Signal to Noise

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “I thought you might want them.”

  “I do.”

  Her mother pulled out another letter and shook her head, chuckling.

  “He could write, couldn’t he? He wrote on anything. Bits of napkins and the backs of receipts. That was Vicente.”

  Her mother put the letters back in the box. She closed the lid and looked at Meche.

  “I wish you could have talked to him before he died,” her mother said.

  “Whenever we talked he was drunk and sad,” Meche said. “But I wish I’d talked to him.”

  “Well, are you going to need help packing? Do you need—”

  “I could use a hug.”

  Meche placed a hand on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother smiled.

  ASSORTED EMPANADAS CONSTITUTED the dish for the last day of the novena. There were spicy tuna ones and sweet ones filled with pineapple jam.

  Meche played tangos. Her father said tango was a music for mending or breaking hearts. Rhythms for close embraces and invitations to dance telegraphed with the eyes and a tilt of the head.

  She saw Daniela and waved to her. The woman approached her, a broad smile painting her face.

  “Hey,” Meche said. “How... um... how’s your day been?”

  “Long. I’ve been up since six and have not stopped. Two kids and a full-time job,” she said. “They’re six and ten.”

  “Seriously? You have a ten-year old child? That’s impossible.”

  “Not that impossible. It’s been a while.”

  “No kidding. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a cook.”

  “That seems strangely appropriate.”

  “Well, I did go crazy with that Easy-Bake oven.”

  “Sebos ate everything you made. Even when it sucked.”

  “My cooking has improved.”

  Meche smiled. She felt strangely sheepish, her hands dipping into her pockets as she looked down.

  “You’re wondering if he’s coming after all,” Daniela said.

  Meche opened her mouth to protest, raising her hand.

  “Don’t deny it.”

  “How do you—”

  “It’s all over your face.”

  Meche huffed. Daniela placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it a little.

  “He’s coming. He’s probably delayed by traffic.”

  “Has he been talking to you?” Meche asked, wondering if he had spilled the beans about their tryst. Now that would be embarrassing.

  “No more than a few words. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. I mean, I figured it out, even back then.”

  “What?”

  “That you were head-over-heels in love with him. I told you so. But you wouldn’t listen.”

  Meche opened her mouth and then shut up when she saw Sebastian entering the apartment. He nodded at her and waded his way through the crowded living room, evading Jimena and her tray of empanadas.

  “I’ll let you talk,” Daniela said, moving aside.

  “Hey, wait,” Meche said.

  “I don’t think you need me to translate for you.”

  “Well...” Meche said, grabbing her arm. “Thanks. I don’t think I ever said thanks to you.”

  “For what?” Daniela asked.

  She thought about all the times Daniela had put up with her, showing kindness when Meche was a bundle of irritated nerves and impatience. Smiling at her when Meche made a sour face. Listening patiently when Meche ranted. Meche had just accepted all of this as fact, never questioning Daniela’s devotion.

  “For everything.”

  Daniela smiled, drifting towards the other end of the room.

  “Hi.”

  Sebastian was holding his jacket under his arm and he looked very formal, though he carried a backpack on his right shoulder. She still could not quite square his current self with his former self.

  “Just got off work?” she asked.

  “Yep. I came right over.”

  Meche nodded. She wished she had a plate of empanadas, a glass of water, something to keep her hands from fluttering nervously in front of her face. She placed her hands behind her back as a last resort.

  “You could have asked me to come yourself, you know,” he said.

  “I never do,” Meche said, thinking about poor Daniela, who had served as her messenger on more than one occasion. “Bad habit of mine.”

  Meche glanced down, softly moving one foot to the rhythm of Carlos Gardel’s “Volver.” In a baritone Carlos told her the stars mockingly look on and in their indifference observe the return of an old lover. She shuffled her feet to each word. Impatient. Annoyed. Tense. He just looked at her, which didn’t help.

  “I wasn’t trying to insult you at the restaurant,” she muttered.

  “Of course you were.”

  “I did, but I wasn’t trying,” Meche said. “It just came out all wrong. I’m not exactly a perfect orator.”

  “I noticed. I think the first time we ever spoke you called me ‘horse-faced weirdo.’”

  “It was just horse-face,” she muttered. “I called you weirdo the next time we talked.”

  “Yeah, and I still befriended you.”

  “That good old masochism.”

  “Well, you made a very compelling case for yourself: you told me I could eat from your bag of potato chips. How’s a guy going to resist a gal offering him chips?”

  Meche laughed. She felt like slapping his arm, like she might have done when they were younger. Then she sobered.

  Sebastian was quiet, as though he were waiting for her to say something. When she did not, he finally spoke.

  “I brought you something.”

  Sebastian unzipped the backpack and took out a mangled, old box. Meche frowned.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Open it.”

  She took the lid off and saw his old sneakers with all the inked doodles.

  “This is my object of power,” he said. “I’m giving it to you.”

  The room seemed to suddenly go... muffled. As though someone had pressed a pillow against the speakers, drowning out the sound. Only that wasn’t possible. The emptiness in her ears was a bizarre auditory hallucination.

  She stood in that silence staring at Sebastian, not knowing what to say.

  “I’m... what do you want me to do with them?” she asked, and hated the hesitation in her voice. Like she’d swallowed peanut butter and it was sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  “Do what you want with them. I also have this,” he said and he showed her a record sleeve.

  Duncan Dhu. El Grito del Tiempo. Track one: En Algún Lugar.

  Meche put the box down and grabbed the sleeve. She took out the record and immediately saw the cracks running down its surface.

  “I glued it back together years ago.”

  “You can’t glue it back together,” she whispered. “It can’t be fixed. You can’t undo...”

  “I know we can’t undo anything. I know that,” he said sternly. “I’m not asking for that.”

  “What are you asking, then?”

  He brushed her cheek with his thumb and smiled the faintest smile.

  “Don’t leave me behind this time.”

  Meche clutched the record and frowned. She had thought about it, but it was an entry under ‘idiot things that occur to me.’ Only an idiot would think about starting something with someone they hadn’t spoken to in years, someone who was a total stranger. Especially when she had somewhere to be. The little apartment in Oslo with her ferns, her computer... her entire life.

  “Oh, whatever for... it’s ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head and coughing because something had lodged in her throat.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is.”

  “I didn’t... I mean, I didn’t want you here for... that. I wanted to tell you something. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have cast that spell on you. I should have been kinder. I should have understood you better.”

  Sebastian s
lid his hands in his pockets and he shook his head. He looked sad and embarrassed and irritated, and it made her want to pinch him because she wasn’t faring any better. And... damn it.

  “You’re giving me the brush off, again,” he said.

  “I’m apologizing.”

  “It still feels like a brush off.”

  “You don’t want to be hanging out with me,” she said, smiling. “I’m bad for your health.”

  He managed to smile back, the corners of his lips rising a little. He shook his head, a chuckle escaping his throat, though it sounded dull and forced.

  “Of course you are. You are terrible for me. Not that I ever gave a damn. Not that I’d start giving a damn now.”

  “Please don’t use that tone.”

  “What tone?”

  That sad, defeated tone. Like she had just stabbed his hand with a fork. Like she had just run over his favourite puppy. Like she was this awful person. She wasn’t. Not when you looked at it all rationally.

  “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” she muttered, ignoring the question. “You know, like a thief.”

  “Maybe you should have,” he said. “It’s better than saying ‘Let’s pretend nothing happened.’”

  “When did I say that?”

  “Wasn’t that coming next?”

  Meche bit her lip. It wasn’t exactly what she was thinking, but it wasn’t far off. It sounded perfectly reasonable in her head. Now he made it seem like an insult. It was all very disjointed and unpleasant.

  “I bet you wish you never spoke to me again.”

  “Not really,” she muttered.

  “Oh, come on. Well, don’t worry. I wish I hadn’t seen you again.”

  That kind of hurt. It shouldn’t, but it did.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

  “No, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I... um... thanks, I guess. For the honesty and all.”

  “I fly out tomorrow. Thanks for the record.”

  She thought about giving him a final hug but it was already weird enough between them. Besides, if she hugged him, she’d have to kiss him on the cheek and that was just... not right.

  Meche stepped back, raised her right hand, signaling ‘bye.’ He raised both hands as if he were surrendering.

  She turned around and headed towards her bedroom. The tango was over. A new song was playing.

  Mexico City, 2009

  MECHE LOOKED AT the plane tickets, checking her row for the third time. The problem with flying these days was that you had to be at the airport three hours before your flight left to get through the security checkpoints. That meant you couldn’t just dash onto your plane, sit down in your seat and be on your way. No. You had to wait at a coffee stand and ask if they had tea. Only they did not have the tea you wanted, which only served to increase the impatience quotient.

  And the music. She did not even want to mention the airport music. Some banal, tiresome selection of soft rock hits which had her stuffing her earbuds into her ears as soon as the first song started playing.

  Meche tapped the little circular table with her nails and wished she could board a train and be home in two hours, like in Europe. Everything was two hours away by rail there.

  She looked at her iPod, pressing the arrow button. It was stuffed to the gills with songs and she couldn’t find the one she was looking for. Who would have thought that in the years since she had left Mexico she had never once bothered to purchase a single album by Duncan Dhu?

  Meche took out the earbuds.

  MECHE STOPPED BEFORE the door and knocked three times in quick succession. The lock turned and Sebastian stood there, looking at her suspiciously, like she had just sneaked into his building to smuggle a bomb.

  “Mercedes,” he said.

  It was probably the first and only time in his life that he had used her real name as opposed to the nickname. Nobody, ever, called her Mercedes. Least of all him, spitting her name out like it was a kick to the gut.

  She wondered if he was going to slam the door in her face and start yelling in Catalán.

  “I need to give these back to you,” she said, handing him the box with the shoes. “They are yours.”

  “I gave them—”

  “They don’t belong to me,” she said. “I can’t take them.”

  Sebastian cleared his throat rather loudly but did not attempt to dissuade her. He grabbed the box and set it aside, on a small table sitting by the door.

  “I thought you were flying out today,” he said. His gaze was not on her face but instead had fixed on some point over her shoulder.

  “I was, but then the weirdest thing happened.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “Do you know the distance between Oslo and Mexico City?” she asked him.

  Sebastian frowned. He turned his face a couple of millimeters, then looked down at her fully, though with caution.

  “About 9,200 kilometres. I’ve measured it on a map. Bad habit.”

  “That’s quite a few kilometres.”

  “Yeah.”

  Meche looked down, nodding and shuffling a step closer to him.

  “I looked it up when I was at the airport.”

  “And then you decided to return my shoes and tell me that factoid?”

  “You are not going to make this easy on me, are you?” she said, crossing her arms.

  Sebastian leaned against the door frame, all tall and smirking. He rubbed a finger against the wooden door frame, as though he were checking that the varnish was intact.

  “No,” he said, staring at her. “Why should I?”

  “I’d appreciate the favour.”

  “I’d appreciate the speech, thank you.”

  “I’m not giving you a speech,” she said. “It’s not one of your books.”

  Besides, she was bad with words. They came out all crooked and deformed and sounded just plain wrong. Numbers and music: those she could work with.

  “Mix-tapes are outdated so I decided to just make a playlist for you. Kind of like you did before when you gave me that soundtrack. You know, this is a sort of... I’m afraid it’s a...”

  “Present?” he finished for her.

  “Something like that,” she said, extending the iPod towards him.

  “Love letter.”

  Meche said nothing to that, rolling her eyes. But he waited and she recalled how he was extremely stubborn and patient. They could probably stand there, at the doorway, for an entire decade and he would not budge until she’d spelled it out.

  “Take the iPod.”

  “I don’t know. You’re missing three words.”

  “You know I—”

  Meche sputtered a word that was not a word. More like a string of consonants without a single vowel in between them.

  “Just fucking take it,” she said.

  Meche waved the iPod and the earbuds before him. Sebastian put them on. He pushed the play button. He clicked it again, looked at the LCD display and shook his head.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “It’s empty.”

  He looked at her in confusion.

  “We need to make a new soundtrack. Together,” Meche said with a shrug.

  “Together as in I—”

  “Jeg elsker deg,” she said, feeling breathless when she spoke, like she’d been running for a long time.

  “Meaning?”

  “They’re words, alright? It counts. I’ll buy you a Norwegian dictionary.”

  Sebastian smiled very slowly and pulled the earbuds away, stuffing them in his pockets.

  “And what will be the first song?” he asked.

  “I figure Absolute Beginners, though if you don’t like Bowie—”

  She was going to suggest a whole swathe of songs. Somewhere Only We Know by Keane if he wanted to go recent and even Coldplay’s Swallowed in the Sea and the Goo Goo Dolls with Iris if he wanted to be cliché and had never watched Wings of Desire. Though if he mentioned I Can’t
Fight This Feeling Anymore she was going to just stomp away. There were some things she would not accept.

  Not even for him.

  “Bowie will do,” Sebastian said, interrupting her with a kiss.

  She twined her fingers into his hair and smiled against his lips.

  “Want to see the Northern Lights this weekend?” she asked.

  “Sure. It’s about time.”

  Mexico City, 1984

  A GIRL SITS outside her apartment building, headphones on, listening to her music. She has a bag of potato chips, a bottle of soda and her idle thoughts. She’ll do her homework later. For now, as the sun rolls down, she simply taps her foot to the rhythm of the music and listens to one of her dad’s tapes. It’s Boston singing More Than a Feeling. She sips her soda.

  A man walks a dog. The seller of camotes pushes his cart. Kids kick a soccer ball down the street.

  The girl scratches her leg. She’s awkward and dressed in clothes a size too large. Her hair falls loose below her shoulders.

  A boy walks on the other side of the street and glances at her. Something clicks in her brain and she thinks this is the new kid. The weirdo who lugs all those books around. She saw him with a book called Tales of Mystery & Imagination and she wants to ask him how it connects with Alan Parsons Project because she doesn’t understand that album.

  A BOY DRAGS the market bag with him trying to remember the things he’s supposed to get. A kilo of tortillas. On the way back, two litres of milk and a box of detergent. He repeats them in his head as he walks—Tortillas. Milk. Detergent.

  He shuffles his feet. He’s a tall kid. He’s skinny and dark, his long fingers curling around the plastic handle of the bag.

  There’s a girl his age sitting on the bottom step of an apartment building, listening to music.

  The boy keeps to himself and walks with his head down, but he raises his eyes to look at her because she looks kind of funny with those big headphones on her ears.

  She stares right at him. The look is like having a pin inserted into his chest. He stumbles, shifts, switches the bag from one hand to the other.

  “Hey, horse-face!” she yells.