Roachkiller and Other Stories (3 page)

As she moved past the woman, Iris realized what was familiar about the lady’s face. She looked like the crazy gypsy lady from the cover of the dream book. Iris did not want to turn her back on her. But the door was in front of her and she opened it. It was dark inside.

“Juan,” she said softly, and then louder.

Something rustled in sheets in the darkness.

She reached over and turned on the light.

Juan was in bed, lying facedown. He looked up at her, his jet-black hair a mess.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I never seen where you live, Juan. I wanted to see it.”

“How did you find me?”

“I always knew. I just never had a reason to come over. You never invited me.”

“You’re crazy. If this is about her . . .”

“It’s not about that. It’s about business.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Well, you told me pregnant women are crazy. Your little friend must be crazy then,” Iris said, then moved closer to the bed. “I want my five hundred dollars.”

“What five hundred dollars?”

He remained on his stomach, not bothering to turn to look at her. Iris figured he was naked under the sheets. She knew he liked to sleep that way. She took a step closer to the bed and took out the old .38 and touched it to his left foot, then she moved it up his leg slowly till she got to his butt cheeks.

“This could do a lot of damage, Juan. I can’t imagine how long it would take to clean the sheets.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I want my money.”

He moved and she backed away.

“Careful, I may be slow but a bullet is very fast.”

He opened a drawer and took out his wallet. He gave her a messy wad of bills.

She took them and counted. “There’s only three hundred dollars here.”

“That’s not my money. That’s Benny’s money. He’s going to come for you.”

She thought of Negron and said, “Let him.”

She put the gun right over where his testicles would be. For a second, she thought she would really pull the trigger. She saw it in her head, Juan screaming, the blood flowing like the wave in her dream. He deserved to have his balls shot off. The wound would probably kill him. And then she would really be rid of him.

But then she thought of Nancy. The little girl’s father would be dead, her mother in jail. Iris knew that she would continue to suffer with Juan around, but her daughter would suffer more without him.

Iris put the money in her purse. “Fine. Come visit your daughter. She loves you. I can’t stop that. But a girl should know her father, good or bad.”

“You’re crazy, Iris.”

“See you for Christmas then,” she said, picking up the gun then bringing it down to smack him in the balls.

“Ayyyy,” he squealed, fully looking at her now for the first time. She aimed the gun at his face. “Okay, okay,” he said.

As she left, the young girl stood against the stove. She had a large knife in her hand. She said nothing but her eyes were full of fear and hate. Iris thought about making the girl’s head disappear but figured the poor thing was headed for enough trouble already.

As soon as the door slammed behind her, Iris felt the weight of everything she’d just done, like a demon hunched on her back. Tears fell down her face, flowing fast, making her taste salt. A gun. Benny’s money? Juan. God forgive her. God help her. She was more scared than she had ever been in her life, and at the same time more excited than she had ever been. She waddled slowly to the elevator, and then she realized something else was happening to her, and she knew she had to hurry.

*  *  *

There was blood everywhere. It flowed like a river and covered the backseat of the car service car.

“Avanca!”
Iris screamed
.

The driver talked too fast for her to understand. Her water had broken in the car, and the liquid pooled dark and red and viscous at the bottom of her feet. She would make it, she told herself. She was a survivor. The car made slow progress through the snow-covered streets. Iris saw whiteness covering the windows, smothering the car. And then all she saw was black.

Later, in the hospital, she opened her eyes and saw Nancy.

“Hija,”
Iris said.

“Titi Maribel brought me.”

Maribel’s voice came from somewhere to her left. “Your son is fine. I saw him. He’s beautiful. A full head of hair!”

Iris stroked her daughter’s face. The girl put something in her hand. Iris looked—it was a roll of money. The girl giggled. “It’s ours, you said.”

Juracán

There was another dead dog on the side of the road. Tongue hanging out. Guts. Blood. I’d never seen so many dead dogs on the road anywhere. The strays must go out of their way to commit suicide. Or maybe they just don’t like dogs in Puerto Rico. I was in this cramped rental car, driving my three aunts to my cousin’s wedding in Ponce. It was a ten-minute ride, and I’d already counted four dead dogs. It took some of the buzz off.

I asked my aunt about it.
“Qué pasó con los jodio peros en la highway?”
I said.

“Se dice perrrrros,”
my Titi Juana said.

“Perrrrrros,”
I tried.

“Perros,”
Titi Gloria said.

Then Tía Nidia said,
“No sé, mi amor. Toda la gente manejan como loco aquí.”

I could see what they meant. The roads in PR could drive anyone crazy. Everyone seemed to drive with the gas pedal pressed to the floor. There was never a traffic light where you needed it. And a lot of the blacktop curved around mountains and were crazy narrow, so if you threw a cigarette out the window it took a thousand-foot drop into nothing but jungle.

But no one honked. That was nice. They might not like dogs around PR, but they sure as hell were polite.

“Por favor, mi amor, maneja más rápido,”
Titi Juana said. Then my aunts giggled about something. I didn’t follow. But I could tell by the way they laughed it was something dirty.

The church was dark, big. Polished pews. Bleeding Christ. The ceremony in Spanish. I spent the time shifting my weight from one foot to the other, wondering if the reception would have an open bar.

*  *  *

The drinks weren’t free, so when the bartender poured, I told him,
“Más. Chin más,”
and put my hand under the back of the bottle.

At the table, my aunts gossiped, and I tried to listen, nodded a lot, and laughed when I thought I was supposed to. I knew everyone at our table, except this one lady. She had black hair cut straight across the forehead. Dark copper skin, cheeks high and broad, lips dark and full. She seemed to be alone, except for a bright green gift bag in the seat next to her. It had the typical
“¡Bienvenidos a la Isla del Encanto!”
on it, over a coqui frog wearing a straw hat. I got up and walked around to her side.

“Quieres que yo lo puse esto con los otros regalos?”
I said, standing over her.

“Qué dices?”
she said, looking up with her eyes, moving her head.

I gestured to show what I meant. Gift bag. Gift table.

“Grácias, pero es algo diferente,”
she said and looked down at her manicure.

“No sweat,” I said and took a seat next to her.
“Me manejó aquí esta noche y vióo una cosa . . . rara. Vió, como, cuatro perros en la highway—muertos.
It was crazy.”

She laughed, covering her teeth like some women do, then shook her head to herself. I hadn’t been trying to be funny. She looked completely away from me. I got the hint and so I bounced and went back to the bar.

Some people gave some speeches. I went outside for a smoke. It was cooler than I expected. Hanging over the palm trees, the moon looked like my grandmother’s glaucoma eye. It smelled good out there, green, wet, sweet. The trees and the sounds of tree frogs all around, doing their little whistles. I’d never seen a coqui up close before, so while I puffed I walked around to see if I could spot one. Then I heard a woman talking in a loud voice. I looked up and saw a silhouette. A lady talking on a cell phone. I couldn’t catch all of it. Something like,
How can you do this to me.
Then some bad cursing.

I got closer. It was the woman from the table. She was framed in the light coming from the reception hall. She was carrying that big gift bag.

When she hung up, she saw me standing there.
“Estás perdido?”
she said.

I wasn’t lost.
“Qué noche bella,”
I said.

“Qué noche fea,”
she said and walked past me.

“Frio
, you mean,” I said to her back.

I finished my cigarette and considered calling Julie. I had a vision of her tight freckled body in a bikini. I checked my watch. It wasn’t a good time. So I just went inside.

A band was playing, and Tía Lidia wanted to know when I would ask her to dance. So I danced with her and then my other aunts and then with every female relative I had. As one salsa finished another aunt would come up, and so it went. I had a couple more drinks. Then I danced with the bride, my cousin Carmen. She was a good egg—a doctor now married to another doctor.

I asked her who the dark woman was.
“Una amiga de colegio. Se llame
Itaba,” she said. “That’s funny, Papo, because she asked me about you.”

My cousin was small, thin-hipped, dark-haired. She was tiny in my arms. At six-four, I towered over her.

“Oh really? What did you tell her?”

That you were divorced. That you were having a hard time. Not too much.”

I guess that was the nicest way of saying I’d been unemployed and unemployable for almost a year. “Okay,” I said.

“I can’t wait to get to Mexico,” she said. “This humidity is killing me. Is my hair okay?”

“How’s mine?” I said, and we laughed. “Leave it to you to get married during hurricane season.”

After Carmen, I danced another salsa with Titi Juana. I felt good, energized, buzzed. I figured I’d give that dark lady another shot.

But then I saw my grandmother. She wore a black dress with fluffy edges and sat on the edge of her chair. I could tell she wanted to dance.

“Abuela. Vamos a bailar,”
I said. She smiled up at me with shiny false teeth. I took her velvet-soft hand and led her to the dance floor. She put her white-haired head against my chest.

When the dance ended, she smiled at me again then said,
“Coco Duro,”
the nickname she had for me as a kid. Then she smacked me in the arm because she couldn’t reach my head anymore.

When I got back to the table the dark woman was gone.

Maybe she’d gone to make a phone call again. I was walking to the door, caught myself in the mirror and put up a hand to fix my hair, when this guy bumped into me. Dark, wraparound shades covered his eyes. I never liked not being able to see a guy’s eyes. You can’t see a guy’s eyes, you can’t see if you can trust him. Dark guy, jet-black hair, combed back. Funny thing was the guy’s forehead—it was kind of deformed. Flat like a plate from his eyebrows to his hairline. And there were thin scars up and down his cheeks. The guy caught me looking, his shades turned toward me, but he said nothing, so I said nothing, and that was it.

I went back to my hair, making sure the pointed peak on top was just right. The gel was holding fine.

Outside there was no sign of the lady. Her loss.

The rest of my night I drank enough to feel good, then I drove my aunts back to my aunt’s house, where I was staying. There was a light rain, making the dark road shiny and slick. I saw four more dead dogs. More guts. More tongues. Or maybe they were the same dogs. The women talked the whole time in the car—what a nice ceremony, what nice music, the food could’ve been better.

In the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep, I got up and went to the living room, found a bottle of dark rum, and filled a glass with it. I heard nails scraping on the floor and saw Titi Juana’s little lapdog peek around a corner to look at me. “Cheers, Romeo,” I said to the dog. “Stay off the streets.” I tipped my head back, drained the glass, burped, and went back to bed.

Outside the drizzle had turned into pounding rain.

*  *  *

In the morning I sat at the kitchen counter in front of a plate filled with eggs, platanos, half a mango, and buttered bread. Café con leche, orange juice.
“Come más,”
my Tía Lidia said, and before I could answer I got another piece of bread, another fried egg, another half a mango. My head was tight, my stomach turned, but I kept eating. I could’ve tossed some to Romeo. He was at my ankles, begging, but I didn’t want to insult my aunt by feeding him with food she made for me.

“I gotta get ready to go to San Juan,” I told them in English. I was too sour to try Spanish.

My aunt gave me more bread and told me about a tropical storm warning coming in. She was happy my cousin had flown to Mexico that morning for the honeymoon. The warning could turn into a hurricane. She told me I shouldn’t travel even though the rain had stopped.

“I’m meeting a friend,” I said. “And I want to get a little blackjack and poker in while I’m here. Besides, who cares about a little hurricane?”

Still, I wanted to get moving before it started to rain again. I went to pack my duffle bag, and through the bars on the window I saw a taxi park in front of the house. A woman got out. My cousin’s friend Itaba. Tía Lidia walked out to talk to her.

I was twisting the lid onto my flask when Tía Lidia came into the room.
“La amiga de
Carmen
necesita un paseo a San Juan.”
I could give her a ride, no?

“She can’t take a cab?” I said.

Cabs were very expensive, my aunt said.

I could see I didn’t have a choice.

“Y ella es muy bonita. Parece india.”

“Yeah. Well, I got to get ready first.”

It’s good to make new friends, my aunt said. You need someone to take care of you, she said.

“I have a friend waiting for me in San Juan.”