“Maeve.”
She turned, and Sweeney the man lay on the ground behind her. “Oh, no. This isn’t what I wanted.”
She sat next to him, took his hand. “What can I do?”
“Just sit with me, please.”
“Did you know this would happen, when you commissioned the painting?”
“I considered the possibility. I had to. Without the magic binding me into one spell or the next, the truth is I have lived a very long time, and I knew that death might well be my next migration.”
Sweeney’s next words were quieter, as if he was remembering them. “No one chooses his quest. It is chosen for him.”
Sweeney closed his eyes. “This is just another kind of flight.”
Maeve hung the finished painting on her wall. Outside, just beyond the open window, perched a white bird.
Unusual companions join an older Cubano musician at his nighttime gig at a children’s care facility.
SALSA NOCTURNA
DANIEL JOSé OLDER
People say that all musical geniuses die in the gutter, and I’ve made my peace with that, but this is ridiculous. Anyway, it’s a boiler room, but let me start at the beginning: the whole gigging around at late night bars and social clubs really began drying up right around the time the great white flight did a great white about-face. Mosta my main night spots shut down or started serving cappuccino instead of El Presidente. Two of my guys moved to Philly. Things were looking kinda grim, to be honest with you. I mean, me, I knew it’d work out in the long run—it’s not that I’m an optimist, there’s just certain things I do know—but meanwhile, the short run was kicking my ass. Kicking all our asses really.
So when my son’s girl Janey came to me about this gig at the overnight center, I had to pay her some mind. Janey’s a special kid, I gotta say. I couldn’t ask for a better woman for Ernesto either. She keeps him in line, reminds him, I think, where he is from, that he’s more than that fancy suit he puts on every morning. And she makes us all laugh with that mouth of hers too. Anyway, she comes to me one morning while I’m taking my morning medicina with my café con leche and bacon, eggs and papas fritas. I always take my high blood pressure pills with a side of bacon or sausage, you know, for balance.
“Gordo,” she says. My name is Ernesto too, just like my son, but everyone calls me Gordo. It’s not ’cause I’m fat. Okay, it’s ’cause I’m fat. “Gordo,” she says, “I want you to come interview at this place I work on Lorimer.” You see what she did? She made it look like I would be doing her the favor. Smart girl, Janey.
I eyed her coolly and put some more bacon in me.
“They need someone to watch the kids at night and later on maybe you can teach music in the mornings.”
“Kids?” I said. “What makes you think I want to have anything to do with kids?”
There’s two kinds of people that really are drawn to me: kids and dead people. Oh yeah, and crackheads on the street but that hardly counts because they obviously have an agenda. Kids seek me out like I’m made of candy. They find me and then they attach themselves to me and they don’t let go. Maybe it’s because I don’t really buy into that whole “Aren’t they cute” shit, I just take ’em as they come. If I walk onto a playground, and I swear to you I’m never the instigator, it’s like some memo goes out: Drop whatever game you’re playing and come chase the fat guy. Family events and holidays? Forget it. I don’t really mind it because I hate small talk, and if there’s one thing about kids, they give it to you straight: “Tío Gordo why you so big?”
And I get real serious looking. “Because I eat so many children,” I say.
Then they run off screaming and usually, I give chase until I start wheezing.
It beats How’s the music business? and Oh, really? How interesting! Because really and truly, I don’t care how everyone’s little seed is doing at CUNY or whatever.
I’m not bragging but even teenagers like me. They don’t admit it most of the time, but I can tell. They’re just like overgrown, hairy five year olds anyway. Also, notoriously poor small talkers.
Janey told me exactly how it would go down and exactly what to say. She’s been doing this whole thing for a while now, so she speaks whitelady-ese like a pro. She had this Nancy lady down pat too, from the extra-extra smile to the cautious handshake to the little sing-song apologies dangling off every phrase. Everything went just like she said it would. The words felt awkward in my mouth, like pieces of food that’re too big to chew, and I thought that Nancy was on to me right up until she says—That sounds terrific, Mr. Cortinas.
You can call me Gordo, I say.
It’s called a non-profit but everyone at the office is obviously making a killing. The kids are called minority and emotionally challenged but there’s a lot more of them and they show a lot more emotions than the staff. It’s a care facility but the windows are barred. The list goes on and on, but still, I like my job. The building’s one of these old gothic type numbers on the not-yet-gentrified end of Lorimer. Used to be an opera house or something, so it’s still got all that good run-down music hall juju working for it. I show up at nine p.m. on the dot, because Janey said my sloppy Cuban time won’t cut it here so just pretend I’m supposed to be there at eight and I’ll be alright. And it works.
They set up a little desk for me by a window on the fifth floor. Outside I can see the yard and past that a little park. I find that if I smoke my Malague?as in the middle of the hallway, the smell lingers like an aloof one-night stand till the morning and I get a stern/apologetic talking to from Nancy and then a curse-out from Janey. So, I smoke out the window.
It’s a good thing that most of the kids are already sleeping by the time I arrive, because even as it is I can feel my presence course through the building like an electrical current. I can’t help it. Occasionally a little booger will get up to make a number one or number two and not want to go back to bed. I make like I’m gonna slap ’em and they scatter back to their rooms. Soon they’ll be on to me though.