The Musician and the Monster

by Jenya Keefe

  “I don’t know what to think.” She rested her forehead against his. “I don’t ever want you to feel ashamed of anything, baby. But I know you sometimes do impulsive things, and regret them later.”

  “He needed me,” whispered Ángel. “No one ever needed me, Marissa, not once in my whole life. Is it so bad to be with someone who needed me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Then: “Yes, of course it’s okay to help someone. But maybe it wasn’t okay for him to make you feel like you had to help.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  She pressed her lips together. “I love you no matter what it was like, okay?”

  But she didn’t believe him. They were twisting everything, taking the loveliest thing that had ever happened to him and turning it inside-out, into something disgusting. They were wrong. In that moment he ached for Oberon to hold him, to tell him again that he was safe.

  “I just— I just need to talk to him, okay?”

  “Then do it,” Marissa said simply.

  He got up, fumbled in the pocket of the too-big sweats for a business card: Agent Neil Jeremy. He went to the phone on the bedside table and called the number.

  He got Jeremy’s secretary. She put him through, and the DOR agent immediately asked if he was rested and well enough for another meeting and more questions.

  “Sure,” said Ángel, picking up the hotel pen, doodling on the hotel pad. “But first I want to talk to Oberon. What’s his number?”

  “Oberon’s been really busy,” said Jeremy. “What with the arrival of the new envoy.”

  Ángel paused. Then, politely, he said, “Excuse me, but that is not true. I know that Oberon was upset when I went missing. I know that he will want to hear from me that I’m all right.”

  “Of course, we told him immediately when we learned you were safe,” said Jeremy. “We’ve been keeping him posted. He is reassured that you’re fine.”

  Ángel wrinkled his brow. He put a palm over the phone and said to Chandler, “Is there a reason the DOR would be keeping me from talking to Oberon?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t think of one, but I don’t work for them anymore.”

  Ángel spoke into the phone again. “I know that Oberon will want to hear from me. I would like you to put me in touch with him. Better yet, I want to go see him. Is he still at the Montana house? Or are he and the new envoy somewhere else?”

  “I’ll leave him a message and ask him what he’d like to do,” said Jeremy. “But as I said, he’s been very busy.”

  “I don’t get this.” Ángel stabbed the pad with the pen, frustrated. “You hired me to keep him company, right? Now you don’t want me to do that? What changed?”

  “It’s really not up to me,” said Jeremy. “Oberon makes his own decisions about who he wants to talk to.”

  “Neil, did I do something wrong? I haven’t been fired, have I?”

  “Definitely not. Your contract with the DOR is in good standing. You’re still drawing a salary. But I’m not able to put you directly in touch with Oberon. I can certainly pass along your message, though.”

  “He’ll want to talk to me.”

  “Then don’t worry. I’ll tell him, and if he wants to talk to you, I’m sure he’ll call. In the meantime, why not relax? Take a vacation day from Oberon and the DOR.”

  He hung up. Ángel tossed the pen down and looked around at the others: sympathetic Marissa, cool Chandler. His father, uncomfortable, silent.

  “Well,” Ángel said. “I don’t have any clothes, or a phone, or anything, but I do have some money. Who wants to go shopping?”

  They walked to a shopping mall near the hotel, where Ángel spent the better part of an hour buying a new phone while Chandler and Marissa went to get him some clothes. Then he and Victor bought sweet tea and sat in the food court waiting for the women, and Ángel bent over his new phone, connected to the mall’s wi-fi, and began to set up apps.

  He heard Victor take in a breath to say something, and he braced himself: would it be disapproving? Pitying? Both?

  Instead, Victor said, “Father Dennis died in October. He had a stroke.”

  “Oh.” Good fucking riddance. But Father Dennis had been Victor’s friend for years. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Victor sighed. “He regretted it, you know. He always felt he drove you away from the Church.”

  “Well, yeah. He totally did. He meant to.”

  “No, Ángel. He knew he shouldn’t have told me about you,” said Victor. “That was wrong. But he believed you could choose another path. He thought we could help you.”

  “Papá. I know you liked him, and I don’t want to fight with you. But he was not trying to help me. If he’d known the word, he’d have called me a cherna to my face.”

  Victor winced. Not a big fan of the gay, he also deplored name-calling. “Sometimes,” he said, “people are helping you, and it looks like something else. If you look at it from their point of view you can see.”

  “Sure.”

  Victor sighed, nodded. “I know. And sometimes people are wrong, and they regret it, and they wish they could make it up to you.”

  Ángel disagreed, but he didn’t want to wrangle about this with Victor. This was the longest conversation he’d had with his father in years, after all. Why ruin it?

  “I was wrong to send you there,” said Victor.

  Ángel studied his father. Victor had rarely, if ever, admitted fault before. But he seemed different now, less hard. He was thinner too, and browner; maybe he’d been spending more time in the sun, since he’d lost his business. “Was it Mom?” he asked. “The Ponzi scheme?”

  “Your mom and Bill. They used my name. I didn’t know about it at first, not until it was big.” Victor paused. “I couldn’t let her go to prison.”

  Ángel snorted softly. “I notice she’s not here.”

  “No, she—she was embarrassed. By the publicity. You know.”

  “Yeah, Papá. I know.” She had already been embarrassed by him—and that was before he’d gotten a reputation for being an elf-fucker. Victor was here, though. No doubt he was embarrassed by the publicity too; not to mention that he’d taken the fall for something he hadn’t done. But here he was. “I’m glad you came.”

  “I’m glad you called me,” said Victor. “I knew I was wrong the minute you signed that contract. I was scared, and the DOR made it seem like the best thing. But then I saw you were so angry. I knew you’d never forgive me. I tried to make it right. I wrote him—Oberon—I wrote and apologized to him. I asked him to let me take your place. He . . . he said he was happy to have you there. But I knew it was wrong, Ángel. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, God. It’s okay. Don’t feel so bad.” Ángel tried to smile. “One time I asked Oberon why he came here, and he said, ‘I am a great adventurer.’ That’s me too, no? I mean it. I had a great adventure.”

  Victor nodded, not meeting his eyes. “Look. There are the girls.”

  Marissa and Chandler were approaching, carrying shopping bags, and Ángel and Victor watched them from a distance. Marissa was bouncing, laughing, chattering, gesturing with her hands. Chandler, just as straight and military as usual, was gazing at Marissa with an expression of dumbfounded fascination that made Ángel smile. “Now that’s a relationship I didn’t see coming.”

  “She was Oberon’s security chief?” asked Victor.

  “Yes, and a giant pain in my ass.”

  “Sometimes,” said Victor, “we thought you and Marissa would be together.”

  By we, Ángel knew Victor was referring to the community of Cuban family and neighbors and fellow-parishioners who had helped to raise him. Who he had mostly lost. He scratched his head, pushing his hair away from his face. “I let you think that sometimes,” he admitted. “Sometimes I got tired of being the talk of the town. But no.”

  “Don’t you think you could ever—”

  “Papá, look at them,” said Ángel, gesturing at the two women. Marissa had taken Cha
ndler’s hands and was now dancing in the middle of the courtyard, swiveling her hips to make her skirts flare out and her hair swing, eyes locked on Chandler’s. “Forget about me for a second, and see the way Marissa’s looking at her. I don’t know Chandler so well, but Marissa could never look at any man like that. It’s not a choice. It’s just how it is.”

  Marissa’s face was bright with admiration as she twirled Chandler around. Oberon’s face would never brighten that way when he looked at Ángel. Or anyone. But he’d called Ángel his love.

  He tapped his new phone’s screen and dialed Neil Jeremy’s number. This time Emma the secretary didn’t put him through: “I’m sorry, Agent Jeremy is in a meeting for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “I wanted to give him my new phone number, so that Oberon can call me.”

  Was there an infinitesimal pause on her end? “Okay, that’s great. What’s the number?”

  He gave it to her. “It’s really, really important. You’ll make sure he sees it as soon as he’s out of the meeting?”

  “Of course.”

  “Or, you know, you could just text my number straight to Oberon; how would that be? That way, he can call me directly, and we wouldn’t have to waste Agent Jeremy’s time.”

  “I’ll check with Agent Jeremy as soon as he’s free,” she promised.

  He sighed and hung up, and got up to go see what the women had bought.

  After that they all trooped off to the shoe store, since Ángel only had his heavy snow boots. And then Marissa saw that, somehow, there was an ice rink in the mall, and wanted to go skating. (She was definitely treating this excursion as a date with Chandler.) Ángel couldn’t get into the spirit, so he sat on the sidelines and watched as Marissa, Chandler, and, surprisingly, Victor, glided around the ice.

  The waiting was killing him. He ached to talk to Oberon. Where was he? How did he feel about what had happened? How did he feel about Ángel?

  Ángel called Neil Jeremy again. Again Emma put him off.

  Was it that Oberon, alone and bereft, had turned to the new envoy and didn’t need Ángel anymore?

  Or maybe it was as Chandler believed: Oberon had never loved Ángel, had just manipulated him and used him, and simply no longer required his services?

  No. Oberon cared about him. Oberon was his friend. Ángel just needed to talk to him.

  After skating they were hungry, so they went to a restaurant and ordered a feast: shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles, crab cakes. Ángel could barely eat. He watched, interested, because Marissa was not fucking around here: she was aiming a firehose of sparkling charm at former DOR goon Chandler Evanston, and Chandler was visibly thawing. Chandler accepted a bite of bourbon pineapple upside-down cake from Marissa’s fork, her cheeks flushing red, and Ángel found himself exchanging a knowing glance with Victor.

  “You should come back with me to Jacksonville, retaco,” said Victor.

  Ángel smiled at the old childhood nickname. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  “Or just come home to Miami,” said Marissa. “Your apartment’s still there, isn’t it?”

  “I think I have a sublet,” Ángel said listlessly. “The DOR arranged it.”

  “Well, the DOR can un-arrange it.”

  “I can’t leave,” he said. “I signed a contract.”

  “Yeah, but things have changed, and they don’t seem to know what to do with you right now,” she said. “You don’t have to keep hanging around here while they figure it out. You have a life. You can come back to it.”

  “I can’t.”

  She leaned across the table, waggling her eyebrows. “I heard Kinsley Halliday’s going to be recording an album in January.”

  “Really?” Kinsley Halliday was a young country singer-songwriter who had Kickstarter-produced a bunch of very good songs. He heard she’d been picked up by Sony. “In Miami?”

  “In Nashville, but they’re scouting Miami musicians because she wants to do an island sound.” Marissa smiled at him. “Interesting, yes?”

  It would be a great gig—to get in on the ground floor with a promising up-and-comer. A year ago he’d have fought for that gig.

  “I can’t,” he said again. “I have to talk to Oberon.”

  She put a hand on his. “You were kidnapped, and I know you’re still recovering. But remember that it’s over. You can come home.”

  She didn’t understand. It wasn’t over at all. It was like he was still helpless on the back of that snowmobile, swiftly getting farther and farther away from Oberon.

  They walked back to his hotel, discussing whether they could get the DOR to pay for a room for Victor. (Victor was broke. He hadn’t gone to prison, but he’d apparently gone bankrupt, his shop had closed, and no one would hire him because everyone knew he’d pled guilty to fraud. He was living off food stamps and handouts from friends.)

  “You can stay in my room,” said Ángel. “There’s two beds.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m in the one by the window.”

  “I prefer the one closer to the bathroom,” said Victor. “Because of my age.”

  Ángel grinned at him. “Oh, please. You’re not that old.”

  The real question, as they entered the hotel lobby, was whether Chandler and Marissa were going to be sharing a room. As the women made their way to the front desk, he pulled out his phone and saw that, during diner, Neil Jeremy had left a message. Cursing himself for missing it, he played it back:

  “Ángel, this is Agent Jeremy. I wanted to let you know that I passed your message on to Oberon. He said that he’s been spending so much time with Mendel—that’s what they’re calling the new envoy—that he doesn’t have time to talk to you right now. But he says he’s glad you’re okay. Call me tomorrow and we’ll discuss renegotiating the terms of your contract—”

  “What?” Ángel had stopped walking, not noticing that the others had gone on ahead. He stood in the middle of the busy hotel lobby, pressed his fingers to one ear, and listened to the message again.

  “. . . he doesn’t have time to talk to you right now . . . he says he’s glad you’re okay.”

  “What?” he whispered. He listened to it again.

  Oberon doesn’t have time for you.

  “Hey.”

  He was sitting on the floor now, replaying the message again. Marissa was there, kneeling in front of him, prying the phone out of his cold hand. He leaned into her, rested his head on her shoulder, and they listened to the message together. Victor was kneeling too, his hand steady on Ángel’s back. Marissa handed the phone to Chandler, so she could hear it too.

  “I thought—” said Ángel, breathless with pain. “He said— He told me he loved me.”

  Chandler turned off the phone’s display decisively. “Ángel. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Don’t,” Marissa said sharply, her hands in Ángel’s hair. “Now’s not the time, Chan.”

  He opened his eyes and looked into Marissa’s. “She’s wrong, you know,” he breathed. “I never believed him. I never really believed that he loved me. But I believed that he— I believed that he liked me. I knew he needed me, and I thought—I thought, when he realized he didn’t need me anymore, that he would be kind.”

  He was crying. He was making a giant scene in a hotel lobby, on the floor, surrounded by strangers, but he couldn’t stop crying. His heart hurt so much.

  Marissa held him. Victor wrapped his arms around his shaking shoulders.

  “I hate crying,” he sobbed into Marissa’s neck.

  “I know.”

  “Why do I always cry? It doesn’t help.”

  “I know,” she soothed, stroking his hair. “I know.”

  “So, are you coming home?” Marissa asked him over breakfast the next morning.

  Ángel’s head still felt clogged with grief, but Marissa wasn’t letting him wallow. She’d harassed him out of bed, made him take a shower, and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, tapping a reggae beat o
n her plate with her fork.

  “I guess I should,” he said, cutting up his pancakes into small pieces, not eating them.

  His unlikely family—Marissa, Victor, and Chandler—was all assembled, along with a mountain of room service food. Victor had found a local NPR interview program on the hotel’s clock radio. It was soothing. Victor always listened to NPR during breakfast.

  She put an arm over Ángel’s shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand. We can be in Jacksonville by lunchtime.”

  How can I just leave? He stared at his mutilated pancakes, his eyes blurring with useless tears. But how can I stay?

  “I need to call the DOR,” he temporized. “I need to . . . end my contract, I guess. Get paid. Find out if I have a place to live.”

  “You can do all that from the road.”

  “Yeah.” He tried to think ahead. “I guess . . . I should update my website too. Call people and let them know I’m open for business again.”

  “You’ll be in huge demand,” she said encouragingly. “Everyone’s gonna want Ángel Cruz on their record.”

  He smiled at her weakly. “You’re an optimist.”

  “I’m really not. You’re going to be so hot, you might need to hire an agent to filter out the lookie-loos.” She jostled him again. “You’re going to be busy. You’ll make good music, and meet lots of people, and you won’t have time to be sad.”

  He leaned on her. He couldn’t imagine not being sad. The idea of leaving without even speaking to Oberon, just because of a secondhand kiss-off on his phone—it felt wrong.

  He opened his eyes and saw Chandler watching him.

  She said, “I would walk away, Ángel. This is a bad scene, but you can leave it behind.”

  “That’s what you did?” he asked—not challenging her, just wondering. “You left it behind? Isn’t it hard?”

  She smiled a little, a one-sided twist of her lips. “It’s hard,” she said. “But all you have to do is start walking. Keep walking until you’re free.”

  “Free,” he said disconsolately. He rubbed his chest, as if the pain there was a physical bruise that could be massaged away.