Tender as Hellfire by Joe Meno

Author:Joe Meno
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, General Fiction
ISBN: 1933354305
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 1999-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

the king of the tango

Out of nowhere, I began to wake up every night and hear the same strange song, usually just after I had fallen asleep. I’d push open the red curtains that hung from the window in our bedroom and stare out at the new silver trailer next to ours, watching as a square shadow moved in the dark to the beat-beat-beat of the night. Usually at about midnight, the old man next door would put on an old tango record and shut off all the lights and then begin dancing, sometimes naked, sometimes not, swaying alone in the quiet dark. His name was El Rey del Perdito. In the day, I’d seen his long gray face and full black pompadour, hair that didn’t look like it belonged on his withered old head. He was large with big shoulders like an old athlete and moved very slow, except when he was dancing, and then he was like dynamite. I guess I had never seen anything like it before in my life. We had lived in that trailer park for nearly two months, and by then I had just about refused to be amazed by anything.

From my bedroom window, I could hear his bare feet as they shuffled and slid across his tile floor. The mobile home would rock a little as he moved, stepping in time to the exotic music that boomed from behind his shiny yellow curtains. I would see the flicker of candles along the windows and his shadow moving on the walls, back and forth, back and forth, swaying in time to the rhythm of the music and his very sad heart, his wide feet sliding across the floor as his thin shadow spun about.

One night I heard French get up and mutter to my mother, “Jesus. It’s past midnight. The damn boys have school tomorrow. Doesn’t he have any goddamn consideration?”

I kept listening, hearing El Rey’s feet move as the tango singer’s voice peaked, shaking the windows in the old man’s mobile home. I flinched as I caught a glimpse of his bare back when he crossed in front of his window. Pill snored in the bunk bed above mine, and I guess I was afraid to wake him, to let him know what was happening.

“That’s it. I’m going over there!” French yelled.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” my mother said. “It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?”

“It’s nice. It’s kind of romantic.”

I rolled my goddamn eyes and laid back down in my bed. I was pretty sure I heard my mother let out a laugh. I shook my head and pulled the pillow over my face as they started doing it, the thin walls of our trailer rocking with their movements. I gritted my teeth and stuck the corners of my pillow in my ears. Heck, I wasn’t stupid. I knew my mother and French did it. But having to listen to it, right in the middle of the goddamn night, and with the old man next door dancing and singing along with the record, it was too much.

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