Manuel Munoz - What You See in the Dark

How she reached the stairwell was that the Mexican boy had been downstairs somehow. How it ended there was that Dan Watson had bounded down to the sidewalk. That was a fact. People said there had been a fight out there, that Mexican boy who got deported. But however the fight between the men ended didn’t matter. What mattered happened in the stairwell. People said blood had splattered all over the wall. Dan Watson had slammed the green door behind him, shutting away the world. The stairwell had shot into darkness, and that girl had fallen into it, Dan with a fistful of her hair. The two of them pitched backward, her stolen boots slipping, their bodies slamming against the wall. Her back landed with a sharp crack against the edge of a stair. Her head knocked against the wall. She tasted metal in her mouth. She tasted blood.

Did you? Dan Watson asked. Because that is the question everyone wanted to know about that girl. Had she, with that Mexican boy?

Do you take …? the question will come out.

What will be the answer?

That girl bit at his hand, but he only pressed himself harder on top of her. She bit harder and he let go of her hair to slap her once, then a second time, hard enough for her head to hit the wall again. She could not scream because the metallic taste in her mouth had sharpened into a gurgle. Blood had come up from her throat. She sensed it coming, and she would have spit it out in order to cry.

Yes.

When she spat out the blood, the cry came out. They had tumbled all the way down the stairwell, near the street with no one on it at that hour. She opened her eyes, but it was only darkness, only the sweat of Dan’s hair, hardly even the light from the top of the stairwell. A pounding came at the green door, closed to the street. Over and over again.

Why was it like that? Didn’t the songs make a promise? Didn’t the songs say to hold your arms out wide open? Wasn’t love supposed to come through an open door to find you?

The dark silhouette stalked out of the theater in disgust, in shame at what she had been forced to see. The quick-witted mother with the pinched face held in her knowledge of two sons — two! — and their suspicious bachelorhoods, the unfairness of it. Everyone with something to keep private.

Her eyes stared up at the darkness of the stairwell, but her heart saw the stars of the theater ceiling, their faint but false twinkle.

Once the song left the soft, beautiful O of Ricky Nelson’s mouth, there was only a sweet darkness left behind, not this light. Love was arriving through the open door. She heard its knock, over and over, insistent. A light was coming, brilliant and unstoppable.

Something dark was forming in her throat. A burst of light was forming there. You tried to swallow to keep it from arriving.

You wanted her to close her eyes. You had to force yourself to close them. You know she saw something. You wanted that girl to see something, and there was no going back once she did.

MY THANKS TO EVERYONE at Algonquin Books, especially Elisabeth Scharlatt and Chuck Adams, who waited with such patient enthusiasm for this novel. Brunson Hoole and Rachel Careau assisted me tremendously in the final stages of production and I am deeply grateful.

My new colleagues at the University of Arizona have provided me with support and good feeling, as have my students. I especially thank Ted McLoof, Will Pewitt, and Jason Timermanis, who took time from their own work to help me with mine.

This book was started in New York City, and my colleagues at Hachette Book Group remain dedicated supporters: Bob Castillo, Tareth Mitch, David Palmer, Kallie Shimek, and, especially, Harvey-Jane Kowal. Thanks also to my friends who took my absences in stride: Antonio Annunziato, John Antonio, Pierce Mattie, and Aaron Smith.

The New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts both provided me with generous support. I cannot express enough gratitude to the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation for the inspiration and confidence granted by its tremendous gift in 2008.

Helena María Viramontes, as always, rushed in to assist when I felt most stranded. I aspire to such generosity, as well as to the spirit of support provided by my agent, Stuart Bernstein, a believer all along.