The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (23 page)

“You were always making me feel like I didn't know anything and . . .”

“Was trying to teach you.”

“I know, and I appreciated it, but sometimes it made me feel dumb, made me want to point out the things
you
didn't know,” I said, realizing as I spoke how much I'd resented him for this and wondering how married people manage to stay together for decades, pulverizing all those little resentments that creep up between folks who share a bed, in order not to let death do them part before it was time.

“Very annoying,” he said.

I wanted to say no more annoying than his bringing it up now, but, again, I let it go. My great-great-grandmother's journal had warned me against the foul moods of new spirits, especially of those who are stuck and can't leave, so I took a deep breath and determined to “walk in his shoes” for a few minutes as the books advised.

“I been creamed today,” he said.

Creamed? Cremated! Of course my impatience with him evaporated. I even took a step toward him, wanting to touch him, but when I saw he faded perceptibly as I approached, I stepped back.

“The good thing is you're here now and we're talking,” I said instead.

“Yes, there you go. Is great,” he said, looking out the window with a blank expression and a wistful air that confirmed my thoughts.

“Okay, well, good. This is good, right? Progress. And just in time because I have to ask you something important.”

“So ask.”

“The police say . . . you were poisoned.”

He grunted and began to fade again, and I figured being here during the cremation was taking its toll on him. Maybe this was why he couldn't remember his death. It was too painful for him to watch, to remember. Which was bad news for me. If each time I asked him to remember that day, his energy would fade and make it impossible for him to recall anything, then he was not going to be any help in solving the mystery that would give him his rest, and me my peace, and my apartment, back.

“Okay. Well, they say the poison used is a plant,” I pressed, pausing to let this sink in, knowing that it pointed to Olivia. “And that it's called belladonna. Is the name familiar to you?”

“Belladonna . . .
bella donna
. . . beautiful woman . . . how ironic,” he spat.

“I'm sorry, Hector.”

“Is done, no?” he said, a few degrees more transparent.

“Well, yes, but, as you know,” I said, realizing he was unconcerned about the fact that I could be a suspect for what was “done,” “they questioned me in the matter of your . . . possible murder.”

“Is not you,” he said as if he couldn't believe the level of idiocy of anyone who could believe I killed him.

“Well, of course,
I
know that and
you
know that, but it's not as if you can testify on my behalf, if it ever came to that, can you?”

“I'm dead, Merry Ella. Dead!” he thundered suddenly.

“Okay, point taken. Actually, that was
exactly
my point—”

“
Dead,
okay?”

Wait a minute. I was so intent on keeping the connection I'd only just realized that he was “screaming” at me.

“You know, Hector. I want to help you, I do . . . but this is hard on me too. So, this is it. You tell me: Why are you here? If you think Olivia murdered you, then why aren't you upstairs giving her the hard time?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because. Don't want to scare her.”

“Well, it's good to see you care about someone's well-being.”

“How come . . . you never . . . toll . . . told me you spoke to . . . to others . . . like me.”

“You mean to arrogant ghosts like yourself?” I said, because it was time to stop pussyfooting around him as if all this were my fault. “Or to dead people who think they're the only ones with problems?”

“Why you never told me you did this?”

“Because I didn't. You're the first one in a long time.”

“Where I heard that before?” he said.

“Hector, you know, this isn't a joke. It's serious for a lot of people. Now, tell me. Why are you really here?”

“Told you. I have to be sure is her, Merry Ella. And I . . . have . . . to know why.”

“What about Abril?”

“Who?” he asked, fading again.

“Henry's mother? Little Henry? From next door? And stop doing that fading thing. You're like a damn neon sign.”

“Who?”

“Abril. Don't you remember who she is?”

“I know who.”

“If you know, why do you ask who? Never mind, just tell me about her.”

“I know whoooo . . . Henrieeee . . .”

“You're talking funny again.”

“Wuuuuuu,” he began, followed by his first mumbling of the day.

“What're you trying to say, Hector?”

But he just kept moaning and fading with every moan, his expression so comical I considered that he might be faking disconnection to avoid my questions. But why? I hadn't forced him to seek my help.

“Hector? How well, exactly, did you know Abril?”

“He's
cahl-ming
.”

“Who's coming?” I asked, alarmed, because the last time he'd warned me of someone's coming, it had not precisely turned out to be the Messiah, and, instead, I'd ended up cooped up for hours somewhere inside a police station, answering questions.

“A rey muerto, rey puesto,”
he said, which means something like “to a dead king, a king crowned,” and is often used to reproach the quick replacement of significant others.

“What're you talking about? Don't you leave without giving me an answer about Abril! Hector? Hector?”

“Don't worry about meeee . . . is
cahl-ming
.”

Sure enough, someone knocked on the door, but this time, Hector told me exactly who it was before I opened it. I could no longer see him, but his voice dripped a mix of hopelessness and irony so thick it could've condensed into a cloud right there in my living room.

“Open the door, Merry Ella. Is your boyfriend.”

Chapter 25

S
ure enough, there was Jorge when I opened the door, wearing dark green khakis and a loose-fitting screen-printed T-shirt that read: I
DISAGREE WITH YOU, BUT
I'
M PRETTY SURE YOU'RE NOT
H
ITLER
.

“You went by the house!” he said in place of “hello.”

“Yep, and good thing I remembered the address because, otherwise, I wouldn't have recognized it,” I said, waving him inside, my heart beating faster than when I realized Hector was still camping in my apartment.

“And? What'd you think?”

“What did I think? What did I think . . . mmm, let's see—” I played, pretending I didn't see that his face was all lit up in anticipation of what I'd finally say.

“Stop torturing me, woman, and tell me you loved it!” he said, taking me by the shoulders and mock shaking me.

“Torturing you?
Ché,
you have no idea what torturing is,” said Hector from wherever he'd faded to.

“Of course I did, you silly man. It's beautiful,” I said to the guy with the pulse standing in the middle of my living room.

“It's coming along, eh? I bought it right after—”

“You bought it? Wait? Is there a rich uncle I don't know about?”

“The owners were going to lose it in the mortgage crisis, so I offered to buy it in a short sale. It was a good deal because it needed so much work.”

“That I remember,” I said.

“Whoooo is this guy?” said Hector.

“Wow, so you're a homeowner now,” I said.

“Actually, I'm a restaurant owner. Can you believe the house has dual commercial and residential zoning? It's because it's so close to the Tower Theater.”

“Oh my God, that's fantastic. I'm so happy for you,” I said, motioning for him to sit on the sofa, then sitting at my desk, so I'd be occupying the space between him and the windowsill behind me, which is where I'd last seen Hector sitting (floating?).

“I want to keep it feeling like a house, like you're going to a friend's home for dinner. So, every room will be a separate dining room with a different atmosphere, and . . .”

“Blah, blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah,” groused Hector.

“The porch will be one ambiance, the dining room another, the bedroom will look out onto the backyard and be more intimate, more romantic,” Jorge was saying.

“But where will you live?” I asked.

“That's the beauty of it: I'm turning the detached garage into a great little tree-house apartment with a side entrance and a view of Calle Ocho.”

“Oooh, I could
die,
it's so fan-taaaas-tic!
Pero qué
incredible,
ché
,” said Hector, loudly slurring his words, and even using Spanglish in protest, as if he were drunk instead of just dead to the world.

“Hoping to open by Halloween. You'll have to come.”

“Of course! Oh, and thank you so much for the delicious food you sent last night. It was really amazing.”

“Yes, soooo dee-licious,” Hector said so close to my ear that I shot out of my seat as if my butt had been spanked into springing out like a jack-in-the-box's.

“Thought you could use it. Gustavo told me, you know, about the police coming,” Jorge said, getting up and coming toward me as if to give me the bear hug that would finally do away with this new stiff civility, this nervous formality between us.

But when he touched me, I was so tense he had to step back, unaware that it was the sarcastic dead guy's presence making me edgy and not the possibility of his touch.

“I'm really glad you came over,” I said, trying to erase the hurt look on his face.

“Really?” he asked. “I know I was a bit of a jerk the other day.”

“No, you weren't. I understood. You needed closure.”

Jorge protested, but I couldn't hear him because someone else was talking:

“Oh, for God's sake, get a broom already,” griped Hector.

“You want some wine? Coffee?” I said, motioning him into the kitchen where I hoped Hector would have a bit of a hard time following us, and pouring him a glass of rioja.

Once in the kitchen, I got right to it, doing something I'd (stupidly) never done before in my relationships with men: speaking clearly upfront.

“Jorge, I am going to share what's going on with me because I really need a friend.”

“I'm here.”

“Yes, but I need to know why.”

“Why what? Why I'm here?”

“Exactly. I need to know your motives, so no one gets hurt. So I don't get hurt.”

He thought for a minute then started to laugh, shaking his head as if I were unbelievable.

“You really don't know?”

I shook my head no, even as I heard Hector snorting and harrumphing from the living room that even he knew.

“You know, I'd been here over a decade by the time I met you, but I never felt I was here, never felt like I belonged, never wanted to do more than work just enough to send money to Cuba every month, have fun, live life. Even marrying Yuleidys was about proving to myself that I could settle down, live like normal people.”

“And you did.”

“And I did, but you'd changed me.”

“Don't say that. We had an affair. It was not—”

“How do you know what it was not? I don't,” he interrupted me. “Anyway, later, months later, I noticed the little changes. I noticed I wanted to do better, be better. I noticed I wanted to do all those things so I could come find you, show you.”

“You wanted to show me what I was missing, huh?” I said, making a joke, but feeling flattered in spite of myself.

“We have something, woman. You and me,” he said, smiling. “I don't know what it is, but there's something.”

“What you have is a wife.”

“Had.”

“He's ly-iiiing!” wailed Hector from the living room.

“Have,” I said, afraid Jorge would prove Hector right and lie to me, ruining the good feeling I was starting to feel about him. “I just spoke to her today,” I said, pointing to the hammered gold wedding band he always wore now.

“This is my father's wedding ring. He gave it to me before he died last Christmas.”

So he was the man I'd seen him cry over in my vision when Jorge had first come over last week.

“I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

“And the woman you saw today isn't Yuleidys. Yuleidys went back three months after coming here.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, she didn't like it here. Hated everything about it. The whole learning to drive thing, the learning English thing, the following rules she wasn't used to thing, plus, she really missed her family, and, to top it off, it probably didn't help to realize that she wasn't really in love with me, and that I wasn't really in love with her.”

“How horrible for you both,” I said, remembering how he'd tried to hide his excitement about her coming back then. “And what about all the money you saved to bring her?”

“To tell you the truth, I was so relieved when she decided to go, that I didn't even care about the money. I knew almost right away that getting married and pulling her away from all she knew had been a big mistake. You know, Mariela,
La Yuma
isn't for everybody.”

La Yuma.
It had been so long since I'd heard the term.
La Yuma
is a mirage wearing an American dream costume. The only way to look at it is in reverse, as if through a mirror, it's what
los de alla
(the ones over there) think coming over here is. Everyone wears designer jeans in
La Yuma
. They have huge houses, and cars, and even boats. They go on vacations and say whatever they want without consequences in
La Yuma
.

“No wonder you've grown up. More?” I asked, pouring him another glass of rioja when he nodded. “And so she left?”

“Yes, but by then I knew what made me happy: feeding people, having them over, watching them relax and enjoy themselves at my own place,” he said, swirling his wine before taking a swig.

“I do remember how much you liked to have people over. Still doing those crazy cook-ins at two in the morning? I could never understand how you guys could spend all night cooking at a restaurant, then get to the house of any one of you and cook for each other, with all that loud music, and pot, and wine, almost every night. I confess, that drove me crazy about you.”

“It
was
crazy, I'll admit it. Maybe it was a phase. My new-immigrant-welcome-to-America phase. But then you broke up with me, and all I heard was your voice telling me how talented I was, and what a good cook I was, and how I could do anything I wanted to do, so, I decided to do something about it.”

“I'm impressed, but wait, so who was Miss Smarty-Pants at the house today?”

He looked at his feet as if he hadn't heard me.

“You don't have to say.”

“That's Omayra. My . . . friend.”

“Your friend?”

“My friend. Ex. Girlfriend. Ex live-in ex-girlfriend, and now my finally moving-out girlfriend.”

“Ohhh.”

“She was almost done moving out when you came to the house. I left to give her space. How was I to know you'd go by? I thought you'd forgotten where it was, the way you stayed away all this time.”

“Well, you know, I imagined you were happily married. Didn't want to intrude,” I said, realizing how much I'd cared about him, but also how much I'd wanted to believe happy marriages could exist.

Jorge placed his forearms on his knees, leaning toward me with wineglass still in hand, and smiled a wistful smile before saying, “I missed you, you know?”

“What you probably miss is your little girlfriend who just moved out. That's what you miss,” I said, downing my wine and looking around for Hector, unable to keep from feeling how I was feeling, once again so close to Jorge. To a now unmarried Jorge sitting across from a woman who felt, for the first time in years, like she could really try to love an available man, this available man, for a change.

But Hector had apparently decided to be quiet now and stay in the living room, the denseness of his energy probably hard to move around.

“Nah, it was a long time coming. She's a nice girl. Just not for me,” said Jorge.

“Right,” I said. “Still, glad to know you haven't been lonely.”

“You were saying you needed a friend,” he said.

“I do,” I said, letting him change the subject.

“Okay?”

“I need to commit a small crime.”

“What?”

“I need to break into a neighbor's apartment.”

“Why? What are you stealing?”

“Nothing. You remember Gustavo's girlfriend, Abril?”

“Sure. Just saw her.”

“Where?”

“She was walking down the street with her son, just now. Why do you need to break into her apartment?”

“I think she might know something about Hector's death.”

“Mariela, everything's going to be okay. The police are going to come to the conclusion that you had nothing to do with it because it's the truth.”

“And you're that sure?”

“Of course. It's not so easy to accuse someone of murder,” he said.

“No, I mean, you're that sure that I didn't do it.”

He looked straight into my eyes and said, “Never in a billion years.”

I could feel them now, the butterflies of possibility bringing Jorge closer to me and making me afraid in a good way.

“But,” he continued. “If you insist on breaking into her apartment, we're going to have to hurry because it didn't look like she was going to be out too long.”