Ernesto Quiñonez - San Juan Noir

Mami was sad because January 1 was the five-year anniversary of our father’s death, and she cooked to forget. She runs a little business where she sells carrot and amaretto cakes at the bookstore on Ponce de León. Mami respects my individuality, so she doesn’t ask questions about my life. She’s also the only one who reads my childish stories. I told her that I thought I’d killed a boy. She laughed as if I’d delivered a Cantinflas monologue, and said, “You wouldn’t even kill in your dreams.” She gave me a kiss and poured two cups of coffee-flavored Pitorro.

Julio, also invisible to my brothers and their wives, was on the balcony. I poured him some of the Pitorro and we chatted for a while. He talked about new pizza recipes, about a Dominican lover he had three years ago who’d slather him with coconut oil before they made love. As we drank more, we reached a complicit silence. We looked out at the city from the balcony, and I told him about the woman I’d seen who was identical to me, that I thought I’d killed someone, and even about my two encounters with Mita. Julio told me that sometimes nightmares mix with memories and these memories are all we have left when everyone’s abandoned us. We hugged and gave each other a light kiss on the lips. We’d always wanted each other, but never found the synchrony in our lives to be together. That’s our destiny, we, the others.

Julio began to grow pale. He clenched his jaw, his eyes seemed to be popping out of their sockets. He pressed his chest and was sweating as if it were noon on a summer day. He grabbed my shirt and I started to scream for Mami and my brothers. Julio vomited on me, pissed himself, and collapsed to the floor. I tried to stand him up, I took his pulse, I gave him mouth-to-mouth. Nothing. At last, my brother Alberto came and helped me try to resuscitate him. My sister-in-law Teresa called 911. The ambulance arrived twenty minutes later. Julio died at my feet of a massive heart attack, in an ocean of vomit and piss.

It was very late when Mami was finally, after a few tranquilizers, able to fall asleep. I left silently. The street was deserted, the fog from the cool morning hung in the air, mixing with the smoke from all the fireworks that had roared, bidding farewell to an unforgettable year. It’s nice to walk in the early morning. Those seconds spilled into the air incessantly, just empty games, spells armed with lies, like stopping the breath of a dead man to give last rites to another illusion.

Mita appeared in the dark alley that took me from Calle del Parque to Avenida de Diego. I told her that Julio had died before ringing in the new year. I cried a little. She looked at me. We continued on our way and a vagrant vomited on the curb. I caught him just as he was about to fall, and sat him down. He looked like a zombie; he fell asleep like that. I left him a container with a little bit of rice and beans, two pasteles, and a drumstick. Mita rubbed against my legs. She also was a creature of the night.

Another resident of the street slept on the sidewalk in the light of Pizzeria Macabre (the name that my ex had given it). There, three musicians played their last notes among Medallas and cigarettes. The flute player offered to buy me a drink. He told me that his home was the night and loneliness was his lover. The New Year’s Eve celebrations intoxicated us with greater nostalgias than the alcohol. I said goodbye to him and took a couple bottles of beer in my backpack. Mita was waiting for me and we went on our way in silence. I was ready to invite her to come stay with me if she wanted. But after opening the condo door, I looked back and she was already gone.

I woke up after midday. I was weak; I had a coffee and sat down to write. I remembered that I might’ve killed a man, that these days death was caressing my footsteps. I also remembered the girl who looked like me. Seeing myself in the mirror of death or the mirror of another life, parallel to my own maybe. Just seeing myself confronting the possibility of being someone else.

Already nightfall, I got a text from Margarita telling me to be careful, not to go walking at night, that she’d had a nightmare in which I was attacked by a woman. At that moment, they knocked on my door. Two police officers. They asked me if I knew Beto Matías and Angelina Fabrani. I said I’d gone out with Beto one night in Santurce. They asked me where I’d been that night. I told them. They asked me if I was Angelina Fabrani. I said my name is Ángela, last name Fuentes. They asked me to accompany them to the precinct on Calle Hoare with my ID. There I learned that Beto and Angelina were suspected of beating a vagrant, a woman, and a cat that morning, and leaving them to die, bleeding out, dismembered. They showed me a photo and I started to cry. It looked like Mita and the vagrant to whom I’d given the food.

After four or five hours, they let me go. I called Mami on my way home. She was calm. I continued walking, with the feeling that I was being followed. I picked up my pace. I called Margarita. She didn’t answer; neither did Omar. I sensed footsteps almost on my heels. A hand touched my shoulder. When I looked behind me, I saw myself. The other me laughed with a voice similar to mine, but it wasn’t my laugh.

I pushed her and started to run, then looked back. There was no one. I ran down Ponce de León to Calle Canals. I continued to my building without stopping. At the pizzeria on the corner there were two patrol cars and an ambulance. I approached. There was a black shoe on the ground, a case on the other side. I picked it up; it contained my friend’s flute. I went as close as the onlookers and police would allow.

The man’s nose was broken, under his bare feet the blood formed a pool. His left eye was about to pop, a piece of his glasses stuck into it. He called to me and I went to him. I hugged him and cried. He said, “Be careful, my girl.” He passed out, then they took me away from him and put him in the ambulance.

A hand blew me a kiss from a car that passed slowly by. I was sure that it was the other me; I heard her mocking laugh. I tried to run after her and I slipped. I stepped in the enormous pool of the flute player’s blood and sank into an immense darkness. It smelled like death. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting in one of the booths in the pizzeria. One of the musicians, my violinist friend Javi, had bought me a vodka with orange juice. He smiled, with traces of bitterness in his expression, and said: “You fainted when you tried to wave to someone.” We drank together, but almost without talking. I kissed the corner of his lips, and he hugged me tightly against his chest. We kissed softly, those kisses recovering something of our lost humanity, or the last hidden orgasm before dying. We said goodbye with a nod. He didn’t get up.

Walking home, my footsteps sank into the asphalt. I lowered my eyes but couldn’t see past my knees, my feet and legs were beneath the street. I got to the stairway with my waist almost touching the concrete. Mita was sitting in front of the door to my apartment. Her tongue flicked across the tip of my nose. At last I started to feel like I’d recovered my body. For a while I forgot the past hours, but not the smell of blood. Mita lay down on the sofa. I poured myself some wine and turned on the computer. I had to write to recover. I had the sensation of living different lives.

I returned to myself. My fingers fell between the moldering memories, between my thighs too; I was touching myself, I recognized my lips, my clitoris. I masturbated as I wrote, and my blood moaned metaphors. Maybe each word could rescue me, splitting apart every scar of my fears. The words and my body melted together, the living words, my hot cunt. I could feel that other me kissing my neck, her hands playing with my nipples; I got even more wet. I thought about how that other me had to be that Natalie, and about Mita, and about all the deaths too. The two of them were always nearby when they occurred. That other me, could it be possible? My pussy convulsed, my other hand wrote automatically on the keyboard. At last I could cry out.