San Juan Noir

Turistas by Ernesto Quiñonez

Dos Hermanos Bridge

I came to San Juan because Mama said my father, a certain Salvador Agron, lived here. “Remember, Julio, only ask of him what is due to us. What he never gave us.” Mama was leaving this world, and with a sense of urgency she passed on the family inheritance by handing me the envelope. I never put much stock into it. But I loved Mama, and so I promised to find my father.

I was staying at the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino, and in the afternoon I went looking for him. Scaling up hills covered with multicolored colonial houses, cobblestone streets, and tons of tourists, most from cruise ships docked by the Malecón. The only pictures I had of my father were from when he was a teenager, when he acquired his famous name.

I spotted three old men sitting outside, drinking coffee by a café.

“Have any of you seen an old man named Salvador Argon, also known as the Capeman?” I asked in Spanish.

“You came to San Juan looking for an old man?” one of them answered in Spanish. “The whole town is old.” And they laughed together.

I continued walking. The humidity never bothered me. I expected to find him in some corner drunk and lost. I walked all around Old San Juan. Lit a candle for Mama at the cathedral. The cult of Mary is not in my bones.

Exhausted, I gave up as night was approaching. I took a taxi back to the Sheraton.

I replayed this search the next day with no luck.

On the third day he rose from the dead; I received the call. It was a female voice, speaking in English.

“You are looking for the Capeman?”

“Yes,” I said anxiously.

“Why?”

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Meet me tomorrow at the San Juan Gates, where the fishermen are.” And she hung up.

Whoever she was, she knew him by his famous name. So she knew what he had done.

My father was born in Mayagüez and had been shuffled from the island to New York City by his parents as many times as he would later be shuffled from juvenile detention to juvenile detention, from prisons to asylums and back to prisons.

He came from a time when the New York City streets belonged to teenage gangs. My father was president of the Vampires. Like many members, he had dropped out of school, left his mother, and then rented a five-dollar-a-week single-room occupancy on the Upper West Side.

The night of the playground incident was a Saturday. All over the West Side of New York City, from the 100s down to the 60s, the large population of Puerto Ricans who lived there before gentrification, before the cleaning up of Needle Park, were taking in the street life. Radios blasting salsa. Everyone looking for someone to love and be loved in return. Everyone cooling off from a summer heat wave.

It was around nine o’clock when word arrived that some kids from a white gang named the Norsemen had beaten up a Puerto Rican member of the Vampires. As president of the gang, my father called up all the Puerto Rican members and told them to meet at the playground on 46th Street and Ninth Avenue. Some came walking. Others took the bus. My father jumped the turnstiles, hopped on the 1 train, got off at 42nd Street, and walked west. He was a Vampire and so he wore a cape. In his hands a dagger, along with years of anger, betrayal, abuse — a wealth of tragedies from his young life just waiting for a reason to be set free. When my father and his Vampires assembled at the playground it was midnight. The lampposts were broken. Hanging out by the swings were these two white boys. It was a moonless New York neighborhood known back then as Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hey, no gringos in this playground!” my father yelled. The two white boys ran but my father and his Vampires chased and fell on them. My father tackled one of the boys, threw him down on the pavement, and started screaming at his face: “This is our playground. No Norsemen! No white Norsemen!” My father wielded his dagger. Began stabbing the white boy and then the other boy... but these were not the Norsemen. They were just white kids hanging out.

Bleeding a river of red, the first white boy made it to the entrance of a tenement building. He knocked on the door of some old lady. She quickly recognized him as a boy from the neighborhood. The old lady kneeled down and held the bloodied boy in her arms as if she wanted to give him what was left of her own life. He in turn looked up at her eyes and tried to say something but died in her arms.

The other white boy made it to his nearby tenement. He managed to drag himself up a flight of stairs and to his apartment. His mother opened the door and saw her bloodied son coughing like a broken radiator. She held her son as he died in the hallway.

This happened a long, long time ago, when my father was just a fourteen-year-old kid. New York City had never seen anything like this. My father made the cover of Newsweek. Was in Time and all over the papers. The media wanted his blood. Called him the Capeman. He was sentenced to the chair but was pardoned at the last minute and did sixteen years.

Many years afterward, a legendary and wealthy musician wanted access to my father’s life story. This guy wanted to produce a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on my father’s life. The musician went looking for my father too, like I am looking for him today, but all he found was Mama and a twelve-year-old me. The musician gave Mama a piece of paper; it was a legal contract. It stated that they were setting aside a lot of money in an escrow account. Should my father ever show up, the money would be waiting for him. The Broadway show went on, though Mama never saw it. She held onto that piece of paper like it was a lottery ticket. She kept the contract safe and dry for years. “Remember, Julio,” she said to me on her death bed, “only ask of him what is due to us. What he never gave us.”

The gates of San Juan are lovely, but they frightened me. They are there to lock you out. To deny you access to the city. To tell you that you are a pirate. An outsider from Spanish Harlem, the mainland. A tourist and not a true Puerto Rican from the island. When I arrived at the huge red doors, I did not enter. I stayed standing there looking out toward the sea. I was afraid that for some reason I would not be let back into San Juan, that I’d be left out among the iguanas and stray cats that roam El Morro all night and day. What scared me the most was that the Capeman might be on the other side.

“Are you going to just stand there or come help me fish?” she asked, not ten feet away from the gates.

“Hi,” I said, “my name is Julio.”

“I don’t want to know your name. You came looking for my father?”

“Your father?”

“I have my net and pole over there,” she pointed with her chin. “Come help me.”

She was young, much younger than I was. She was lovely beyond anything, as if she had been assembled by a committee of men. She was sweaty. Wearing shorts and her long, long hair hid her behind when she walked in front of me. I quickened my pace for us to be side by side. I studied her face to see if I saw my father or myself in her. It was a stupid thing to do since I had never seen him. Just pictures of when he was the Capeman.

“Caldo de pez tastes so good,” she said. “Touristy restaurants buy them from me. All I need is to catch one today and I’ll have enough money for a month.”

We walked toward a small inlet marina. There were many fishermen. From the boardwalk’s platform stemming from El Morro, one could see the large fish swimming below.

“With you here next to me, the men won’t be able to take the best spots for themselves. They’ll see you and make way for me.” She elbowed her way between two men who, annoyed, saw me standing behind her and left her alone. She then baited her pole and casted it out to sea. I could see that there were fish just a few feet away from us. “Those are no good,” she said, knowing full well what I was thinking, “too skinny.” She didn’t have a hat or anything to cover her head and the sun was beating down on me. Even the men had covered their heads. “Why are you looking for my father?”

“Because if it’s the same man, you are my sister.”

But she didn’t bat an eye. She continued to wield her pole, jiggling it, hoping to get a bite. “Do you know how many brothers I have? All from him. Do you see any of them trying to help me feed him?”

“I want to help you,” I responded. “I have something for him.”

She quickly took her eyes off the sea. “Give it to me,” she demanded more than asked. She held the pole with one hand and stuck out the other toward me. “Give it to me and I’ll give it to our father.”

“Can you take me to him?”

“What is it that you have for him?”

I wasn’t about to tell her. It was a long story. And I was not sure if she was telling me the truth.

“If you want to see the Capeman,” she had both hands back on the pole, “you have to roam the streets of Old San Juan at night. That viejo only comes out late at night.”

I had been searching for him only in the daytime; somehow she knew this.

“You’ll find him by a tourists store that sells Cuban cigars under the counter,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

“Magaly.”

I found him. Standing outside the cigar store on Calle Fortaleza, late at night, just like Magaly had said. He was wearing his cape. He was old but he was so tall that it gave him the appearance of having a lot of life left in him. He was light-skinned, almost white, with hazel eyes. The eyes saw me and smiled, and it was in the way he called me papo that I knew he felt comfortable both on the mainland and on the island.

“You see, papo, many people don’t know me because I made myself invisible.” He laughed a little laugh and he had a huge gap between his big front teeth. I saw that his cape was really worn out, the satin fading. His pants were thin too, as was his shirt, both fabrics disappearing into strings. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and held together with a rubber band. He reminded me of a broken-down Jesus Christ, ragged and old, whose disciples had long ago deserted him.

“My name is Julio,” I said.

“Yes, I know.” He peered at the night sky as if he had lost something there. “I gave you that name.” His tone and his slumped shoulders told me he was harmless. No longer that kid who had killed people.

“I’d like to begin again. But you see, I can’t do that, papo. So I live here in the night now and I try and forget, you know?”

“My name is Julio,” I repeated because I didn’t want him to keep calling me papo.

“Okay, papo, Julio,” he said and smiled a bit. “Your sister told me you have something for me?”

“Yes, I have me. Your son.” I don’t know what I expected of him. I myself felt very little love. This was the first time I had ever seen him, talked to him. Why would I think he would feel any different?

“A son is always a good thing,” he said with some joy, but no excitement.

“Mama is dead.” I felt a pang of sadness just by saying this. I saw how it hurt him too. We were outside, on the sidewalk, with insects flying around us and drunken tourists walking by. He sat down on the warm cement and held his heart. I kneeled down and grabbed him because he was about to topple over in a sitting position. For the first time I saw his face up close. His eyes were faint glimmers in a nest of wrinkles.

“I’m sorry.” I helped him get back up, leaned him against the wall of the cigar shop. “She didn’t suffer.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” He crouched now, hunching his shoulders like he was humbling himself. Like I’ve seen many tall people do when they feel inferior for being so tall. “I loved your mother,” he said in almost a whisper, “I did love your mother.” But no tears rolled down his face.

“But you left us and never came back.” I had little sympathy for him. I was here only for Mama. “You left us.”

He didn’t look at me but at the night sky, as if he could find the past there. Then he looked at the concrete below us. A cricket was hopping by. Then he looked at the taxis driving tourists. Then at the night sky again, as if he wasn’t sure where to start. When he did face me, his hazel eyes were huge like on an Egyptian’s coffin at the Met. He scanned my face like nervous radar, deciding if he should answer.

“I needed to go,” he placed a hand on my shoulder, “I needed to live in the darkness.” His eyes were watery and his nose was running. “After what I did to those kids. The light, Julio, it shames me.” And he embraced me. I embraced him too.

I took him back with me to the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino. I wanted to talk to him all night about many things, as if in one night I could make up for decades of his absence. I felt happy when we reached the hotel; he placed an arm around me and excitedly told people, “This is my son.” He kept proudly saying this all night, to anyone who passed us, so that all could hear: “This is my son.” That night he told me everything about how he became the Capeman. The killings of which most I already knew. Everything he said I had heard or read about, but hearing it from him made it all part of my life too, by being his son.

One night we went swimming at the nearby San Sebastian beach. It was there, when I tasted the salt of the Caribbean, that I felt he was truly my father.

“When you swim this sea,” he said while we were in the water, the air cooling my temples, “you don’t feel poor.”

I knew I had to give him the envelope. All he had to do was sign it, show proof of who he was, and he’d have more money than he’d ever need.

“In America we could never taste the salt of the sea and feel the heat of the island, so we felt poor, we were poor, but here, Julio, I’m rich with nothing but my island.”

I had stayed in San Juan for two weeks. Two weeks with my father talking at night, as he only came out at night. We talked about many things, catching up on our lives. Soon, my vacation time was over. I would need to go back to work. My intention was to go see him before I took the plane. Tell him about the contract and give it to him. Let him know I would send money so he could return to New York City. Stay with me while he straightened out and collected the money that the wealthy musician had set aside for him. And then it would be up to him.

At the Sheraton desk I received the checkout bill.

“He said many times he was your father. You’re his son, right?” the hotel clerk said. I was being billed for thousands of dollars in casino gambling. “You are his son? And he was always with you?”

I had not stepped one foot in the casino, but he had. Many times, under my name and room number.

Before taking a cab to the airport I went looking for Magaly; I knew where I’d find her.

“You and him got me pretty good,” I said. She was fishing the sea in a terrible spot since the men had taken all the good ones. “What’s his real name?”

“Listen,” she replied, continuing to hold her fishing pole steady, “everyone here is trying to make a living, okay? This island is poor. You are all tourists. Even if you are Puerto Rican, you don’t live on the island; you are a tourist, and because of that, you have more money than us.”

She wasn’t going to tell me anything. She might really be his daughter. But it didn’t matter.

“Magaly...” I handed her the contract. The piece of paper that Mama had kept for so many years, hoping that our ship would one day come in and like Columbus we would find riches. “Tell him that if he can play the part of the Capeman as well as he played it with me, there’s money for him and you.”

Boarding the plane, I could not get Mama’s words out of my head: Remember, Julio, only ask of him what is due to us. What he never gave us. The plane took off and slowly Puerto Rico became a dot in an endless blue sea, and I knew I had obeyed her. Flying into that night sky, Mama was alive and I understood why she had held onto him even when she was leaving a world that would now and forever mean nothing to her. I was happy and felt less alone. I looked out the window; the stars were in my face again and I was sitting on Mama’s lap like an obedient child.

Originally written in English

Y by José Rabelo

Santurce

You think of Samira with a kind of guilty feeling — the best student, the most promising girl in the twelfth grade — now missing. Optimistically, you don’t believe she’s dead; she has just disappeared, location unknown.

You look at her photos on Facebook: one with her boyfriend, El Gato, murdered weeks earlier in the Manuel A. Pérez projects, that older boy who came to pick her up every afternoon in an old Mercedes-Benz.

You remember your student, her caramel face, long black hair, and the mole on her right elbow in the shape of a cockroach. That’s how she described it, anyway. Maestro, have you ever seen a cockroach wearing a wig? Well, look, there’s one right here. Then she took your right hand and made you feel the texture of her birthmark.

Again you think of her with a kind of guilty feeling, because you never talked to her about the dangers of the street. Combinatorial operations; absolute values; linear and quadratic equations; inverted functions; variable isolations; ratios and proportions — advanced mathematics doesn’t allow room for other subjects.

Nobody’s heard from her for two weeks. Her mother suffers at home; she’s all run out of tears. A long-time widow, and now she’s lost her daughter too, that’s what Señora Vélez, the social worker, said. Samira went out and didn’t come back, just like that — a purebred puppy lost in the wild jungle of Río Piedras.

The students didn’t know anything either.

Best case, she went off with a new boyfriend, said one of the boys in the classroom.

El Gato got her hooked on the meat. Who knows, someone might’ve kidnapped her to steal her kidneys, a goth girl suggested. Sorry... not to be so morbid. She could’ve just left the country with someone to go become a dancer, everyone knows Samira was into that nonsense, she continued.

That girl is dead, said a Pentecostal girl, so she can’t snitch on El Gato’s killers.

Her name always struck you as attractive: Samira. You even looked it up in the dictionary once. Samira: of Islamic origin, a woman who tells stories at night, a female entertainer. You look at her Facebook photos again. She’s dressed as a belly dancer, in a black-and-gold costume covered with small metallic bells; everyone applauded when she won the talent show. You saw her leave with El Gato after the show that Thursday night, and you remember that she didn’t come back until the following Monday.

You can’t relax at home; an inaudible call compels you to leave the comfort of your apartment. You want to find the equation that will solve this mystery, and you wish for a new use of polynomial functions that would decode Samira’s location. You long to touch the oblong mole on her elbow again, to determine how chance had planted it on her young skin.

You get on the train at Sagrado Corazón to see the city by night. It dawns on you that the map on the wall resembles a folded arm: the shoulder in Santurce, the elbow in Río Piedras, the hand in Bayamón. At the elbow you enter the subterranean part of the route — the underground, an inferno. You can’t see the urban landscape; the windows reveal only darkness. You catch your reflection in the glass. You haven’t shaved recently, so you look like a vagrant, a drunk sick with dengue fever. You don’t see Samira. You get off the train and wander through the streets filled with bookstores, ruined buildings, bars, walls covered in urban art, the street dormitories of junkies recently introduced to the alternative life, and murals of dogs and cats. Deep down you consider the probability of running into Samira. If you found her, you’d ask her why she wanted to disappear. A homeless man tries to bum a cigarette; you say you don’t smoke. Asshole, he says without resentment, staggering off down the street. If you found her, you wouldn’t question her, you’d offer to help her — after all, you’re just her teacher, not her father or relative — and you’d notify the social worker. Down a dark street, you see a man pull out his cock, moving it like a dead serpent. This is what you’re looking for, daddy, come get it, it’s not easy to find around here. You act like you don’t see or hear him. You come to the public square. Cops remove a handcuffed man from a patrol car and take him into the station. Nobody would care if you found her — let her live however she wants, die however she wants, disappear however she wants. At that elbow on the map, Río Piedras, you squash a cockroach on the ground near the station.

That night you dream of Samira: you find her in the classroom dressed in the black-and-gold outfit from the talent show; she’s the teacher, you, the only student in a room illuminated by black candles. From a desk you watch her, glowing, self-absorbed, solving equations on the chalkboard. She turns around to begin class; the bells ring in the background. This is what we call the inverse ratio, with the constant Ω. This kind of ratio also appears in natural processes and phenomena, for example... In the middle of her explanation, a gust of wind slips in through the recently opened door. All the candles go out; the moon provides the only illumination for what comes next. El Gato enters and undresses in front of a silent Samira. She keeps looking at you, as if wishing to continue the math lesson. He’s in front of her, naked, his skin covered with tattoos — skulls, tombstones, feline sex acts, men with pistols in place of their genitals, and women with breasts like curled-up cats. He strikes her and throws her on the floor. She seems to enjoy the beating. You stay motionless, paralyzed. You don’t want to stand; watching her suffer makes you feel good, so you watch her enjoy it, smiling passively, bleeding from the nose. El Gato positions her on the desk to take her. He’s panting, they’re panting, moaning, licking each other. You feel them licking your neck, and then you’re panting, it’s you moving on top of her, you feel your cock inside of her. El Gato is no longer there — you’re El Gato now — your arms spread on the desk, which creaks, and your arms are cat legs. You growl, you meow, and your tail quivers with pleasure. She sticks her claws into your chest. The pain wakes you up.

You don’t turn on the light to shower. You scrub your body vigorously as you try to remove the filth from your skin and your brain. You’ve seen cats clean themselves with their tongues, passively, parsimoniously, with all the time in the world, but yours is not a cat bath — it’s tense, exaggerated. But the water doesn’t eradicate the filth you feel, the dirt you harbor. It runs bloody in the darkness, down the drain that’s darker still.

When morning comes you have no desire to get up, to go back to the school. You decide to stay home with the memory of the dream, the sensation of claws embedded in your chest, and the thought of Samira presenting a report on inverse trigonometric functions. She herself was inverse: she wasn’t a normal adolescent; she acted like an adult, a teacher, erudite. She spoke more than the rest of the kids combined, and her conversation was substantive. Maestro, if so many people live happily off government benefits without needing to study, why do us kids have to study so much? Maestro, if God knows everything, why did He create the devil?

That question goes beyond the scope of mathematics, you would always answer.

You look like a vagrant now. You watch the news again, flip through the channels, peer out the apartment’s front and back windows, and look through the newspaper. You read every page and inspect every photo, but you don’t find Samira. Your hands are dirty, so you clean them with your tongue, passively, parsimoniously, with all the time in the world. Math is good for nothing — nothing in this life — it doesn’t help you live well, or be born, it doesn’t help yield high probabilities of ending up with an good family, and when you die it won’t give you one extra microsecond.

The students give you a surprising reception. Maestro, you don’t look so good. Are you sick? You look like you’re about to die. Maestro, we have news for you, says one of the boys in the classroom. Look at this picture. You see the façade of a notorious bar called Y. Stories of killings that have happened there have been in the papers and on the news before. You think of “Y” as one of the protagonist variables in an equation on the chalkboard. Some of my friends saw her there last night... She’s a total star, a sensation, the little jewel of the business, the most popular whore. Maestro, can you go save her?

You let the night enter you as you board the train at Sagrado Corazón. You no longer care that the map of your trajectory resembles a folded arm, but you do remember the mole in the shape of a cockroach on Samira’s elbow; you enter the underground at that elbow. The urban landscape is unimportant, you think, seeing the long beard of a sick, drunk Zeus. You don’t see Samira. You exit the train and enter the street amid the shadows and decaying odors, where cat-sized rats run by. Deep down you think about the probability of forgetting Samira. A kid offers you cocaine. You tell him that you’re not interested. Fuck yourself, he says without fear. You want to go home. Down a dark street you see two women kissing, and you act like you don’t notice. You arrive at Y. Some men enter with the tranquility of coming home; you long to go to your own home. I’m ridiculous, you can’t stop thinking. The large, red Y outside invites you in, as if you’ll find the answer to the equation you’re trying to solve.

You drink two beers in one hour — the last one already tastes bitter. You listen to the noise; the salsa; the solicitations of older women: you can do everything for this much; the proposals of little girls; none of them is Samira. You feel tricked; it’s impossible that you’d find one of your students here. With her intelligence she’s guaranteed a promising future. Samira would become an upstanding citizen. You think about ordering another beer, but instead decide to pay, leave a tip, and get out of there. You make your way through the patrons who’re there to have a good time.

Back on the train you hear the faraway click of high heels. A shadow approaches with a distinct glow around her hair, like a character with a halo from the calendar of saints. She moves sensually, the sashay of hips possessed by tropical music — you can almost imagine the salsa playing at the Y. As she approaches, you see a black silk scarf. It’s long and it plays with her to the rhythm of inaudible music. You don’t recognize it; you do recognize her.

Maestro, good evening. I never thought I’d see you in these shadowy places.

You don’t answer. You look at her: she’s overly made-up, like a woman already, an adult; she’s not the student you once knew, and you can almost imagine an extensive life history. She traps you with the scarf, tosses it over you, and you feel the band of cloth on your back. She comes closer to you with a slight pull — a grouping of sets, whole numbers, Samira is equal to — standing, she curls up into you.

Maestro, I like this too much... With every man I relive the nights with El Gato, my cat. It’s like this dead man comes back to life every day, like a miracle, and I want to do this for the rest of my life. Don’t give me that face; I’m happy, and my mom knows all about it — she brought me here. She got laid off at work, like they throw out the trash, that’s how they got rid of her. My mom brought me to these dark places and I enjoyed it from the very first time. I couldn’t let my little mother go hungry after all that she’s done for me, so I closed my eyes and felt my cat on top of me, beside me, and behind me. I also want you to know that for as long as I can remember, after working all day, Mom helped me with my homework at night, we played together, and I went to bed early with a prayer to God. Later, I sometimes escaped from my bed, and would find her with other men in the house. At first she told me it was Daddy who came in spirit to visit her, because spirits have needs too, and at first I believed it, but then I saw Daddy as a big man, other times as a small man. Sometimes he was white, sometimes black, and a few times I saw him with Asian eyes; being a spirit gives you such powers, you can change shape. Some nights Daddy could transform himself into a rich or a poor man, and his soul is so powerful that my mom said it can even transform itself into a woman. And I pretended to believe her. Maestro, I don’t want to go back to school. What I wish for now is to be on one of those cheap motel beds, where you can hear people jabbering in the streets, where the red lights change the color of your face, where not even a fan can evaporate my sweat and filth — our filth. Ay, maestro, you don’t know how much I’ve fantasized about you! I’ve imagined it so many ways that sometimes I think it’s real, more real than the men who’ve been fucking me these past few weeks. Maestro, if you say anything or if I find out that people from the government have done anything to my mom, I swear that you’ll never forget me, because I’ll tell everyone the story of how you tried to touch me at school. I’ll tell them that a few days later you took me on your desk and threatened my grades so you could screw me every day. I’ll cry when I tell it, with an expression of shame and pain, and there won’t be a single police officer or judge who won’t be moved. Ah, I want to go to bed—

You finally escape from the restraint of the scarf and your forehead feels sweaty, your face is hot, and your ears are red. You leave Samira in the darkness and run to the train. I’m a delinquent, you think, seeing the terminal as an impossible goal. Finally, it’s there in the distance and you can hear your own heart beating like a drum. It’s no longer imaginary music, it’s an internal percussion. You want to forget that conversation. You want to get home, shower, and erase the memory of Samira’s words. You long to be in front of the chalkboard. Invertible functions, variable isolations, ratios and proportions. You see a black cat; it moves quietly, without hurry, without worry. The animal turns around to fix its gray eyes on yours. If it could speak, what would it say to me? The feline’s gaze is challenging, uncomfortable, and intimidating. You look back the way you’ve come, back to where you left El Gato’s girlfriend. Samira, the girl with the mole in the shape of a cockroach on one elbow, an unsolved equation. With a kind of guilty feeling, you decide to go back and solve it.

Inside and Outside by Edmaris Carazo

Old San Juan

“I’m a resident,” he said, and removed the piece of paper from the glove box that apparently confirmed it. The officer looked at it, tilted his head like a dog, checked out my legs, looked him in the eye. He showed the officer his perfect teeth and returned the head tilt. I prayed that he didn’t catch a whiff of alcohol on our breath.

He looked at the document again... “Go ahead,” he finally said, holding the paper a couple seconds more before returning it. He didn’t believe us. That’s what I thought, but maybe it was because Miguel didn’t live in Old San Juan. I really wasn’t sure where he lived. Yes, there was his father’s house in Carolina, where I waited for him that one time in the pickup while he looked for his board. The same house where we shook the sheets in the half-light of a room with the door open and his old man’s snores as background music. There was also that empty apartment with nothing but a cot and a refrigerator, a very useful place but not fit to live in. Resident — a resident of Old San Juan — I doubted it more than the officer did. Anyway, deep down, I celebrated his lie.

Old San Juan is like a family member you miss right up until the moment you see them again. Not a day goes by that you don’t show up and wonder what’s going on now, what caused the hullabaloo this time. Then certain streets get shut down and only people who live there can enter. The guards stop you in front of Plaza Colón and filter out those who can enter. The residents of Old San Juan are the lucky ones, those mythical creatures. Nobody knows where they park, or how they’re able to go in and out and lead relatively normal lives within the walled city.

The only thing worse than trying to get into Old San Juan on a Friday night is trying to do so when it’s raining. On this island, cars stop moving when the first raindrop hits. Any street, any intersection, any checkpoint can become a traffic jam. San Juan in the rain is a spectacle: every puddle illuminated by streetlights, every cobblestone slick — even the disgusting ditches acquire a certain charm. I love cities in the rain. They’re like men in suits. If a city doesn’t look beautiful in the rain, it never will.

I always enter through the lower end, not caring where I’m going. Even though I come down Avenida Muñoz Rivera as if to go past, I always stop in Plaza Colón, traffic jam or not. I head down as if I were going to the Tapia theater, along the touristy cultural route. I always park at the Doña Fela parking garage on Calle Comercio. It’s dark and ugly, but it only costs three dollars for the whole night and it’s close to my usual haunts — the restaurants, the bars, Paseo la Princesa. When it’s up to me, I stick with Calle Fortaleza and Tetuán. Familiar routes soothe my soul.

I hate driving. When you first start driving, your car is a window of freedom, providing the illusion of being able to go wherever you want — ignoring the small fact that we’re stuck on a piece of dirt surrounded by water. Besides, I’ve been nearsighted since I was twelve, before my first period. At night the lights blind me, and alcohol makes it even worse, drying out my eyes and contacts. My lenses reflect the glare of the stoplights and headlights of other cars, and the additional $134 was too much to pay to have them put on antireflective coating. It seemed like a pointless charge at the time.

Miguel loves to drive, I imagine in his mind it’s like surfing on dry land. Miguel does everything with grace: even scratching his beard, tying his hair up in a bun — that would be feminine if it wasn’t for his huge hairy hands filled with rings. Being natural is easy for him, which sounds redundant, but it’s not. I, on the other hand, look like I’m about to have an aneurysm when I’m driving through Old San Juan, dodging bums who cross the streets as if they have license plates of their own. It’s like they wear dark colors on purpose, blending into the wet cobblestones with their filthy faces and bags on their feet. Maybe that’s why I prefer that someone else drives, why I don’t question the white lie. Because it saves me from parking in the Doña Fela, allows me to avoid the aroma of rancid piss, of local beer, that sweet rotten smell that fills the city. When I leave the Fela, I usually head right for the street, even though the parking lot has a pedestrian walkway. I hurry out through that little exit, “home” to a commune of who knows how many. I don’t know if they’re the same ones or if they sleep in shifts. I never ever look them in the eye, I dodge their sores, I hold my breath when they’re close by. For some reason I have nightmares about passing through that space — I’m terrified that they’ll latch onto my legs, throw me to the ground, touch me, infect me.

We got on the Norzagaray and drove around aimlessly, seeing the coast from the highest point on the street, passing by La Perla, like tourists, at a distance — seeing the little colorful houses, crammed together, dropping down to the shore. In its beginnings, La Perla was a slaughterhouse, cemetery, and residence for slaves and servants. It was there that they slaughtered cattle and buried humans, outside the walled city, of course. The poor sometimes have the best views in the world, as well as some cemeteries.

We found a place to park on the street, a miracle that would’ve never happened to me, and we went down the San Justo hill. Whoever says bajando hasta las calabazas obviously hasn’t tried to walk down cobblestone in high heels. I was using Miguel as a walker, avoiding cracks, gutters, and raised cobblestones. We stopped at a door, Miguel took out his cell phone, waited, looked up, then down at the ground. “Caballo, I’m outside,” he said, and closed the cell phone. It was an old flip phone, prepaid like a burner. While we waited, he hugged me from behind, bit my neck, and squeezed me, until someone appeared in the doorway.

It was a kid — he looked like a minor — pale, bright-eyed, fragile, freshly bathed. “Come in, come in.” We followed him up a spiral staircase that seemed endless. It was very dark and smelled like damp wood and cat piss. We came to a huge door, which wasn’t a standard rectangle. It was tall, and the upper part was a semicircle with gold-stained glass windows. When it opened, we were transported to another dimension.

It was cold in Old San Juan in mid-August, central air blew throughout the whole world of that apartment, which was covered in varnished wood paneling. The ceilings were exceedingly high; I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell they’d hung all those chandeliers. The kitchen was spacious, with stainless-steel appliances. On the other side was the living room, some white leather sofas, plush cushions, and about half a dozen women who looked like they’d been pulled out of the pages of magazines. The music seemed to be coming from the walls themselves. It was one of those electronic rhythms that make the floor and your ribs shake. There were three open bottles of champagne in silver buckets full of ice. And yet, almost nobody was drinking; everyone was dancing, moving their blond heads from side to side, as if hearing a different rhythm.

Migue brought me a glass. I took a breath and put on a questioning face. He kissed me. “Don’t ask, just dance.”

I drank that champagne with such thirst that it was like I’d walked all the way from the Doña Fela to that strange mansion. I was hoping to feel what everyone else seemed to be feeling, but nothing was happening. I went up to the champagne buffet and filled my glass again. Migue spoke with the kid, while his feline eyes slid over the bodies of the girls. The music had a robotic feel, like a scratched disc, a broken and repetitive melody that gave me more of a headache than a desire to dance. But the rest of the girls danced, eyes closed, fingering their lustrous necklines, smiling as if something very pleasurable was happening to them.

I went back to the table, filled my glass, took three sips, and served myself more. I touched one of the girls on the forearm to get her attention. To my surprise, she opened her big green eyes, smiled, and looked at me as if my face was the most striking one in the world. “Do you know where the bathroom is?” She smiled and tilted her head, came even closer to me, furrowed her brow, and pulled me to her ear — she smelled like lavender and cherry blossoms. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“I’ll show you.”

She turned around, went to the sofa, and began to move the cushions, as if she’d lost something of great value. She went to the other sofa and did the same thing, pushing the cushions aside, sticking her hands into the cracks. Finally, she pulled out a small bag, white and gold, approached me, and took me by the hand. I followed her down a long, dark hallway. It was full of huge canvases, colorful paintings framed in sequoia. I knew the exact kind of wood, because my grandfather had owned a framing business and I spent many summers haggling with galleries and rich people who wanted their recently purchased paintings in frames made of the most expensive material on the market. Then I started to wonder who these people were, who this apartment belonged to, how anyone had so much money in an economy that was so fucked. How old was that kiddo living the life of an artist? Who were these women?

The girl led me to the bathroom and held onto my hand as she entered. She flipped on the light, and I turned to leave. “You can stay.”

I smiled at her and looked down at the floor. I think I said, “Thanks,” and left. Halfway down the hallway, I remembered I still had to pee. I turned back toward the bathroom, praying to run into the blonde in the hallway. But no, I got back to the bathroom and the door was still shut. Then, as if by magic, it suddenly opened. The blonde threw her head forward as if she was going to kiss her knees, then straightened up quickly. Her hair fell back in a cascade, the image of a mermaid. Her eyes were so big, her eyebrows so high, her lips so red, her smile so wide, so drunk, her jaw set as if fighting an overbite and an underbite at the same time. She went strutting off down the hallway, like she didn’t even see me.

I went into the bathroom — I’ve always thought you can tell everything about a house from the bathroom, like you can tell everything about a man from his shoes. I sat down on the toilet and inspected the room. It resembled a steel urn. It had one of those special showers, the kind you only see in hotels and spas. I looked at myself in the mirror; my eyeliner had run a little and my eyes looked sunken. I attempted to fix it with my fingers but it was a futile effort, so I just pinched my cheeks to give myself a false blush.

When I returned to the living room, I tried to serve myself more champagne. The first two bottles were already empty, so I emptied the third into my glass. “Let’s go when you finish that.” Miguel didn’t fit in that environment either, we looked like we’d been photoshopped in. The chandeliers on the ceiling were reflected in his plastic lenses. He held the glass with both hands, one on the base and the other on the stem, tapping his rings against it. Champagne bubbles are fatal for a beer drinker. Only half of his hair was tied up in a bun. I laughed and told him that we had the same hairdo, touching his hair and scratching his beard. “Let’s get out of here.” With that whisper, I could tell that Migue had bad intentions, and more alcohol in his body than he knew how to handle.

We put our glasses down on the table and went to say goodbye. Migue grabbed my hand, which was strange. We weren’t a handholding couple — we weren’t a couple, period. We went down the spiral staircase — which, thanks to the champagne, seemed like the swirling of a giant toilet — and right out onto the cobblestones, this time heading up the San Justo hill. I asked Migue to stop for a second, the ties on my espadrilles had come undone. He stopped, crouched down, and tied them for me with all the calm and care in the world. I had no idea what time it was.

“Whose apartment is that?”

“Well, it’s Julito’s.”

“No, but who does it belong to?”

“I already told you.”

“Migue, that kid is like seventeen.”

“Nineteen.”

“And what does he do?”

“He manages.”

“It must come from his family then — what do his parents do?”

“Dunno, they’ve got an art gallery or something.”

He got all gallant and opened the pickup door for me. I could barely climb in, it’s too high for my short legs, and champagne doesn’t typically make you more skilled at anything.

“Are you good to drive?” I asked.

“Sure.”

We turned onto one of the little streets, Luna or Sol, I always confuse them. But we kept ascending.

“Aren’t we going?” I was confused.

“Yes.”

He pulled over to the side of the road, and started texting. I began looking all around, it seemed like we were just waiting to be mugged. Soon, a bum appeared, with a backpack, shorts, infinite beard, and bare feet. Migue rolled down the window. I’d seen him roll down the window other times to give them money, or tell them to find some shoes in the back of his truck. Oh, Migue, not today.

The guy opened the door, removed his backpack, got in the pickup, settled in, shut the door, and greeted us. Migue locked the doors and put his hand on my thigh, as if telling me to stay calm. He took a manila envelope out of the glove box. The guy pulled a package from his backpack, a brick wrapped in plastic. He set it down between my seat and Migue’s. Migue picked it up, unwrapped it, and pulled out a heavy green brick. I couldn’t believe it, it was like a bar of gold, but it was weed.

They shook hands, and the guy slipped the manila envelope in his backpack and said, “Buenas noches, miss.” And he got out.

“Sorry you had to be here for this,” Miguel said

“Sorry? You know the position you put me in?”

“You know I—”

“That you smoke weed, like all the time? Yes. Did I expect you to deal drugs with me in the car? No!”

“It’s no big thing.”

“Start the car, let’s go. And don’t take me around San Juan doing stupid shit, I need you to bring me home, and that’s it.”

There were cops diverting traffic in the middle of San Juan. On the other side, the streets are one-ways. So we ended up taking the longest way around — not along the coast, not by the docks, but in the interior. We went right through the intestines of the old city.

The silence in the car was almost as tempestuous as the music in that mansion apartment. Migue fiddled with the air-conditioning, trying to defog the windows. It had rained most of the night and the city was damp, cold, and foggy. He had let his hair down, and he drove with his right hand while resting his head on his left. When we got out of the walled city, the only noise was our breathing and the swoosh of the tires over the wet tar. Free of the cobblestones, at last we could move at a decent speed.

I looked out my window as we moved away from Old San Juan and returned to the city like the rest of the mortals. I was more sad than angry about what had happened. Migue was generally a good guy, and many times I’d wondered if our thing was going somewhere. I was savoring the journey without destination that we were on, and his hands always made me happy, so I enjoyed the coming and going without thinking of dates or reasons. But what had happened that day was forcing me to make a decision, to draw lines, define things — the opposite of everything we were.

I heard a deep gasp, as if Migue were reading my mind. I turned to look at him and his brow furrowed. He pushed back from the steering wheel to plant himself in the seat and stretched out his right arm as if he could protect me from flying out the windshield. The world was moving in slow motion. I felt a violent lurch and almost hit the dashboard. The screeching of tires broke the silence. When I managed to look up, I saw the silhouette of a man, then the details of his face growing clearer — coming closer and closer, as if focusing binoculars — until I could recognize the panic in his eyes, and then the impact came. I closed my eyes. I still heard the screech of the tires and the impact, again and again, pulsing from jaw to sternum. I opened my eyes and looked at Migue. He didn’t have his glasses on, and he was covering his face with his hands with their many rings. “What do I do? What do I do? WHAT DO I DO!” He ran his hands over his forehead and pushed his hair back, over and over. When I dared to look out the windshield, I saw the body on the ground. It was wet and his face was looking in the other direction. His clothes were dark. It was impossible to know whether or not he was breathing. Migue unfastened his seat belt and unlocked the doors.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’ve gotta take him to the hospital.”

“Miguel, you’re crazy.”

“We can’t just leave him lying there.”

“You know how much we had to drink?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“We could go to jail, Miguel.”

“No way, it was an accident.”

“An accident? If we’re unlucky enough to have killed the bum, it’s like homicide, Migue, seriously.”

“What does it matter that he’s a bum?”

“He’s got no family, nobody’s gonna give two shits about investigating. Start the car, let’s go.”

“I can’t do that, I can’t.”

“We drank a ton and we’re driving around with a brick of marijuana in the car, we don’t have any other option.”

Miguel looked down. He tied his hair into a half-bun, dried his tears, crossed himself, and started the car.

At 4:23 a.m. yesterday, there was a report of a serious accident involving a pedestrian. The incident took place on Avenida Constitución at the exit of the walled city, in the jurisdiction of the municipality of San Juan.

According to the preliminary report, the incident occurred when a vehicle, described as a blue pickup, was driving down the aforementioned roadway toward Avenida Ponce de León. Several neighbors in the vicinity said that the female driver abandoned the scene immediately.

The body of the victim was identified as Julio Botet, owner of the Galería Éxodo on Calle San Francisco in Old San Juan.

Agent Nicholás Marrero of the Highway Patrol Division of the Puerto Rican Police Command at Avenida Fernández Juncos Station, Parada 6 in Puerta de Tierra, and District Attorney Esteban Mendizábal have taken charge of the investigation, ordering that the scene be photographed and analyzed.

Death Angel of Santurce by Charlie Vázquez

Avenida Fernández Juncos

She has dyed blond hair that’s turned orange in spots, and her eyes twitch left and right as she storms down Avenida Fernández Juncos in a panic. Her red blouse should be tighter and she pulls her short black skirt up as she goes. Of medium complexion — not white, not black — she was once very beautiful.

Shattered glass crunches under her scuffed maroon heels as she passes windows that are barred like prison cells — or tiger cages — along the restless Santurce thoroughfare on the night that will claim her forever. She knows something’s wrong, very wrong, and fears that she’ll never find her way out again.

So she runs to him in the meantime.

The tantalizing aroma of a pig being fire-roasted whole for a celebration floats past her on the pirate breezes that sneak in like thieves from the brooding Atlantic Ocean. The breezes always disappear inland, toward the lush, mysterious green mountains in the dark island interior.

She forgets her hunger as soon as the winds move on and now she won’t stop for anything. Only one thing haunts her thoughts tonight and she will not cease until he appears. She digs through her purse and sprays her neck and armpits with a flowery perfume she stole from a pharmacy.

I’ve missed him, she thinks, and snaps her compact closed, wedging it between her lips in order to undo and redo her frizzy ponytail, tighter and cleaner. She hurries down the dark avenue as cars zoom past blasting salsa, and the descendants of shipwrecked derelicts linger, drinking liquor out of brown papers bags.

They lick their lips and call her precious things. A man appears out of nowhere in a green tank top and dirty blue jeans. He’s tall, dark, and smells of beer; a lightning flash of pink tongue sneaks out, pornographic desire.

“Hey, mami, come over here—”

“Go to hell, cabrón!” she says, and shoves him out of the way.

The man keeps talking to her — he trails her for an entire block — and his voice fades away with the now distant, distorted pulse of salsa in the background. She quickens her pace, careful not to misjudge the uneven pavement beneath her throbbing feet. She has to avoid injury tonight; no distractions or accidents this time.

Our young lady of the night wonders what time it is (a constant concern since her watch and cell phone were stolen), as she passes a loud parade of whistling and catcalling men who grope themselves and conspire to slow her down — or stop her. She breaks through them and continues on her quest, not stopping to ask for the hour.

Specters linger under the swaying shadows of palms draped in moonless darkness, like something out of one of those old black-and-white movies her grandfather used to love. Her mother would pass the day watching them when she was a little girl, and now she adores them too.

A familiar outline materializes in the darkness up ahead. It becomes clearer and approaches with threatening speed: another young woman working the same perilous trade approaches, her black eyes and sculpted eyebrows narrowed and pinched tightly with confrontation. Her hair and outfit are Gothic black and she curls her dagger-filed fingernails into her fists with feline grace. “You got some nerve—”

“You got nothing and I got a date, puta,” our young lady tells her. “Now, get out of my way before I kill you.” She pushes the newcomer aside and digs through her purse for a knife, almost knocking the cat-girl off her feet. Their throaty profanities echo off the buildings and ricochet over the busy avenue, and men passing in cars press down on their horns excitedly. One fellow stops and offers to take them both with him.

Our young lady of the night ignores him — that motherfucker doesn’t have any money — and finishes telling the cat-bitch what she’s been waiting to tell her for some time. Then she puts her knife away and continues on her aching feet, letting the puta live for now.

Hissing, cat-girl fades away from the frame as she approaches the man in the driver’s seat — “Wait for me, papi,” she says — as his friends in the backseat deepen their voices and squash together to make room for her. They grasp the heads of their dicks through their basketball shorts and the salsa pulse gets louder.

She resumes her frantic journey through the treasonous streets and thinks she’ll need to charge him more money from now on. She can already see the surprise and hurt in his old brown eyes, which always stare at her from somewhere long ago and far away, from another place in time.

Always a gentleman, and still handsome for an old dog, he pays her in crisp hundred-dollar bills he sometimes counts incorrectly in her favor. If the moon is right, he’ll even take her to a fancy Old San Juan restaurant and let her spend the night in his expensive hotel, after putting his valuables in the safe and taking his teeth out.

He never asks for kinky or freaky tricks (she wishes he would for a change), or says things to upset and degrade her for his pleasure — unlike so many losers. Those rich losers who get off on the suffering of others. He’s easier to turn over than men half his age, and she’s had him figured out for over a year.

Our young lady of the night arrives at the designated tavern — Finally, she sighs as she enters — and orders a can of Medalla. It’s all she can afford until he arrives. She waits near his favorite seat, gulping her beer and listening to a new bachata hit.

He’s over twenty minutes late, which is unlike him. She rummages through her purse, unsure of what she’s looking for. He better not be dead.

She has no phone, but that doesn’t matter since the old man’s married and always calls from a blocked number. She asks the meaty-armed bartender if her date has been around, describing him, and the bartender tells her no. She writes something on a piece of paper and passes it to him.

A second and then a third Medalla appear, followed by several shots of vodka. Our young lady of the night hasn’t eaten dinner, but she doesn’t care because she’s never coming back here — she’s finished with this place, this infernal island of heartache, this city she used to love.

Her aunt Yolanda in Philadelphia will be happy to have her visit, and after that — she says to herself as the meaty-armed bartender sets a fifth Medalla down — she’ll go to Florida because she hates the snow. Snow is for gringo motherfuckers. Twice in her short life was enough.

The bartender stops serving her when the overweight, sweaty owner comes in to catch up on some office business in the back with an attractive young woman. He winks, hands her four squashed Marlboro Reds, and tells her it’s time to get moving.

“Come meet me tomorrow around midnight,” he says. “I get paid and...”

She stumbles out, doesn’t answer him.

Over two hours late. This has never happened before. She gives up and says a prayer for him. She knows it’ll do nothing, but she doesn’t know what else to do. The night brings answers to every question. It always has and why should tonight be any different?

Our young lady of the night passes even more people on her way home than she had on the way to her ruined date. Shadows and silhouettes appear to ask her things (Are they really there? she wonders), and she waves them off and sucks her teeth with disgust. She’ll be living on the streets again soon, so fuck them and their problems.

The next time that ugly old motherfucker wants a date, I’ll make him pay double, she laughs in the haze and warmth of silly intoxication. She considers going back to the clubs to make some last-minute money, but she was banned from all of them for stealing. A lie. Another lie.

Our young lady digs around in her purse and lights a cigarette with shaky hands. Then she pulls out two wrinkled school photos of her little man — her little boy, her little prince — who lives in Ponce with his asshole father. The motherfucker who kicked her out to marry that bitch, the reason for all of this...

She puts her hands to her face. The convulsive bursts of emotion rock her. The shameful agony of not having her son with her explodes from her core, and she kneels on the pavement, using a parked car to keep balance, until it passes several moments later. People walk right past, as if she isn’t even there.

I’ll get my little man back, she thinks, but it’s just as hard when he’s around. So she stops at the entrance of an avocado-green apartment building where she cannot be seen and lets the last stabs of hoarse anguish drain out. This passes too, and she blows her nose into a napkin she finds in her purse.

Lights another cigarette.

At least you aren’t dead, she says to herself, hooking her bag on her shoulder.

Tomorrow’s her birthday; it’s only one in the morning, and she feels like celebrating. There’s no one around to tell her she can’t. Our young lady of the night walks past another bar and tries her luck. Why not? Even a glass of water would be good. She’s cried all the moisture out of her body and another drink will help her forget for a while.

She steps aside to inspect herself in her broken compact one final time and approves of the reflection, despite another missing tooth, blotting away the trails of makeup from her tears. She walks in and sucks up her runny nose, a blast of marijuana smoke hitting her nostrils.

There’s a loud, awful heavy metal ballad playing that she remembers from an MTV video when she spent her summers in Philadelphia as a little girl. Ugly gringo motherfuckers in women’s clothes and makeup with long nasty hair, and endless guitar solos that would drive a deaf person crazy. They’re not the Stones, that’s for sure.

Our young lady of the night wants a man, one who’ll hold her after he’s done. She spots a muscular guy wearing a chunky watch and gold chains sitting alone at the bar, typing something into his phone. Her favorite Santo Boricua tank-top physique. He’s handsome as a jaguar and looks like he has money to spend.

She introduces herself and brightens when she smells his sweat, but then a curly haired, high-heeled Dominican woman slams the squeaky bathroom door behind her, walks up to our young lady of the night — her perfume is too strong — and pushes her out of the way.

“What the fuck are you doing talking to my man, puta?”

“The only puta you need to be worried about is your mother,” our young lady says, and lunges to grab her hair.

They scream insults at one another, pushing as the boyfriend with rocky muscles and black armpit hair tries to break them apart.

“Stop that shit, puñeta!” he says.

They stumble apart and our young lady of the night gets ready to leave before things get too hot. She’s too drunk to fight. The Dominican woman continues to call her a list of horrible things; her man is embarrassed and finishes his beer, swipes his car keys off the bar to leave.

He’s ready to fuck, the lonely woman thinks; she can see it in his walk and hear it in his voice. She savors the thought of him taking her — he’s the kind of man she would keep around — but he disappears into the night, keeping his girl calm at his side as he does.

There’s an older guy there but she’s had enough of them. He’s at the back of the bar and is dressed like a leading man from an old black-and-white movie. Staring down at something — a magazine? His phone? She can’t see his face.

Something pulls her to him, so she stumbles over and tells him her name, that she thinks she’s seen him before. He doesn’t look up but nods without the slightest degree of emotion or interest — this overdressed man from an old movie.

He gestures with an open palm for her to sit, which she does, but he still doesn’t say anything or even look up. He mumbles something she doesn’t understand in a smooth, deep voice she finds pleasant. She suspects he is lonely like she is, and waits for him to meet her gaze or say something, offer her a drink.

He raises his head after a few tense moments and she gasps. He’s not old at all. What was she thinking? He’s one of the most handsome men she’s ever seen: friendly, penetrating blue eyes, combed-back silver hair, with about three days’ worth of a stubbly beard.

Our young lady feels dizzy when she smells his fresh, piney cologne. He undoes the top two buttons of his crisp white shirt to reveal thick chest hair. No wedding ring. Well-groomed and elegant, she thinks. Easy in bed.

Suddenly she is overcome by a terrible feeling and tells herself that it’s best to get moving and go home where she can lock the door and get away from the world. She’s drunk and it’s best to leave before something awful happens.

He’s so handsome that she cannot look at him for too long.

The stylish devil leans over and says something. His voice is dry and reptilian, yet familiar, and she nods in approval at everything he says. They leave the bar — and the terrible heavy metal music — and head to her room just a few blocks from there, making a quick stop along the way.

She leads him into the dark lobby and up an even darker staircase to her room. The building is without power, she tells him, but they can take a cold shower to freshen up from the humid night.

He remains silent and enters after her. She lights candles for atmosphere, romance — so they can see one another — and excuses herself to the bathroom to wash up for several anxious and jittery minutes, before emerging anew.

Glowing.

Naked.

He’s sitting in the corner, still dressed, and she wonders how she could’ve mistaken him for an ugly old monster. He won’t take his clothes off, he says, because he’s not staying. He works nights and has a lot to do. Another freak, she thinks, but at least he smells nice. And he looks strong. Maybe he’ll even hold me.

She wonders what’ll turn him on as she leads him to her bed. She lies on her back in the storm of her intoxication and he falls on top of her, crashing down and spreading her legs apart. A wooden bedpost creaks and splinters and he hushes her with a finger to her lips when she tries to say something.

He unbuckles his belt, unzips his suit pants, pulls it out, and guides it into her. Their desire ignites and launches her to strange and wonderful worlds — to new realms where everything is fantastic and wondrous. She lets out long, throaty animal sounds that mean many prophetic things in the moment, but he says nothing.

Our young lady of the night rocks her head left and right in ecstasy: there’s a handsome man on top of her, dressed exquisitely and smelling of expensive cologne; no foul body odors, or sore spots, or careful maneuvering around broken bones and bandages.

He moans into her ear and she spreads wider for him, his prong swelling wider inside her. It hurts, because it has a sharp curve and is thicker than her wrists, so she shifts her hips to makes it easier, to take him all the way in.

He grinds into her, burying his snout into the space just below her ear. She feels teeth push against her neck, harder each time. Something overcomes him and he sinks his teeth into her shoulder, piercing her skin. He thrusts harder at the taste of her blood.

Our young lady screams in protest, but his hand is over her mouth. His charming cologne becomes foul and cadaverous, and each of his movements chips away at her strength. His fingers become sharp claws that tear her flesh off the bone, and her eyes light up with the screams that are silenced in her throat. In tandem with his cruel teeth, they rip her body to shreds.

She screams one final plea and loses consciousness. Deafening hurricane winds shatter the windows, and the dissonant groans of the resurrected dead rush in on the trade winds.

The curtains become still.

The nervous hotel manager explains that the power hasn’t been restored yet as he puts his heavy key ring back in his pocket and opens the door. The first officer enters, pinches his nose. The second follows with instinctive hesitation. The dirty manager, a chubby and religious middle-aged man, lingers behind and says a prayer.

It’s been days since anyone’s heard from her. A young woman who disguised her voice and lied about her identity was the one to alert the police that something was wrong. The hotel manager explains to the cops that she’s five months behind on her rent. “Always has money for everything else, if you know what I mean.”

The officers ignore him. They’ve heard it all and they know what they’re doing. It’s as humid as it gets in San Juan and they’re dressed in their black uniforms. The stench in the room doesn’t help much, but it solves the mystery.

She’s faceup in bed; legs spread wide; an angelic and peaceful expression on her darkening face. Her left arm is tossed aside, punctured with agony and guilt. Skin spotting over. Her makeup’s smeared and streaked, as if she’d been crying.

“Everything else looks fine,” the officers say to one another. The only unusual detail is her eyes, which are open wide with wonder, as if the last thing she’d seen had been astonishing and beautiful.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” the younger cop asks.

The older cop curtly tells him to cover her body with the blanket, as if insulted by his stupid question, and issues a report over his radio. He tells the manager he can start cleaning the place up, that she doesn’t have much and what’s there is worthless. As if she were still alive.

He goes through her purse and finds two photos of a little boy that resembles her. He wedges them into the corners of a framed image of the Virgin Mary that hangs next to the locked window. Shakes his head.

“No sign of a break-in or any other disturbance,” he says to the dispatcher. “No need to send Detective Guerrero since there’s nothing to investigate. Overdose.”

The hotel manager steps back and the officers continue. The older cop hands her purse to the younger one to look through (no money, no credit cards) and checks the locked window one last time. Then he goes into the bathroom and comes out with a curled-over tablespoon and syringe and throws them onto the bed next to her.

He shoots a small plastic baggie into the air with a flick of his middle finger and says, “Another satisfied customer.”

“She probably scored on Fernández Juncos, overestimated the dose, and well...” the younger officer says with a hint of sadness in his voice.

“You know everything already, don’t you?” the older one says.

The electricity comes on and the television whines back to life. A weak lightbulb flickers on overhead and an old movie brightens to life on the screen. The younger officer crosses the room to switch it off. This nasty old hotel actually has cable, he thinks, and takes in the moving image of a pretty woman jumping into an elegant man’s arms for a brief moment.

“At least she had good enough taste to watch old black-and-white movies,” he says to the grumpy senior officer. The image darkens with a metallic ringing sound when he turns the TV off. “Because the new ones suck.”

Originally written in English