Love & Other Poisons by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Author:Silvia Moreno-Garcia [Moreno-Garcia, Silvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-09-08T06:00:00+00:00

Nine years later. Enough to misremember.

I had long finished my bachelor’s degree and moved out of my mom’s place and into a little apartment. Overall, things were going fine and I was considering applying for another scholarship, this one for a master’s degree.

Marilu was married and living in Monterrey. She had just had a second baby. My mom was going to go live with her and watch over the grandchildren. Mom told me that she was getting rid of everything in my room and I better go help her throw out my old crap.

I put a few precious things aside, then piled my old books into a box, including the horror paperbacks La Bola had given me in junior high. I took them to one of the used stores where they buy books and newspaper by the kilo, and got a couple of pesos out of the whole effort.

When I was handing the guys who bought the books and newsprint my stuff, I discovered that at the bottom of one of the boxes there were a few photocopies of La Bola’s Necronomicon. I folded them and took them with me. Out of a sense of nostalgia I walked through the old neighbourhood, patting the wrinkled photocopies.

The area was still shitty but they were starting to build nice condos here and there. Gentrification was creeping in.

I stopped at street with the pantyhose factory. That block had not been touched by the cranes and construction crews. The old buildings remained stubbornly in their place, peeling paint and all. The factory itself was even more ruined, dirty and with more shattered glass panes.

I glanced at the photocopies I was carrying, at the building and then back at the squiggly lines that passed for writing.

I heard the tinkering of glass bottles and a panhandler sleeping nearby shuffled to his feet.

“Hey,” said the man and I raised my hand to tell him that no, I didn’t have any cash to spare but I stopped.

The man was very, very skinny. Bone thin and he looked at least a decade older than me, so he couldn’t possibly be La Bola. But he looked like him, only hungrier, his dark eyes very large and fixed on me.

“Hey, long time no see,” said the man. “I got some nice stuff for you. You want to take a look?”

I was born and raised in a neighbourhood with its fair share of drunkards, hobos and hookers, and none of them ever scared me, but this man who looked a bit like La Bola sent me shivering like a five year old; and I swear I could feel a cold, cold rubbery thing slipping around my neck when La Bola stared at me.

I tossed the papers in the air and ran away, only pausing once to see if the man was following me. He was too busy picking up the pages that I had dropped, fiercely clutching them against his chest and mumbling something I could not make out.

Three blocks from there I hailed a cab.

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