Marisol jumped her from behind, the duo staggering until Lupe was pinned to the garbage can, knife again to her throat. As the grip tightened, Lupe breathed deep, trying to pull away. It was no use. Marisol was way stronger than her, and so much savvier. Who am I fooling? she thought. Every one of her sixteen years had been uphill; it was only fitting that she should die on a street on her father’s island, in over her head once again. She was tired of fighting, so tired. But she had to get to Javier; she had to try.
Marisol put her cheek close to Lupe’s. “You should have stayed in Canada where you belong, hermana.”
Lupe relaxed. “I’m from Vermont, bitch.” She pulled her elbow up and jammed it back into Marisol’s nose, blood flying out in an arc.
Marisol dropped to the sidewalk, the switchblade clattering to the ground between them. Lupe jumped to her feet and kicked the blade into the sewer grate, the metal clanging down into the bowels of the street below them.
Lupe cut through the edge of the crowd, her eyes searching for las madres. She needed to make sure the plan was in place. She had to find a way to get Javier away from El Cuco. As she neared she saw the women stretching their arms toward one another, the line broken, the cyclone onstage blowing out toward the crowd. She had to get closer to try to close the break. She pulled herself onto the stage, turned, and leapt out onto the crowd. People cheered and held her up over their heads and started to pass her backward, closer to las madres, whose frightened faces were getting swallowed by the crowd. As she held her arms out from her sides, it was almost as if she was finally flying.
“Tío!” she screamed over the heads around her. Her uncle was trying to push the edges of the crowd back. “Esteban Dávila!”
His head rose and she caught his eye. She pointed down at the broken line of women and then Esteban was pushing his way inward like a linebacker, cutting through the crowd. Just as Lupe reached las madres she tried to put her feet down, but the crowd was pulling her away, farther into the sea of people. She flailed her limbs, kicking people as they moved her along, and she started to shake. She had no control over her body, no control over where she was going, and the panic spread through her like flames. She began to sob like she was five years old again, and her mother was gone. She put her arms over her eyes, her voice now nothing more than a whimper, when she felt arms around her waist, pulling her upright. When her feet hit the ground she started to crumple, but her aunt Maria was holding her up, while a new group of police officers surrounded the mothers. Lupe watched the women reclasp hands, the air electrifying again, the crowd giving them space once more.
Lupe whipped around toward the stage again.
Was it too late?
It’s retribution that rules the night
La madre’s fateful words were right
Javier
Javier noticed he had picked up speed and looked up, the tunnel of wind and refuse buffeting him from all sides, the dark void behind it all, deepening to the black of space above him. He shored up his shoulders to prepare for whatever awaited him, but he was terrified. Beyond terrified.
Then all sound stopped and Javier was suspended in the air, a sensation of being pulled from below reversing his rise. It made more sense to him in the middle of all the madness that he was being pulled down, not up.
Hell was down.
He looked toward his feet, expecting to see claws dragging him down, but as he squinted at his ankles he saw hands. Human hands, women’s hands pulling on his ankles, digging into his jeans. And then he saw the glint of the yellow stone of his mother’s ring. Were they on the stage with Carlos? Or were they in the crowd? That was the plan. He didn’t want to put any of them in danger: that was not part of the plan.
He was about five feet off the stage now, his head even with a stand of large lights that were off, their glass reflecting the nightmare on the stage. As the wind brought him closer, he looked over and saw his face reflected in the clear glass of a light. He started to turn and just caught the sight of his eyes in the mirrored surface.
They were yellow with black reptilian lines for pupils.
A scream caught in his throat as the pull from above increased. For a moment Javier thought he would be torn in half, las madres pulling from beneath and El Cuco from above.
Lupe
Las madres’ pull was working! Lupe hooted as she saw Javier’s ascent slow, then reverse.
“He’s going down!” she yelled back at the line of mothers in the crowd. But their eyes were closed in concentration, and the energy that was coming off them was so strong that Lupe’s hair was blowing back as if from a breeze.
But when Lupe looked back toward the stage, she saw Javier moving upward, the grasp of the mothers slipping.
“No!”
It wasn’t working.
Las madres’ pull wasn’t strong enough.
And there was no plan B.
Javier
When it was clear that las madres’ hands below him were losing their grip, Javier looked up into the swirling cylinder of shadow above him, and in the darkness he saw two yellow glowing orbs like cats’ eyes, the same as he’d seen in his own. As they got closer, a face was forming around the eyes, human-shaped but covered in scales, the nostrils nothing but two slits. His stomach froze as his stare locked with the creature’s and it was as if all hope and joy were being sucked out of him.
He was ready. He had gotten clean, redeemed himself. Turned his life around. Damn it, his conscience was clean. He was ready to face El Cuco.
Retribution, it begins inside you
As he stared into El Cuco’s face, the noises got farther away. Time stopped. It could have been a second or a year. The air around him was shifting, reorganizing itself into a different setting, the stage lights fading, darkness and silence buffering him.
He was standing in the middle of a street.
Huh? He spun around.
Wait, it was the block he grew up on, a few doors down from his house. The concert was only half a kilometer away, but there was no throbbing music, just the hum of traffic in the distance.
“Javi, I’m not sure about this.”
He started at the whispered sound of his nickname, and noticed two thin boys walking toward him.
“Hey, hermanitos?” he called to them as they passed by, but they didn’t seem to hear him.
“Man, Vico, for once in your life, don’t be such a chicken.”
Vico?
Wait.
Javier pulled ahead of the boys and looked at their faces.
Holy shit. It was him. A younger version of him and … Vico. Javier grabbed his head as if to stop it from spinning.
Vico stopped. “Nah, I think we should give it back. My moms will kill me dead, bro.”
“You always do what your mom tells you to do?” Javier hated the taunting music of his childhood voice. He could see his younger self staring at Vico and realizing his friend was not going to budge. His tone changed. “Look, man, don’t you want a fancy car like Keno? And money to buy whatever you want?”
Vico shrugged. “Yeah, but—”
“This is the only way we can get it, hermano!”
Javier’s throat tightened as the glow of the streetlamp caught the shimmer of the bag of white powder in the center of his younger self’s palm. He was holding it out just like Flaco had that afternoon in El Rubí, just like Omar had earlier that night.
“Look. Tonight’s our thirteenth birthday party. Thirteen! We’re practically men. So it’s time to start acting like men.”
“I don’t know.…”
Javier watched the thoughts spin behind his younger face, and he wanted to shake him. To take the kid version of himself and scream, “Stop!” But he could do nothing but watch as he manipulated Vico.
“Look, you can even have this!” He put the cocaine away and pulled something from the back pocket of his jeans.
Javier felt his stomach lurch as he saw the black knife, the yellow skulls glowing in the lamplight
.
“Really?” Vico stepped forward hesitantly and touched the knife. “I can really have it?”
Young Javier handed it over while a smile spread across his face. He knew Vico was hooked. “Of course. Keno gave it to me, but I want you to have it.” He watched Vico press the button, the shiny blade flicking out like a snake’s tongue.
“Whoa! It’s so cool! Thanks!”
“You can be my lieutenant.”
Eighteen-year-old Javier watched the thirteen-year-old version of himself and his now dead friend walk away, strutting with their new, dangerous toys, and his legs gave out. He dropped to his knees on the cracked asphalt.
It was him.
He had started los cangrejos on the path to El Cuco. Had he blocked that memory with a haze of drugs, or had he known all along?
It didn’t matter. It was his fault his friends were dead.
An explosion started in his chest and roiled its way up his neck until it escaped from his mouth in a primal scream that echoed off the line of houses on either side. He looked up and saw the two boys disappear around the side of his house, heads bent together in excitement. He threw his head back and screamed to the night sky. “But I was just a kid!”
In an instant the wind swirled around him, lifting up his hair, his jacket. He had to close his eyes from the street’s dust churning in the air around him.
Then it was still. Silence fell over him like a cloak. He opened his eyes and found himself in his mother’s darkened living room.
“What now?” he whispered, as if he and El Cuco were in the middle of a conversation.
He stood at the sound of galloping steps coming down the stairs. Once again he was face-to-face with a younger version of himself, judging from the hair and the clothing about fifteen years old. As he watched his younger self put on a jacket with shaking hands, his movements jerky with impatience, he recognized the signs of withdrawal.
“Javier! Javier, stop!”
Cue his mother from upstairs. Javier braced himself for his mother’s passive-aggressive abuse. This was a scene that replayed itself pretty much nightly when he’d lived at home. He crossed his arms and glared at his mother as she clutched at her robe with her thin fingers.
“Please, stay home, just for tonight. I worry about you.”
Javier dropped his arms to his sides as he heard the concern in his mother’s voice. The surrender.
His younger self whipped around as he swung open the front door. “Well stop worrying about me, Madre. Why don’t you worry about yourself? Get out of this fucking house and live your own life for a change instead of trying to live mine! I can take care of myself.”
Javier flinched at the language, the revulsion in his younger voice. The door slammed and both he and his mother stared at the back of the door. The sound of sneakered footsteps thumped down the front steps, down the walk. A car door opened, a rush of loud, thrumming music, a car door slammed, then the roar of engines and squealing of tires receded down the street and onto the avenida.
“Wow. What an asshole.” His voice sounded loud in the quiet house. Then he noticed another sound. He looked over and saw that his mother had put her face in her hands, her whole body shaking.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He padded over to the foot of the stairs, staring at his mother. She was sobbing. He’d never seen his mother cry other than conjuring a few crocodile tears for dramatic effect. But there hadn’t been anyone watching that night. She lifted her face, her skin all splotchy, her makeup-free eyes red rimmed.
“Oh, Javier. I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Javier’s throat tightened. It was as if she could see him, as if she were talking right to him.
He had an overwhelming desire to move up the stairs, to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. To tell her it was he who was sorry. But he couldn’t make his legs move.
What difference would it make? She couldn’t feel it anyway. He looked up, willing his eyes not to fill just as darkness swirled around him. He was relieved to feel it this time.
When the wind stopped, the light was blinding, and he whipped around to try to get his bearings. The scent of pizza, burnt coffee, and sweat was overwhelming. The echo of hundreds of voices, babies crying, toddlers whining.
A food court. He was at Plaza Las Americas, the island’s biggest mall, in the food court. Why the hell would El Cuco bring him there? In that moment, a kid at the bright yellow table in front of him knocked over his Coca-Cola, the dark brown liquid spreading across the table and onto his mother’s white jeans. She screeched, jumped up, and rushed over to get some napkins, leaving the now crying kid and her baby in the stroller with her purse hanging over the back.
Javier watched a skinny kid pass by, slip the purse off the handle in one swift movement, and lose himself in the crowd before the woman came back to the table dabbing at her stained jeans.
Javier yelled after him. “Hey! Hey you, kid!” He weaved in and out of the sea of people, keeping the kid’s curly, overgrown head in sight. He ducked out a side exit and Javier caught up with him just as the kid pressed himself against a column, shadowed from the sun and traffic going in and out of the mall.
Javier approached as the kid was pulling the cash out of the woman’s coral-colored wallet, the bright leather contrasting against the dirty, scabby hand. He slipped the credit cards out with practiced fingers, and threw the now-empty wallet into the manicured bushes that framed the entrance. When the boy whipped his head around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Javier’s hand flew to his mouth.
It was him. But he’d known that, hadn’t he? This version was painfully thin, dirty, and stealing from young mothers with babies in the mall. It was Javier right before Padre Sebastian found him, helped him clean up.
Javier screamed in the face of his younger self. “What’s wrong with you?” Then again, toward the sky, “I cleaned up! I did the work!” But it was half-hearted. When he left Amapola he had turned his back on who he was, on his role in the life that had killed his friends.
As he was thinking and the younger version prepared to bolt, he heard a whizzing sound and felt a sharp pain on the side of his head.
He reached up to his ear and when he took his hand away he saw blood. “What the hell?” He whipped around—purse snatching was not exactly worthy of being shot at—but then he realized if it had been aimed at the kid, it couldn’t have hurt him since he wasn’t really there. A pop and another whistling sound, then the mall scene evaporated as if made of smoke, the pounding beat of Carlos’s music rushing in to take its place.
Javier was once again suspended in the cyclone, but he could see straight ahead to the scaffolding behind the stage. Through the swirling refuse he saw someone hanging from the metal beams, pointing a gun directly at Javier’s head.
Keno.
Javier was still in El Cuco’s grasp, but this was no memory. This was happening. “Keno?”
Keno moved the gun away from his line of sight, and a smile snaked across his face. “Who you expecting, Javi? The boogeyman?”
Javier’s mind scrambled to figure out what was happening. It wasn’t enough that he was suspended in a supernatural hurricane, now he had this gangsta trying to shoot him? But words weren’t coming easily. “Why?”
The smile dissolved. “You kidding me? I have the chief of police climbing up my culo because of you!”
“It’s not my fault you’re a thug!”
“Don’t bother. Because of you my business is dead. Dead, man! With all the heat I’ve had to pull back. Other players are trying to move in.”
Javier put up his hands. “Look, the life isn’t worth it.” He gestured down to his shoes, suspended twenty-five feet off the stage. “I know what I’m talking about. You’ll have to pay at some point.”
“Yeah, well, Carlos’s efectos especiales don’t impress me.”
“They’re not special effects! You see any wires here?” He moved his feet back and forth, waved his arms.
“Whatever, man. I got work to do and you’re in my way.” He pointed the gun again and squinted to take aim.
Javier braced himself for the bullet. Ironic to go out this way before El Cuco could take him. He closed his eyes and pictured los cangrejos before their lives went off the track. Swimming beneath the waves at Luquillo Beach. In the background he heard the cocking of the pistol, a crash of glass breaking, the crack of a shot.
He felt nothing.
Javier opened his eyes to see Keno leaning back and looking toward the ground. His gaze followed and there was Lupe at the base of the stage tower, pitching bottles up at Keno.
“Cut it out, you gringa bitch!”
Lupe took aim and launched another bottle up at Keno like a softball, hitting him squarely on the thigh. “That’s Ms. Gringa Bitch to you!”
Javier laughed and Keno growled at him.
“You need a little white girl to fight your fights for you now, Javier?” Then he switched the aim of the gun down toward Lupe. “We’ll see how you feel when I take out your little snowflake girlfriend.”
Javier watched Keno’s thumb move to cock the gun. All that was going through his head in that split second was: no. He was not going to be responsible for another death, even if it meant his own. And with that thought, he launched himself toward the tower and at Keno. He was able to throw his body at Keno’s, and grasped for the gun. Keno swiped and kicked at him, all while hanging with one arm from the metal bars. Javier had Keno’s arm under his, and had his fingers wrapped around the barrel when Keno lifted his knee and kicked Javier in the stomach, hard. Javier lost his grip on the weapon and it left both their hands in slow-motion, falling to the ground in a clatter.
Keno was pissed then. He started punching at Javier’s head, but with the movement of his arms he lost his grip on the bar and started to fall backward. Javier lurched forward and caught Keno by the sleeve. Keno dangled, looked up into Javier’s eyes, and said, “Don’t you drop me, pendejo!”
Five Midnights Page 23
