Maya's Notebook: A Novel (12 page)

When he found out I was the
gringuita
who was working
for Manuel Arias, Don Lionel gave me a big hug. “Tell that ungrateful Communist to come and see me! He hasn’t been here since New Year’s, and I’ve got a very fine bottle of
gran reserva
brandy.” He’s a colorful patriarch, an expansive bon vivant, with a big paunch, a bushy mustache, and four white tufts on top of his head. He roars with laughter at his own jokes, and his table is always set for anyone who might happen to show up. That’s how I imagine the Millalobo, that mythic being who seizes maidens to take them off to his kingdom in the sea. This Millalobo with a German surname declares himself a victim of women in general—“I can’t deny these beauties anything!”—and especially his daughter, who exploits him mercilessly. “Blanca is more of a mooch than any Chilote, always begging for something for her school. Do you know what she asked me for the other day? Condoms! That’s all this country needs: condoms for children!” he told me, laughing his head off.

Don Lionel is not the only one at Blanca’s feet. At her suggestion more than twenty volunteers got together to paint and repair the school; this is called a
minga
and consists of several people collaborating for free on some chore, knowing they won’t be short of help when they need it themselves. It’s the sacred law of reciprocity: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. That’s how potatoes are harvested, roofs are fixed, and fences are mended; that’s how Manuel’s refrigerator got here.

Rick Laredo hadn’t finished high
school and was roaming
the streets with other losers, selling drugs to little kids, stealing crap, and hanging around the Park at lunchtime to see his old classmates from Berkeley High and, if the opportunity arose, dealing. Although he’d never have admitted it, he wanted to get back into the school gang, after being expelled for putting the barrel of his pistol in Mr. Harper’s ear. It has to be said: the teacher behaved too well, he even intervened to prevent the expulsion; but Laredo dug his own grave when he insulted the principal and the members of the board.

Rick Laredo took a lot of care over his appearance, with his spotless brand-name white sneakers, a tank top to show off his muscles and tattoos, hair gelled up like a porcupine, and so many chains and wristbands that he could have been dragged away by a large magnet. His jeans were enormous and fell down lower than his hips, so he walked like a chimpanzee. He was such a nonentity that not even the police or Mike O’Kelly were interested in him.

When I decided to solve the problem of my virginity, I made a date with Laredo, without giving him any explanation, in the empty parking lot of a cinema, at a dead time, before the first showing. From the distance I watched him going around in circles with his provocative swagger, holding up his pants, so baggy it looked like he was wearing diapers, with one hand and a cigarette in his other hand, excited and nervous, but when I approached, he feigned the indifference required by that kind of macho guy. He looked me up and down with a mocking sneer. “Hurry up, I have to catch the bus in ten minutes,” I told him, as I took my pants off. His superior smile vanished; maybe he’d been expecting some preamble. “I’ve always liked you, Maya
Vidal,” he said. At least this cretin knows my name, I thought.

Laredo flicked his cigarette away, grabbed me by the arm, and tried to kiss me, but I turned my face away: that wasn’t part of my plan, and Laredo’s breath stank. He waited till I got my pants off, and then he crushed me against the pavement and exerted himself for a minute or two, stabbing me in the chest with his chains and medallions, not even imagining he was doing it with a novice, then collapsed on top of me like a dead animal. I pushed him off me furiously, cleaned myself with my underwear, which I threw on the ground in the parking lot and left there, pulled on my jeans, grabbed my backpack, and ran away. On the bus I noticed the dark stain between my legs and tears soaking into the front of my shirt.

The next day Rick Laredo was standing in the Park with a rap CD and a little bag of marijuana for “his chick.” I felt sorry for the poor guy and couldn’t get rid of him with ridicule, as a proper vampire should. I snuck out of Sarah and Debbie’s sight, invited him for ice cream, and bought us each a three-scoop cone, pistachio, vanilla, and rum’n’raisin. While we licked our ice cream cones, I thanked him for his interest in me and for the favor he’d done me in the parking lot, and tried to explain that there’d be no second opportunity, but the message didn’t get through his primate skull. I couldn’t get rid of Rick Laredo for months, until an unexpected accident swept him out of my life.

In the mornings I would
leave my house, looking like someone on her way to school, but halfway there I would meet Sarah and Debbie at a Starbucks, where the employees gave us a latte in exchange for indecent favors in the washroom. I would put on my vampire disguise and go off on a bender till it was time to return home in the afternoon, with a clean face and the look of a schoolgirl. My freedom lasted for several months, until my Nini stopped taking antidepressants, came back to the land of the living, and noticed some signs she hadn’t perceived when her gaze was directed inward: money disappeared from her purse, my hours didn’t match any known educational program, I walked around looking and acting like a slut, I’d started lying and scheming. My clothes smelled of marijuana and my breath of suspicious mint lozenges. She hadn’t yet realized that I was skipping most of my classes. Mr. Harper had spoken to my father on one occasion, with no apparent results, but it hadn’t occurred to him to call my grandmother. My Nini’s attempts to communicate with me had to compete with the noise of the thunderous music in my headphones, my computer, my cell phone, and the television.

The most convenient thing for my Nini’s well-being would have been to ignore the danger signs and just try and live in peace with me, but her desire to protect me and her long-standing habit of solving mysteries in detective novels drove her to investigate. She started with my closet and the numbers saved on my phone. She found a bag with packs of condoms and a little plastic bag with two yellow tablets
with “Mitsubishi” stamped on them that she couldn’t identify. She distractedly tossed them into her mouth and fifteen minutes later discovered their effects. Her vision clouded over and so did her mind, her teeth chattered, her bones went soft, and she saw her sorrows disappear. She put on a record of music from back in her day and started dancing frenetically. Then she went outside for a breath of fresh air, where she kept dancing, while taking off her clothes. A couple of neighbors, who saw her fall to the ground, rushed over to cover her with a towel. They were just getting ready to call 911 at the moment I showed up, recognized the symptoms, and managed to convince them to help me carry her inside.

We couldn’t lift her—she’d turned to stone—and we had to drag her to the sofa in the living room. I explained to these good Samaritans that it was nothing serious, my grandmother had attacks like this quite regularly and they went away by themselves. I gently pushed them toward the door, then ran to reheat the coffee left over from breakfast and look for a blanket, because my Nini’s teeth sounded like a machine gun. A couple of minutes later she was burning up. For the next three hours I was alternating the blanket with cold compresses until my Nini’s temperature got back under control.

It was a long night. The next day my grandma had the despondency of a defeated boxer, but her mind was clear, and she remembered what had happened. She didn’t believe the story that a friend had given me those pills to look after for her, and I, innocently, had no idea they were ecstasy. The unfortunate trip got her back on her high horse. Her opportunity to put into practice all that she’d learned in the
Club of Criminals had arrived. She found another ten Mitsubishi pills among my shoes, and discovered from O’Kelly that each one cost twice my weekly allowance.

My grandma knew a bit
about computers, because she used them at the library, but she was far from an expert. That’s why she turned to Norman—a technological genius, hunched over and half blind at the age of twenty-six, having spent so much of his life with his nose glued to the screen—who Mike O’Kelly employed on occasion for illegal purposes. When it came to helping his boys, Snow White had never had any scruples about surreptitiously scrutinizing the electronic files of lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and the police. Norman can access anything that leaves even the slightest trace in cyberspace, from the secret documents of the Vatican to photos of congressmen frolicking with hookers. Without leaving his room in his mother’s house he could have extorted money, stolen from bank accounts, and committed fraud on the stock market, but he lacked any criminal proclivities; his passion was entirely theoretical.

Norman was not eager to waste his precious time on the computer and cell phone of a sixteen-year-old brat, but he put his hacking abilities at my Nini and O’Kelly’s disposal and taught them how to violate passwords, read private messages, and rescue from the ether what I believed I’d deleted. In one weekend this pair of vocational detectives accumulated enough information to confirm my Nini’s
worst fears, leaving her stunned: her granddaughter drank whatever she could get her hands on, from gin to cough syrup, smoked marijuana, was dealing ecstasy, acid, and tranquilizers, stole credit cards, and had set up a scam inspired by a television program in which FBI agents pretended to be underage girls to trap depraved men on the Internet.

The adventure began with a personal ad we vampires picked out of hundreds of similar ones:

We sent the man a photo of Debbie, the shortest of the three, at the age of thirteen, riding a bicycle, and made a date with him in a hotel in Berkeley that we knew because Sarah had worked there in the summer.

Debbie got rid of her black clothes and deathly makeup and showed up with a shot of booze in her gut for bravery, disguised as a little girl with a school skirt, white blouse, knee socks, and ribbons in her hair. The man was a bit startled to see she was older than in the photo, but he was in no position to complain, since he was ten years older than he’d claimed in the ad. He explained to Debbie that her role consisted of being obedient and his was to give her orders and punish her, but not to hurt her—just to mend her ways,
that’s a good father’s obligation. And what’s the obligation of a good daughter? To be affectionate with her daddy. What’s your name? It doesn’t matter, you’ll be Candy to me. Come here, Candy, sit here on your daddy’s lap and tell him if you moved your bowels today, it’s very important, sweetie, it’s fundamental to good health. Debbie said she was thirsty, and he ordered a soda and a sandwich from room service. While he described the benefits of an enema, she bought time examining the room with feigned childish curiosity, sucking her thumb.

Meanwhile Sarah and I were waiting in the hotel parking lot the ten minutes we’d agreed, and then we sent in Rick Laredo, who went up to the room and knocked on the door. “Room service!” announced Laredo, according to the instructions I’d given him. As soon as they opened the door, he burst into the room with his gun in hand.

Laredo, who we’d nicknamed the psychopath, because he bragged of torturing animals, had imposing muscles and gang paraphernalia, but he’d only used the gun for intimidating the underage clientele he sold drugs to and getting kicked out of Berkeley High. Hearing our plan to extort pedophiles, he got scared—such misdemeanors didn’t figure in his limited repertoire—but he decided to help us because he wanted to impress the vampires with his bravery. He gave himself courage with several shots of tequila and some crack. When he kicked open the hotel room door and burst in with a demented expression and a clatter of heels, keys, and chains, aiming with two hands, like he’d seen in the movies, the frustrated sugar daddy collapsed into the only armchair, curled up in the fetal position. Laredo hesi
tated—he was so nervous he’d forgotten the next step—but Debbie had a better memory.

The victim, sobbing in fright, might not have heard even half of what she said to him, but some of her words—
federal crime
,
child pornography
,
attempted rape of a minor
,
years in prison
—had the proper impact. For the sum of two hundred dollars cash he could avoid these problems, Debbie told him. The guy swore by what was most sacred that he didn’t have it, making Laredo so upset that he might have shot him if Debbie hadn’t thought to call me on my cell phone; I was the mastermind of the gang. That’s when there was another knock at the door: a hotel waiter with the sandwich and soda. Debbie took the tray at the threshold and signed the bill, blocking the spectacle of a man in his underpants sniveling in the armchair and another in black leather sticking a pistol in his mouth.

I went up to the sugar daddy’s room and took charge of the situation with a calmness obtained from a joint. I told the man to get dressed and assured him that nothing was going to happen to him if he cooperated. I drank the soda and took two bites of the sandwich, then ordered the victim to accompany us without a sound; it would not be in his interest to make a scene. I took the unhappy wretch by the arm and we walked four floors, with Laredo at his back, down the stairs, since we might run into someone in the elevator. We pushed him inside my grandmother’s Volkswagen, which I’d borrowed without asking and was driving without a license, and took him to an ATM, where he withdrew the ransom money. He handed over the money, and we got back into the car and took off. The man stayed there in the street, sighing with relief and, I suppose, cured of his
vice of playing daddy. The whole operation took thirty-five minutes, and the surge of adrenaline was as fantastic as the fifty dollars we each pocketed.