Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

by Daniel José Older

  "Yeah, well now you have less."

  "The boy?"

  "Saved your ass. Soon as his soul burst out that window, we separated it from the fray, I worked it back into him and he bee-lined for the house. Brave kid, Jimmy. I barely had time to tell him to aim for the music box."

  "Ah, glad you picked up on that."

  We're definitely in some remote corner of the park, deep in the underbrush. I test out turning my head. It works, but I don't like what I see.

  "We're...not on the ground." Not by about twenty feet from the look of it.

  "Yeah, this fellow brought you up here. The COD was so pissed off about the sudden flood of dead souls at Intake they didn't even want to deal with your hemorrhaging ass."

  "Charmingly Official Devastation."

  "Exactly. So we brought you here. Well, this old guy brought you here. He'd been watching us the whole time. He took care of the kid too."

  "Jimmy's okay?"

  "He's fine. But he can still see me, which is odd." I'm strangely relieved to hear that. It makes everything a little less lonely knowing someone else will now have to put up with this in-between shit. Even if he's not half-dead like me, we'll be able to compare notes. And he saved my life.

  "You got the heffa?"

  "Heffa got away," Riley reports with a twinge of shame. "Seems she had someone swing by and pick her up. Made herself scarce while we were hauling you out of there."

  There's that vague sense of dread again. "She was on the phone with someone," I say, "right before Jimmy and Mina came in."

  "Yeah, the boys at the Council are on it, but you know how that goes. The daughter's ghost popped up from under the house as we were leaving. Celine?"

  "Celeste."

  "Whatever, she took off after the old hag in a hurry. She was going on about unrequited love and a mailman named Morris or something. Looked to be a nasty cat fight in the works, but not the kind you pay money to see. The wee, skinny chick stuck around, though. She's spooked, kept saying she shoulda seen it coming, though I have no earthly idea how. She'll be alright."

  The old bearded spirit stirs slightly and warbles at Riley. It's a low moaning sound, like air blowing past a flap that keeps saying fworp fworp fworp over and over again.

  "What is that?" I ask irritably.

  "It's old ghost talk," Riley says. "Very old. Mostly forgotten. Few phantoms even speak it anymore. Lucky for you I had a crush on my ancient languages teacher in the academy."

  Fworp-fworp-fworp, goes the spirit. Maybe it's changing intonations slightly.

  "Turns out he's some kind of family of yours. An ancestor."

  "What?" It never occurred to me that I have ancestors. Of course, I do – everyone does. But why bother trying to find them when I don't even know the first thing about who I am? It's all too much. I look up at his peaceful old face and smile. "He knows about my life?"

  "Not much, I'm afraid," Riley says. "But he's been dying to meet you. Says he's sorry it had to be under these circumstances." Speechless, I study him for signs of me but come up short. "He's been keeping you alive for a few days now."

  I reach out a trembling hand to touch this brand new, very old piece of myself. All of the sudden, I am not the errant, half-dead weed in God's garden I'd thought I was; I'm a link on a spiraling, ancient web. I have a towering young friend who saved my life twice. I have a partner that can make me laugh when we're both about to die and a chain-smoking healer man that lends me his couch when I'm hurt. A woman loves me, even if she's imaginary or long dead, she stays with me when everything else goes dark. I have roots. The old ghost puts his glowing hand to mine. It's icy cold and barely there, but it's real.

  Graveyard Waltz

  Janey finds me at my spot on the graveyard hill late one Sunday afternoon. It's true, I owe my future daughter-in-law for getting me that nice job at the care center for troubled kids, and I owe her even more since I got my ass fired for holding midnight salsa classes, but that's another story.

  As she gets closer, I retrieve a Malagueña from my pocket and turn down the music. When I got the graveyard gig, my boy Ernesto'd bought me an i-thing, a slick little music player, and loaded it up with all my favorite old salsa guys, but it never sounded right – those tiny headphones and even though it's supposed to be higher caliber, you can imagine what becoming so many zeros and ones does to a song. Instead I just bring my record player to work. Yes, it's a pain, but the quality is incomparable. The i-thing sits in my jacket pocket; I keep meaning to accidentally leave it outside the middle school across the street for one of the kids to find.

  "Gordo," Janey says, puffing her way up the last steps to where I stand chuckling. They call me Gordo because I am gigantic in the old world of rumba and salsa, a legend. Also, because I am fat.

  I can see by Janey's face she's come to collect up on that favor so I head her off at the pass. "I thought we were straight after I got you that jar full of cemetery dirt," I say, winking.

  "Yeah," she says, "turns out that was just you being nice."

  "Really?" I say.

  "Turns out I need a bigger favor, and then we'll be straight."

  * * *

  Janey works at this swanky save-the-children spot on Lorimer, teaching kids how to be well-behaved, properly speaking little robotrons. But of course, when the grinning overlords aren't looking she always slips in some Malcolm X shit or a little hint about how to get one over on the cops. Anyway, the kids she was working with, they decided to build this monster – that's what the cemetery dirt was about apparently – they needed all kindsa ingredients to make it work. It was supposed to be like a team building exercise or something, you know from one of those corny books. But then Janey ended up throwing in a little of that Panamanian juju she inherited from her bruja granny and the damn thing came to life, Frankenstein style. But she says they just caked it together from mud and clay, not a body.

  * * *

  Whenever I start a new job, I like to find The Perfect Spot. You'll see me circling the place like a dog looking for somewhere to sleep. I'll try one, smoke a Malagueña, take a nap, let it settle into my body. Then I'll try another. At the cemetery, the Perfect Spot is on top this tombstone speckled hill – a little sheltered outpost that affords me a terrific view of the passing midnight traffic on the BQE and beyond that the sparkling city. From here, it's obvious that those skyscrapers are just lit up graves, different books in the same library.

  The sky grows dark over the city as Janey tells me her story. The beast was supposed to help their community. Something that would look good in a brochure, I suppose. But instead it cut loose, took out into the Williamsburg night. Janey and her friends went after it, and what does it do? The thing ate a hipster. Hipster is what they call these new-fangled white people that've been moving onto the block – the ones with the tight pants and big glasses. Now Janey has a serious clean up job on her hands.

  "You know," I say, "the river's really good for that kind of thing."

  She says it'd bother her not to give the kid a proper burial, being that she was partially responsible for his death. And knowing Janey, he'd probably start troubling her dreams.

  * * *

  So here I am, at 3 a.m. on a soggy late April morning, lugging two ominously heavy trash bags up a remote hill towards a grove of trees. I have a shovel and a flashlight and I'm trying to ignore the way one of the bags is knocking against my back as I walk, like it's trying to get my attention. Still, the thrill of adventure is tickling me like it hasn't done since Nesto's mom made me give up breaking and entering. Perhaps it's tinnitus, but the dead seem to be humming excitedly, a quiet droning accompaniment to my journey. Most people sneak around graveyards to steal bodies; here I am bringing one in. And I work here. If I'm caught, at least they will be confused. But then they may think I'm the one chewed up the boy. I walk a little faster.

  Untold stores of ferocious grace remain in these old bones, however hidden beneath lard and cholesterol. The hole gets dug pretty fas
t but I'm a sweaty disaster when it's done. Just as I heave-ho the two bags in, the crunching of tires on gravel announces the imminent arrival of graveyard security. I probably know the guys; I play dominoes with a few of them at shift change, but still, this would be difficult to explain.

  I'd like to say that I grappled my way down; even a controlled tumble would've been something. There wasn't time for any of that though: I plummeted. I felt sure my girth traveling at that speed would've given the planet a jolt, but the splintering bones and squishy body parts I land on break my fall, saving my ass in more ways than one. I try to breathe as quietly as possible as the patrol jeep rumbles close and then wanders away.

  It's a few hours from dawn and I'm lying in a fresh grave with two trash bags full of severed hipster parts, so I sit up and light a Malagueña. I'm pretty sure I haven't had a stroke or heart attack. Everything hurts slightly more than usual; perhaps I'm bleeding internally. That, at least, would be poetic. I close my eyes and pull a stream of smoke down my trachea to survey the damage. Things seem to be in working order.

  I exhale and follow the cloud up into the dark sky, above the tombstones, above the trees, above the sparkling city. Souls are rising into the night. It's just graveyard souls at first, but then I start seeing people I know. There's Old Corrales and Ruben, my bass player. Sylvia Andaluz, who used to give me head in the back room at El Mar. By the time Nesto Jr. and Janey float by, tears are rolling down my face, which hasn't happened in a few eons. All I hear is the swarming hymn of the dead and the clackity-clacking body parts beneath me. White pus is oozing from the torn up hipster's limbs and slow-mo flooding through the streets of Brooklyn; a rising tide. The last few scattered souls float up into the sky and all that's left are kids, thirteen and under. It's a whole orchestra of the little guys, each armed with instruments and they're putting up a fight, coming at the pus with everything they got. I hear them laughing and chattering as they blast homemade fire bombs from trombone cannons and beat back the waves with flame-throwing tubas and sharpened guitar spears.

  The chattering and laughter of children blends with scattered birdsong as morning breaks around me. Everything is back to normal, but nothing will ever be the same. I sit up, take in the crisp new day air. It's a beautiful morning, but something terrible is coming. Perhaps Janey saw the same vision, and that's why she does what she does. Either way, my own path is clear: I'll drop off this i-thing in front of the middle school. While I'm there, I'll see if they need anyone to teach music or sweep the floors or both. Maybe at the school there will be a nice spot for me to smoke and ponder in between classes. I'll see what this new day brings. But first I have to get out of this hole.

  Protected Entity

  Short, sullen-faced child ghosts are hovering around my legs. They don't speak, just stare through wide, horrified eyes at the misty warehouse around us. I don't like kids that much, especially not dead ones, but I still have to force back the urge to just wrap my living arms around them and tell 'em it's gonna be alright. It's not. They're dead; prematurely, horrifically dead, murdered probably. What do you say to a murdered child? I just stay quiet; try to ignore those questioning eyes.

  "Carlos," Bartholomew Arsten floats towards me from one of the offices. Bart's one of the Council's more reconciliatory ghosts upstairs, always trying to make like he's doing his best to work things out for us soulcatchers in the field. I don't trust him. "Thanks so much for coming down, we really appreciate it." He looks nervous, skirting carefully through the crowd of youngins like he might catch something if he touches one.

  "Whassup?" I say as if the answer weren't hovering all around me. It's more fun to make him explain.

  "Well," says Bart, "it seems there's been some kind of incident, er, spiritual incident, you know, of some kind, in the African-American community."

  "What makes you think so?"

  You'd think we were playing tennis, the way those wide eyes bounce back and forth between me and Bart.

  "Well, all these..." he gestures helplessly at the air, "children. These bla–African American...children."

  "Looks like someone having a damn celebrity adoption open house down here."

  Bart laughs, but only for show. He's too busy being uncomfortable to really pay mind to what I'm saying. "Of course, yes. Yes. Anyway, Agent Delacruz, that's why we brought you in, as you can see. And Agent Washington, of course, is on this too, he's just otherwise occupied right now, but he'll meet you at the scene."

  "Buncha black kids get offed so you bring in the only two minorities you got, huh?"

  "Yes! No! Well, of course I mean, because...no. No."

  "Whenever you're ready, Bart."

  "We don't know what to do, Carlos, they won't even speak! And they keep showing up! There's what, seven, eight now? It's crazy. We just want to help them, but you can see how the situation's getting, er, untenable... It's horrible really, whatever's going on. And we don't know their names, where they're from... Nothing."

  I wrap my hands around one of those little cloudy waists and lift up the child to my eye level. He squirms, tiny arms waving in the air, and lets out a few pathetic chirps. The others get quiet and watch to see what I'll do. "What's your name, kid?"

  The boy lets out a heartbreaking sob, his little icy body trembling in my hands. I close my eyes, blocking everything but the gentle vibrations radiating back from my hands. It's mostly emotion coming through, all that brand new fear, but there's relief there too. Seems like all the boys know each other somehow, besides having died together.

  "God, I just want to do something for them, you know, like, start a program or something, you know?"

  I put the kid down and grab another, ignoring Bart so as not to encourage him. This one's a little more together. Perfectly twisted ghost locks dangle from his round head. He doesn't cry, just glares back at me like I had something to do with this mess. But when I close my eyes, it's like looking through a slightly smudged window into him. It's a block, a pretty damn fancy one; gorgeous brownstones stand proudly on either side. BMWs, SUVs and Mercedes are parked along the grassy, tree-lined curbs.

  "I mean, like, a program for the underprivileged, you know? Like, for ghosts who were poverty stricken in life? A way to, like, help them to help themselves." Bart's words flutter around me like a stupid flock of moths – one I can ignore for now. Might be in Harlem, this block, maybe up by 125th, on the west side. I squinch up my closed eyes, trying to clear up the image enough to make out a street sign but it's still pretty murky.

  "They're not poor, Bart."

  "Huh?"

  "Here." I extend little man to Bart. He looks pleadingly at me for a second and then grudgingly reaches for the child. "I gotta go. Tell Riley to meet me uptown."

  "Come back soon," Bart says, trying to keep the desperation from his voice.

  * * *

  This part of Harlem's mostly white now. Homeless black guys wander aimlessly, pretending they didn't get the memo to clear the fuck out. Cops wear vindicated grins as they stroll triumphantly up and down the quiet, sunshiny blocks. Comfortable young white people flutter around in sandals and shorts, doing little chores, heading to outdoor cafes, staying casually but carefully within the designated borders of their territory.

  "Malcolm X Towers?" Riley scoffs. "Luxury apartments? Are you serious?" We're standing at the foot of a monstrous glass fortress on Fifth Ave.

  "You know ghost Malcolm's ready to fuck a tower up," I say.

  "If only..."

  "Well, at least they had the decency to put in an exercise room, Riley. And a spa."

  "Let's go, man. I'm 'bout to have a Nat Turner moment."

  We wind westward through the sidestreets. I'm blending with the bums, a limping weirdo in a long leather jacket, talking and joking like there's some dude next to me. No one pays me much mind; strolling madmen are an endangered species in this part of town.

  * * *

  "Black people live here?" Riley says as we approach the first spiraling mansion. I
t's a holdout: Several of the richest black families got together and bought up all the property on this one block as a last ditch effort to hold on to the old spirit of West Harlem. "Shit, if I'd known that when I was alive I would've found a reason to come over and marry their daughter. This place is made outta money."

  "Maybe you did," I say. "Hell, maybe you lived here."

  "Carlos, I don't have to remember my past to know that this brother was broke, OK? Don't press me on it."

  "I don't really see how..." I start, but then the door swings open and a tuxedoed white man appears.

  "No...fucking...way!" Riley yells at the top of his lungs.

  The butler can only see and hear me though, and he doesn't look amused. "How may I help you, sir?"

  "These cats went ahead and got a white man to serve them hand and foot!" Riley gasps, doubled over with laughter. "Son!"

  "I'm Agent Delacruz with the NYPD's Special Crimes Division." I flash a fake badge that the Council of the Dead secured through one of their nefarious, un-talked-about connections with the cops. "Just want to ask Mister and Missus Ballantine a few questions about the disappearance of their son." It's utter nonsense of course but usually gets us in the door.

  "The Ballantines have already spoken to the police," the butler says in a severe monotone. "They don't wish to be further disturbed."

  Riley stops laughing. "Oh really, motherfucker?"

  "I understand, sir," I say. "However, I'm afraid I have to insist. Given the recent media coverage about the number of kids gone missing on this block, it's crucial that we rule them out once and for all as suspects in the investigation."

  The butler raises an eyebrow. I really haven't said anything, just laced the words "media" and "suspects" into a sentence together so Jeeves'll know I mean business. He chortles unintelligibly, opens the door and stands to the side. I walk in, exaggerating my hobble. I don't feel any imminent danger, but I've fallen into the habit of giving anyone I meet plenty of reasons to underestimate me.

  * * *