John Adams - Wastelands 2

Sounds pretty shitty, I said.

Oh, come on, he said, putting an avuncular arm around me. It ain’t that bad.

Alex’s big dream? (Of course we all knew it, because he wouldn’t shut up about all the plep he was going to do.) He wanted to be either the Dominican Sebastião Salgado or the Dominican João Silva (minus the double amputation, natch). But he also wanted to write novels, make films, drop an album, be the star of a channel on the Whorl—dude wanted to do everything. As long as it was arty and it made him a name he was into it.

He was also the one who wanted to go to Haiti, to take pictures of all the infected people. Mysty was, like, You can go catch a plague all by your fool self, but he waved her off and recited his motto (which was also on his cards): To represent, to surprise, to cause, to provoke.

To die, she added.

He shrugged, smiled his hundred-crore smile. A photographer has to be willing to risk it all. A photograph can change todo .

You had to hand it to him; he had confidence. And recklessness. I remember this time a farmer in Baní uncovered an unexploded bomb from the civil war in his field—Alex raced us all out there and wanted to take a photo of Mysty sitting on the device in a cheerleading outfit. She was, like, Are you insane ? So he sat down on it himself while we crouched behind the burner and he snapped his own picture, grinning like a loon, first with a Leica, then with a Polaroid. Got on the front page of Listin with that antic. Parents flying in from their respective cities to have a chat with him.

He really did think he could change todo . Me, I didn’t want to change nada ; I didn’t want to be famous. I just wanted to write one book that was worth a damn and I would have happily called it a day.

Mi hermano , that’s pathetic to an extreme, Alex said. You have to dream a lot bigger than that.

Well, I certainly dreamed big with Mysty.

In those days she was my Wonder Woman, my Queen of Jaragua, but the truth is I don’t remember her as well as I used to. Don’t have any pictures of her—they were all lost in the Fall when the memory stacks blew, when la Capital was scoured. One thing a Negro wasn’t going to forget, though, one thing that you didn’t need fotos for, was how beautiful she was. Tall and copper-colored, with a Stradivarius curve to her back. An ex-volleyball player, studying international law at UNIBE, with a cascade of black hair you could have woven thirty days of nights from. Some modeling when she was thirteen, fourteen, definitely on the receiving end of some skin-crafting and bone-crafting, maybe breasts, definitely ass, and who knows what else—but would rather have died than cop to it.

You better believe I’m pura lemba , she always said and even I had to roll my eyes at that. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I am .

Spent five years in Quebec before her mother finally dumped her asshole Canadian stepfather and dragged her back screaming to la Capital. Something she still held against the vieja , against the whole D.R. Spoke impeccable French and used it every chance she got, always made a show of reading thick-ass French novels like La Cousine Bette , and that was what she wanted once her studies were over: to move to Paris, work for the U.N., read French books in a café.

Men love me in Paris, she announced, like this might be a revelation.

Men love you here, Alex said.

Shook her head. It’s not the same.

Of course it’s not the same, I said. Men shower in Santo Domingo. And dance, too. You ever see franceses dance? It’s like watching an epileptics convention.

Mysty spat an ice cube at me. French men are the best .

Yes, she liked me well enough. Could even say we were friends. I had my charming in those days, I had a mouth on me like all the swords of the Montagues and Capulets combined, like someone had overdosed me with truth serum. You’re Alex’s only friend who doesn’t take his crap, she once confided. You don’t even take my crap.

Yes, she liked me but didn’t like me, entiendes . But God did I love her. Not that I had any idea how to start with a girl like her. The only “us” time we ever had was when Alex sent her to pick me up and she’d show up either at my house in Villa Con or at the gym. My crazy cousins got so excited. They weren’t used to seeing a fresa like her. She knew what she was doing. She’d leave her driver out front and come into the gym to fetch me. Put on a real show. I always knew she’d arrived because the whole gravity of the gym would shift to the entrance and I’d look over from my workout and there she’d be.

Never had any kind of game with her. Best I could do on our rides to where Alex was waiting was ask her about her day and she always said the same thing: terrible.

They had a mighty strange relationship, Alex and Mysty did. She seemed pissed off at him at least eighty per cent of the time, but she was also always with him; and it seemed to me that Alex spent more time with Mysty than he did with Valentina. Mysty helped him with all his little projects, and yet she never seemed happy about it, always acted like it was this massive imposition. Jesus, Alex, she said, will you just make it already. Acted like everything he did bored her. That, I’ve come to realize, was her protective screen. To always appear bored.

Even when she wasn’t bored Mysty wasn’t easy; jeva had a temper, always blowing up on Alex because he said something or was late or because she didn’t like the way he laughed at her. Blew up on me if I ever sided with him. Called him a mama huevo at least once a day, which in the old D.R. was a pretty serious thing to throw at a guy. Alex didn’t care, played it for a goof. You talk so sweet, ma chère . You should say it in French. Which of course she always did.

I asked Alex at least five times that summer if he and Mysty were a thing. He denied it full. Never laid a hand on her, she’s like my sister, my girlfriend would kill me, etc.

Never fucked her? That seemed highly unfuckinglikely. Something had happened between them—sex, sure, but something else—though what that was isn’t obvious even now that I’m older and dique wiser. Girls like Mysty, of her class, were always orbiting around crore-mongers like Alex, hoping that they would bite. Not that in the D.R. they ever did but still. Once when I was going on about her, wondering why the fuck he hadn’t jumped her, he looked around and then pulled me close and said, You know the thing with her, right? Her dad used to fuck her until she was twelve. Can you believe that?

Her dad? I said.

He nodded solemnly. Her dad. Did I believe it? The incest? In the D.R. incest was like the other national pastime. I guess I believed it as much as I believed Alex’s whole she’s-my-sister coro , which is to say, maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, but in the end I also didn’t care. It made me feel terrible for her, sure, but it didn’t make me want her any less. As for her and Alex, I never saw them touch, never saw anything that you could call calor pass between them; she seemed genuinely uninterested in him romantically and that’s why I figured I had a chance.

I don’t want a boyfriend, she kept saying. I want a visa.

Dear dear Mysty. Beautiful and bitchy and couldn’t wait to be away from the D.R. A girl who didn’t let anyone push her around, who once grabbed a euro-chick by the hair because the bitch tried to cut her in line. Wasn’t really a deep person. I don’t think I ever heard her voice an opinion about art or politics or say anything remotely philosophical. I don’t think she had any female friends—shit, I don’t think she had any friends, just a lot of people she said hi to in the clubs. Chick was as much a loner as I was. She never bought anything for anyone, didn’t do community work, and when she saw children she always stayed far away. Ánimales , she called them—and you could tell she wasn’t joking.