by Jorge Franco
“We’re all hiding something,” Larry said. “We always take a secret with us when we die.”
“When something overrides your willpower, it feels like you need to hide it,” Charlie said, staring at the no-smoking sign. She moistened her lips with the glass and grabbed Larry’s hand. She said, “Let me think.”
“We can drop it if you want,” Larry said, his eyes fixed on her hand holding his.
“What?”
“The secrets thing.”
“No, no. It’s my turn. Just give me a minute.”
She let go of his hand and sat there quietly. Larry stealthily brought the hand she’d held up to his nose and then his mouth, grazing it against his lips just as she had with the glass.
Out of nowhere, Charlie laughed loudly. The other people in their row, who were sleeping, shifted in their seats. She covered her mouth, still laughing.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” Larry said.
“I’d forgotten all about it. Seems like everything that has to do with my dad is coming back.”
“That’s natural.”
“There’s nothing natural about what I’m about to tell you,” she said, and began: “Once, before putting on my school uniform, I went to pull out some underwear and the maid had accidentally put some of my dad’s underwear in my drawer.” She laughed again, though it seemed more like she was buying time. “I saw they weren’t as big as I’d have guessed. I was as tall as him, since he was pretty short. And he was slim—he took care of himself. They smelled clean when I sniffed them so I put them on. They were too big, but they stayed up. They were those boxer-brief things.”
Larry ran his hand through his hair. He glanced over at the window, but the shade was down.
“I left them on, put on my skirt and the rest of the uniform, and I went to school like that. I didn’t tell anybody. All day I kept going to the bathroom to look at myself, and I twirled and jumped around hoping somebody would notice what I was wearing underneath.”
Larry gave an obliging laugh. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get comfortable in his seat. Charlie sighed again and asked, “Do you want to rest, or should we have another drink?”
“What do you want?” Larry asked.
“Another drink.”
“I’ll go.”
When he got back with the little bottles, she stared at him. “Tell me something,” she said. “Am I delusional, or did you kiss the hand I was holding?”
Larry turned red. Charlie grabbed that same hand and squeezed.
24
We were there twiddling our thumbs, staring at each other, when they came to tell Libardo that the meeting with Deputy Attorney General Diago had been a failure, and he went off like dynamite. All through the house you could hear him shouting, menacing, all his threats condemning the prosecutor who’d betrayed him. Benito and Dengue tried to calm him down and explain that it wasn’t a betrayal, that Diago’s hands were tied.
Libardo and the few capos who had stuck together were fighting on two fronts: against the government and against Los Pepes. They were fighting the government with money, and the others with bullets. But Libardo was trying to neutralize at least one of his enemies, and with the government he had the advantage of having been almost entirely overlooked by the law. Though there were rumors that Libardo was close to Escobar, most people thought he was just a “dog washer,” the lowest rank in the hierarchy of the drug lords’ henchmen, one of many who surrounded Escobar to feed his ego with praise, pats on the back, and vulgar jokes. The jesters that every king requires. The gringos had him in their sights too, but they hadn’t been able to prove anything, and up to the last minute they were setting traps in the hope he’d stumble into them. Among his peers, though, his exploits were well known—all those stories I refused to believe.
“Diago assures me you can relax,” Benito told him. “Your files vanished when the Palace of Justice was burned.”
“What about the trial in Caucasia?” Libardo asked. “Diago himself warned me there was a witness who might drag me into it.”
“That’s all two-bit bullshit, Libardo. Don’t waste your energy on it. You need to focus on how we’re going to handle the people here and in Cali.”
My grandmother called Libardo into the breakfast room, where we were sitting with her. “Don’t worry, Ma,” he said, “everything’s fine.” He said that every day, and contradicted himself every time he flew off the handle.
“Why don’t you go talk to him?” my grandmother suggested.
“Who?”
“Pablo.”
“But . . .”
“He’ll hear you out, he’ll help you straighten things out, son.”
My grandmother noticed we were all gaping at her in astonishment.
“I always ask the dead for help,” she said. “They give the best advice. They can see the whole picture from up there . . .” She pointed to the sky and crossed herself. I caught a glimpse of Julio’s face and stifled the urge to laugh. Libardo was still bewildered.
“You’re saying I should go to the cemetery?”
My grandmother nodded.
“Alone?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll go with you,” said Julio.
“No,” said Libardo.
“Go alone, son. That way the two of you can talk more easily.”
I told Fernanda what my grandmother had said, and as a punishment for my tattling, I got the usual harangue. “Doña Carmenza is in no mental state to be giving advice,” she said. “Can you imagine? He’d be completely exposed in the cemetery; it’s probably still full of reporters and cameras, not to mention hitmen watching to see who comes to visit and leave flowers—then they can mark them, and you know what comes after that. She may be your grandmother, but if she’s saying she talks to the dead, it’s because she’s nuts. Sorry, but who comes up with this crap? I hope Libardo doesn’t listen to her.”
He half listened. He did go to the cemetery despite the warnings and visited Escobar’s grave site. He wasn’t there long. He couldn’t concentrate, felt uncomfortable talking to a dead man, so he prowled around the grave for about fifteen minutes and then left.
“There weren’t any reporters anymore, or at least none that morning,” he told us. “There wasn’t anybody, not even gawkers. The grave is still covered with flowers, though, and some of the bouquets have the senders’ names. It’s a huge pile of flowers like you wouldn’t believe—it’s overwhelming. I got a knot here.” He touched his throat. “But I couldn’t do anything,” he concluded.
“You didn’t talk to him?” Julio asked.
Libardo made a tired gesture.
“I could hardly believe what I was seeing,” he said. “Everything that’s happened up till now has been like some awful movie, but being there, practically treading on his toes, I realized what a motherfucker death is.”
Fernanda took his hand. “What were you feeling?” she asked.
Libardo looked down, took a big breath, and screwed up his mouth, like he was holding down whatever he wanted to say but couldn’t so as not to involve us. He picked up a glass of water from the table; I thought he was going to drink to clear his throat, to swallow his bitter pill, but he raised it and dumped the water on his head. Fernanda immediately let go of his hand.
“What are you doing, Libardo?”
He looked at Julio and me, smiled at us like when he’d been drinking, but he was sober. The water ran down his face, down his neck, and wet his shirt. He was sober, booze-wise at least. Something else had him intoxicated—maybe fear, or doubt, or, worst of all, certainty. He ran his hands through his wet hair and said to us, “Keep a cool head, boys. Above all, a cool head.”
25
All right, chill, man, Pedro the Dictator tells me,
you’re going to have plenty of time to see your mom. You’re going to spend so much time with her you’ll get sick of her, whereas this is just once a year, he says, though in my dictatorship we’ll have La Alborada once a month. Why so often?, La Murciélaga protests, it takes the fun out of it if it’s a regular thing. But at least everybody’s pets will get used to it, says Julieth, looking beatific. Where to now?, Pedro asks, and my heart sinks at the question. This is over, I tell them, though the night is still booming with fireworks. I’d figured that after midnight things would start settling down, but this is like a virus spreading farther by the minute. Oh is it?, Pedro says. It’s not a question but an announcement: we’re not done yet.
Nobody wants to go down, everybody wants to see the show from up here. Nobody, if they don’t know me, is going to take me to Medellín, and the only people who know me are refusing to let me spoil their fun. Every car’s playing different music, so what I hear between the explosions is a mix of rhythms, an exasperating cacophony. The bottles of aguardiente keep being passed around. The joints go from hand to hand, and there’s always somebody throwing bangers at people’s feet. A drunk woman with a little-girl voice and garish makeup tells me, give me a rail and I’ll suck you off. I don’t have any, I say, and I get in the car, turn off the radio that’s going full blast, lean my head back, and, for the first time since I arrived, wonder why the hell I came back. It wasn’t because of Libardo, and not because of Fernanda or my brother either. Maybe I came back because it was time.
La Murciélaga climbs into the car, plops down next to me, and says, “They’re smoking total crap out there.” She rummages in her purse and pulls out the marijuana she bought. She lights the joint and says, “They’re poisoning themselves with fumigated weed. Everything that grows in the ground is contaminated—rain’s full of negative radiation.”
“So where does the water yours is grown with come from?” I ask.
“It’s run through several filters made of volcanic rock and purified with positive ions,” she replies primly. “Didn’t you feel, like, this powerful cosmic perception when you smoked it?”
“No,” I tell her.
“No offense, Larry, but you’re not very sensitive,” she tells me.
She savors every hit on the joint. She inhales slowly, as if the smoke were the air she needs to live, and she holds it and then lets it out deliberately, carefully.
“This girlfriend I had used to say the same thing,” I tell her, and La Murciélaga looks at me, puzzled. “She also said I was boring.”
“So why was she your girlfriend?” she asks.
“Because, according to her, I wasn’t like that at first.”
“Flaws appear over time.”
“No way,” I say, “they’re always there, it’s just people don’t see them because they’re horny.” La Murciélaga passes me the joint, and I take a drag. I ask, “Do you really think I’m boring?”
“I didn’t say that,” she says. “I said you were insensitive.”
“But I do feel things.”
“Even chickens feel things,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean they’re sensitive.”
“What do you know about what chickens feel?”
“They’re not human beings, Larry.”
“Sure, but nobody knows to what extent they feel or how they feel. It’s possible they feel even more than we do.”
“More than you do, I’m sure,” La Murciélaga quips.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, Larry,” she sighs, “you’re boring me.”
“See, you do think I’m boring!”
I hold out the joint, and she takes it and pinches off the cherry, then stores the rest in a little square of aluminum foil. She sighs and looks at me. “Are you getting out,” she says, “or are you going to stay in here thinking about chickens?”
“I’m going to sleep till Pedro feels like taking me home.”
“Sleep?” she asks, and laughs at me.
La Murciélaga gets out, and the din comes in. She closes the car door, and part of the din leaves, but only barely, and I’ve already got the noise deep in my body.
I close my eyes and see flashes of light. Is that the connection with the cosmos that La Murciélaga was talking about? Effects of the hydroponic pot? What state will my head be in after tonight? Right now I wish I were in London, strolling along the river, along the Embankment, thinking about returning, imagining this moment that I’m living now. The expectation was better than the reality—it’s better to wish for something than to regret doing it, better to dream than to live. Maybe I’m safer here, shut up in the car, than trapped in Fernanda’s embrace.
Somebody knocks on the window, and I open my eyes and see Julieth smiling at me. I blink and see her boobs pressed against the glass, pale with dark nipples that I sucked on multiple occasions. She kisses the windowpane and her mouth deforms, she laughs, and she dances off. I close my eyes.
What if I call Julio to come get me? He must have arrived from the farm by now—the three of us had planned to be all together again, like before. It’s better if he’s with me when I see her again.
Something explodes beside the car door, the people outside jump, and I jump. Somebody knocks on the window again and a woman calls, Pedro, Pedro! She presses her face against the glass and realizes that I’m not Pedro. And I realize that she’s got to be her, the Swedish chick.
“Isn’t this Pedro’s SUV?” she asks.
“It is,” I say.
“So who are you?”
“Larry. A friend.”
“I’m looking for Pedro.”
“And he’s looking for you.”
“Really?” she asks, and climbs into the car. She holds out her hand. “I’m Inga.”
“We went to a house to look for you,” I tell her. “We thought they’d dismembered you.”
“What’s disme . . .?”
“Dismembered,” I explain. “Chopped up, cut into pieces to eat you.”
Inga laughs. She’s not a pretty woman, but there’s something refreshing about her laugh.
“You’re such goofs,” she says. “They did eat me, but not like that.”
She laughs again. Little by little I’m realizing that the Swedish chick is massive; she looks cramped in the seat, and this is a big SUV.
“Where’s Pedrito?” she asks.
“He was there five minutes ago.”
“And why are you in here on your own?”
“Because I’m tired.”
“Want some coke?”
“No, I’m practically falling asleep.”
“So?”
“I want to sleep. I haven’t slept in I don’t know how long.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had time, I think.”
Shouts break out and mingle with the explosions. They’re not shouts of joy but of surprise. Inga and I look around, trying to figure out where they’re coming from. What’s going on?, she asks. Something must have blown up on somebody, I say, since everybody’s messing around with goddamn explosives . . . Look back there, Inga says, there’s a big crowd of people. I see a commotion, some people running toward it and others running away. Look, says Inga, here comes La Murciélaga. I see her. She’s running toward us, laughing. Inga opens the door. Fight, fight!, La Murciélaga shouts, really agitated. Somebody opens my door—it’s Pedro. His nose is bleeding. Move, jackass!, he tells me. Pedro!, says Inga. Let’s go!, says La Murciélaga, and climbs in the back. I move back there too. Inga settles in the front seat. You’re bleeding, I say to Pedro. I know. What happened to you?, Inga asks, more excited than upset. Some group of assholes, Pedro says. Who? He doesn’t answer. What about Julieth?, we can’t leave her, says La Murciélaga. But Pedro’s already got the car in reverse. Out of the knot of people, a group runs toward us. Oh, La
Murciélaga exclaims, they’re coming. Julieth bangs on my window. Let me in! She manages to get in before the horde reaches us and before Pedro makes the tires squeal, peeling away from the overlook in terror.
“Bastards,” says Pedro. He wipes his hand under his nose and it comes away smeared with blood. “Does anybody have a tissue?”
Nobody does. Julieth, Inga, and La Murciélaga all talk at once, asking questions that nobody answers. What happened? Who were they? What did they do to you? A sign announces a road down into the city a hundred yards ahead. It’s now or never.
“Turn, Pedro,” I tell him.
He doesn’t respond or slow down.
“Turn!” I yell.
He doesn’t budge. He’s plowing ahead, his face distorted with fury. But I’m even more furious.
“I said turn, motherfucker.”
Ten yards, five yards. I lunge forward. The three women scream. I grab the steering wheel with all my remaining strength and spin it left. Pedro tries to straighten the car out, but I give the wheel another yank to force us onto the turnoff. Two yards. Pedro lets go of the wheel and starts punching me. The women keep screaming. Asshole, shithead, you’re insane, what are you doing. I don’t care what they call me, it’s done. Pedro elbows me in the face. But we’re heading down, on our way back. Julieth and La Murciélaga grab me by the shirt and the waistband of my pants. They pull me backward. Inga slaps me. Pedro pounds the steering wheel, irate, and brings the car to a sudden halt.
“Get out, asshole,” he tells me. “Get out right now.”
“I’m not getting out,” I say, “and you’re taking me home right now.”
“Who is he?” Inga asks, referring to me.
“That’s Larry,” Julieth says.
“Libardo’s son,” La Murciélaga says.
“And who’s Libardo?” Inga asks.
Pedro grits his teeth and, dripping rage and full of hatred, turns around to look at me. I’m about to answer Inga, but Pedro cuts me off. “A capo,” he replies.
