“Excuse me?” She stopped short and her hands were on her hips. “Whose cousin is Izzy, hmm? I think I know my family.”
“Izzy is the closest thing to family I had growing up. Day in and day out.”
“And I’m glad you had each other, but don’t assume I don’t understand my cousin just because I didn’t grow up here.”
Something about her tone felt like he was being lectured at. Javier hated being lectured at, that’s why he wasn’t applying to colleges. He felt the heat in his head rise. “How can you say you understand? You come down here once a year and think you understand us?”
“‘Us’ again? Who the hell is ‘us’? I’ve known Izzy my entire life. When we were kids we were—”
“Right, when you were kids. You have no idea who he is now.”
“Look, Izzy has always been wild—”
Javier pointed at her. “See? Right there. That shows you don’t really know him. Izzy might be a total smart-ass, but among los cangrejos he was the diplomat, the one who was always diffusing conflicts, knowing the right thing to do. Trust me, you don’t know Izzy like I do.”
“Oh what, since I don’t shoot up with him I can’t know him?”
Javier felt a boiling feeling in his chest. He made his voice slow and measured as if he were talking to a five-year-old. “All five of los cangrejos, we went to good private schools, our parents took us to art shows and symphonies. My dad is a goddamn lawyer. Smart middle-class kids never go off the rails in your perfect world?”
Lupe crossed her arms. Javier wouldn’t have been surprised if flames started shooting from her eyes from the look she was giving him.
“Don’t you go putting words in my mouth, Javier Utierre. Just because I didn’t expect it doesn’t mean I’m passing any kind of judgment.” She took one hand off her hip and pointed at him in a very pissed-off-Latin-girl kind of style. “And by the way? My world is about as far from perfect as you can get, so clearly, you’ve passed some kind of judgment about me and I don’t appreciate it.”
The boiling was starting to reach his eyes. He was afraid he was going to say something he would really regret. “This was a bad idea. Why don’t you go back to your safe little town in Maine—”
“Vermont!”
“Whatever!”
Their last words were followed by squeaking shoes on marble floors.
“Excuse me, jóvenes, you have to keep it down if you’re going to stay here. This isn’t a sporting arena!” the old lady said through pinched lips, her judgment peeking its way through the small lenses of her eyeglasses.
The two of them were blinking and looking around at the museum hallway as the woman squeaked her way back to her desk, and it was as if they both just realized where they were, in the lobby of the museum. They looked at each other and burst out laughing, quickly trying to stifle it as the lady glanced back over her shoulder. This only made it worse, to the point that they were holding on to each other, tears running down their cheeks. Just when they caught their breath, Lupe whispered, “This isn’t a sporting arena!” and they both dissolved again.
They pulled it together as Javier paid admission for them both and the mood turned solemn as Javier led Lupe to the wing that held Izzy’s favorite exhibit. He started filling in the blanks as they walked. “Izzy likes to paint, always has. He’s been coming here since it opened when we were, like, four. His father used to take him here, que descanse en paz”—he quickly translated the phrase for Lupe—“may he rest in peace.”
“Oh.” Lupe just nodded and for a moment the only sound was the occasional squeak of other people’s shoes on the white marble floors. She glanced at one of the signs near the permanent collection. “José Campeche. Who was he?”
“He was a Puerto Rican artist. Son of a slave. Never left the island, but was known worldwide. I think that’s why Izzy likes him so much. Even after his father died and Izzy’s dreams of traveling and painting fell apart, hermano still has hopes of being a real artist one day.” As Javier talked about Izzy it weighed him down like he had a cinder block on each shoulder.
Lupe seemed to think about that, then said, “I remember Izzy painting when we were younger. I didn’t know it meant that much to him. I thought it was just something he did for fun. I guess I don’t really know him like I should. Like I’d like to.”
They turned the corner into the main exhibition room and saw the back of a lone figure sitting on a bench near the far wall. Javier let out a big breath. Izzy was parked in front of one of Campeche’s most well-known paintings: a man being rescued at sea, the water churning and wild while two men reach into the waves trying to save him. Izzy sat with his body bent, elbows leaning on his knees, eyes glued to the image of the flailing man. Javier stopped, not wanting to disturb his friend. He could see Lupe pause next to him. He looked over with a smile that seemed more of a nervous tic, and she nodded at him. They started to walk again, their steps silent on the shining floor.
“Izzy?” Javier’s whisper sounded amplified in the silent room. He thought Izzy would start at the sound, or at least turn, but he simply smiled without taking his eyes from the painting. He didn’t seem surprised at all.
“What up, Javi?”
Javier sat down next to Izzy on the upholstered black leather bench, Lupe next to him, perched on the edge of the seat. “Your mom is worried about you, hermano.”
Izzy chuckled. “Mom’s always worried, bro. She thinks that’s her job. I can’t believe she didn’t give up on me years ago.” He turned then and Javier looked deep into his friend’s eyes, searching for telltale signs of junk, but Izzy’s golden brown eyes were clear. Tired, but not stoned. At least Izzy wasn’t using. That was something. Then Izzy noticed Lupe and his grin widened.
“Holy shit. Is that you, prima?”
Lupe smiled back at him. “Yeah, cuz. Long time no see.”
Izzy looked back and forth from Javier to Lupe and back again, his smile widening. “Girl, does your tío know you hanging out with this loser?” He jerked a thumb in Javier’s direction.
Lupe’s face grew red and she looked at the ground. She might be strong, but she couldn’t hide her feelings for shit.
“I’d say that’s a big-ass no. Man, Esteban’s going to lose it when he finds out his precious lily-white niece is spending time with the likes of us.”
Lupe’s face was still red, her eyes filled with flame. “Lily. White? What the hell, Izzy? You’ve always worked real hard to make me feel different—”
“Feel different? Newsflash, prima. Down here you are different.”
“Well, maybe if everyone would spend less time telling me I don’t understand and help me to understand, I would.”
Javier looked from one to the other. He was going to have to switch roles with Izzy and play the diplomat or they were going to get thrown out. “Tranquilo, Izzy. Lupe is here because she’s worried about you. So am I.”
That laugh again, that sounded like it was on the edge of being a groan. “Why you worried about me? Did Padre Sebastian send you? Man, I been clean and sober for three months now.” Izzy waved his hand in a way he always did when he was getting pissed. He’d been doing it since they were kids.
“Yeah, but remember who you’re talking to. I know you only come here when you’re in a bad place, man.”
Izzy stood up abruptly, his arms flying from his sides as if he were plunging off a cliff. “Why the hell shouldn’t I be in a bad place? I mean, shit. Vico and Memo dying like that, one after the other. It’s a nightmare, man.”
“I know, pana, I know. But that’s what we’re here to talk to you about—”
“But nothing. This shit is messed up.” He paced back and forth in front of the painting, his sneakers squeaking with each pivot. “I’ve spent days going over and over the last few months in my mind, the last few years, trying to figure out when the darkness that’s following los cangrejos came. Sometimes, when I think about what’s going on, it feels like my lungs are being squeezed, li
ke I can’t breathe.” He put his face right into Javier’s, his eyes pleading for answers, for release. “Javi, with all our friends dying, why not use? Horrible things still happen, how do we stay straight? Why should we stay straight? The pain would stop, at least for a while.”
Javier froze. He wanted to give the right answer, but what was the right answer? He hated to admit that Izzy had a point. What would Padre Sebastian say? As he stared back into the swirling brown of Izzy’s eyes, he wondered if they were both fighting a losing battle. Like the guy in the painting, gasping for breath, barely keeping his head above the waves, the depths calling for him.
“Izzy, we think there are patterns in the killings.…”
Lupe nodded. “And we’re going to figure it out.”
At that Izzy snorted and looked his cousin in the face as if he were a pit bull deciding whether to bite. “Well, óyeme, ‘cousin Lupe,’ I think you’d best get your ass back on a plane.”
“Oh, you think so, ‘cousin Izzy’? Maybe I should do that and leave you to get gutted by some psycho.”
“Psycho? You’ve never seen a real psycho. If you’d like to keep it that way you’d best stay the hell away from this guy”—he jabbed his thumb at Javier—“or any of us, for that matter.” He started to pace again, his attention moving away from Lupe. Izzy stopped, looked at Javier with sad, old eyes. “Believe it or not”—his gaze still on Javier but also looking down into him—“we’re cursed.”
Izzy stared at Javier for a few more seconds and then he was up and walking, strolling across the museum floors with his hands in his pockets, his last words hanging in the air like a coming storm.
Javier sat for a moment, examining the painting in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he related more to the man about to drown in the water or the sailors on the boat reaching in vain for their comrade.
He stood, offered Lupe his hand. To his surprise, she took it, and the two of them followed Izzy out.
July 8, 1:53 P.M.
Lupe
WHEN THEY WALKED out of the museum, Lupe spotted Izzy sitting in the middle of a bench out front.
She walked to the bench, stopped, and stood staring down at Izzy, her hands on her hips.
Without looking up, Izzy chuckled. “You always stand that way when you’re pissed. Even when we were niños.”
“Yeah, well, you’re acting like a niño, taking off like that without a word.”
Izzy sighed. “Lately the air gets hard to breathe when I’m inside.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Lupe sat down next to her cousin, her anger dissipating. He seemed so defeated, which only worried her more. She may not know him like she thought she did, but she knew Izzy was not a quitter.
Javier joined them on the bench, sitting on the other side of his friend.
Izzy shifted over until his shoulder bumped hers. “Do you remember the last time me and my dad came up to Stowe to ski?”
The image of her dad loading suitcases in the back of his truck outside the Burlington airport brought along the memory of a blast of icy, late-night air. She involuntarily shivered. “Yeah, I thought you were crazy. It was, like, ten below zero.”
Izzy chuckled. “Yeah, it was effing frio, but I remember that day like it was yesterday; his yellow ski jacket, the smell of the pine trees.” He smiled more to himself than anything. “I think that was the last time I was really happy.”
Lupe’s throat caught. She felt bad for thinking her life sucked. Her dad was a drunk but at least she still had him.
Javier coughed. “Hermano, why you want to sit around and wait for shit to happen? That’s not you, man.”
Lupe noticed Javier spoke differently around Izzy.
Izzy looked up at Javier, his eyes red and old-man tired. “What’s the point?”
“The point is, you might be in danger. Let’s figure out what’s going on and stop it. We need The Diplomat in on this one. Lupe and I have … shorter tempers than you do.”
Lupe snorted, smiling. “Ya think? And I’m going to help, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure tío will love that.”
“He won’t know. I’m going to show you there’s no such thing as being cursed. Besides, remember who it was that saved you from the fire ants that time?”
Izzy laughed. “Yeah, by blasting me with cold water from the garden hose!”
“Cold? That was not cold. Now Vermont hoses are cold. Besides, it did the trick, didn’t it?”
Her cousin finally looked at her, and gave her that lopsided smile like he had since they were little. Esteban called it Izzy’s shit-eating grin.
Javier put his hand on Izzy’s shoulder. “So what’s the verdict, hermano? You joining us?”
Izzy nodded his head, still smiling. “Yeah, man. What a trio of losers. A pair of Boricua addicts and the Gringa-Rican from Vermont.”
Lupe smiled back at him. “That’s the first time you called me Puerto Rican. Even if you started with Gringa.”
* * *
The three of them drove around for an hour while they talked about the little they knew. They discussed the possibility of revenge, rival dealers, and enemies. Nothing seemed to fit. After they exhausted their ideas, they sat in a moment of frustrating silence as they cruised down the highway. That’s when Lupe saw the Papi Gringo billboard.
“El Cuco!”
Both boys looked at her. “What?”
Lupe was talking fast, but she couldn’t help it. “Just hear me out. Vico’s grandmother talked about retribution when I saw her in El Rubí—”
Izzy scoffed. “Vico’s abuela? She must be 106. And what the hell were you doing in El Rubí?”
“She seemed pretty sharp to me. Plus, there’s the words to that Papi Gringo song.…” They stared back at her.
“Oh, do not tell me you haven’t listened to the lyrics?”
Javier shrugged.
Izzy said, “Hey, I been busy.”
“Wait, there’s a photo of you with Papi Gringo online! I saw it! At one of his concerts!”
“I didn’t stay for the actual concert.”
Lupe sighed. “Some friends you guys are. The song is all about retribution.…” She loved knowing more about something Puerto Rican than they did. They didn’t have to know she’d only learned about it yesterday from Tere. She pulled out her phone and pulled up Spotify. “Let’s just play it. Does this car have Bluetooth?”
Izzy and Javier looked at each other for a second, then burst out laughing. When they could finally breathe again, Izzy said, “Girl, this car don’t have a single tooth!”
Javier added, “It’s toothless!” They started laughing all over again until tears were running down their cheeks.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Lupe reached for the radio dial, and searched through the stations as the guys did the high-five ‘good-one-bro’ thing over her head. They were lucky she didn’t punch them both toothless. It only took a few minutes until a station was playing Carlos’s hit. Lupe waited as the boys listened to the lyrics. She had to bite her tongue after the closing notes. Did they hear the connections she heard?
Javier clicked the radio off.
Izzy took a deep intake of breath. “Damn.”
Lupe smiled wide. “Right?”
“Carlos doesn’t suck.”
Javier responded. “Yeah, homeboy’s got some talent.”
Lupe was dumbfounded. “What? That’s all you got from that?”
Javier shrugged. “It’s just a song.”
“Wait, hold up. Lupe ‘the sensible’ isn’t suggesting that El Cuco is after us? Are you?” The smile threatened to split her cousin’s face.
“No! What about all that talk of retribution? Of life ‘pumping through a needle’ and ‘El Cuco’s cure will conjure that’? What if someone is trying to reproduce the myth of El Cuco?”
“It’s just Carlos, writing about how we grew up.”
Lupe slumped down in the seat.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t think it has anything to do wi
th what’s going on.”
“Yeah, cuz. You been watching too many movies. Things just aren’t that interesting in real life.”
As she sulked in silence, part of Lupe agreed with them that it was crazy to believe there were clues in a song. But another part, a deeper, older part, knew that unconsciously or not, Carlos had hit on something in his song.
Something bad.
* * *
“Grrr!” Lupe growled at her phone as Javier inched them through traffic.
“What’re you growling about, Lupe?” Javier asked, the only one who wasn’t completely absorbed in a phone.
“There’s, like, next to nothing about El Cuco on the internet! I mean, chupacabras are everywhere! Why not this legend? Dark bullshit like that sells.”
“There isn’t a lot about the island on the internet. When I did a paper on the Taínos I had to go and talk to people, visit historical sites. There was some information, a few books, but more often than not I got much more information talking to people.”
“Speaking of which…” Izzy handed Lupe his phone. She read the text as the car inched through traffic. It had to be from an adult, it was in complete sentences:
Isadore, I got your message about the legend of El Cuco. It might help if you talk to a gentleman who is an expert on the subject. Ernesto Quiñonez is a professor of anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico, semi-retired as he’s very elderly. His specialty is island mythology and he wrote many of the articles you accessed through the library. Perhaps it would help to go straight to the source? I have pasted his contact information below. I hope this is helpful.
She smacked her cousin on the shoulder. “You were researching El Cuco? After laughing at me when I brought up Carlos’s song?”
Izzy shrugged. “I got a librarian friend.”
Javier smiled. “‘Friend’?”
Izzy sneered. “Not like that! She’s like, fifty. She just likes me. I read a lot.”
Javier looked over at him. “What did your friend say?”
Lupe read him the text. Javier took the next exit to head in the other direction. “Let’s go talk to this professor.”
Five Midnights Page 12
