Shooting Down Heaven

by Jorge Franco

  “They’ve been seen out together?” Julio asked.

  Fernanda nodded, then said, “At least with the others he didn’t take them out—he just wanted to sleep with them.”

  “Others?” I broke in.

  Fernanda straightened up and stared at us as she took another sip of wine. “Oh, sweeties.” She slid forward and fell to her knees on the rug, and shuffled toward us with her arms held wide, still gripping the wineglass. I wanted to get up and run, to flee the pathetic sight of an intoxicated mother seeking her children’s compassion. But I was paralyzed, and she hauled us into her embrace, squeezed us tight, and burst out sobbing. I looked at Julio out of the corner of my eye, pressed against her other shoulder, while Fernanda, unawares, spilled cold wine down my back.

  13

  A bald guy with a long beard, wearing flip-flops and a loose shirt, a prophet of the new era, gives La Murciélaga a long hug. She comes back to the car giving jubilant little skips. She’s finally got that hydroponic weed she was after. We’ve had to come all the way from Las Palmas to Belén to make this woman happy.

  “All right, kids, let’s blow this place,” she says as she clambers into the front seat next to Pedro the Dictator. And she adds: “The world can end now.”

  The noise of the fireworks is relentless. Some of the explosions are sharp and booming, like a slamming door, like a set of cookpots clattering from a cupboard to the floor. Others announce themselves with a whistle before they detonate, an exhalation in the night before bursting out in lights. There are high ones and low ones, near ones and far ones. No matter what they look like, they’re all money that burns up in seconds, giving boundless pleasure to the person setting them off. The same euphoria that people feel from firing their guns in the air.

  I often saw Libardo and his friends riddle the sky with bullets in celebration of something. A successful shipment, a lucrative business deal, a law passed in Congress for their benefit, or the death of somebody who’d been in their way.

  “Where to now?” Julieth asks.

  “Let’s go back to Las Palmas,” says La Murciélaga.

  “It’s nine fifteen p.m.,” says Pedro, as if he were an announcer on Radio Reloj.

  “Can you drop me off at my place?” I ask, but they all look at me as if they didn’t understand a word.

  “Your mom hasn’t called yet,” Pedro tells me.

  “I don’t care. If she’s not there, I’ll wait for her in the foyer. If she isn’t ready to see me, I’ll stay downstairs till she opens the door.”

  “All right, whatever you say,” Pedro tells me.

  For the first time all night, I feel relief. And also a chill in my abdomen and eddies in my guts. A freefalling void. Fear? Fear, anxiety, joy, respite. Though I know there won’t be silence tonight, at least I won’t be in this SUV anymore with the music blasting, in a smoky haze that smells of fireworks. Pedro’s cell phone rings again, and I try to catch a glimpse of the screen.

  “Inga!” yells Pedro.

  He’s no longer talking normally but shouting and laughing insults and mockery. He slaps the steering wheel in excitement.

  “Can you turn the music down, Murci?” I ask, but she doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want to.

  We’re gonna get down, get down, get down, we’re gonna get down, oh, oh, oh. La Murciélaga sings, and Julieth sways haltingly to the beat. I stretch forward and lower the volume. La Murciélaga slaps my arm.

  “What’s your problem?” she scolds me. “Don’t crush my groove.”

  “My head’s going to explode,” I tell her.

  Julieth ruffles my hair. La Murciélaga turns the volume back up, Pedro keeps yelling like he’s standing next to a waterfall.

  “Hang on, I’ve got something for you,” La Murciélaga tells me and rummages in her purse. “Pull over, man,” she says to Pedro. “Let’s stop a minute.”

  I thought she was looking for an aspirin, but she pulls out the bag of hydroponic marijuana and starts rolling a joint with impressive skill.

  “No, Murci,” I say. “I thought . . .”

  But before I can think, the SUV has filled up with smoke and the smell of weed. And when Pedro tells the person he’s talking to, we’re coming to get you, my relief evaporates, and once again my prospects dim.

  The joint passes from hand to hand and mouth to mouth.

  “Inga needs us to rescue her,” Pedro says.

  “Where is she?” La Murciélaga asks.

  “She says some aliens kidnapped her.”

  “Who’s Inga?” Julieth asks.

  “The Swedish chick,” La Murciélaga replies.

  “You don’t know her?” Pedro asks. “The Swedish chick who came to Medellín to learn Spanish.”

  “So has she learned it?” Julieth asks.

  “Not much, but she did learn to do coke.”

  Julieth expels the smoke with a laugh. Her laughter is still beautiful, like when we used to laugh together in bed.

  “So let’s rescue her,” La Murciélaga says.

  “What about me?” I ask.

  “You? Smoke,” says Julieth. She blows smoke in my face and sticks the joint between my lips. The three of them look at me like I’m about to perform an amazing somersault. I toke, and they keep watching me to see if I inhale. I expel the smoke, and Julieth smiles at me. She passes the joint up to the front.

  Oh, oh, oh, we’re gonna get down, get down, get down, we’re gonna get down.

  We drive past the old airport. People used to say that if you jumped real high there, you could touch the airplanes’ wheels as they took off.

  “Is it still in operation?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes during the day, no at night,” Pedro says.

  “I’ve seen planes landing at night,” La Murciélaga says.

  “That must be when you’re tripping,” Julieth says.

  “The runway doesn’t have any lights,” Pedro says.

  “No plane could fly tonight with all this smoke,” I tell them.

  And I’m flying low, only a few inches off the ground. La Murciélaga starts another round. This time I snatch the joint and take a drag.

  To my left is Nutibara Hill. As a boy I used to imagine that the restaurant at the top was a flying saucer. As soon as we found out that the restaurant rotated, we begged Libardo to take us. And it did rotate, but very slowly. Julio and I were disappointed. What did you expect, Libardo asked us, that we were going to be eating on a merry-go-round?

  “Is there still a restaurant up there?” I ask.

  “Where?” Julieth asks, looking up at the sky.

  “On the hill.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “I think it closed,” says Pedro. “I never went.”

  “I did,” says Julieth. “It spun.”

  It doesn’t look like a flying saucer now. It doesn’t even look like a restaurant.

  La Murciélaga laughs. I don’t know why she’s laughing. Well, I know why but I don’t know at what. People are setting off fireworks on top of the hill too. It looks like a volcano spitting out its first sparks. I remember the other hill, farther north, the one people said was a dormant volcano. I don’t remember what it was called, but I do remember you could see it from our high school, and we used to fantasize that it might wake up. I would imagine Medellín filling with lava and everybody fleeing toward the mountains. The lava catching up with us, lapping at our heels, in this city that looks like a mug of nasty soup.

  “What’s the name of that hill that was a dormant volcano?”

  The three of them look at me, Pedro in the rearview mirror.

  “What’s up with you, Larry?” he asks.

  “There’s a volcano here in Medellín?” Julieth as
ks. “If there is, I’m going to go live somewhere else.”

  “No more of this stuff for now,” La Murciélaga says and snuffs out the joint in the ashtray.

  To my left I see the spiral of cars trying to climb Nutibara Hill. Everybody wants to watch La Alborada from a high place. We’re all getting high too.

  Get down, get down, the song says, and we’re going up, up, up.

  14

  What is it about nighttime that focuses pain when a person is grieving, or uncertain, or in an airplane seat? What is this fear of opening our eyes and admitting to sleeplessness in the eternity of a nocturnal flight? Were Charlie and Larry sleeping? Or were they pretending to sleep, like pretty much everybody else? She’d laid her head on his shoulder, and he could feel her breath on his ear. He could just see her eyelashes and the tip of her nose out of the corner of his eye. His neck hurt from sitting in the same position for so long, motionless as a doll out of fear of waking her, if she was actually sleeping, since he didn’t dare ask. Sometimes Charlie started the way you do when you dream you’re falling, and her eyes moved restlessly under her eyelids as if she were looking for something in her dream. She must have been looking for her father among the living, who else, to refuse him his death.

  A flight attendant emerged from the shadows and walked slowly down the aisle. She was smiling, perhaps out of habit or, why not, malice. She’d be looking for the passenger with a hand fondling their private parts. Two people groping each other under a single blanket, a couple attempting a bit of gymnastics to suck each other off, a man with a substantial erection as he slept. Smiling and stealthy, she slipped past them, and when she saw Larry her smile disappeared.

  She’s going to catch me sneaking into first class . . .

  He stroked Charlie’s hair, barely grazing it to avoid waking her. The flight attendant kept going, apparently buying Larry’s pretense that he was traveling with his girlfriend. He felt the pain, rising from his big toe to his head, more strongly, but his soul was brimming over.

  What is life playing at when it introduces a man to a sad, beautiful woman and, within an hour of his meeting her, has her snoozing on his shoulder like the sleeping beauty from a fairy tale?

  15

  The bank statements arrived, and Libardo discovered that Fernanda had been disobeying his order not to go to the casino by herself. She tried to cover her gambling with cash, but if she lost a bundle, she’d use the credit card. What Libardo didn’t know was how she was getting out without the bodyguards noticing. One night she didn’t come home at the usual time, and he decided to go ask the head bodyguard, a former police captain known as Dengue, where she was.

  “We dropped her off at Margarita’s house at 3:30 this afternoon, just like we do every day, and we wait for her there until she comes out,” Dengue told Libardo.

  “And she doesn’t move from there? She doesn’t leave?”

  “No, boss,” Dengue said. “The only one who leaves is Mar­garita, but she’s always alone.”

  “What?” Libardo asked, perplexed.

  Dengue repeated himself, and Libardo raised his hands to his head.

  “You’re a bunch of morons,” Libardo said. “If Fernanda’s going to visit Margarita, how come Margarita leaves on her own? So who’s Fernanda visiting, then?”

  Visibly upset, Libardo told Julio and me that he was going to look for Fernanda and asked us to go to bed. But when he left, we sat on the stairs to wait.

  When Libardo and Dengue arrived at Margarita’s house, they parked across the way, crossed the street, and rang the bell. A maid answered, and he asked for Margarita and was told she’d gone out. When he asked for Fernanda, the maid started crying.

  Libardo and Dengue went back to the car.

  “What do we do, boss?”

  “Wait,” Libardo snorted.

  They sat for a long time in silence, Dengue fidgeting in his seat. Finally Libardo asked, “Have you worked out what’s going on yet?”

  “Yes, boss,” Dengue replied. “We’re waiting.”

  “Right, waiting,” Libardo said.

  The lights of another car shone on them. It was Margarita coming back home alone. Libardo leaped out of the car and got in front of her before she could put the car in the garage. She gripped the steering wheel as Libardo slowly approached.

  “Oh, Libardo,” said Margarita.

  He stopped by the rear door. Through the window he saw a shape on the floor of the car, covered by a blanket. Libardo knocked on the window and Fernanda’s head poked out from under the blanket. Her hair was tousled, and she was grinning from ear to ear.

  At around eleven at night, Libardo burst through the front door of the house and dragged Fernanda inside. The living room was dark, and my brother and I were still sitting halfway up the stairs, just as we’d been when he left to look for her. She was barefoot, carrying her high heels. She tried to get free, but Libardo grabbed her forcefully and tossed her onto the sofa. Libardo hadn’t seen us, though she caught our eyes before he pushed her.

  “Don’t you move,” Libardo warned her, and as soon as he took two steps to leave, she sat forward. He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her back on the sofa. “Don’t move, damn it,” he said again.

  “I want a cigarette,” Fernanda said.

  She was drunk. She was slurring her words. Though she seemed lost, she kept turning around to look at us whenever she could. I was afraid of Libardo’s rage, afraid he might hit her, but he left her lying there and went to the study. Fernanda was breathless, and since she’d closed her eyes, I thought she’d passed out from the alcohol. Libardo came back to the living room. He was carrying something shiny in his hands. I was convinced it was a gun. Fernanda opened her eyes when she heard him return. He showed her what he was carrying, and she burst out laughing. It was a pair of handcuffs. Libardo grabbed her by one arm to lift her up, forced her to turn around, and cuffed her hands behind her. She kept laughing. He pushed her onto the sofa again, harder now, and she grimaced with pain.

  “I don’t like you sneaking around doing these things,” Libardo hissed at her.

  She sat up defiantly. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “And how do I know that?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she said, “you think I’m like that skank you’re seeing?”

  He grabbed her face hard. With his other hand he started unbuckling his belt. Fernanda looked at us out of the corner of her eye.

  “Are you going to hit me?” she demanded.

  “No, better—or worse,” he said, and unzipped his fly, still gripping her.

  “No,” Fernanda said, and turned to look at us. Then Libardo saw us.

  “You little shits,” he said, and Julio and I sprang up like we’d been hit by lightning and bolted for our rooms.

  The strongest image of that night that’s stayed with me is Fernanda in handcuffs. I still don’t know whether it was part of a sexual game or the start of some sort of torture. Libardo was capable of anything. And it pained me to see Fernanda with her hands bound, as if she were the criminal.

  16

  There aren’t too many houses in El Poblado with people still living in them. Before I left they’d already demolished almost all the European-style ones; a few newer mansions remained, gringofied, with huge garages, pools, and lawns as tidy as golf courses. Even those had started being demolished too, to make way for apartment buildings. All signs indicated that El Poblado would become what it is now: a brick beehive. Pedro the Dictator took us to one of those remaining houses to rescue the Swedish chick.

  He went in to get her, and we stayed in the car, the music blasting the whole time. What can I say without you thinking I’m joking, you won’t let me rock you but you’re totally smoking.

  Five minutes later the Dictator comes back, confused. “I can’t find her,” he says. “Come help me look for her.”<
br />
  “I’ll wait here,” I say. “I don’t know her.”

  “It’s a cinch,” says La Murciélaga. “She’s Swedish and about five foot nine.”

  Julieth prods me to urge me out of the car, as if she didn’t have a door on her side. I get out because I’m thirsty; maybe I can get a glass of water inside.

  “What if those bastards did something to her?” Pedro says.

  “Do what?” La Murciélaga asks. “If she’s here, it’s because she knows them.”

  “Whose house is this?” I ask. “Who lives here?”

  “There are some really weird people in there,” Pedro says, and pushes the door open.

  “What’s that noise?” Julieth asks.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask.

  “Charred meat,” Pedro says.

  “They’re not grilling Inga, are they?” says La Murciélaga.

  We enter a large living room lined with glass doors that look out on the backyard. The lights are off, and there’s a group of people sitting in a circle in front of a fireplace, the only source of illumination in the room. They’re all singing along to a guitar with their eyes closed. They rock their heads back and forth while intoning something that goes, thank you to life, which has given me so much, it’s given me laughter and it’s given me tears. They sway slowly, shoulder to shoulder, and several couples are holding hands. A woman gestures to us to join the group. In response, Pedro signals for her to come to us. She gets up and approaches, still singing.

  “We’re here for Inga,” Pedro tells her. “She called and said she was here.”

  “Inga?” the woman asks quietly.

  “The Swedish chick,” Pedro says.

  “Oh, right,” she says. “She’s around.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere. Come have a seat till she shows up.”

  “Can we take a look for her around the house?” Pedro asks. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “And your house, your streeeeeet, and your gaaaaarden,” the woman intones, and goes back to the group.