Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

“You’re Mindo,” Nelson said.

They didn’t shake hands, but there was no violence. The threat evaporated the moment they saw each other.

Patalarga still didn’t know what to make of this. He hadn’t dismissed the idea of a deranged killer coming from T— to snuff out Nelson. He desperately wanted them all to move inside the theater, “where we’d be safer, and dry,” he said, but Mindo was nailed to the ground. He wouldn’t budge.

“I had the sense that anything could happen,” Patalarga told me later.

Not anything. This:

“Come with me,” Mindo says to Nelson. He slurs his words, but there’s no menace in them, just the quiet authority of a jilted man. “We have to talk.”

“We do,” Nelson says, nodding gravely, like a child who knows he’s done wrong. Mindo never crosses the threshold, and Nelson simply floats out of the gate, as if being pulled by something irresistible, something magnetic.

That’s all.

Ixta’s lovers walk off into the dark, lightly drizzling night; Henry and Patalarga stand side by side, like worried parents, watching them go. A half block on, and they’ve disappeared into the murk. Only one of them comes back.

IXTA SPENTthat evening at the apartment, reading old magazines and waiting for Mindo. He had the night off from the restaurant, and she assumed he was at his studio, painting, though it was just as likely he was doing the same as she was — sitting around, reading idly, staving off boredom by daydreaming of a more creative life. If they’d been in a better place, they might have done that sort of thing together. They might have even enjoyed it. She considered surprising him with a visit, but it was cold out, and besides, he might not welcome the interruption.

She didn’t mind calling though: Ixta tried Mindo’s cell phone several times, beginning just after seven, calling every hour or so until around eleven-thirty. She left no messages, and at about midnight she went to sleep. “I wasn’t worried,” she told me later. “I was annoyed. We usually talked at some point in the day. This was it, you understand? I was bored. I was thinking to myself: what an asshole. I was thinking: this is my life now. I stay at home with the baby, he comes home when he pleases. He makes art. My breasts swell, my nipples turn black. It felt very dark, you see? I wasn’t even thinking about Nelson. He didn’t cross my mind. I’m telling you, just like I told the police.”

This is what we know: the two young men left the theater headed in the direction of the plaza. A fine drizzle hung in the air, and the sidewalks were slippery. Mindo was very drunk, and they walked carefully so as not to fall, one empty city block and then another, shuffling as best they could through the curtain of fog. For a long time, they didn’t speak.

“Do you love her?” Mindo finally asked. They were five or six blocks from the theater by then.

“Yes,” Nelson said. And then: “But she doesn’t love me back.”

Mindo nodded. “So at least we have that in common.”

We know they made it to the plaza, that they walked diagonally across it and sought refuge at the Wembley. This was Nelson’s suggestion. It was a slow night, and one of the white-haired bartenders sat behind the counter, doing a crossword puzzle. He remembers when they came in, about a quarter to one in the morning. For every crossword, he wrote down his start and end times, so he was able to provide the police with a fairly accurate estimate. He told them he knew Nelson, recognized him: he’d served drinks to Sebastián back when Nelson was still a boy, and he’d seen him a few times after rehearsals. The other one, Mindo, he’d never seen before.

“The tall one was drunk, which was none of my business. I shook hands with the kid. I hadn’t seen him in a few months.”

They chatted for a few moments, and then Nelson ordered a liter of beer and two glasses. Mindo watched the exchange, unimpressed.

“My old man used to bring me here,” Nelson said when they’d sat.

“Your dad,” Mindo mused. “Did he mess with other men’s women too?”

They locked eyes. The evening could still go any which way, and Nelson knew it. He hadn’t decided what would happen. What he wanted to happen. He took a deep breath.

“My old man was a prince.”

Mindo sucked his teeth. “Skips a generation.”

“I guess it must,” Nelson said.

Just then the old bartender appeared, all smiles. He had the beer and a couple of glasses. Patalarga had lent Nelson some cash, and he paid right away. Mindo didn’t protest, only watched suspiciously, examining the transaction as if attempting to decipher a magic trick.

“Are you all right?” Nelson asked.

“Of course I’m all right.”

“Because you don’t look all right.”

The bartender, when we spoke, offered much the same assessment. He stood over them for a moment, observing. “The taller one, he looked like hell.”

“I’m fine,” said Mindo. He looked up at the bartender. “And you, old man, why are you still here?”

The bartender frowned and went back to his crossword puzzle.

“What were you doing with Ixta?” Mindo asked once the beer had been poured.

Nelson considered his rival. In this bar, beneath this warm light, any hint of menace was gone. He was hurt; that was all.

“Just talking,” Nelson said.

“Yeah? What about?”

“Not much.” Nelson turned away. The content of that morning’s conversation was so disappointing he could scarcely bring himself to think of it. “I was surprised at how little we had to say.”

“Not what you’d planned.”

Nelson shook his head. “It wasn’t what I’d hoped .” He paused, and looked up at Mindo. It was merciless to push forward, with more courage than he’d had that morning with Ixta, when he’d most needed it.

“I wanted to talk about us. Me and her.”

He enunciated these last three words carefully, clearly.

Mindo laughed. “You don’t have an us to talk about. There is no us .”

“There was once. There might be.”

For a few moments they didn’t say much, each drank their beer, never breaking eye contact. Mindo processed the brazenness of it, shaking his head. He set his beer down.

“But we’re the ones having a baby! You get that, right? She and I. Me and her.”

Nelson shook his head. “How do you know it’s yours?”

With that, the bar’s quiet evening was shattered.

When questioned (by me, by police) the Wembley’s old bartender recalled this moment very clearly. Mindo stood abruptly, lunging at Nelson and tipping the table over. Beer was spilled, one of the glasses shattered, and in an instant a few of the tables nearby were at the ready; the men, who a moment before had been drinking peacefully, were standing now, alert and prepared to intervene or defend themselves. When they saw it was just these two, everyone stepped back, giving Nelson and Mindo the room they required. They tussled for a while, neither very skilled but neither relenting, until they were on the ground, the both of them. It fell to the old bartender to break things up. Men like him are devoted to their service. Perhaps this was for the best; regarding barroom scuffles, he might have been the most experienced server in the city.

“Boys! Please!” he shouted, because they were all boys to him. “Stop!”

Nelson and Mindo stopped. Boys always did.

“Get off the floor!”

They stood.

He had them now. He told me later that he was sure of it. If they couldn’t be civilized, he said, they’d have to leave. Did they really want to leave?

In case they didn’t believe him, the bartender added, “Look at it out there!”