Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

by Daniel José Older

  Ugh, see how I do? Here I was trying to tell you about the chistoso screensaver and you got me talking childhood memories. I can't stand myself sometimes. Especially at night.

  The point is, the computer is on and all at once just like that, pum! A little noise erupts out of it, like a digital rock plunking into a digital lake and I swear I nearly fell out of my chair with shock. What in the name of all that is holy could that be? It is, after all, almost three o'clock in the morning and I'm used to being perfectly alone with my many thoughts.

  I advance on the thing like it's a wild beast. All those ones and zeros there's no telling what it could be up to. I push the spacebar and the screen comes to life and there's a little box on it. The box says:

  LAMUSICA718: hello?

  My computer is speaking to me! Then I remember that Janey had been over a few days ago and fixed me up on some kind of social something or other. A chat. And this must be said chat. And it's chatting. But who LAMUSICA718 might be is a mystery.

  The computer burps again and more words appear.

  1

  2

  3? 123...

  Hello hello!

  Hola!

  I watch in wonder as a little stream of letters flows by.

  bsiurghspr oiushg;s

  sg h;hsgs

  test 1 2 3

  yo soy un hombre sincero

  I know that song! I sit down and tap out carefully:

  de donde crece la palma. Then I press the RETURN key like Janey showed me. It appears on the little window beside the screen name we picked for me, SIEMPRECICI. A moment passes.

  You exist! Im sorry didn't mean 2 trouble u so late was just trying out this thing + i saw u were online

  I actually chuckle at this point, because the whole situation has simply become so absurd I don't know what else to do.

  are you Cicatriz Teresa Cortázar?

  Nobody calls me Cicatriz! It's a weird name to most people. They say, what kind of a name is Scar for a woman? And they have a point. I used to say the same thing until I got used to it, and realized, a scar isn't about the injury, it's about the healing. Still, I don't tell many people my real name.

  People just call me CiCi. But yes.

  A pause.

  Ok.

  I stare at the screen.

  CiCi.

  I do believe this gentleman is flirting with me. Perhaps inadvertently. If it is a gentleman at all. Could be a twelve-year-old girl for all I know. This cyber-thing will take some getting used to.

  What's your name? And how do you know mine?

  A little interrogative perhaps, but I am a lady, and I have a right to know.

  They call me Gordo.

  My eyebrows rise all the way up to the top of my head.

  My future daughter in law Janey signed me up to this thing.

  I burst out laughing and when I stop there's a profound silence left in the room and I can hear my heart beating in my ears. Janey. I met her fiancé once. Nice boy. A little serious perhaps, but he is excessively handsome and they had a certain quiet fire between them that couldn't be missed. And this is his father. Fascinating.

  Janey gave me your screen name and said i should "friend" you. I told her I didn't even know u so how could I do this thing but she said it was ok thats how things work now.

  Now I'm giggling and cringing at the same time. And I'm not entirely sure why.

  I see, I type, just to not leave him hanging.

  she said also that you wanted to learn about music and because I am a music teacher to the little kids at the school on halsey and I still sometimes perform at small bars around the neighborhood perhaps I could tell u some thing about it?

  Lies! Janey is telling him lies about me! I know plenty about music, in fact I have studied with several masters, and I have no need to learn any more from some random fat guy online. Ridiculous.

  how interesting, I type. I would be curious to hear what you have to say about music, Señor Gordo.

  That's not a lie. Technically, I would be curious. Perhaps I'm flirting.

  Very good. I am glad I could be of help to you, Señora CiCi. When is a good time for us to commence?

  I smile. Janey is a devious and beautiful soul. I wonder about that swirl of potential rising inside her. She reminds me of myself when I was about twelve decades younger. I wrap the thought up and pocket it for later. There are more pressing things at hand.

  I look back at Gordo's question and then, very slowly and deliberately, I type: Late, late at night.

  Phantom Overload

  I'm late to a meeting with The New York Council of the Dead so I swing by my favorite Dominican spot for a ferocious coffee. It's kind of on the way, but mostly I do it to bother my icy, irritating superiors. I'll roll up twenty minutes in, smug, caffeinated and palpably disinterested. I linger even longer than I have to, partially because I'm in a good mood but mostly because the counter honey's strapless shirt keeps slipping up like a curtain from her paunchy little tummy. Every time it happens my meeting with the Council becomes less and less important.

  The spot's called EL MAR. It's one of those over-decorated 24-hour joints that always has dim lights and a disco ball. Corny papier-mâché coral reefs dangle off all the walls and there's usually a lively crowd of stubby little middle age couples and taxi drivers.

  "My friend Gordo's playing here Friday," I say, aiming for casual chitchat but achieving only uninvited randomness. The counter honey raises two well-threaded eyebrows and pouts her lips – which I roughly translate to mean "Whoopdeedoo, jackass." But it's spring outside, a warm and breezy afternoon, and my good mood has granted me temporary invincibility. Besides, I like a girl that can say a lot without even opening her mouth. "The big Cuban guy?" I offer. "I've never seen him play before but I hear it's amazing."

  She softens some, leans back against the liquor cabinet and exhales. "Gordo's a friend of my tío. He alright." The shadow of a smile is fluttering around her face, threatening to show up at any moment. I try not to stare. "Brings a weirdo crowd though," she adds.

  Here's the part where I'm supposed to hand her the dollar, letting the touch linger just a fleeting moment longer than it has to so my fingers can tell her fingers about all the rambunctious lovemaking I have planned for us. But my skin is inhumanly cold; my pulse a mere whisper. I am barely alive at all, a botched resurrection, trapped in perpetual ambiguity with not even so much as a flicker of what life was like before my violent death. Surely, whatever flutterings of passion trickle through my veins wouldn't make the jump from one body to the next. Plus I'd probably ick her out. I put the money on the counter and walk out the door.

  * * *

  The New York Council of the Dead holds court in a warehouse in the industrial wastelands of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The outside is nondescript: Another towering, dull monstrosity clustered between the highway and the harbor. Inside, a whole restless bureaucracy of afterlife turns eternal circles like a cursed carnival ride. Mostly dead though I may be, it's here that I always remember how alive I really am. Everyone else in the place is a shroud, a shimmering, translucent version of the person they once were. The glowing shadows spin and buzz about their business in the misty air around me. After a few years of showing up here every couple weeks for a new assignment, the presence of this walking anomaly doesn't even warrant a sidewise glance.

  I stroll through chilly little crowds of ghosts and into the back offices. I'm a good half-hour late and still murkily ecstatic from the nascent spring and my non-conversation with Bonita Applebum. Unfortunately, they seem to have been waiting up for me.

  Chairman Botus's hulking form rises like a burst of steam from behind his magnificent desk. He's the only one of the seven Council Chairmen that anyone's ever seen; the rest lurk in some secret lair, supposedly for security purposes. "Ah, Carlos, wonderful you're here!" Something is definitely very wrong – the Chairman is never happy to see anybody. Botus smiling means someone, somewhere is suffering. I grunt unintelligibly
and sip at my lukewarm coffee. There's two other ghosts in the room: A tall, impish character that I figure for some kind of personal assistant or secretary and a very sullen looking Mexican.

  "Carlos," Botus grins, "this is Silvan García, spokesman for our friends out in the Remote District 17." The Mexican squints suspiciously at me, nodding a slight acknowledgment. His carefully trimmed goatee accentuates a severe frown. "Silvan, Agent Delacruz here is our leading soulcatcher prime. An investigator of the highest spiritual order. He's done terrific work in the Hispanic communities."

  I don't believe in spirit guides, but if I had one it just curled up and died. Nothing marginalizes marginalized people like a dead white guy talking sympathetically.

  Plus he's managed to deflate my rare bout of perkiness. The secretary, apparently unworthy of any introduction, just stares at me.

  "It seems Mr. García's community is experiencing some, er, turmoil," Botus grins hideously down at Silvan. "Is that the word you would use, Sil? Turmoil? Anyway, in short, they're in Phantom Overload and need our," another smirking pause, false searching for the right word, "assistance."

  It's a tense moment. The Remote Districts are a few scattered neighbor-hoods around New York that unanimously reject any interference from the all powerful Council. Instead, they deal with their own dead however they see fit. I believe 17 is the strip of East New York surrounding the above ground train tracks on Fulton Street, but either way, for them to ask help from the COD means something's really messed up over there. Unfortunately, I haven't peeked at my terminology manual, well, ever, so I just nod my head with concern and mutter, "Phantom Overload, mmm."

  The meeting wraps up quickly after that: Many nods and smiles from Botus and grimaces from Silvan García.

  "The fuck is Phantom Overload?" I say once the curt spokesman has floated briskly away. Shockingly, Botus's smile hasn't evaporated along with his guest. He appears to be genuinely happy. It's a terrifying thought.

  "Oh, Carlos Carlos Carlos," he mutters, letting his long cloudy form recline luxuriously behind his desk. "You're weird and of questionable allegiance, but you're the best we got and I like you."

  "You're sinister and untrustworthy," I say, "and I can't stand to be around you. What's Phantom Overload?"

  "It means our good friends at RD 17 can't handle their business. No surprise there of course. Seems they have a bus that makes a routine drive through the area picking up souls, collecting the dead, you know – it's all very quaint."

  "Until?"

  "Until the motherfucker disappears!" Botus lets out a belly laugh.

  "The ghost bus disappeared?"

  "Can you imagine the irony? Is there anywhere Mexicans don't go stuffed into buses? Man!"

  I have this blade that I carry concealed inside my walking stick. It's specially designed and spiritually charged to obliterate even the toughest afterlifer. In moments like these that I have to work very hard not to use it.

  "Anyway," Botus continues once he's collected himself, "yeah, the ghost bus gone and disappeared, or ain't showing up for whatever reason and so yeah, of course," he rolls his eyes and makes an exaggerated shoulder shrug, "they're gonna go into Overload. Phoebus, tell him what Overload is."

  The slender secretary ghost, who had become so inconsequential that I'd actually forgotten he was there, suddenly leaps into action. "It means, sirs, that the souls are all hanging around and can't be carted off to the Underworld and instead congeal and cause havoc and generally make nuisances of themselves. The situation can be exacerbated by high murder or infant mortality rates and can reach a critical point in as few as 72 hours."

  "Critical point?"

  "Would be classified as an utterly overwhelming level of chaos derived from the overcrowding and massive spiritual collisions."

  "A fucking disaster," Botus puts in. "A Mexican clusterfuck of the highest order. Trust me. You don't wanna see it. It'd be like 9/11 for the dead, but worse. Or like that other thing that happened, the one with the levees and whatever."

  "So they sent an emissary?"

  "To beg for help. Cocksuckers refuse and refuse and refuse assistance from the Council for decades. No, it'll compromise our autonomy! It'll create dependency on the COD. Blah blah blah. You know the whine. What can you do? Wait around 'til some shit pops off they can't handle. Fine. Here we are. Took a little longer than expected, but no matter. We'll move ahead as planned."

  "As planned?"

  "Like I said, we all knew this was gonna happen. It was only a matter of when. So did we have a plan in place for when the inevitable occurred? Of course we did, Carlos, that's what the COD does: It prepares. That's how these things work. Stay ahead of the game and you rule the planet. Come unprepared and the world will fuck your face and shit in your soul."

  "Is that what it says on your gravestone?"

  Botus chuckles mildly and I start getting antsy.

  "So you want me to..."

  "Set up in RD 17 and lay some preliminary groundwork for an incoming squadron of soulcatchers. It's gonna be a hazy mess in there, kid, and I'd like things to be a little ready for our boys when they show up. Minimize damages, if you know what I mean. You start tomorrow. Phoebus here will be your partner."

  My what? I gape at Botus for a full three seconds before recovering. "My what?"

  But the matter's closed. The Chairman has already immersed himself in some other paperwork and Phoebus is hovering eagerly beside me.

  * * *

  I'm heading back towards Bushwick, running through all the reasons why the Phoebus thing is a wack disaster. Number one on the list is Jimmy. Jimmy's a high school kid, my friend Victor's cousin. A freakish incident with a granny and some soul-eating porcelain dolls a couple months back left him able to see afterlifers. He's not half-dead like me but he's definitely another uneasy interloper between two worlds and I've taken him under my wing to thank him for making my unusual status that much less lonely.

  But with winky little Phoebus tagging along, I'll have to explain why I'm bringing a live teenager around in flagrant disregard for the most basic Council protocol: Stay the fuck away from the living.

  Whatever, I'll figure it out.

  I find Jimmy playing checkers on a little sidestreet off Myrtle Ave. Even sitting down, the kid towers over the table and has to squint through his librarian/Nation of Islam glasses to see the board. He's playing against Gordo, a great big Cubano cat who's down with the living, the dead and probably a whole slew of saints and demons no one's even heard of yet. Says it has something to do with the music he writes. He plays a mean game of checkers too, and from the look of it he's hammering Jimmy something fierce.

  "If this were a real game, like chess," Jimmy is saying when I walk up, "you'd be on the floor beggin' me for mercy."

  Gordo is tapping away on a cell phone, which is a startling new addition for him. Whatever it is he's doing must be fascinating, because his eyes are wide and he's grinning like a school kid. When Jimmy prods him, Gordo looks up and triple jumps across the board.

  "How is it," I say, pulling up a chair, "that you can be such a freaking wizard at a game as complex as chess and get your ass handed to you in a glorified Connect-4?"

  "Who asked you?"

  I gank one of Gordo's Malagueñas and light it up. "I need you both tomorrow." Gordo raises an eyebrow but keeps his concentration on the board.

  "What you got?" Jimmy asks.

  I explain more-or-less the situation, minus the part where I had to ask what Phantom Overload is.

  Gordo's looking interested when I finish. "This ghost bus – she just disappeared? She estopped coming completely?"

  "Apparently. Maybe it's on strike. The little irate Mexican Silvan said he'd try to arrange a meeting for us tomorrow with the ghost bus driver but it wasn't a guarantee."

  "Silvan García?" Gordo says. "He's Ecuadorian."

  Figures my oversized living friend would know more about my assignment than I do. "Either way," I say, "he's already giv
en me the dirty eye 'cause Botus did his poor Hispanic communities routine and now I look like Malinche again."

  Gordo lets out a long sigh. "One day, Carlos, I am going to kill your boss." It's not an idle threat but he'll probably have to wait in line.

  "Who's Malinche?" Jimmy asks.

  "The chick that helped a couple white guys on horses take down the whole Aztec empire," I say. Jimmy looks crestfallen. "Or got kidnapped and forced into being a historical scapegoat, more than likely."

  Gordo looks very sad all the sudden. "It is always easier to blame one of our own."

  "Oh and there's more," I say. "They stuck me with a partner. Some doofy little guy named Phoebe or something."

  "Phoebe's a girl's name," Jimmy informs me.

  "Either way, I want you to tag along. Should be an interesting mess. We'll work it out with the partner. Gordo, can you mingle around Fulton while we meet with Silvan, see what you can find out?"

  Gordo nods and then jumps Jimmy's last two checkers.

  "Fuckassshit."

  Gordo just chuckles: "Should've stuck with basketball."

  * * *

  "Who's that?" Phoebus wants to know when I show up to meet him with Jimmy in tow. It's the beginning of a beautiful breezy autumn night. The whole world seems to be milling pleasantly about under the Fulton Street train tracks. It's gametime and gossip hour outside the bakeries, dollar stores and beauty salons of East New York. I'm in another weirdly chipper mood but I don't let it show; instead I get up in Phoebus's face.

  "Listen, partner," I say real slow and menacing, "I'm glad you have the protocol book memorized and got good grades in the academy, but now you're in the streets and it's a different game." Okay, I got the speech from a cop flick I was watching the night before, but it translates pretty well. "Now we gonna play by my rules. Got it?"