A Fierce and Subtle Poison (9 page)

Thirteen

I WAS SICK
for three days.

I hadn’t even straightened up before Isabel pushed me out the gate. And after the gate had slammed shut behind me, and I’d started down Calle Sol with a smile on my face, I could still hear her calling me bad names in Spanish.

Eventually, I passed the house of Señora Garcia. With bare feet and a broom clamped in her arthritic fingers, she was attempting to sweep up the wet leaves and palm fronds that had fallen in front of her house during the storm. She was wearing a housedress that came down to her knees, and her dark varicose veins pulsed across her bare calves as she worked. She stopped and stared, making sure that I could see her mumbling at me under her breath.

I waved and gave her my best grin. “Buenos días, Señora.”

She spit in the street and went back to sweeping.

I got back to the hotel just in time for my dad to wave me over for breakfast in the restaurant. The manager apologized for the half-functioning kitchen and delay in fresh coffee. My dad ignored him and continued to read from the soggy, day-old newspaper.

“Did you hear about these girls who went missing?” he asked. “One of them died. Sisters from San Juan, Cara and Marilyn.”

“Mari
sol
. Is there something about them in the paper?”

“No.” He flipped the page and recrossed his legs. “I heard a couple of the porters talking about them on my way down this morning.”

My dad clucked his tongue and said it was a pity that so many young girls in Old San Juan were undereducated and lacked proper guidance. He apparently could not put two and two together to figure out that Mari
sol
was the reason I’d spent close to ten hours at the police station.

“You should really be thankful for what you have, son.” He looked up. “Is that a new shirt?”

As I chewed violently on a hunk of banana bread, I envisioned myself swimming out into the ocean, never stopping, never returning.

It wasn’t until the first forkful of eggs entered my mouth that I realized my food didn’t taste right. I spit the eggs into my napkin, but the courtyard had already started spinning. I had to grip the table to keep from getting dizzy. The skin around my lips started to crawl, like it was being swarmed by tiny beetles. I slapped and scratched to get them off.

I heard my dad call my name. He said I looked terrible and asked if I got enough sleep. I couldn’t answer. My tongue felt heavy and numb. As I pushed away from the table, I lost my balance and fell onto one knee. My coffee cup tipped off its saucer and hit the ground, where it smashed into several pieces and sent hot coffee all over my hand. The pain barely registered. The slivers of porcelain turned to worms inching across the wet bricks.

I peeled myself off the ground and managed to stumble up to my room just in time to retch up a mixture of coffee, banana bread, and stomach fluid into the toilet. As I was resting my cheek against the cold porcelain, I realized that Isabel had entirely avoided answering my question about her mother. I smiled, thinking that gave me good reason for another visit. Then I passed out.

I woke up in my bed with one of the housekeepers dabbing my forehead with a damp washcloth. I was burning up. The sheets were soaked. My breaths were thin and made whistling sounds. When I ran my tongue over my dried-out lips, I could feel small blisters around the edges.

I slept and woke, slept and woke, always thirsty. I dreamed. First, of a Christmas back in Houston. I must have been six. I’d gotten a plastic baseball bat and a ball with a stand. Even though it was icy outside, I went into the backyard to play. I imagined a crowd cheering for me as I hit a grand slam and ran the bases, pumping my small fists in the air. I imagined them cheering loud enough to drown out my mother calling my dad a selfish asshole from inside the house.

I dreamed of the dog I was never allowed to have. He was a golden retriever named Frankie. Imaginary Frankie and I went on a long walk around the neighborhood. When we got back home, I filled up his bowl in the backyard and petted his thick hair as he lapped up water.

I dreamed of being with Marisol, kissing her full lips and putting my hands under the thin fabric of her dress in a quiet, empty room. She told me again that she’d waited all year for me to come back to the island. Then she told me she had a secret. In between kisses on my neck and my throat, she told me she was full of poison, and now that she’d kissed me all over, I was full of poison, too. I didn’t care. If anything, what she told me made me only want to kiss her more.

I dreamed of my mother; she was standing near a window, with her back to me. She was telling me the story of la ciguapa, the monster who lives in the trees on the edge of the beach. La ciguapa has dark eyes, and her black hair is so long it touches the tops of her feet like the hem of a dress. Her feet are backward so her toes face behind her. She is full of misery and hate. At night, she paces and sings—if you could even call that noise she makes singing. It sounds more like children wailing in an empty church. In the morning, you can trace the path she was walking because of her backward footprints and because rocks and the leaves will be sprinkled with her tears.

La ciguapa is not dead, my mother said in the dream, but she’s not alive, either. She roams the trees around the beach looking for the man she once loved a long time ago—some say he was a sailor who went out one morning with his ship and never returned—but as much as she searches, she will never find him.

So she finds substitutes.

I’d heard this story before—not in a dream but for real. My mom had said there was an old man in her village who everyone believed had met the monster. It happened one morning when he went out fishing. La ciguapa was just there, standing at the edge of the tree line, gesturing for him to follow her. He did; he followed her deep into the forest hoping to get a single kiss. She kissed him, yes, but when she pulled away, he realized she’d taken a piece of his spirit. Now when he spoke, he’d trail off in the middle of sentences and leave certain letters out from all his words.

In the dream, I asked my mother if she believed in her, if she thought la ciguapa was real.

My mother smiled. Her answer was perfect: “What’s there not to believe?”

Last, I dreamed of the young nun. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my hot feet with her cold hands. She’d been in love with the
blacksmith’s
son, not the butcher’s son, she told me. She didn’t know why everyone kept getting that wrong. Most of the rest of the story was true, though, she’d said with a sigh. My room was once her room. She’d remembered lying right where I was lying, and gazing up at the ceiling, tears running down her cheeks, as the blood drained out of her.

She looked at me. She had no eyes, just fuzzy circles that were as dark as her habit. She told me that some loves are not meant for this world. She asked if I understood; I nodded. I told her they were tearing the hotel down and that I was sorry. I told her I wanted to help her, but she just turned her head and was quiet as she continued to press her dead thumbs into the arches of my feet. Before she left, she walked around the room, looking for her letters one last time. When I told her I’d never seen any as long as I’d been staying here, she seemed disappointed.

Eventually a doctor came, and I was lucid enough to hear her tell my dad I’d contracted some kind of fever. She said it looked like it was breaking, but that it might be causing hallucinations.

No shit, I wanted to say. I’ve been talking to ghosts.

I slept again for what seemed like days. I dreamed about my mother again, about running through burning buildings, about Marisol, about a little girl who turned into a wolf, about imaginary Frankie, about swimming into the ocean, but never about Isabel.

When I finally woke up, Rico was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching my television. At first I thought I was imagining him, too. I was tired of opening my eyes and feeling like the world had completely changed since the last time I’d shut them. As a test, I closed my eyes slowly and then opened them again, just as slowly. He was still there.

“What are you doing?” I mumbled.

Rico spun around. “Hey! Look who’s up! It’s La Bella Durmiente!”

“Way to be sick, dipshit.” I turned to see Carlos lying beside me, shoeless but still dressed in his porter’s uniform. He had something like five pillows under his head. I checked: I had none.

“Make yourself at home,” I said.

He grinned. “Don’t worry, Lucas. I have been.”

“So, what?” Rico asked. “You feel better?”

Surprisingly, I did. I didn’t feel like I was burning holes through my sheets while surrounded by figures from my dreams. I put my hand over my heart and confirmed that it was, in fact, still functioning. I licked my lips. The sores were gone—if they’d even been there in the first place.

“One of the ladies who works here said your fever finally broke,” Rico said. “So what happened to you, man? Eat something bad? Get bit by a rat?”

“Something like that,” I muttered.

I dragged myself out from under the covers and into a pair of jeans that I’d tossed on the floor several days ago. They smelled like piss and old sweat. I’m sure I smelled just as bad.

My legs felt wobbly from lack of use as I made my way to the bathroom, leaving my friends to continue their full-room takeover. After splashing water on my face, I leaned against the sink and looked in the mirror. The skin under my eyes was deep purple; my cheeks and chin were covered with dirty blond stubble, and my hair was so greasy it practically stood on end. What was sad was that I’d seen myself look worse.

“Hey, Lucas!” Carlos shouted from the other room. “The reason we stopped by was to see if you were up to going to the Festival de San Juan tonight.”

Every June, the locals all gather in the Plaza de Armas to celebrate San Juan Bautista, the patron saint of the island. Street vendors hock fried codfish, beer, and cheap necklaces made from shells, and little kids run around holding sparklers too close to their faces. Couples old and young dance to live bands consisting of men sharply dressed in their best guayaberas, fedoras, and boat shoes and who can play their instruments all night long. Women come in from the outlying districts in droves in their finest flower-print sundresses and don’t leave until the sun comes up or until they find a man, whichever comes first. Kids my age find dark corners where they can drink and feel each other up. Inevitably, either Rico or I—or sometimes the both of us—end up drunk and in the fountain.

“Yeah, sure.” I shoved a toothbrush in my mouth. “Hey, so where was Celia?” I asked, stepping from the bathroom. I assumed that she’d found her way home, since she wasn’t the first thing either of them brought up.

Rico spoke without turning his head away from the television. “She’s still missing, Luke.”

I halted mid-brush.

“The police are still looking, man,” Carlos added. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and snuggled deeper into his mountain of pillows.

I turned to spit in the sink and then dragged the back of my hand across my mouth.

“And you’re just okay with that?” I asked, stepping out of the bathroom.

“I know it freaks you out since you and Mari were kind of . . . you know,
close
,” Rico added, his eyes still glued on my television, “but we’ve done all we can do at this point.”

“Our friend’s cousin vanished into thin air,” I said, “and neither of you give a shit.”

Rico spun around and launched off the edge of the bed. Before I could dodge him, he’d shoved me hard on both shoulders causing me to crash into the bathroom doorframe. If it had been anyone but Rico, I would’ve fought back, but Rico’s was a rage that hit whiplash-fast. Whenever I lost my temper—which was often enough—no one got legitimately freaked out the way they did when Rico lost his. I’d seen guys react to his anger the way an unfortunate hiker would react to a bear he came across on a trail—hands up, palms out, making soothing sounds while backing away slowly.

“
We
don’t give a shit?” Rico snarled. “
We
looked for her. While you were here sick off your ass, Carlos and me were knocking on doors and helping out with search parties, not to mention going to Marisol’s funeral and staying up all day and night trying to keep Ruben from completely losing his shit, so don’t
fucking
talk to me in that stuck-up way of yours about not caring.”

Marisol’s funeral. I’d missed it because I was sick. I was sick because I couldn’t resist putting my lips on Isabel’s skin.

I turned to Carlos, who’d swung his legs off the side of the bed and was in the process of putting his work shoes back on. He looked at me, shook his head, and shrugged like,
What do want me to do?

“Hey!” Rico shoved me again in the chest to get my attention. “I’m sorry about Marisol, okay? I know you were only together for a couple of days or whatever, but still that sucks.” He put his finger in my face, but his tone had softened. “You should’ve just told me you were going to the beach that night. I would’ve come with you, and you wouldn’t have had to deal with this . . . ” He waved his hand in the air. “ . . . by yourself.”

I cringed. “I wanted to be alone.”

“Yes, I know.” Rico backed away. “Lucas—always needing his precious alone time. We get it.” He ticked up his chin to Carlos. “Let’s go.”

Carlos was halfway out the door when he stopped and turned. “Hey. I just want you to know—while you were sick La Lopez was around asking questions.”

“About what?”

“About you. Like, about your temper. Like, if I’ve ever seen you get jealous or anything. I told her out of everyone I knew, you were the most levelheaded.”

“So you lied?”

“Through my teeth.” Carlos cracked a smile that quickly faded. “Just be careful. La Lopez has it out for you.”

After they left, I took my time in the shower, scrubbing off the days’ worth of grime, then shaved, slicked back my hair, scrounged up some clean clothes, and headed downstairs to have my first proper dinner in a long time. In the staircase, I ran into a girl who had just arrived with her parents after a long flight from the mainland and was out exploring the hotel on her own. She was wearing a long white dress and white leather sandals to match. I told her my name was Luke, that I was from Houston, that my dad owned this place. I wasn’t proud of myself, but it just all came out, so easy, like it used to before all the girls I met ended up dead or deadly. The girl smiled. She was pretty. She said her name was Tara and that it was nice to meet me.