Signal to Noise Read online

  The little store looked exactly as it had when she was a teenager. She was sure that even some of the ads on the walls behind the counter were the same, though the attendant behind the counter had changed. He did, however, bear an uncanny resemblance to Don Chemo. Meche wondered if this could be his grandson who would have been an annoying little kindergartener the last time she’d seen him.

  Meche found the milk and riffled through the store, looking at the candy and chips. They had the regular tamarind Pelón Pelo Rico and a sour lime flavour she had never seen before, peanuts dipped in chilli, and chocolate Carlos V.

  Meche took out a bill and placed it on the counter. Don Chemo’s grandson—he had to be, he had the same disposition—gave her her change and slowly placed the things she had bought in a plastic bag.

  As soon as Meche stepped out it began to rain. A light drizzle which made her smile.

  She loved the rain.

  Meche reached into her pocket and turned on her iPod, picking a song from the playlist. For the sake of nostalgia she settled on Miguel Bosé. Nena, which was from ’86. The writhing of the handsome Bosé and a blonde woman in white all along the floor had sent her mother into a bizarre state of agitation the first time it aired on TV. Natalia had quickly changed the channel and railed against music videos, which exposed youth to so many nasty images.

  But Meche liked Nena. There was something real about it. Not like some of the other videos which contaminated the airwaves. Certainly better than the chirpings of Thalía or—dear God— Lucerito. When Bosé sang about an impossible woman with an insatiable mouth and they fought—and rolled around the floor—it seemed gritty and true. A fucked up relationship, but fascinating all the same.

  Meche raised her head. The street was empty except for someone standing on the other side, holding an umbrella.

  Meche looked down at her iPod again, pumping up the volume so she could hear nothing but the deep voice of Bosé.

  When she looked up again the person with the umbrella was still in the same place.

  It was a guy in a business suit and a long, black raincoat; a matching umbrella with a nice wooden handle.

  He was staring at her.

  It took longer than it should have for Meche to recognize him. But then she saw the resemblance. The very tall, thin frame—though now it was not cadaveric, he was lean without seeming unhealthily skinny—was the first thing to trigger her memory. Then the other pieces were all pulled together. Very black hair, cropped short in a fashionable style. A stern mouth which had grown sterner. A carefully trimmed goatee which had never been there before. The dark, dark eyes which resembled a pair of pebbles.

  Sebastian Soto, in the flesh.

  He looked so different. Only the eyes had remained the same.

  She wondered what she must look like now, her long hair—it had reached her waist—cut short in a boyish style, the thick eyebrows plucked, her clothes actually fitting her.

  He looked at her and Meche wanted to laugh. Not a good laugh. A bitter, angry laugh. She had been so fearful of meeting Sebastian again and she had found him, smack across the street.

  Meche held the plastic bag with her purchases in one hand and jammed the other hand in the pocket of her jeans, tilting her head a little, daring him to cross the street and say hello.

  He just looked at her, though by now she was sure he had identified her, and stood his ground. His gaze did not waver but he did not make any effort to move her way, wave hello or open his mouth.

  Like two duelists at noon, about to draw their guns, they stood on their respective sides of the street. Finally he snapped, looking away from her and continuing along the path he had been following, keeping to his side. Meche also turned away, walking in the opposite direction.

  The rain did not seem pleasant anymore. The dirty puddles reflected the street lights and the trash strewn on the ground was beginning to clog the drain. Later, the whole street would ooze and the water level would rise.

  Mexico City was sinking. A city slowly descending into the muck from where it had come. The Spaniards had drained its Venice-like canals and filled them with earth, creating shaky foundations for their churches. Centuries later, their descendants paid for their folly with constant inundations which threatened to turn the whole metropolis into the lake it had been when the Aztecs made their way there. A fetid sea of sewage swamped the sidewalks every year.

  In Mexico City everything returns. The rains and the past and everything in between.

  Meche, upset by her encounter with Sebastian, gave in and went by the house owned by Daniela’s parents. They were happy to supply their daughter’s number.

  Mexico City, 1988

  IT WAS ANOTHER one of those days; it was always one of those days with Natalia. She flogged him with her tongue, excoriated him for real and imaginary flaws, drew blood. This time the fight had been over cigarettes. They were a needless expense. He should quit smoking. Not because of his health, no. Natalia could care less if he died of cancer. Her concern was the money. They could save so many pesos if he would only stop smoking.

  “You could stop doing your nails,” he countered. “They’re more expensive than my half pack a day.”

  “I do my nails because of my job.”

  “What job? You work at the pharmacy.”

  “It’s customer service.”

  “It’s bullshit. You do your nails because you want to, so don’t come telling me it’s because of some demanding job.”

  “I could get an audition.”

  “But you won’t,” he said.

  She slapped him. He left afterwards, didn’t even try the chicken soup that was supposed to be his dinner, and went to eat at the cantina instead.

  There he nursed his glass and his feelings, hunched over a table. Eventually some of the regulars arrived and he joined a game of dominoes, trying to find meaning in the black-and-white pieces, like a man trying to read the Tarot cards.

  Where had he gone wrong? Where had his road forked towards defeat? Somehow, at some point, he had become a loser. Maybe he’d always been one but had been unable to recognize it in his youth.

  Vicente smoked his cheap cigarettes. Cigarettes which were staining his once pristine teeth, turning them an ugly yellow. But did it matter? He had been a decent looking chap but that was gone. He had the same face, but it was lined with discomfort and misery. It was not the face of a music idol.

  As for Natalia... Natalia had changed. Each year her eyes narrowed more, fixed more sternly on his shoulders. Each year, he knew she found the leather jackets shabbier, the long hair more off-putting, the little tricks he did to charm people—like recite the year when any song had come on the air—more stale. Each year she measured him and found him more and more wanting.

  How different from when they had first met at the record store, when Natalia had wandered in looking for a present for the boyfriend she had at the time. Her taste in music did not run very deep and Vicente had spent a good hour chatting to her about this and that band, the benefits of a certain record over another, finally settling on Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) as his recommendation for a birthday present. When he gave Natalia her change he wrote his number on the back of a bill.

  “Let’s go out sometime,” he said.

  “I told you I have a boyfriend,” she said.

  “It’s not going to last.”

  It didn’t and one month later she was back at the store, trying to exchange the record for another one, although, truth be told, she just wanted to see him.

  He had charm aplenty in those days. He wrote letters to Natalia every day and quickly won her heart. Maybe he still had charm, but Natalia had ceased to be impressed by it. She didn’t want him to compose songs for her and she certainly didn’t want to read his eternal compendium on Latin American music.

  Vicente smoked and drank. Around midnight Meche popped in. She’d been sent to get him from the cantina since she was ten years old. Vicente knew the ro
utine, he said goodbye to his friends, put out his cigarette and nodded to his daughter, following her outside.

  She was stuffed into her oversized green jacket, carrying her Walkman.

  “What are you listening to?” he asked. He always asked her. It made her happy when he asked.

  “Dylan. All Along the Watchtower.”

  “Depressing.”

  “Well, you know,” Meche muttered, kicking a can of soda down the sidewalk. “Happiness is in short supply.”

  She passed it to him and Vicente kicked it for a little bit, then passed it to her and paused to light a cigarette. Meche looked at him with eyes that were his own. Large and sad and painted with the same seeds of misery he carried in his own gut.

  “Then you steal it.”

  Meche frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “If happiness doesn’t come to you, then you take it. Any way you can,” he said.

  He thought of the ocean. He had wanted to live by the beach but Natalia had been opposed to that. What would they do there? His fantasies of building a hut, of combing the sand for treasure, of running barefoot with nothing but a single change of clothes and a guitar, pounding on the typewriter by candlelight, did not impress her.

  Maybe he could still do it. Maybe he could have his ocean and the sound of the waves heavy in his ears as he went to sleep.

  Steal it if you can’t get it...

  “Yeah,” Meche said, nodding.

  MECHE NEVER LIKED dragging her father back home. She thought her mother sent her to punish him, to humiliate him. It seemed petty to her. Especially that night. She had told her mother she did not feel like going out, too busy nursing her disappointment, but her mother had shoved Meche into her jacket and pushed her out the door.

  Her father had to go to work the next day, her mother said. She’d better bring him before it got too late.

  Later, as Meche and her dad sat in the kitchen, dipping animal crackers in a glass of milk, she thought about what he’d said about happiness.

  Steal it if you must.

  Meche was willing. But that bitch, happiness, wasn’t being very cooperative.

  Why had the spell failed?

  She looked at the box of crackers with its colourful picture of a lion tamer and a lion jumping through a hoop.

  She sighed, wishing magic was more like something she could understand. More like math.

  Equations, she could get. Computer languages, she could get.

  Mysticism, apparently, not.

  Meche paused, the lion-shaped cracker hovering before her mouth.

  Wait.

  When you type a computer command, you don’t just type any random phrase. You have to be specific.

  If you are, the desired result occurs.

  “Holy mother,” Meche whispered.

  She ate her cracker.

  SEBASTIAN AND DANIELA looked around the room, carefully inspecting their surroundings. It had taken Meche a couple of days to fix it up, but the place no longer looked like an abandoned factory room: it looked frankly awesome. She had swept the floor and put up posters of several bands. Cut-outs from magazines and some record sleeves were fashioned into large collages. There were all the big names: The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pedro Infante, Toña la Negra. Newer, younger ones too.

  She had cleaned the old couch as best she could. She brought some blankets so they could sit on the floor. There was also a little coffee table with candles on top: the factory had no electricity.

  Meche sat in the centre of the room, by the portable record player, smiling.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “It’s nice,” Sebastian said.

  “We are not supposed to be here,” Daniela reminded them.

  “I bought a lock,” Meche said, showing it to them, “so we can close up and others can’t get in when we’re not here.”

  “Um... why?” Daniela asked.

  “Because this is going to be our base of operations. You see, I didn’t get it. Not last time. We need the right environment. You know, just like with a computer program. Plus, we went too big. We need to focus on something smaller. We have to be specific.”

  “Oh, not the spell thing again,” Daniela said.

  “Yes, the spell thing again,” Meche said. “I’ve got a notebook that is going to be our grimoire and I’ve got the records. Now we focus, we are specific and we experiment until we get it right.”

  They didn’t say anything. Daniela just looked down at her pink and white tennis shoes. Sebastian slid his hands into his pockets.

  “What do you say?”

  “I’m up for it,” Sebastian said.

  Daniela seemed surprised by that. She bobbed her head, imitating Sebastian. “Sure.”

  “Okay, we have to focus on one thing,” Meche said. “A single thing. What do you want to do? Something we can fix?”

  “My motorcycle is busted again,” Sebastian said with a shrug.

  “Motorcycle,” Meche said, “that’s good. Now, let’s find the right music.”

  She knelt on the floor, going through the piles of records she had dragged to the factory. Her friends also sat down. They began looking into her cardboard boxes, pulling records out.

  “Subete a Mi Moto,” Daniela said, holding up the Menudo record.

  “Don’t be too obvious,” Meche said.

  “Flans!” Daniela said excitedly.

  “No.”

  “Lucerito!”

  “It’s not phone-in-the radio-station-for-your-favourite-song.”

  “Aw, but I like Lucerito.”

  Meche rolled her eyes. Of course Daniela would like Lucerito, the most saccharine, inane teenager singer on the market. And Flans... why not stab each other in the ears now?

  “Cindy Lauper?” Daniela asked hopefully.

  Meche was willing to grant her that, but what Cindy Lauper song were they supposed to use?

  “Duncan Dhu,” Sebastian said.

  Meche looked up at him as he offered her the record.

  “En Algún Lugar,” he whispered.

  Meche grabbed the record and felt a tiny, electric charge running up her arm. Like static electricity. It almost... felt warm. As though it had been resting on top of a stove.

  Weird.

  Meche lowered it carefully, holding the needle between her fingers. Sebastian stared at her.

  She let the needle drop.

  The record hissed, like steam escaping a kettle.

  The guitar split the silence, and then the beat began.

  The three of them stood up.

  This time they did not spin around. Instead they joined hands and stepped close around the portable record player, their heads almost touching as they looked down at the record, seeing it turn.

  Meche did not feel anything. Not at first. Just Daniela’s sweaty hands, Sebastian’s steady grip.

  And then it was... something she couldn’t identify. Just this warmth, the same warmth which had permeated the vinyl now stretching up her fingers, making her arms tingle. Her body felt a bit numb yet there was this odd current churning through her blood, swimming up her veins.

  It felt like the time she had sipped some clandestine tequila. That had stung her mouth and this stung her body. Not very pleasant, but also not painful.

  The beat rose and fell and the singers spoke of running away, of a rider who does not turn his head, leaving with the wind, the hoofs of his horse sinking into a dusty road.

  Meche could see the road, painted red, lonely, and the rider reaching the bend of the road, the evening sun staining the sky red.

  Meche tasted dust. She closed her eyes and opened them again.

  She was standing by the road and when the rider swept by, she extended her hand and he pulled her onto his horse. They were galloping towards the horizon.

  Meche opened her mouth; heat that had been accumulating inside escaped. It rose like a golden streamer, drifting like smoke, touching the ceiling. Golden tendrils also escaped from
Sebastian and Daniela, coiling together.

  The three of them looked up, amazed.

  “What is that?” Daniela asked.

  “Magic,” Meche whispered.

  The golden streamers coalesced into a ball and the ball grew larger, then began to collapse and dissolve, bits of it floating away until there was nothing left.

  “Is that it?” Sebastian asked, sounding disappointed.

  As if punctuating his words, several dirty glass panels shattered. Daniela yelped. Meche laughed.

  “Let’s see if it worked!” she yelled and rushed out of the room, leaving the record spinning.

  They stomped downstairs and made it to the street, heading straight for Sebastian’s building. When they reached it they were all out of breath. Meche slid down against the doors to his building while Sebastian fumbled for his keys. He kept the motorcycle inside, on the first floor, beneath the stairs.

  “Go check it out,” she said.

  He nodded, turned the key and stepped inside. Meche, too exhausted to move, just waited. Daniela half-collapsed next to her, her hair in her eyes.

  Sebastian walked the motorcycle out. Meche straightened up, carefully watching him as he straddled it and placed the key in the ignition.

  The motorcycle coughed, sputtered and did not move.

  Meche bit her lip.

  Sebastian tried again and this time it worked. The old, banged-up machine roared into life. Meche jumped, clapping.

  Sebastian was beaming. Daniela seemed in shock.

  “Fucking yes!” Meche said jumping up and down.

  “Get on,” Sebastian said.

  Meche turned to look at Daniela and Daniela nodded. “Go ahead. I want to rest.”

  Meche hurried towards him, quickly throwing her leg over. She scooted close to Sebastian, holding on to his jacket.

  He twisted the grip, applied the throttle, and they sped away, turning the corner. She leaned forward along with him and they zoomed past the corner store, then the pharmacy, the small video store, the tortilleria.