The Barcelona Brothers (8 page)

“You killed him.”

“Ná
, I only punched him out.”

The van pulled away and ran through the lights at the first three intersections they came to. The first light was green, the second amber, and the third red. It was like one of those PlayStation games where you keep eating up obstacles. As they hurtled along, nobody spoke. It was always awkward when Epi, the ex-boyfriend, drove them to the Granada Street
apartment, but this time it seemed more awkward than ever. After his passengers got out, Epi, who loved routine, usually pulled away violently so that Tiffany would know that once again she’d broken his heart. It was a little like the old
Avengers
comic books, where the Falcon yields Jane to a nonhuman. But Tiffany’s considered conclusion was that it wasn’t her fault if Epi had no pride and continued to act as their facilitator. If he didn’t want to go out with them, all he had to do was to say no and pass up the chance.

They didn’t take the time to go up to the apartment; they did it in the lobby. Tiffany closed her eyes. All those images flooded over her—the gasoline, the smell of fear and perspiration, the alcohol, the spasm of violence, the young man jerking in convulsions on the gray asphalt, the streetlights hurtling toward the van at top speed—and paralyzed her senses. Once inside the apartment, they did it again. Tanveer’s hand was swelling up. His fingers, constrained by the rings he wore, looked as though they were going to explode. A face is full of bones. Sometimes one forgets that. In the bathroom, he turned on the faucet and took off the rings, one by one, holding his aching hand under the cool running water.

“Whore.”

“I knew you’d come.”

But the last time they saw each other is obstinate, it imposes itself on her memories. It wants to come forward, it wants to be present. Tiffany can’t always prevent bitter images of that last night, the night when they celebrated Tanveer’s birthday,
from filling her head. Yes, that night was different. Passion hardly deigned to make an appearance; it was her rage and jealousy, not her romantic passion, that bit Tanveer’s face and shoulder. When they entered the apartment, he hit her, but only to get her off of him. He didn’t want to fuck and decided to leave again shortly after they arrived. Jealous and confused, Tiffany demanded that he stay, but he paid no attention to her. It was then that stories about abandoned women sounded inside her head, women in limbo waiting for a call that never comes, women driven mad by rejection. Stories about players who don’t know enough to withdraw from the game in time and so lose everything.

That night, Tiffany made a vow: never again. Sooner or later, as he’d done before, more than once, he’d come creeping back and beg her to go to bed with him. And she’d refuse. She would, indeed she would. Before too long, the alcohol knocked her out. When she woke up some minutes later—it was still night—she felt dirty and discarded. In a few hours she’d be taking Percy to nursery school. She thought she couldn’t bear the day, and it was only beginning. She went down to the street. In a bar, she drank a cup of coffee, which did her good—and strengthened her resolution not to see Tanveer again. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she glanced at her cell phone to see if there was a call from him. There wasn’t. Maybe it was too soon for him to request a second chance. But that morning was nearly a month ago, and she hasn’t heard from the no-good son of a bitch since. He drives her crazy.

She’s fed up. Fed up with men and fed up with waiting. That’s why she rises from the bed, resolved on leaving the apartment at once. She doesn’t want to meet Epi there anyway, nor does she care whether he explains what’s going on or not. She’s Tiffany Brisette. The girl with the tattooed blue eyelids. The one who never cries. The one who doesn’t wait for anybody.

EPI THOUGHT HE COULD MAKE USE OF THE TIME TIFFANY
would need to get to the apartment on Granada Street by talking to his brother. But the call was cut off, so he decided to go home and wait for him there or call him on their apartment’s landline. Now, however, he doesn’t want the taxi driver to drop him off in front of the building. A certain paranoia has come over him, and he asks the cabbie to let him out a few blocks away. Though limping, he walks rapidly, almost militarily. He’s aching and exhausted. If he lies on the bed, he could sleep for years. He meets no one in the lobby or on the stairs. When he goes into the apartment, he locks the door behind him. Unfortunately, Alex isn’t home.

He looks for the cordless telephone, which as usual is not in its cradle. He presses the search button and locates the receiver. On his way to get it, he raises the blinds in his room and the dining room in two swift jerks, using so much force
he fears he’s broken something. At those hours, the sunlight crosses the apartment from one side to the other, creating walls glistening with golden dust.
The sun regenerates sick bodies and minds
. He remembers a period when his brother used to say that. It must have been one of the adages Alex had been made to learn by heart in one of his detox centers. Epi can tell that Alex has been rummaging around in his stuff. On the computer, some eMule files have been completed. He takes the opportunity to clear the list. Then he dials Alex’s number on the landline phone. Busy.

In the bathroom he takes off his bloody T-shirt. He turns around in front of the mirror and looks over his shoulder at the impact marks on his back, blue-and-purple welts, some scratches. All the blood is apparently Tanveer’s. It’s true that his face is yellowish, or maybe it just seems that way to him. The long, straight hair, the little ears, the elongated countenance. The small eyes look frightened, like a child’s eyes in an adult’s face. He empties his pockets. He ought to look for his cell phone’s charging cable, but he’ll do that later. He calls Alex on the landline again. The number’s still busy.

He sits on the edge of the bathtub and takes off his shoes and socks. The little toe on his left foot looks bad. It’s so small he can’t tell if it’s broken or not. He reaches out an arm, inserts the stopper in the drain, turns on the cold water tap, and sticks his foot under it. He won’t dedicate much time to this activity—he knows how little Tiffany likes to wait—but his toe feels better already. Cupping both hands under the bathtub faucet, he washes his face. Then he puts
his socks back on and leaves the bathroom with the intention of looking for another T-shirt, a clean one, if possible. And in any case, he thinks he’ll take the bloodstained shirt along with him. He doesn’t yet know how he’ll get rid of it, but he’s convinced that leaving it in the house or wearing it would be an extremely bad idea. As he’s pondering this problem, the telephone rings.

“Epi!”

“Don’t yell.”

“Are you home?”

“You called here, man.”

“Right, right, of course.”

“Alex, you have to help me.”

“Don’t pull any more stupid stunts. Everything’s under control.”

“I had to do it, man. I had to kill him.”

“Epi, don’t say anything, all right? Do you understand? You do, don’t you? I’m coming home, and we’ll talk. Don’t move from there.”

“Better hurry. I’ve got to go.”

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t stay here.”

“Sure you can. Let me explain when I get there. Nothing’s happened yet.”

“Yes it has. It’s been happening for days now, lots of days.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Look, we’ll see each other in a minute.”

“Just one thing.”

“What?”

“Do you know where my cell phone charger is?”

Alex doesn’t know. They hang up. Epi lets the conversation end without answering his brother’s question, because he doesn’t want to tell him where he’s in such a hurry to get to. Now, sitting on the chair beside the little table the telephone has always rested on, Epi wonders how long it’s been since the last time he sat there. He looks at the wallpaper in that part of his home. There was a time—so long ago now—when it was the fashion to wallpaper everything, absolutely everything. As a boy, Alex stared at that wallpaper so much he could see things in it, things nobody else could see—just like he does now. Antelopes escaping from ferocious lions, clouds in the shape of gigantic winged creatures, elephants with huge ears, Egyptians with perfect profiles, heroes struck down by treacherous arrows. Epi makes a vain effort to find some of those things in the wallpaper. No doubt, the figures are all angry with him for his stupidity and disdain, for always passing in front of them without paying them the least attention, but the fact is, he never could see what Alex saw. Epi always admired his brother for being able to do such things. It took time for him to become convinced that many of Alex’s accomplishments, which Epi had considered brilliant when he was young, were nothing but a series of malfunctioning circuits in his brother’s head.

Back in his room, Epi opens the closet and takes out the first T-shirt he comes across. He puts it on and then pulls on a second T-shirt over it, in case he gets cold. He looks
for a different jacket; he wants to avoid being connected not just with what happened in Salva’s bar this morning but also with what happened last night with the whores. Until this moment, he hasn’t thought about that. And he prefers to keep on not thinking about it. Maybe he can use it in his defense. Everything’s piling up in his head like shapes in a nightmare, swelling until they can no longer fit inside the narrow confines of his brain. He puts the bloody T-shirt in the pocket of the jacket and promises himself to get rid of the shirt as soon as he’s outside. A sewer would be a good place for it.

Tiffany must be waiting in the apartment already. He ought to get a move on. He’s very thirsty, so he goes to the kitchen and drinks two glasses of water. The sink is piled with pans, plates, cups, and cutlery. He takes the opportunity to put the stopper in and fill the sink with boiling hot water, as if it were still possible to preserve a certain sense of routine on a day like today.

He dials Alex’s number again on the landline, but at that very moment his cell phone display announces that Tiffany’s calling him. Epi has to choose. He searches his desk for the charging cable again but doesn’t find it. By the end of the search, Tiffany has hung up. Cursing, he leaves the apartment. When he steps out onto the street, he’s lucky enough to find a cab right away. In five minutes he can be with Tiffany. The traffic lights help. He has a pain in the center of his chest. Maybe from a blow, or maybe it’s his heart. He should have followed his first impulse and gone straight to Tiffany’s place. The cops don’t move all that fast.

“Drop me off right here.”

He strides quickly to the building on Granada Street and enters the lobby, determined to go up as fast as he can to the apartment where he’s sure Tiffany is, doing what she least likes to do: waiting. At that moment he gets a phone call. Alex again. He can barely hear his voice.

Alex is in front of his apartment building. He’s been inside and seen that Epi was there but isn’t anymore. And now Alex is standing as if planted on the sidewalk with no idea of what to do. He’s like an ungainly antenna, waiting to pick up some transmission, some signal that will tell him where to go, where to start looking. It’s so frustrating. He touches his face with his hands. He takes a few steps to one side and then to the other, trying not to lose control. Whatever he decides, it would be a good idea to take his medication again, though it’s been hardly any time since the last dose. But he knows his stomach will burn and phlegm will fill his throat. He sits down on the curb in the space between two parked cars. His cell phone’s in his hand, because he’s waiting for Epi to call him back, and Alex wants to be sure it’s him calling before he answers. Suddenly, a pair of legs is standing in front of him, blue, spread legs that end in two impeccably polished police boots. The legs call him by name. Apparently, a neighbor woman has pointed him out as Alejandro Dalmau, and Alex doesn’t have the nerve to deny a thing like that.

NIGHT IS NOT A LOYAL ALLY. AND ON MOST OCCASIONS
, waking up’s a relief. Epi hadn’t trusted the dark for a long time. Even so, that night, barely a few hours earlier, he’d raised his arm as though trying to touch the darkness. He’d stretched out his hand until his fingertips met the windshield. The effort appeared to calm him down. Or maybe disappointment was what shone in his face, disappointment at not having been able to dip his fingers into that enormous liquid plasma screen, which was what the night sometimes seemed to be when he was behind the steering wheel of his van.

Everything that happens at night seems incomprehensible later in the sun. By night, things are done that wouldn’t be done by day. And on the following day, you don’t believe you did most of the things you did the night before. Maybe everything can be summed up in those two worlds his father used to speak about. Two opposed worlds: one dark, the
other luminous. Crimes and sexual acts perpetrated at night shouldn’t be judged, punished, or kept up in the light of day. When the sun shines, white lines on asphalt can’t be seen.

In addition to being disloyal, night wears you out. At night, it’s a mistake ever to come to a stop. You go to pieces. Ghosts chase you. When you’re young, you don’t realize it, but little by little you begin to learn. Not that he’s so old. Twenty-something years aren’t much, but they’re not nothing. If he could take all his nights, with their parties and drunkenness, their many disappointments and few fucks, if he could take them all and line them up the length and breadth of this avenue, he could almost fill it.

The problem occurs when you find what you want and then lose it. Without warning. You find it on an ordinary night, almost by chance. You recognize it, it’s yours, and despite trying to hold on to it with all your strength—as in his case—you lose it. Then you grow old abruptly, then you’ve seen and known and you can’t go back to not seeing, not knowing. And of course, you have to keep setting out every evening in hopes of finding again what made you happy the first time, as if miracles were frequent occurrences, but you suspect that nothing will be as good as what you had. No matter how much you seek and seem to find, you think it will always taste, in the end, like failure, like too late, like a mistake.