manhood, to her womanhood, and to male/female relationships in general. Had she no shame at all?

  “Dale, che, at least he’s a fellow Argentine,” Roldán noted.

  Eduardo laughed like a condemned man on the gallows. “Yeah. Thank God for small favors,” he sneered.

  Right then Eddie Ortega popped up at the window in an aggressive mood. When the boss gave the little ferret some money, Eddie counted it and proceeded to break the rules, barking aloud for everyone to hear: “That’s not enough, panzón. What do I look like, a dope?”

  Eduardo instantly broke the rules in retaliation: “Hey, get out of here you piece of garbage. Go fuck yourself!”

  Eddie Ortega looked surprised. Then he fled, terrified, as Eduardo took a wild swing and also tried to kick him.

  54. A Ticket Out of the Ghetto

  Alfonso met me in front of the Bleecker Street Cinema. We were going to see a movie by Jean-Luc Godard. As we stood in line for the tickets, Alfonso said, “Did you hear what happened to Jorge?”

  “The guitarist for Cathy Escudero?”

  “Yes, that guy—the young boy.”

  “No, what happened?”

  “He killed himself. Chuy told me.”

  I accepted my ticket and the change from the ticket seller. I couldn’t believe it. Alfonso bought his ticket and we went inside. The t
heater was crowded but we found seats in the middle of a row toward the back. Alfonso ahh ed against his glasses and wiped them clean on his scarf.

  “How did he kill himself?” I asked.

  “Out the window of his apartment into the air shaft. Six stories up. He smashed all the garbage cans.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “I guess it was a broken heart. People die for that reason all the time.”

  “He wasn’t even eighteen.” My ears had started ringing.

  “Adolescence is the most vulnerable time.”

  Alfonso removed a small box of raisins from his pocket and offered me some. Underneath the purple scarf he wore a baggy gray sweater knitted by Sofía.

  “He was a great guitar player,” I said. “I mean …” I was at a loss for words. I felt dizzy, cold, flushed.

  Alfonso said, “Well, he’s playing his guitar in heaven now while that arrogant dancer prepares to drink French champagne.”

  “Where is his family?” I asked.

  “In Sevilla. A brother named Eliverio flew over and took back the body and his guitars. Jorge had four guitars and lived in a one-room crib with a mattress on the floor. The maestro Alejandro Cárdenas says he might have been good one day.”

  “I can’t even remember why he was in the United States.”

  “Cárdenas was his teacher over there. They say the old maestro committed a political crime and fled to New York where he has a cousin. In Spain, if you spit on the street Franco’s goons will kill you just as quickly as they shot García Lorca. So Jorge flew to America to be with his teacher. Cathy Escudero paid him to play for her. As you know, she earned her money working at El Parrillón on Forty-seventh Street. She also studies once a week with Matilde Guerrero. Both those kids believed that flamenco was a ticket out of the ghetto.”

  “I can’t believe he would do a thing like that,” I said. I couldn’t think straight. My stomach was cramping. I had trouble breathing correctly.