In any case, it was done. There would be no going public. The context would not be disturbed. And so they forgot it when they could, let themselves fall in love, and found those amnesiac moments to be their best.
“Leave,” Reena said. “Please.”
It was February. December had passed, and January, and Reena had stayed sick. The doctors said she’d be better by spring. They told her optimistically that she’d be dancing again in no time at all. Now her mother was coming. Had called twenty minutes before, was on her way. David should have left already. His usual seat at La Floridita was waiting for him, and the curly-haired waitress who would bring him coffee and a Lotto ticket and a stubby yellow pencil. The slick city sidewalks. The rumble of a passing train. All the routines of disappearance were waiting for him out in the streets. But he felt something heavy in him, something leaden and stiff. Something arthritic. Cataleptic. David sat at the desk. The red walls sometimes unnerved him, but today he felt their heat.
“It’s cold out,” he offered.
“David.”
“What?” he said blankly.
“You’re stressing me out,” Reena said. “Go get a cup of coffee. Do you need money? Here, take some money.” She offered him a few rumpled bills.
“You don’t have a job.”
Scowling, she let the money slip from fingers. “What are you trying to do? Are you trying to make this difficult?”
“No.”
“Then? Are you going to wait until she buzzes? Till she knocks?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m sick, goddamn it, I’m sick!”
The picture he’d left had made no impact. Reena’s mother hadn’t asked who took it. Or why it was in black-and-white. David had stalked his girlfriend and her parents at Union Square, taking black-and-white pictures that were not quite beautiful. Reena hadn’t even noticed it on the desk. Mrs. Shah had said only how handsome Reena’s father had looked that day.
It was subtle. But falling on his ass in front of Mrs. Shah? Nothing. Reena’s mother had commented on it and forgotten. Found it funny. Tik. That was all. A week after he’d tumbled to the frozen sidewalk, Mrs. Shah had walked right by him without so much as a glance.
Since then, he’d learned two new words that he hadn’t yet had the chance to say:
Namaste. Hello.
Amah. Mother.
If he still wanted to be found, he’d have to stop her on the street. Catch her on the stairs walking up to the apartment. Look into her brown eyes and speak in complete Hindi sentences:
Hello, mother. I am a wealthy Punjabi engineer looking for an American-born Desi to warm my bed. For marriage and dowry, and perhaps for love. My mother will not mistreat your daughter after the wedding. I promise you this, Mrs. Shah.
Would that be enough?
Mrs. Shah, I am David. My parents are Peruvian. I work in the projects. Your daughter and I, we live together. We used to make love on the fire escape. I have cleaned up her vomit. I have watched her get sick. Sometimes, I think I still love her, but I’m tired.
His jacket landed on his lap, followed by his scarf, and then his gloves. He looked up at Reena, tired and sad against the red walls. She sat on the edge of the bed. “You want your sweatshirt too?”
“Yeah,” David said.
She tossed him his hoodie. “We can’t talk about this now,” Reena said.
“I know.”
“Later?”
“Sure,” he said, nodding.
Her face disappeared into her hands. She was taking a dozen pills a day. Each Friday, the doctors gave her a shot in the thigh with a long needle. He put on his sweatshirt, and then his jacket. He took his key off the hook by the door, his knit cap from on top of the dresser. It was cold out. He put on his gloves, left hand first. The room was bright and warm and red.
lima, peru, july 28, 1979
There were ten of us and we shared a single name: compañero. Except me. They called me Pintor. Together we formed an uncertain circle around a dead dog, under the dim lights just off the plaza. Everything was cloaked in fog. Our first revolutionary act, announcing ourselves to the nation. We strung up dogs from all the street lamps, covered them with terse and angry slogans, Die Capitalist Dogs and such; leaving the beasts there for the people to see how fanatical we could be. It is clear now that we didn’t scare anyone so much as we disturbed them and convinced them of our peculiar mania, our worship of frivolous violence. Fear would come later. Killing street dogs in the bleak gray hours before sunrise, the morning of Independence Day, July 28, 1979. Decent people slept, but we made war, fashioned it with our hands, our knives, and our sweat. Everything was going well until we ran out of black dogs.
One of the compañeros had directed that all the dogs were to be black, and we were in no position to question these things. An aesthetic decision, not a practical one. Lima has a nearly infinite supply of mutts, but not all of them are black. By two o’clock, we were slopping black paint on beige, brown, and white mutts, all squirming away the last of their breaths, fur tinged with red.
Given my erstwhile talents with the brush, I was charged with painting the not-quite-black ones. We had one there: dead, split open, its viscera slipping onto the pavement. We were tired, trying to decide if this mutt’s particular shade of brown was dark enough to pass for black. I don’t recall many strong opinions on the matter. The narcotic effects of action were drifting away, leaving us with a bleeding animal, dead, a shade too light.
I didn’t care what color the dog was.
Just as we were coming to a consensus that we would paint the dead mutt we had at our feet — just then I saw it: from the corner of my eye, darting down an alleyway, a black dog. It was spectacularly black, completely black, and before I knew it, I found myself racing down the cobblestones after it. I dropped the paintbrush one of my compañeros had handed me. They called after me, “Pintor!” but I was gone.
Enraged, I chased after the black animal, hoping to kill it, bring it back, string it up. That night, the way things were going, I wanted, more than anything, for my actions to make sense. I was tired of painting.
You should know the homeless dogs of Lima inhabit a higher plane of ruthlessness. They own the alleys, they are thieves of the colonial city, undressing trash heaps, urinating in cobblestone corners, always with an eye open. They’re witnesses to murders, robberies, shakedowns; they hustle through the streets with self-assurance, with a confidence that comes from knowing they don’t have to eat every day to live. That night we ran all over the plaza, butchering them, in awe of their treachery, raw and golden.
I knew how many cigarettes I smoked each day, and I knew how little I ran except when chasing a soccer ball now and then if a game came up, and I knew that there was little chance of catching it and — I’ll admit — it angered me to know that a dog might outdo me, and so I resolved that it would not. We ran. It surged ahead. I followed along the narrows of central Lima, beneath her ragged and decaying balconies, past her boarded buildings, her cloistered doorways, her shadows. I wanted the mutt dead. I ran with cruelty in my chest, like a drug pushing me faster, and then my leg buckled and I sputtered to a stop. I was blocks away from the plaza, in the grassy median of a broad, silent avenue lined with anemic palm trees, dizzy, lungs gasping for air. The poor dog slowed on the far sidewalk and turned to look at me, standing only a few feet away, panting, its head turned quizzically to one side, a look I’ve seen before, from family, from friends, or even from women unfortunate enough to love me, the look of those who wonder at me, who expect things and are eventually disappointed.