Latin Moon in Manhattan: A Novel

by Jaime Manrique

  “Right on,” Claudia said, watching our mothers carrying on. “Lucinda, that’s a heck of an act you’ve put together. Man, you’re awesome singing that stuff.”

  Getting carried away, Mother said, “Maybe Carnegie Hall. Why not? I think you’re better than Liza Minnelli, anyway.”

  Wilbrajan stared at me. I realized I was the only one who hadn’t complimented her yet.

  “That was good, Sister,” I said. “I really enjoyed it.”

  She continued staring at me, fishing for more compliments.

  “I especially liked Volver,’ ” I said sincerely.

  “It was so sweet of you to dedicate it to Bobby’s memory,” Paulina said.

  “I was practically in tears,” Mother added.

  “It was freaking great,” Claudia opined.

  “I shall always think of Bobby when I sing ‘Volver,’ ” Wilbrajan said. “Tango is about pain.” She gulped down a glass of champagne.

  We continued praising her performance and swilling the bottles of Dom Perignon that Claudia kept uncorking. I noticed a tall, tanned, muscular blond in safari clothes. He approached our table, smiling. Jumping off my chair, I cried, “I’ll be damned! Stick Luster!”

  It was my friend Stick, with whom I used to play hide-and-seek in the morgue in Bogotá. We hadn’t seen one another in over twenty years, but I recognized him instantly. We embraced, and then Stick hugged and kissed my female relatives and was introduced to Paulina and Claudia. It was a happy occasion and there were many toasts.

  “Stick, mijito, how did you know we’d be here tonight?” Mother asked.

  “Well, you do see, Mrs. Lucy. It was a most fortuitous coincidence,” he said in something that was almost Spanish. His Spanish had deteriorated a great deal, but now he spoke it with a musicality that was Brazilian. He went on. “I go to visit my client in Queens today and they have a poster for tonight on the table, and there was a picture of Will and I thought, Aha, I think I know this singer. And you know, my friends, never once in all past years did I lose hope we’d meet again.”

  “Stick, are you a devotee of the Virgen de la Macarena?” my mother asked.

  “No, Doña Lucy. I’m Protestant. If you must remember.”

  “The reason I ask, my dear,” Mother explained, “is that la Virgen de la Macarena, if we pray to her with all our hearts, will reunite us with long lost friends.”

  “Most useful piece of information to know,” Stick said thoughtfully. “I do remember Virgen de la Macaroni, Virgen del Chilindrina, Señor Nuestro de Monsterate,” he said, mangling the names of the most popular saints in Colombia.

  Unable to restrain herself, Claudia burst into loud squeals.

  “Claudia, muchacha, behave yourself,” Paulina admonished her daughter.

  Disregarding Claudia, Stick said, “And since when did you come to America, my friends? I see you’re a very beautiful artist, Will, and a famous singer. I’m very happy about your success. But what about you, Señora Lucy, and you Sammy?”

  “Sammy’s famous, too,” Mother said. “He won the most important poetry award in Colombia. And now he’s writing a long book about Christopher Columbus.”

  “Ah, like me, a lover of high adventure. I always knew you’d be a famous writer, Sammy. You always had lots of imagination. Since you were a little boy. Remember how you read to me from The Adventures of Dick Turpin?” he said to my embarrassment. “And you, Señora Lucy?”

  “I got married to the nicest man, Stick. I wish you could have met him a few years ago. But he has Alzheimer’s now,” she concluded with sadness in her voice.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “We choose neither our blessings nor our curses, my dear,” she sighed. “And what about you? What have you been up to all these years?”

  “Well, you see, Señora Lucy,” Stick began, clearing his throat. “Afterward we leave Bogotá we go to Brazil. Ah, Brazil, land of the samba. What a beautiful country. But poor Papa had to go put telephone cables not in Rio or Sao Paulo or Bahia but in jungle. Ah, it was most exciting and wondrous experience for a child. Too many mosquitoes and bugs, snakes and tigers and alligators for Mother. But not for me. We live with tribes who do not talk anything we speak. I learned to hunt and fish with spears, and weave. I do love the life very, very much. But, since we move here and there, poor Papa catches deadly virus and after four years in jungle we go back to Sweden.”

  “Tarzan of the Amazon,” Claudia cried, breaking into shrill peals of laughter.

  “You must excuse my daughter,” Paulina said. “Too much Dom Perignon.”

  Oblivious to Claudia’s guffaws, Stick continued. “Back in Sweden, my soul was not Swedish but Amazon. But I could not go back, as I was only a boy. So after I finished college (I study archaeology), I return to Brazil. Ah, Brazil. I make my living traveling to remote tribes in deepest jungle—some of them I’m first blond they’ve seen—and I bring back pottery and weaving of most artistic tribes. I sell these in America and in Europe. And I will show you some whenever you want.”

  “We have an apartment in Trump Tower,” Paulina said. “Do you think we could decorate it with jungle things, Mr. Stick?”

  “Oh, yes, madam. Jungle motifs will look most beautiful there.”

  Wilbrajan, who had remained silent all this time, and looked bored out of her mind with the conversation, finally said, “Stick, come over here and talk to me.”

  Pretty much the same way she had hogged him all to herself when we were children, she drew him into an intimate conversation that excluded the rest of the party. I must admit that they looked stunningly sexy together. Mother and Paulina returned with renewed vigor to their interrupted tête-â-tête.

  Seeing them all cozy and romantic, Claudia remarked, “Isn’t it wonderful? They look great together, don’t you agree, Sammy?” I nodded my approval even though I was quite pissed with Wilbrajan for taking Stick hostage. After all, as children, he had been my best friend, not hers. I was dying to have a long conversation with him, alone. Could it be possible, I wondered, that now that we had grown up, he preferred her company to mine?

  “I predict they will fall in love,” Claudia said. “Look at them, Sammy. Qué cheveridad.”

  “God, I hope not,” I said crankily. “Not the way she goes through men.”

  “You’re pretty snippy tonight, aren’t you? It must be Bobby’s death that’s affected you so much. You’re not usually like this,” she said, taking my hand. “Anyway, since it’s getting late I might as well remind you that you’re supposed to propose to me tonight.”

  I pulled away my hand. I had thought all along that the marriage plot had been concocted by our mothers unbeknownst to both of us.

  “Sammy, I’m hurt,” Claudia said, looking teary-eyed. “Here I’m proposing to you and you recoil from me as if I were a green mamba.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” I asked, although something told me she was serious.

  Claudia laughed hysterically, slapping my back. When she had collected herself she said, “No, Sammy. I think it’s a marvelous idea. I think it’d be neat to marry you. I’ve been waiting for you to propose to me for years. It’d be so cool to have your child.”

  I chugged down a glass of champagne. I might as well take this with a grain of salt, I thought.

  “Don’t you love me at all?” Claudia asked pathetically.

  I patted her shoulder as if she were a big dog. “You know I love you, but not like that. You’re like my sister. I wish you were my sister and not Wilbrajan.”

  “So? You love me; I love you. It’s perfect, man. Think of it. Have we ever had an argument? Have I ever been pissed at you? Never.”

  “But Claudia,” I said gently. “You’re a dyke; I’m a fag.”

  “Big fucking deal. Look at our mothers. Don’t they look like a couple of sweet old dykes? I’ve never seen such devotion. I mean, this thing runs in our families?”

  “Are you saying my mother is a dyke?” I said, outrag
ed.

  “Just forget it, will you? Anyway, don’t you think dykes want to get married too? You’re thinking about the dykes in the 60s. Now we want children just like all other women. Plus I’m going through changes. I’m sick of blowing heaps of money on mean bulldykes who just take advantage of me. And I’ve known you for so long. There aren’t going to be any nasty surprises coming from you. I know you as I know the palm of my hand. Better. And the way you love that cat of yours. That tells me you have good parental instincts. When we get married you’ll have your own child to love instead of a pet.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t think I could love anyone more than I love Mr. O’Donnell. Nobody could ever need me that much.” I could see this marriage thing wasn’t going to work. If she couldn’t understand something as obvious as my love for Mr. O’Donnell, what about my other dreams? For example, what about Christopher Columbus? “Mr. O’Donnell isn’t just a cat,” I said.

  “Okay, he’s not just a cat. He’s a Bengal tiger, whatever you want. I’m not allergic to him. I’ll be a nice mother. I’ll buy him lots of nice, juicy mice to eat.”

  “That’s so gross.”

  “Sammy, I will not let Mr. O’Donnell stand in the way of our happiness. In any case, as I was saying before, it’s true you looked a bit weird when you were a boy, but not now.” Claudia smiled her killer smile. “I really dig your looks, man. You’ve grown so tall and slender, just my type, if I were straight. And you have such beautiful cow eyes and your wonderful curly hair,” she purred, running her fingers through my hair. “And even your ears, which were so peculiar back then, now make such a punk statement. And those nice, pink, fleshy lips of yours … I just want to bite them.”

  Before I understood what was happening, I saw her black, painted lips approaching mine and we kissed. It wasn’t disgusting like I thought it would be: it was different. For the first time I had kissed a woman and not felt as if I were kissing my mother or sister. In other words, it didn’t feel incestuous. It must have been the guascas in the pasteles, and the champagne certainly must have helped. Suddenly I melted and found myself feeling chummy and mushy toward Claudia and her untold riches. I took both her hands in mine and she rested her orange hair on my shoulder.

  “Listen to me, Sammy,” she began after awhile. “This is very serious. Right now I’m footloose and fancy free. But not for much longer. My family is determined to marry me. They don’t want an unmarried dyke in the family. And if you don’t marry me, they’ll make me marry some horrible mafioso. You know my brothers. Now, I know you wouldn’t like that happening to me, would you? Besides, I promise to take good care of you.”

  “Oh, oh,” I said, remembering her unpleasant brothers. “I wouldn’t want to join ‘the family,’ you know what I mean? I disapprove of the drug trade. I think it’s evil.”

  “I’ do too. I’ve nothing to do with that business. Mother and I just get the revenues, that’s all. But they’ll leave us alone. They know you’re a poet. You know Colombians respect poetry so much.”

  “I’ll have to think about it, okay?” I said, letting go of her hands. I noticed that Mother and Paulina were looking at us, smiling. If this were an early Dickens novel, I would conclude it now by saying that my sister and Stick and Claudia and I got married and lived happily in Jackson Heights ever after. But this is what happened next: the romantic, plaintive notes of the violin and the bandoneón in the background were drowned out by loud complaints and harsh, “Hey, you animal, watch where you’re going, will you?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my nephew rushing toward us. When he was a few tables away, I spotted two men with drawn pistols hot on his trail, pushing aside the seated customers, overturning chairs and tables, weaving through the crowd to catch up with Gene. People screamed and ducked as Claudia’s bodyguards sprang forth and bullets were exchanged generously all over the nightclub. Gene’s pursuers, with their faces, chests, and stomachs looking like bloody graters, fell dead on top of some freaked out customers. Several women fainted, and the ladies and gentlemen in the audience crawled and hid under tables, summoning their own bodyguards to protect them. Brandishing guns, Claudia’s bodyguards fired at the chandeliers, and, for a moment, the room sparkled with a shower of glass. Yelling, “The Urrutias are leaving; nobody move,” the bodyguards surrounded our party and herded us out of the Saigon Rose and into Claudia’s limousine. And just like it’s been done in a million Hollywood thrillers, the driver peeled rubber into the night.

  Paulina was the first person to speak a coherent sentence. “Qué taquicardia,” she said, beating her breasts lightly with her closed fan. “Isn’t it terrible how decent folk can’t go anywhere these days?”

  “It was worth the price of admission,” Claudia said. “I haven’t had so much fun since Carnival in Rio.”

  “How providential those nice gentlemen were there to help us out,” Paulina said referring to her bodyguards. “Claudia, please remind me to have them over for coffee.”

  “Qué horror! Qué horror!” Mother exclaimed. Then, addressing Wilbrajan, “Cookie, I’ll never come to hear you again as long as you sing in that place.”

  “Oh, Mother, get real,” Wilbrajan said. “I’m used to it; it’s like singing in Colombia all the time.”

  While the limo scudded down the dark Queens streets, Gene sat sullenly in a corner, staring out the window, his knees jerking up and down. To me, he looked guilty as hell; I would have to confront him later that night, I decided, but not in the car. I was sure the men had been after him, and I thought I knew why.

  Checking her watch Mother said, “It’s still early. Why don’t we all go home and have supper? I made the most delicious pig’s feet and garbanzos. There’s plenty for all.”

  It was agreed we’d continue the party at Mother’s house and we proceeded in that direction. As soon as we arrived, Mother and Paulina busied themselves in the kitchen, while the rest of us settled in the living room to get sloshed and chat with Colombian music in the background. Stick had just finished telling a gruesome tale about a young woman with her period who had been devoured by piranhas in a jungle river, when Gene excused himself. I took the opportunity to follow him upstairs. Wilbrajan and Claudia were so riveted by Stick’s tales and hunky looks, that they couldn’t have cared less if we had excused ourselves to go to Siberia.

  Gene was lying on his bed, listening to the Grateful Dead, or the Dead Kennedys, or some such necrophiliac group. He looked scared as hell when he saw me come in. I asked him to turn down the damned music and sat down on his bed. “You got to return that coke,” I said. “You almost got all of us killed. Do you realize that?”

  He pretended not to know what I was talking about.

  “The coke in the cartridge,” I snorted. “You stole it.”

  “Oh that,” he said, lying on his bed, closing his eyes. “I just want to buy a bike.”

  “There is enough coke in that package to buy a Honda dealership. Are you out of your mind?”

  “Okay, so I did,” he said, sitting up. “What do you want me to do now? They don’t know who stole the coke, but I can’t return it just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “Cut the crap. They know who did it. Those men were out to kill you.”

  “Where do you get your information? From the Reader’s Digest? You’re so wrong. Those men weren’t after me; they were after Claudia’s ass.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Sammy, don’t you know shit? There’s a fucking drug war going on, and those men were out to fry Claudia and her mother to get back at the Urrutia brothers for some drug squealing or something. The Urrutias have been snitching to the DEA about Pablo Escobar.”

  “What episode of ‘Miami Vice’ was that? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think, Mr. Geraldo Rivera.”

  I sat there staring at him. If he weren’t taller than me, I would have slapped his insolent mouth. To my utter astonishment, he started rap
ping:

  “I’m just a boy

  from Jackson Heights,

  I ain’t no criminal

  All I want’s a bike.”

  Then he burst out sobbing. “Oh, Sammy, I’m scared shitless.”

  This had the intended effect on me. “Okay,” I said, patting his shoulder. “I don’t mean to make it worse. We’ll just have to think of something,” I finished, feeling sorry for this pathetic boy who had no father (Wilbrajan wasn’t sure who his father was), and a mother who carried on as the torch singer in Blue Velvet.

  “You know, Uncle,” he said. “Besides the Boners, you’re the only friend I have in the world.”

  I knew he wanted something out of me—otherwise he’d never have called me Uncle. “What do you want me to do?”

  He stopped crying. “You will help me? You’re not shitting me?” he asked, smiling his killer smile.

  “Of course I will. I said so, didn’t I? You’re my nephew and I care about you. I don’t want to see you get fucked up.”

  “That’s right. Because you know what they’ll do to me? They’ll chop me like ropa vieja,” he said, referring to Cuban brisket of beef dish. “So please, uncle Sammy, take the coke with you to Manhattan until I can think of something. Is that cool, dude?”

  I vehemently refused. Gene cried some more, and like the sucker I am, I fell for it.

  I went downstairs to join the party, which went on for hours. We munched on delicious Colombian pasabocas, until the pig’s feet were served. After supper, Mother and Paulina, accompanied by Wilbrajan at the guitar and Gene on the drums, entertained us singing their favorite rancheras. We danced cumbias, pasodobles, and merengues, and consumed several bottles of aguardiente and Ron Medellin. It was the wee hours when I went upstairs quite tipsy. Although I was exhausted, I couldn’t fall asleep. I tossed on my bed until my room spun like a roulette wheel and the bed tilted like a raft on the high seas. Feeling nauseous, I got up and sat on the sill of my open window. The branches of the cypress in front of the window were so thick they blocked the street. Looking up, through the leaves, I saw a handful of stars and maybe a planet. The sky was a milky black color that belonged neither to night nor day, but rather to a state of mind. I thought about the times I used to go to my grandfather’s farm by the river: The motorboat would come to pick us up around 4:00 A.M., so we’d wake up after midnight and sit by a bonfire near the shore to wait for it. The mosquitoes were merciless at that hour, and my only consolation was the rococo sky and the hundreds of wishing stars that dropped from midnight until dawn. Grandpa would say that some of the stars were witches on their night errands, and he’d entertain us recounting the many times he had been bewitched, and how he had broken the spells and captured the witches. These stories terrified me, and even when I returned to the city after my vacations, they would haunt me at night. This line of thinking always weirded me out, and presently I thought I saw Bobby’s ghost standing a few feet away from me. I don’t believe in ghosts, so I immediately remembered I was sloshed. And yet, I could almost see it—this shape that was like Bobby’s outline etched in mercury. I looked out the window and toward the sky and after awhile I looked back into the room, and it was still there. But there was no reason for me to be frightened of Bobby—not even his ghost. “What is it?” I asked, feeling quite batty for talking aloud to a would-be ghost. “What do you want?” As I spoke these words, the outline contracted until it became a little red dot that flickered before it went out. Now I was sure I had imagined all this. With the kind of day I had had, it was probably the d.t.’s.