A Fierce and Subtle Poison Read Free

my voice; I hoped she didn’t notice.
    I could feel the blood from the cut trailing down the middle of my face and dripping from the tip of my nose, and going up the steep steps while drunk was giving me the spins. Once Marisol and I got back to the field, I could just make out Rico in the near distance, acting the carefree clown as usual, trying to dance to nonexistent music and continuously toppling over. Everyone was laughing, except for Carlos, who was sprawled out on the grass, snoring with his mouth wide open.
    When we got close enough for Ruben to see my face, he sneered and asked what I’d done to make Marisol sock me. I rolled my eyes and Marisol erupted into a fit of giggles. Neither of us mentioned the rain of stones.
    I drank more rum as the night went on. I acted as if Rico’s antics were the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen and that Marisol’s attention was all I’d ever need. I acted this way because I didn’t want to let on how I couldn’t stop thinking about that one dark shape I’d seen on top of that courtyard wall, the one I didn’t mention to Marisol, the one that didn’t sway like the leaves but that seemed focused solely on me and was poised in a motionless crouch, ready for a reason to jump.

Two
    “ROUGH NIGHT?”
    My dad was talking at me from behind the pages of the morning’s
El Nuevo Día
. It wasn’t even seven o’clock, but he was already up and dressed for what my mom used to refer to as the “island life.” His outfit consisted of a white linen suit, a light blue dress shirt, and tan boat shoes. His graying hair was slicked back with pomade. His wide-brimmed hat was balanced on his knee. He thought he looked debonair. I thought the only thing missing from the picture was a cigar and a mountain of cocaine on the table in front of him.Behind his back, my friends would snicker and refer to him as el patrón or, when they were feeling particularly brutal, el conquistador.
    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