The Barcelona Brothers (16 page)

Tiffany ends the call. Until that moment, she hasn’t thought the matter was so serious she’d have to call the cops, but the idea gathers strength inside her. She can make a scene, get some protection, and be the star of the barrio for days to come. An object of desire for the men. The most motherly mother of all the mothers. Jamelia will look like a selfish, subnormal idiot. Tanveer will be jealous, just the way she wants him. But no. She can’t be thinking those things. Her son’s up there, and he’s too much to bet. So a little less fantasizing is in order. Do what’s easiest. Ring the apartment
bell and ask Epi to let the child come downstairs and get this whole thing over with.

She rings the bell, and while waiting for a reply she glances at her cell phone. There’s a bunch of missed calls, but no trace of Tanveer. He’s sleeping off last night’s partying, no doubt. Bea and Rita have both left voice and text messages. She taps the keys rapidly so she can have a look at the texts. “How are you? Coming over to your place. We’ll talk.” She’d keep on reading, but Epi’s voice breaks in on her over the intercom.

“Come on up.”

“No, bring Percy down here. And stop all this bullshit. If you piss me off, I’ll call the police, and then you’ll be good and fucked.”

“The thing is he’s sleeping.”

“Sleeping? What the fuck does that mean, sleeping? Epi, Epi!”

An electrical spasm opens the door. Tiffany steps into the lobby and starts to climb the stairs to the apartment. Really, the girl thinks, you can’t ever plan anything. Things happen just because. One thing knocks away another, like in a billiards game. The scene changes with every stroke of the blue cue.

Epi has his own purpose in mind: getting a hearing. He wants to talk to Tiffany and let her know what he’s capable of doing for love. He wants her to see as clearly as he does that Tanveer was the obstacle to their happiness, that he was something that stood between them. For her part, Tiffany operates on instinct. She’s aware that all this will end badly, but not necessarily for her. She has ways and means of dominating
Epi, she’s confident in her power, and if it comes to that, she’ll know how to get rid of him. That won’t be a problem. Not at all, in spite of the people who’ve told her there’s something inside that boy that has yet to appear, people who say he struggles to control his reactions. Like when he starts looking at you in that certain way and you don’t know whether he’s thinking about something or he can’t think at all. That’s what they say, but with her he’s always been as docile and easily led as a puppy. So what’s there to worry about? Tiffany doesn’t know. It’s like nobody’s willing to play his or her assigned role on this miserable goddamned morning. She’s been too permissive, too trusting with all of them. With Jamelia, with Epi, with Tanveer. Permissive or trusting. But nothing’s been lost. Nothing she couldn’t sort out by slamming her fist down on the table. And she’s going to start with that guy in there, who’s left the apartment door ajar for her.

Epi’s nervous. He’s waiting for her at the back of the apartment, with one eye on the window. He smiles, but he immediately corrects himself, without being sure why. He’d like to feel raging anger, or he’d simply like to display an attitude that would compel respect and intimidate the girl. But he can’t do it. He’s trembling from head to foot, his chest hurts, his breathing is labored. He tries to get hold of himself so that he can find the words he needs. He doesn’t want to fail to say what he has to say. Or to lose his cool. But from the very first moment, it’s Tiffany who takes charge of the situation: “Where’s Percy?”

“In the bedroom, sleeping. He came in, he threw himself on the bed, and …”

Tiffany goes into the bedroom and tries to awaken the little boy, but he’s in a deep sleep. Too deep. Besides, she immediately spots the red marks on his face and neck. She whirls around, intending to transfix and paralyze Epi with a single look, but he hasn’t yet come into the room. She plots her revenge against him. She’ll fix it so he’s killed, so he’s thrown into prison. If necessary, she’ll petition Hussein to blow his guts out, and if he won’t, she’ll do it herself. She’s afraid the child has suffered a concussion from striking his head against something, but she feels his scalp without finding any blood or any sign of a blow. Planting her feet firmly on the floor, she picks up her son, cradles him in one arm, and turns to leave. She intends to take him to a hospital and hope they can wake him up. Just as she’s about to pass through the bedroom door, Epi appears, his eyes staring out at her from the depths of his face. Cold eyes. Bottomless. Different.

“Put the kid back on the bed. You’re going to be here for a while.”

“Stop talking nonsense, we’re leaving now. Epi, let me pass.”

“No.”

She tries it, but Epi’s body tenses in such a way that the real situation becomes quite clear. Their eyes meet. Tiffany’s not going to yield, and neither is he.

“Put the kid back on the bed,” he repeats, as if hearing him say the same words again will calm her. “Don’t complicate things. Listen to what I have to say to you. Is that asking too much? You listen to me, and then you pick up the kid and go. Nothing’s happened to Percy. He had a little tantrum, and …”

“And what about this?” She shows him the marks on the child’s face and neck.

“That’s nothing. You know, sometimes my nerves get the best of me, and that’s all it was. I didn’t hit him, I just grabbed him hard and—”

“You’re a coward.”

“Come on, Tiffany …”

“Don’t touch me!” she screams, yanking herself away from Epi’s arms as he tries to help her place the child on the mattress. Epi stops obediently, leaves the bedroom, goes to the front room, and sits on the floor. This display of calmness surprises Tiffany. Of course, he’s taken his precautions. The door’s locked with a key and bolted. Although he’s seated on the floor, she knows he’s prepared to spring to his feet and snatch her. Getting out of here won’t be as easy as it was the first time, but if she escaped once, she can do it again. The second he loses concentration, she’ll send a text message or call someone up, and then—

“Give me your cell phone.” Epi seems to have read her mind. “I don’t want anyone bothering us.”

“I don’t have it with me.”

“Don’t hand me that shit.”

Epi gets up from the floor to intimidate Tiffany with his physical presence, but she becomes even more defiant. He won’t do anything to her, she knows he’s not going to do anything to her, she knows he’ll fold at the first opportunity and turn back into the kitten he’s always been.

“Give it to me.”

“Take it from me.”

The cell phone’s in one of her rear pants pockets. He knows she usually carries it there and grabs for it as quickly as he can, but she beats him to it. However, he’s determined to get that phone, so he seizes and twists her wrists until she drops it. When it hits the floor, Epi kicks it into the part of the room where he plans to sit down and explain to Tiffany what happened a few hours ago and how it’s changed both their lives.

“You broke it, you’re gonna pay me for it, jerk-off.”

“Fine, I’ll pay you.” He picks up the cell phone and checks it. Like a little eye, the phone’s screen saver—the shield of the Barcelona Football Club—continues to blink. “It’s still working. I’m turning it off. Sit down.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t sit down. Except for leaving before we talk, you can do whatever you want. But no screaming, either.”

“So let’s hear it, fast, because I have to take Percy to the hospital.”

Epi would love to be able to explain himself in a way that would allow Tiffany to see things as he sees them. But how to find the right words? That never happens to him. He remembers arguments that began with something the girl had or hadn’t said, with some oversight, some long delay or discovered lie, something clear and evident, and by dint of talking and talking, saying and unsaying, the world turned upside down, and he wound up being the one who asked forgiveness. But today it’s going to be different. He won’t let her dictate the game. To begin with, he’ll come out with what he did and why.
He’s not going to ask her for anything. What’s done is done. It’s no use going over it ad nauseam.

“Tiffany …” Epi’s kneeling in front of her. He already feels less sure than he did a few moments ago. She notices. “Tiffany, I love you.”

“And?”

“And you and me, we used to be happy, before …”

“Everything comes to an end.”

“No …”

“Fine, then no. If you say no, it must be no.”

This is the version of Tiffany he hates the most. The know-it-all, the one who’s enormously adept at answering quickly and easily, the one who makes fun of him and doesn’t give him the consideration he deserves. Can it be so hard for her to take him seriously and not treat him like an imbecile? Is everything he does or says so predictable, so childish? Being here with him is obviously a nuisance for her. But then …? Are the hopes the girl’s been tossing to him like treats false hopes after all? Epi tries to understand. All their mutual memories, the dreams they shared—did they count for nothing? The affectionate words she addressed to him over the course of the past several months, when her relationship with Tanveer seemed, for the umpteenth time, to be coming to an end—were those words false? No, no, they were truthful, she spoke the truth. It had to be the truth. He wasn’t such a fool as not to have noticed if it was all a load of crap. The sight of her son is what set her off. That had to be it. He shouldn’t have hit the kid. But everything would have been simpler if Tiffany
had remained in the apartment, if she hadn’t run away for no reason, only because he’d made her wait too long.

“Don’t treat me this way. I’d do—”

“I’ll treat you any way I want to, all right?”

“Let me begin at the beginning. You and I were good together, and then Tanveer came along …”

“Tanveer had nothing to do with it. I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“But he came along, and then it was over between us. If you knew how much I suffered when that was happening, the thoughts I had, the things I saw, the things I suspected—”

“How can you say that, if I knew? As if I don’t know! Of course I know. I know because of all the times you followed us, because of all your pathetic dead-of-night phone calls, because you’ve been telling your sad tale to anybody willing to listen—”

“But you said, you said many times, that—”

“Yeah, I say lots of things, it’s true, but if you think kidnapping children at nine o’clock in the morning is the way to make me fall at your feet, you better think again, asshole. You’re a little shit. Real guys don’t act like this …”

By this point, she’s shouting. A total blowup is imminent. Epi can’t find the right words. Why won’t she let him talk? Where does all this attitude come from, this insistence on treating him like dirt? Epi moves closer to Tiffany, and she stands her ground, glaring at him. He notices the nicotine on her breath, the perfume he can never forget.

“Real guys do things differently, Epi, you know? Real guys know how to keep a woman. Real guys—”

“Guys like Tanveer, right?”

“Like Tanveer. Exactly.”

“Guys who screw whores and then beat the shit out of them.”

“That’s not true, and besides, what difference does it make to you? Maybe I go around screwing whoever I feel like, too. Whoever comes along. Except for you, of course.”

Tiffany knows she’s making a mistake. This isn’t the smartest way of solving the problem, but she can’t help herself. She’s overcome by anger and the desire to demonstrate her power, the same power she plans to exercise over Jamelia and over Hussein himself if he doesn’t show up to help her this very instant. It’s too late to shift into reverse. And when she sees Epi’s eyes grow cold and hard again and fix on hers, she thinks that maybe, just this once, she should have controlled her temper, she should have curbed that sharp little tongue of hers.

IF YOU SPEND MUCH TIME IN THE WOODS, YOU LEARN
to recognize and distinguish the silence that always presages the worst. It’s the same in the barrio. When the streets are nervous or drowsy, you can sense it in the shops and among the people. It’s the driving force, the reminder that under the asphalt and inside the cement honeycombs, beneath the underground parking garages and behind every door, each concealing a thousand and one stories, the living essence of earth, fire, and water remains. Like a black angel of memory, almost every tale, every occurrence finds an echo inside the walls of the barrio. Old stories, myths, sayings, commandments, angry threats, advertising tips.

Something’s going to happen. It’s not just another of his premonitions. Alex detects it in the argumentative conversations he hears here and there, in the groups of teenagers crossing the barrio from one end to the other, in the faces of
the tradesmen who’ve already checked the papers in the top drawer behind the counter to see if they’re up to date on their plate glass insurance.

The barrio’s been fed up for some time. The young people are bored. Whites, yellows, and blacks. On this point they’re in agreement, while the older folks don’t forget that, in one way or another, they were swindled, too. Tolerance, cultural diversity, and intermarriage are pieces of slogans suited to newspaper editorials no one in the barrio reads, songs no one listens to, or speeches spewed out by politicians for whom many in the audience can’t even vote. And the people live, love, hate, and bear up as best they can. Some wear headscarves, others play their radios too loud, and the rest nostalgically remember the city when she was a broad-hipped matron, venerable and distinguished, who knew how to keep her sweepings hidden under rugs and in jail cells.

The boundaries of the barrio are invisible but impossible to cross. Art galleries, fancy restaurants, scooter rinks, painters’ studios, and circus workshops have taken up positions around its perimeter like circled wagons. The said enterprises were launched by the others, the clever ones, and are being continued by their increasingly less clever children. They live on the other side of the invisible walls and come to the barrio for a few hours to look around, drink, and pretend to belong there. But as dawn approaches, they return incognito, like thieves, to their homes, their air conditioners, their plasma televisions, and their vacations in Ireland, where they go to brush up on their English. They leave these streets,
which function like cages, containers, or cocktails. During the past several years, the neighborhood’s been shaken and stirred and pressurized more and more, in the confidence that the plumbing supporting this melting pot of people will hold out. In the hope that fine words will prevail, that the compensations for being an invalid, for being unemployed, for having or not having children, for taking your daughter to school and not removing her clitoris, for going to Mass or to the mosque, may excuse everything. And it’s true that everything is forgiven. Everything except boredom. Or the desire to escape, the fascination of turning, for a moment, into the star of the movie.