Signal to Noise Read online

  “What about music?”

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Meche muttered, looking at her equations.

  “Cracker?”

  Meche nodded, taking a cracker shaped like a lion.

  Her dad closed the box and took the glass to the kitchen, leaving it in the sink. Then he grabbed his jacket.

  “I’m going out.”

  He didn’t have to say he’d be at the bar. Weekdays it was at the bar. Weekends it was the pool hall. Sometimes, when he stayed out too late, her mom had her go pull him out. Meche felt humiliated when this happened.

  Her mother was out late tonight, so maybe Meche wouldn’t have to put on the sweater and head there. It wasn’t far. It was just... annoying.

  She wished he’d come home early. Otherwise her parents might fight. Again.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “Yup. Finish your homework, alright? Don’t skim on the reading. You can’t read, you can’t do shit. No matter how good you are at adding numbers.”

  “I’m going to work with computers, dad,” she reminded him.

  She had decided this two years before when her parents finally bought her a Commodore 64. She had learned how to program little games on it and thought she could make a go at it as a real career when she grew up.

  “You still need to read.”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “Arrr. Don’t stay up late.”

  Meche raised her hand, saluting her dad. She watched him put on his old leather jacket and step out.

  She dropped her hand and chewed on her pencil, starring at the numbers.

  IT WAS A rainy morning. Meche jumped and tiptoed around puddles to the rhythm of Soda Stereo. She shook her head and snapped her fingers.

  A hand grasped her shoulder and she frowned, turning around. Sebastian Soto, lanky and dour, just like every morning of the week, stood with an umbrella under his arm. He was the tallest kid in her class and when he stood like that, grimly looking down at her, Meche had to agree with the kids that teased him: he did resemble Lurch from afar.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should give it a try.”

  “For real? When?”

  “How about now?”

  “School day.”

  “So?”

  “Oh my God, you just want to skip the chemistry test.”

  “Maybe. But do you really want to go to school?”

  “Nope.”

  Sebastian rocked back and forth on his shoes, which, against school regulations, he had painted with faint traces of whiteout spelling out THE RAVEN. Meche pulled up her left sock, with the broken elastic.

  “Daniela will be pissed if we skip out without inviting her.”

  “Yeah, but her mom drives her to school. Tough luck. I’m heading to the factory. Are you coming?”

  “I studied for the test.”

  “Why bother when you can cheat?”

  Meche rolled her eyes and held on to the straps of her backpack. On the one hand she was annoyed at Sebastian for trying to miss the test. On the other hand this might be a good chance to convince him about the music and spells. He was halfway there already. She could tell. He had the same expression as he did when they had done that Ouija session. Daniela had freaked out because she had recently seen a movie about demon-possessed people, and she swore she’d never speak to them again because they were morbid and freaky, but she came back to roost with them all the same. What else could she do? It was not like any of them had much of a social circle.

  “Fine,” Meche said.

  Sebastian led the way, purposely sinking into the puddles and splashing her.

  Wanker.

  Meche put her headphones on again and the cassette player told her about a voyeur staring through the window.

  She followed Sebastian until they reached the abandoned pantyhose factory. Most of the windows were covered with wooden boards, but Sebastian ducked and went in through a large opening, obviously knowing what to do.

  Meche leaned down.

  She had never liked the pantyhose factory. The little kids enjoyed playing tag there and the older ones came to drink beer and make out, but it had always seemed so sad and grey.

  She shoved her backpack in and then crawled in herself, emerging into one of the cavernous factory rooms. It was dark and she was glad when Sebastian took out a flashlight, even if he did shine it in her face.

  “Let’s go up,” he said, handing her the flashlight.

  They rushed up the stairs, their feet clattering upon the metal and making the building echo with their footsteps.

  They went into a large room with scattered furniture: a table, some chairs piled in a corner. Someone—probably not the original factory workers—had dragged a lumpy, red couch into the middle of the room.

  There were more windows on the second floor and fewer of these were boarded, so there was significantly more light, even though dirt had accumulated upon the panes, blurring the view. Meche walked up to the circular window on the east wall and wiped it with the sleeves of her too-large sweater, which she had inherited from her older cousin Jimena.

  The neighbourhood looked different when seen like this, so diffused.

  “You’ve been coming here a lot?” she asked.

  “Not often.”

  Sebastian tossed his umbrella on the floor and threw himself on the couch, propping his feet up.

  “So now you believe me about the magic?”

  “I think you are cr-aaaa-zy,” he said. “But what the hell. Life can’t get any crappier, can it?”

  “Was your dad home last night?” Meche asked, frowning.

  Sebastian’s dad wasn’t living with them, but he came around periodically to collect money and beat the kids. For old time’s sake.

  “It’s got nothing to do with him,” Sebastian said, meaning it probably had everything to do with him.

  She shoved his feet away and sat on the couch. Sebastian had the backpack pressed against his chest and was staring at the ceiling.

  “What’s it got to do with?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I just wish it was all different. You know?”

  “Yeah.”

  Meche scratched her leg and sat quietly, thinking about all the things she would change if she could. She’d get rid of the pimples. She’d get nice, new clothes. Not Jimena’s hand-me-downs. Her mother would yell less. She’d go out on a date with Constantino.

  “How do we do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Meche said. “I haven’t thought about it too much. I mean, we need a turntable and lots of records, I guess. We have to figure out the formula.”

  “So you’re saying you have no idea?” he asked flatly.

  “I have some idea,” Meche said, feeling offended. “It’s just going to take some experimenting. I need to do more research. I wonder if there are any books I can use at the school library...”

  “Aha.”

  “We need to convince Daniela. I figure we need three people.”

  “Why three?”

  “Because it’s the first lucky prime number.”

  Sebastian looked at her blankly, as though she had just spoken in Dutch. She sighed.

  “Stuff always comes in threes. Like there are three notes in a triad, which is your basic chord. Or the holy trinity.”

  “‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble’,” he said.

  “What?” Meche asked. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Macbeth’s witches,” Sebastian said, frowning. “Hey, I’m not a girl. Does that matter?”

  “I don’t think it does. You can be a warlock, can’t you?”

  “I suppose. We don’t have to wear capes, do we? I don’t think I’d look good in one.”

  She felt like telling him that, yeah, they most definitely had to use capes and pointy hats, and then watchi
ng what face he made at that, but Meche decided to spare him the unnecessary cruelty.

  “No.”

  “Good. Do you have any food? I didn’t eat breakfast.”

  He never ate breakfast. He also tended to eat Meche or Daniela’s lunch. Meche’s, usually, because Daniela was less generous with her food allocations. Meche figured that if half a cheese and ham sandwich was what it took to convince Sebastian to join her cause, it would be a small price.

  She took out her battered tin lunchbox and scooped the sandwich, giving him half. Sebastian munched on it and grabbed her thermos without even asking for permission, taking a big gulp.

  “What are Macbeth witches?” she asked, punching one of the lumpy cushions and putting it behind her head.

  “I really can’t believe you are like half-illiterate.”

  “I’m not half-illiterate.”

  “You are clueless when it comes to books. Rodriguez is so going to fail you in Spanish and World Literature.”

  “You are going to fail all the sciences, so who’s talking?”

  “Blah blah,” he said, opening and closing his left hand. “That’s what remedials were made for.”

  “What are Macbeth witches?”

  “Macbeth is a play by Shakespeare,” Sebastian said, grabbing the sandwich crumbs that were left and stuffing them into his mouth. “It’s about this guy who meets with these three witches and they prophesize that he’ll be king. So he begins to think about it all the time and then ends up killing the guy in charge and becomes king. It’s a tragedy.”

  “It doesn’t sound too tragic to become king.”

  “Obviously things don’t go as planned. You should read that book I gave you.”

  Meche had read some of the books Sebastian had given her. Correction. Probably some of the only books she read were the ones he gave her, but she hadn’t read this particular one because she was still a little pissed off that he’d only given her a book for her birthday instead of the album she had wanted. Getting Shakespeare’s sonnets and complete works for your fifteenth birthday was like getting a sweater from your mom for Christmas: bullshit.

  “I’m working on it,” she said. “Slowly working on it.”

  “Illiterate.”

  “Ass,” she said tossing her backpack at his face.

  Sebastian dodged it and shrugged. “Better an ass than to be illiterate.”

  “I can’t hear you,” Meche said, sliding to the floor and pressing the play button on her Walkman.

  “What are you listening to?” Sebastian said, sliding down next to her.

  Meche pulled out her extra pair of headphone and plugged it into one of the jacks. Sebastian put on the headphones. Meche pressed the rewind button. They tilted their head backs and Soda Stereo began to sing Persiana Americana from the very beginning.

  MECHE TIPTOED INTO the apartment, trying to sneak into her bedroom. She was half an hour early and needed to hide for a bit. Grandmother Dolores was in the kitchen, humming. She spent most of her time there, looking after a boiling pot or frying onions and chillis, always on her feet and always ready to make a meal. She’d been a maid for many years before old age made her unemployable. Cooking had been her favourite task during that time.

  “Meche, did you skip school today?”

  Meche stopped in her tracks and cursed inwardly. Mama Dolores had an internal lie detector, so there was no sense in trying to fool her.

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t miss classes. Come, sit down. You can peel some potatoes. I’m making picadillo the way your mom likes it.”

  “What’s the point? Mom and dad both eat outside.”

  “Well, maybe one day your mother will come home early.”

  Meche walked into the kitchen, dumping her backpack on one of the two plastic chairs and sitting at the table. She grabbed a peeler and began slicing the skins off the potatoes.

  Mama Dolores turned on the little radio sitting next to the narrow kitchen windows and Pedro Infante began singing Amorcito Corazón while the old woman hummed and poured some oil into a frying pan. She swished the onions to the tune of the love song.

  “Mama Dolores, can you tell me something and tell me the truth?”

  “What, baby?”

  “Were there really witches in your town?”

  “Of course there were. They’d fly off at nights in the shape of great balls of fire, nestling in the trees and cackling.”

  “And they did magic and it worked?”

  “It did. They cast all sorts of spells.”

  “If they were so powerful why didn’t they leave the town and become billionaires?”

  “Oh, magic is more complex than that. You have to give as much as you take. There’s a price to everything.”

  “What about music? Could there be magic in music?”

  “There’s magic everywhere, if you look carefully,” her grandmother said. “The trouble is wanting it enough, and holding on to it.”

  Meche slanted the peeler, slowly stripping the potato.

  “What if magic...”

  “Magic will break your heart, Meche,” Mama Dolores said very seriously.

  Meche frowned.

  MECHE’S MOTHER, NATALIA, was good looking. When angered, however, she resembled the Medusa in one of Meche’s story books. Except she still had to grow some snakes on her head. Any day now, Meche thought those would begin to sprout.

  “Okay, Meche,” Natalia said, from behind the pharmacy counter. “How come I got a call from school today to ask if you were sick?”

  “I don’t know,” Meche said. “I’m just here because I need money for the tortillas and grandma doesn’t have any.”

  “I left money on top of the refrigerator.”

  “It’s not there.”

  “Your goddamn father,” her mother muttered. “Did he take it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Meche rested her chin against the glass counter and shrugged. If she had known it was going to be such a big deal to get the pesos she needed, she would have borrowed them from someone. This was Spanish Inquisition stuff.

  “Wait three minutes,” her mother said as she headed to the back of the pharmacy.

  Meche eyed the arcade machine sitting in a corner, right by the little children’s coin-operated horse and the scale that would tell you your weight and fortune. She could play a game. Or just get the hell out of the pharmacy before her mother started asking too many questions.

  “Here,” her mother said, coming out from behind the counter and opening her change purse, handing her two bills. “Buy the tortillas and give the rest of the money to your grandmother.”

  “Alright.”

  “Meche, if I find out that you and Sebastian Soto are skipping classes, I’m going to beat you black and blue.”

  “I wasn’t skipping nothing,” Meche said, though she was impressed by her mother’s psychic skills.

  VICENTE VEGA STILL had most of his hair, only a small—though increasing—gut, and a great quantity of his charm. He had, however, misplaced his common sense and his optimism as he stumbled through the streets of Mexico City. Thirty-eight—not too old, not really young—he went through life like a zombie navigating a closed course, from home to the radio cabin and from the cabin to the cantina.

  On Mondays he had the seafood soup. Tuesdays the stuffed chilli. Wednesdays he fought with his wife. The weekends were for playing pool and dominoes. He drank every day.

  He remembered being young once, being happy. He remembered marrying a pretty young woman he had adored and somehow stumbling into a cold, distant stranger in bed one morning. He had been his parents’ pride and joy, now a sore disappointment, their eyes turned to his younger brother who had done as he was told and—his mother reminded him every time he spoke to her—had made something of himself. His brother was a licenciado and he had a big house and two nice cars, wearing good suits which threatened to explode as he moved his corpulent form around the office. At heart, his broth
er was still the same tricky, devious bastard he’d always been, but he played in bigger leagues now. He had set his sights squarely on the Mexican dream: lots of money and lots of women.

  Vicente, always unable to understand these simplistic desires, never one to lust after lots of money or numerous broads, had looked for that elusive something else in life. Meaning. Answers that were not printed in triplicate or faxed to the office. Beauty. But life, being the bitch that she was, had denied Vicente what he asked for, had rewarded him only with ugliness and pessimism, had sunk his dreams low.

  Music. He loved music. Playing it, writing songs. He’d quit veterinary school and gone to work at the record shop and then he had got the part-time stint as a DJ because—and here he could quote more than a few people—he had the most amazing voice. But that golden voice was false gold and when the demands of parenthood, of making money and getting by intruded on the band, he quit the musician bit and went full-on onto radio.

  He thought this would make Natalia happy. Natalia, however, was never happy, accumulating little hates and grudges, cataloguing them by date and carefully filing them so she could pull them out later and toss them in his face.

  Only Meche loved him.

  She’d been born like him, Meche. Not just the looks—the shape of the eyes, the firm mouth—but his temper and his proclivities.

  If he hadn’t had Meche, Vicente might have gone to live at the bar forever, installed himself in a corner and drunk himself under the table. If he shuffled his feet home every night and stumbled out of bed in the mornings, it was because of his daughter.

  Vicente went up the steps, trudging back into the apartment. After hanging his jacket he went towards the stereo, running his hands over the turntable. He carefully selected a record, plugged in his headphones and sat on the floor, listening to The Beatles playing in the dark as he smoked a cigarette.

  He was almost done with one side of the recording when the door opened and the clatter of heels announced the presence of his wife. She turned on the lights and glanced at him.

  She didn’t say anything. Her heels just moved away, towards the bedroom, with a soft sort of indifference which mirrored his own.