Five Midnights

by Ann Dávila Cardinal

  “Sobrina, is there something you’re not telling us?”

  Lupe looked at the floor, at the plants, but not into her aunt’s probing eyes. “I’m just … freaked out about Izzy.” That wasn’t a lie. In the slightest.

  Maria took Lupe’s chin in her hand and she had no choice but to look at her. “I don’t care if you tell me, but if you have something that will help your uncle figure out what’s going on, share it with him. ¿Comprendes?”

  Lupe nodded, tears blurring her vision.

  Maria took her hand. “Bueno. Your uncle is insisting they release him. I need you to try to talk some sense into him. He’ll listen to you.”

  Her. Talk sense into her uncle. Lupe was pretty sure it was her sensible thinking that had kept her from seeing the truth. Now even her uncle had seen it.

  It was too late for Izzy, but maybe not for Javier.

  She was going to have to keep her mind open.

  July 9, 8:58 A.M.

  Javier

  JAVIER SHIFTED HIS weight from one foot to the other, the crash of the waves on El Rubí’s shore below providing a rhythm. It felt comforting to rock back and forth like he did when he was holding one of his baby cousins. Izzy was dead. Memo. Vico. If their birthday theory was correct, he was the last one left. For a minute he considered running in the other direction, away from Lupe Dávila, hopping in his car and heading east. He could sit on the beach in Luquillo and wait for the end to come, by himself so no one else would get hurt.

  But he had to admit the idea scared him to death.

  The clock was ticking.

  Thirty-nine hours.

  Was that all he had left? He was proud of all the work he’d done, kicking his habit. There were moments that were so clear from his past, moments seen through a filter of drugs, which were so damn painful. People he hurt, money he stole. After meeting Padre Sebastian he was surprised he got off so easy. Not that getting clean was a walk in the park, but he was surprised that there was no physical payment for his sins, no pound of flesh. He had thought the feeling of guilt was his punishment. But part of him wondered if he had been wrong and the true judgment was coming. Deep down he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to ride it out alone on a beach.

  If El Cuco really was coming for him, his end would not be peaceful.

  To make things worse, he wasn’t looking forward to going down the stairs. Javier rarely came to El Rubí since he stopped using. When he was fifteen it was like an adult carnival, the lights beacons in the night sky, and all he’d wanted was to have full admission. The first time he’d been there straight, he was shocked at how worn it looked, how poor. Even now as he looked down at the rooftops he could still identify where the best drugs could be purchased, the names of the dealers. If they were even still alive. Despite the reality of the morning sun washing over the streets, the barrio still held a pull for him.

  And he didn’t like it.

  His eyes darted from left to right, wondering if the darkness was there even in the brightness of morning.

  He heard someone running up from the direction of San Cristóbal and he turned to see Lupe jogging up the hill, ponytail bobbing on her back, her pale, muscled legs pumping as she ran. He liked the way her body was heavier on the bottom, like she was rooted to the earth. Lupe looked up then and smiled wide when she saw him. He realized in that moment he wanted to be in her company for as long as humanly possible.

  Well, for the next thirty-eight hours and fifty minutes, at least.

  Her face was glowing pink with the exercise and she was breathing hard. “Whose idea was it to meet at the absolute top of this city on a hill?”

  He smiled back. “If you’ll remember, Señorita Dávila, you were the one who wanted to accompany me.”

  She pointed to the stairs. “Are we going, or what?”

  He grabbed the covered casserole dish that his mother had brought to him earlier that morning and headed for the stairs before Lupe could get there. No way was he letting her go first. When she got to the top of the stairs Lupe stopped, holding on to the handrails on either side, and stared at the barrio below.

  He looked up at her, certain he saw fear in her eyes. “You can still change your mind. I can meet you at the Café Poético in twenty minutes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You look scared. It’s okay, really—”

  She gave him that look. “Scared? Excuse me, Señor Macho Pants?”

  He put his hand up in surrender.

  She smiled and he let out a breath. “I was just thinking how well they named it.” She looked back over the neighborhood spread out below them. “The Ruby. It’s so beautiful.”

  Surprised, Javier looked into her face then, really looked. Blanquitas from the states usually acted like they were above it all, that the island was a place to party and tan, no more, and boys like him were for flirting with, dancing with, or bringing them towels poolside. But Lupe seemed to really love the island.

  He realized she had darted past him and started down the stairs. Independent or not, he was sticking to her like glue. Just before he took the first step, he froze. He had the feeling he was being watched. He spun around in a 360, looking at each tourist, jogger, and dog walker that was on the calle. No one seemed out of place. No shadows in his vision. What’s wrong with me? He shook the feeling off and took the stairs two at a time to catch up with Lupe.

  They reached the bottom together and he stopped and looked around, wondering if the stain of Vico was still on the pockmarked ground.

  “You okay?” Lupe was looking at him with concern.

  He nodded. “Just stay by my side, okay?”

  “Why, you scared? Relax. I’ve been here before, you know.”

  He watched her as she looked at the life teeming around them. He knew she was taking in the shabby clothes of the children, the pounding music pouring from open windows. She kept walking in silence, but her eyes ran across everything, like a brush filling with paint. Javier began to see the streets through her eyes and, though he had come down there hundreds of times in his life, he began to notice things he hadn’t before. The rich textures of the broken concrete buildings, the colors of the houses washed on in waves of patina, the children running in and out from between adults’ legs like cat’s cradle strings. It was as if even familiar places became new when he was with her.

  Javier stopped in front of Vico’s abuela’s building, and pointed up the crooked staircase. “This is it.” He led them up the stairs, stopped on the second floor and lifted his fist up to knock at a faded door, the black plastic number hanging upside down from one nail like some sort of dark talisman. Before his knuckles hit the wood, the door opened, leaving his hand in midair like an unfinished sentence. Vico’s grandmother stood holding the inside knob, her tiny frame barely reaching halfway up the door, but her shoulders were up and strong like they had been at the funeral.

  “Come in, come in.” She brushed impatiently at them with her hands.

  He handed her the still-warm casserole. “Doña Belasco, Mami sent you some arroz con pollo with her blessings. She is so sorry for your loss and that she couldn’t make Vico’s service.”

  The old lady patted Javier’s cheek with a look of affection but no smile. She didn’t have much to smile about these days. “Gracias, m’ijo. Please give your mother my thanks. She’s always been so thoughtful, but I didn’t expect her at the service. Things like that upset her. And lately we have too many young men’s funerals to attend.” She gestured to the love seat in the living room. “Sit, sit, children. Would you like some cake? My granddaughter made it. She brought it to me yesterday when she came to pick up some things of Vico’s. Such a sweet girl.”

  Javier gave a tight smile. Marisol was many things, but sweet was not a word he would use to describe her. “No, gracias, Doña. We—this is my friend Lupe Dávila.” He noticed Lupe had sat down on the love seat near the window and he realized he was going to have to sit close to her. Real close. “We don’t want to impose
.” He concentrated on being nonchalant as he dropped down on the remaining cushion and the old woman settled in a chair opposite them. He looked down at Lupe’s bare leg next to his and noticed the fine blond hair that shone on her thighs like gold dust.

  Lupe spoke and pulled his attention up. “Actually, Doña Belasco, you and I met a couple of days ago a few blocks from here. The day after your grandson…”

  “Yes, m’ija. I remember you. That was a difficult day. You did not find me at my best.”

  Lupe cleared her throat. “I was so sorry to hear of your grandson’s death.” She glanced over at Javier. “That day we met, you mentioned something about ‘they’ and their responsibility for Vico’s death.”

  “Yes.” She turned to Javier. “M’ijo, I’m sorry. Your mother and the others, they didn’t know.”

  “Wait, what do our mothers have to do with what’s going on?”

  Tears started to fill her rheumy eyes, but didn’t fall, just gathered against the dam of her eyelids. “They didn’t know that he would come.”

  “That who would come?”

  “El Cuco.”

  It was a whisper, but hearing those words for the second time, they reached for him with spidery fingers, wrapping around his neck like a noose. More memories broke through. “It was that night when my mother found us in the backyard, wasn’t it? That last birthday party?”

  She nodded. “You have to understand, your mothers were at the end of their ropes and nothing they said or did kept you away from those animales who were taking over the neighborhood with their guns and drugs. It used to be such a nice area, a family neighborhood, but it started to change when the economy failed. Jobs were lost, houses foreclosed. Your mothers tried to talk to you boys, but we couldn’t fight the lure of their fast cars and easy money.”

  Javier remembered watching those tricked-out muscle cars drive by, the loud bass from the stereos rattling the windows, curvy girls with tight clothes in the passenger seats, and wanting nothing more than to be like them when he grew up. He’d blocked out what happened later that night, but the fog was starting to clear.

  It was the first time they’d ever done coke, the five of them, thirteen-year-old cangrejos beneath the flamboyán tree. It was coming back to him now. It was his mother who’d found them, who’d seen the mirror covered with uneven white lines. Javier couldn’t even remember where they’d gotten the drugs. Who had given them the drugs? They were children! It had to have been Vico. Then his mother was pulling him up by the arm, the other mothers spilling out the back door at the sound of her shrieks. When he’d looked back he’d seen the mirror was broken in half, cocaine sprinkled over the packed dirt like ashes.

  He shivered despite the heat.

  “That night we had all been in the kitchen cleaning up the last of the cake and ice cream, when your mother thought to check on you in the backyard. We were all so desperate, so scared to be losing you all. They didn’t even know what they were going to do when they sat you down, but when they lined up in front of you boys, they grasped each other’s hands for strength. And as they began to talk about El Cuco, it was as if some kind of power went from one to the next, like something from the Old Testament. I sat nearby holding Marisol. She was terrified, poor thing. She had nightmares about monsters every night after that, insisted she could see shadows everywhere. She and Vico fought a lot, but still, she was always protective of her brother, tu sabes? She was never the same again.”

  Javier remembered all of them, los cangrejos, squeezed side-by-side on the couch, hearts beating fast, while their mothers stood in front of them. He and his friends hadn’t known what to expect, but they’d known it wouldn’t be good.

  Vico’s mother had stood at the end of the line of women, pointing her finger at them. “If you don’t stop this behavior, El Cuco is going to get you!” The boys had stared at them, mouths open.

  “It was out of desperation that they turned to El Cuco. The threat of him had always made you behave before.”

  “We were thirteen, not seven.” Javier could hear the shortness in his voice.

  He remembered thinking: that’s it? That was the punishment? He’d heard Vico snort, then cough, trying to cover his laughter. Javier had looked up at this line of women in front of him, adults who until that night had seemed so formidable, so in control, and it was as if he had been handed a pair of glasses and could finally see things as they were. He’d seen the powerlessness in their eyes, how frail they really were.

  In retrospect, Javier realized this was the moment that turned him toward the neighborhood drug dealers, not away. If only he’d known just how much power those women had together, perhaps he would have more than thirty-seven-and-a-half hours left.

  “They did it. Our mothers. They called him.”

  Doña Belasco nodded. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it since Ludovico was taken from me. Then Guillermo and Isadore. Such a tragedy.”

  “But what does he want? El Cuco? How do I show him that I’m not bad?” Even his voice sounded thirteen again. The truth was, he hadn’t ever been this frightened.

  Her voice was tired. “I wish I knew, m’ijo.”

  Then Javier could feel anger spread through his veins like heat. The boys had trusted their mothers. They were their mothers, for God’s sake. “They were supposed to take care of us, not have us killed.”

  Doña reached for Javier across the table, but he pulled his hands back.

  No.

  She didn’t get off this easily. She could have stopped it. His mother should have stopped it. Doña Belasco folded her hands back in her lap, the papery skin almost clear over the blue of her veins. “They had no idea that he would come, Javier. We thought El Cuco was just a myth, something to get children to behave. Believe me, if I could take it back for them or call him off I would. I tried to talk to your mother about it, but she acted like that night never happened, kept changing the subject.”

  Javier snorted. “Typical.” He wondered if it was after that night, after finding him and his friends, that she gave up and moved to Denial Land. Javier couldn’t breathe. He stood up, knocking his knee against the glass coffee table, the pain almost welcome. “I have to get out of here.” He bolted out the door and ran down the stairs, desperate to fling open the front door and grab a breath.

  Javier paced up and down the cracked pavement in front of the building. The morning sun felt like it was searing his eyes. There were so many feelings rattling around in his chest that he couldn’t sort them out. Fury was the first, the easiest. Thinking about his mother often made him angry, but this was on another scale altogether. What were they thinking? What kind of parent sics a monster on their child?

  He’d seen his share of monsters in his life, human and otherwise, but the main feeling, the one that pushed down on his shoulders as if he were being pressed into the ground like a stake, was guilt. If only he had been a better kid, this never would’ve happened. If only he’d stayed away from drugs like Carlos. But as Padre Sebastian often reminded him, you can’t decide where you came from, but you can decide where you’re going. Javier stopped pacing.

  It wasn’t helping.

  “Javi, man! That you?”

  A gravelly, smoke-roughened voice called from a nearby corner. Irritated, Javier turned and saw Flaco, a local character he hadn’t seen since.… well, since. The cabrón had stayed true to his nickname, his skinny frame twitching, stained T-shirt draped over his shoulders as if on a hanger. Javier nodded but didn’t move. Flaco peeled himself off the building’s wall and strutted over, grabbing Javier’s hand in a gang shake.

  “What you been up to, jefe? Haven’t seen you on these calles in a long-ass time!”

  Javier looked toward the door, hoping Lupe would come through. And hoping she wouldn’t. What would she think of him talking to someone like Flaco?

  “Yeah, man. Been busy with Padre Sebastian, tu sabes?” That should do it. Nothing cuts short a conversation with a drug dealer faster than the mentio
n of a priest … except maybe a cop … or the guy’s grandmother.

  “Oh right, the padre.” Flaco was nodding his head. And not leaving. Javier was about to bring out the big guns and ask after Flaco’s grandmother when it happened.

  Flaco looked around, reached into his jeans pocket, and pulled out a bag of white powder all in one practiced move.

  Javier’s stomach turned to ice.

  “Man, pure Tigre Blanco H out of Asia. Guaranteed to take you for the ride of your life, pana.”

  Javier just stared, the clean white powder a soft pillow in the middle of Flaco’s grimy hand. He was surprised to find he missed it, the going-home feeling only that little plastic bag could give him. The sounds of the street faded away and Javier felt the broken sidewalk spin. He felt some part of his mind blink off, and he could only stand and watch as his fingers reached out, sweat beading his forehead.

  Black started spilling in from the side of his vision, but he didn’t care.

  The building door swung open and he yanked his hand away from Flaco’s. Lupe came bursting through and onto the street, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked around for him. Her face lit up from inside when she saw him. Javier lurched toward her, grabbed her hand tightly, and started walking her fast toward the staircase up and out.

  “I’ve been thinking about something Doña Belasco mentioned,” she said as she was basically pulled along. She looked back at the barrio, at the skinny junkie yelling after them in the middle of the calle. She yanked her hand back from Javier. “Stop. What’s going on? Who was that guy?”

  Forgetting his commitment to stay by Lupe’s side, Javier took off at a run and didn’t stop until he was at the top of the stairs and safely on the sidewalk outside of the barrio, the pain in his lungs more from the brush with Flaco than from the stairs. Lupe appeared not long after, that look of fire in her eyes.