“I owe you an apology,” he said, as if he’d merely bumped into me.
I shook my head, disgusted, and got up. A waiter showed me the bill for the margaritas I’d been drinking. I passed it to the famous comedian.
“My pay includes expenses,” I said. The curtain had fallen. I was in the way now. I wanted to leave the terrace but found I couldn’t. I had to know the truth. “I keep asking myself if you knew that cop was the person blackmailing you in Andrea’s name. Maybe you hired him to protect her. Maybe you feared he’d hurt her. You wanted to save her. You wanted me to kick his ass and you’d come out of it squeaky-clean. Was that it?”
In an instant, he put in play the simpleton character that he’d had such success with in his movies. His voice changed, he moved differently. In other words, he ceased being Mario Moreno and became Cantinflas.
“That’s the thing, chato. I’m not the one to tell it, and you aren’t the one to hear it, but rest assured that it’d be pretty tough to figure out…”
He left me with a great big smile. The only one he ever gave me.
Andrea Rojas was waiting for me outside. She was watching the construction on the corner: a Polish factory being converted into housing units. It was being painted in loud colors: blue, yellow, and red.
“Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo used to live there,” she told me. “Each one had their own apartment but he had a bridge built over to her bedroom, since he lived on the other side. Isn’t that romantic?”
“I would have made the bed bigger. It’s a cheaper solution.” I was a little drunk from the margaritas. Andrea looked at me and I fell into her black eyes.
“What are you doing over there? Those people don’t want us. They think we’re trash. You should come back to your hometown. The country’s changing. We could do things. We could bring justice to our people. Why do you have to go back?”
In that moment, I had about a million coherent responses. In almost every case, I told her she was right. But for some reason I didn’t say any of them aloud. I simply held her face and gave her a long, moist kiss. She returned it, and gave me another. I felt like I was in paradise again. Then she pushed me back.
She shook her head sadly. She didn’t understand me. I don’t understand myself either. She turned and walked off down the street. It was the last time I saw her. Years later, I heard she was at Tlatelolco in ’68 when the army shot at student demonstrators. She vanished that night; I never found out what happened to her or her body. That’s why, on nights when I’m a little drunk and get choked up, I imagine she managed to flee from the massacre and take refuge in Guatemala. Maybe she finished her studies and had a daughter who would become a masked hero fighting for justice in our country, just like she’d dreamed.
But I know that can’t be true, because in Mexico, films always have happy endings.
PART II. DEAD MEN WALKING
BANG! BY JUAN HERNÁNDEZ LUNA
Roma
I’m standing in front of the dark barrel of a gun, which is held by a guy who is watching me very carefully and gesturing unsympathetically. I try to move but the guy makes a sign indicating not to or he’ll have to shoot. I obey without taking my eyes from the barrel.
I’m on the edge of the roof. Down on the street, there’s a parked car with its motor running and lights on. I can’t tell if anybody’s in the car. I stay quiet, waiting for the guy to tell me what to do. My hands aren’t raised, and that worries me, though not too much, because I know that hands in the air don’t correspond to the usual script when there’s a gun involved.
A shot. If the bullet pierces me, I’ll have to try to stop the hemorrhaging, to stabilize my blood pressure. The stupid projectile will probably be dirty, which means it will cause an infection. Wounded, on my back on the roof of this building, it will be difficult to protect my nerves from possible damage; it will be impossible for me to excise the injured parts and save the rest.
Arrrggghhh! Mexico City, such a beautiful, dark sky! About to die, I greet you and watch each elusive red cloud as it floats on the south wind.
Dialogue. Right now there should be dialogue. Threatening phrases that indicate who has the power, and although there’s a gun aimed at me, every word suggests I’m the one with the ace up his sleeve.
I contemplate that “ace up his sleeve” and immediately regret it. You shouldn’t use clichés, even in real life.
The guy is still in front of me. I have no idea how long it’s been. I decide to pull another file from my memory and search for the moment that brought us to this point.
Running. I take quick steps through the street, up some stairs. The neighborhood is totally deserted at this hour, the lights dulled. There are children’s toys scattered on the patio. As I ascend the stairs, I feel somebody after me. The rattle of my feet is echoed by even heavier steps that keep me alert.
There are shouts. An old woman peeks out her window and sees my sweaty face. I want to try to make a joke, to say something like booooooooo, but the noise of the approaching steps forces me to reconsider, and I keep climbing higher.
When we get to the roof, I try to run but there’s nowhere else to go. I turn around and find the guy with the gun who tells me to stop, that it’s best to end this once and for all.
I suppose it is better to end it, but I keep looking at the gun’s barrel and then I see him, and I notice his face, which is scarred by smallpox or acne or one of those damn skin diseases. And then my gaze moves from his damaged face back to the gun barrel.
I reconsider. So it is not a cliff, it is not a ravine, it is not a planet of martyrdom; it is emptiness that fills this four- or five-story building.
From the roof, the smoke of a refinery can be seen to the west of the city. At this hour, it’s possible to discern guardian angels leaving to go to sleep; the lights of the city center fusing with the glow of the airport; to hear all the noises from the cars mixing with the tick tock of the hearts of little boys and girls; there’s a mariachi song; coughing and kissing. The moon rises behind the high tower; the west is bloodred, the south only fog, and I’m left to remember poems…
Friend of mine, whom I love, do not age…
Running. Running as hard as possible, with everything from childhood in tow.
This is a heavy burden. Childhood’s too great a burden to carry while fleeing from a gun.
A smile. Women have twisted smiles. Women are not sincere when they laugh. This is a woman I’m sure I know from years ago, when my hands were trees and planets, and I suppose I knew her and slept with her, but I can’t be sure because her hair, which has been done up in a beauty shop, depresses me, and I can see that she’s insulting me.
Behind her, there’s the guy whose face is scarred by acne or smallpox or some other damn skin disease.
I leave the room and the woman follows me. I think she wants to ask me something.
It takes approximately three days for a corpse’s skin to decompose. It fills up with toxic gases that cause sores on the outside, then the skin succumbs, cracks, and the gases are freed. If the corpse is exposed to the sun, it takes less than ten days for everything to collapse, for the flesh to rot and the scent to spread among the living. In the end, only the skeleton remains, and perhaps remnants of the liver, the toughest organ in the human body, the one that most resists decomposition. An irony if the death has been brought on by cirrhosis.
I don’t have cirrhosis, nor do I have a body. I am matter floating here on this rooftop where I continue to stare at the barrel of a gun that some guy is pointing at me. To the west, there’s the vast, dark stain that is Chapultepec Forest, to the south there’s the eternal track of my doubts, to the north the shadow of a blonde who’s moving away, to the other north another blonde and another goodbye, until I bring my gaze back to the stain on the west, and again I find the barrel of the gun.