Mariachi Meddler Read online

  “Why do they scare you?”

  The streetlight outlined the moisture around her eyes while the night breeze rustled through her hair, disturbing the contours. “I don’t know.”

  “To me they seem like regular customers, only wealthier and more spoiled.”

  “There’s something else! But I can’t explain.”

  “I won’t let them come near you. Don’t worry about it.” I worked my way back towards the stage, greeting customers along the way.

  “Is there any special song you’d like to hear?” I asked the two men.

  The one whose silver cross bounced on his chest wrinkled his nose as if he hadn’t heard.

  The one with golden chains contemplated me before he spoke. “Does it look like there’s any ‘special song’ we want to hear?” His voice was raspy as if he’d slept all day and hadn’t drunk any water yet.

  “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  G.C. (Golden Chains) and Cross were rude, but their curtness didn’t affect my salary. I dealt with grumpy customers every night. Usually their complaints were mundane—their feet hurt, they’d overeaten, or they had sunburns. These men seemed irritable by nature. Maybe they’d made poor business decisions or were struggling with angry girlfriends. Lots of things went wrong for people. As musicians our mission was to erase their problems. If people were too whiny to accept our help, they were on their own. We didn’t work miracles. On some nights we didn’t even play in tune.

  Pablo handed me some bills. “This is for Joey. He left last night before we divided the tips.”

  “Did everything go all right?”

  “Sure,” Sergio said, “until Joey got stuck in the middle of Tristes recuerdos. What a sad memory it is to get stuck in the middle of Sad Memories! He laughed at his own joke. “First we couldn’t stop laughing, and then we couldn’t remember the words either.”

  “So where were you last night?” Pablo asked.

  “Would you believe I had the stomach flu and went to bed early?”

  “No.”

  “Good for you. You’re learning!” I lit into Chuparrosa, a polka so fast it got its name from a type of hummingbird, and the others had to scramble to follow along.

  While I performed I kept an eye on G.C. and Cross, but they sat so morosely that I started watching the blondes next to them instead. The quartet drank Pacíficos as they swayed to the songs.

  “Got a preference?” Sergio asked. They looked like fun, but Sergio’s kind of fun, not mine. Or maybe I was tired.

  “If you have an orgy, don’t invite me,” said Pablo. “My wife has been in such a bad mood lately that I would go off with a sweet young woman and never go back.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” Sergio asked dreamily. “That you wouldn’t have to go back?”

  “No problem. Nobody would notice. Least of all my in-laws or my children! Let me sing Mambo brazileiro. I’ll pretend I live in the tropics.”

  The Brazilian tune made matters worse because our new fans got up and shook every rounded curve they had.

  ***

  As soon as the last customers walked out, the wait staff bused the final tables while Pablo and Sergio and I counted tip money.

  Yiolanda stormed to our area. “You didn’t pay attention when those two men left!”

  “What men?” asked Pablo. He handed me a twenty and some ones.

  “Oh, never mind!” She strode to an empty table near the entrance and plopped down.

  Pablo watched after her. “What’s with her?”

  “She was keeping track of some customers.”

  Sergio made a circular motion with his groin. “Were they good looking?”

  “Sergio!” Pablo slung his trumpet case over his shoulder. “You only have one thing on your mind.”

  “I’m realistic. Rolando is still out of town.”

  “How many women are waiting outside for you?”

  “All four,” he grinned.

  Pablo shook his head and wished us good night.

  “Want to help me out?” Sergio asked me. “They’re very nice girls.”

  “No thanks. Yiolanda asked me to help her lock up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He looked between Yiolanda and me several times slowly. “Wow. Good for you.”

  “She just wants me to help her lock up.”

  “Right.” He bent closer to me and lowered his voice. “Remember, she’ll be comparing yours to a whole lot of others.”

  “Szt!”

  “Can you two gossip later?” Yiolanda called out as she crossed her arms over her chest.

  Sergio patted me on the back. “You better be worthwhile.”

  As soon as we were alone, Yiolanda locked the restaurant’s front door from the inside and then the back door from the outside. I expected her to go straight for her car, but instead she pointed upstairs.

  “I need to do some numbers. Would you please come with me?”

  She’d invited me upstairs to the private apartment. Lusty scenarios flew through my mind, but I pushed them back out.

  I sat at the round desk and smoked a cigarette while she went through the first sets of receipts, but the cranking of the adding machine was loud and monotonous, and the bright lights weighed the air. I went to lie on the bed in the other room to distract myself. I was trying to remember the words to Una aventura. A customer had asked for the old song earlier in the evening and we’d pushed our way through it, but none of us could remember the third verse, and the memory lag annoyed me. Me ilusionaste, you enticed me, were the first words, but I couldn’t get any farther than that.

  The loud knock on the door to the apartment startled me off the bed. I rushed to the other room where Yiolanda stood watching the door. When we turned to one another our eyes locked, stunning us into inaction. We hardly expected visitors.

  The knock repeated.

  “I know you’re in there, bitch!” said G.C.’s raspy voice. “Open the fucking door!” He rattled the wood so hard the walls shook. “I said, open the fucking door!”

  I stared at the door as nerves tickled the back of my neck. For a second, neither Yiolanda nor I moved.

  The sound of a cocked pistol unlocked my feet. I snatched Yiolanda’s hand and jerked her into the bathroom. Then I ran past her to retrieve a chair.

  “What are you doing?!” she whispered.

  A shot rang in the air. I stepped into the shower stall and lined the chair up with the window. “Go!”

  “But I can’t—”

  We heard another shot; this one snapped through the front door. Yiolanda tried to wedge herself through the bathroom window but didn’t angle herself right. For a moment, I pushed on her round hips, and she wheezed as she flopped onto the other side. I followed after her.

  From the other end of the apartment, I heard the door fly open.

  “Follow me.” I raced to the far side of the roof and waited for her to catch up, her two-inch high sandals making poor running shoes. When we reached the framework over the restaurant’s front door, she stuck her nose over the street and abruptly pulled back.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Climb down!”

  “What makes you think I can?”

  “Let me go first.” I climbed down the first two rungs, then braced myself and cleared the door frame before dropping four feet to the ground.

  She peered at me from above, her mouth caught between anger and disbelief.

  “Do it. I’ll catch you.”

  For a moment she paused, gauging whether she needed to escape or not.

  “They’re armed! Hurry up!”

  With some effort, because her arms were weak, she crawled over the edge of the roof and started down the door frame. She lowered herself most of the way before dropping on top of me. I broke her fall but lost my balance. We rolled into the street as her cell phone bounced along the sidewalk.

  “Ow!” She’d hit her elbow on the curb, but the cry signified surprise rather than pain.
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  She crawled to her feet, seized her cell phone, and took two running steps towards the back of the restaurant where she’d parked her car.

  I threw my arms around her and yanked her back. “This way!”

  We ran a few yards up the steep street and turned left on Mulberry so that we could double back on an elevated, parallel road. As we ran, we caught glimpses of Adams Street, which wound past the restaurant, but we didn’t see any moving cars. We reached Peter’s bakery, and I beckoned Yiolanda to follow me as I lifted the gate latch to the baker’s yard.

  “This isn’t your house!”

  “It’s a friend’s.”

  The courtyard was quiet because the baker wouldn’t rise for another couple of hours, but the streetlight illuminated big objects such as his motor scooter and delivery cart.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Yiolanda whispered.

  “Don’t make any noise.” I headed up the spiral staircase and beckoned for her to follow. The stairs creaked at each step, but by the time we got to the second-floor landing, we could see the back wall of Noche Azul.

  A Fiat was parked behind Yiolanda’s car. G.C. and Cross were walking in circles, shouting words I couldn’t distinguish over the loud sounds of my breathing.

  Yiolanda was breathing more heavily than I. Her chest caved in and out in regular motions. She wasn’t used to aerobics, and she clung to the balcony rail as if it were a life preserver. She held her eyes tightly closed to block out the rest of the world. Her nostrils quivered as small sobs escaped her open mouth.

  I sat beside her on the landing. “We’re safe here,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “I don’t know what they want!”

  “Look.” I pointed towards the restaurant. G.C. and Cross hopped in the Fiat and raced off.

  “Come on.” I stood and tried to pull her up, but she resisted. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know.” She stood slowly, still clinging to the rail. “Go. I will follow you.”

  We retraced our steps through the courtyard and out to the street, but when I took a step in the direction of Noche Azul, she stopped abruptly.

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “They’re long gone. We can return to the restaurant and call the police.”

  “No!”

  “Yiolanda!” I shook her shoulders. “We almost got killed! Don’t you understand that? This is serious.”

  “I don’t want to talk to the police!”

  “You don’t have a choice. You need to report this straight away.”

  “I’ll call the police station tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is too late.”

  “No! I’ll call tomorrow. That’s final. Otherwise they will all come out here with their squad cars and make racket and wake up all the neighbors at this hour of the night. No. I want to go rest without anyone bothering me.” She held her right arm out in front of her body to show me how it wavered. “See? I can’t talk to the police. I can barely talk to you.”

  “Then at least call Rolando.” I started to get out my wallet. “I’ve got Liliana’s number right here.”

  “Andy, why should we call my husband at this time of night and wake up the whole household to worry him about something he can do nothing about?”

  Yiolanda was right. Her husband was too far away to do anything about the situation, and Liliana was such an alarmist that she would make the situation out to be ten times worse than it was.

  “You’ll call Rolando first thing in the morning?”

  “Yes, yes. But for now I don’t want to think. Please take me to your place. I know you live close by.”

  “Why don’t you let me take you back to Corona del Mar? I’ll drive if you like.”

  She closed her eyes, deciding. When she opened them again, her face melted in the night. “Take me with you.”

  Given the scare we’d had, I wasn’t looking forward to being alone myself. Silently I guided her to St. Michael’s Square.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was used to seeing Yiolanda at the restaurant, and I’d often imagined her in a sleek bikini at the beach. Having Yiolanda in my apartment was an original concept. I opened the door, turned on the light, and stepped back to let her enter ahead of me.

  Clean, crumpled clothes were piled on the couch while CDs flooded the coffee table. Ashes had spilled over the edge of the ashtray, leaving a gray trail. Even though I’d left the windows open, the air hung like a curtain.

  “I would rather be in the dark,” she said, turning off the light and entering the room.

  I couldn’t blame her. Even with the overhead light off, streetlights shone in through my large bare windows, magnifying the defects of my housekeeping. I bade her sit on the couch while I gathered the laundry and dumped it on my bed in the other room. I carried the ashtray to the kitchen only to notice that the sink was full of dishes and two cupboard doors hung open. No doubt the counter showed spots from various morning frappés. My sloppiness was consistent.

  “Please, Andy, can you bring me something to drink? A brandy, if you have any.”

  I brought glasses of E & J to the living room where Yiolanda sat in the corner of the couch with her hands on her knees. I sat at the other end, leaving a gap between us. “Cheers.”

  She took a small sip and put the glass back on the coffee table. “You saved my life,” she said in a small voice. “I’m embarrassed because I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything.”

  “You had no reason to risk your life for me. I’m sorrier than I can possibly tell you.”

  “Anyone from the restaurant would have done the same, Pablo, Sergio, Dennis.”

  She looked me straight in the eyes for the first time since we’d heard the gunshots. Her pupils were soft circles. “But you knew what to do. The others, they, they—!” She wailed so suddenly and so loudly I was afraid she’d wake the neighbors, who would make entirely wrong assumptions about my behavior.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong!” she said between sobs.

  I thought about putting my arm around her shoulder but decided against it.

  “Maybe it’s not about you. Maybe it’s about Rolando.”

  “Who would want to hurt him?” Yiolanda threw herself face down and sobbed into my couch. For a moment I sat on its arm to stay out of her way, but then I escaped to the balcony. I could breathe easier outside in the slightly cooler air. Safe on my perch, I recuperated from hearing bullets two meters from my chest. Yiolanda’s enemies were determined. They didn’t resemble jilted lovers, and I guessed she was sincere in not recognizing them. But now what?

  Rolando was too much of a businessman to have enemies. He didn’t cheat anyone on purpose, never hassled customers who owed him money, and offered cash advances when the staff really needed them. He was almost always in a good mood, and he was even friendly to rival restaurant owners. Yiolanda was much more likely to have enemies than he.

  The plaza was empty until two cats chased over the wall past St. Michael’s and out into the street. I envied their strong legs. When they needed to, they could escape. The most Yiolanda and I could do was hide.

  Eventually Yiolanda became quiet and I assumed she’d fallen asleep, but I refrained from waking her. I was content on the balcony. If I dozed in the chair, the worst outcome would be a crick in my neck.

  “May I join you?”

  She’d stepped outside so gingerly I hadn’t heard her.

  “Of course.” I shook dust off the guest chair.

  Yiolanda had a glass in her hand. “I poured myself another brandy. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not.”

  “May I have a cigarette?”

  I took two from my pocket. Because there was no wind, the smoke rose above us in a direct path.

  “You must think I’m awful to come to your house and lose control like that.”

  “Given what happened to us this evening, I’m sure i
t’s normal.”

  “I’ve never felt as frightened as when I heard those bullets.” She shuddered, but her voice was back to normal, and though her manner was unusually shy, she’d recovered herself. “Have you ever felt anything like that before? Or maybe you weren’t scared.”

  “Sure I was. The feeling was new for me too.”

  “You were calm.”

  “I acted on instinct, which was to exit as fast as possible.”

  For the first time all evening, she smiled briefly. “I won’t ask you how you knew to vanish from the roof.”

  I hid my own smile. “Fair enough.”

  We sat in silence, listening to the background sounds of the night. When I stretched, my bare foot rubbed against hers. The result was the kind of jolt you get when you touch a wire that gives a small shock. I concentrated on the flowers in Mrs. Sfirakis’ balcony next door, but I could sense Yiolanda’s gaze.

  “Andy, I know you have done everything for me tonight, but I need to ask you one more favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  She wouldn’t answer, and I knew it was because she was waiting for me to turn to face her. After several deadening seconds, I did so.

  “Please, Andy, make me feel safe.”

  She spoke so softly I could barely hear her.

  Before I could respond, she nodded towards the door. I followed her into my bedroom where she drew her dress above her head. The streetlights illuminated her waist, the hips outlined in leopard-print panties, the matching bra. She straightened her dress and folded it over the dresser. I stood a foot back, unsure.

  “Perhaps you can lend me a sports shirt—you know, with no sleeves?”

  She’d said it without turning around. I opened a drawer and yanked out the top shirt. I gently placed it on her shoulders, then watched as she slipped it on and lay on the bed. My shirt fit her like a tent.

  “You don’t mind if I sleep here?” She pushed my laundry to the floor and spread face down on the bed.

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  After a few seconds she twisted around. “Don’t stare at me, Andy. Hold me.”

  I obeyed without thinking. When I lay down beside her, she turned on her side, away from me, and positioned herself against my body. Gently I put my hand on her shoulder. A few seconds later she pulled my hand down to her waist.