Category Five, page 9
Marisol sighed. “So slow. Painfully slow. And there’s no money coming from the States at this point. But we’re doing what we can.”
“Does everyone have power by now?”
“Most areas. Of course, it’s the poorer towns that still don’t have it back.”
Lupe scoffed. “So infuriating.” She looked at her watch and without a word they both started back toward the building and up the stairs to the second floor and the faculty offices.
“But we’re helping to do repairs to homes, clearing roads. Whatever we can do.”
Lupe stopped walking and turned to face Marisol. “Thank you.”
“What are you thanking me for?”
“For all the work you’re doing for other people.”
Marisol started to feel uncomfortable. Lupe’s overexpression of emotions was a lot to get used to. “Dávila, don’t get all mushy on me. Besides…” She pointed to the door they were standing in front of. “You have to prepare to get lambasted by … what do you call him?”
“Professor Cranky Pants.”
“Oh yes, now I remember. So mature.”
Lupe stuck her tongue out at Marisol and rested her knuckles on the door. “So, let’s get this over with, shall we?” She knocked three times, quick and sharp.
Almost immediately a handsome, lean guy in his mid-twenties—a graduate student, perhaps?—opened the door and pulled them in. “Come in, quickly, he’s waiting for you.” Then he whispered, “I think he forgot to take his meds this morning.”
“Oh, joy,” Lupe added as they were ushered to the inner room, the sanctum of Professor Quiñones. Marisol had met the professor before, at an academic event at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, but she’d never been to his office. Of course, Lupe had, and she doubted he’d forgotten that visit. To say that her friend and the professor had not gotten along was a huge understatement.
As they walked through the first room, hundreds of saint statues glared at them, their eyes seeming to follow each step, and Marisol wondered if they were plotting their demise. She whispered to Lupe, “I bet if you slept in here these things would come alive and kill you in your sleep.”
“Trust me, there’s no way anyone could relax enough in here to fall asleep.”
And as if on cue, a craggy voice reached them from behind the large wooden desk. “Well? Are you coming in or not, young ladies? I don’t have time to waste, I’m an old man, you know!”
Marisol knew from experience that the old cranky ones lived forever. When they went to visit her great-grandmother, she was still bellowing at them from her rocking chair, her gnarled index finger pointed at Marisol in disapproval. And the last time Marisol had seen the professor, he’d been the exact same way. It had only been about a year and a half since she’d last seen the professor, but he seemed … diminished, somehow. His already pale skin was even whiter, with blue veins running across his temples like a road map.
Marisol stepped forward, since Lupe had told her how badly her last meeting with the man had gone. “Professor, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at the Institute—”
He looked at her with almost a smile. Almost. “Of course, I remember you. The lecture about the African influence on island poetics. You asked pointed and well-thought-out questions about the whitewashing of Luis Palés Matos.”
Marisol gaped at him. There was no faulting the man’s memory.
“You’re surprised I remembered at my age, yes?”
She nodded, then quickly shook her head. “No, I mean not at your age, but you must meet dozens of people at each event. And I’m only a high school student.”
He stood up then, as if he had been inflated. “Ah, but that’s precisely why I remember you.” He walked around the desk to stand in front of her. “Your line of inquiry was controversial, of course, but that you were asking the questions that the more ‘mature’ scholars in the room didn’t dare to ask was what stuck in my memory.”
Marisol was still gaping. She was used to being pushed off, ignored. “I … I appreciate your kind words, Professor.”
He dismissed her with a wave. “Bah! Nothing kind about them. Just the truth.” Then he walked over to Lupe. “Now this one I remember clearly as well. The sharp-tongued gringa. It seems my information proved helpful in your El Cuco exploits, hmm?” He pointed to a series of framed newspaper articles about El Cuco—which included interviews with the cranky academic, of course. A lopsided smile lifted the wrinkles on one side of his face, and Lupe seemed to shrink slightly in front of him. Only slightly.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Knowing Lupe, Marisol bet that hurt to say.
Quiñones held his hand to his ear as if listening harder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Old-man hearing, you know.” The smile lifted even higher.
Lupe stood taller and practically shouted, “Yes, thank you, sir. For your kind and knowledgeable assistance!”
The old man stood to his full height, which was formidable, and said, “Ah, now, that wasn’t too painful, was it?”
“Actually, it kind of was.” Lupe’s eyes narrowed and Marisol figured she’d better get right to it before her friend threw a punch.
“Professor, we’re looking to get your thoughts on a situation in Vieques. Have you heard about the recent murders?”
“My dear, I’m a cultural anthropologist, it is my job to know what is going on in today’s world.”
Marisol held her tongue. She needed to get to the point before she held him down so Lupe could hit him. “Professor, have you heard of any stories about ghostly figures walking around on Vieques?”
That got his attention. “Well of course, but I haven’t heard of any occurrences of that sort since … well, since 2001.” He moved quickly, much faster than she expected him to, and keenly pulled a notebook of articles off a seemingly disorganized bookshelf.
“When the navy was there?”
He just smiled at that with a cat-that-ate-the-canary look. What was he holding back? He ignored her question and continued, without any hurry, until he found the place in the notebook he was looking for and set it down on the desk open to certain articles. “Yes, the ghosts were wearing period dress, if I remember correctly.”
Lupe stared at him, then at the notebook. “How did you know that? That wasn’t in any of the articles I read.”
“My dear, if my work was limited by what those idiots printed in the newspapers, I would be bagging groceries in Amigo by now.”
Oh no he didn’t. Heat started to rise behind Marisol’s face. But Lupe’s tongue was quicker.
“Is there something wrong with bagging groceries, Professor?” Lupe was squaring her shoulders, ready for a throwdown. Marisol looked at her and they locked eyes, anger coming off both of them like static. Damn classist a-hole. Then, in that moment, Marisol took a slow breath in and shook her head slightly, and Lupe paused, then gave a slight nod in response. Silently they agreed this was not today’s fight.
“Doctor Quiñones.” Using his official title was sure to get him back on track; classist a-holes loved their titles. “We would greatly appreciate it if you would share any thoughts or information you have on this phenomenon.”
He straightened his too-loose suit coat and moved behind his desk to sit in the leather chair. Then he tented his fingers in front of him. “Of course, of course. The first references to the appearance of ghosts on the little island were in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Of course, their dress was not considered antiquated then.”
Lupe stepped closer. “So, you’re saying the clothes they are wearing are from that time period?”
“Precisely.” He opened a desk drawer with a resounding squeal, then pulled a worn, overstuffed manila folder from its depths. “Yes, here it is.” He pulled out a sheet of paper that was thick and yellowing, with a line drawing on the front. “This is an artist’s rendering from Isabel Segunda in the early 1930s.” He laid the thick page on the desk and turned it around so it faced the girls. “This is the first example I found from the documentation at the time. This artist was from Vieques and his subjects were often anticolonialist.”
They both leaned over to examine the artwork and Marisol asked, “What is the title? I can’t quite make it out.”
He put a pair of thin reading glasses on the tip of his nose and read, “Titi Margaret returns to fight.”
Marisol straightened up. “To fight what?”
But the professor was staring at Lupe. Marisol looked over and saw that her friend was staring at the illustration, chewing on her lip, her eyes wide.
The professor asked in the gentlest voice he’d managed yet, “Miss Dávila? I’m getting the sense that this time you’ve seen the supernatural phenomenon yourself, am I right?”
Lupe just nodded.
Marisol stared at her. “What? You didn’t tell me that!”
But Lupe didn’t respond to that, just grimaced a bit and stood taller. “So, let’s say I have, what do you think they want when they appear?”
“Once again you search for the want. Always looking for justifications. Why can’t they just exist?”
“But they appear at particular times. I would imagine there is a purpose to the ‘when’ if not the ‘why.’”
“Ah, now that’s a different query than your original one. Yes, the ‘why’ is interesting. So, you’re saying they are back, and people are seeing them now?”
“Yes.”
“Are they causing any harm?”
“Four people have died since they were first seen. Their hearts were removed from their bodies.”
He looked at Lupe in that discerning way he had, bushy white eyebrows raised. “Do you think these ghosts are committing these ghoulish acts?”
Lupe looked nervous. “Well, when I saw the ghosts, one of them, a woman, was reaching for my chest, like she wanted something.”
He looked at her without saying anything for some time, then said, “That must have been terrifying.”
Lupe swallowed, her eyes glassy. “It was.”
He sank back into his chair, tired lines deepening on his face. “Well, I’ve never heard of ghosts that could make physical contact to the point of evisceration.”
Lupe perked up. “That’s true! They didn’t even leave footsteps in the sand!”
Marisol’s mind was clicking. “Lupe, I think we should look into who has the most to gain from the deaths of the individual victims. And how it might be connected to when the sightings originally happened, around…” She pulled the drawing closer to her and peered at the signature again. “Nineteen thirty.”
Lupe continued talking as if in a trance. “The resort they’re building. It’s on land that’s supposed to be saved as a nature preserve.”
The old scholar barked, “It was supposed to belong to the people who owned it in 1941 when the navy ‘relocated’ them.” He did air quotes with his long, bony fingers.
“Wait, what do mean? Relocated them to where?”
“St. Croix, mostly. Three thousand people, if I remember correctly. Mostly farmers. And the land they moved them to was barren.”
Marisol froze. “Wait, St. Croix? What was it Abuelita said…” The other two were asking her questions, but Marisol was lost in her own head. “She was angry that ‘they made us leave … left her there alone.’”
Lupe threw up her hands. “Left who alone?”
“Abuelita,” Marisol said absently. Then she realized no one else was talking, and she saw Lupe and the professor gawping at her. “It was just, there’s this old woman at a shelter in Yabucoa. She said her grandmother was on Vieques and she was angry they ‘made us leave.’”
A loud sigh brought Marisol’s attention back to the present, and she and Lupe looked over at the professor.
It was as if he had deflated into his chair, a clockwork man wound down. “This is all so very compelling, children, but you’re going to have to find the rest of these answers on your own.” He shoved the papers back into their folder and dropped it on his desk as if exhausted just from holding it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to rest before my afternoon lecture.”
Lupe looked like she was about to push further, so Marisol grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the door that led to the outer office. “Of course, Professor. Thank you for your time.” Lupe allowed herself to be dragged past the assistant and out into the hall, the door clicking shut behind them.
Marisol let go of her upper arm. Damn. She should have gotten his signature on the petition.
“Well, that went about as well as last time. I just love that man,” Lupe said, rubbing her upper arm.
“I liked him.”
Lupe looked at her with a sardonic smile. “You would! He was warmer to you than I thought the old crow was capable of.”
Marisol smiled back. “I think you don’t get along because you two are just too damn alike.” She started walking to the stairs with Lupe following behind.
“What? Now see here, young lady! I didn’t attain three Oxford degrees so that I could sit here and listen to a child babble!”
“See, now you’ve gone and taken it too far.”
“Two Oxford, one Harvard?”
“Nah, ‘child babble’? That was plain lazy.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lupe
SHE’D RIDDEN OVER from the ferry to Río Piedras with her uncle, but he had to return to Vieques earlier, so Marisol dropped Lupe off at the late afternoon ferry, the sun melting Creamsicle orange across the top of the ocean. Marisol was going to join her the following day after she stopped at home and packed a few things for crashing at Lupe’s uncle’s condo. As Lupe walked away, Marisol was sitting in her car tooling around on her phone, waiting to make sure Lupe got on the ferry, when she called out the open window. “Hey, Lupe.”
Lupe turned around. “What? Miss me already?”
Marisol smiled. “No, next time you put some shit like that on your Facebook page, add a trigger warning or something.”
Huh? “What are you talking about? I forgot I even have a page. Facebook’s for old people.” She started walking back to the car, a weird feeling roiling in her belly. She got to the window and looked down at Mari’s phone.
Marisol scrolled until the picture of a heart was revealed, a real heart, a trickle of blood spilling onto the sand, the flesh of the organ glistening in what looked like early morning sunlight.
“What the hell?”
Marisol scrolled a bit. “There’s a caption.”
Picture yours here.
Lupe took the phone from Marisol so she could look closer, her stomach in full roil now. “This makes no sense; the post says it’s from me. I must have been hacked.” She handed the phone back.
Marisol gaped at her. “You’re not concerned about this?”
“Look, it’s probably some kid trying to scare me.”
Marisol lowered her gaze. “With a photo of a bloody human heart on a beach? Pretty elaborate for a ‘kid.’”
Lupe shrugged, but began chewing on her lip.
“Lupe, this is on Vieques.”
“What?”
She pointed to the photo. “Even though this was at night, I can see the white balustrades of the seawall in Esperanza, here.”
Lupe shrugged again, this time with less enthusiasm. “Could be a coincidence.”
Marisol got out of the car at that one. “Someone or something is tearing the hearts from people on a tiny island—that tiny island”—she pointed across the water—“right over there, your uncle is investigating it, you’re asking questions, and someone posts a photo of a human heart on your Facebook page taken on the same tiny island the day after one of the murders, and you’re saying it could be a coincidence?”
“Okay, when you put it like that…”
Marisol grabbed Lupe by the shoulders. “Girl, you have to tell your uncle.”
“No!” She pulled out her phone, opened her Facebook app, and deleted the post, then looked into deleting her account. “No. If we tell him he’ll just send me back to San Juan under house arrest, or worse, back home to Vermont.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”
Lupe’s eyes shot up from her phone.
“I mean, I want to see you. We all want to see you, but I think everyone would rather you stay safe.”
Lupe was shaking her head so hard her eyeballs shook. “No way. I’m staying. I’m in the middle of this, and I’m going to help sort it out. Besides, I have to figure out what’s going on with Javier.”
“Yeah, we didn’t get to talk about that.”
“Nothing to talk about, really. I need him to talk.”
“Are you sure it’s just him?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, I’ve been wondering what’s going on in your life for the last six months, but all we’ve talked about is the hurricane, my work, my family, not yours.”
Lupe put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, well, a category-five hurricane in your homeland kind of takes precedence over track meets and pre-college courses.”
“No! It doesn’t! See, I want to know about your athletics and your classes. It makes the nightmare here feel better, like it can be overcome.”
Lupe gave her the side-eye.
“No, really. I want to know that life goes on. Normal life. Maybe Javier did, too.”
“I told him things … I think.” But she couldn’t remember any one thing. Hours of conversations about power, and water, and procuring gas. About joining his mother, who was alone in her house in Amapola, her uncle collecting them both and putting them up in his house, no questions asked. About how the community rallied. Lupe did brush off questions about her own life; they seemed so insignificant, but that didn’t increase the distance … did it?
“Don’t think about it now. You did nothing wrong, it’s just … friendship is both ways. Take it from someone who knows, you can’t always be giving.”
Lupe nodded, but her mind was swirling, rewinding conversations, trying to find a bit of herself in them, but coming up empty.
A ferry horn blew.
“Shit! I gotta go.” She pulled Mari into a hug and turned to run to the ferry.
