Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

Sleepy Joe made his way through life half-asleep, lacking in initiative, no plans, indifferent and drowsy, a pack of muscles that went underused. In bed, however, he was able to let loose that impressive voltage that dwelled inside him.

“If you were to put such energy into work,” I always told him, “you’d be a millionaire.”

When it came to sex, everything about him was much too grand and lasted forever. There was in him a kind of excess that made me think of a goat, an animal in heat, a satyr, something not quite human, like those hyperactive and hypersexual monkeys Violeta and I saw once in the zoo, jerking off and fucking like crazy in the cage. Violeta was speechless. “Let’s go,” I told her, grabbing her arm, “come on, Violeta, there are other cute animals.” But Violeta did not move from there. “You go,” she responded, “I want to see this.” I had also glimpsed the other Sleepy Joe, in those fits of rage that made him want to kill everyone and everything. This monk-like creature on the roof was not my brother-in-law, not my boyfriend or my lover, not his brother Greg, not the poor, good-for-nothing Joe, the sleepy, lonely, fake trucker. He was something else now, a feverish possessed lunatic, a sinister priest, a murderer clown. This son of a bitch would no doubt kill me, I thought. Suddenly that became very clear to me. Or at the least impale me with a broom, as he had done to Corina.

There were some nails lying around and I started to try to reach them with my foot, little by little, so he wouldn’t notice. Until finally I was able to get a hand on one and with it I started to loosen the knot on the belt, doing it in little steps, patiently, slowly. It was time to gamble all or nothing: Sleepy Joe was flying, stoned with the divine presence, and as the knot started to come loose, I gave a good pull on the belt, managed to free myself, and flew down the stairs as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as before, no more of this hiding in the rat hole. This time, I grabbed my mink and shoes, and Joe’s wallet, which in a stroke of brilliance I snagged out of his jacket, and ran out the door. I flew down the stairs and out into the street! I buttoned the mink all the way up so that it wasn’t obvious I was butt naked underneath, and soon I was down in the labyrinths of the subway.

Hero! Shit, I had left Hero behind again. I hadn’t even seen him when I rushed out, and to look for him at that moment would have been suicide. But whatever was to happen, this time I was committing to rescuing him once and for all. At the next station, I got out of the subway and hailed a cab. You must be wondering, Mr. Rose, why I just didn’t call the cops to have Sleepy Joe arrested. The answer is simply that the cops are the enemy, that’s the main difference between your people and my people. You have authority on your side, and we always have it against us. If I would have gone to the cops in the state I was in, an ex-con in their eyes, a mess, ass naked under the mink, do you get how fucked I would have been, Mr. Rose?

“Just go,” I told the cabdriver.

“Where?”

“Just away from here.”

After a few minutes of riding around, I gave the driver my address. When we got there, I instructed him to park nearby, behind some garbage Dumpster halfway down the block. I scrutinized the driver while we waited. He was an ogre from the very heart of Africa, a man of few words who took shit from no one. This was my man, I told myself. Nothing was going to faze this guy. And money was not a problem because there was three hundred dollars in my brother-in-law’s wallet.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to hide here,” I told the driver, crouching on the floor of the backseat and greasing his hand with a hundred-dollar bill. “Go up to the fifth floor of that building and let me know if there is anyone there. Go in the apartment, check everywhere, the bathroom, the kitchen, everywhere. If there’s no one there, check the roof, just a look, and come down and let me know. There’s no lock on the door. I just don’t want to run into my drunk of a husband, you know. He hits me when he drinks. No big thing, you have nothing to worry—”

“I’m not worried,” he cut me off. It seemed he’d done this kind of thing before.

“If you run into him, just say you must have the wrong floor.”

“I can take care of myself, miss.”

“Good, I’ll wait for you here.”

Ten minutes later, the driver returned. Good as new.

“He’s in there alright,” he told me. “On the roof. Some tall blond dude?”

“Then let’s wait till he comes out. I’ll stay down here and you keep a lookout. I have another fifty. Easy money. Just tell me when he leaves.”

“There goes the son of a bitch,” the driver announced forty-five minutes later. “That’s the dude on the roof.”

And sure enough, it was him — hands in pockets, head buried under the upturned collar of his jacket. Sleepy Joe walked down the street and out of sight.

“Wait for me here,” I said to the driver. The plan was to go quickly into the apartment, get Hero, some clothes, especially the stuff Pro Bono bought me for the trial, which I had left sitting out, and leave there forever.

“Hero?” I started calling him. “Hero? Hero! Come here, my little doggy, where are you, my precious? Where you hiding? Come to Mommy. Don’t be afraid; Joe’s gone; the monster’s not here.” But nothing. I looked for him under the sofa, behind the refrigerator, in the bathtub, the closets, nothing. He had to be somewhere. He always used to hide really well when Sleepy Joe was around, but I couldn’t find him anywhere and it was not that big of an apartment. I climbed up to the roof, already very freaked out, I knew he couldn’t even climb up there in his state, but I went to check. The sun was already hitting the tar full force, and the remains of Joe’s ceremony were scattered all about. Candle stubs, little wax puddles, a few rags blown by the breeze, and a thread of smoke from incense still burning. That’s it. Now that I’m telling you this, Mr. Rose, I recall this amazing nightclub I once went to with Sleepy Joe because Greg was out of town tending to some problem in his other house. Sleepy Joe and I went dancing, my idea — I paid for it and chose the place, a nightclub named Le Palace that was one of the most astonishing places I had seen in my life, with music blasting so loud that I felt it vibrating inside of me, and that extravagant mob flying on Ecstasy and drinking tons of water, women showing off their tits, the trannies wrapped in sequins and feathers, the couples amid the incredible high-tech laser light show. Four floors of live music, and I floated amid the lights and careless laughter as if I were inside a fish tank, not knowing for sure if all that was real or if I was just dreaming. Needless to say, I had an amazing time, even if Sleepy Joe was in a shitty mood and had to be dragged to the dance floor. But in the middle of it all, I lost an earring. It was a little gold stud that I really liked but I hadn’t even noticed I had lost it till I got home. So the following morning, I had to go back to the nightclub and see if I could find the earring. The place was closed but the workers let me in while they looked, and I was shocked. In the light of day, the spell from the night before was shattered. Imagine Cinderella’s world after the clock strikes twelve. The so-called Le Palace was just an empty soulless warehouse area, a really gloomy place, deathly silent and with battered furniture covered with dust, badly painted black walls, torn curtains, a suffocating smell of cigarettes, and garbage in every corner. In the light of the day, the nocturnal paradise was reduced to ashes. Now, on the roof of my building, I looked with the same unease at what remained of the great ceremony my brother-in-law had conducted. It was so desolate, such an inconsequential place, littered with broken toys. That was the feeling I had, as if I were seeing the remnants of a children’s game. The whole scene was nothing more than a poor imitation, an absurdity instead of a real ritual. And that had been the horrible scene, the dark nightmare? I swear I felt ridiculous about the ghosts I had invented in my head. Where had that unwarranted fear that had left me paralyzed just a couple of hours before come from? But then I found something that congealed the blood in my veins. It was something so frightening that my legs weakened and I fell to the ground. I had to cover my mouth to stifle the scream that escaped from me, in pieces, almost comical, like one of those doomed girls in a horror film. What followed was something visceral, absolute terror. I saw Hero. Sleepy Joe had nailed him to the wall. My doggy. Sleepy Joe had nailed my dog to a wall up there on the roof. There was Hero crucified, bleeding, and already dead. I bent over at the waist clutching my stomach as if someone had kicked me there. I was paralyzed by the pain, the horror, the anguish, the trembling, shaking like a leaf, Mr. Rose. When I was finally able to react, I pulled the nails off, washed the wounds, kissed Hero’s snout, and stroked his body a long time, crying over him, and then I placed the remains in a pillowcase.