The Empanada Brotherhood Read Online Free Page B

sudden crash. I wanted to clap but resisted the impulse. Panting, Cathy said, “I fucked up the second llamada. I always fuck it up. I
hate
fucking it up.”
    She went to her purse on the floor and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. She gave one to the guitarist and called over to me, “Querés un faso?”
    â€œNo, gracias.”
    Cathy leaned against a mirror, smoking, sweating heavily. In Spanish she told me, “My name is Cathy and this is Jorge. We’re both going to be famous. What do you do for a living?”
    I explained that I was trying to be a writer, but meanwhile I washed dishes at the Night Owl Café and unloaded trucks for the Houston Street Labor Pool.
    â€œI want to be rich,” she said. “My father is a janitor. I work at El Parrillón, a restaurant uptown on Forty-seventh Street. My mother sews cheap sweatshop dresses. They can’t even speak English. Before two years are over I swear that I’m going to be a star. I’m not a gypsy, but that doesn’t matter. I pity anyone who gets in my way.”
    When she finished the cigarette Cathy dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her shoe.
    â€œLet’s do alegrías,” she said to Jorge.
    He struck a hard, short note. She twisted into a lovely anguished shape—ready. Then they began.
    I sat quietly for an hour, enthralled and impervious to the cold. They repeated every move and each note a hundred times. They stopped, went back, tried once more. They went over and over it again until a troupe of diminutive pixies in ballet costumes chaperoned by an adult carrying a small Victrola and a bag of records took over the studio. I walked downstairs with Jorge and Cathy Escudero.
    On the sidewalk the girl shook my hand good-bye. “Come by whenever you want,” she said. “We practice three times a week at this hour. I like an audience. It gives me an edge.”

10. Carlos the Artist
    Carlos the Artist often wore a cape, a black jersey, black pants, and black boots with elevated heels. He also worshiped Marcel Duchamp and the film
Last Year at Marienbad.
His paintings were surreal but good. He was slated for a show at an uptown cultural center next spring.
    Meanwhile, Carlos had been married three times and never officially divorced. Now he had a problem because his present wife did not work and remained at home all day long while Carlos tried to paint. She distracted him and they spent a lot of hours in bed. The artist sat around drinking and moping and complaining to her that he couldn’t make his art. Eventually—desperately—he approached me.
    â€œOíme. Don’t give me any guff. I need an apartment tomorrow between three and three-thirty. Can I have your key?”
    â€œWhy for only half an hour?”
    He shrugged. “That makes it more exciting.”
    â€œAll right. I’ll drop off an extra key with Roldán after I finish my stint at the Night Owl. You can come by and pick it up when you need it. Be careful not to kick the manuscripts stacked across my floor.”
    â€œYou have a friend for life, blondie. My house will always be your house.”
    The next day when I was due out of the apartment, Alfonso and I saw Francois Truffaut’s movie
Jules and Jim.
The mathematics professor was a movie buff and together we had already seen
Breathless, Viridiana,
and
La Dolce Vita;
also
Black Orpheus, Rashomon,
and
La Strada.
Alfonso knew theschedules at museums or out-of-the-way art theaters, and we usually attended screenings in the mornings or early afternoons—whenever the price was cheapest.
    When we emerged from
Jules and Jim
I felt confused and excited. I was enthralled by Jeanne Moreau and identified with Jules, the timid Oskar Werner character. The mood of that story about two men obsessed with the same woman made me uncomfortable. I knew I had witnessed wonderful secrets impossible to understand that were nevertheless integral to human