Yuri brings him some pills. I look at him suspiciously, so he explains: “To get him up.”
I nod. To get him up, whatever that means. Whatever those pills might be. Amphetamines. Tonics. Something for high-performance athletes. For desperate economists. Antidepressants. Hallucinogens. For housewives. For new wave santeros. Analgesics. For everyone. Maybe all at once. They’re different kinds of pills. It’s a lot of pills.
Or maybe just placebos.
Probably.
“There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen,” Yuri tells me. “Bring me a glass.”
I go, serve the equivalent of one cup, and come back.
“I said a glass,” Yuri says, raising his voice. “A whole glass. Filled to the brim.”
I go, pour, come back.
Yuri makes the boy turn around and sit up at the edge of the bed while the sergeant crushes the pills with his fingers and sprinkles them in the coffee.
Maybe they’re not placebos after all.
The boy just looks at the floor.
“Here, drink this.” Yuri brings the glass to his face.
After a bit of a struggle and some splattering of the coffee on the sheets, the glass is empty. There’s some sediment at the bottom. It’s quite thick. Yuri hands the glass to the sergeant, who goes to the kitchen and then comes back stirring it, full again.
“C’mon, don’t play dumb.” Yuri starts the second round.
The boy surrenders even more. After he empties the glass, he coughs.
“Bring him a soda, carbonated,” Yuri demands.
I go. While I’m at it, I grab a beer for myself. I down it in long swallows while the boy drinks avidly.
“How many left?” Yuri asks.
“Two,” the sergeant answers.
Yuri nods and holds the boy by the shoulders.
“Okay, everything’s all right. Act like a man and I’ll give you a present later.”
The boy doesn’t say anything. Yuri takes his silence as a good sign and the three of us walk out, leaving him alone.
Hanging out by the window, I stare at my hands. For the first time, I notice that my little finger is slightly separated from the rest at the base, and it begins a little lower. I wonder if everybody else’s hands are like this. Or maybe I’m deformed. Curious, I try to get a look at Yuri’s hands. I can’t manage it. He has them in his pockets. I try to see the sergeant’s hands but he’s always making fists.
I try to remember Daniela’s hands.
It’s useless.
The only thing I remember — I think — is that they were weak.
How much strength do you need to stab yourself in the head with a pair of scissors?
How long do I have to wait?
“Forget about it.” Yuri appears at my side. “Forget about Dani. Have some balls and forget about it.”
I think I detect sadness on his hard face. I start to feel an intense regret. Who knows, maybe things won’t turn out so well. The sergeant is strong but I’ve never actually seen him work. I’m sure he can take two, even three, maybe even four, but who knows. Héctor is the king of the neighborhood. And there are so many people in the neighborhood. And Yuri... Yuri’s my brother. He’s as skinny as me. That’s why he has the sergeant. My only sibling now. I should...
“In any case, she was a whore,” Yuri says. “She was a whore, that Dani. A helluva whore. It’s better this way.”
I stare at him.
“I started fucking her back when you moved to Grandma’s house. Dani liked it. She also loved it when I took pictures. I told the guys, I showed them the photos. Then one of them asked me if he could fuck her. I thought he was joking but he was serious. He said he’d pay, so that it wouldn’t screw up our friendship. I said yes. Then came the other guys. Dani still liked it, not as much as before, but she still liked it. Later, some woman brought me a little girl. She was her husband’s daughter, not hers, and she’d leave her with me on Wednesdays, when her husband had to do his turn at neighborhood watch. She said we could split the profits. I thought that was all right... That’s how we started. One day, when Dani was older, she said she wanted to stop. I told her that was okay, that I didn’t need her anymore. She asked me not to tell you, ever. I said okay to that too. But that’s not important anymore... Can you imagine? She loved it when I called her my little dove, the way you do... It’s so strange that after everything she took up each hole, that she cracked from being forced... Yes, I heard about it, though neither of you said anything to me. I also heard you were showing off... but it doesn’t matter... Do you wanna see the photos of Dani from when she was a kid? I still have them.”
I don’t think I see anything on Yuri’s face anymore. It’s just a hardened face. That’s all.
“Seriously, do you wanna see the photos?” he insists. “You can even keep them. For real. Consider them a gift. If you don’t want them, I’ll give them to the sergeant.”
I tell him no. I tell him I don’t need them. He can do with them whatever he wants. I look outside to the street, to the corner, and tell him I have to go to the bathroom.
While we were watching the rehearsal, I noticed that Dani had been quiet for a while, absorbed in something. I thought I knew what it was and put my arm around her.
“What you have to do is tell yourself that nothing happened. If you say it enough, it’ll come true. Because it’s the truth. Nothing happened. For me, you’re still Daniela, my little dove. And if you want, when you feel better, I’ll tell Yuri, and you’ll see how that sergeant guy he has in the shadows shoves Morro Castle up Héctor’s ass and then does the same to the others...” I was on my ingenious little speech, of which I was very proud, so I smiled when she said, also smiling, to wait for her a minute, that she was going to the bathroom.
I was still smiling when the lights went out.
I was smiling still when the lights came back on, when somebody screamed in the bathroom, when everybody began running around.
How stupid.
I’ve lost sight of Héctor and his animals from my perch by the window; they’re probably at the door. They’re about six or seven, the animals. That’s why I’m not so sure what’s going to happen now. I’m not even sure what it is I want to happen.
Voices. Screams. La Gloria’s name. Screams. Daniela’s name. More screams. The thud of a fist on a table. Another thud. More screams. The volume drops. Then some more. Voices. Isolated words.
Silence.
I leave my post and move to the living room.
Yuri and Héctor are sitting at the table. There are a few bills between them. A bottle of rum. Glasses. Grave but serene faces. Men at the table. Business matters, men.
“When I catch whoever hit my baby’s face, I’m gonna cut off his balls,” Héctor says, and he seems to be repeating it for the fourth or fifth time. “Nobody hits one of my women like that... and much less while trying to fuck with a business associate...” He looks at Yuri. “The truth is, it’s not your fault you had such an asshole for a sister.”
Yuri nods: “You don’t get to pick your family, as much as you may want to... About the other thing, business, let’s meet tomorrow at the bar, and we’ll talk about it then, with our heads cleared. You’ll see that we come to terms.”
“Damn right, damn right.”
“Omaha.” Yuri shakes his head in my direction. “Go up to the corner and get us a coupla bottles. My buddies here are soaked and we have to warm them up. Take that.” And he points to the bills on the table.
The sergeant and the animals huddle around to look at photos the former is holding. They laugh. They click their tongues. In one of the photos, I see can Daniela’s smile shining. A dumb-blonde smile, like Britney Spears, the kind she knew would make me laugh.