"You can't stay here in RD 17 though, you have to scatter." More nods and whispers. "Moco and I are going to go back to the Council soulcatchers and work out the arrangements."
* * *
"What do you mean they killed Phoebus?" Botus is livid, which means somewhere an angel is getting head. "I don't understand. Which one of them? We have to exact revenge!"
"Well, that won't actually be so easy. He was kind of torn up in the mob, it wasn't like one or the other. And they're all gone now anyway. Scattered."
"What do you mean they're all gone?"
"Isn't that what we wanted?" I'm trying so hard not to smile that it actually hurts. "Phantom Overload no more. Situation remedied. Voilà. A few of them lit out for Mexico I think. Shame about Phoebe though."
"I don't understand," Botus says again.
I light a Malagueña and exhale thick plumes of smoke into his office. "My full report's on your desk, sir. Just had one more question."
Botus barely looks up. "Eh?"
"Where might I find Silvan García?"
* * *
It's another beautiful afternoon. My mark is hovering in a quiet reverie on the walking path that winds alongside the Belt Parkway, not far from the Verazzano Bridge to Staten Island. Perhaps he's contemplating the sun sparkling on the water or the way the lapping of waves contrasts with the rushing traffic. Either way, he's about to get sliced.
I come up quietly, trying but failing, always failing, not to look too sketchy. Standing by a tree on this unusually warm late-autumn day with my long trench coat and walking stick. There's something definitely off about that guy, the joggers are thinking, where's his spandex and toothy grin? Why no headband or fanny pack?
I'm just biding my time, waiting for a break in the constant stream of exercise dorks so I can make my move. When it comes I take one step forward before a thick, warm hand wraps around my arm. It's Gordo, looking cheery as always but a little worse the wear after his harrowing hostage experience. I already apologized too many times to him for that and he's already swatted away each one jauntily, so I just nod at him. "What are you doing here, papa?"
"I am estopping you."
"What you mean?"
"Not this one. This one is not for you."
"Gordo, if it wasn't for this asshole..."
"Yo sé lo que hizo. And it doesn't matter." His hand is extremely strong and me tussling with a fat old guy would not be a good look right now. "It's not right and you know it's not right."
I'm about to argue with him when I realize he has a point. Ending García gets us nowhere and risks blowing my cover. It was Botus, after all, that told me where to find him. The trail would lead right back to me. All I'm left with is 'but I want to' and that's obviously not going to get me anywhere. "It is always easier," Gordo says, "to blame one of our own."
I shrug my acceptance and Gordo cautiously releases his hold on my arm. We turn together, away from the water, away from Silvan and my useless vengeance schemes, and begin walking back into Brooklyn. "You are coming tonight?" Gordo wants to know.
"Wouldn't miss it."
* * *
Six mojitos deep, I stumble towards the counter honey. Around me, the living and the dead are bopping up and down together to the sacred and sexy rhythms coming from Gordo's motley crew of musicians. Even a few of the soulcatchers showed up, including Dennis and Tyler, which I found kinda touching once I was drunk enough not to be eeked out by it. Moco is dancing up a storm towards the front, apparently in a world all to himself. The music is pounding and relentlessly beautiful. It strips us, if only for this night, of all inhibitions and traumas.
The counter honey's making eyes at me. I think. She's smiling even. Maybe at me. I'm not so sloppy yet, just have a little extra swing to me. I've been watching her and she's not fazed by the ghosts. The bar must be its own little Remote District – outside the Council's grasp, free of the fears and taboos of the living.
"What's your name?" I say, careful not to slur.
"Melissa." It's a little plain for how pretty she is, but I don't mind.
"It's a little plain for how pretty you are." Oops. She looks me dead in the eye and then laughs.
"You don't like to touch people?" she says, still burrowing her gaze right through me. "We're Latin, man. We touch. Get with it."
"I know, I know," I say, putting a hand to my face. "It's that, I'm...I'm like them." I nod at the ceiling, where a few adolescent ghosts are grinding their crotches into each other in anxious imitation of adulthood.
"What, a horny teenager?"
"No!" Ah, she's laughing again. She also touches her hair, which my best friend Riley once told me means she wants me to eat her ass. I manage to keep that insight to myself though. "No, I'm partially slightly dead. I died. But I came back."
"Ah." She nods knowledgably, like customers tell her that all the time. "That's cool."
It is? I mean, I knew it was, to me anyway, and to my dead friends, and to Jimmy, who's gawking at me rudely from a few barstools away, and of course…the others like me. But I never thought it was alright to someone like Melissa. "I don't know who I was before I died. Or how old I am." It’s been a year since I’ve felt the tender touch of a lover. A year since Sasha walked away and almost nine months since she came back and I walked away, vowing to forget, forget, forever forget. Closed my heart up like a house after a hurricane, nailed planks over the windows, spray-painted warnings on the door. Perhaps it’s time I let some sunlight seep back in.
I put my hand on the bar and squint up at nothing in particular, trying to look thoughtful.
Melissa reaches over, in this room full of stunning music and the pulsating, celebrating bodies of the living and the dead, and puts her hand on mine.
About the Author
Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of Salsa Nocturna, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series from Penguin’s Roc Books and the Young Adult novel Shadowshaper (Scholastic, 2015), a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. He co-edited the Locus and World Fantasy nominated anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. His short stories and essays have appeared in the Guardian, NPR, Tor.com, Salon, BuzzFeed, and the anthologies The Fire This Time and Mothership: Tales Of Afrofuturism And Beyond, among others. Daniel has guest edited at Fireside Fiction, Catapult, Crossed Genres, and Fantasy Magazine, and served as a judge for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Burt Award for Young Adult Caribbean Literature, and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Antioch University and has taught at Voices at VONA, Mile High MFA Program, Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing For Children and Young Adults MFA Program, Boricua College, St John’s University, and Rikers Island among other sites. You can find his thoughts on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as an NYC paramedic and hear his music at http://danieljoseolder.net/, on youtube and @djolder on twitter.
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