A Fierce and Subtle Poison Read online

  Aside from the tourists who came in on cruise ships, no man in Puerto Rico ever dressed for the “island life” like my dad did. Some of the older men wore guayaberas, those cotton, button-down shirts with the pocket patches running down the front, and most had wide-brimmed hats, though theirs probably didn’t cost close to a thousand dollars. I just wore jeans or cargo shorts, white V-neck T-shirts, and flip-flops or Converse. My friends wore more or less the same. Unlike my dad, I didn’t dress to impress; I dressed to avoid being drenched in sweat immediately upon stepping out the hotel doors.

  Not that I’d be stepping out the hotel doors anytime soon. I wouldn’t have even dragged my ass out of bed this bright morning had it not been for mine and my dad’s “standing breakfast.”

  The rum from the night before had become a painful fog in my head. I remembered that Jorge, the night doorman, had dragged me by my armpits up to my second-floor room, where I’d passed out and dreamed of a little girl with green skin standing in front of me, throwing stones at my face. The stones kept hitting louder and louder. Eventually I realized there were no stones. It was morning, and someone from the front desk was pounding on the door because I hadn’t answered my wake-up call. I finally peeled my eyes open enough to see that I was face down on the floor in front of my bed, fully clothed, having managed to remove only one of my shoes before passing out. The phone was ringing in such a loud, high pitch I was tempted to yank it out of the wall and hurl it across the room. But before I could do that, I’d run to the bathroom and puked.

  So yeah, it had been a rough night.

  The waiter came by and sat a plate of watery scrambled eggs in front of me, and I nearly puked again right there. I had to look up, away from my food, to the tops of the palm trees rustling over the open-air courtyard. Their motion against the blue sky was soothing.

  “Juan,” I heard my dad say to the waiter, “how long ago did you brew this coffee?”

  “Just before you came in, señor,” Juan replied. “As we usually do.”

  “It doesn’t taste very fresh. Please brew another pot.”

  The waiter shuffled away mumbling a half-hearted apology. My dad abandoned the first question he asked me—because the answer was obvious—and shot me another.

  “Have you thought any more about where you want to do your college visits?”

  I hadn’t. He knew I hadn’t. We both had a common understanding that so long as I didn’t prove myself totally incompetent, upon graduation from wherever I went, where I would get whatever GPA, I’d be handed a position at my dad’s firm in Houston, quickly rise through the ranks, and be able to spend my summers out here in the Antilles. I wanted a shack on some remote beach where I could spend my days alone. Very infrequently, I would leave my shack, drive around the island with my assistant, and say things like, “Build a resort there. Make sure the decor is chic and modern. Make sure it’s eco-conscious. People love that kind of thing these days.”

  Ignoring my dad, I looked back to my plate, picked up a slice of cantaloupe, nibbled the flesh, and then tossed it back down.

  “Lucas.”

  My dad had placed his folded paper across his empty plate. This meant it was time for him to impart some of his precious wisdom upon me.

  “What happened to your face?”

  My face. Right. I reached up, felt around gingerly with the pads of my fingers, and winced at a sore spot just above my eye. I remembered more of last night: the stones, the shape perched at the top of the wall. I took a sip of water; it had a metallic tang.

  “I fell near El Morro,” I replied, poorly covering up a gag.

  My dad sighed. “I’m all for you having a good time with your friends, Lucas, but let’s try to bring it down a notch.” A fly buzzed around his head, probably attracted by the sweet smell of his pomade. “Jorge told me about you coming home at three-thirty in the morning, tripping over your own feet and ranting about some girl who cursed you.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I don’t know what it is you do all night long, aside from hang out with local kids and get drunk on my rum, but I’m warning you about getting into personal relationships with island girls, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  Oh, I understood what he was saying. And if I’d had a clearer head, what I said next might never have left my lips.

  “Mom was an ‘island girl.’ You got into a ‘personal relationship’ with her.”

  My dad responded in slow motion. First, he set his porcelain coffee cup back on its saucer. Then he placed the saucer on the glass top of the table. Leaning back in his seat, he fingered the brim of his hat as he decided what to say. He could tell me to watch my smart mouth. He could laugh and say touché. He could brush it off, blaming my hangover. Or he could change the subject to one less off limits.

  “I’m looking out for you.” He grimaced as he pinched a minuscule piece of lint from his hat. “I only wish that someone would’ve cared enough to give me that same bit of advice before it was too late.”

  While my dad took his hat off his knee and rose to standing, I tried to not interpret his remark as him regretting my very existence. He pulled his mirrored Ray-Ban aviators from his jacket pocket and slid them on before checking his reflection in the glass of the table and giving himself a satisfied smirk.

  El patrón.

  “I’m going to Rincón tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be gone for the night and most of the next day. I’ll leave the address with the front desk before I go if you decide you want to take a car and meet me. I know you’ve always liked it out there, though I still can’t understand why.”

  Rincón was less than a hundred miles from San Juan, but seemingly another world. To me, it was beautiful just as it was, all trees and big, big waves. My dad thought differently, though. To him, Rincón was some indigent fishing village where mainland hippies went to surf and get high. He couldn’t wait to build a hotel out there and help give the town a “touch of class,” as he liked to say. It didn’t hurt that he’d make a fortune in the process.

  My dad and I, like the scientist at the end of Calle Sol, are gringos. And just like no one ever trusted the scientist, no one trusted us. Every summer since I was ten, the two of us would come to San Juan from Houston and stay at this luxury hotel that his company had converted from an old convent. Every morning of every summer, after reading his newspaper, drinking his coffee, and eating his pan dulce and melon, my dad would get into the backseat of a big black car and be gone until sundown—out looking for other old buildings to convert to hotels or the perfect place on the beach on which to build from scratch. I’d spend my time roaming around the hotel by myself and playing out in the streets with the three Old San Juan kids who would give me the time of day. It was from those kids’ abuelas, mamás, and tías that I learned all of my stories about the island. They told me their stories, but they never trusted me. They smiled but never really meant it. Their whispers and suspicious stares always broke my heart.

  My dad was making his way to the other side of the courtyard just as Juan brought a fresh urn of coffee. Leave it to Michael Knight to complain, make a demand, and forget he did either.

  “Sorry about that,” I muttered with a pained smile. “But I’ll take some, please. And hey, Juan?” He cocked his eyebrow but didn’t look at me as he continued pouring the coffee. “Do you know if someone recently moved into the old house at the very end of Calle Sol?”

  Juan did a strange thing: he laughed. It started as a chuckle but quickly shifted into a full-on, open-mouthed, head-tipped-to-the-sky guffaw. Then he turned and walked away, shaking his head and wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes.

  I downed my cup of black coffee as quickly as I could and left the table without touching any more of my breakfast. Up in my room, I managed to get both of my shoes off before collapsing on top of the covers. If I dreamed of anything, I couldn’t remember what it was.

  That night, Marisol’s head was in my lap while my fingers explored the cool strands of her long
hair. We were in Ruben’s bedroom with the group from the night before, half watching some American reality dating show because it was the only thing coming in on the antenna.

  Ruben was downing can after lukewarm can of Medalla and shouting insults at the television. On a tattered loveseat on the other side of the room, Rico was feeling up Marisol’s friend Ruth.

  “I’m sorry about what happened last night,” Marisol said before taking a sip from a straw that was plunged deep into a glass Coke bottle. “I had way too much to drink. I hope I didn’t say anything too embarrassing. If I did, just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  I smiled. She really was pretty; I hadn’t really noticed the night before. Her eyes weren’t purely coffee-brown after all. They were flecked with green and hazel, which gave them a wild quality.

  A gold charm in the shape of the letter M rested between her collarbones, where her skin was slick with sweat. It was hot in Ruben’s house even though the sun had set and even with the creaky ceiling fan whipping above our heads at full speed.

  “Mari!” Ruben cried out, pointing at the television. “You can be honest with me since we’re family and all. Tell me. What is it with this guy? He looks like he and Lucas could be brothers. What is it about skinny blond white guys that make all the girls line up, huh?”

  “Don’t answer that, Marisol,” I said.

  “I don’t see a line of girls here for Lucas,” Marisol replied before taking another sip of Coke.

  Ruben grunted and took a pull from his beer can. “You haven’t been around for long enough then. They line up.”

  “We should take a walk,” I suggested to Marisol. “You want to take a walk?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me and then craned her head to shoot a worried glance at the hot tangle of limbs that was Ruth and Rico.

  “They’ll be fine,” I said. “We won’t be gone long.”

  The old town was mostly deserted. Once outside of Ruben’s house, I steered Marisol into a nearby alley off San José Street, gripped a fistful of the fabric of her floral-print sundress, and pulled her close. Again, and without the rum swimming in our heads, we kissed. When my lips left her mouth and traveled down her throat to land between her collarbones, where the little gold M settled against her skin, I felt her tremble. She whispered in my ear how much she was hoping to see me again and then plunged her hands into my hair.

  It was later, as we walked together through the empty streets, that Marisol told me about her dream of moving to America once she finished high school. She was even considering dropping out. Her goal was either to open a café or play French horn for a symphony somewhere. She’d never played French horn before, she said, but she was convinced she could learn. It had been her favorite instrument ever since she found out it was the Wolf in Peter and the Wolf.

  She asked me what Texas was like and if I’d been to any of the big cities like Los Angeles and New York. I told her I had, but when I said I thought they were too big, too noisy, and too full of people, she seemed disappointed.

  “Ruben was right, you know,” she said, hooking her pinky finger with mine. “I haven’t been around San Juan very long. My mom and I and my sister Celia moved up from Ponce just over a year ago.” She’d said that last night, almost word-for-word, but I didn’t remind her of it. “I like it here better. There’s more to do. The rest of my family’s here, and my mom has a better job.”

  We turned onto Calle Sol. In the middle of a large circle of light cast by a street lamp, an orange cat was grooming himself on the sidewalk.

  Marisol saw it and smiled a close-mouthed smile.

  “Celia wants to take home every cat she sees. Even though they all hiss when she runs up to them, she calls them her babies. Are you taking me back to the same place you took me last night? By the water?” She paused, but not long enough for me to get a word in. “It’s not that it matters. I just can’t be out as late as I was last night. My mom’ll kill me. She’s been worried ever since that American girl went missing over in Condado . . . Sara Something.”

  “Fikes,” I replied.

  According to the news, sixteen-year-old Sara Fikes went out a couple of nights ago to take pictures of the sunset and never made it back to the beachfront hotel room where she was staying with her parents. When the police began searching for her the next morning, they found her flip-flops and her Nikon placed neatly on the sand half a mile down the coast, as if she’d set them there before going out for a quick swim.

  “Where’s your mom?” Marisol asked. “All I ever hear anyone talk about is your dad. Did you know they call him el patrón?”

  Yes, I knew that.

  “Does el patrón have una patrona?” she urged.

  “My mom’s not around.” I paused. “I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “En serio?” Marisol clasped my hand and forced me to stop. “I’m sorry, Lucas. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have asked. No one told me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I forced the side of my mouth up into a half-smile. “It is what it is, I guess. She’s been gone for so long, I barely remember her.”

  That wasn’t quite true, but I wished it were. My mood tended to sour when I talked about my mom, which isn’t what I wanted to happen while I was with Marisol. She was different than I was: full of optimism and hope and brightness.

  We walked on. For a while it was so quiet, I could hear Mari’s sundress swish around her legs. I had the sense she thought that by bringing up my mom she’d tread unknowingly into a minefield and was searching for a way to retrace her steps. Eventually, she stopped. Her gaze had landed on something down the dark street, and I watched as a small smile spread across her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  Marisol pointed to the scientist’s house. I’d brought us straight to it without even realizing it.

  “The other day my grandma told me that house is cursed,” she said, again repeating herself from last night. “It was some stupid story that another old lady at the market told her—about how anyone who goes into the house never comes out and that maybe the man who lives there eats them or something.”

  I laughed. “Eats them?”

  “Yes, eats them.” Marisol nodded soberly. “He puts them in a big pot with carrots, onions, and potatoes, and lets them simmer overnight. Have you not heard that?”

  “I haven’t heard that,” I said. “But I heard that the house was cursed, yeah.”

  I told Mari the señoras’ story about the scientist who kept his wife trapped with his bird and his plants, and also about how when we were kids my friends and I would make up our own stories.

  “Rico said that a witch lived there and if you wrote a wish on a piece of paper and threw it to her, she would grant it.”

  “Did you throw a wish?” Marisol asked. I tried to hide the truth but the strained expression on my face apparently gave me away. “You did!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “I know you did. What did you wish for?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you. Only the witch knows.”

  Marisol let out a cry of mock-outrage just as the orange tom behind us expelled a guttural screech. I turned just in time to see it zip down a nearby alley.

  Marisol released her hand from mine and ran over to the wall of the scientist’s courtyard. She picked at a flake of loose plaster with her fingernail and peered up at the tips of the leaves.

  “This is where the stones came down from last night, right? I remember that! Someone has to be there or else all these plants would die. Come on, Lucas.” She reached down to slip off her sandals. “Give me a boost. We’ll solve the mystery, and then we’ll get to tell all the old ladies what the true true story is. If I don’t come back, just tell them I was eaten. They’ll understand.”

  I was impressed. As long as I’d been coming to the island neither me nor any of my friends had ever thought of actually going into the scientist’s house. It had always been a place people judged from far away and made up stories about, not a place the
y would ever willingly enter.

  “That wall is three feet taller than you,” I said, offering up the most rational response—one that didn’t involve poison or witches or curses. “Even if I gave you a boost, there’s no way you’d ever get back over.”

  “There might be a ladder or something on the other side.” She stood on the balls of her feet and stretched her arms up to the sky. As much as she was willing herself to be a giant, it wasn’t happening. “A little help, por favor.”

  “You just said something about not wanting your mom to worry about you and now you want to jump into a house that’s cursed.” Marisol ignored me and started taking little two-footed leaps into the air. She still came up very short. “You look ridiculous, by the way. Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working.”

  Marisol let out a burst of laughter and finally stepped away from the wall. As she put her sandals back on, one of the straps of her dress fell off her shoulder. I stepped closer and lifted it back in place.

  For a moment, the tips of my fingers lingered against her warm skin. They traced the curve of her shoulder up to her throat. She leaned in, brushing her lips across my ear.

  “Paper,” she whispered.

  I jerked back. She was grinning. It was a devilish expression, made even more devilish by the mixed light from the moon and the orange-tinted street lamps.

  “Do you? Have any? Pay-per?” she asked. “I want to make a wish. You can’t object to that. It’s something you’ve done yourself.”

  “When I was a kid, yeah.”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Do you have paper or not?”

  I dug into my pockets and pulled out a quarter, a couple of crumpled receipts, and the folded piece of hotel stationery on which my dad had scribbled the name and address of the place he’d be staying in Rincón. He’d written the information just under the embossed logo he was so proud of, a blood-red palm tree, and the name, Hotel St. Lucia.