Hot Sur (45 page)

Alas, I was no Bobby Thomson. What a loser of a ballplayer I turned out to be. Sleepy Joe came in and in a matter of seconds he wrestled the bat from me.

“Time to pray, my little hot ass,” he said, his face all drool and blood, and because his voice was all nasal with the broken nose, he sounded more dejected than enraged.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Go up to the roof and pray; I’ll wait for you right here.”

As if he was going to do as I said. He grabbed my arm and bent it behind my back in some jujitsu hold and led me up the stairs to the roof. It was dawn, the time the little Slovak boys performed their prayers. Once up on the roof, Sleepy Joe took off his belt and bound me to the railing with my hands behind my back and naked as I was.

“Let’s see if you can let me pray in peace, you two-timing whore,” he said.

“I’m cold, Joe,” I responded.

“Shut up, bitch, or I’ll warm you up with a beating.”

“But why are you tying me up?”

“So you don’t escape.”

“I’m not going to leave.”

“Bullshit, you bitch.”

I had never actually known what the brothers did on the roof during their prayers because they never let me up there, assuring me it was not for women. But this time I saw how Joe lit some candles, spread out some blankets, messed around with a bell, took out a Bible, incense, and I couldn’t tell what other knickknacks and placed them all very meticulously on a red cloth spread out on the floor as if for a picnic. What a dirty Mass, I thought.

“Stop playing around, Joe,” I called. “Come here, hon, untie me. Or at least cover me with something; don’t let me freeze to death here. And don’t get so close to the edge, baby, careful or you’ll fall off.” I said all this in a very sweet tone to see if I could win him over, but he was so focused on the whole ceremony that it was as if I wasn’t even there.

“Get over here, Joe, give me a little kiss.” I didn’t know what else to try. “Come on, let me go, don’t be such a bad boy to me. Let me clean up that nose, my poor little baby. Does it hurt a lot? Why don’t we just go back down, things were so good there—”

“Shut your mouth, you whore, I’m doing this,” he said without even turning to look at me.

Sure enough, he was doing that, on some cosmic voyage or some shit, as if he were in another world, tooth and nail with his god so nothing else mattered. Meanwhile, the city slept below, and I trembled naked in the cold. What could I do? Scream? Wake up the whole neighborhood, yelling for help by causing a scene? Not a bad plan. But Joe must have thought about such a possibility at the same time, because he interrupted his little Mass and came over and gagged me with a handkerchief. So much for my plan. After he was done muffling me, the nutcase moved away and knelt on the very edge of the roof—and because there were no parapets on the cement roofs of the buildings in this neighborhood, the edge was like the edge of a cliff. A wind swept across the roof, blew out the candles, and tousled my hair. The city was waking up little by little below, and I was a little stunned by the change in my brother-in-law. Just a little while ago, he had been a raging macho hyped on testosterone, and now he seemed to be some type of angel glowing in the divine light of morning. He was moving in slow motion, half monk and half yogi, and he began to chant, at first in a low voice with his head lowered and his whole body folded in on itself, like some giant fetus floating in the amniotic fluid of the first light of day. Then slowly his voice grew louder. He straightened up and let his head fall back theatrically, and his body went into convulsions or something, as if electrical shocks were coursing through his body. His body shook epileptically, but somewhat controlled, the petit mal, let’s say—I know too well about these things with all the psych wards I’ve had to visit for Violeta.

A song in two different tones now broke out from Sleepy Joe, first one tone then the other. For the first tone, a grand and serious voice emerged from his throat, a voice like Greg’s, I remember thinking, if I closed my eyes I could imagine it was Greg who was there, it was his Gregorian chant. Motherfucker, I thought then, I was hallucinating because of the incense that, not for nothing, smells like weed. What purpose did all this serve for him? What was the point of this ridiculous theater? Did he miss his brother? Was he summoning the spirit? I began to shiver. And then it was no longer Greg’s voice that was coming out of that throat, now it was a little thin voice, almost a child’s, that responded to the other one. Sleepy Joe’s voice as a child? The two brothers together and praying? Oh, God, so horrific I was getting goose bumps. They must have been very ancient chants from Slovakia, but so incomprehensible, son of a bitch, lightning over Tatras. In spite of it all, there was something very impressive about it, I had to admit. Sleepy Joe’s silhouette over the city was a potent sight. My loser brother-in-law had become a dark, half-naked priest, with the bloody face and the rivulets of blood dripping on the crucifix tattooed on his chest. He spread out his arms as if he wanted to hold the universe and let his head fall back. No laughing matter here—this was scaring the shit out of me. His back was tense, so arched that his ribs stood out like a vault. I was beginning to lose it, I don’t know, so much so that Sleepy Joe seemed to be emitting heat and brightness, perhaps burning, it seemed as if the air around him had caught fire. The veins in his neck popped out and his fists were so clenched that I could imagine his nails cutting into his palms. Could it be that he had some kind of supernatural powers? Greg used to say that his little brother was imbued with the Spirit, but I never believed that crap, because I knew that if his little brother had any powers they were located elsewhere. But now, watching this mystical display, I wasn’t so sure. Stop with this idiocy, María Paz, I told myself—what powers? what possession?—it’s just your asshole brother-in-law monkeying around with rusty buckets and pots and tin sheets. But the reality was that the man covered in blood celebrating this ancient ritual at times did seem more than just a man. Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case. He was just some maniac. Not a devil, just a man. It was a line from some movie that came into my head then. And it helped calmed me down,
not the devil, just a fucking man.
I repeated it to myself. This Sleepy Joe was like a coyote, mysterious and cowardly. A loser, all fucked up and defeated by life. But in that state he was in during the ritual, shaken by some sort of celestial orgasm, with his eyes gone white and fully raised to the heavens, Jesus, you had to respect it. I swear, Mr. Rose, more than a man. As if some high-voltage electrical shocks had transformed him, that’s what it seemed for a moment, and I began to understand some things then. I felt as if Corina were beside me and suddenly I got it.
My Corina, I’m sorry for my stupidity. This is what you saw, Cori? This is why you fled, to save yourself. This is what frightened the shit out of you. This fear I feel now was your fear. These muffled screams were your screams. Oh, Bolivia, my beautiful mamacita in heaven, Corina in Chalatenango, have mercy on me and save me from this lunatic.
Something has happened, now I can see that this uncouth man who had been my lover has been endowed with some horrendous power. He was a terrifying being, inside and out; he instilled fear in others and at the same time was devoured by it. His faith was nothing more than panic raised to a maddening power. But this was the first time I witnessed the full metamorphosis. I had known the signs. They were obvious every time we made love.

Sleepy Joe made his way through life half-asleep, lacking in initiative, no plans, indifferent and drowsy, a pack of muscles that went underused. In bed, however, he was able to let loose that impressive voltage that dwelled inside him.

“If you were to put such energy into work,” I always told him, “you’d be a millionaire.”

When it came to sex, everything about him was much too grand and lasted forever. There was in him a kind of excess that made me think of a goat, an animal in heat, a satyr, something not quite human, like those hyperactive and hypersexual monkeys Violeta and I saw once in the zoo, jerking off and fucking like crazy in the cage. Violeta was speechless. “Let’s go,” I told her, grabbing her arm, “come on, Violeta, there are other cute animals.” But Violeta did not move from there. “You go,” she responded, “I want to see this.” I had also glimpsed the other Sleepy Joe, in those fits of rage that made him want to kill everyone and everything. This monk-like creature on the roof was not my brother-in-law, not my boyfriend or my lover, not his brother Greg, not the poor, good-for-nothing Joe, the sleepy, lonely, fake trucker. He was something else now, a feverish possessed lunatic, a sinister priest, a murderer clown. This son of a bitch would no doubt kill me, I thought. Suddenly that became very clear to me. Or at the least impale me with a broom, as he had done to Corina.

There were some nails lying around and I started to try to reach them with my foot, little by little, so he wouldn’t notice. Until finally I was able to get a hand on one and with it I started to loosen the knot on the belt, doing it in little steps, patiently, slowly. It was time to gamble all or nothing: Sleepy Joe was flying, stoned with the divine presence, and as the knot started to come loose, I gave a good pull on the belt, managed to free myself, and flew down the stairs as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as before, no more of this hiding in the rat hole. This time, I grabbed my mink and shoes, and Joe’s wallet, which in a stroke of brilliance I snagged out of his jacket, and ran out the door. I flew down the stairs and out into the street! I buttoned the mink all the way up so that it wasn’t obvious I was butt naked underneath, and soon I was down in the labyrinths of the subway.

Hero! Shit, I had left Hero behind again. I hadn’t even seen him when I rushed out, and to look for him at that moment would have been suicide. But whatever was to happen, this time I was committing to rescuing him once and for all. At the next station, I got out of the subway and hailed a cab. You must be wondering, Mr. Rose, why I just didn’t call the cops to have Sleepy Joe arrested. The answer is simply that the cops are the enemy, that’s the main difference between your people and my people. You have authority on your side, and we always have it against us. If I would have gone to the cops in the state I was in, an ex-con in their eyes, a mess, ass naked under the mink, do you get how fucked I would have been, Mr. Rose?

“Just go,” I told the cabdriver.

“Where?”

“Just away from here.”

After a few minutes of riding around, I gave the driver my address. When we got there, I instructed him to park nearby, behind some garbage Dumpster halfway down the block. I scrutinized the driver while we waited. He was an ogre from the very heart of Africa, a man of few words who took shit from no one. This was my man, I told myself. Nothing was going to faze this guy. And money was not a problem because there was three hundred dollars in my brother-in-law’s wallet.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to hide here,” I told the driver, crouching on the floor of the backseat and greasing his hand with a hundred-dollar bill. “Go up to the fifth floor of that building and let me know if there is anyone there. Go in the apartment, check everywhere, the bathroom, the kitchen, everywhere. If there’s no one there, check the roof, just a look, and come down and let me know. There’s no lock on the door. I just don’t want to run into my drunk of a husband, you know. He hits me when he drinks. No big thing, you have nothing to worry—”

“I’m not worried,” he cut me off. It seemed he’d done this kind of thing before.

“If you run into him, just say you must have the wrong floor.”

“I can take care of myself, miss.”

“Good, I’ll wait for you here.”

Ten minutes later, the driver returned. Good as new.

“He’s in there alright,” he told me. “On the roof. Some tall blond dude?”

“Then let’s wait till he comes out. I’ll stay down here and you keep a lookout. I have another fifty. Easy money. Just tell me when he leaves.”

“There goes the son of a bitch,” the driver announced forty-five minutes later. “That’s the dude on the roof.”

And sure enough, it was him—hands in pockets, head buried under the upturned collar of his jacket. Sleepy Joe walked down the street and out of sight.

“Wait for me here,” I said to the driver. The plan was to go quickly into the apartment, get Hero, some clothes, especially the stuff Pro Bono bought me for the trial, which I had left sitting out, and leave there forever.

“Hero?” I started calling him. “Hero? Hero! Come here, my little doggy, where are you, my precious? Where you hiding? Come to Mommy. Don’t be afraid; Joe’s gone; the monster’s not here.” But nothing. I looked for him under the sofa, behind the refrigerator, in the bathtub, the closets, nothing. He had to be somewhere. He always used to hide really well when Sleepy Joe was around, but I couldn’t find him anywhere and it was not that big of an apartment. I climbed up to the roof, already very freaked out, I knew he couldn’t even climb up there in his state, but I went to check. The sun was already hitting the tar full force, and the remains of Joe’s ceremony were scattered all about. Candle stubs, little wax puddles, a few rags blown by the breeze, and a thread of smoke from incense still burning. That’s it. Now that I’m telling you this, Mr. Rose, I recall this amazing nightclub I once went to with Sleepy Joe because Greg was out of town tending to some problem in his other house. Sleepy Joe and I went dancing, my idea—I paid for it and chose the place, a nightclub named Le Palace that was one of the most astonishing places I had seen in my life, with music blasting so loud that I felt it vibrating inside of me, and that extravagant mob flying on Ecstasy and drinking tons of water, women showing off their tits, the trannies wrapped in sequins and feathers, the couples amid the incredible high-tech laser light show. Four floors of live music, and I floated amid the lights and careless laughter as if I were inside a fish tank, not knowing for sure if all that was real or if I was just dreaming. Needless to say, I had an amazing time, even if Sleepy Joe was in a shitty mood and had to be dragged to the dance floor. But in the middle of it all, I lost an earring. It was a little gold stud that I really liked but I hadn’t even noticed I had lost it till I got home. So the following morning, I had to go back to the nightclub and see if I could find the earring. The place was closed but the workers let me in while they looked, and I was shocked. In the light of day, the spell from the night before was shattered. Imagine Cinderella’s world after the clock strikes twelve. The so-called Le Palace was just an empty soulless warehouse area, a really gloomy place, deathly silent and with battered furniture covered with dust, badly painted black walls, torn curtains, a suffocating smell of cigarettes, and garbage in every corner. In the light of the day, the nocturnal paradise was reduced to ashes. Now, on the roof of my building, I looked with the same unease at what remained of the great ceremony my brother-in-law had conducted. It was so desolate, such an inconsequential place, littered with broken toys. That was the feeling I had, as if I were seeing the remnants of a children’s game. The whole scene was nothing more than a poor imitation, an absurdity instead of a real ritual. And that had been the horrible scene, the dark nightmare? I swear I felt ridiculous about the ghosts I had invented in my head. Where had that unwarranted fear that had left me paralyzed just a couple of hours before come from? But then I found something that congealed the blood in my veins. It was something so frightening that my legs weakened and I fell to the ground. I had to cover my mouth to stifle the scream that escaped from me, in pieces, almost comical, like one of those doomed girls in a horror film. What followed was something visceral, absolute terror. I saw Hero. Sleepy Joe had nailed him to the wall. My doggy. Sleepy Joe had nailed my dog to a wall up there on the roof. There was Hero crucified, bleeding, and already dead. I bent over at the waist clutching my stomach as if someone had kicked me there. I was paralyzed by the pain, the horror, the anguish, the trembling, shaking like a leaf, Mr. Rose. When I was finally able to react, I pulled the nails off, washed the wounds, kissed Hero’s snout, and stroked his body a long time, crying over him, and then I placed the remains in a pillowcase.