Louis Hannibal Nez
The man who enters the liquor store stands about six and a half feet tall. His torso is cylindrical, his arms and legs broad and flabby; he has no discernible neck and a round face like a snowman's. Concern marks his features. His short, curly hair has been left in complete disarray. He wears a tight white cotton T-shirt, gray trousers and gray sneakers. He is sweating. His gaze searches for Rob, and the instant he sees him, he locks the door.
"Hey, Dan! It's you! What's wrong with you, fat man? How are you going to get in like that with everything that's going on?" Rob is relieved to see that he knows him, while he finishes arranging everything inside the jeans.
"Have you found out?" asks Dan with a deep voice and a tone of obvious concern. He is agitated.
"Yes, I’ve been reading about it in the paper all day," Rob answers as he heads back toward the pavement. "Did you bring anything to smoke? I’m dying for a cigarette."
"No. Hey, I think we should barricade ourselves in here and not come out for any reason for days." Proposes Dan. He positions himself in front of Rob with the table in the way.
"Yes, of course, do you call the owner and tell him that we will use his business premises as a trench?" asks Rob, while desperately looking for cigarettes among all the drawers within reach.
"The owner of this pigsty lives in Baybeach. No? He must no longer be alive or at least not healthy," Dan reflects.
"Ahhh, now" exclaims Rob without listening to Dan.
He celebrates when he finds tobacco and rolling paper. He smells the tobacco and finds it somewhat stale, yet delicious all the same. He begins rolling a cigarette and does not speak until the task is done. Only then does he look at Dan.
"Fire?" asks to the burly guy in front of him.
"Hey, we have a damn problem. "Forget the vices," Dan replies angrily."
"You didn't say that when I got you one of these in prison, huh chubby?" Rob remembers smiling. He immediately finds matches. He lights the freshly rolled cigarette, takes a drag and reflects pleasure on his face.
"Isn't smoking prohibited inside closed places?"
"I don't give a shit."
"Listen, Rob, we have to do something, lock the door, put furniture in the windows. Do you have weapons? Otherwise maybe we won't last alive until midnight," Dan suggests and wants to convince him.
"Unless you are the one in charge of this pigsty, no one is going to move any damn furniture here, okay? I'm the one who has to answer later to that old stingy. If you want weapons go get them. Stay holed up in a corner without disturbing the customers," Rob suggests while enjoying his cigarette.
Still perched on the stool, Rob props his feet on the desk and leans back. He savors his cigarette, smiling as he recalls a night when, still a free man, he accidentally obtained the telephone number for Brittany Condon's hotel room. The artist was staying at a five-star hotel in Baybeach. It was the closest he ever came to contacting her directly. The radio journalist who mistakenly gave out the number live on air earned himself—and the show's producers—a massive lawsuit.
Thanks to that, Rob got an unbeatable opportunity. He felt very lucky that night, he could communicate with none other than his most impossible love. It was a unique chance to talk to Brittany; the same situation would probably never happen again. Of course, other listeners who were listening to the radio at the same moment also had the same chance, when the journalist absentmindedly released the room number on air. Rob remembers that night very well. Trembling, he entered the magic number on his virtual cell phone. He called without caring about the extra costs associated with calling from Los Condominios. It cost him a fortune.
He realized then, as the tone rang, that he didn't know what he was going to say. The phone rang at least five times, before the young woman answered the call with her usual musical, delicate and harmonious tone of voice.
"Hello. Hello? Who is it?" communication was cut off.
Whether because the young woman ended the call or because he ran out of credit, he no longer remembers, he lost an excellent opportunity to talk to her. The detail of that motif has become negligible over time. The really important thing was to have listened to her, to have known that she made a call and that, thanks to that, he heard her voice for a second. He remembers having the inevitable impulse to talk to her, to introduce himself, to tell her a thousand things that he wanted to express to her and that he has felt for her for so many years. But he was stunned, amazed, speechless and idiotic at the same time when he heard that sweet voice. Rob was silent for hours, regaining his speech a long time later.
He can scarcely believe what happened. Her voice seemed to him a melody made of bells. Although he could have dialed the number again, he lacked the courage. Days later, he would learn that she had disabled the hotel telephone after receiving thousands of calls within minutes. Now and for the rest of his life, he regrets not having found the courage to speak to her. He will never know what might have happened had he said enough for her to know him—and for him, in turn, to know her better. Even so, the memory remains unforgettable. After calling her, he lay down upon the bed in the dark, windowless room he rents in Los Condominios.
He let himself be sweetened again and again by traces that Brittany's voice left in his ear. He imagined her in a thousand passionate ways with him, like when he was in prison. Her image accompanied and consoled him in several situations of a sad or violent nature, an innumerable amount of cruel vicissitudes that he had to suffer for five long years. But it was never so incredible, nor in such a special and intense way as this time he called her. After several years have passed since that extraordinary moment, Rob remembers and laughs. He considers that he has matured, he no longer has those feelings. At least that's what he thought until before reading the news he read in the morning.
The terrible possibility that the virus may have taken her from him forever makes Rob realize that his feelings have not changed in the slightest since then. He cares little about the catastrophe in Baybeach, the riots, destruction and police brutality, or about the injured, the dead and the uncontrollable violence unleashed there. The only thing he wants to know—this very instant, if possible—is what has happened to Brittany Condon.
"What are you laughing at, Rob?" Dan wants to know.
"I’m remembering something." He laughs. "How nostalgic."
"Do you tell me?"
"It's not very interesting."
"I want to laugh too."
"Nothing, fat man, leave it at that."
"Hey, you know you owe me money, right?"
"Money from what? What's that for? I don't owe you anything."
"Do you think I came here just to see that face?"
"I don't owe you anything. If you came just for that, then go."
"I need money, I'm desperate. They kicked me out of the room I was renting, I'm on the street, right now with all this virus risk. You have a job. I don't want to steal, if I go to prison as a repeat offender I will never get out. And you owe me money, it's your responsibility to keep your word."
"What is my debt supposed to be?"
"I paid you rent more than seven times, I bought you cigarettes, tobacco, food and on top of that you go out with my sister. Do you want me to calculate your debt?"
"Are you including the Meerkat in the total? Better not. I’ll give her back to you." Rob bursts into raucous laughter.
"I don’t find that funny. Give me some of what you owe me, or you’ll never see my sister again, you bastard." Dan lowers his hand from the table and rests it behind his belt.
"I don't have money, fat man. What do you not understand? My salary is not enough for anything, I already spent it."
"I don't believe you. Give me money, Rob. Before stealing again, I prefer to collect what you owe me at any price. Don't underestimate me when I'm desperate. I'll do whatever it takes."
"Are you threatening me, chubby? Stop joking, fool."
They both start suddenly in the middle of the discussion. Someone knocks on the glass door of the Happy Drunk Liquor Store in an incessant and repetitive manner.
"Come on, since you are preparing for combat, go see if it is an infected person. Break his head for me. Oh, if it's someone healthy you let him in, I haven't sold a damn bottle yet," Rob orders his dear friend. He talks with the cigarette between his lips.
Dan moves as fast as his big frame allows. He gets up from his chair, backs away without ever turning his back on Rob, and checks who it is that is banging on the glass so insistently. Rob's burly friend looks up and down at the person on the other side of the glass. He discovers that she is a very young girl, blonde, so thin that she appears to be in an advanced state of pregnancy, perhaps eight months or more. Her eyes look like two emeralds. She is wearing a simple, faded dress that once had little flowers scattered across the print. She wears old flat shoes that look like they have traveled miles for years.
"She's pregnant," Dan announces to Rob.
"And? "Open it up, idiot," Rob demands."
"I'm not sure, what if it is infected?" Dan transmits very worried.
"Yes, a pregnant woman. What could she possibly do to us—bite us? Come on, open the door before I lose the only customer we’ve had all day. We need to sell something or I’ll be out of work. Come on, damn it. Open up!" Dan does not move. "Open the door, fatty!" Rob yells.
Finally, his great friend moves his plump arms, they shake a little. As shaky as he is, he unlocks the door and opens it. He shows the young woman a dark smile. The girl doesn't pay much attention to this, she anxiously and hurriedly enters the liquor store.
"Hello. "I wasn't sure if the place was open today, with everything going on," she exclaims with friendly and unexpected sweetness."
Rob sets aside what remains of his cigarette. He cannot return the greeting; something prevents him from even smiling at the young woman. Dan locks the door again from within. In the liquor-store clerk's eyes, the girl is some joke played by fate, a test placed in his path by something or someone to discover what he is capable of. Standing before him is a woman who looks identical to Brittany Condon—or perhaps is Brittany herself. Famous people do not always look the same in reality as they do on television.
"Well, I won't be long. "Permission," the young woman announces."
She waits several seconds for them to return her greeting. When they fail to do so, she hurries on with her shopping. She disappears among the shelves of fine chocolates, particularly those without liquor fillings. Meanwhile, Rob tries not to look into the past, but cannot keep it from overtaking him with the pressure of gallons of ocean water. Every memory he tried to leave behind floods fresh into his mind.
"Hey, Dan, come here."
"What do you want?"
"Look carefully at that girl and please tell me she isn’t Brittany Condon. Do it now." Dan glances at the young woman, who is distracted as she chooses among the products she wants.
"That skinny girl is not the singer you are obsessed with."
"You don't sound very convincing, I think you're telling me what I want to hear, you haven't looked closely."
"I'm telling you, it's not her."
"I think it is. "Come here, look at this," says Rob, approaching the window and showing Dan the dancing holography of Brittany in the building across the street."
"Why are you asking me then?"
"Because I know it's her, but I was hoping it's not. Don't you see that they are identical?"
"Listen, we were talking about something important before…"
"Gordo, leave me alone."
"What could that famous singer buy in this cheap pigsty anyway?"
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out. She's here, and she won't leave until she tells me if she's Brittany or not."
A noise announces that something has fallen from the liquor-store shelves. Both men start, rise and immediately look out to see what happened. The young woman is picking boxes of chocolates up from the floor. She looks at them and smiles with slight embarrassment. Rob has struggled enormously to retreat into his misery, lose himself in the past and detach from the store so that he will not make a mistake he might regret. The sight of her drags him back to reality. He studies her again through his hardened eyes and feels certain that she is Brittany Condon.
Without further ado, he sets out to do what he had in mind from the first moment he saw her. He heads towards her.