Bodega Dreams (16 page)

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Bodega said, “but if you see God he won’t seem that powerful anymore.” He then licked his lips as he had been doing all morning, shoved his hands in his pockets, and then took them out again. He walked fast and I had to tell him again and again to calm down.

P.S. 72 loomed just ahead, the American flag on its roof wagging in the blue sky. A pompous pigeon, his arrogant chest stuck out like a banker’s, sat on top of the flagpole. Then Bodega turned around and said “I’m going back.” He said that this was all bullshit and that he had a neighborhood to run and had to create a new future. That he was sorry for putting me through all this bullshit.

“No way, man!” I went after him as he was practically running away from the school. “No, bro, stop!” I caught up to him and held him by the arm. He gave little resistance. He took out a cigarette.

“You’ve been waiting a long time for this, bro. If anything, at least let’s go and meet Vera so you can show her what a mistake she made.”

He lit his cigarette and took only one drag before he ground it out.

“Nah, bro,
eso no se queda así.
She made a mistake and she has to know it.” He took out another cigarette.

“At least that way you’ll get something out of this, bro, b’cause she married that guy for his money.”

He lit up and took one drag. Then another. “Thass right. You’re right, Chino.” He looked at me with bravado, took a third drag, put out the cigarette. “You’re right. Let’s go see this bitch and show her what a fucken mistake she made. That bitch! That fucken, fucken bitch. Why’d she leave in the first place? She never wanted him, she always wanted me. And now she can’t have me. Now she’ll fly back to Miami and cry as if the plane was going down.”

“Thass right, bro. You’re goin’ to walk right in there and show her that you had vision.” He nodded rapidly.

We started walking toward the school again, like sour-grapes drunks. Bodega was ripping away at Vera, then at women in general, then at Vera’s mother, then he was ripping Vera again.

I pretended to agree with everything as if this was new and enlightening.

“I hear you, I hear you.”

“Cuz there ain’t no difference between a whore who sleeps for money and one that marries for it! Shit!” He then went on about something else, something that only makes sense when you are afraid of death or desperately in love and will say anything to alleviate the terror.

“I hear you, bro.”

We got to the school and the guard told us to go to the general office and get visitors’ passes. We asked for directions to the auditorium, and when we got there the assembly had already started. The place was full of children and flowers. Kids whispered to one another, fidgeting in those uncomfortable auditorium chairs, kicking the chairs in front of them and rocking back and forth. Up on the small stage, the guests were sitting on yellow school chairs, waiting for their moment to speak. One was a tall woman in a blue dress who could easily have been Blanca twenty years older. I looked at Bodega. His gaze was fixed on her with an intensity that indicated nothing else mattered or existed. If I’d wanted to pick his wallet, I could have. He stared at her as if he was reeling back years, each year a ton of hate mixed with a love that never had had an opportunity to reenter the atmosphere and burn itself out. It was as if Bodega had hit rewind on an ugly romantic scene that should have been shot differently, a scene that, after all these years, after he had played it in his head every day, he was now going to shoot with the ending he had always wanted.

I elbowed him hard.

“Which one’s Vera?” I knew but asked anyway. It had to be the woman he was staring at, the one waiting patiently, not showing any discomfort in the delay.

“The one with the blue dress. The one crossing her legs. Still has the legs, the legs never left her,” he answered, continuing to gaze at her.

And then from behind the curtains came a figure looking like he wasn’t just sorry he was late but also as if he hadn’t done his homework. Nazario sat down and took his place among the guests.

That’s when it hit me. All this time, I had been set up.

It had been Bodega who had donated the money to Vera’s old school so they could call her up from Miami and invite her as their guest. I’m not sure he even knew they were going to name the auditorium after her but it didn’t matter because it got him the results he wanted.
Nazario had probably handled all the paperwork and concealed where the money really came from. Nazario must have made some sort of dizzy razzmatazz nonsense about the donation being an anonymous gift but I’m sure he gave the school enough information to know it was Vera. Or maybe Nazario just skipped all that shit and went straight to the superintendent of District 4 with an offer he couldn’t refuse. One thing was sure, I was there for one reason and one reason only, so Bodega could have one of Vera’s relatives there next to him. Bodega probably had no clue how to reach Blanca or Negra and so he reached me. He reached me and he could now pass himself off as family.

The fact was that Bodega could have easily found Vera. He could have gotten Nazario to hire the best private investigator in the city and traced her all the way to Florida. But then what? Blood was thicker than water and that’s what he wanted, blood. Family is family for Latinos: a cousin, no matter if it’s third or fourth or seventh, is still a cousin, and nothing can cut that—regardless of how far away the family member is; he or she is part of that family. With me and Blanca he had an ace in the hole. He had helped himself and along the way had also helped Vera’s family by giving her pregnant niece and her husband a nice apartment. And I had walked right into it.

At that moment I didn’t like him. He used people and used his money to move them by remote control. He had used Blanca without Blanca even knowing it and I had been the one that had gotten us involved in all this. I was going to go home and tell her everything that I knew—except for the stuff about Sapo, because I knew Blanca would want me to go to the police.

Of course, once Blanca knew who owned the building, and how he got the money to buy and fix it up, she’d want to move out. I didn’t want to move. It was the best living situation we had ever had and it was more than affordable, it was downright cheap. Besides, the baby was due to arrive by late summer and we needed that extra space, that extra room. Also, regardless of Bodega’s activities, he was fixing up the neighborhood. For the first time in my life I had seen scaffolding all over Spanish Harlem. In almost every part of the neighborhood, some building was being renovated. And he was creating this professional class of his. Paying people’s tuition in hopes of building a better future.
No, I thought, with Bodega all you could hope for is that the good would outweigh the bad. I decided not to tell Blanca and just leave Bodega stranded in a school auditorium.

So as Bodega and I were standing against the back of P.S. 72’s auditorium, I pointed at Vera.

“Well, there she is. That’s her, right? So I did my part. I’m out.” I opened the large door of the auditorium and walked into the hallway. Bodega broke away from wherever he was at in his mind, peeled his eyes off Vera, and chased after me.

“Where you going?” He sounded surprised, as if I had agreed beforehand to stay. As if my staying was part of the deal.

“Hey, man, you said for me to find Vera, and I did. She’s right there and now I’m gone and we’re even, right? I’m your tenant, you’ll have my rent on time, and thass it.” I began to walk away. Bodega followed me.

“Chino, you can’t leave. You have to be there with me, bro. Come on, don’t be like that.” I was taken back to the time when I first met Bodega. When he had talked all that tough stuff and I had turned him down, his face had collapsed. This was the same face. Just like that first time, Bodega needed something from me and didn’t know how to ask.

“Nah, I got you what you wanted. If you want me to stay with you,” I said, “you got to level with me.”

He looked at my face carefully. He understood everything. Bodega gestured for us to go outside, and I silently followed him to the playground. The assembly was going to go on for at least another half hour. He picked an isolated but open space under a bent basketball rim, beside a broken water fountain. He faced the school doors.

“If those doors open we have to go back inside, all right?” he said.

“Where’s Sapo?” I dodged the question because I wasn’t planning on going back in.

“Sapito is hidin’.” It wasn’t a surprise.

“Why’d you have Salazar killed?”

“Because Salazar was crooked.”

“But a few weeks ago I heard Nazario tell you he didn’t take your money when you offered it to him.”

“Thass right, he didn’t, because he already belonged to someone else.”

“Sapo is my
pana.
If he’s in trouble—”

“Wha’? You think I’m gonna let Sapo fry? Let me tell you, Salazar was a worthless piece of shit who didn’t even make a deal with his own people. He got what was comin’.”

“Shit, bro, just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that. Just when I’m almost there, Chino, just when … this Salazar fuck has to make static.”

“You killed that guy, bro.” I looked at the sun as if I wanted to punish my eyes. “I mean, when you sell that stuff and someone buys it and dies, that’s one thing. I mean, it was his choice to go and buy it, but actually killing someone—”

“Yeah, I did.” Bodega looked at the doors. “It wasn’t the first. And let me tell you cuz I feel I owe it to you. Let me tell you why. B’cause Salazar belonged to Aaron Fischman.”

“Who?”

“He is this fucken guy they call the Fish of Loisaida. I been dealin’ with that bastard for years now and I always do whass right. I’ve told him, ‘This is my neighborhood and the Lower East Side is yours.’ There’s enough junkies and gamblers to go around, right? And the mutherfuckah agrees. I say, ‘No one wants a war.’ With a war everyone loses money and things get sloppy. So I back away and he backs away. Then out of the blue comes this reporter. This Alberto Salazar. I think I got problems because he’s a good man. Then Nazario finds out Salazar made a deal with Fischman. He’s gonna get all this shit together on me, ignore Fischman. Salazar was almost there, too. He only needed a few more pieces, and he would have called all this attention to me.”

“No way. You think the cops don’t already know what you’re doing?”

“They might be sniffin’, they ain’t that stupid. They got a little piece of it too. But everything is still layin’ low. No noise, and as long as there’s no noise, cops don’t care. But if the media makes a big deal out of it then the cops look bad. They’ll have ta come after me. That’s what Salazar was planning on, exposing me for buying buildings with so-called
dirty money. I couldn’t let that happen.” He kicked the ground as if it were dirt and not concrete. “Thass the way it works, Chino. Then I have to deal with the police and that would weaken me. And with me out of the way Fischman would move in on my neighborhood. I got tired of that bastard. Salazar wanted to be the hero around here. Well, I sent Sapito to make calcium of him and I’ll deal with Fischman later.”

“Shit, you gonna kill that other guy too?” Most practical people would have cut the cord right there, would have broken away from Bodega like a rancher shoots a horse with a broken leg. But I didn’t. I didn’t want Sapo in jail, that was part of it. And though I didn’t want to admit it, secretly I was rooting for Bodega. I had been all along.

“I don’t know yet,” Bodega said. “I don’t wanna to do anythin’ hasty. Maybe Nazario can still talk. Find another solution. That fuck Fischman did some work with this big Italian in Queens, can’t just get rid of him like that. But I’m not going to worry about that right now,” he said, glancing at the school doors.

“Right now, Chino, all I’m askin’ is for you to help me find some sort of happiness. Remember when I told you at the museum that when Vera arrived I was going to ask somethin’ else from you?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m askin’, all right. I don’t like people to think I’m weak, because I’m not. Never been. But you, Chino, if yo’r as smart as I think you are, if you’ve studied your history, you would know that the most powerful men have turned to garbage,
basura
, when they have fallen in love. All of them.” He got defensive. And because his everyday speech didn’t have any diplomacy, he defended his case the way he always did.

“Chino, bro, last week I saw a special on channel thirteen about Napoleon. And when that nigga was about to lose Egypt, you know what he was really afraid of? Losing Josephine.” He looked at my face, hoping I wasn’t going to make fun of him. “See, Chino, he was far away and Josephine was rumored to be two-timing him with some other guy. While he was fighting to expand her empire she was like … like … you know what I’m sayin’?”

“What’re you gonna do about Sapo?” I hadn’t seen the special and didn’t care much about Napoleon.

The school doors opened. Bodega shot me a desperate look.

“You gonna get Sapo off somehow, right?”

“I’ll help Sapo. Nazario is workin’ on it. Wha’? You think this Vera situation has clouded my mind? Nah, you wrong. I love that woman but it was me who sent Sapo. It will be me who will bring him out.”

“So, you gonna get Sapo off?”

“Of course. I don’t know how, but you have my word.”

“I have your word, then?”

“My word is bond.”

“All right. So tell me what it is you want me to do.” Now Bodega smiled as if he had swallowed the canary, but there was still something childlike in his look.

“I owe you, Chino, I owe you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what you want me to say to Vera.”

“See that limo parked over there?” He pointed. I didn’t turn my head but could see it out of the corner of my eye. “I want you to go over and tell—” He caught himself. If he and I were now family, he shouldn’t give me orders anymore. “Could you please, my main-mellow-man.” He laughed and put out his hand for me to give him five. I skinned it but I didn’t feel like laughing. “Just go tell Vera you are married to her niece Nancy, and that your landlord, William Irizarry, Izzy to her, is waiting for her inside that big, black, very expensive car ovah there.”