Di Iorio - Outside the Bones

Advance praise for Outside the Bones:

Come meet Fina, the irrepressible, hilarious, tough-talking heroine of Lyn Di Iorios delightful first novel, Outside the Bones .

Cristina Garca, author of The Lady Matadors Hotel and Dreaming in Cuban

Toni Morrison meets Alexander McCall Smith on Manhattans Upper West Side in this brilliant tale of ghosting and rescue by Di Iorios unlikely heroine. Driven by raw humor, a wonderful eroticism and a laser ear, the author listens in on Finas world and shares observations as powerful as the noise from the cauldron.

Catherine E. McKinley, author of Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World

The musical prose in this novel sings like Luis Rafael Snchezs classic Macho Camachos Beat ; and the love object here, Chico the promiscuous and gifted musician, also recalls Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love . This very, very funny novel flashes back at moments to the island, the books symbolic Barrio Sal Pafuera. But it is the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and especially Central Parkwhere the characters in the book carry out their magic ritualsthat comes to life in these pages in such a spectacular way, emphasizing that the Upper West Side was in the past, and still is in and out of this novel, an enclave of Puerto Rican and Latino identity.

Ernesto Quionez, author of Bodega Dreams and Changos Fire

In the entertainingly loud and street-toughened voice of a Nuyorican big girl, Lyn Di Iorios readers first believe that theyre following the erotic detailing of an old murder mystery, only to find themselves on a journey stretching from Manhattans Upper West Side through Central Park to a place in Puerto Rico where river and sea meet, where a body burned and where the bones have yet to find peace. A fresh and original approach to fiction grounded in Afro-Caribbean spirituality.

Marie-Elena John, author of Unburnable

FOUR

MISS UNIVERSES PANTIES

T o make up for the fact that Gus wasnt paying the rent no more, I started working as a secretary at The Balder School. Yeah, it aint my calling, but I can do secretary in a pinch. I went to typing school and can type eighty words a minute. I may be a plus size, but Ive got nimble fingers and I like words on a page. I read a lot of shit, from The Times to Victorian poems to urban trash novels. Words on the page can be like fufs unto themselves.

The building I was supposed to work in was a brownstone neo-something-or-other on the Upper East Side on 90th St. I walked in and did a double-take when I saw the place didnt have no security guard or metal detectors at the door. I saw a tall blonde boy in the schools uniform of gray pants and a white shirt walk up the stairs to the second floor. Aside from that, the place was real quiet and gray, like a bad painting of an interior space, and like no school Id ever been to before.

Looking spiffy in my chosen camouflagea long black skirt and a white button down shirtI went into the office belonging to my new boss, the Headmaster, Hiram Beltoff.

Between the floor-to-ceiling windows and a huge desk carved from different types and colors of inlaid wood sat a soft-bodied, bald man in his mid-fifties with a big bushy red-haired moustache. There was a big state-of-the-art desktop computer on one end of the desk and four piles of neatly stacked papers on the other end.

He looked up. Can I help you? High twang. A suit that looked like textured silk. An old queen from the Remember the Alamo South.

Im the new secretary.

Oh. He looked at me head to toe, but kind of out the sides of his eyes. Josephine Meta?

Ho-se-fin-ah Ma-ta.

He kept darting glances at my hair. The extensions were tied up so that they flowed down my back, but if I turned my head sharp up or down, they made a chica-chica-chic sound. I think it pissed off old Beltoff. I wanted to let rip a laugh, but I can do a stone face when I need to, and I did.

Ha-rem Bail-toff to you, he said, not meeting my eye. Well, Josefeena, as long as you can write and type adequately and do basic errands, we should have no problem.

Adequately? Basic errands? What was this condescending shit? Ill try my best to do my best, I said. Or some shit like that.

He quickly restacked the four piles of paper on his desk. Then he pointed behind him somewhere. Your office is there, he said.

On the far right there was a door next to the big windows. I strode over, opened it. The room was a windowless cubbyhole with a vomit-colored rug and a desktop computer about seventy-five percent smaller than Beltoffs.

I went back to his big office. No printer?

Youll share the printer with the other staff in this suite. I have an office manager, an accounts manager and there are two other secretaries. A Headmaster needs a respectable staff. Each secretary has specific duties.

I discovered on my second day that my specific duties for the time being seemed to be typing letters firing peoples asses. Beltoff dictated eleven letters to me that dayall letters letting faculty and staff know their contracts had not been renewed.

When I was done typing, he looked at the first printouts and complained about the typos.

I looked at the typos. Two typos in eleven letters is pretty good. I shrugged. What a petty little twerp! I didnt think an Ivy League secretary could do much better. It occurred to me that he probably liked to terrorize the types that ended up working the secretary routine. Well, in the end, condescension or no condescension, his caterpillar body told me I would have the final fucking punch. If it ever came down to that. Which it wouldnt. What the fuck could make it worth it?

No typo is better.

Goes without saying Im correcting them. I went on with my fake honey routine. You from Texas?

Kansas.

Texas was the Lone Star State, hot-assed cowboys and Mexican Americans coming into their own. Kansas...

Wizard of Oz! I bellowed.

He rolled his eyes, but didnt say nothing, and then looked shiftily away. He took up a letter that had no typos, put it in the already addressed envelope and passed one of those little sponge things with a handle over the gummed part. Then he sealed the envelope.

Im putting this in Ashley Duvals mailbox myself. His face was red, his eyes liquid with excitement.

He didnt like me, but my size made him leery. As for me, I thought he was a goddamn laughable ass, but I needed the job and I knew what the workaday world was like. Tata Victors skulls and bones were a helluva a lot more alive than people who pushed paper for a living.

But to live sometimes you have to die a little.

At work, a few days later, I sat in my little windowless cubbyhole with the vomit-orange rug. It was so hot I kept the door open, typing and printing letters for Beltoff. Folding envelopes. At one point I looked up and there was a gray-haired woman with pink-framed glasses staring at me. She wore boring navy pumps, and a gray suit that fit her like clothes on a hanger.

Is one of those letters for me?

Whore you?

Lori Shellman. I teach Psychology and History of Science.

Oh. I knew who she was. She had filed some sort of complaint against Beltoff. No.

She let out a little breath of relief, but her blue eyes were still faded from worry, so I said, I dont think youre going to get one of these. You made that badass complaint, and now hes too afraid that if he gets rid of you, itll look like retaliation.

Her blue eyes lit up like the sparks they were meant to be.

I cant say I felt any regrets when Alba, or whatever her name was, came by to bitch and moan a few days later.

She stood in my doorway with her hair hanging greasily over her face. For once she wasnt channeling Betty Boop or Jessica Rabbit. Instead she wore baggy pants and a loose T-shirt and one of them baseball hats with the batter on it.