Don't Come Back Here Any More

by Pedro Menchén

  “I warned you,” J.J. apologizes.

  “You mean you wanted a bar with music? I ask with false naivety.

  “Of course! Some merengue or salsa! The girls are crazy about dancing!” says Benito.

  “And why didn’t you say so? I’m afraid that here there is only piped-in music. In fact, you can’t hear anything with so much noise. If you want to go ...”

  “No, no. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

  The bar which we entered is one of those cafés that try to imitate English pubs, although without a fireplace or a carpet, nor, naturally, the musty decor of an ancient Yorkshire mansion. It has, to be sure, large windows of smoked glass and it’s full of a mixed and noisy clientele who, instead of beer, drinks Cuba libres or gin and tonic. Why would J.J. come to this place? Why this one and not the one that I suggested? Oh, of course, because of the windows. It has smoked glass windows and from here you can see the outside without being seen. That could be it. Next to the entrance. Of course. All five of us fit. What is it? An aspidistra. Yes, like the one my mother has. They have polished the leaves. J.J., on my left and Benito on my right. Fine. Marcela, the youngest and prettiest, opposite me, next to J.J. But why are you looking at me? Look at him. You’re his sweetheart, aren’t you? Fermina is older than I thought at first. Forty or more, although she could pass for thirty-five. She’s the one who’s fucking Benito. Okay, look at him. Not at me. Fuck! Why? And Benito! All of them are looking at me at this moment! All except J.J., who only has eyes for the lovely Marcela.

  “They’re all my family in Spain,” says J.J., as he takes off his cap and puts it on the table.

  Oh, well, I didn’t know you had family in Spain! You didn’t tell me that.

  “We live in Leganés,” adds Benito. “We came to Madrid to do some shopping ...”

  “Benito is my first cousin and Marcela, my second cousin,” continues J.J. “Fermina is from the same neighborhood where I was born in Medellín and we know each other from there, right, Fermina?” he says, without looking at her, while he hugs Marcela affectionately.

  “That’s right,” says Benito.

  Geez, here’s the waiter. He’s in no hurry now. No, sir. No hurry.

  “And how is it going for you in Spain? Have you had much trouble finding work? Have you got residence permits and all that? Have you made many Spanish friends?

  “No, we’ve hardly made any Spanish friends,” says Marcela, undoubtedly the most expressive of the four. “People don’t trust Colombians. Papers ...? No. Only Benito has a residence permit.

  “That’s right,” he says. “They gave it to me after I was holed up in a church. We were on a hunger strike for several days. They talked about it in the newspapers.”

  “Oh, yeah. I think I read something about that.”

  Marcela and Fermina weren’t there. They’ve got no papers or work. Benito works in a mechanics shop. He’s single. He gets a good salary and he just bought himself a car. Fermina and Marcela worked as domestics and taking care of old people, but now they’re out of work. All the same, they smile confidently. Everything will work out. Life is not easy. They already know that. Nobody promised them a rose garden.

  “If you hear of anything ...” Fermina says to me, taking a sultry drag on her cigarette, “We’d be very grateful if you tell us about it.”

  “At the moment I don’t know of anything, but if I hear of something ...”

  But now it turns out that somebody told Fermina about a job and she didn’t go. That was several days ago. Why didn’t she go?

  “It was too far,” protests Fermina, “and when I realized it, I would have got there late. I’ll go tomorrow.”

  Finally the waiter brings our orders and leaves them on the table. Benito doesn’t let me pay and I have to keep my money. Liquor for Marcela and Fermina. For the men, beer.

  “Do you guys know what happened to me and a girl friend as soon as we got to Spain?” Marcela says, after taking a swallow of her drink. “My God, I thought I would die laughing! We had just got off the plane, very early, around six-thirty in the morning or something like that, and we were so tired that the first thing we did was to go to the coffee shop in the airport to get some coffee. “Two double reds, please,” I said to the waiter. “Two reds?” he asked me, surprised. “Yes,” I said. “Double. Two double reds.” “Of course,” said the waiter. “No problem.” He put down two flute glasses on the counter, took a bottle of wine from the shelf, pulled out the cork and proceeded to fill the glasses to the top. We looked at him horrified, not daring to say anything. In Colombia only coffee is called red. But you guys, in Spain, call wine red. And we didn’t know it! What sort of women would there be that would drink wine in the morning!, the waiter must have thought. We didn’t want to start trouble the minute we got to Spain, so we took the glasses with resignation and, between laughing and choking, my friend and I drank the last drop of wine. Since we weren’t used to drinking so early, we left the airport half drunk. Both of us were laughing our heads off. And I still laugh whenever I think about it.

  Marcela and Fermina ask me questions of a personal nature. They want to know things about my life. I believe they suspect something or that they’re interested in me in some way that’s not quite clear. Benito also looks at me and smiles. He’s touched my leg a couple of times and I think it wasn’t by accident. He’s not good-looking, but he has something. He has .... J.J. is ignoring me. Fine, then I’ll fool around with him to make him jealous.

  It was after eleven when we left the café and headed for the white car that he had parked on the corner. Marcela, Fermina, and J.J. managed to fit in the back seat, J.J. between the two girls, with his left arm over Marcela’s shoulder. I occupied the shotgun seat next to Benito, who seemed very proud to be taking us in his car.

  “It’s time to go back,” he said. “If you want me to take you somewhere ....”

  J.J. remained silent. It was obvious that he no longer had the slightest intention of having dinner with me, as we had planned.

  “Well, if you don’t mind, you could drop me off at my house,” I said, a trifle out of sorts. “Keep going straight and I’ll tell you where.” At least I have food at home, I thought. “Nice car,” I added, roling around in my seat, “and very comfortable.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Benito, while he was picking a CD. “It’s not bad.”

  At that moment one of those syrupy melodies started to play that the Latins like so much, interpreted by a singer unknown in Spain, but presumably famous in Colombia. Little by little they all joined in an improvised chorus and sang with a certain solemnity, as if it were a patriotic hymn or a popular romance.

  “I’ve been driving cars since I was fourteen or fifteen years old in my country,” said Benito, shouting to make himself heard in the midst of the voices, when we stopped for a traffic signal, “but this is the first time I’ve driven a new car, and besides that, one of my own. In Medellín I worked as a taxi driver.”

  “Oh, did you?” I said. “I don’t have a car,” I said. “I quit driving after I was involved in a minor accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing serious, but since then ...” I said. The voices in the back seat keep us from hearing almost everything that the other was saying, and I’ll wait until a verse is ended. “That seems strange to you, doesn’t it?”

  “No, no, not at all,” said Benito with deference. Then he joined with the other voices and sang part of the refrain, giving me a sidelong glace and a smile. “Sometime if you want ... you know ... if you want to take a trip somewhere ... I’d be pleased to drive you. Any weekend, Whenever you like.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind. You’re very kind.”

  Once again the voice of Benito joined the other voices and all together they kept singing until they reached the final apotheosis, all a monument to cheap sentiment and vulgarity, I thought, unscrupulously. Through the rear-view mirror I noticed the efforts of Fermin
a to hold back her tears. Even J.J. seemed moved.

  Oh, those Latins!, I thought. They’re so sentimental! And why am I not moved?

  “Here. Let us out here,” shouted J.J. suddenly. “Ramón lives on that street back there.”

  “But I ...” I objected, surprised, since what he said wasn’t true. Nevertheless, something inside me told me it was better to keep quiet.

  “I can take you to the door,” said Benito thoughtfully.

  “No, it’s not necessary,” replied J.J. “It’s right here and it’s not worth the trouble.”

  “All right. As you wish, mate.”

  The white car stopped on a corner and J.J. jumped to the sidewalk with a sport bag in his hand.

  “I hope we meet again soon,” I said, shaking Benito’s hand.

  “Okay. Get him to give you my phone number.”

  Now outside the car, I took leave of the two women with a kiss to each through the window. In a short time, we had warmed to one another and we smiled with sad eyes.

  “I hope you get lucky and find a good job soon,” I said.

  I didn’t have time to hear what they responded, because J.J. grabbed my arm and pulled me away from them with a jerk.

  SECOND PART

  THE HITMAN

  “There is nowhere to go back and begin again with this ... there is no place to go. The past is never where you think you left it.”

  KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

  Ship of Fools

  CHAPTER V

  “But what’s wrong with you?” I said, pulling away from his hand and looking at him with indignation when we turned the corner. “I don’t need you to push me, and besides, I don’t live here. What the hell is going on? Where are you taking me?”

  “I’ll explain it to you later! Come on! Don’t stop!”

  “But why are you running?”

  “Don’t stop! Move, move!”

  “We had a date for dinner, just you and me, and you show up with somebody ...” I said, almost breathless, while a group of people who had gathered at a movie theater made room for us to get by. The rest of the sidewalk seemed clear.

  “They’re my family. I thought you liked them.”

  “Okay, so they’re your family! Then why are you running away? Why are you lying to them and telling them I live here? And now, where are we going? What ... what’s going on?”

  “Quit talking and run! Turn there, to the right! Somebody’s following us! Haven’t you realized that yet?”

  “How could somebody be following us?”

  “I lied to protect them. They’re not to blame for anything.”

  “And I’m not to blame for anything either! Why are you putting me in this mess?”

  J.J. stopped in front of a gate and said: “Let’s go! In here! Hide!”

  “It’s not open,” I said weakly, seeing how he went on farther. “Oh, wait!”

  “Hide somewhere! Keep away from me!”

  “But what are you going to do? Oh!, why don’t we go in there?” I shouted, pointing to a lighted sign a little farther down.

  We took a quick glance around us and didn’t see anybody or any suspicious car. J.J. nodded with his head.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  It was a sort of Basque inn or restaurant with a lot of smoke, a lot of people, a lot of noise and the good smell of home cooking. An older waiter, somewhat unkempt, led us to the free table located in a corner, under a branch of garlic and a huge squash that threatened to fall right on my head.

  “Just the place I wanted to bring you,” I said with a sardonic smile. “We had a date for dinner, didn’t we? Come on! Don’t say you aren’t glad! We’ve escaped from danger! Or do you think somebody is still coming to attack us?”

  J.J. shot me a cold look, let out a sigh of dismay and said nothing.

  “Come on, come on! Don’t worry! I continued, very sure of myself. “I know who followed us.”

  “How? What do you know?”

  “My ex-boyfriend, silly. He’s the one who followed us.”

  “Your ex-boyfriend?”

  “Sure, man. The one I told you about. He’s jealous. He left me. He dumped me for another guy, but it didn’t work out and now he wants to come back. He thinks I should be available whenever he wants. He doesn’t know that I too ...”

  “Fuck!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s not who it is!”

  “What do you mean, that’s not who it is?”

  “No, fuck! Don’t you get it? He’s not the one who followed us!”

  “Well, all right. You can tell me about it later. For now, let’s eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving to death. Have you checked out the menu? What would you like to have? Oh, J.J., that cap suits you so well ...! But, I don’t know ... You realize that we’re in a restaurant ...”

  “I’m not hungry,” said J.J., taking off the cap with a surly attitude. “I don’t feel like eating anything.”

  “But we have to order something.”

  “Order something for yourself. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to eat alone. I don’t like to eat alone. And now I’m not so sure that I’m hungry. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why we got out of the car like that. You say you want to protect your family, that somebody’s following us! I thought it was Pedro, but if it’s not him, who is it then, and why ...?”

  “All right. Order something to eat. Something for two.”

  “Of course. I’ll order it, but I still don’t know anything. The food is not going to resolve my doubts.”

  “This is neither the time nor the place ...”

  “All right,” I said, making a sign to the waiter to take care of our table.”

  “We’ll talk later at your house,” J.J. concluded with a mellow look. And it was as if he had said: “We’ll make love later at your house.”

  The dinner was boring and frugal. Very different from what I had imagined. We didn’t have dessert, tea, or coffee, and, after I paid the bill, I asked the waiter to get us a taxi. This took ten minutes, and, in spite of our fears of being seen by the supposed pursuer, it’s certain that we didn’t see anything strange in the doorway of the restaurant when we got into the taxi, nor around my house when we got out of it.

  “You see?” I said to J.J., after opening the door and entering the living room. “Nobody followed us. Maybe it had been my ex-boyfriend, but after I got mad at him for stalking me the other day, he would have kept out of sight once he saw that we were aware of his presence. No doubt that’s who it was.”

  J.J. glanced around the inside of the house with little interest, then he dropped his bag on the floor, took off the cap, and sat down in an armchair. It was then that I truly realized how worried he was and I reached out my hand to his head to stroke his hair.

  “Leave me alone!” he said brusquely. “Don’t touch me!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “I need to think,” said J.J. “I have to think. I have to make a decision about something tonight.”

  “I’m sorry.” I insisted, confused and snubbed. “I only wanted ...”

  “I’ve got a very serious problem, mate, and this is no time to ...”

  “I get it. I get it,” I said, flopping onto a chair.

  “No! You don’t get anything! You’re making a joke out of it! You Spanish are all ...!

  “Well, tell me then, what’s going on with you,” I said, furious. “Haven’t I been trying to find out what it is the whole time? But if you don’t tell me anything ...”

  “Somebody wants to kill me. Somebody’s looking for me to kill me. That’s what’s happening! Now do you get it?” said J.J., pressing on both temples with his fingers, as if he were trying to cure a headache.

  A chill ran through my body. I wanted to say something, but I was incapable of speech. I got up from the chair and sat on the sofa, next to him. I had never seen him as beautiful as when he lifted hi
s face, looked into my eyes and said: “I have to kill somebody. I was supposed to do it several days ago. If I don’t kill this guy, somebody else will kill him and then he’ll kill me too. Get it, mate? Now do you get it? I’m a hitman, a fucking hitman, a killer for hire. I’ve got a deal to carry out, and if I don’t kill, they kill me.

  It was almost as cold in the house as it was outside. So I put on the heat and we waited for the temperature to go up so we could take off our jackets. I made coffee, I took it to the table in the living room, and, after drinking the first cup, we both started to chat in a more relaxed mode.