Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  “What happened to Big Cane?” I ask.

  Everyone looks gloomy suddenly. “No idea,” Riley says. “We got into a tussle with the ’catchers. They were all converging right where Krys and Jimmy were hiding and—”

  “I didn’t ask anyone to save me,” Krys insists, striding out of the shadows. “We woulda made it outta there.” She’s holding back tears. I’ve never seen her this shook.

  “It’s okay, my child,” Cyrus says. “We made a decision. I made a decision. It was worth risking Cane and Riley for the diversion. They knew what they were getting into.”

  “Damn right,” Riley says. “And anyway, there was no stopping Cane once he heard you were hemmed in. I could barely keep up—that’s why he got there first.”

  “But he’s an insider too. Why would you—”

  Cyrus stands, moves toward Krys. “He’s barely in the know these days—they just bring him in for special assignments. And the weapons, child . . .”

  “I knew this was about the damn weapons!” Krys slides away from Cyrus, over the bar. “We can’t make decisions about who lives or dies based on which of us has the coolest guns.”

  Cyrus furrows his brow. “Coolest, no? But yes, these decisions must be made, and they must be made with strategy in mind.”

  Krys turns and storms out the door.

  “And this is the burden of the general,” Cyrus says as he takes his seat. For a few seconds, his eyes stare at some long-lost moment in the distance. Then he shakes it off. “No sign of him?”

  Little Damian says, “No, and we’ve scoured all of Manhattan.”

  “Think he was caught?”

  “Or he turned on us,” Riley says.

  A few gloomy seconds pass. Then I shake my head. “I don’t see it. Not if he threw himself into the fray like that. Not with how close he is with Krys. Doesn’t add up to me. He had no way of knowing it would go down like it did, for that to be planned . . .”

  A tall ghost with an axe comes in, one of Cyrus’s guys. “Some folks from RD 17 are here,” he says. “They want to talk.”

  At a nod from Cyrus, he opens the door wider, and three old women enter. One steps forward, clears her throat. “We have come to apologize on behalf of the Remote District Diecisiete.” She gestures to the other two with a tiny, crinkled hand. “These are my hermanas, Rosali and Angelina. They call me La Venganza.”

  Cyrus’s smile grows wide. “An honor to meet you, my dear.”

  “El honor es mío,” she says with a slight bow. Then her face tightens. “We have dealt with the traitor, Moco. He has been destroyed completely and sent to la Muerte Más Profunda, ya.”

  The two women behind her spit at the mention of Moco’s name.

  “And we are here to say that because of this man’s disgrace, we have spent the day rallying the rest of Diecisiete and we can now proudly add two hundred souls to the cause of destroying the Council of the Dead for once and for all.”

  A cheer goes up from the bar as La Venganza bows again and then retreats with her sisters.

  “Thank you, hermanas,” Cyrus calls after them. Then he turns to us. “Father Desmond’s district is less assured, unfortunately. He took about half with him when he defected.”

  “Which puts us at about the same place we left off,” Riley says.

  I stand. “There’s something else . . .” I tell them about my meeting at Sunset Park yesterday, the limping ghost and Botus’s offer to make me one of the Seven, and how Sasha took out the CentCom and freed me from the meddlesome reach.

  “Excellent,” Cyrus says when I’m done. “Excellent.”

  “What?” I say.

  “They’re terrified and confused. Right where we want them. Things are about to get very bad, more likely than not. And then they’ll get worse. And then we’ll have a real fight on our hands.”

  Sasha

  “They’re good,” Gordo assures me over the phone. I’m in a crowded coffee shop and some gloomy and perfect piano blues fills the air, so it’s hard to tell if Gordo’s scared or not.

  “How ’bout Reza and Janey?”

  “The kids love Reza, no matter how much of a tough guy she pretends to be. Janey’s been taking a lot of walks. I think she is maybe going through something with Nesto? Yo no sé.”

  “He needs to marry that ass,” I say. “No offense.”

  “None taken! I told him this myself.”

  “Alright, Big G. I’m gonna brood in this coffee shop some more. Keep me updated.”

  “I will and . . . let me know what’s going on with the Council situation if you find anything out.”

  “I will. Thanks for . . . everything.”

  He chuckles and hangs up.

  The guy playing piano has brown skin and locks all the way down his back, just like Trevor’s. He wears some big ol’ grandma glasses, and a goatee frames his mouth. He closes his eyes and leans into the keys as the song comes to a head, pounding out blue notes that seem to slide in between the melody, and then he lands back on the one with a resounding power chord. The whole coffee shop bursts into applause—no one was ready for such stunning accompaniment to their studying or brooding. I know I wasn’t.

  He nods his thanks, smiles, and then mumbles something about the next tune in a sultry voice.

  And then all I see is Juan Flores’s face—the face before it was devoured by rats. He’s looking down at me, squinting just slightly. I’m vomiting bile and blood into a bucket, my whole body trembling, the edge of death creeping along my limbs. That squint: it was pain, shame. I knew it then but didn’t know why. He never showed any emotions with the others, a complete mask. I had figured it was some creepy guy gaze—here I was destroyed and helpless at his feet. He held my hair away from my face as I retched, his hand on my back.

  I shudder and coffee splashes on the table.

  “I could take her to my home,” the pianist croons, “and bring her up into my room alone.”

  I was married to that man. We were intimate once. Disgust overwhelms me, and I have to breathe deep to ease my shaking hands.

  “We would do what lovers love to do.”

  For once, I’m grateful my memories are gone. If Juan Flores and I were in love during that first life of mine, I don’t want to see it, don’t need the images, the echoing emotions. Let it go, all of it.

  Carlos is right: those were other people. Aisha is not Sasha.

  “And I would wrap her in the soft cocoon. We’d light the night up like two crescent moons.”

  Carlos. The memory of him clings to me, a welcome phantom to keep watch over this aching heart. His big hands wrapping around me in the hotel room, the weight and length of him, a shelter encompassing me.

  “But in the end I’d only break her little heart in twooooo.”

  Miguel’s big hands aren’t like Carlos’s. Each edge and cuticle trimmed and manicured; the palms are warm and sometimes wet as they glide over my cool skin. I never let myself cum with Miguel, couldn’t, but his penis is a thing to behold. He’s stockier than Carlos, and shorter. A bad breakup sent him solace-seeking at the gym over the past year, so he’s almost perfectly toned and wears the sculpted bulges like a shiny suit of armor. He was gentle at first—too gentle—and I had to teach him how to manhandle me right.

  He shows up some nights after his shifts, always texting first to make sure I’m up, always smelling of air freshener and cologne, the air around him bristling with customers’ annoyances and petty fare negotiations. We don’t talk about our days—he knows better than to ask—just trade quick pleasantries, and then I ease him out of those jeans and unbutton his shirt. He smiles when I take him in my mouth, grunts when I let my bathrobe collapse like a slow splash of water, pool around my feet. He moans when he enters me, fisting his face to hold back the explosion that already shoves its way through him, obliterating the tiny indelicacies
of the day. He sighs when he hits his stride, a goofy smile overtaking him, his big, warm hand around my slender, cool neck, squeezing; then the smile peels back, his eyes go wide, and Miguel gasps when he cums, a guttural, unapologetic blast that I fear will wake the kids but never does.

  And then Miguel sleeps.

  “Cuz it should be you,” the pianist sings, hitting the chorus at full stride. “It should be you-ou-ou.”

  It shouldn’t be Miguel. It was for a time, in an easy, we-don’t-have-to-explain kind of way, but all that is over. Everything is different now.

  “You’re the only one I should be giving all my loving to. It should be you.”

  Certainty, that rare and beautiful gem, seeps over me.

  “It should be you-ou-ou.”

  He’s having too much fun, the pianist, and I love it. Each word becomes a tiny poem on his lips, emboldened by that rich, molasses voice.

  “You’re the only one I’m gonna give all of my lovin’ to.”

  I sip coffee, take in the moment.

  And then Miguel is there, all puffy in his winter gear, smiling over his scarf.

  “Sasha!”

  I stand and embrace him. He de-jackets and orders a coffee and joins me, and the words are forming in me, the gentle letdown, the gift of clarity, however cutting, and then he says, “I’m glad you asked me here today, Sasha. I have something to tell you.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Yes, and it’s not easy, so . . . you know, let me just . . . I just want to . . . yes.”

  “Take your time,” I say.

  Miguel does things with his face—mouth twisting to one side, then the other as he closes one eye and furrows his brow.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes!” he assures me. “Sorry, I . . . yes. The thing is, Sasha. I feel that I should, that we should . . . we should stop.” He exhales the word and then seems to deflate.

  Without meaning to, I brighten. “Really?”

  “Yes, and it’s not because you aren’t amazing, Sasha. You are. And even saying that, I feel its meaning is cheapened because I am telling you now and not then, as we lay together, so it becomes more a thing said in retrospect, a going-away present, and that’s not fair, but . . .”

  My smile is sincere. “I never doubted you found me amazing, Miguel.”

  He sighs. “I’m glad. It’s just I realized the other day that I’m not really the man I should be, still. I mean, I’m over Vanessa—that’s not a question, like, at all. I’m just not ready to do a serious thing yet. I’m still, you know . . . me and I just need to, I need to be me, and not me and someone else, for a little while. Longer. If that makes sense?”

  It only half makes sense: Miguel and I never approached anything like couplehood—we barely spoke! But why complicate a simple gift like him taking on the burden of the break? “Makes perfect sense,” I say.

  “Not that we ever . . . but you know . . . my life has been very strange the past couple months, ever since that whole thing by the river I told you about.”

  Carlos, Janey, and Gordo helped him fend off some kind of demon, but he got disemboweled in the process and barely survived. We never got into it in detail, but I gather that’s why he just accepts all the not-quite-right things about me. He may not understand it, but he’s content to not know, and that’s its own kind of understanding.

  “And I thought I could just go back to being who I was, you know: Miguel. Like, ayyy Miguel!” He cheeses unnecessarily; I know exactly what he means. It’s cute, though. “But no.” Suddenly despondent. “No.”

  He sniffles, and I send up a prayer that he won’t break down.

  “Yeah,” he says, rallying. “Anyway, a lot is changing, and you helped me through, like, the worst of that, while I was healing still and everything, so thank you for that. Really.”

  I swat away his thanks. “I didn’t do anything, man.” It was my pleasure. Literally.

  In the back corner of the coffee shop, a group of rowdy teenagers busts out laughing as one jumps up, swatting a splash of color off her arm. They curse lovingly at each other and settle back down. The pianist find his way out of a labyrinthine solo, sliding back into the gentle strut of the verse.

  “And I would make her cry and make her laugh, memorize her like a photograph, kiss her body as the morning drops the dew.”

  The air between us thickens, no thanks to this obscenely talented man making love to the microphone a few feet away.

  “Well, anyway, I should . . . ,” Miguel says as I mumble: “Anyway, yeah, thank you.” Then we both giggle, stand, embrace, and in that embrace I allow myself to take him in fully—beyond his midlevel Dominican-dude cologne and well-coifed everything. A warmth emanates, a growing, pulsing glow, the soul of a lover, yes, but also a healer. He’s moving toward that glow, toward his own core, and when he gets there, it’ll be a wonder to behold.

  I put my hand on one of Miguel’s cheeks and kiss the other. I don’t let it linger. He smiles, and then he’s gone.

  For a few moments, I watch Bedford Avenue out the big coffee-shop window. Across the street, some kids are shoveling in front of a mosque. The city has already mired the once-pristine snow into a gray brown sludge.

  “It should be you.”

  Juan Flores steps in front of the window.

  “It should be you-ou-ooooh.”

  I stand, merging my own reflection across his shimmering form.

  “You’re the only one I’m gonna give all of my loving to.”

  Then I walk outside.

  —

  I knew he’d come looking for me. Stopped at home this morning after I left the botánica, knowing he’d be watching, waiting. Felt the icy prickle of his glare as I walked in my front door. I showered, already missing the smell and essence of Carlos around me, changed clothes, texted Miguel, and made it to the coffee shop in time to get a corner table before the lunch rush.

  I knew he was coming, and still.

  His visor is up. That empty face sends a shiver through me, but I force myself into neutral, illegible.

  He’ll be curious, I’m sure. Grasping for meaning at the tiny twitches of each muscle, my every move scrutinized. I’ll give him nothing and that way, perhaps, learn everything.

  Or at least more than the tattered semblance of my life and death I’ve pieced together.

  We head north in silence. Fruit stands and taco joints become kosher supermarkets. Hasids crowd the streets, families and clusters of bearded men talking quietly, laughing. Some shoot me suspicious glares: How dare a black woman intrude on their turf? I ignore them. Somewhere ahead there will be an empty lot or abandoned warehouse—somewhere I can end this motherfucker in peace.

  “You received my gift, I see.”

  I keep my eyes on the street ahead of us. Nod. “Why?”

  “Hm?” His voice bemused.

  “Why did you help me sabotage the Council? You work for them. And in no small capacity, from what I gather.”

  “Of course. I’m their minister of war. I stand below only the Seven.” A slight growl emerges in his voice.

  “So—why?”

  He stops. “For you. For us.”

  Takes everything in me not to scoff and then spit in his face and fill him with holes. I don’t, though, I don’t. The need for knowledge trumps the need for revenge. At this point, anyway.

  “Tell me about my death.”

  Juan Flores flinches, looks up at the white sky. Exhales.

  “It was a Bloody Pentacle—that’s what Sarco called it.”

  I squint, feigning surprise. “You—you knew Sarco?”

  “He was like a mentor for a while, when we were alive.”

  “To . . . to me too?”

  “Of sorts. I don’t think you ever fully trusted him the way I did—but then you were always the craft
ier one. He showed up in town one day, the quintessential mysterious stranger, talking big philosophies about the line between life and death and, honestly, making a lot of sense. And one late night in at Gerry’s Bar over by the factory, he showed me he had the powers behind all that talk too. It was raining that night, and someone had hit a possum on Route 9. I watched with my mouth hanging open while Sarco chanted something and the tattered mass of blood, bone, and fur lurched to life.

  “In retrospect, he probably just shoved some passing spirit into the thing’s corpse, but hey, what did I know? I was flabbergasted. And I was in. Life and death? That kind of power? I was a security guard at the time; all I knew of power was kicking someone off the premises.”

  Anyway, I know all about this side of Sarco. He infiltrated the Survivors back in our early, wary days of existing. Got us all riled up against the Council and had us divided and quarreling amongst ourselves in a few manic weeks. My brother Trevor drank the Sarco Kool-Aid and paid the price for it. Maybe I did too, when I was alive.

  “And you . . . Aisha.”

  “No,” I cut him off. “That’s not my name anymore. That’s not who I am.”

  A crowd of Hasidic schoolkids swarms past, all yarmulkes and excited Yiddish chatter. A few pass through Juan Flores’s icy visage and shudder; the rest flush around him, an unspoken understanding that something is very off.

  “As you wish. Sasha.”

  I shudder when he says it. There’s no mouth to direct me, but I imagine an ironic, shit-eating grin stretching across his face. I keep walking. If I stand there looking at him any longer, I’ll lash out and probably get carted off for causing a disturbance in this well-guarded Williamsburg enclave.

  “You were interested too,” he continues, catching up with me. “You had a gothic streak in you, all those animations you used to watch, and for a few years in high school you would wear all black, chains and studded neck collars and such.”

  He says it distastefully, and I smile to myself. “What’s this Bloody Pentacle you mentioned?”

  We cross the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Midday traffic stretches off in either direction. Brick row houses rise and fall on either side, and further along, a synagogue’s cement rooftop peeks above the others.