Signal to Noise(25)

“What do you think?”

“You always could hold a grudge.”

“Bingo,” Meche said winking and pointing a finger at Daniela.

Daniela sighed, resting her elbows on the table, holding her cup carefully.

“I guess you’ve forgiven me?”

“You were not the major issue,” Meche said, “although you played your part.”

“Meche, we couldn’t keep on forever. Casting spells, playing with people...”

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t right.”

“That’s not why we stopped, though.”

“Maybe it was a bit of why we stopped. A lot. Because you—”

Meche shook her head, tossing her tea bag onto a napkin and folding it all into a ball.

“We stopped because Sebastian broke the circle and convinced you to abandon it, to boot. He betrayed me. Fucked my life.”

“He didn’t...”

“He didn’t?”

“Meche, Sebastian adored you.”

Meche leaned back, an unpleasant smirk on her face. Adored her? Right. He had a funny way of showing it. A funny way of being her best friend.

“Look, I guessed you were still on good terms with him. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want him showing for my father’s novena. I know it may seem the polite thing to do, but I don’t want him in my mother’s apartment. I’m pretty sure Jimena invited him, but I’m against it. He should stay away.”

“Meche, that’s not right.”

“It is what it is.”

“Are you going to tell me to stay out of your apartment too?”

Meche shrugged, her face cold. She didn’t care if Daniela came, but she wasn’t going to encourage it either.

“That’s mean, Meche,” Daniela said. “We both knew your dad.”

“Well, he’s dead. He won’t miss you.”

Daniela chuckled, looking down at her hands.

“Here I thought you were trying to reconnect.”

“I’m a bitch like that. See, I wouldn’t want someone hexing me or my mom. Old habits.”

“We wouldn’t hex you.”

“Liar,” Meche whispered. “Just tell him to stay out of the apartment.”

“I brought something for you,” Daniela said, reaching for her large purse and pulling out a fat manila envelope. “Don’t worry. It’s not hexed.”

She set the envelope in the middle of the table. Meche glanced at it but made no attempt to look inside.

“You know, Meche, I always thought you were the smartest of us. You were always so sharp. But now I realize you’ve always been half-blind, and not nearly as sharp as you think.”

“What do you mean?” Meche asked.

“You need to let it go. My regards to your mother.”

Daniela slipped away. Meche drank her tea slowly, taking her time. When she was done she opened the envelope and looked inside. It was Meche’s notebook. Her old grimoire. There were also lots of photographs. Daniela’s quincea?era party and Daniela looking like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in her gigantic dress. Meche leaning against a wall, headphones on, staring at the camera as if she was daring someone to take a snapshot. Ah, Constantino and Isadora’s group. Sebastian’s motorcycle. And...

... Sebastian and Meche. It was a series of photos taken inside a booth. They were making faces in the first two frames, their tongues sticking out. By the third one they had settled down and were looking at the camera with a smile. The fourth one showed them looking at each other. In that last bit of black-and-white film, their expressions were inscrutable.

Meche stuffed the photos back inside the envelope.





Mexico City, 1988





SHE RECOGNIZED THE notes of power in the air. She could see them the same way one can see a spider’s web when a shaft of light hits it at the right angle.

Meche’s web of power.

Dolores clicked her needles together and smiled, remembering her own days of spells.

She didn’t think about magic very much anymore. That was part of her childhood, when Dolores and her sisters stitched spells with their needles. Spells to make the clouds release a gentle drizzle upon their heads. Spells to catch the eye of the boys in town. All those spells which were now gone, erased the same way a slate is erased with a warm cloth. But the memory of the feeling, of the magic...ah, that was still there.

Where had she put her old thimble? It had been made of porcelain and carefully painted by her eldest sister. Dolores hadn’t looked at her object of power in ages. She wondered whether it still had any strength in it.

“Grandma! I’m home!” Meche yelled, and she heard the front door bang shut, then the quick patter of feet across the hallway.

It was no more than a few seconds before a record started playing.

Dolores smiled and kept knitting.





HE WAS WATCHING his classmates across the schoolyard, eating their lunch. Isadora was leaning down to talk to Constantino and he was laughing.

Now that the Day of the Dead had passed, November marked the real festivity of the season: Isadora’s birthday party. Each year she threw a birthday bash and each year Sebastian did not attend. It was not that he was not invited: everybody was. He never dared to show up.