Signal to Noise (17 page)

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yep.”

They roared away together, through the darkened streets of the city.

Mexico City, 2009

J
IMENA HAD A
placid smile on her face. A smile Meche knew well. The smile said
I know something you don’t.
Meche drank a cup of
atole
and ate a piece of
tamal
, trying to ignore the smile. It had never boded well in her youth and she did not think it could bode well now. There were sweet
tamales
and salty ones, some filled with chicken and others with pineapple. There were even
tamales chiapanecos
, wrapped in a banana leaf and stuffed with pork.

All this business of eating and praying was having a narcotic effect on Meche. When her mother came to her side and spoke she did not hear her. On a shelf, a photograph of her father looking younger than he had ever been presided over the dinner. He stared at Meche with a sad, startled expression.

“Huh?” she asked.

“Are you going to put on another record?” her mother said again.

Meche realized the turntable had gone quiet. Meche nodded. That was her job: keep the music going. Jimena was in charge of the food, her mother, the greeting of people, her stepfather seemed to be managing the distribution of the
atole
and the soft drinks. All Meche had to do was keep some soft, pleasant music playing. She had decided she could not stomach CDs. Her father would have hated that. So she had hooked up the old turntable.

Meche picked a collection of jazz songs. She started with Stormy Weather.

She mouthed the lyrics to the song and felt comforted by the familiar tune, the trumpet and the piano and Billie’s voice.

“Hey, Meche, come here.”

Meche raised her head and saw Jimena motioning to her, by the kitchen door.

“What?” she asked, wondering if she was going to have to distribute
tamales
. She didn’t want to. Meche was happy standing in her corner, blending in with the curtains and avoiding chatting with her relatives and former neighbours.

Jimena gestured more emphatically and Meche hurried to her side.

“What?” she muttered.

“Here she is,” Jimena said brightly. “Meche, your buddy is here.”

Jimena was grinning from ear to ear. Sebastian stood next to her, looking very sober, a cup of
atole
in his hands; well-dressed and well-groomed.

“Hi,” he said, stretching out his hand.

Meche shook it stiffly.

“Hello.”

“I’ve come to pay my respects to your mother,” he said, like a perfect gentleman.

“I can find her for you,” Meche offered.

“Oh, I’ll find her,” Jimena said. “I need to get this tray out, anyway. I’ll be back. Don’t you move.”

Jimena flashed a wide smile to Sebastian and shoved Meche, carrying her large tray with the
tamales
. Some things never changed. Jimena was still able to flirt with anything that had a pulse.

Sebastian looked at his cup.

“I thought I saw you the other night but I wasn’t sure it was you.”

“Then it probably was me,” Meche said.

“I would have said hi—”

“No worries,” Meche said brusquely. “Didn’t Daniela talk to you?”

“She phoned me promptly yesterday.”

“Then you still like being a dick.”

Sebastian looked up at her, lifting the corners of his mouth into a wry, small smile.

“Daniela’s coming tomorrow. We’re long past being teenagers and we’re not afraid of you. We have a right to say hi to your mom and pay our respects.”

“And I have every right to ignore you. Eat up, it’s all free.”

Meche pivoted on her heels, slowly walking out of the kitchen.

“Cry Me a River.”

“Excuse me?” she said, turning around and placing her hands on her hips.

“That’s what’s playing. Ella Fitzgerald is singing Cry Me A River.”

Meche realized he was right. The previous song had finished and Cry Me had started to play.

“Did you become a jazz fan at some point?” she asked, with that easy, snide tone she liked to employ with him from years and years back.

“No. But I do know my Ella.”

“Congratulations. Should I give you a medal?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Daniela was right. You’re exactly the same.”

Meche walked away.

“D
ID YOU KNOW
he was coming?” Meche asked her cousin.

They were tidying up the apartment. Moving empty glasses to the kitchen, tossing any garbage which had found its way onto the floor into a bin, and trying to implement a degree of order. Meche had positioned herself behind the sink, dutifully scrubbing dishes, while Jimena brought her more dirty cups.

“No,” Jimena said.

“Are you sure?”

“I said no. What’s wrong? He’s cute, isn’t he? Why, if I could get my hands...”

“Aren’t you married?” Meche asked sharply.

“That doesn’t stop me from looking at the menu,” Jimena said with a shrug. “What about you? You’re single, no?”

Meche’s last serious relationship had taken place two years before and lasted eight months. She knew it caused her mother much anxiety to know she remained unmarried and childless. In Natalia’s eyes, Meche was a spinster, doomed to a life of unhappiness. She viewed her as dangerously contaminated by foreign traits. Marriage and motherhood were a woman’s ways. Anything else was an aberration stemming from too many imported shows. If Meche chanced to remind her mother that she herself had divorced her husband and was therefore not exactly a paragon of Catholic virtues, Natalia would deny any wrongdoing. Comically, Natalia had even asked Meche—in a quiet little voice—if she was a lesbian.

“I am single,” Meche said to her cousin. “I am also uninterested in Sebastian Soto.”

“And I thought you’d be glad to see him.”

“I haven’t talked to him since I was a teenager. Why would I be glad to see him now?”

“Well, seeing as you did like him back then...”

“I also painted my nails neon green one time. It doesn’t mean I’m rushing to buy puke-coloured nail polish this instant,” Meche muttered.

“Uh, you know who was hot?” Jimena asked. “That C kid... um, Constantino Dominguez.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s married now. He’s fat and married and balding,” Jimena said. “He’s got three kids and they’re all damn ugly. Who would have thought?”

“Does he still live around here?”

“No. I saw him at the mall a couple of times when I was working in a pet shop. He chatted with me for a little bit. At first I didn’t recognize him, but then when he began talking I remembered. Constantino Dominguez.”

“Do you remember a girl named Isadora?” Meche asked. “She was in my grade, so maybe you didn’t know her.”

“In the Queen? Before you went away?”

“Yeah. She was pretty. Skinny, tallish.”

Jimena snapped her fingers. “I remember her! She was Sebastian’s girlfriend, wasn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Meche said.

But Meche did know. Even though Meche did not speak a word to Sebastian after the spring of 1989, even though she moved to a different city that same summer, she was aware of it. It was hard not to be aware of it when she lived three blocks from him. Three blocks and three knocks. But those blocks stretched miles long, separated them as though they were oceans, and she did not take the path which led to his apartment building after that time at the factory.

That time...

“Well, she married him.”

“Isadora is married to Sebastian?”

“He’s not married,” Jimena said. “Weren’t you paying attention? I said he’s single.”

“Yeah, but...”

“They got married right out of high school. We all thought she was pregnant. It’s the same thing as with his brother, we thought, but no. It lasted maybe a year. Was it two? It wasn’t long. They divorced, she moved back in with her parents and he ended up moving away. You know, he was living in Monterrey in 1998. I thought for sure you guys had met up then.”

“I wasn’t living in Monterrey in 1998,” Meche said. “I had already moved to Europe.”

“Oh, well. Then you missed each other.”

“Probably.”

Meche squeezed some more liquid soap onto her sponge.

“He’s in marketing now,” Jimena said.

“I didn’t ask,” Meche replied.

“You were wondering about it,” Jimena said with all the aplomb of the neighbourhood gossip. “Same as you’re wondering if he’s seeing someone: I don’t think so.”

“Man, your mental powers suck, Kalimán,” Meche said.

“Well, then what are you thinking?” Jimena asked, giving Meche a little bump with her hip.

Meche frowned, looking at the murky, soapy water and the cup she was washing.

“I’m thinking about music,” she said.

Mexico City, 1988

D
ECEMBER BROUGHT THE
Nativity play. Sebastian, Meche and Daniela had non-speaking roles, playing shepherds. Isadora, Constantino and their friends were the angels and the demons in the
pastorela
, as befitted their station.

Meche sat with her friends at the back of the room and watched her classmates rehearse their lines, her eyes fixed on Constantino. The handsome boy had not talked to her again. The party, the dance, remained a freak occurrence. Had the magic driven him to her? Had it been something else? She did not know.

Meche could not spin fantasies in her head like Daniela; she could not feed on phantom lovers. She wanted Constantino and she wanted him now. What to do? A love spell? Would the others agree to perform it with her? Meche felt too ashamed to tell them about it. She could imagine the face Sebastian would make. He would laugh. But there seemed no other way.

Meche rested her elbows against her knees and leaned forward.

“Is your grandma going to bake a
rosca de reyes
?” Sebastian asked.

Food. A primary topic for Sebastian.

“Yeah.”

“Nice. When is she making it? I’ll come over.”

“I don’t know.”

“You can also buy a slice at the posada in two weeks,” Daniela reminded him, lowering her romance novel for a moment.

The posada was part of the play. Or, rather, the play came before the posada. After the performance was finished, the students and their families were ushered out into the school courtyard, where food stands offered typical Mexican Christmas foods and treats: mandarins,
tejocotes
, sugar canes,
tamales
,
tostadas
. Punch made with guava. Chocolate and
atole
to stay warm. There was a Nativity complete with life-sized figures of Joseph, Mary, the baby Jesus and the three kings. A piñata dangled from a rope, ready for the students to smash it to pieces and collect some of the candy. People bought tickets for a raffle and purchased holiday knick knacks made by the mothers of some of the students. The more intrepid students found this a perfect time to make out in the washrooms, marking a yearly tradition.

“Why would I buy it when I can eat it for free?” Sebastian asked.

“She’s not even a good actress,” Meche said, raising a hand and pointing at Isadora.

Despite the simple dialogue required, the pretty girl was wooden. She did not even seem able to stand still and look credible, though Meche had to admit the white robes she was wearing fitted her well.

“Like you’d do better,” Sebastian said.

“I might,” Meche muttered. “Only we’ll never know, will we?”

Isadora placed a hand on Constantino—he was a devil, though he had not cared to don his costume for this rehearsal, only the horns—and whispered something in his ear. Meche felt her gut churn.

“You always have to complain, don’t you?” Sebastian said.

“Yeah, and you always have to defend her,” Meche replied.

“Don’t fight,” Daniela said.

“Look, the school posada is going to blow. Let’s go to my cousin Jimena’s place after the play. She’ll have a real posada. What do you say?”

“Are we invited?” Daniela asked.

“You are if you bring your own booze.”

“Will she have
rosca de reyes
and
tejocote
?” Sebastian asked.

“How should I know?” Meche said feeling irritated. “There will be
something
to eat.”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian said.

“Fine. Go to the school posada and make googly eyes at Isadora. Like that’s more fun. I’m going home. It’s not like we’re even needed at this stupid rehearsal.”

Meche grabbed her things and hurried outside.

She put on her headphones; Edith Piaf was singing about a life in pink. She wasn’t even sure why she was angry. Lately Sebastian’s interest in Isadora just rubbed her the wrong way. Like it was a bit, well... it was frankly insulting that he liked such a simpleton. Because, let’s face it, Isadora was a bit of a simpleton and for all of Sebastian’s intellectual talk about “Oh my God, how come you’ve never read that book,” it didn’t seem to trouble him that the only thing Isadora read was the daily horoscope and the graffiti in the lavatories.

When Meche arrived in her apartment she waved a weak “hello” to her grandmother, who was knitting in the living room, and headed for the kitchen, pulling out the milk from the fridge. She dunked animal crackers in the glass, listening to more music in French because it was the day for that kind of thing.

Her father walked in and patted her head.

“What’s up, Meche?”

“Hey,” she muttered.

He sat down across from her, pouring himself a glass of milk and grabbing a few crackers.

“What are you listening to?”

“Eh,” Meche said sliding the headphones off and shrugging.

She ran her hands over the plastic table mats with ugly yellow flowers on them.

“What’s the most powerful love song of all time?” she asked him, scratching one of the flowers.

Meche thought the most romantic album cover of all time was
The Freewheelin
, which showed a very young Dylan walking arm-in-arm with his then-girlfriend. There was something about the composition, the street, the sky, the smiles, which made her think falling in love should be like that snapshot.