Miami Beach
Elis had met Juan and the Instrumentalist just a few months ago, introduced by a friend she worked with. None of them could afford the rent on a beach apartment on their own. Prices had kept going up since the last wave of immigrants and no one wanted to move to a less fun neighborhood.
Juan and the Instrumentalist had arrived from the south, too, though Juan’s parents had come when he was little. The Instrumentalist had to wear an electronic ankle bracelet now. It was a red dot blinking on some official’s computer screen. He couldn’t go outside a certain range. I don’t think he would have tried anyway. With or without the ankle bracelet, he’d only ever lived by the beach, like Juan. They’d become friends in the dives of Normandy Isle.
It wasn’t like Varadero, of course, except for the fact that you could walk along the beach, as I later discovered. There were sidewalks, there was sunshine. Still, the sun that day seemed sick. And every summer day ahead would come with its own sick sun. I asked Elis whether her friends had objected to me staying there. She said no. They were good guys. She had explained my situation and they had both agreed.
“But even if I hadn’t told them anything, they would have been okay with it,” she said.
Nothing in the world seemed stranger to me than Elis just then. She was still sprawled on the bed as her bedroom was swallowed up by daylight, wrapped in the effects of a marijuana and tobacco cigarette. I couldn’t see her outline anymore, couldn’t say where my friend began or ended.
She asked whether it bothered me that she’d told her roommates. I said no. She asked whether I was sad, whether I wanted to talk or tell her what I remembered, and she said I didn’t have to answer now. It could be when I felt like it. If I didn’t want to talk, that was fine too.
“What is autism exactly?” I said. “Tell me more about that.”
“Don’t you know?” asked Elis.
“Some things, sure, but what is Juan like?”
“He isn’t violent, but he gets worked up. He quit drinking. He never drinks at all, he’s clean as a nun, and he can spend days in one place doing the same thing.”
I witnessed that for myself the next morning. When I woke up on my sofa, Juan was still in front of the map of the United States on the balcony. I went to join him.
“S’up, my friend?” he said.
“Hanging in there.”
“Whatever makes you happy, we’re on it, my friend. We’ll be good roommates.”
He was speaking for himself and the Instrumentalist, I gathered.
“What are you doing there?” I asked.
“Where?”
“In front of the map, it’s been hours.”
“Looking for the treasure, my friend. I lost something in this country, and I can’t figure out where, what city.”
“We’ve all lost something,” I said. “I’m glad to be here, despite everything.”
“Oh absolutely, my friend, you’re lucky,” he said. “I know the earthquake destroyed your home, but there are thousands of people without a roof over their heads, piled up at the border.”
Juan spoke without looking at me, eyes fixed on the map. I stretched a little, flexing my muscles. My knees cracked. I leaned on the balcony railing.
“Do you know more or less where your treasure might be?”
“It moves around, my friend. Sometimes it goes north, sometimes west. Right now it might be in Arkansas or Wyoming.”
“What’s it doing there?”
“No idea. One day it was just gone. Got in a car wearing sunglasses, and that was it. She was beautiful. So beautiful. Like nobody you’ll ever see in your life.”
“Will you go looking for her?”
“Who?”
“Your treasure,” I said.
It took Juan two seconds to turn. He’s a robot, I said to myself.
“Can’t be done, my friend. Nobody can leave Florida.”
“I plan to move eventually.”
“That’s what they all say, but there’s no escaping Florida. You’re at the bottom of a pit, my friend. Nobody will throw you a rope. You won’t get past Jacksonville.”
“Do you want to get a drink?” I asked. “I’ll wash up and we can go out.”
“I’m clean, my friend. Haven’t had a drink in seven years.”
“Right, sorry. Elis told me.”
“Elis likes to talk.” “Is she your friend?”
“Yeah, she’s a good kid. I couldn’t live with somebody who wasn’t my friend. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are.”
Juan shook my hand again.
“You won’t want to leave Miami, you’ll see. Forget that idea. This is the best city there is, my friend.”
I nodded.
“I’m going to shower,” I said.
“All right. There’s food in the fridge. Take whatever you want.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t be in a hurry to make money. You’ll pitch in when you can,” he said.
I thanked him again. I opened the sliding door and went into the living room. Juan seemed ready to spend awhile longer in front of the map.
I had no idea where Arkansas or Wyoming was. Juan’s map showed the outlines of the states, but with no names. The United States was a vast and anonymous country unfurling before an autistic man. A nameless painting in the eye of an unbalanced mind.
“Another thing, my friend,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Find a new treasure. I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely, my friend. You’ll know it when you see it. In this country there’s a treasure for everyone.”
Intimate Love Letters
Leaning on his elbows on the glass table in his living room, FreddyOlmos returns to the half-finished second letter. He sticks on anotherten-peso stamp and drops this letter on the night table too. There will be many more, until one day, tired of writing, Freddy Olmos decidesto go to the theater. The neighborhood streets are full of trees whoseroots creep under the pavement and crack the cement.
The show hasn’t started yet. People are gathered at the door to thehall, talking about things Freddy Olmos can’t understand. Thingsthat scare him. It’s like another language inside the familiar one. Hesits on a park bench in front of the theater. Someone is sitting nextto him. The person talks to him, asks whether he’s here to see theplay. He says he was thinking about going in but now he’s restinghis legs. He feels tired and he thinks it might be better to go homeand come back later. and come back later.
“I recommend it,” says the person. “I come almost every day andI keep seeing it.”
“It’ll be here for a while, won’t it?”
“It’s on for a few more weeks.”
The person is young, younger than Freddy Olmos. His beard istrimmed, hair and eyes black, nothing Freddy Olmos hasn’t seen before, but his eyes are dull, strange, closer set than normal. Like someone who used to be shortsighted and isn’t anymore, he thinks.
“Is it a good show?”
“I don’t know, to be honest,” says the person.
“But you come all the time.”
“Yes, but I don’t know. Did you hear that?”
“What’s it about?”
“I don’t know. Better see it and decide for yourself.”
“What do you come here for?”
“Other things.” A smile appears on the person’s face. A smile FreddyOlmos doesn’t get to in time.
“I’ll come, for sure.”
In the park the tree branches move timidly. It isn’t hot anymore.The shadows of buildings, demolition happening somewhere, thesound of something falling.
“Do you hear it or not?” repeats the new friend.
But of course he hears it. The sea drawing back on itself, oldboats rocking in the water, moss on wood, salt mingling with gasoline and garbage.
They don’t go into any theater. The new friend, whose name isAbel, brings Freddy Olmos to his house. He lives on the edge of thecity, closer to the country. They have to take a bus full of people andget off at a packed stop where Freddy Olmos can’t make out a singleface. In the middle of the crowd he holds his new friend’s hand tightlyso as not to get lost.
Abel lives in a microbrigade building. His apartment has peelingwalls and unpainted baseboards. They’re drinking wine, sitting ona red vinyl sofa.
“What’s something that scares you.”
Freddy Olmos thinks for a minute. Someone once told him therewere questions you shouldn’t answer, but the silence drags on andhe’s afraid not to say anything.
“I’m afraid of being taken for someone else in the street,” he says.
The taste of wine in his mouth.
“What do you mean?”
“Being mistaken for someone else. Once I saw a movie where aperson was killed by accident because he was mistaken for someone else.”
“How was he killed?”
“Somebody came up and shot him in the head.”
“From behind?”
“Yes, from behind. There are people who look alike from behind,and you can’t control that, can you? You don’t get to choose who youlook like from behind.”
“I see what you mean.”
“The thing is, I have a theory. There will always be someone outthere who looks like you. A lot like you, in fact.” Freddy Olmos ran a finger around the inside of the glass. “So I’m afraid of that, of theperson who looks like me doing bad things and later somebody coming to get revenge on me.”
“But maybe the person who looks like you is on the other side ofthe world,” says Abel.
“No. That’s not how it works. The person who looks like you isalways in the same city as you. Or very nearby and they visit yourcity sometimes or you visit theirs.”
“Well, maybe it’s you who does the bad things and the other person is the one who gets killed.”
“No, that doesn’t happen either. I don’t do bad things.”
Freddy Olmos gets uncomfortable and stands up. He goes over to a photograph on the wall.
“I took that,” says Abel.
Freddy Olmos sees himself as if from a remove with the glass of wine in his hand. The way he’s standing is elegant, he thinks. It’s a pose he wouldn’t mind holding for a while.
“It’s pixelated,” he says, half focusing.
“It’s zoomed way in. I took it with my phone,” explains Abel, who has come over to stand next to him.
It’s a photograph of a very green, leafy tree, with glimpses of gray sky visible through a few breaks in the leaves and branches. Toward the left side, about halfway down, a vulture glides over things, about to exit the photograph. Black wings spread.
“What about you? What are you scared of?” Freddy Olmos turns and meets his friend’s eyes.
“Bad weather. I get allergies.”
“What happens to you?”
“My hands and feet get itchy and I start to cough. Also, my skin peels.”
“And that scares you?
“Yes, a lot.”
The conversation continues along the same lines for a while. They keep drinking wine and the wine brings them closer together. Abel asks Freddy Olmos if he wants to stay, and Freddy Olmos says he’s going home but Abel can come too if he wants.
“Nobody’s been there for a long time. I’d like to bring you,” is what Freddy Olmos says.
Abel puts a few things in a bag and the two of them start back toward the apartment. It seems to Freddy Olmos that the city is disappearing behind them, as if they’re erasing the places they pass through.
They join hands and are turned into shadows. One shadow kisses the other on the neck. They touch each other’s faces gently.
From FALSE WAR. Used with permission of the publisher, Graywolf Press. Copyright © 2025 by CARLOS MANUEL ÁLVAREZ.
