Chango's Fire by Ernesto Quinonez

Author:Ernesto Quinonez [Quinonez, Ernesto]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Urban, N.Y., Fiction
ISBN: 9780062030436
Google: 1sJNeAwTEoUC
Amazon: B0042FZVPI
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2004-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

13B

The lounge is located on 101st Street and First Avenue. It’s one of the new, trendy bars that have opened since the face of the neighborhood started to change. I walk in to find all sorts of people, but mostly white professionals. Residents of Spanish Harlem drink outside, paper-bagging their cans of Budweisers, playing dominoes under a street lamp or a tree. During winter, they go to each other’s houses and drink in the kitchen. Lounges are alien to Spanish Harlem. Even during El Barrio’s glory years of the fifties, when there seemed to be a bar on every street corner, they were always dives, not places with paintings, sofas, cushions and curtains.

I enter, and the music is loud, but not so loud that one can’t talk or hear anything else. I see Helen sitting next to this real geeky-looking white guy with glasses. He constantly pushes away a lock of hair that falls below his eyes. I wonder who the guy is. They’re playing Monopoly, and I look around some more and realize this place is a haven for people like Helen. It’s equal to finding an American bar in Paris, the expat bar that few of the native residents ever patronize. The crowd is young, and as I make my way toward Helen, a young guy in a suit and tie accosts me.

“Hey, amigo,” he says, “you know where I can find some?”

“Outside,” I say, “pick a corner.”

“Can you do that for me?” he says and tries to underhand me two twenties. “You know, I’m new here.”

“Sorry, man,” I say, not taking his money, “I don’t do that.”

“You know who does? A friend of yours, maybe? I mean I don’t mean to be rude or imply anything. Hey I just want to unwind,” he says in the friendliest of tones, and I do believe him.

“You need a drink?” he asks me. I say no thank you. So he turns around and walks back to the bar.

A Latin guy, who was sitting by the pool table and probably heard everything, walks over to me. He is wearing a guayabera, a short-sleeved shirt with colorful embroidered patterns running down the sides. A fedora hat sits on his head, and his ears are plugged with headphones from a Walkman he must have at low volume.

“My friend, I tell you,” he talks like he just took a deep drag on a joint and he’s not trying to exhale. “They see a Latino walk in here and right away he’s got to be dealing.” I nod in agreement. “Yes my friend, but the worst,” he says after he takes a sip of his beer, “is they want it right here, in the bar. Like delivered Chinese food, shit. They don’t have the balls to go and cop on the corner like everybody else. Unless they’re true addicts, they won’t do that. They want takeout. Wass your name?”

“Julio,” I say.

Helen hasn’t seen me yet. But I can tell she’s already a bit lit, because when she rolls the dice, she throws them too hard and they slide off the board and onto the floor.

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