Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

by Gonzalo Barr

  “Let’s go,” Bettina pulled on Ugo’s arm.

  “Just a minute there, lady,” the old guard put his hand on her forearm. She shook it off. “This gentleman has just committed an act of unprovoked vandalism.”

  “Now, wait a second—” Bettina started to say.

  “What’s happening here?” It was the museum president, a thin woman in her sixties, wearing a black dress and a pearl necklace. The crowd let her through.

  The old guard explained what happened.

  Bettina introduced Ugo.

  “Of course, I’ve heard all about you,” the museum president took both his hands in hers. “And Bettina says that you’re going to be serving on our board.”

  “I am?”

  “We’re very excited,” the president said.

  The guard cleared his throat.

  “Oh,” the president said to the guard, “I’m sure we have more candy in the back.”

  “But he ate two of them!” the guard cried out.

  “Maybe the artist won’t mind if the work is two candies short,” Ugo said, trying to be helpful. “We could ask him.”

  “The artist is dead, sir,” the guard said.

  “If the artist can see us, wherever he is,” the museum president said, looking at the ceiling, “he must find this very funny.” She laughed and turned to the crowd.

  Scattered applause. Ugo smiled.

  “I’m still hungry,” Ugo told Bettina when the applause died down.

  Soon after Ugo was ejected from his mother’s room, she started to travel for a few weeks at a time. The door to her bedroom was closed and locked. His mother sent unsigned postcards addressed to Mrs. Norcross. Ugo kept the postcards and placed them in the box with his father’s logbook and the photograph. He used the old atlas in the library to mark the places where she went.

  When Ugo was thirteen, his mother took a trip around the world on a yacht owned by the richest cattle randier in Brazil. A year later, she returned with gifts for everyone. Mrs. Norcross received a leather purse from Argentina and a silver rosary from Italy. Mr. Norcross received fine cloths from England arid two cases of champagne. Ugo got a miniature bullfighting ring from Spain, a pair of ebony bookends from Ethiopia, a collection of poems by Rimbaud in French, The Divine Comedy, illustrated and abridged for “young ladies and gentlemen” in modern Italian, and a samurai sword from Japan. Ugo’s mother announced that she was tired of traveling and would be staying home for a while. She needed to rest, she said.

  Instead of rest and quiet, the house throbbed with mambos, rumbas, and cha-chas playing from the stereo console that Mr. Norcross wheeled out to the patio. Handsome young men, and women his mother’s age, danced and drank around the pool, wearing only their bathing suits, sometimes less.

  One day, as Ugo walked toward the dining room, a woman called out, “Oh, there’s the son.” The woman wore sunglasses and a one-piece black bathing suit. She called Ugo over. When the music started again, she took his hand and made him dance with her. She smelled of chlorine and cigarettes. Ugo kept his head down and looked at her feet, so as not to step on them. Each time he tried to leave, the woman pulled him closer. “That’s no way to treat a lady,” she said. “Do you have a little girlfriend?”

  “For chrissakes, he could be your son,” one of the men cried out.

  “I’ll let you know,” the woman yelled over the music, “that in some cultures, more advanced ones, if you ask me, it is the mother, or, if not the mother, then the aunt, who initiates a young man.”

  “Don’t let his mother catch you practicing anthropology without a license,” another man said.

  “She’s too busy with Nico,” the woman said, and immediately put both her hands over Ugo’s ears. “You didn’t hear that.”

  There were other parties. New people replaced the old ones. Bossa nova and samba played from the console stereo. Each morning, Mr. Norcross brought the stereo inside and cleaned the polished cherry wood cover. A fine white powder seemed recently to crosshatch all the flat surfaces near the pool. Ugo saw a young man inhale the powder through a straw off a glass table. He spied a woman in the library with one of the framed Matisse etchings on her lap. The woman ran the tip of her finger over the glass before she rubbed it against her gums. After the woman left to join the others, Ugo took the etching and did the same with the remaining specks. His mouth was numb for hours, and he bit his tongue twice.

  On another day, Ugo walked past the door of the music room and saw a naked young man crouching, flipping through the LPs. The man looked barely twenty. He was thin and muscular. Two outspread wings were tattooed on his lower back, and his buttocks were very white. Then Ugo’s mother walked across the room, also naked. She knelt down and embraced the man from behind. Ugo left as quietly as he could.

  …

  From the museum, Bettina drove Ugo to Le Bee Fin, a small, very exclusive restaurant on South Beach with a view of the channel and the large cargo ships that left the port late at night. On their way to the beach, she thought a car was following them. But before she made the final turn into the restaurant parking lot, the car disappeared.

  At the restaurant, Ugo ordered two bottles of wine and drank most of it. When the check arrived, he had trouble reading it. He took out his wallet, put a bill down, and covered everything by turning the check face down over the bill. The waiter collected the check and bill, bowed slightly, and left.

  Ugo could barely follow what Bettina was saying. The sound of clinking glasses and utensils seemed to grow louder.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the waiter returned. “There must be some mistake.” He showed Ugo the bill and the check, a blur of letters on a rectangle that appeared to undulate, as if it were underwater. Then the ceiling lights flew past Ugo, and he heard a thump, which was the sound his head made when it struck the edge of the table before he slipped out of his chair and fell to the floor.

  Ugo did not remember the rest of the night, not the argument between Bettina and the waiter, who thought Ugo had pretended to faint to avoid paying the check, not the part where two busboys walked him to Bettina’s waiting car.

  Nor did he remember how she helped him into his house (it’s a good thing Paola was a light sleeper and came to the door as soon as Bettina rang the bell because she could not fend Ugo’s house keys), and the two of them, Paola and Bettina, each grabbed one of Ugo’s arms, walked him to his bedroom, and laid him on the bed as Bettina said, “Thankyou, Paola,” and Paola said, “De nada, señora,” and “Call me if you need anything else.”

  “I think we will be fine,” Bettina said, before she closed the bedroom door and locked it.

  Bettina opened the balcony doors and took a deep breath. The breeze smelled of the sea beyond the barrier islands.

  She loosened Ugo’s tie and pulled it off before unbuttoning his collar. Then she sat him upright, his chin against his chest, to remove his coat. She took off his shirt too and laid him down again, his head snapping back against the pillow, his mouth lying open. She undressed him to his underwear.

  Ugo mumbled something.

  “What did you say?” Bettina whispered close to his ear. He snored softly.

  Should she? Why not finish what she started? She pulled on the elastic waistband of his boxer shorts. She slipped her hand under his lower back and lifted as much as she could to slip off the shorts.

  Ugo lay motionless. He looked like a boy—hairless, ribs showing, hipbones pronounced.

  She turned off the lights, undressed, and lay next to him. She found his hand and held it. But she was tired and must have fallen asleep right away because when she opened her eyes it was morning and she had let go of his hand.

  When Ugo was fifteen, he made friends with a girl in his class named Ana María. She was a little heavy and not very pretty, but she was friendly and outgoing. She dressed modestly, even carelessly, in baggy, simple clothes that looked as if she had slept in them. A month into the school year, they ate lunch together every day in the cafeteri
a. By November, they talked on the phone until late at night. The homeroom teacher reprimanded them for talking in class. “Would you lovebirds please stop your twittering so we can get on with the business at hand?” she said. Everyone laughed.

  Boys who had never talked to Ugo before punched him in the arm and winked. “Did you do it?” they asked.

  Ugo knew what “it” was after exploring the library at home, which included translations of classic Indian texts on lovemaking and Tang Dynasty medical books on sexuality, as well as Hippocrates, Galen, and Vesalius. Ugo had read Plato on abhorring women, Catullus on sweet-talking them, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which quoted Parmenides, who claimed that desire was the beginning of everything.

  He knew that human beings engaged in complex mating rituals that varied, in different cultures and times, which in the case of Ana María and Ugo, included the exchange of handwritten notes during Geometry class. How do you divide a right angle? Let me count the ways.

  It was the early seventies. Miami was going through one of its construction booms and Ana María’s father was making millions. His picture appeared frequently in the papers.

  Ugo’s mother called Ana María and her family nouveaux. She said, “Girls like that are interested in one thing only.” She meant money, but Ugo thought she meant sex and blushed. His mother prohibited him from seeing Ana María outside school, lest he mix with the wrong people. They did not see each other through Christmas vacations. The absence, instead of diluting the relationship, only strengthened it.

  When classes resumed, Ana María drove to school in a new convertible sports car. A few times, she and Ugo skipped class to park on the causeway and listen to music. She gave Ugo his first kiss. They might have gone further except for the daylight outside, the stick shift between them, and the fact that Ugo had to return to school before Norcross arrived to collect him.

  One afternoon, Ugo asked her if they could meet behind her house late that night. “Just like Romeo and Juliet,” she said, which was what they were reading in English class.

  Ugo set the alarm for 2:00 in the morning, but he didn’t need it. At 2:15, he sneaked out of his bedroom and got his bicycle out of the garage without waking the Norcrosses. Then he set off for Ana María’s house, having memorized the route on a street map.

  The roads were dark. The moon was a crescent and hung suspended over the horizon. The city lights washed the sky clean of stars. Ana María’s house had a wall around it and a curving concrete driveway that ended at a wide garage door. There was a broad lawn too. Beyond that was uncleared land that turned into mangrove before it met the bay.

  Ugo hid his bicycle in the bushes, climbed over the wall, and ran across the yard, following her detailed instructions on where they would meet. Behind the house was the pool and the patio. Beyond that was the tiled path she said would lead him to the gazebo and the artificial pond.

  “Hey!” Ana María whispered. She sat on coral rocks that rimmed the pond. Everything was dark except for the spotlights on the main house in the distance, which seemed to shine directly at them. “Everyone’s asleep,” she said. “We’re safe.” She wore a white tee shirt, shorts, and sandals. Ugo stepped carefully on the rocks. “The pond’s not deep, but don’t fall in because I’m not going to rescue you.” she said, gigging.

  Ugo sat next to her. She took his hand and leaned against him. The coral felt hard and sharp. Then she kissed him. “Like this,” she said, slipping her tongue past his lips.

  She stood, stepped in front of him, and placed her arms around his neck. She sat down on his lap. A sharp point in the coral rocks beneath him jabbed his thighs and made him wince. They kissed some more, but the pain worsened. When he tried to relieve it by lifting himself off the rock with Ana María on top of him, he lost his balance and she fell back.

  Ugo heard a splash and the sound of hollow metal being struck by something blunt.

  “Ana María?” he called out, trying to keep his voice low. The pond did not reflect any light.

  He stood rubbing the back of his thighs. A breeze blew and made the palm trees hiss. Something moved nearby.

  “Annie?” Ugo walked around the pond, still rubbing his thighs. A few yards away, the overgrowth of broad leaves and vines appeared black and impenetrable. As he approached it, the air smelled of rotted fruit and sulfur. A branch snapped.

  “Aah-neeh?” Ugo said, almost in a whisper. Something was moving away from him. The sound came from deep inside the overgrowth. He tried to see, but there were too many leaves, thick, with skin like rubber. Behind him, from the house, he thought he heard the drawn-out squeak of a door hinge. Without thinking, Ugo parted the vines and stepped into the overgrowth.

  The sky disappeared. A little light from the main house seeped through a break in the leaves behind him. More noise. There was something out there, maybe someone had heard them and was coming to investigate. He took a few more steps, careful to avoid tripping over the roots, until he was in complete darkness. The vines grew thicker the deeper he went. Far above him, the leaves rustled, but the breeze did not reach him.

  Another branch snapped.

  “Ana María, please!”

  He moved in the direction, of where he heard the branch snap. And as he did, the vines embraced him and the leaves felt waxy against his face. The roots wrapped loosely around his legs. He lifted his feet to keep from tripping and took one step every few seconds, feeling with the tips of his shoes before placing his weight on the spongy ground. The vines were so thick that when he leaned his shoulder into them, they pushed him back.

  She must have become scared and run, he thought. Or maybe she was hiding, waiting until it was safe to come out. No one would find them hidden this deep in the vines. It was black. Except for the ground pressing against his shoes, he had no sense of up or down. There was only the smell of the mangrove nearby and the sound of the open bay beyond that.

  He would wait. He would stand still, close his eyes, and think of nothing except being here. It was good, sometimes, just to be, to close your eyes, let the world continue without you. As a child, he spent hours hiding in the unused rooms of the house.

  “You have inherited your father’s reclusive genes,” his mother told him one summer when he was six and the Norcrosses found him only after searching the entire house. “And look where those genes took him.”

  To seek solace in the middle of the ocean, Ugo thought. To escape you.

  “Your father thought only of himself,” his mother said. “Il était un égoïst sans pareil. First him, then him, and once again him,” she said. “People like him take so much from the world and give so little in return. They are cursed to live in solitude and die of loneliness.”

  But it was peaceful to be alone, Ugo thought. Even more, to remove oneself from one’s thoughts, like stepping into a world where nothing happened.

  He thrust his fists through the leaves and extended his arms until he stood like a diver ready to jump. He did not think about what he did next. He did not think about anything. He leaned forward and let go. The vines held him suspended above the ground.

  Ugo waited for the sound of another branch snapping, but there was only the white noise of insects. The black around him was so thick and unmoving that it seemed as if he were floating in it. When he closed his eyes, phosphorescent crystals darted each time he tried to look at them.

  He dreamt. He saw an endless expanse of lawn. The noon sun. Whiteness. And out of the whiteness, a figure began to emerge, but before he could recognize the figure, he opened his eyes.

  The moon shone above him, a wispy gray arc within a sphere of light that made everything luminous. The vines and the ground were the color of ashes. How long had he been there? Ana María was likely back in her room asleep.

  Ugo untangled himself and felt his way out of the overgrowth, back to the pond. He ran through the yard, climbed back over the wall, and found his bicycle in the bushes. He pedaled home so fast that he almost lost control.

 
; The following day. Ana María did not go to school, nor the day after that. On the third day, the teacher announced to the class that she had been found dead. “An accident,” she said. A card addressed to her parents was passed around for everyone to sign. Ugo signed too. By end of the day, a rumor started circulating that her body had been found in the artificial pond behind her house. The police had evidence of foul play. They found footprints near the body that they believed were made by the murderer. The footprints went around the pond, into the overgrowth, then out to the wall at the edge of the property. A smudge marked the place where the police thought the perpetrator had jumped over the wall.

  Late the next morning, the sound of the gardeners’ tractors mowing the grass below the bedroom balcony woke Ugo. He felt as if someone had stabbed him through the eyes. Each time he turned his head, the room banked. He inched his way to the edge of the bed, sat up, waited for the room to settle down again, then stood.

  Had he undressed himself? When he looked up, he heaved. He ran to the bathroom and kneeled in front of the toilet bowl. Waves of nausea flowed through him until he spit out a thick yellowish liquid so sour it caused him to retch again, even though nothing else came up. The tap water tasted sweet when he washed his mouth in the sink.

  The gardeners finished mowing and the tractors rode away. Ugo heard three quiet knocks on his bedroom door.

  “Paola?” he called out. Bettina walked in. Ugo dashed behind the bathroom door but kept his head in view. The room was spinning less than before, but it was hot and he was sweating.

  “I’ve already seen you naked,” Bettina said. When she took a step toward Ugo, he shut the bathroom door and locked it.

  “Hey,” she said, her mouth pressed against the door. “Listen to me: Did I ever tell you that—”

  The first shot pierced the French doors that led to the balcony and shattered one of the panes. Ugo tried to unlock the bathroom door, but the old, defective lock would not release.