The Empanada Brotherhood (5 page)

Slowly, I scanned that book, whispering sentences aloud. I reread the last fifteen pages, which left me cold. How could this be? Nervously, I changed some punctuation and made other corrections. I wondered: How could you work so hard on a book and yet remain ambivalent?

Then I decided to rewrite the college romance one more time, and after that I would attempt to get it published.

My Argentine pals could not resist the lure of Rockefeller Center during the holiday season. Alfonso, Luigi, and I took a bus up there and walked around for an afternoon. We bumped into Eduardo, who tagged along with us as we ogled the enormous decorated tree and the gold statue of Prometheus. We gazed at rich people skating circles at the ice rink. In St. Patrick's Cathedral, Luigi and Eduardo lit several candles.

“Who are you lighting them for?” Alfonso asked.

“I am lighting this candle for my own face,” Luigi answered.

Eduardo said, “I am lighting this candle so God will strike down my wife, Adriana, with a thunderbolt.”

“She's not your wife, she's your ex-wife,” Luigi reminded him.

Alfonso lit one taper for Renata, his volatile Argentine lover, and another for Sofía, his pragmatic Buenos Aires girlfriend.

“I'm playing it safe,” he explained. “Like Henry the Eighth.”

We mingled with the crowds and ate hot chestnuts and bought four green cookies shaped like evergreen trees. Bells rang, carols played, and everyone had rosy cheeks. Alfonso showed us the building where Diego Rivera had done a mural that the Rockefellers destroyed because it depicted the face of Lenin. Eduardo complained that he hadn't been laid ever since Adriana began dating the “pimp.”

We went window-shopping up one side of Fifth Avenue to the Plaza Hotel at Fifty-ninth Street and down the other side
toward Forty-second Street. Cheery colored lights blinked around displays of jewelry on beds of angel hair. I wanted to buy Cathy Escudero a Christmas present. I wanted to spend all the dollars I could earn over a year for a gold bracelet, a string of pearls, or a pair of diamond earrings from Tiffany's or Van Cleef & Arpels.

Instead, Eduardo borrowed ten bucks from me. “I'm broke. I forgot my wallet.” That cleaned me out. “Don't worry, blondie, I'll give it back when next we meet at the kiosk.”

Luigi halted dead in his tracks. A beautiful woman was approaching us, tall and brunette, wearing silver hoop earrings and a knee-length mink coat. Her hair bounced against her shoulders with great verve and she had an air of self-satisfied gaiety. She carried no packages so her arms were swinging freely.

The burnt man spread his hands wide apart and, in heavily accented English, proclaimed to the universe, “Look at this beautiful woman!”

The lady stopped, contemplating our comrade with a perplexed frown. Then she brightened, laughing. “And you are a beautiful guy.” She walked right up to Luigi, kissed him on the cheek—“Merry Christmas, little man”—and continued on her way.

“What about
me
?” Eduardo called after her in Spanish. To us he moaned, “You see? Adriana has cursed me. When we were married I had a dozen chicas on the side. Now that I'm ‘free' they ignore me because I'm a cuckold.”

When we reached Forty-second Street Alfonso said, “Let's go into the library.”

We crossed the avenue. Two small boys were sitting astride one of the concrete lions while their father took a picture. Inside, Alfonso led us upstairs to the newspaper reading room. He checked out a
New York Times
microfilm and we gathered around him while he searched for the day that Argentina's famous singer Carlos Gardel had died—Monday, June 24, 1935.

An article explained that after a successful Bogotá concert, Gardel's plane had taken off for Cali, via Medellín. The plane was a Ford tri-motor F-31 belonging to SACO, a Colombian airline. After refueling at Olaya Herrera airport in Medellín, the plane taxied onto the runway and collided with another aircraft, bursting into flame. Seventeen passengers died, five were miraculously saved. Burned beyond recognition, Gardel's body was identified through an ID bracelet and dental records. He was seated next to the pilot and probably expired instantly. His band members, his secretary, and his masseur also perished. His English professor survived.

We emerged from the library at dusk, riding the subway downtown to Astor Place. Over at the empanada stand Roldán had the sliding glass window partially open. A clump of mistletoe was tacked to the overhead frame above a string of flashing lights. His portable Victrola on the ledge was playing a record of Elvis Presley singing Christmas tunes. Gino and Popeye were lounging on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes and eyeing three NYU girls also listening to the music while they sipped coffee and sucked on Hershey Kisses from a basket Roldán kept on the window ledge. Gino had on a new Borsalino hat. Alfonso asked to replace Elvis with Carlos
Gardel and the fat man obliged. Luigi chose the record, a scratched 78 that gave out a lot of static. The coeds trotted away. Collars up, shoulders hunched, hands thrust deeply into our pockets, we boys huddled together in a semicircle on the sidewalk listening to these words in Spanish:

The clown, with all his funny faces
and exaggerated smiles,
is inviting us, dear friends,
to enjoy the carnival.
You can't see by his smile
all the pain that's underneath;
his face of frozen cheerfulness
hides the awful truth.

While we listened to this song, Luigi's deformed features assumed a disturbing radiance. Pedestrians wandered by carrying bags of gift-wrapped presents. Soon it began to snow and the storm did not stop for two days.

I woke up at three
P.M.
with an icing of white stuff on the window ledges. The fire escape outside my kitchen was frosted by dazzling meringue. I kneeled beside a clanking radiator and inhaled the warm bread odor from Vesuvio's bakery. Thick snow was still falling and a premature darkness muffled the tenements. No trucks were unloading on West Broadway. A single pedestrian under a red umbrella scuffed along the center of the street. Two chairs outside the Sons of Italy Social Club had fluff piled five inches high. While I was sleeping the city had come to a standstill.

I bundled up and hurried downstairs feeling buoyant and excited. I was due at the Night Owl at four. New York stifled by the storm was amazing. The lack of noise was eerie. I crossed Houston, prancing through unsullied snow that rose well above my ankles.

The café had a
CLOSED BECAUSE OF WEATHER
sign on the door. So I kept going. Only a few sets of tracks crisscrossed the open areas of Washington Square. The Christmas tree under the arch was lit up and beautiful. No commerce plied Fifth Avenue where the awnings of fancy apartment buildings sagged beneath the weight of snow. A woman kept snug by luxurious fur stood uncomfortably with her arms folded while her Pomeranian shivered in a drift.

I walked north pummeled gently by the insistent flakes. Traffic lights blinked from green to yellow to red and back again, but there was nobody to be directed across the intersections. Visibility was only a few blocks.

I didn't know I was headed for the dance studio until I arrived. On Fourteenth Street, halfway between Eighth and Ninth avenues, I heard Jorge's guitar. They had a window open. When I showed up they were hard at work as if nothing unusual had submerged the city's clamor. I arranged myself in a corner creating a puddle around me on the floor.

Snow falling was reflected in the studio mirrors, which cast shadows over us like sunshine rippling underwater. Jorge played a slow tune and Cathy stretched languidly while bending into the dolorous shapes of her craft. Jorge's fingers released pensive notes I had never heard. The guitarist and the dancer cast a delicate spell with their remarkable balancing act.

Cathy went through a series of small hesitations; she inclined forward like a grieving widow, compassionate and tragic.

Jorge stopped. Cathy was left hanging as he put aside his guitar; then his partner sank to the floor. They sat quietly, luxuriating in torpor. The one to break it was Jorge when he reached for a cigarette. Cathy said, “Dame un pitillo.”

She lit it herself and exhaled deeply. A defiant shadow tweaked her features. They smoked in silence until Cathy asked me, “How did you get here?”

“I walked.”

“Vos sos loco.”

“Yes I am.”

She replied, “Did you publish a novel yet?”

That startled me.

“No … not yet.”

Her shoulders sagged and she picked discontentedly at a blemish on the floor.

“How did
you
guys get here?” I asked.

When she glanced up at me Cathy's eyes had a provocative twinkle.

“We paid for a limousine.”

On Fourteenth Street in the dark I wanted to shove her playfully and instigate a snowball fight, but Jorge tromped seriously ahead of us in measured rhythm like an ascetic holy man. Street lamps were dimmed by the storm: Flakes wiggled like twirling cells breeding under a microscope. Cathy hugged the heavy dance bag to her chest and hunched her shoulders.

Jorge strode down into the subway entrance. Cathy paused on the threshold looking up at me. Her charming disconsolate face was ashen, her teeth chattered.

“Adiós, gringito,” she said.

“Adiós, Cathy.”

Then she pattered down the steps, hurrying to catch up with Jorge while I waved good-bye like somebody in a movie.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve La Petisa said, “Luigi's apartment is like no place I have ever seen before. It is the haunt of a lunatic, the product of a mind as burnt as his face.”

“What do you know about Luigi's apartment? You visited there with Gino?”

We had met by chance on Bleecker Street and entered the Café Borgia for tea. The room was full to the brim with pink-cheeked last-minute shoppers. Outside, wind blew fresh snowdrifts down MacDougal and across Bleecker. I was happy because my college romance novel was going great but I was afraid to discuss it with anyone.

La Petisa said, “Gino is too much of a slob for me. I would get everything neat one minute, but next minute he would mess it up again. After one of our fights he tore all my clothes out of the closet and threw them onto the kitchen floor. Al final fue una joda despelote. Every time I put the toilet paper in correctly, he flipped it backwards. Then Gino threw me out and Luigi took me in. Of course, to sleep we use separate beds: It's a platonic relationship. His place is warmer than Gino's, but there's a Buddhist altar and dozens of vulgar magazines on the bookshelves. In the bathroom are barbells that Luigi never uses. However, once a day a strange beast with a beard and hair down to its shoulders appears and spends fifteen minutes working out with the barbells. The beast is Luigi's friend El Coco. And that guy
really
bugs me.”

Looking up I saw Roldán's nose pressed against the window and waved to get his attention. He walked around to the door and limped in. He was wearing an old raccoon coat, a
knitted cap, and his face was half hidden by a woolen scarf. He sat down, unwound the scarf, unbuttoned his coat, and lit a cigar he'd just purchased at Johnny's Italian Newsstand.

“Qué carajo invierno!” he exclaimed. “I never experienced this in Argentina or Bolivia or Mexico City.”

La Petisa patted his hand. “Listen, tomorrow everybody's meeting at Fugazzi for dinner, correct?”

“De acuerdo.” Fugazzi was a small Italian restaurant on Sixth Avenue a block west of the empanada stand. “I made reservations for fifteen.”

“But should we really have an Italian dinner on Christmas?” La Petisa made a wry face. “I mean, what way is that to celebrate the birth of Jesus?”

“A ravioli or a goose, what's the difference?” Roldán shook salt onto his large palm and licked it. “I wouldn't be surprised if Joseph and Mary sat down to a good spaghetti dinner after Jesus was safely asleep in the manger.”

Alfonso came over to our table stomping snow off his shoes.

“It was scampi,” he announced, unwinding his purple scarf. “I'm sure they had scampi or veal cacciatore that day. Maybe osso buco.” He took off a ridiculous red-and-yellow cap with earflaps and a bell at the tip. “Christ it's cold outside.”

He also removed an elegant pair of fur-lined leather gloves and slapped them onto the table.

La Petisa warned the professor: “Don't be blasphemous. God hears everything.”

“Oh? And what does He think about you who goes to bed with Gino out of wedlock?” Alfonso called the waitress over, ordering an espresso.

La Petisa said, “Hey, I'm a good Catholic. I go to Mass every Sunday. For two years after my father died I wore a black armband and went to the cathedral each morning to light a candle. And I'm living with Luigi now, since Gino threw me out.” She added: “Where did you get that woeful hat?”

“It's a Christmas present from my novia Renata in Buenos Aires.”

“Her taste is in her ass.”

“Oi.” Alfonso arched way back. “She's got a lot more imagination than
you
do, shorty.”

“What about the gloves, profe? Same piba? At least they look useful.”

“They're a gift from Sofía.” Alfonso tugged the gloves back on approvingly and flexed the fingers. “My other novia, the sensible one.”

“Marry the gloves,” La Petisa advised. “If you marry that hat you're a dead man.”

What a snowstorm! Roldán did not have a Christmas tree so we decided to buy him one. Two blocks south on Sullivan Street we located a few ratty shrubs corralled inside a wooden fence. A boy wearing an Aztec ski mask ran out of a bar to make the deal with us, then hurried back inside.

We carried the tree home to Roldán's apartment three floors above the empanada stand. La Petisa left to search for ornaments while Alfonso and the boss mixed hot rum toddies in a blender. We listened to a record by Edith Piaf. La Petisa returned twenty minutes later with colored paper, glue, gold paint, and Luigi, who was wearing a white Santa Claus beard full of snow. We clicked on the TV to a Perry Como Christmas special. I cut out snowflakes; La Petisa made bells and angels from the colored paper. Alfonso and Luigi fashioned elaborate paper cockroaches. There was a brief argument about the cockroaches. We snipped a tin coffee lid into the shape of a star for the treetop.