San Juan Noir
Page 13
Our young lady of the night wants a man, one who’ll hold her after he’s done. She spots a muscular guy wearing a chunky watch and gold chains sitting alone at the bar, typing something into his phone. Her favorite Santo Boricua tank-top physique. He’s handsome as a jaguar and looks like he has money to spend.
She introduces herself and brightens when she smells his sweat, but then a curly haired, high-heeled Dominican woman slams the squeaky bathroom door behind her, walks up to our young lady of the night—her perfume is too strong—and pushes her out of the way.
“What the fuck are you doing talking to my man, puta?”
“The only puta you need to be worried about is your mother,” our young lady says, and lunges to grab her hair.
They scream insults at one another, pushing as the boyfriend with rocky muscles and black armpit hair tries to break them apart.
“Stop that shit, puñeta!” he says.
They stumble apart and our young lady of the night gets ready to leave before things get too hot. She’s too drunk to fight. The Dominican woman continues to call her a list of horrible things; her man is embarrassed and finishes his beer, swipes his car keys off the bar to leave.
He’s ready to fuck, the lonely woman thinks; she can see it in his walk and hear it in his voice. She savors the thought of him taking her—he’s the kind of man she would keep around—but he disappears into the night, keeping his girl calm at his side as he does.
There’s an older guy there but she’s had enough of them. He’s at the back of the bar and is dressed like a leading man from an old black-and-white movie. Staring down at something—a magazine? His phone? She can’t see his face.
Something pulls her to him, so she stumbles over and tells him her name, that she thinks she’s seen him before. He doesn’t look up but nods without the slightest degree of emotion or interest—this overdressed man from an old movie.
He gestures with an open palm for her to sit, which she does, but he still doesn’t say anything or even look up. He mumbles something she doesn’t understand in a smooth, deep voice she finds pleasant. She suspects he is lonely like she is, and waits for him to meet her gaze or say something, offer her a drink.
He raises his head after a few tense moments and she gasps. He’s not old at all. What was she thinking? He’s one of the most handsome men she’s ever seen: friendly, penetrating blue eyes, combed-back silver hair, with about three days’ worth of a stubbly beard.
Our young lady feels dizzy when she smells his fresh, piney cologne. He undoes the top two buttons of his crisp white shirt to reveal thick chest hair. No wedding ring. Well-groomed and elegant, she thinks. Easy in bed.
Suddenly she is overcome by a terrible feeling and tells herself that it’s best to get moving and go home where she can lock the door and get away from the world. She’s drunk and it’s best to leave before something awful happens.
He’s so handsome that she cannot look at him for too long.
The stylish devil leans over and says something. His voice is dry and reptilian, yet familiar, and she nods in approval at everything he says. They leave the bar—and the terrible heavy metal music—and head to her room just a few blocks from there, making a quick stop along the way.
* * *
She leads him into the dark lobby and up an even darker staircase to her room. The building is without power, she tells him, but they can take a cold shower to freshen up from the humid night.
He remains silent and enters after her. She lights candles for atmosphere, romance—so they can see one another—and excuses herself to the bathroom to wash up for several anxious and jittery minutes, before emerging anew.
Glowing.
Naked.
He’s sitting in the corner, still dressed, and she wonders how she could’ve mistaken him for an ugly old monster. He won’t take his clothes off, he says, because he’s not staying. He works nights and has a lot to do. Another freak, she thinks, but at least he smells nice. And he looks strong. Maybe he’ll even hold me.
She wonders what’ll turn him on as she leads him to her bed. She lies on her back in the storm of her intoxication and he falls on top of her, crashing down and spreading her legs apart. A wooden bedpost creaks and splinters and he hushes her with a finger to her lips when she tries to say something.
He unbuckles his belt, unzips his suit pants, pulls it out, and guides it into her. Their desire ignites and launches her to strange and wonderful worlds—to new realms where everything is fantastic and wondrous. She lets out long, throaty animal sounds that mean many prophetic things in the moment, but he says nothing.
Our young lady of the night rocks her head left and right in ecstasy: there’s a handsome man on top of her, dressed exquisitely and smelling of expensive cologne; no foul body odors, or sore spots, or careful maneuvering around broken bones and bandages.
He moans into her ear and she spreads wider for him, his prong swelling wider inside her. It hurts, because it has a sharp curve and is thicker than her wrists, so she shifts her hips to makes it easier, to take him all the way in.
He grinds into her, burying his snout into the space just below her ear. She feels teeth push against her neck, harder each time. Something overcomes him and he sinks his teeth into her shoulder, piercing her skin. He thrusts harder at the taste of her blood.
Our young lady screams in protest, but his hand is over her mouth. His charming cologne becomes foul and cadaverous, and each of his movements chips away at her strength. His fingers become sharp claws that tear her flesh off the bone, and her eyes light up with the screams that are silenced in her throat. In tandem with his cruel teeth, they rip her body to shreds.
She screams one final plea and loses consciousness. Deafening hurricane winds shatter the windows, and the dissonant groans of the resurrected dead rush in on the trade winds.
The curtains become still.
* * *
The nervous hotel manager explains that the power hasn’t been restored yet as he puts his heavy key ring back in his pocket and opens the door. The first officer enters, pinches his nose. The second follows with instinctive hesitation. The dirty manager, a chubby and religious middle-aged man, lingers behind and says a prayer.
It’s been days since anyone’s heard from her. A young woman who disguised her voice and lied about her identity was the one to alert the police that something was wrong. The hotel manager explains to the cops that she’s five months behind on her rent. “Always has money for everything else, if you know what I mean.”
The officers ignore him. They’ve heard it all and they know what they’re doing. It’s as humid as it gets in San Juan and they’re dressed in their black uniforms. The stench in the room doesn’t help much, but it solves the mystery.
She’s faceup in bed; legs spread wide; an angelic and peaceful expression on her darkening face. Her left arm is tossed aside, punctured with agony and guilt. Skin spotting over. Her makeup’s smeared and streaked, as if she’d been crying.
“Everything else looks fine,” the officers say to one another. The only unusual detail is her eyes, which are open wide with wonder, as if the last thing she’d seen had been astonishing and beautiful.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” the younger cop asks.
The older cop curtly tells him to cover her body with the blanket, as if insulted by his stupid question, and issues a report over his radio. He tells the manager he can start cleaning the place up, that she doesn’t have much and what’s there is worthless. As if she were still alive.
He goes through her purse and finds two photos of a little boy that resembles her. He wedges them into the corners of a framed image of the Virgin Mary that hangs next to the locked window. Shakes his head.
“No sign of a break-in or any other disturbance,” he says to the dispatcher. “No need to send Detective Guerrero since there’s nothing to investigate. Overdose.”
The hotel manager steps back and the officers continue. The older cop hands
her purse to the younger one to look through (no money, no credit cards) and checks the locked window one last time. Then he goes into the bathroom and comes out with a curled-over tablespoon and syringe and throws them onto the bed next to her.
He shoots a small plastic baggie into the air with a flick of his middle finger and says, “Another satisfied customer.”
“She probably scored on Fernández Juncos, overestimated the dose, and well . . .” the younger officer says with a hint of sadness in his voice.
“You know everything already, don’t you?” the older one says.
The electricity comes on and the television whines back to life. A weak lightbulb flickers on overhead and an old movie brightens to life on the screen. The younger officer crosses the room to switch it off. This nasty old hotel actually has cable, he thinks, and takes in the moving image of a pretty woman jumping into an elegant man’s arms for a brief moment.
“At least she had good enough taste to watch old black-and-white movies,” he says to the grumpy senior officer. The image darkens with a metallic ringing sound when he turns the TV off. “Because the new ones suck.”
* * *
Originally written in English
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Janette Becerra is a fiction, poetry, and essay writer. She has published two volumes of short stories (Ciencia imperfecta and Doce versiones de soledad), two poetry books (La casa que soy and Elusiones), and a children's novel (Antrópolis). Her creative and critical work has been published in Venezuela, Cuba, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and Tunisia. She holds a PhD in Spanish literature from the University of Puerto Rico, where she has taught since 2000.
Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos is a singer, journalist, and writer from Puerto Rico living in New York. He has been published in the main newspapers on the island and is the president of Proyecto Educativo y Cultural Unidad Insular (PECUI), an initiative that offers creative writing workshops in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. He's currently completing a PhD at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he is researching Caribbean music in its transnational context.
Edmaris Carazo has maintained a blog, siemprejueves.blogspot.com, since 2008. Her short story "En Temporada" was published in the Cuentos de Oficio: Anthology of Emerging Storytellers in Puerto Rico, and she won an honorable mention in the 2013 Novel Contest of the Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico with her manuscript El Día que me venció el olvido. Currently, Carazo works as a digital communications manager at an advertising agency.
Tere Dávila is author of two story collections: Lego y otros pájaros raros and El fondillo maravilloso y otros efectos especiales. Her award-winning stories have been published in Spanish and English anthologies: Latitud 18.5, El ojo del huracán, Cuentos puertorriqueños para el nuevo milenio, and Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra. She has a BA from Harvard University and a master's degree in creative writing. Dávila lives in San Juan and is finishing her first novel.
Ana María Fuster Lavín is a Puerto Rican writer and cultural columnist. She has received awards from the PEN chapter in Puerto Rico for her novel Réquiem, and from El Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña for her story collection Verdades caprichosas. She is also the author of numerous poetry collections, including El libro de las sombras, Tras la sombra de la luna, and El eróscopo; and the gothic novel (In)somnio.
Manuel A. Meléndez was born in Puerto Rico and raised in East Harlem, New York. He is the author of two novels, four poetry collections, and two collections of short stories. His novel Battle for a Soul was a finalist for the 2015 International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery Novel. He's currently working on a collection of suspenseful short stories as well as a mystery novel, and lives in Sunnyside, New York.
Luis Negrón, a writer and bookseller, was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1970. Mundo cruel (2010), his first book, was awarded, in its English translation, with a 2013 Lambda Literary Award. His work has being adapted for the theater and cinema.
Manolo Núñez Negrón studied Latin American literature at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras, and earned a PhD from Harvard. He was an assistant professor at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. Currently, he teaches at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras. His first book of short stories, El oficio del vértigo, was published in 2010. In 2012 he published his first novella, Barra china.
Alejandro Álvarez Nieves is a Puerto Rican writer and translator, and an adjunct professor at the Graduate Program in Translation at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras. He completed a PhD in translation studies from Universidad de Salamanca in 2013. His short stories have been published in several journals and publications. His poetry book El proceso traductor won the El Nuevo Día Poetry Contest in 2011.
Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is a Puerto Rican writer. Her story collection Las negras won the National Prize from the PEN chapter in Puerto Rico in 2013. She has also won awards from the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 2012 and 2015, and from El Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña in 2008. Her notable children's books include La Linda Señora Tortuga and Thiago y la aventura de los túneles de San Germán.
Ernesto Quiñonez was heralded by the Village Voice as a "Writer on the Verge." The New York Times called his debut novel Bodega Dreams a "new immigrant classic." It has since become a landmark in contemporary American literature and is required reading in many colleges around the country. He is a Sundance Writer's Lab fellow and is currently an associate professor at Cornell University's MFA program.
José Rabelo is a Puerto Rican writer and dermatologist. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences program and received his master's degree in creative writing from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. He won the National Prize for Children's Stories in 2003 for his story collection Cielo, mar y tierra. He is the author of three novels: Cartas a Datovia, Los sueños ajenos, and Azábara. He received the Premio El Barco de Vapor in 2013 for Club de calamidades.
Mayra Santos-Febres has published more than twenty-five books of poetry, short stories, essay collections, and novels. Among her most well-known titles are Sirena Selena (2000), Our Lady of the Night (2006), and La amante de Gardel (2015). In 1996 she won the Juan Rulfo Award for her short story "Oso blanco." Her works have been translated into Croatian, Icelandic, French, Italian, German, and English. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico.
Will Vanderhyden is a translator of Spanish-language literature. He has an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester. He has translated two novels by the Chilean writer Carlos Labbé, Navidad & Matanza and Loquela, for Open Letter Books. His translations have appeared in journals like the Literary Review, Asymptote, and Two Lines. In 2015, he received an NEA Translation Fellowship and a Lannan Writer's Residency.
Charlie Vázquez is the director of the Bronx Writers Center, as well as the author of the novels Buzz and Israel (2005), and Contraband (2010). He has served as the New York City coordinator for Puerto Rico's Festival de la Palabra and has just finished his third novel, a paranormal mystery set in Old San Juan. He lives in the Bronx, where he was born.
BONUS MATERIAL
Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series
Also available in the Akashic Noir Series
Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition
INTRODUCTION
WRITERS ON THE RUN
From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple
In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments la
ter, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.
It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.
From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.
My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.
Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.