The Empanada Brotherhood (16 page)

She held it up, her fingers spread wide for effect.

Alfonso said, “It's bigger than the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Carlos asked, “How much did a boulder like that set you back?”

Cathy kissed the diamond affectionately. “Two hundred and seventy-three dollars. It's from Tiffany's. Aurelio gave it to me yesterday. To celebrate, we had dinner at the Stork Club. I'm so in love with him I could dance right out of my skin.” She kissed Aurelio's earlobe and tweaked his chin and ran her hand through his long curly hair.

Aurelio smiled.

“My novio has a ten-room house in Montevideo,” Cathy continued. “And a black Citroën automobile. He's going to teach me how to drive the car and ride horses and shoot live pigeons at the country club.”

Roldán passed over the empanadas, the coffee, the Coke, and the dulce de leche. He also picked up a stack of paper cups and handed one to Aurelio, one to Cathy, and one to each of the rest of us. From under the grease bin he fetched a half-empty bottle of red wine, pried the cork out with his teeth, and poured each of us a splash. Then he raised his cup, saying, “Here's to the boda.”

Everyone repeated in unison, “Health, love, money … and all the time in the world to spend them!”

“I am going to be married in a dress of red velvet,” Cathy said. “I will carry two dozen white roses for my bouquet. My flower girls will wear white satin with elbow-length gloves and beautiful opaque stockings. There will be an orchestra and the best flamenco guitarist in Montevideo—Enrique Barrón. I will dance alegrías at my own reception. The champagne will come from France.”

We all stared at the dancer, hanging on to every word. She was shining like an autumn maple leaf made even more radiant by rain. If huge ruby ribbons carried by naked cherubs
with pink wings had appeared over her head nobody would have been surprised.

After Cathy and Aurelio Porta left the kiosk we moved back inside the cozy cubicle. Roldán emptied the dregs of his wine bottle into our cups. We tingled from being seduced by Cathy's youthful enthusiasm.

Alfonso lifted his cup. “Here's to the lucky couple. They certainly deserve each other.”

We drank to that.

I was stunned by Cathy's news.

Even when you see it coming for months it catches you by surprise.

I walked home to Prince and West Broadway and climbed the stairs toward my apartment. There was an odor of garlic and cooking oil on the second landing. Higher, through a door opened a crack, I heard people talking about food in English with Italian accents. But I didn't feel hungry.

Sitting in the dark at my own apartment window I gazed down at Prince Street. It was quiet, the storefronts dark, the garbage cans lined up for collection tomorrow. Faint jukebox music came from Milady's Bar on the Thompson Street corner, and the warm bread smell arose from Vesuvio's bakery. Beyond the black silhouettes of water towers atop neighborhood tenements the night sky glowed a misty pink. Midtown skyscrapers seemed very distant. The blinking lights of an airplane were headed toward La Guardia.

I could not relax and stayed up for hours, fidgeting, pacing between my kitchen and the bedroom. I wanted to kill myself, but how? I leafed through books by a handful of famous writers, reading a few paragraphs or a few pages, unable to concentrate. For a while I tried to type, a mistake; I gave up impatiently. I almost kicked apart the manuscripts piled neatly across my floor, but didn't. I tore all the rejection slips and postcards off my bulletin board, crumpled them up, and fired them one by one into the wastebasket. I even took a bath but couldn't sit still long enough to enjoy it. So I made a cheese sandwich and drank three cups of instant coffee as I
contemplated Prince Street again. Nothing happened, though, not even a taxi drifted by.

Then I looked for the note La Petisa had left in my door but I couldn't find it. It was not in my wallet, nor tacked to the bulletin board, nor on my typing table or a windowsill, nor atop any of my manuscripts, nor in any pocket of my shirts and pants or my jacket. Shit. It was just gone, period.

Okay. I put on my jacket and knitted cap and went downstairs to the sidewalk. I prowled north on West Broadway which was deserted. I felt miserable, like a fool, a patsy, a clown. I wanted to walk over to the East River and jump off a bridge.
So long, blondie.
Splash! Me and Virginia Woolf. All the metal city trash baskets were filled to overflowing. In a doorway between Houston and Bleecker a bum was conked out, one leg bent underneath himself at an awkward angle. The Grand Union in front of the NYU projects was dark. A man and a woman holding hands walked by me headed south. “I didn't like it,” she said. “You weren't paying attention,” he replied.

A cop car idled beneath the Washington Square arch, its headlights turned off. A guy was walking a large dog on the diagonal through the park. I circled the empty fountain afraid of those officers who might be watching me, invisible inside their dark cruiser.

If they'd known what I was thinking they would have jumped out and tackled me, clapped on the cuffs, thrown me into a dungeon, and left me there to rot.

I traveled south on Thompson Street because I didn't want to pass all the shuttered-up seedy clip joints on MacDougal or see the empanada stand. The deserted area during the wee
hours looked shabby and cheap. It sure fit my mood. I heard a cop's horse clip-clopping west of me. A taxi with its
OFF DUTY
sign illuminated went slowly past. Steam leaked up from a Con Ed grate. Concrete slabs were broken at a construction site circled by yellow warning tape. I almost stepped on a dog turd.

Fuck this city.

I climbed back to my apartment and sat in the dark some more looking out the window. No lights were lit in the buildings across from me so I could not even be a voyeur. I couldn't be anything. My writing stunk. I had no money. I was still a virgin.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

After a spell of thinking like that I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, literally counting sheep. Just for spite I counted over three thousand, which wasn't easy. There's no logical or acceptable way to deal with heartbreak. Then I fell asleep.

When Eduardo learned that Luigi had “eloped” with Adriana he went crazy. Arriving at the empanada stand black with rage he rambled on about betrayal. He accused Roldán, Alfonso, Carlos the Artist, and even me of aiding and abetting the romance. “I want to garotte all of you cowards with my bare hands.” He called us fairies, said Roldán was a “fat old pederast” and Alfonso was “a diminutive queer.” For good measure he called Carlos a “lascivious sodomizer.” Though he tried to pick a fight with everyone nobody gave him the satisfaction. Finally he broke down, tearfully accusing America of destroying his life. “All us muchachos were insane to leave Argentina.”

It made him delirious to think of Adriana captured by the arms of that ugly dwarf. What an insult to his manhood, to her womanhood, and to male/female relationships in general. Had she no shame at all?

“Dale, che, at least he's a fellow Argentine,” Roldán noted.

Eduardo laughed like a condemned man on the gallows. “Yeah. Thank God for small favors,” he sneered.

Right then Eddie Ortega popped up at the window in an aggressive mood. When the boss gave the little ferret some money, Eddie counted it and proceeded to break the rules, barking aloud for everyone to hear: “That's not enough, panzón. What do I look like, a dope?”

Eduardo instantly broke the rules in retaliation: “Hey, get out of here you piece of garbage. Go fuck yourself!”

Eddie Ortega looked surprised. Then he fled, terrified, as Eduardo took a wild swing and also tried to kick him.

Alfonso met me in front of the Bleecker Street Cinema. We were going to see a movie by Jean-Luc Godard. As we stood in line for the tickets, Alfonso said, “Did you hear what happened to Jorge?”

“The guitarist for Cathy Escudero?”

“Yes, that guy—the young boy.”

“No, what happened?”

“He killed himself. Chuy told me.”

I accepted my ticket and the change from the ticket seller. I couldn't believe it. Alfonso bought his ticket and we went inside. The theater was crowded but we found seats in the middle of a row toward the back. Alfonso
ahh
ed against his glasses and wiped them clean on his scarf.

“How did he kill himself?” I asked.

“Out the window of his apartment into the air shaft. Six stories up. He smashed all the garbage cans.”

“How could he do that?”

“I guess it was a broken heart. People die for that reason all the time.”

“He wasn't even eighteen.” My ears had started ringing.

“Adolescence is the most vulnerable time.”

Alfonso removed a small box of raisins from his pocket and offered me some. Underneath the purple scarf he wore a baggy gray sweater knitted by Sofía.

“He was a great guitar player,” I said. “I mean …” I was at a loss for words. I felt dizzy, cold, flushed.

Alfonso said, “Well, he's playing his guitar in heaven now while that arrogant dancer prepares to drink French champagne.”

“Where is his family?” I asked.

“In Sevilla. A brother named Eliverio flew over and took back the body and his guitars. Jorge had four guitars and lived in a one-room crib with a mattress on the floor. The maestro Alejandro Cárdenas says he might have been good one day.”

“I can't even remember why he was in the United States.”

“Cárdenas was his teacher over there. They say the old maestro committed a political crime and fled to New York where he has a cousin. In Spain, if you spit on the street Franco's goons will kill you just as quickly as they shot García Lorca. So Jorge flew to America to be with his teacher. Cathy Escudero paid him to play for her. As you know, she earned her money working at El Parrillón on Forty-seventh Street. She also studies once a week with Matilde Guerrero. Both those kids believed that flamenco was a ticket out of the ghetto.”

“I can't believe he would do a thing like that,” I said. I couldn't think straight. My stomach was cramping. I had trouble breathing correctly.

Alfonso finished off the raisins. “When you're really in love you're helpless,” he explained. “When you are obsessed—when your heart is hog-tied by a woman—you go crazy. It's a dangerous situation. You know that my Renata is like that. She laughs and is full of fire and has terrible moods and drinks too much. She is either too happy or too sad or too angry. She writes poetry and knows how to ice-skate. Her beautiful long hair makes my chest ache. With her I am a yo-yo, up and down, perpetually off balance and confused. Of course I would die for her and I would kill for her, too. After a while this condition can be fatal. I just want to escape.”

“But you love her?”

“Love.” He sighed. “Who knows about that? Cervantes said war and love are the same thing.”

“Hey, shuttup,” said a guy behind us. “We're trying to watch the movie.”

Alfonso turned around, speaking English. “
You
shut up, buddy. A man just died for love and we're talking about him.”

Another moviegoer said, “Pipe down you assholes.”

“Fuck you,” Alfonso said. “And your mother and your little sister, too.”

“Take off your glasses,” said the first person, “and I'll teach you to be rude.”

Alfonso stood up. “Come on, blondie, let's get out of here.”

People booed and hissed as we squeezed clear of the row. One fellow slapped at my leg. Out on the sidewalk Alfonso removed his glasses and wiped his eyes and cheeks on his scarf. We walked up to Washington Square where some old men were playing chess under the streetlamps. After kibitzing for a minute we headed diagonally through the park to the corner of University Place. Turning left, we traveled west to MacDougal Street, then south to the bottom of the square, then east again. I kept visualizing Jorge falling among the garbage cans but I couldn't say a word. Feelings of guilt and confusion made me tongue-tied. My heart was beating too fast. I wondered who had told Cathy Escudero, and what had her reaction been? Alfonso was quiet also, lost in his own thoughts. We made the rounds five times in this manner before splitting up and heading off toward our separate apartments.

Alfonso stopped and turned around, calling after me, “Are you okay?”

I was not, but you know how it is with guys: I said, “Yes.”

I entered a pawnshop on Second Avenue and East Third Street and asked the big lug behind the grill how much for a Stella guitar in his window? He said, “Ten bucks.” I handed over the money, so he came forward and leaned into the window fetching the guitar.

“This is a lousy instrument,” he admitted. “Are you sure you want it?”

“It's the only one I can afford.”

I don't know why, but he pointed out, “The neck is warped. If you don't have calluses it'll destroy your fingers.”

I didn't care. I took the guitar and walked west on Houston Street, then up to the empanada stand. Alfonso was alone in the alley talking to Roldán about the mysterious stone heads on Easter Island. I gave the Stella to Alfonso, asking would he please tune it for me? Even though he could not play, the professor knew how to tune a guitar. He started right in and immediately scowled.

“This is a bad instrument, blondie.”

“I don't care. Just tune it, please.”

“Maybe I can't. The neck is terrible. The strings are so old they're rusted.”

“I spent all my money. That's it. Do the best you can.”

He did as well as could be expected. Then I went home and opened my new Mel Bay
Chords for Beginners
book and started teaching myself C, F, and G7.