That seemed to mollify her, but he knew the subject hadn’t been dropped. They walked on to the subway stop and stood on the platform, which was now crowded. It must have been a while since the last train, so another should be due soon.
Even as he formulated the thought, a cool wash of air moved across the platform, pushed by an approaching train. A light appeared down the narrow, dark tunnel, and an increasing roar chased away all other sound. Everyone moved closer to where the speeding train would growl and squeal to a stop.
Roger was aware of Laura edging back behind him, which she did sometimes to protect her hairdo from the breeze of an approaching train.
When the train was no more than fifty feet away, he was surprised to feel her fists firm in the small of his back, and amazingly he was airborne, out and dropping, blinded by the brilliant light of the train, consumed by its thunder.
After the funeral, life, routine, settled back in. Roger had been dead less than six months, but Laura and Davy seldom spoke of him, and Laura and Roger’s wedding photo was tucked away in a box of his possessions that someday Laura would put out curbside with the trash.
Davy was doing better in school now. The Slicer murders were happening less frequently, as if the killer were maturing and learning restraint. There was no sense of urgency about the murders now in the media. In fact, amidst all the ongoing mayhem of Manhattan, they were hardly news at all.
Laura rarely patronized dry cleaners or laundromats, choosing instead to do most of the family wash herself. She would spend hours in the basement laundry room, scrubbing diligently, removing stains, scrubbing them again and again to make sure they were removed.
Some of the stains never completely came clean, but they were hardly noticeable, so she didn’t mind them. She didn’t see that they made much difference.
FREDDIE PRINZE IS MY GUARDIAN ANGELBY LIZ MARTÍNEZ
Washington Heights
Freddie Prinze had been dead for four years when he spoke to me the first time. I was in my room in my family’s apartment in Washington Heights, saying the Rosary, when he appeared. At first, I thought the dark spot on my wall was a shadow, and I closed my eyes tightly, trying to concentrate with fervor. I was preparing for my confirmation, and I knew that the ability to pray without distraction from the outside world was important.
He must have gotten impatient waiting for me to finish because he cleared his throat. I jumped at the sound, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid to see him standing in my room in the fading January light. He winked at me. “Hey, mamacita,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?”
I wasn’t really sure how to talk to a celebrity, but he was just slouching against the wall, the way I’d seen him do in Ed Brown’s garage on TV. He looked a lot taller in my room. In the living room, he was only about six inches high and sort of grayish on the old RCA. He also jumped up and down a lot because the vertical hold was busted. Here he was relatively still and looked like the older brother of one of my friends.
“Hi,” I said shyly. I immediately wondered if he knew I was saying the Rosary twice because today was the fourth anniversary of his death.
“So what are you doing?” he asked.
I guessed that he couldn’t read my mind after all. I breathed a little easier and held up the Rosary beads.
He nodded. “My mom does that all the time.”
He seemed very much at ease, but my knees were shaking like Bill Cosby’s Jell-O Pudding. I was glad I was kneeling so he couldn’t see. Did he know I had a huge crush on him, still?
“I hear you’re my number one fan,” he said.
I wanted to die. I felt my face turning red-hot. “Who told you that?” I asked, trying to be cool, sending up a quick prayer that my brother wouldn’t pick this moment to burst into my room.
He shrugged elaborately. “You know, you hear things when you’re…”
“Dead?” I whispered.
“Yeah.” He examined his fingernails.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“Being dead? It’s not so bad,” he said.
“I mean… heaven. What’s heaven like? Do you get to meet all the saints?”
He snorted. “Naw. Haven’t met any yet.”
I was puzzled. This was not jibing with what the nuns had told me for the last eight years. An idea struck me. “Are you in, you know, purgatory?” I wondered if it was rude to ask, sort of like mentioning someone’s deformity that you’re not supposed to notice because it isn’t polite.
“No, no. It doesn’t really work that way.”
“What do you mean?” I was stunned.
He seemed to lose interest all of a sudden. “Listen, Raquel, I don’t have much time. I have to be getting back. I just came to tell you something important.”
He looked at me to make sure he had my full attention. Like I could concentrate on anything else.
He pointed his finger at me. “You’re going to have to make a decision soon, and it will affect the rest of your life.”
I nodded importantly. At last, something I could understand. “I know. I have to choose a confirmation name. I want to take Frederika. After you, you know?” I looked at the floor.
“Aw, kid. Don’t do this. I’m not-I wasn’t that important, really. I mean, I’m flattered as hell that you think so much of me, but I’m not worth it. Really.”
My eyes welled up. “I think you are.” I couldn’t speak above a whisper, and I couldn’t look at him.
“No, no, come on. Hey. I wish I could give you a tissue, but I don’t have any on me. Can you wipe your eyes on your sleeve and look at me? There you go. I hate to see anyone cry. Especially over me. I don’t deserve it, believe me.”
Now that I stopped sniffling, I got angry. “I think you do. You gave us all hope. You came from Washington Heights, and you made it. Everyone who has a TV saw that a Puerto Rican could be an important person.”
“Most people thought I was Mexican because of the character I played on Chico and the Man,” he said quietly. “And look at the kind of work Chico did on the show.”
I thought I understood. It wouldn’t be fitting for someone who would one day become a saint to brag. He must be practicing up by being modest with me. But I knew what he had done for me and countless others in el barrio. He was our symbol of possibilities.
I had another question. “Why’d you have to die so soon?”
There was no way to communicate to him the emptiness he left in my heart and soul when he abandoned me and all his other fans. Why couldn’t he have waited until I was older and could handle his death better?
“Every life lasts exactly as long as it’s supposed to,” he said gently. “I was here just the right amount of time.”
I hung my head and mumbled, “I wish you could have been here longer.”
“No, come on. Anyway, I’m here now because I have something important to tell you. You listening? Okay, here it is: You’re supposed to join the NYPD.”
I didn’t understand. “I’m only fourteen.”
“Yeah, well, this is a little ahead of schedule, but trust me. This is what you need to do. Listen, I have to get going now. It was nice to meet you.” He started to fade.
“Hey! Do you think you could say it before you go?”
“You mean, Looooking goo…? ”
The last sound was drowned out by the pounding in my ears, which receded long after Freddie had disappeared.
I couldn’t understand why Freddie Prinze had told me to become a cop. There weren’t a lot of female officers, and I certainly didn’t know any Puerto Rican ones. It didn’t make any sense. I considered that he might be wrong. But could a saint be wrong? He must be a saint, because I’d heard of the Virgin Mary appearing in people’s oven windows, and she was certainly a saint if anyone was. He had the humility thing down, too, very important for those to be canonized.