Signal to Noise(2)

Jimena touched her shoulder and Meche took out the earbuds.

“I said you’ll never believe who I saw the other day.”

Meche did not know and frankly did not care, but she understood she should bite her tongue and try to be congenial.

“Who?” she asked.

“Okay. Tall. Dark hair. He used to play with you when you were a kid.”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re not even trying!”

Meche was not in the mood for trying. The drawers of her memory were shut tight, and with good reason. She had hated the neighbourhood and everyone living in it. If she’d had a can of gasoline when she was about fifteen, she would have organized the biggest bonfire and laughed like Nero while it burned.

She had promised herself nothing would drag her back to that ugly web of streets and peeling paint, stray dogs and factory workers leaning against the walls of the corner store, back to the circle of hell from which she had escaped.

“I’ll give you another clue,” Jimena said. “He used to draw on his shoes with markers.”

Meche had grown to become a person of a certain composure. Things took place inside her head and heart, but she did not let people take a peek, preferring to show them only the smallest ripples of herself. Jimena’s words, however, had the capacity to make her forget about her cool exterior and she turned her head whip-quick, staring at Jimena with wide eyes.

“Sebastian?”

“That’s the one,” Jimena said chuckling.

“I figured he moved.”

God, she didn’t want to see him again. If he was living with his mother she would probably run into him.

“He did. But his mom’s been sick and he’s come back; been looking over her.”

“She still lives in the area?”

“Same apartment.”

Three blocks from Meche. Past the tortilleria. Fourth floor. Blue curtains with sunflowers. Knock three times. That was the code.

“He has a fancy car. He got hot,” Jimena said.

Meche laughed.

“No, really. He was such a dweeb. Who would have thought?”

He had never been ugly, but Jimena wouldn’t have noticed back then. His skin had been too dark, his hair too black, for Jimena to fancy him. Like all the girls in the neighbourhood, Meche included, Jimena would have gone for the blond, hazel-eyed Constantino.

“I was the dweeb,” Meche muttered. “He was the freak.”

“I always figured you two would end up together,” Jimena said.

“In a parallel universe where I didn’t want to rip out his *, maybe.”

“I never got that. You guys were sewn together at the hip and one day you just stopped talking.”

“Childhood friendships don’t last.”

Jimena laughed loudly, her painted mouth open wide.

“He used to have that stupid motorcycle and you guys used to ride it all around the block. Oh, my God, it was so old! It used to make so much noise! It was falling apart and you’d jump on it together and think you were so cool!”

They had been cool. Sebastian had been gangly and greasy-haired, Meche as developed as an eleven-year old boy with pimples dotting her face. They’d both dressed in atrocious clothes and the company they kept—sickly, chubby little Daniela, with the stash of Twinkies and Chocotorros under her bed—didn’t help.

But they had been cool. For a little while. When magic was real.

And she had cared the world for him.

And he’d said, once, “Let’s run away.” On the old motorcycle, of all things. Like it would even make it to the outskirts of the city, never mind to the highway. “Let’s just run away from this f*cking place, this f*cking city, this f*cking everything.”

And Meche, staring at the maps on his wall.

The map of France and the map of Spain. The Arctic circle.

Because they were going to take over the world.

Together.

Fucking Sebastian. Fucking, f*cking Sebastian.

Daniela, too.

No, childhood friendships will never last. No friendship will ever last.

“You know, I don’t remember that,” Meche said, lying with a flat voice. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“Really?”

“I remember you looked like a marshmallow in your quincea?era dress.”

“Oh, well. It was a while back.”

Meche put her earbuds back in and pressed play, hoping that was the last bit of chatter she would have to endure. She tried to stare ahead and focus on Nina’s voice, but despite her attempt not to look, she craned her head and glanced at Sebastian’s building as they drove past it.

She wanted to know if the curtains were blue.

They were green.

This made her feel relieved. Like the building was saying, “Hey Meche, it’s not 1988. You are here. In the present. Relax.”

There was movement by the curtain and, for a moment, Meche thought Sebastian was about to pop up, in the window, and she’d be looking straight at him. The prospect of seeing him there, framed by the old window, caused her to panic, as though it wasn’t just some guy she’d known as a teenager, but the damn shark from Jaws.

Nobody looked out the window and Meche let out her breath slowly.

Three blocks later Jimena parked the car. Meche pulled her luggage from the trunk while Jimena looked for the keys to the building, which were sitting somewhere in the abysmal depths of her huge purse. After a small eternity, Jimena pulled out her key chain and pushed the heavy front door open.