“Change that ringtone, Greg,” I asked him. “Get something more serious.”
But he always had the same response. He liked it, so why should he change it. So that night, the night of his birthday, past eleven, I couldn’t wait anymore and I called his cell. It had gotten too late, something must have happened. But the only response was ABBA and “Mamma Mia” from our bedroom, which woke up Hero, who began to bark. So there wasn’t anything I could do.
Something had happened or else this was a repeat of the old story of the man who tells his wife he’s going to the corner to buy some cigarettes and never returns. But no one spends all day making a soup if he knows that before eating it he is going to flee from his house. I went down the five floors and out onto the street. I remember that there was a strong wind blowing, a cold wind with the smell of Chinese food. I walked a couple of blocks to the right of the building and then a couple of blocks to the left but found nothing. And then I realized that just at that moment Greg might have been trying to get in touch with me so I raced back up to the apartment, climbing two stairs at a time. Maybe he had called while I was out, or when I slept on the chair. Could I have been sleeping so deeply that the phone ringing didn’t wake me? It would be strange but possible, and what was more strange was that Greg would be gone so long without calling. He wasn’t that type of guy, least of all on such an important date. I was just about going out of my mind when the doorbell rang and I ran to answer it, convinced it was him, but in truth not so sure because he had a key and never rang the doorbell. That had always been an issue during my affair with Sleepy Joe, because I never knew when Greg would burst in and catch me with my hands in the cookie jar, as they say. So I opened the door and it wasn’t Greg. It was Sleepy Joe.
He was wearing a wool hat pulled down to his eyebrows and a wifebeater, with his marvelous arms on display in spite of the windy weather. That was him, as I’ve told you, an exhibitionist, showing off his goods whenever possible, so I wasn’t surprised by the getup.
“Hello, my hot ass,” he said, pinching my butt.
“Stop it, not now,” I whispered, convinced that Greg was right behind him.
It was a logical assumption, given they had been together, or at least that’s what I had imagined. But there was no one behind Sleepy Joe.
“Where’s Greg?” I asked him.
“Greg?”
“Yes, Greg, your brother.”
“Greg, yes, Greg. I was waiting for him and he never showed up.”
“What do you mean he never showed up?” I said. “He left here to go meet you.”
“There you go, and he never showed up.”
“What are you talking about? You called him. He went to meet you.”
“I don’t know. He never showed.”
I noticed something strange about him. He was trying hard to seem calm, coolheaded, but he was shaken up, disturbed. He was trembling. He who is white as can be that night was almost transparent.
“You’re lying,” I said. “You were waiting for him for two hours.”
“I waited for him for a bit, and then I just found things to do,” he responded with a nervous, wry smile I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret.
“Stop it with the hands,” I told him, because he kept trying to feel me up. “Can’t you see I’m worried?”
“Calm down, calm down, no hysterics, please.” It was more an order than an attempt to console me.
“I’m telling you that Greg went out to meet you when you called him and he hasn’t returned yet.”
“And I’m telling you to calm down. You don’t want to make me nuts. And you will.”
It was true. I realized that he was on the brink of bursting, so I opted to change my tone. Besides, I was still worried about Greg but not as much anymore. Joe had begun with sucking on the back of my neck and the dirty words in my ear, and I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Rose, I have never been able to resist the bastard, I don’t know what it is about him that makes me abandon all common sense. Maybe it’s the testosterone, youth and testosterone, a big juicy plate of food when one is starving to death. But why do I need to explain it to you when you already get it? And besides, it’s too late, what good is it understanding when calamity has already struck? If I go on with these clarifications it is out of guilt that eats away at me. Not a pretty thing on my part, my Greg disappeared on his birthday and me happy with his delay and making the best of it with his handsome little brother. But things were weird, very weird that night. There was something strange with Joe, even in the careless way he touched me, as if his mind were elsewhere. Because he was lazy and a bum about everything except sex. In that arena he always put forward his best effort and was very dedicated. But not that night. He was unrecognizable that night.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked him.
He didn’t respond. He went into the kitchen and had a few spoonfuls of the cold kapustnica straight from the pot.
“Do you want me to heat it up for you?” I asked him, and he pressed me against the wall, placing his package in between my legs.
“Yeah, heat it up,” he said, but it was soft. He, who was always hard, was soft that night.
“Something is wrong with you,” I told him, “now I’m sure of it. Does this have to do with Greg?”
“Be quiet and hurry up, there’s no time” was all he said. “And take off those heels; you look like a cheap whore. Put on some comfortable shoes and grab a coat. Quickly.”
“We’re going to go look for Greg?”
“Yes, exactly, we’re looking for Greg. Go, the minutes are ticking. Hola, Colorado, viva amigo mios de Rio Huerfano,” he screamed, going in a second from down in the dumps to a euphoria that sounded artificial, put on. He screamed it in Spanish, tilting his head back and howling like a mariachi, which startled me.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said. “You’re up to something.”
“Our time has come, Hot Ass. We’re out of here for good. Cucucurrucucu the pigeon!”
“What are you saying . . . ?”
“Nothing. Get your coat. But get me a cold Diet Coke first. Now, come on. Move that ass. A Diet Coke. Not that one, you moron, that’s regular. Diet, I said, diet. Don’t make me repeat everything a hundred times. The regular one has sugar and this is going to be stickier than used candy.” Again his mood changed and he was beginning to lose it, which could happen quickly if his wishes were not fulfilled right away.
He took a knife out of his pocket and showed it to me, but pulled it back when I reached for it.
“Easy,” he warned me. “Look but don’t touch.”
“Why do you have that?”
“I bought it for Greg.”
“A birthday present?”
“Yeah. A birthday present.”
I detest weapons, and this was one of those horrible knives, with an ugly black blade, something a gangster or a mugger would have. But it wasn’t strange enough that I suspected anything; often, the brothers would spend whole Sundays with their weapons. It was their thing. There are some men obsessed with metal, and that was them. So it wasn’t strange that Joe would have brought a knife as a birthday present. I went to our bedroom, changed my shoes, and returned to the living room with a coat in one hand and Hero in the other.
“I’m ready,” I said, “let’s go look for Greg.”
Joe was cleaning the knife with his handkerchief soaked in Diet Coke. When he was finished he dried it with a cloth napkin, then wrapped it in the same napkin and put it on a high shelf.
“I’ll be right down,” he said as he went up the stairs to the roof. “Wait for me here. Don’t move. And put that dog down, he’s not going.”
Hero seemed to understand and whined. While I was waiting, I thought the present was all wrong like that. It wouldn’t hurt to wrap it properly. So that it seemed like a real gift. It was one of thos
e things that occurs to us women, who care about details. Details, that’s how we refer to such nonsense. But I thought I’d get a couple of pieces of tissue paper, scissors, and a blue ribbon. I wrapped it carefully, not touching it so I wouldn’t smudge it after Joe had cleaned it so carefully. In less than two minutes it was done, with a ribbon and everything. On the refrigerator door, among the pictures and other memories put up with magnets, there were a few of those “To . . . From” Christmas cards. I saved them all for sentimental reasons, I guess, that hang-up inherited from Bolivia that nothing gets thrown away because it could come in handy one day. And that all garbage is recycled, or simply kept, collecting in a box. I looked for a card that said “To Greg, From Joe.” And found one, in his handwriting, perfect! Greg would appreciate the detail, so I put the card on the gift and hid it high up on the shelves, thinking that if Joe saw it, he’d ridicule me, or throw a fit, so best if he saw it right before Greg got it. And then Joe started making some racket on the roof. Some dry blows, as if with a hammer, and then he started cussing, like he did whenever he grew impatient, and then again with the blows, hard smacks, as if he were striking a wall with a sledgehammer. What he screamed while he was doing this I couldn’t tell, but I did realize that he was having a fit, something had set him off, and I so feared these rages that I went back to our bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed petting Hero to calm him down. The poor little thing trembled every time we had to deal with one of Joe’s fits. And that’s when I heard the door slam, not the door to the roof, but the apartment door on our level. A hard, violent slam, the front door smashing against the wall when opened. At first, I thought that Joe had left, swinging the door behind him. Sometimes he would do that, in a fury. But then I heard voices, male voices. And I realized that a group of men had broken into my apartment.
Sometime later, I don’t know, maybe two or three months, after I had arrived at Manninpox, during those weeks when I was so befuddled, I came upon graffiti that Las Nolis had painted in a hallway. Guess what they used as ink, Mr. Rose, it’s not that hard. The only paint handily available to them, their shit. Aside from their blood, of course, which is for more desperate circumstances. The graffiti said, “From my skin inward, I’m boss.” It was typical of them, trying to raise awareness of such things, but it made me angry with them, for their snobbishness, for preaching such pretentious nonsense. But there is everything cooking in this rotted stew, from the most rebellious to the most wretched, from those just barely crawling by, who do not have as much as a place to drop dead, to a few daughters of wealthy folk who indulge in more than a few extravagances. Like Tara, an ex-model in her fifties but still in good shape, who was my cellmate for a while. She swore that was her real name and we called her “Tarada,” Spanish for loony, because she was dumber than a mule. Who knows what her rich lover did for a living, or the money might have been hers, I’m not sure, but the guy sent her everything, creams, lotions, nail polish . . . and a pine-scented spray that was my misery, for every time someone sat down to do number two in the stainless-steel toilet embedded right in the middle of the cell—on its own, like a throne, in full view—every time someone sat down to poop, Tara would bring out the spray, and squirt the fucking thing everywhere, smothering us, until it seemed as if someone had taken a big shit in the woods. But Tara’s lover sent her everything, including the soybean pellets that she had to apply subcutaneously. Can you believe it? I didn’t even know such a thing existed, soybean pellets. They’re these superexclusive beauty products that Tara knew how to inject under her skin near the hip; with a Gillette she made a tiny little cut, put the pellet inside, closed it up with Micropore tape, and that’s it. To regenerate the hormones, awaken sexual desire, and rejuvenate the skin. Each pellet cost $280, and her lover bribed the guards so that she got her monthly dose, or bimonthly, I can’t remember, and that razor, but she always got her soybean pellet on time so that her treatment wouldn’t be interrupted. And meanwhile those lunatics Las Nolis writing such nonsense on the walls with their own shit. From my skin inward, I’m boss. Nothing could be further from the truth. That there is some pure shit. Maybe Tara still has her skin intact thanks to her creams and her soybean pellets. But my story is different. My skin is no longer mine. I’m skinless, one of those who goes around in the raw flesh. It’s a figure of speech, of course—not literally. The thing is that ever since those guys got to me I feel as if I’m burning, as if my whole body is on fire. I’m talking about the FBI men who broke into my apartment on the night of Greg’s birthday.
One of them, whom the others called Birdie, locked himself with me in the bathroom, threw me on the floor, and hurt me, asking me where the money was. “The money,” he screamed, “the money.” He needed to know where who knows what money was.
“The only money here belongs to the Virgin of Medjugorje,” I told him.
“What did you say?”
“She appears, the Virgin of Medjugorje . . .”
“Shut up with this bullshit.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t believe in it either but my brother-in-law and my husband are very Catholic and they’re saving money for a pilgrimage there,” I blurted out nervously.
“What are you talking about?”
“The sanctuary of the Virgin of Medjugorje, it’s in Bosnia, or so I’ve been told. My husband and brother-in-law are saving money to go see the miracle. But take the money if that’s what you want. No problem, it’s in the kitchen in a jar.”
But that’s not what Birdie was looking for. He shut me up with a slap and started to go nuts. His eyes bugged out and he began to strike me in the face till I saw stars. I thought it was just a saying or something that happens only in comic books, but that night I realized it was real. I saw stars. After each blow, things went black, and in that blackness there were points of light like stars. Birdie kept on shouting at me, “the hundred and fifty thousand, you bitch, the hundred and fifty thousand dollars, quit acting stupid.” I had no fucking idea. Of course, I’d have told him if I knew.
The men ate Greg’s kapustnica, spread out like pigs on the living-room furniture. They put on some cowboy program on the television with the volume all way up, while the others wandered around the apartment, searching, emptying boxes, kicking everything around, and swallowing up anything they found. I asked about Greg. “Where is my husband? Tell me where my husband is,” I screamed, or I wanted to scream but they didn’t hear me, or they heard me and ignored me. “Don’t be acting stupid,” they repeated, and kept demanding the money. I was handcuffed in the bathroom. But I must warn you, Mr. Rose, that night for me is a blank; it has no substance, a fog that lifts only momentarily. The voices still echo in my memory, that’s certain, I hear them laughing, but the rest is very hazy. I think at times that I was left alone. Maybe because Birdie got tired of hitting me, or else he needed a break to gather his strength. Everything is off-kilter as I remember it, as if it had happened a hundred years ago or to another person. But I remember the coldness of the tiles. Those cold wet tiles made me shiver, maybe because they had pissed on them; the stink was intense. It smelled like males in heat and like my own fear. And I remember my neck pressed against something, maybe the toilet or the bathtub. They didn’t like the soup, I heard them say, but they ate it, and they drank beer, and I knew they were making a big mess, the dishes dirty, the glasses shattered, the tablecloth soiled, and their shoe prints on my white rug.
I wasn’t very much concerned about what would happen to me in the long run. “Nothing to fear if you have done no wrong,” as they say in my country. And I had never gotten involved in anything. With my papers in order, I didn’t see what they could accuse me of. I was convinced that they couldn’t even take me from my house. I demanded to see a search warrant, an arrest warrant, some document that authorized them to do what they were doing, and I was sure they had no such warrants. So during that whole time I struggled to convince myself to just hold on patiently. Stay calm, I told myself,
stay calm and this nightmare will be over and everything will return to normal. Maybe that’s why I didn’t scream or cry during the interrogations, I didn’t want anybody in the building to hear. And look how the mind works sometimes; during that whole ordeal I was most concerned about the living-room carpet. Unbelievable. The worst part is that I still think about it, my white carpet; I must be nuttier than that woman I interviewed once who told me she couldn’t stand for the shags in her carpet to go the wrong way, and that every time someone walked on the carpet she followed behind setting the shags the right way with her hand. Without telling her, I classified her in my journal as anal, a fundamentalist about hygiene, which was precisely what we were looking for, to gather the names of these anal-retentive folks as a target list for things such as the multiservice vacuum that would suck up particles from the air, cat hair from corners, and even the cat if it gets in the way, the Miele S5 Callisto Canister, just the machine for such a task. And that was me, all anal, obsessing about my rug, when what I should have been worried about was Greg’s whereabouts, why he had not returned, what had happened. I did ask them, “What have you done with my husband? Where is he?” Because my only hope at that moment was for Greg to show up, my poor Greg, who was so in love with me, while I was so in love with his brother, but it was Greg I needed to see now, and inside I prayed for Greg to walk through the door, so he could show his police badge and everything would be fixed, everything new again, end of nightmare.
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