Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 (17 page)

On the street, his moniker was various: Three Hats, Three-Hat Juan, El Diablo, the Red Man. His favorite drink was chili paste mixed into lukewarm tap water. He wore a black vest with a total of four pockets, one on the inside large enough to hold half a sandwich, one along the left breastbone in which he had long kept one button and one tooth, and two above his hips, on either side, both of which were torn. Three Hats always misrecollected the deteriorated condition of these pockets, and sometimes put coins there only to discover that his fingers could not withdraw them again. For him, pockets were as much for losing things as for keeping them. The button and the tooth in his breast pocket were different. He kept it in the back of his mind that, as part of some general restoration, the button might someday be put back on the vest and the tooth back in his head.

And the vest itself should never be lost, for it was crucial to the Red Man’s customary attire. He had his red, polyester, long sleeve shirt with the pointy collar tips, and his deep burgundy trousers verging on threadbare. He seldom wore shoes, and his red feet poked out of his trouser legs, hard and calloused from years of pavement passing beneath them. Once a girl had sat with him under the fruit market awning and, for a reason he couldn’t reckon at all, had painted his toenails black. “There you go, Diablo,” she had said. “That’s all you needed to complete the look.” He had to agree it was a nice effect.

The Red Man could sleep in the same position for twenty-four hours at a stretch, which worried passersby on the street sometimes, who would see him curled in a doorway when they left their apartments for an evening and returning seven hours later—after eating, drinking, dancing—to find him in exactly the same position. If they nudged him and gently spoke one of his names, they might be relieved to feel a long exhalation of breath, but he would not wake. And for the Red Man, this was nothing, for as a youth in his native country, he would routinely sleep for days at a time, even weeks, as his family sang and ate and labored and laughed and wept and sometimes slept around him. He often woke to find the circumstances of his life very changed. New people would have arrived in the great house, orphans, long-lost cousins, new wives for his brothers, and familiar people would have left: Grandfather Tobias had died at the dinner table during one of his long sleeps, and his favorite sister, Rosa, had disappeared one unusually foggy night. He had woken to the debate amongst his family about where she had gone, the convent, marriage, or the otherworld. “Your sister has left us without a word,” they told him, and groggy as he was, he found that what he most wanted was to return to bed. She was the eldest daughter in the family, but of all his brothers and sisters, she was the closest to him in temperament. Both of them had lived in dreams, and the world of the great house, the family, the town three miles away were more oneiric than real to them, insubstantial, always on the verge of fading into nothingness. And Juan knew that Rosa had not merely vanished, but had left this dream for another, where he would eventually find her.

He had dreamed of her, of calling for her through the fog. “Rosa! Rosa!” In his dreamworld, his voice sounded weak and thin, unable to penetrate the layers of heavy, damp air that wove around him. He tried calling louder, and louder. He summoned her from whatever mystery had consumed her, calling insistently through weeks of dreaming, certain she could not but respond to his summons. When he awoke next, the house was in a panic of activity. “Come, Juan,” his grandmother Cynthia had said, “enough sleep, now. We must all leave this house at once. It’s cursed.” Juan did not feel like going anywhere, except, vaguely, back to bed. He yawned and stretched, the bottom of his striped pajama shirt lifting to reveal a taut belly, which he lazily scratched. Brothers, wives, and their children fled past him in the hallways, their arms full of bags, and dolls, and pictures snatched from the walls.

“What d’ya mean? What’s happening? Where’s everyone going?” He stopped a small child it seemed he had never seen before.

“The house is cursed,” the child said, his fluty voice gone all grave. “La Rosa. La Rosa!”

Rosa? Was she back? He wanted to see her. “Mother,” he grasped a woman running by him, who was indeed his mother. “Is Rosa here?”

“I don’t know, Juan. I don’t know what’s happening except that El Diablo has put his hand on this house, and we must leave it now, while we can.” They had reached the main hall, where suitcases were being stacked and carried four and five at a time out the door which stood wide open. Juan thought he smelled rose perfume. “Come just as you are, Juan. We’ll get you some clothes in town. We cannot wait for you!”

“But, Mother. I don’t want to go. What if Rosa returns and finds no one here? Someone must wait for her.”

His mother took a step backwards, as if to regard his whole length through her slitted eye. Her lips were tight and dark. “Juan. Did you call Rosa from your dreams? Have you been calling her?”

“I think so, Mother.” Juan knew he had.

Her hand flew to her chest, gripping something that lay there under her dress. “El Diablo! You are not my son.” She fled through the open door of the house, never to enter it again. Others followed her, saying goodbye on their way, but without looking at him, and soon Juan stood in the quiet main hall, alone in the house for the first time in his life. He felt sleepy, and he lay down on the carpet to sleep. In his sleep he dreamed of Rosa.

He slept and slept in the quiet house, his longest sleep yet—it may have been years—and when he awoke the house was dark and fragrant. From very far away, he heard birds singing—night birds? The door still stood open, but he could not see out. There was something covering the entrance, a dark net or web. He reached for it with his hands, and something fell into his palm from the dark wall. Rose petals. He reached out again, this time struck by sharp pain. A thorn had pierced him, and blood ran down his wrist. There was a wall of roses covering the door.

Slowly, making his way through the close-shuttered house, Juan inspected the windows and doors—all covered in blood-dark roses and thorny vines. He discovered the same situation on the second floor of the house, and even the attic windows were knotted over with roses. Juan did not know if it was night or day. He did not really know if he slept and dreamed or dreamed and woke. He did not know if he was still Juan, without his family here to name him, or something else, El Diablo. In his father’s room he found a hat, his grandfather’s fedora, and put it on his head. “Tobias,” he said. “Grandfather Tobias.” Could he summon a spirit for company?

But Juan was alone. He went to the kitchen and found only rotten food. He tried to sleep in the pantry, where he used to curl up in the sunny afternoons of his childhood, but, strangely, he could not sleep. Grandfather’s hat on his head, Juan took a few large knives from the kitchen and returned to the door. He began cutting, and rose petals dropped and vines split under his energy. His hands and arms were cut, scratched, and blood ran, soaking his pajamas and making his knives sticky and hard to wield. But still he cut, and forced his body into the wedge he’d made, and cut further. He forced his body further, cut until his whole body ran with blood, and he could not see through the vines to what lay outside. His breath slicing through his lungs, Juan did not know whether to continue or to fall back, exhausted and bloody, into the house. He hacked a bit ahead, crying now because he realized that to stay still meant risking being embalmed by the vines, which grew quickly, entangling his legs and pressing against his narrow chest. If he paused too long, he would die in La Rosa’s embrace.

Desperate, he fell back into the house, clutching his knives and throbbing with pain and blood. He lay on the floor, a voice in his throat that he did not recognize as his calling out grunts and moans. He could think of no name, not Rosa, not Mother, not Grandfather, that could help him. He lay and lay, awake and throbbing, and finally said, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, help me!” He burned in a blood-fever, gripping his knives. After a few hours, he got to his feet and limped back to his father’s bedroom, where he removed his bloodied pajamas and girded himself in his father’s clothes. He put on the clean, white underthings, soft against his bloody wounds, and then a shirt, a vest, a suit, an overcoat, yellow kid gloves, and—for good measure—his father’s top hat right over his grandfather’s hat. “My God, oh, Padre, help me!” And Juan returned to the door and slashed more furiously through the vines, tearing them away in a rage and forcing his body into the crevice he made. But the vines, too, seemed more furious, and they wound about him, stopping his hand, wrenching away a knife, plucking away his coat, his jacket and vest, the clothes shredding and falling away, vanishing amongst the dark roses, and though now Juan wanted to die, he would not give his body to be chewed on by thorns, and so fell back into the house, naked and shaking with anger. Again, he lay there, unsleeping, one hand holding a knife, the other resting on the top of his head, still covered by two hats.

Just a young man, Juan had never fallen in love, but his brothers had. Their love had hummed through the walls as Juan slept his death-like sleeps. Juan had never thought of kissing. He had never driven a car, but there had always been three of four cars in the drive. He had never danced in the night or laughed with friends out under the stars, but he could remember what Rosa had looked like home late from a night of dancing, her laughter, her cheek outshining the white cheek of the moon. He had not been to the city since he was a child, but remembered the noise and calls of humanity enwrapping his dreams. He had not labored. The smallest nostalgia for the embrace of these things awoke in his thin chest, and—naked, alone, sleepless—Juan felt incomplete. He was too vulnerable, just a child, but grown now into a man’s body. His father’s clothes had not protected him. He was hungry. He limped back into the kitchen. He needed nourishment. He needed protection.

In the cupboard, he found a jar of grandmother Cynthia’s chili paste. He could remember the expansive smack of it. He opened the jar and sniffed the red paste. Every one of his wounds cried out in hunger. His mouths watered with blood. Dipping his fingers into the paste, the scratches on his hands burned, were seared, became adamant scars. Gently and with great care, Juan fed all of his mouths, covering his naked body with the chili paste. His wounds were cauterized, and the white skin of his youth became a deep red. From the soles of his feet to his pointed, black beard, Juan armed himself. He treated his face last, and with the tenderness of a lover, he rubbed the paste over his eyes, along his aquiline nose, up into the roots of his thick, black hair. He no longer felt pain. He was a flame. He left his knives on the table and returned to the door.

But there was no point attempting the door again, while he was still incomplete. There was one thing lacking. Juan climbed the stairs, the sinews of his thighs coiling under red skin. He entered Rosa’s bedroom. In her closet he found a hat she used to wear, a little red cone with a set of fake cherries dangling from its floppy tip. Reverently, he put this hat on his head, feeling it snug against his scalp. And carefully, carefully, he covered Rosa’s hat with his grandfather’s fedora, and both of them with his father’s top hat. Now he was ready. He stood, naked and gleaming red under his three hats, before the door and the wall of roses and thorny vines. “La Rosa,” he said.

“La Rosa,” he said. “La Rosa. I am your own brother, imprisoned. I dreamt you here and slept in your perfumed embrace. And I think you dreamt me here as well.” Juan paused and looked at his red hands. Even his nails, grown long in long sleeps, were red and hard under the chili paste. “Now we must part ways. Let me out. Or in. Let me in.” And he walked toward the wall of roses, with no intention of stopping, come what may. He reached out his thin, delicate hand and stroked the thorny wall, and a few rose petals fell into his palm. He crushed them against his face, exulting in their perfume. The wall began to part; a cleft appeared. Juan entered it, feeling his way through. The thorns reached out to him, but not with fury as they had before. They pricked his skin like little tongues, and the roses brushed against him softly. His body was full of excitement; he felt he would never sleep again. He made his way through the close darkness, imbued with the power of being deep inside, as deep as can be. He knew everything about himself, complete, and his body shook with love.

And then he felt a releasing of the tension around him and—air on his face—she was letting him go. They parted ways under the moon, and Juan walked toward the city, where on the streets he would find sleep again and enflamed dreams, where he would be hailed Three Hats, Three-Hat Juan, El Diablo, the Red Man. He was to remain stained red for the rest of his life. People would give him everything he needed. There was no cause for worry. Old women carried buckets of roses into the restaurants and bars for men to buy for their sweethearts, and sometimes they would kindly lean over the Red Man, offering a flower. “La Rosa?”

“La Rosa.” And he’d hold it to his red cheek, blooming again with joy.

We are almost purple. After that, we will be almost yellow. Last time we were here, there was a dry creek; now there is a river. Despite all our best efforts, the door to this place still creaks. It drips oil onto the floor and we’re too afraid to light the candles in the bathroom. You tell me they were only ever for decoration, but I feel as though I have fewer choices now.

Get him, eat him, the door creaks.

One time you painted me scarlet. I didn’t know that it was an ancient color and I would have to wear it always. While you were in the other room, I cut my hair and put it inside the grandfather clock. When you came back, I cut my fingernails and left them inside the oven. This is what you’ve always called sentimental. This is what I’ve always called a frenzy.

I am still hungry, the door creaks.

Soon, the whole valley will flood and this little locked house will be washed away with the rainwater. Soon, the ground will start sinking and the lawn furniture will be lost forever. You will eventually decide to leave everything so we can save ourselves. The door will stop creaking and I still won’t want to leave. You will lift the bed skirt and find me there, a monster.

Three guys try to carry a couch across the country.

Three guys on an important

mission involving furniture.

It’s just a couch, right?