Signal to Noise (10 page)

Meche could see the road, painted red, lonely, and the rider reaching the bend of the road, the evening sun staining the sky red.

Meche tasted dust. She closed her eyes and opened them again.

She was standing by the road and when the rider swept by, she extended her hand and he pulled her onto his horse. They were galloping towards the horizon.

Meche opened her mouth; heat that had been accumulating inside escaped. It rose like a golden streamer, drifting like smoke, touching the ceiling. Golden tendrils also escaped from Sebastian and Daniela, coiling together.

The three of them looked up, amazed.

“What is that?” Daniela asked.

“Magic,” Meche whispered.

The golden streamers coalesced into a ball and the ball grew larger, then began to collapse and dissolve, bits of it floating away until there was nothing left.

“Is that it?” Sebastian asked, sounding disappointed.

As if punctuating his words, several dirty glass panels shattered. Daniela yelped. Meche laughed.

“Let’s see if it worked!” she yelled and rushed out of the room, leaving the record spinning.

They stomped downstairs and made it to the street, heading straight for Sebastian’s building. When they reached it they were all out of breath. Meche slid down against the doors to his building while Sebastian fumbled for his keys. He kept the motorcycle inside, on the first floor, beneath the stairs.

“Go check it out,” she said.

He nodded, turned the key and stepped inside. Meche, too exhausted to move, just waited. Daniela half-collapsed next to her, her hair in her eyes.

Sebastian walked the motorcycle out. Meche straightened up, carefully watching him as he straddled it and placed the key in the ignition.

The motorcycle coughed, sputtered and did not move.

Meche bit her lip.

Sebastian tried again and this time it worked. The old, banged-up machine roared into life. Meche jumped, clapping.

Sebastian was beaming. Daniela seemed in shock.

“Fucking yes!” Meche said jumping up and down.

“Get on,” Sebastian said.

Meche turned to look at Daniela and Daniela nodded. “Go ahead. I want to rest.”

Meche hurried towards him, quickly throwing her leg over. She scooted close to Sebastian, holding on to his jacket.

He twisted the grip, applied the throttle, and they sped away, turning the corner. She leaned forward along with him and they zoomed past the corner store, then the pharmacy, the small video store, the
tortilleria
.

At some point her hair band snapped and Meche’s hair streamed freely down her shoulders. She laughed.

“It works!” she yelled.

“Of course it works!” he yelled back.

At the stoplight, she squeezed Sebastian tight and stared at the cars as they crossed the junction in front of them. Catalina Coronado looked at them, with a disapproving glare, as she crossed the street. Meche chuckled.

She didn’t care if Catalina told her mother she had been riding around on Sebastian’s bike. They had power. Real power.

Things were never going to be the same again.

Mexico City, 2009

M
ECHE SAT IN
the restaurant, looking at her cup of tea, absently folding and refolding her napkin.

“Baby, baby what are you going to do when you grow up?” asked Miguel Mateos in her ear, singing like it was the 80s again and he was pushing the cause of “rock in your language”—Spanish-language music to compete with the imports introduced by MTV.

“Meche, is that you?”

Meche looked up and tugged out the earbuds.

Daniela was pleasantly plump. She had traded her pink sneakers and pink shirts for black shoes in a ballerina style and a white peasant shirt. She looked warm and sweet, similar to the Daniela she had known.

“Yeah,” Meche said extending her hand.

Daniela hugged her, planting a kiss on her cheek. A typical Mexican greeting, though it startled Meche a bit, unused to such a personal hello.

“It’s so good to see you,” Daniela said, pulling out a chair.

“Do you want something?” Meche asked.

“Just a latte.”

Meche motioned to the server and the woman took their order.

Daniela looked at Meche expectantly, a big smile on her face.

“So, is Norway cold? What am I saying, of course it’s cold.”

“It’s fine,” Meche said. “I’ve been there for four years now.”

“Where were you before that?”

“Spain. The United Kingdom. Wherever there’s work. You’d be surprised. Software development is actually quite big in Romania.”

“Well, that’s awesome.”

Daniela’s smile faltered a little.

“I heard your dad had passed away.”

“Who told you?”

“Sebastian.”

“How would he know?”

“When something happens in the neighbourhood people know. He knows.”

“So you still talk to him?”

“Oh, maybe once a year,” Daniela said with a shrug. “He’s been living in Tijuana for a long time now so we don’t see much of each other. He only moved back this spring.”

“I saw him yesterday,” Meche said, taking a sip of tea.

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“Nothing. I just saw him standing across the street.”

“You didn’t say hi?”

“He didn’t say hi either.”

Daniela’s coffee arrived. She opened three little packets of sugar and poured them in.

“Are you still angry at him?”

“What do you think?”

“You always could hold a grudge.”

“Bingo,” Meche said winking and pointing a finger at Daniela.

Daniela sighed, resting her elbows on the table, holding her cup carefully.

“I guess you’ve forgiven me?”

“You were not the major issue,” Meche said, “although you played your part.”

“Meche, we couldn’t keep on forever. Casting spells, playing with people...”

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t right.”

“That’s not why we stopped, though.”

“Maybe it was a bit of why we stopped. A lot. Because you—”

Meche shook her head, tossing her tea bag onto a napkin and folding it all into a ball.

“We stopped because Sebastian broke the circle and convinced you to abandon it, to boot. He betrayed me. Fucked my life.”

“He didn’t...”

“He didn’t?”

“Meche, Sebastian adored you.”

Meche leaned back, an unpleasant smirk on her face. Adored her? Right. He had a funny way of showing it. A funny way of being her best friend.

“Look, I guessed you were still on good terms with him. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want him showing for my father’s
novena
. I know it may seem the polite thing to do, but I don’t want him in my mother’s apartment. I’m pretty sure Jimena invited him, but I’m against it. He should stay away.”

“Meche, that’s not right.”

“It is what it is.”

“Are you going to tell me to stay out of your apartment too?”

Meche shrugged, her face cold. She didn’t care if Daniela came, but she wasn’t going to encourage it either.

“That’s mean, Meche,” Daniela said. “We both knew your dad.”

“Well, he’s dead. He won’t miss you.”

Daniela chuckled, looking down at her hands.

“Here I thought you were trying to reconnect.”

“I’m a bitch like that. See, I wouldn’t want someone hexing me or my mom. Old habits.”

“We wouldn’t hex you.”

“Liar,” Meche whispered. “Just tell him to stay out of the apartment.”

“I brought something for you,” Daniela said, reaching for her large purse and pulling out a fat manila envelope. “Don’t worry. It’s not hexed.”

She set the envelope in the middle of the table. Meche glanced at it but made no attempt to look inside.

“You know, Meche, I always thought you were the smartest of us. You were always so sharp. But now I realize you’ve always been half-blind, and not nearly as sharp as you think.”

“What do you mean?” Meche asked.

“You need to let it go. My regards to your mother.”

Daniela slipped away. Meche drank her tea slowly, taking her time. When she was done she opened the envelope and looked inside. It was Meche’s notebook. Her old
grimoire
. There were also lots of photographs. Daniela’s
quinceañera
party and Daniela looking like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in her gigantic dress. Meche leaning against a wall, headphones on, staring at the camera as if she was daring someone to take a snapshot. Ah, Constantino and Isadora’s group. Sebastian’s motorcycle. And...

... Sebastian and Meche. It was a series of photos taken inside a booth. They were making faces in the first two frames, their tongues sticking out. By the third one they had settled down and were looking at the camera with a smile. The fourth one showed them looking at each other. In that last bit of black-and-white film, their expressions were inscrutable.

Meche stuffed the photos back inside the envelope.

Mexico City, 1988

S
HE RECOGNIZED THE
notes of power in the air. She could see them the same way one can see a spider’s web when a shaft of light hits it at the right angle.

Meche’s web of power.

Dolores clicked her needles together and smiled, remembering her own days of spells.

She didn’t think about magic very much anymore. That was part of her childhood, when Dolores and her sisters stitched spells with their needles. Spells to make the clouds release a gentle drizzle upon their heads. Spells to catch the eye of the boys in town. All those spells which were now gone, erased the same way a slate is erased with a warm cloth. But the memory of the feeling, of the magic...ah, that was still there.

Where had she put her old thimble? It had been made of porcelain and carefully painted by her eldest sister. Dolores hadn’t looked at her object of power in ages. She wondered whether it still had any strength in it.

“Grandma! I’m home!” Meche yelled, and she heard the front door bang shut, then the quick patter of feet across the hallway.

It was no more than a few seconds before a record started playing.

Dolores smiled and kept knitting.

H
E WAS WATCHING
his classmates across the schoolyard, eating their lunch. Isadora was leaning down to talk to Constantino and he was laughing.

Now that the Day of the Dead had passed, November marked the real festivity of the season: Isadora’s birthday party. Each year she threw a birthday bash and each year Sebastian did not attend. It was not that he was not invited: everybody was. He never dared to show up.

He kept thinking about attending, wearing brand new sneakers, his hair combed back, looking like a rock star.

“What are we going to wish for next?” Daniela asked.

“Isadora’s birthday party,” Sebastian said before Meche could open her mouth.

The girls blinked and looked at each other, then back at him.

“We should go, at least for a little bit. Go in style. Make them notice us.”

Daniela shrugged. Meche sipped her bottle of apple juice and began peeling its label off with careful fingers.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Meche said. “All the cool kids will be there.”

“We could be just as cool as them. Couldn’t we?” Daniela asked.

“If I had Constantino’s money I’m sure I could look cool too,” Sebastian replied.

“So are we wishing for money?” Daniela asked.

“Yeah,” Sebastian said. “Enough dough to buy new outfits. What do you say, Meche? You girls could get your hair done. Makeup. The whole nine yards.”

“Makeup is not going to cover my pimples,” Meche said.

“So we wish away the pimples,” Sebastian said.

Daniela giggled. “Can I wish for a different eye colour? Just for the weekend?”

“Sure,” Sebastian said.

“We can’t be wishing too much, too often,” Meche warned them.

“Why not?” Daniela asked.

“’Cause I felt tired after what we did. Didn’t you feel it? I slept like a rock.”

“Me too,” Daniela said “Why would it work like that?”

“I dunno.”

Sebastian watched as Isadora moved away from her group, heading towards the school’s little general store. Sebastian had no business near the store: he could not afford the drinks or sandwiches they sold there.

But he had the wild desire to talk to Isadora, to open his mouth and regale her with a sentence for once in his life. He was still high from the motorcycle trip with Meche and he felt this day he might actually do it.

“Okay, no wishing too often, got it,” Sebastian said hastily. “I’ll be back.”

He walked quickly, moving in the same direction Isadora had gone. He stood behind her in line, with nothing more than one peso in his pocket. When she glanced at him, Sebastian nodded and smiled.

She gave him this weird look, like she was a little surprised to see him standing behind her, but did not speak to him.

Sebastian waited in line, his hands deep in his pockets, trying to keep calm.

“So... umm... your birthday’s this Saturday, right?”

“Yes,” Isadora said.

“What kind of presents are you hoping for?”

“I don’t know. I like jewellery.”

Constantino’s father owned a jewellery store. For a moment Sebastian saw his opportunities dwindle, but then he remembered he could buy anything they wanted. They had magic now. He could look for a nice, golden bracelet for Isadora. Or a little chain. Something pretty, which she might wear often.

“Cool.”

“Are you going to come?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Your friends too?” She lifted her chin, looking in Meche and Daniela’s direction.

Sebastian nodded. “All right. I’ll see you then.”

The line moved, Isadora bought a soft drink and stepped aside. Sebastian looked at the candy and junk food for sale, trying to figure out what he could buy.

W
HEN HE WALKED
by the Pit that afternoon, Sebastian saw Isadora, Constantino and some other students standing there, smoking and chatting.

Isadora held her cigarette with two fingers and she smiled, just a tiny smile.