Ernesto Quiñonez - San Juan Noir

Migue brought me a glass. I took a breath and put on a questioning face. He kissed me. “Don’t ask, just dance.”

I drank that champagne with such thirst that it was like I’d walked all the way from the Doña Fela to that strange mansion. I was hoping to feel what everyone else seemed to be feeling, but nothing was happening. I went up to the champagne buffet and filled my glass again. Migue spoke with the kid, while his feline eyes slid over the bodies of the girls. The music had a robotic feel, like a scratched disc, a broken and repetitive melody that gave me more of a headache than a desire to dance. But the rest of the girls danced, eyes closed, fingering their lustrous necklines, smiling as if something very pleasurable was happening to them.

I went back to the table, filled my glass, took three sips, and served myself more. I touched one of the girls on the forearm to get her attention. To my surprise, she opened her big green eyes, smiled, and looked at me as if my face was the most striking one in the world. “Do you know where the bathroom is?” She smiled and tilted her head, came even closer to me, furrowed her brow, and pulled me to her ear — she smelled like lavender and cherry blossoms. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“I’ll show you.”

She turned around, went to the sofa, and began to move the cushions, as if she’d lost something of great value. She went to the other sofa and did the same thing, pushing the cushions aside, sticking her hands into the cracks. Finally, she pulled out a small bag, white and gold, approached me, and took me by the hand. I followed her down a long, dark hallway. It was full of huge canvases, colorful paintings framed in sequoia. I knew the exact kind of wood, because my grandfather had owned a framing business and I spent many summers haggling with galleries and rich people who wanted their recently purchased paintings in frames made of the most expensive material on the market. Then I started to wonder who these people were, who this apartment belonged to, how anyone had so much money in an economy that was so fucked. How old was that kiddo living the life of an artist? Who were these women?

The girl led me to the bathroom and held onto my hand as she entered. She flipped on the light, and I turned to leave. “You can stay.”

I smiled at her and looked down at the floor. I think I said, “Thanks,” and left. Halfway down the hallway, I remembered I still had to pee. I turned back toward the bathroom, praying to run into the blonde in the hallway. But no, I got back to the bathroom and the door was still shut. Then, as if by magic, it suddenly opened. The blonde threw her head forward as if she was going to kiss her knees, then straightened up quickly. Her hair fell back in a cascade, the image of a mermaid. Her eyes were so big, her eyebrows so high, her lips so red, her smile so wide, so drunk, her jaw set as if fighting an overbite and an underbite at the same time. She went strutting off down the hallway, like she didn’t even see me.

I went into the bathroom — I’ve always thought you can tell everything about a house from the bathroom, like you can tell everything about a man from his shoes. I sat down on the toilet and inspected the room. It resembled a steel urn. It had one of those special showers, the kind you only see in hotels and spas. I looked at myself in the mirror; my eyeliner had run a little and my eyes looked sunken. I attempted to fix it with my fingers but it was a futile effort, so I just pinched my cheeks to give myself a false blush.

When I returned to the living room, I tried to serve myself more champagne. The first two bottles were already empty, so I emptied the third into my glass. “Let’s go when you finish that.” Miguel didn’t fit in that environment either, we looked like we’d been photoshopped in. The chandeliers on the ceiling were reflected in his plastic lenses. He held the glass with both hands, one on the base and the other on the stem, tapping his rings against it. Champagne bubbles are fatal for a beer drinker. Only half of his hair was tied up in a bun. I laughed and told him that we had the same hairdo, touching his hair and scratching his beard. “Let’s get out of here.” With that whisper, I could tell that Migue had bad intentions, and more alcohol in his body than he knew how to handle.

We put our glasses down on the table and went to say goodbye. Migue grabbed my hand, which was strange. We weren’t a handholding couple — we weren’t a couple, period. We went down the spiral staircase — which, thanks to the champagne, seemed like the swirling of a giant toilet — and right out onto the cobblestones, this time heading up the San Justo hill. I asked Migue to stop for a second, the ties on my espadrilles had come undone. He stopped, crouched down, and tied them for me with all the calm and care in the world. I had no idea what time it was.

“Whose apartment is that?”

“Well, it’s Julito’s.”

“No, but who does it belong to?”

“I already told you.”

“Migue, that kid is like seventeen.”

“Nineteen.”

“And what does he do?”

“He manages.”

“It must come from his family then — what do his parents do?”

“Dunno, they’ve got an art gallery or something.”

He got all gallant and opened the pickup door for me. I could barely climb in, it’s too high for my short legs, and champagne doesn’t typically make you more skilled at anything.

“Are you good to drive?” I asked.

“Sure.”

We turned onto one of the little streets, Luna or Sol, I always confuse them. But we kept ascending.

“Aren’t we going?” I was confused.

“Yes.”

He pulled over to the side of the road, and started texting. I began looking all around, it seemed like we were just waiting to be mugged. Soon, a bum appeared, with a backpack, shorts, infinite beard, and bare feet. Migue rolled down the window. I’d seen him roll down the window other times to give them money, or tell them to find some shoes in the back of his truck. Oh, Migue, not today .

The guy opened the door, removed his backpack, got in the pickup, settled in, shut the door, and greeted us. Migue locked the doors and put his hand on my thigh, as if telling me to stay calm. He took a manila envelope out of the glove box. The guy pulled a package from his backpack, a brick wrapped in plastic. He set it down between my seat and Migue’s. Migue picked it up, unwrapped it, and pulled out a heavy green brick. I couldn’t believe it, it was like a bar of gold, but it was weed.

They shook hands, and the guy slipped the manila envelope in his backpack and said, “Buenas noches, miss.” And he got out.

“Sorry you had to be here for this,” Miguel said

“Sorry? You know the position you put me in?”

“You know I—”

“That you smoke weed, like all the time? Yes. Did I expect you to deal drugs with me in the car? No!”

“It’s no big thing.”

“Start the car, let’s go. And don’t take me around San Juan doing stupid shit, I need you to bring me home, and that’s it.”

There were cops diverting traffic in the middle of San Juan. On the other side, the streets are one-ways. So we ended up taking the longest way around — not along the coast, not by the docks, but in the interior. We went right through the intestines of the old city.

The silence in the car was almost as tempestuous as the music in that mansion apartment. Migue fiddled with the air-conditioning, trying to defog the windows. It had rained most of the night and the city was damp, cold, and foggy. He had let his hair down, and he drove with his right hand while resting his head on his left. When we got out of the walled city, the only noise was our breathing and the swoosh of the tires over the wet tar. Free of the cobblestones, at last we could move at a decent speed.