Monstress (15 page)

At the end of Fortunado's first month in the city, Vicente raised a bottle of Du Kang to the night sky and said, “To Nado, the finest houseboy in all of Seattle.” He took a swig, and passed it over. Fortunado drank, swallowed slowly to ease the burn.

They were on the third-floor fire escape of the I-Hotel, too tired to change out of their uniforms. They sat for hours, laughing as they reminisced about the night they met, as though it had happened years instead of only weeks before. But as the night grew darker and colder, their faces turned serious, their voices quiet. “It's good that I found you,” Vicente said, “finally someone I can talk to who doesn't whine about life.”

“You can't listen,” Fortunado said. “They'll get you down.”

“But it's tough. No family. No wife. No home of my own.” Vicente brought the bottle to his lips but didn't drink.

Fortunado put his hand on Vicente's shoulder. “Those things will happen. I promise.”

“It's better here, yeah? We were right to come?”

Fortunado leaned in, so close he saw Vicente's eyes glisten, and said yes.

They let moments pass in silence, and a solitary car drove down Kearny. “I'm drunk,” Vicente said, setting the bottle of Du Kang by Fortunado's feet. “What's left is yours.” He rested his head against the brick wall, blinked slowly until his eyes stayed shut. He was shivering, so Fortunado took off his jacket and draped it over Vicente's shoulders, tucked it under his chin. His hands were just below his jaw; then a finger, at the edge of his lip. Fortunado had been this close with others before: those few flirtatious men back home, who at some point became willing. But it was never like this: below the street was empty and silent, every window and doorway was black, and the sliver of moon cast no light. These were signs that the world was offering up this moment, a chance to understand what it was like to kiss the one you knew, perhaps loved.
Good
night,
he told himself,
that's all it means,
and moved closer until their faces touched. He kissed Vicente, and just as he was about to apologize, he felt Vicente kissing him too.

Then Vicente turned away. “It's late,” he whispered, eyes still closed, “time to go back.” He got to his feet and climbed through the window, and Fortunado watched him walk down to the far end of the hallway, where he unlocked his door and shut it behind him. It was almost light when Fortunado finally returned to his room. He sat on his bed with his back to the wall, listened to Vicente on the other side, breathing and turning in his sleep.

Later, just before work, Vicente opened Fortunado's door, already dressed in his uniform. “Come on, slowpoke,” he said, snapping his fingers twice. He made no mention of the night before, only that his head still buzzed from the Du Kang they shared. Then he hurried down the stairs and Fortunado slowly got up, and when he saw his face in the mirror above the sink, he understood how this would go: as it did back home—with silence and forgetting, the only way he knew.

All that became of their kiss was longing. Fortunado began counting off days and weeks since it happened, believing that enough passing time would blur the night into one that perhaps never happened at all. But it only brightened in his mind, and when months dragged into a year and then another, it was an absolute truth: once, long ago, they had kissed. On nights when Vicente caroused in bars with easy women or purchased hours in a Chinatown brothel, Fortunado would lie awake in bed, so restless that he kicked away his sheets, dressed, and walked down the empty blocks of Manilatown to the Embarcadero, where he would stand by the rail and look out at the Bay Bridge, which was nearly finished. Its progress was evidence that the world still turned forward, leaving behind a night when he was truly happy, and the moment he was utterly and finally known.

“I
hate the bus,” Vicente said, sorting through a pile of mismatched socks. “The seats hurt my back. No buses, Nado.” He never wondered where they were going, only how they would get there.

“We won't take a bus,” Fortunado said. He stood at the dresser, gathering their California ID's, Social Security cards, and passports, then stuffed them into a yellow envelope, along with a letter from the West Oakland Senior Center, where tenants would be temporarily housed if the eviction happened. There was no plan beyond that; some might return to another San Francisco facility, others to Daly City or San Jose.

“Amtrak is faster. We'll take Amtrak, right?”

Fortunado sealed the envelope, wrote their names across the flap. “I've got the tickets,” he said, “don't worry.” He looked up at Vicente, and saw that he had shaved only the right side of his face. He was careless with his grooming these days: he might remember to change his undershirt but not his underwear or socks; when he showered, he would forget to rinse the soap from his body, then go through his day with white streaks of dry soap on his arms and neck. “You didn't finish,” Fortunado said.

Vicente looked in the mirror above the sink, brushed his thumb against his cheek. Beneath the lightbulb above, his stubble look thorny and white, as though painful to touch.

“Here,” Fortunado said, “I'll do it.” He filled the sink with water, took out a disposable razor and shaving cream from the shoe box beneath. He lathered the left side of Vicente's face, wiped his hand dry, then stepped behind him.

“Don't cut me,” Vicente said.

Fortunado shook his head. “I won't.”

The sirens were much louder now, police shouted threats of arrest through their megaphones, but in the hall, the protesters continued:
Block the front door. Check the roof.
Hurry.
But when Fortunado leaned in, he could hear the razor slide gently down Vicente's skin, the drops of water trickle from the faucet, and the night was quiet again. When he was younger, he had yearned for this closeness, ached for it, and now that Vicente could no longer care for himself, these were the necessary gestures of their everyday lives. And Fortunado welcomed the responsibility, secretly cherished it. Duty fulfilled desire, as best it could.

Vicente flinched. There was no blood; Fortunado had barely nicked the skin. But as Vicente wiped away the shaving cream from his face, Fortunado saw a spot of red, reflected in the corner of the mirror: the time on the digital clock, its numbers backwards and inverted, urgent and glowing. 12:03
A.M
. The next day already, and Fortunado realized he hadn't packed a suitcase of his own.

1936.
June. Two years in the city and nothing had changed. “What a life,” Vicente said, passing a bottle of Du Kang to Fortunado. They were on the fire escape, exhausted from a double shift, and he was drunk. “Two hotels. One where I work. One where I live.” Fortunado drank and passed the bottle back, but instead of drinking Vicente turned the bottle upside down and let the rest spill through the grate. “How can you stand it,” he said, and climbed inside as if he didn't want to know the answer.

Then, only a day later, there was a girl.

Her name was Althea. Vicente was on the seventh floor of the Parkdale, hurrying to the elevator, when a maid called out, holding a gold button between her fingers. It had fallen from his blazer, and she insisted on sewing it on for him. “Guess where she fixed it,” Vicente said to Fortunado later that night. “In the Berlin Deluxe.” He spoke like he was bragging: the Berlin Deluxe was the hotel's grandest suite, but still under renovation after a room fire six months before. “She had a maid's key, and sometimes she goes there just to smoke a cigarette and look at the view. We sat by the window, for almost an hour. No one even saw us.”

Except for the Berlin Deluxe, Fortunado had entered every guest room in the Parkdale, but just far enough to unload bags and luggage. He was never invited to look out the window, to gaze at the hotel's famous city views. “What was it like?” he asked.

Vicente looked at him and shook his head, as if what he saw was beyond Fortunado's imagination. “You could see everything,” he said.

The following Sunday, coming home after another double shift, they saw Althea on Columbus Street. She was standing in front of a Chinese clothier, looking at the window display, a mannequin clad in black velvet, surrounded by boxes wrapped in silver paper. Behind it was a framed map of America, and Althea stared at it, as if studying all forty-eight states. “Planning a trip?” Vicente asked.

She turned toward them. Her red hair fell past her shoulders, and a lime-green scarf was tied loosely around her thin, pale neck; she was like no maid Fortunado had ever seen. “I'm just looking back at home, ” she said, tapping her finger on the window. “Toward the middle, right there. Wisconsin. That's where I'm from. Mount Horeb. A tiny place.”

“Do you miss it?” Vicente asked.

She shook her head. “Girls back there get married, have babies, and then they're stuck. If I'd stayed, that's what I would have become.”

Vicente took a step forward. “And what are you now?”

She smiled playfully, as though Vicente had asked a trick question. “I'm new,” she said. “Like you. Like everybody here.” She took a small tin box of mints from her purse, and offered one to Vicente. “What about you,” she said, “do you miss home?”

“I don't really think about it,” he said, then took a mint. Only when Fortunado said hello did Vicente finally make proper introductions.

The sun had set but the night was still warm, so Althea suggested a cold beer at a nearby tavern on Fourth Street. They walked down Kearny, crossed over to Third, and below Market the sidewalks narrowed as the crowds thickened; Fortunado fell several steps behind but could still hear Althea talk about living in San Francisco, how quickly everything moved—the streetcars, the people, even time. But life dragged too: her boardinghouse room was stuffy and dim, the walls and single window unable to keep out any noise, barely a comfort after long shifts at the Parkdale. “Sometimes I stay awake all night, no matter how tired I am,” she said.

Vicente nodded. “I stay awake too.” They walked so close their arms could touch.

Fortunado stopped, and as they moved farther down the block he recognized the slight zigzag in Vicente's step. It was the way he moved the night they met at the Dreamland, and now he recognized Althea too. She could be any Dreamland girl, but there was a difference: when Vicente looked at her, she looked back at him.

They were half a block ahead now. Fortunado decided to leave, to return to the I-Hotel or make his way to the Embarcadero, to its darkest, emptiest spot. But then a stocky, pink-faced man stepped out of a bar, his sleeves rolled up and shoes untied, and stumbled toward Vicente and Althea, raving about brown men taking white women and white jobs. He grabbed Vicente's shoulder and turned him around, put a finger in his chest. Vicente stepped back, tried walking away, but the man took him by the collar and shoved him against a storefront window. He threw a punch, and Vicente fell.

Fortunado ran to Vicente, fists clenched, ready to fight. But the man was too quick, too strong, and he grabbed Fortunado by the shoulder and pushed him to the ground. He heard his name—
Nado—
and when he looked up Vicente was back on his feet, punching the man in his stomach. “I'm not scared of you,” he said, “I'm not scared.” With every blow he said it, until Fortunado pulled him off.

They hurried back to the I-Hotel, ran up to Vicente's room. Fortunado went to the window, checking to see if they'd been followed. “We were just walking,” he heard Althea say, “that's all.” But he knew the truth, and saw it reflected in the glass: Vicente and Althea on the edge of the bed, his arm around her shoulder.

T
he last thing left of Manilatown was the I-Hotel, and the human barricade was crumbling. Fortunado watched protesters fall to the batons of police, handcuffed and dragged away, and those still standing were not enough: a group of officers finally broke through, charged the front entrance with sledgehammers in hand. Behind him, Vicente slept atop the covers facing the wall, his coat and shoes already on.

In the hall, someone with a megaphone told tenants to keep their doors locked, block them with whatever they could move, so Fortunado went to the bureau, pushed it toward the door. But it was heavier than he thought, and he could feel his rushing heartbeat, the sweat on his face and neck. He stopped, took a breath, and just as he meant to try again he caught sight of something he had seen a thousand times before: the empty space on the floor beside Vicente's bed. Fortunado lay there once, and he remembered how well he had slept, how Vicente's coat had kept him warm. It was their only night together in the I-Hotel.

In the street, in the hall, they continued:
We won't go.
Save the I-Hotel.
He had heard it all day and night. He had heard it for years, an entire life.

He had strength left to barricade the door. To block the police out. To trap themselves in. Instead, he moved away from the dresser and undid the chain above, the lock beneath.

It was 2:11
A.M
., and every few seconds Vicente's arm shook and his head jerked, as though fighting in a dream. Fortunado went to him, placed his hand on his shoulder, and even after Vicente grew still he kept it there. This was the I-Hotel's final morning, so Fortunado allowed himself this moment and lay down beside Vicente, their bodies back to back, touching. Then he closed his eyes but stayed awake to make the last hours feel longer than they were.

D
ays after the tussle on the street, Vicente would tell the story to other I-Hotel tenants. “White guy, real big,” he said, “and I showed him.” He punched the air as he reenacted the scene, but instead of applause and admiration all he received was a warning.
Stay away from her.
It's not worth the trouble
. He called them cowards and stopped telling the story.