Isn’t it easy to make connections?
But those are just the speculations of the sleepless, too many horror movies. The only thing that’s clear is that the more I know, the more I am disgusted with Sleepy Joe.
I am the type of person who cannot stand the suffering of animals. I must admit that sometimes I feel like Brigitte Bardot with her maniacal and exclusive obsession with the well-being of seals. I do not compromise with anyone who engages in the abuse of animals in any form, and that’s why I’m a vegetarian. But to nail a dog to a wall, you have to be a sadistic motherfucker to do something like that. And that would be enough to earn my hate, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If there’s something I can’t stand in this world it’s a man who mistreats a woman. Zero tolerance, much less if it’s the woman I love. Yet there is another side of him that caught my attention, a corner of his character, one only, that inspires a degree of envy, his knack for the ritualistic, which seems authentic. He is a nobody, illiterate and vicious, but he retains the sense of the sacred. Or least he is one inspired son of a bitch. A taut string of conviction vibrates in that bastard, and I dashed to write that phrase down before I forgot it. Writing graphic novels for so long, I have developed the habit of thinking in vignettes, which I translate into catchy expressions that fit in dialogue balloons.
Some force is pushing Sleepy Joe beyond himself. Something lifts him from his current surroundings. At nights, in the safety of my bed, I intuit what an angry María Paz had to experience on her own on the roof, tied up and terrified, naked and trembling from the cold as she watched her brother-in-law officiate that ceremony. She knows exactly what all this is about, and after so many days of silence on the matter, early this morning she uttered a phrase whose meaning I haven’t quite fully deciphered. I don’t know if it was said in defense of her brother-in-law or against me: she warned me not to underestimate Sleepy Joe.
“You may hate him, yes, despise him even, whatever you want, but never underestimate him.”
“Alright,” I said, somewhat annoyed, “I’ll be careful; I don’t like the idea of being nailed to a wall.” Not to mention a broomstick up my ass.
Two days ago I told María Paz that today we would have to separate for a few days, just a few, because my mom and Ned’s anniversary was coming up, and I had promised both of them that I would go to the celebration in Chicago. I hate the idea of leaving María Paz alone here, knowing that Sleepy Joe is near, but it is much more risky to try and take her out given the police presence. I can’t miss this fucking anniversary, my mother would kill me, she’s already very touchy since I decided to live with my father, and missing her party would be the last straw. Besides, María Paz is fine on her own. She is in a house owned by white people who are more or less rich, or at least upper middle-class, and, as such, free from suspicion. The state troopers are well aware that they are here to protect us and not make things harder, and they will not have any awareness of her presence unless she makes it known by peeking her nose out of the hiding place. I have warned her a thousand times that she cannot do it, not under any circumstances. She cannot be tempted to look out the window at the garden, as she does when I am there, or go down the stairs, or go to the front door, under mortal risk.
“Look me in the eyes, María Paz, promise me you are not going to do anything crazy while I’m gone,” I said, and tried to soothe her anxiety. “It will only be forty-eight hours, forty-eight hours of common sense on your part, that’s all I’m asking. Before you know it, I’ll ride back up to the house on my bike. Think of it like this: I will only be gone this afternoon, tomorrow, and the following morning, just the ride there, the party, and the ride back. Don’t pull any stunts during that time or engage in risky action, just do that for me. Do you understand?”
“What if something happens to you?” she asked, widening her big black eyes so that I wanted to jump into her, plunge into the deep dark water of those eyes, forget about Edith and Ned, to hell with their anniversary, there will be others, but I can’t, just can’t.
Edith would kill me, and if you ask me whom I fear more, Edith or Sleepy Joe, I’d have to say Edith by a few heads.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Motorcycles are very dangerous…”
“Now you sound like my father.”
I’m going to leave her plenty of food and a ream of paper, in case she is inspired to write something new. As a temporary farewell, yesterday we made love and took a shower together, me struggling to hold her under the warm stream as she slid down my arms, wet and slippery as an otter, and I brought up her dream again, although she didn’t seem to want to talk about it this time.
“So AIX?” I asked her.
“What?”
“AIX. That’s what you said the creature in your dreams was named, the one that comes out of the cloth vagina. That was it, right, AIX?” And I wrote the letters in the foggy glass of the shower door.
“And what if your father comes up, Mr. Rose?” In spite of all the intimate acts we had shared, to her I continued to be Mr. Rose, her creative-writing teacher; she never called me Cleve.
“My father is going to be in the city. Besides, you know he never comes up here. Why? Will you get bored?”
“How can I get bored, when I am in heaven?”
Her response could not have been more lovely or full of joy. But it concerned me somewhat.
Even though María Paz may not think of it in these terms, she is as locked up and deprived of liberty here as she was in Manninpox.
“Why don’t you start writing your memories over again,” I suggested. “I’ll leave you my laptop, you know how to use it now, or there is paper if you prefer longhand.”
“Ugh, no, Mr. Rose, write everything down from the beginning again, way too long. That’s lost, and it should stay lost. Oh, one little thing before you go,” she said, handing me a small wooden box that she took out of her bag. The box contained Hero’s ashes and the medal of valor given to him in Alaska.
María Paz wanted me to bury the box and keep the medal, but the medal was attached to a blue ribbon that was all stuck to the ashes, so I suggested that we just bury the box with everything inside.
She agreed, and asked that it be buried in a clearing in the woods that was visible from the window. Today, before I leave for Chicago, I will do it in a big way. I am going to give Hero the funeral rites of a hero, a war hero, with Wagner and everything. I’ll burn his name into a small wooden placard and mark the spot of the burial with a makeshift wooden cross. Although on second thought, no name. It would be stupid to do that and then already be well on the road when the police make their daily rounds and investigate. Or what about if my father saw it and was curious about this Hero. What hero? He’d wonder. I will just bury the box, make a quick cross with two pieces of wood, and that’s it — no Wagner or any such other stuff. I’m doing terrible on time. I promised my mother I would not ride the bike at night, and I’m already cutting it close.
A few hours later, I say good-bye to María Paz, my father, and the three dogs. I go to the garage to get a shovel, but I pass by the kitchen for a second to grab a Gatorade and I notice Empera putting out the food for the dogs. She has her iPod headphones on with the music so loud she doesn’t even realize I am standing there, so I pause for a second just to watch her. I have always suspected that she is not much of a dog person. She does not have much interaction with them or much less pet them. On the other hand, she prepares their food bowls with care, adding the appropriate vitamins and supplements to each plate. She doesn’t feel any affection toward the animals, but she also doesn’t mistreat them or neglect them, that’s what I was curious about, and I am pleased with what I see.