Bronx Noir

“You’re sick,” he said, lowering the gun again and staring at the array of pills.

“Ah, amado, you always were obvious,” she sighed, and he straightened.

“You know what I came back for,” he said coldly, though even now he had to fight back the urge to help her somehow.

“I imagined you would,” she said, and he thought he heard a hint of triumph within that dim voice, something that infuriated him all over again.

“So that’s why you moved in here. Hoping to surprise me.”

She said nothing, but made a small, neutral gesture with one hand.

“Why did you do it?” he asked despite himself, hating the pleading sound in his voice. “Why did you do it? I thought you loved me.”

“I needed the money,” she wheezed. “And I didn’t need you.”

“What about all your big plans?” The anger growing in him again, baffled and enraged that she had so little to say for herself. When he had first glimpsed her, in her decrepit state, he had expected her to do the pleading. Now he was conscious that he could hear the sound of the ballgame through the windows, much louder than he remembered it—the rising beat of the organ, the noise of the crowd building in that steady, dangerous way.

“What about being an actress?” he tried to taunt her.

“Mierda. Well, I wasn’t an actress after all,” she told him, and gave a little cackle that trailed off into a cough. “I couldn’t do anything. But I tried. I left this place.”

“So—maybe you needed me after all,” he said, lowering the gun and trying to smirk at her. Desperately wanting to hear her say it, to hear her admit it, even this sick, dying remnant of the woman he had loved. “Maybe you wish you had stayed with me now.”

She fixed him with another look, a glint in her eye.

“Why would I ever need you? A man who is too afraid to take what he wants? A man who lets a woman plan for him—who is too afraid to stand up to another man on his own?” She gave a short, scornful laugh, and drew herself up as straight as she could at the table. “Why would I ever want such a man? What could he ever do for me?”

Luis walked forward again, knowing then that he was going to do what he came to do. Through the windows he could hear the sharp intake of the crowd’s breath, like that hiss of the waves out at Jones Beach. He took another step toward her, but at that moment she held up a hand, her tired, painfilled eyes staring into his, stopping him for a moment.

“Luis!” she said. “Don’t you remember? Wait for it…That’s it. Ah, cara mia, I knew you would do fine!”

The crowd noise came up then, the full-throated roar, just like the wave enveloping him along the beach, and he took one more step and pulled the trigger, just as he had done it—done it so well—that afternoon thirty years before. But only as he fired, in that very instant, with the noise rising within and around him, and the feeling that he was falling, falling into the wave, only then did he finally put it all together—how she looked, and all the pills on the table; how easy it had been to find her after so many years without a trace, the way his cellmate had suddenly remembered someone who could sell him a gun, the triumphant, knowing way she looked at him even as he took that last step and pulled the trigger; how she had made him wait until the crowd noise rose up from the stadium, and what she really meant when she said those words, now and thirty years before, down in the super’s basement kingdom, I knew you would do fine!—and confirm, once and for all, that she always had been too smart for him.

JAGUAR

BY ABRAHAM RODRIGUEZ, JR.

South Bronx

To Scott, with love

Iris operated right from the stoop. She lived upstairs with her mother. It was the kind of building where she didn’t have to be too obvious about it, because of the crack traffic. Sometimes fishnets on her long curvies, but for her it was enough to just sit there in jeans and tank top and that smile, the eyes dizzy like she’s seen it all and just had another hit. She might wave to passing cars, plant the lingering stare on the shy ones. Her brown eyes were deep murkies and made people look away. There was just something about her, as if something was about to happen. Her olive skin tanned easy dark. If her hair was up, so much curvy smooth neck, if not, it fell in curly clumps onto her shoulders. A different girl everytime. Some days makeup, some days no. Some days she was a loud brash sound. Other times quiet meek and she could only sit there on the stoop like a lost girl staring back.