The Empanada Brotherhood (7 page)

Lo and behold, I bumped into Alfonso, Eduardo, and Luigi scurrying miserably north along MacDougal Street and we walked together up to the park. “Happy New Year,” I said. “How are tricks with Adriana, La Petisa, Renata, and Sofía?” That was supposed to be a joke.

Eduardo didn't think so. He thought Adriana should have a scarlet A branded on the center of her forehead prior to being deported from this country for hooking without a license. The night before he had tried to pick up a girl at the Ninth Circle and she told him to “bug off.” What did
that
mean? “I can hear Adriana cackling, the witch.”

Alfonso explained, “It isn't her fault. It's just a puerile fixation inside your own adolescent head.”

“Look who's talking,” Eduardo grumbled. “The mugwump who can't decide whether to marry the sexpot devil or a humdrum saint.”

“At least he has a choice.” Luigi flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter. “La Petisa hates my face. She cooks, she keeps the apartment clean, but she won't even dole out kisses. I am treated like a eunuch in my own house. If I had a Sofía I'd be ecstatic.”

“Stop.” Alfonso held up one hand. “I feel so desperate I don't even want to talk about my novias.”

But while we were circling the fountain like hamsters in an exercise wheel he said: “In her last letter Renata implied that she might start dating other men if I don't agree to marry her. My heart freezes when I think of that. It isn't fair. Why don't women play by the rules?”

And Eduardo still never mentioned the ten bucks he owed me.

Though I wore a knitted cap, gloves, and my kapok jacket to the dance studio I half froze to death anyway. Jorge had on his porkpie hat and scarf and overcoat. Between numbers he shoved his hands into his crotch. Cathy started out wearing a sweater and a cap but shed them quickly. Even though our breath was visible in the chill air she became soaked from the dancing. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Certain moves within a bulerías or a solear were special. I sat far away and kept my mouth shut.

After the practice session Cathy said, “Let's go for coffee.” We three walked through dirty snow to the Downtown Café and slipped into a booth. Jorge had a six-word vocabulary, even in his native Spanish. He came from Sevilla, Spain, and was now studying flamenco guitar with an exiled maestro named Alejandro Cárdenas.

The waitress brought over some coffees.

“Here you go,” she said, taking them off her tray. “Three cups of ordinary joe brewed in our cool kitchen especially for you good people by little elves from Brazil.”

Cathy said, “When I am a star I want to buy a house in Andalucía and another one in Buenos Aires. I'll keep a New York apartment but I don't like the United States.”

She chain-smoked cigarettes. I said, “Isn't that bad for you?”

“No me importa. I'm young. They don't kill you for a while.”

She ordered two glazed doughnuts with her coffee. I said, “Don't you have to watch your diet?”

“Not me, vos. I still have my girlish figure. But flamenco doesn't worry what size or shape you are as long as you have duende. Some of the greatest stars are elephants.”

Her smile was dazzling, her bravado seductive. One minute she exuded a little-girl innocence, the next minute she could withdraw, suddenly haughty and professional.

“To be an artist you can't care about anyone except yourself,” Cathy told me. “I can get away with murder because right now I am so beautiful.”

Then she leaned forward and whispered: “Maybe I don't have a drop of gypsy blood, but my soul was born in Granada.”

She drank one coffee and ordered a refill. Her skin was pale and her hair as shiny as wet coal. She wore bright red lipstick and thick mascara and her eyes had that mischievous sparkle. After practice she had donned an old sweatshirt and replaced the flamenco shoes with a dirty pair of fur-lined boots from Argentina. She had reapplied her makeup before leaving the dance studio. Now she clicked open a compact and checked her face again and then put on fresh lipstick. She fixed it by pressing her lips on a napkin and gave the napkin to me.

I asked her to sign the lipstick print and she wrote:
Con cariño, Catalina María Escudero.

“Do you dream about me?” she teased. “I bet all you boys dream about me. I am a femme fatale. Before I am twenty-three I will make a Hollywood movie. Do you think I'm gorgeous?”

How could any man say no?

Cathy laughed and put a fresh cigarette between her lips. She snapped her fingers. “Give me fire, baby.” She said
baby
in English.

With pleasure I struck a match.

When he wasn't playing guitar, Jorge seemed half asleep. He never said anything. Cathy talked to me about herself, her native Argentina, her spangled dancing. I listened, bewitched. Cathy prattled on. And Jorge tuned us out like an indifferent dumb animal basking in tropical sunshine.

During the second week of January an Argentine boxer was slated to fight in Madison Square Garden. Roldán pasted a cartel of the bout on the brick wall beside the empanada stand. The Latin heavyweight was undefeated down south, having won six knockouts in a row since turning professional. He was going to battle an unknown American and no one doubted that he would clobber the bum. All the muchachos declared it would be “no contest.”

Roldán seized on the event as an excuse for a party. He contacted a friend who had a pal who knew some people at the Garden who could sell us tickets for a reduced price. “And we'll have a dinner at my place before the knockout,” he said. “I'll make sangría. And chicken in a spicy stew with pigs' knuckles and niños envueltos and papas rellenas.”

“Dale,” Carlos the Artist cried. “We'll get pissed to the gills and they'll have to carry us to the Garden! Better yet, we'll go in Popeye's diaper truck.”

Everybody wanted a ticket.

Gino paid first and I followed suit because I had extra cash from unloading a furniture truck on Broome Street. Alfonso was next in line and promptly bet five dollars with Gino against his own countryman, whom he claimed had a glass chin. Luigi forked over the price of a ticket, as did Carlos the Artist. La Petisa refused to participate, calling us “barbarians.” When we pressed Popeye to join us he said that nylons were not as profitable as advertised: He was broke. But Chuy sprang for four tickets, one for himself, one for Popeye, and two extras for as yet unselected women. Looking gaunt and
deranged, Luigi's long-haired weight-lifting pal, El Coco, gave Roldán a dirty sock filled with pennies for his entrance fee.

Six nights before the bout Eduardo visited the empanada stand apoplectic because through binoculars he'd seen his ex-wife making out with her fat boyfriend near the window of her apartment without the shades drawn … and he also plunked down the price of admission.

On the day of the fight I only worked lunch at the Night Owl. Then I went to Roldán's messy digs and helped the fat man prepare our meal. His Christmas tree was still up, the little lights blinking. It was cold outside, the temperature not far above zero. By four o'clock we had two large kettles on the stove simmering and awaiting the onslaught. We made a sangría of red wine, sugar, and slices of melon, with oranges and also lemons. By five o'clock, when guests should have arrived, everything was ready. I lay down on the rumpled bed in Roldán's room and watched television for a spell and soon fell asleep to snowflakes ticking against the window. At six the cook's pudgy hand shook me awake.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Only Chuy has come. But he brought two minas.”

I sat up. Chuy was seated at the kitchen table facing a pair of teenagers, Angela and Adelita. He was preening and leaning close to their faces, murmuring sweet nothings.

“We might as well eat now,” Roldán said. “Everything is ready and we won't reach the Garden on time if we delay any longer.”

He lifted a lid and stirred with his serving spoon. We ate hearty and drank sangría, getting bloated and tipsy. Chuy described in gory detail the operations on his stump that
were preparing it for a prosthetic hand. Angela and Adelita giggled, smoking cigarettes while they ate. Their funny off-color jokes caught us by surprise and we had a good dinner. A number 9 train carried us up to Madison Square Garden in plenty of time to see the Bull of the Pampas lose his first American showdown by a fourth-round TKO.

“That will ruin his career,” Roldán said, disgusted.

Over the following days everyone stopped by the empanada stand with a brazen excuse—a girl, a last-minute job, an urgent obligation. Eduardo had worked overtime editing a newsreel about Cuba and the Soviet Union. El Coco got lost on the subway. Popeye couldn't make it because the diaper truck had a flat tire. Luigi had a fight with La Petisa because she declined to screw him. And Alfonso had spent all night typing a twelve-page letter to Renata thanking her for the gauche jester cap (that he'd already lost), followed by a two-paragraph bread-and-butter note to Sofía for the gloves (which he treasured).

The muchachos turned over their unused tickets, begging the fat man to obtain refunds. Roldán promised that he would try. Meanwhile, he brought the leftover food down from his apartment to the kiosk, and during the next week he dished out the vittles and sangría free to whoever was hungry. “It would have tasted better on Friday but it's still palatable,” he insisted.

Gino refused to pay off the bet with Alfonso because “If
you
had lost you wouldn't have paid me, either. Just like everyone else in the patota.”

“Not true,” Alfonso said. “I'm the only honorable guy, besides Roldán, in our gang.”

Gino said, “But you're always broke, profe. You never even give me a tip when I'm working here on the maestro's night off.”

Alfonso retorted, “Oh? And how come I've never seen you hand the boss a tip when
he's
running the stand?”

“Because he's the boss,” Gino said. “He rakes in all the profit. I'm only a hired hand.”

Luigi said, “Che, profe won the bet. You better pay up.”

“
You
pay up, you're so rich,” Gino said. “Get the money from your loudmouth concubine, La Petisa.”

Luigi was too small to attack Gino, so instead he opened his wallet and gave Alfonso five bucks.

Gino was appalled. “Wait a minute, you little monster. Are you trying to make me look bad?”

Luigi said, “You make yourself look worse than my face by acting like a pudenda.”

“Fuck you, quemado.” Gino pushed Luigi's five dollars back at him and slapped one of his own bills onto the counter in front of Alfonso. “And fuck you, too, profe. Go to hell both of you.”

“Thank you,” Alfonso said politely. “Now, who wants an empanada compliments of me? Don't be bashful, boys, I'm loaded.”

Okay, it was “finished.” Now I had to act. Into a manila envelope went my college romance novel. Along with the manuscript I included a self-addressed postcard so that the publishers could notify me of their rejection by mail. Then I would travel north and pick up my book, saving the cost of postage. After all, a subway token was only fifteen cents.

I spent an hour going over my list of publishers. Then I made a decision. The Lexington Avenue line took me to mid-town Manhattan where I approached the front desk of my first choice. I explained to the receptionist about the postcard inside. She took the slim package from me and weighed it in her hands. “What have we here?” she smirked. “
Moby Dick
?
David Copperfield
?
The Brothers Karamazov
?”

I departed feeling breathless and humiliated. Back downtown, I hurried west on Bleecker Street as nervous and hungry as a wolf. When I turned the corner at the Figaro, Chuy's accountant, Greta Garbo, was standing at the kiosk's window nursing a cup of coffee while smoking a Tiparillo. She had on a fashionable overcoat and tall suede boots. To celebrate the submission of my novel I had decided to order a pork empanada. Eating it would be ecstasy.

“I want a pork empanada the size of the Empire State Building,” I told the cocinero.

“I'll pay for the pie,” Greta Garbo said. “It would be my pleasure.”

I balked. “Oh no, thank you, but no.”

She said, “I'm serious. You look like a starving artist to me.”

“But I have
money,
” I protested. I took out my wallet and showed her. “Yesterday I unloaded garment bales on Canal Street.”

Greta Garbo said, “That's not money, it's chicken feed. Cookie crumbs.”

While we were arguing, Eddie Ortega appeared at the window still wearing his black leather jacket and the red Converse All-Stars. Also blue jeans with rolled-up cuffs. That was his uniform. Roldán plucked a half dozen bills from the register drawer and handed them over. Eddie scribbled in his notebook. He said, “Gimme a pastelito,” so the boss gave him a pastelito and a napkin. Eddie gobbled the treat, wiped off his fingers, and handed back the napkin.

As he departed Greta Garbo asked, “What was
that
all about?”

“None of your business,” Roldán said. He flicked his fingertips scornfully.

To me, the accountant said, “I hear you think you're a writer. What do you write about?”

“I'm working on lots of stuff,” I said. “But I haven't completed anything worthwhile.”

“What sort of
stuff
?” she asked, blowing smoke in a thin stream up toward the stars. “Have you published anything?”

“No, not yet. I write novels and short stories. They aren't any good, though.”

“Oh my, Mr. Self-Confidence. What sort of novels?” she persisted.

I didn't like talking about my work but feared even worse being impolite. Feeling squeamish, I said, “One is a college
romance, another is about a Bowery bum. A third concerns the lives of a robber baron family on the North Shore of Long Island.”