Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

by Gonzalo Barr

  Another shot hit the dresser mirror. A third shot thumped against the wall. A fourth smashed through the bathroom door and whizzed past Ugo’s right ear, causing him to jump into the bathtub and slide the glass doors shut. It was quiet for a few seconds.

  “Bettina?” Ugo called out.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  A fifth shot hit another window, followed by two more shots in quick succession. Something heavy fell to the floor.

  Downstairs in the yard, a man screamed, “You bitch! Come out here!”

  Ugo climbed out of the tub and ran with all his strength against the bathroom door, tearing the 110-year-old hinges off the wood frame, landing face-first. He crawled toward the bed and crouched behind it. He spit out the cap on his front tooth and wiped the blood off his mouth with the back of his forearm.

  Bettina lay on the floor in front of the open balcony doors.

  “I know you’re screwing that faggot!” The man sounded drunk.

  “Bettina,” Ugo said just loud enough so only she could hear him, “we should call the police. Did you hear me?” His gum was bleeding. It tasted coppery.

  He crawled toward her. The back of her head was red and bright. A dark stain on the carpet beneath her spread slowly. The room smelled of the freshly cut grass and blood.

  Ugo covered his face with his hands and sat on the floor, his back against the bed. Only when the man started screaming again did he crouch to the floor and crawl toward the balcony doors until he got close enough to peek.

  Ugo recognized Bud Alvarez from the pictures Bettina had shown him. Alvarez stood in the yard below the balcony wearing a dark suit and an open-collar white shirt. He had his back to Ugo. Suddenly he turned around, aimed the gun at him, and squeezed the trigger three times. Ugo ducked out of sight, but he heard the click-click-click.

  “Come out here, you faggot! And bring my wife with you!”

  “¡Dios mío! ¿Señor, qué sucede?” Paola was on the other side of the bedroom door, which had shut and locked.

  “Paola,” Ugo said, “call the police. La policía.”

  “No, not the police, señor.”

  “Yes, Paola. The police. Now!”

  Ugo peeked again. Bud Alvarez was still there, staring up at the sky, his eyes wide open, holding the gun by his side.

  The police arrived a few minutes later. Ugo sat next to Bettina’s body. He placed his hand on her back and let it rest there. His eyes filled with tears until the balcony doors, the room, and the morning light blurred. The bedroom door burst open. A dark unfocused figure stood in the doorway.

  “Police. Are you armed?” the officer asked Ugo. The question, as ludicrous as it was, made Ugo feel a little less naked.

  The gardener found Ana María’s body early the next morning. He lifted it out of the artificial pond and laid it on the grass. He had a severe speech impediment, which made questioning difficult when the police arrived. Though they found nothing linking the gardener directly to the murder, the circumstantial evidence made him the prime suspect. He was found not competent to stand trial and committed to a mental hospital, where he died of a heart attack eight years later.

  Ugo finished prep school in Switzerland. He enrolled in a small liberal arts college in Vermont and majored in classics. He never graduated. His senior year, his mother became ill with cancer, and he returned home.

  She died months later, when he was twenty-two years old. He inherited the house, the rococo furniture, a library of leather-bound books in five modern languages arid two dead ones, an eclectic collection of nineteenth-century paintings by obscure French artists, and an ancient Rolls-Royce. And the money, of course.

  The information filed by the state against Bud Alvarez included one count of first-degree murder for the death of his former wife and three counts of attempted murder for pointing the gun at Ugo and squeezing the trigger three times. Bud Alvarez pled to a lesser charge and was sentenced to life in prison. He also lost a civil trial for wrongful death. The jury awarded Bettina’s estate punitive damages in excess of seventeen billion dollars, a sum 250 times greater than his entire worth.

  For almost two years, Ugo kept to himself, turning down invitations to dinners and cocktails. On weekdays, before the sun set, he liked to watch Felipe play outside the house with his schoolmates. When the boys got too loud, Paola ran out to quiet them.

  Ugo enrolled Felipe in a private school and paid his tuition.

  “Felipe has something to tell you, Don Ugo,” Paola said one afternoon, standing in the hall outside the library. “Go ahead.” She nudged her son inside.

  “Gracias, señor,” Felipe said. “Thankyou, very much.”

  “You’re welcome, Felipe.” Ugo held out his hand. Felipe shook it and stepped back into Paola’s arms.

  Ugo went to the dentist and had a new cap placed over his tooth. Otherwise, his days began and ended the same way. On those rare nights when he felt restless, he reread portions of L’education sentimentale or La vita nuova and saved Catullus for the end, which he could recite in Latin with his eyes closed. Da mi basia mille, deinde centum. The woman he imagined had Madame Arnoux’s black hair, Beatrice’s green eyes, and Lesbia’s husky voice. Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum. Some nights he imagined Bettina loosening her long black hair over her shoulders. Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. Other nights, it was Ana María who appeared uninvited, still fifteen, her arms across her chest, her skin wet and cold. She stood for a moment. Then she ran across the room and disappeared.

  3.

  La verdad es que Neruda dice que es bien largo el olvido, pero mi opinión personal es que es bien largo el recuerdo.

  —Alfredo Bryce Echenique

  Twenty-two months after Bettina died, Ugo attends the first wine and jazz cocktail of the season at the museum. He looks forward to the company of others, the small talk, the music, even the art. His life feels settled again, like stepping on land after being out at sea.

  Inside the museum, people are kind to him. They are well-mannered enough not to brood on tragedy, so they talk of other things as soon as it is appropriate.

  The museum president comes by several times, makes sure his glass is full, and walks him through the first gallery. “Here’s an exciting new find,” she says, pointing to an unmade bed in the center of the floor.

  Not long after he arrives, unused to so much activity around him, Ugo begins to feel tired. He takes his leave and walks out into the humid night.

  The driver he hired by the hour insists on playing music. Ugo wants silence, but the driver is excited and punches buttons on the console through the entire trip, skipping from piece to piece.

  At home, he pays the driver. “Guy, you can call me anytime, OK?” the driver says, handing Ugo his business card, HAPPY TIMES, reads the name of the limo company.

  Paola and Felipe are in their apartment over the garage. Ugo thinks about sitting in the library for a while, but whatever contentment he felt earlier has come apart.

  He climbs the stairs to his room and undresses. He lies on the bed and turns off the light. The air glows like the night sky over a distant city. He thinks about taking a sleeping pill and reaches over to the night table when he sees her.

  She stands in the corner with her arms held tight across her chest. Ugo is not afraid. She’s done this before. She never speaks, never looks at him. Each time, she stays a little longer. But her skin is wet and she is shivering. Then she starts to run across the room, as she does every time, as she has done for years on nights made restless by the hum of an unwelcome memory.

  Ugo lies in bed for a long time, trying hard to think of nothing.

  He stands and opens the balcony door, the only one that works after the other one was shot.

  The shrimper boats are out. Spotlights hang face-down off the sides of the boats. He hears the rumble of their engines and the men on the boats singing. A breeze rises and the palm leaves rustle around him, drowning out the engines and the men.

&
nbsp; Ugo stands on the balcony and breathes deeply. He looks at the lights on the bay and the shrimper boats.

  He read somewhere that the spotlights hanging off the boats attract the shrimp to the surface. Shrimp confuse the lights for a full moon. Once on the surface, they are scooped up with nets.

  Shrimp are stupid, Ugo thinks. “Ils sont cons,” he says.

  Con is a word his mother would not have liked to hear him use, so he says it again. “Con.” And again. “Con.” Louder. “Con. Con. Con.”

  He says it so many times that he can hear it even after he stops.

  Nothing

  It was past midnight and Lincoln Road was crowded with tourists and locals. Near the corner of Meridian Avenue was a café where you could have tapas and wine. They served stronger drinks too, but they were expensive, even for South Beach. Outside on the sidewalk, an umbrella with the name of the café stamped on it spread over every table. All the tables were occupied and extra chairs had to be brought from the back to accommodate all the customers.

  More people arrived. The wait for an outside table grew to over an hour, and latecomers had to settle for a place indoors.

  Inside the café, the stucco walls were painted burnt orange. Un-framed canvases made by local artists hung on the walls—rectilinear abstracts, sensuous still lifes, and portraits of women reclining like majas, except for the homicidal look in their eyes. The air was thick with the warm smell of cigars. The smoke rose until it disappeared between the blades of the fans. Painted on the ceiling was the windmill scene from Don Quixote. If you asked about the artist, the manager himself, Estefan Roig, came to your table and explained that the painter slept on the beach, kept everything he owned in a small backpack, drank only Chianti, and told everyone that he was the reincarnation of Michelangelo.

  Also in the back, two young men strummed nouveau flamenco on their guitars. They wore red bandannas wrapped around their heads and blousy white shirts. The guitarists took turns performing solos that Roig suspected were recorded. Speakers fixed to the walls and above the entrance carried the music out to the street.

  Even with five waiters and two bartenders, service lagged and customers complained. One woman was served a daiquiri instead of a mojito, another received limoncello when she had ordered a caipirinha, and a strongly built bald man who looked to be in his forties, with a goatee, big arms, and an accent, was incensed about getting a snifter of brandy after he had ordered cognac. He sat at one of the larger tables outside, near the entrance. Next to him was a young blonde with vaguely European features wearing a tight knit top.

  “I told him,” the bald man pointed at the waiter, a wiry Cuban named Manolo, standing next to Roig. The speakers were almost directly overhead and the music was loud. Roig leaned forward so that he could hear the man. “I even showed him the menu here,” the bald man said, “so your man would not make a mistake.” He wore a huge gold watch and a gold bracelet. The blonde said something to him in a language Roig did not recognize. She was in her early twenties, at most. She wore an expensive gold necklace and a diamond watch.

  “I know this trick,” the bald man said, ignoring the blonde. “You bring me brandy and charge me for cognac. I call the police.” He started to push his chair back from the table. Roig apologized and offered them a round of drinks on the house.

  Manolo walked behind Roig to the bar.

  “Charlie, dos coñacs, for table twenty-seven,” Roig called out to one of the bartenders. Then he turned to Manolo, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “I know you are doing the best you can under the circumstances.”

  “But these are impossible circumstances!” Manolo said.

  Roig removed his hand. “It is what it is, and we have to make do.” He turned his back on Manolo and spoke to the bartender again. Charlie was twenty-five and claimed to have graduated from pharmacy school in Cuba. Roig was grooming him to become assistant manager.

  The guitarists finished their set. They had played for less than fifteen minutes. Lately, their breaks had stretched from thirty to forty-five minutes. Roig would have a talk with them.

  When the drinks were ready, Roig placed them on a tray with a bowl of olives and another bowl of peanuts. He carried everything outside to the table with the bald man and the blonde and he served them.

  “How do I know this is cognac?” the bald man said, pointing at the glass.

  “It is the cognac you ordered,” Roig said. “I served it myself.”

  The man picked up the snifter and swirled it. He raised the glass to his face, breathed deeply, and took a drink. “Good,” he said, smacking his lips.

  The blonde leaned over to kiss him. Then they both turned to Roig and brought their hands together, as if they were applauding.

  Roig loved his job. Restaurants and cafés were all he had known since he left his parents’ apartment almost thirty years before. His father had been a jeweler. After school and all day Saturday, Roig helped him at the workshop, sweeping and cleaning mostly, watching him mount diamonds on rings and pendants. His father did not believe in free time. “Every minute of our lives on earth is borrowed,” he told Roig. He frowned on idle conversation, card games, and vacations. “Frivolities,” he called them, using the Catalan word. Still, he did not object when Roig’s mother took him and his brother, Emilio, to her cousin’s farm for three weeks during summer vacation.

  The first time they went, Roig was twelve years old. He woke before the sun rose to work in the kitchen grinding coffee beans in a big iron mill bolted to the wall. After breakfast, he pumped drinking water from the well. “Look at the shoulders he is developing,” his mother said. Emilio, in turn, slept late and read paperback novels all day. Roig also played with his cousin, Elena, who was a year older than he. She taught him to care for the horses.

  For five years, Roig’s mother took her sons to the farm. When Roig was fourteen, Elena let him ride behind her. When he was fifteen, he kissed her, and her lips were so soft that he had to touch them with his fingers because they did not feel like skin. The rest of the year, they wrote long letters to each other.

  His last time at the farm, the kisses led to long walks in the afternoons to places where no one could find them. Elena did not discover she was pregnant until Roig was back home. The two families met and decided that marriage was the only honorable solution, so Roig fled.

  He took a train to Madrid and worked as a waiter, changing jobs each time he learned that someone had come around looking for him. When he turned twenty-one, he flew to Venezuela and worked his way from waiter to maître d’hôtel and finally to manager of one of the most fashionable restaurants in the Chacao district of Caracas. He stayed there twenty-four years and married the daughter of an Italian immigrant, a woman with black eyes and curly black hair. They divorced two years later when he discovered that she was pregnant by another man.

  He did not hear from his family again until his last year in Caracas, when he received a letter from Emilio. His father had died of lung cancer, and his mother had died years later of a stroke. There was also a photograph of his brother sitting with his own family. Emilio was in the center, next to his wife. He had lost most of his hair. She had a plain face and veiny hands. Standing behind them were two young men. On the back of the picture, his brother had written, Here we are—me, Elena, Estefan, and Mauricio. We named the eldest one after his uncle.

  For weeks, Roig thought about writing back. Several times, he started to compose the letter in his head. Then Chávez came to power, Cuban military advisers arrived from Havana, and the army replaced many civilian teachers. Roig followed the owner of the restaurant and moved to Miami.

  Roig left the bald man and the blonde to stand at the café entrance, from where he welcomed customers and walked them to their tables. He also watched people walk on Lincoln Road, past the café. He could distinguish the Europeans from the South Americans and the Americans. The French traveled in pairs, usually couples, burnt from too much sun. The English came in small groups
of pale and rowdy young men. The South Americans spoke softly and examined the menu carefully. The locals were easy to spot too. They left the best tips. Then there were what he called the very locals, the beautiful young people who lived on South Beach. They were tanned and ñt and wore few clothes. They always had their cell phones out, talking into them or thumbing messages. There were others too—performers, pamphleteers, a man who sang the 1958 hit “Volaré” in different keys, a juggler, and a one-armed crazy.

  Roig called him El Loco, the Crazy One. Each time the police took him away, he would be gone for a few weeks. When he returned he was a different person, smiling at everyone, rattling a bottle of prescription pills at Roig as if it were a party trick. But then the pills ran out and he harassed the customers again. He had a real name, which a police officer told Roig was Caine. “Just like the actor,” the cop said, laughing. But to Roig, he was El Loco. He was short, with sun-beaten dark skin. His hair was blond and matted. His eyes were a feline green. When someone gave him money, he danced a jig and bowed low, his one arm across his chest and the stump of his other arm, amputated below the elbow, jutting out behind him. If people waved him off, however, he screamed and chased them, swinging his stump over his head like a club. There were other crazies on Lincoln Road—like the woman who dressed in brown garbage bags wrapped with twine and marched past the café arguing vehemently with herself—but they never bothered anyone.

  One night, a few months before, while Roig was occupied in the back behind the bar. El Loco walked to a sidewalk table at which two fashionably dressed older women were seated. He took the unoccupied chair across from them, drank wine from their glasses, and ate their olives and cheese.

  Manolo told Roig, who called the police before he ran outside. The women were standing, clutching their purses, while Caine picked at the olives with his fingers. Roig escorted the women inside the café. Two officers arrived on bicycles.

  “Get out of the chair!” one of the officers yelled. Caine lifted a glass of wine and toasted them. The officers tackled him out of the chair and knocked the bottle and the glass to the sidewalk. The red wine seeped into the limestone.