Rich - The Mayors Tongue

It was June whenEugene Brentani took the jobat Aaronsen and Son Moving Companyand subleased an apartment in Inwood from aman on his crew named Alvaro. Like many of the men whoworked at Aaronsen and Son, Alvaro had recently emigratedfrom the Dominican Republic. Unlike the others, however, Alvarowas from the Cibao Valley, a small rural region in thenorthern part of the country. Separated from the rest of the islandby the Cordillera Septentrional mountain range, the isolatedfarming communities of the Cibao Valley had developedtheir own dialect. This dialect, Cibaeo, was virtually incomprehensibleto natives of the other Spanish-speaking countries inthe Caribbean. Cubans thought that it sounded excessively affricative,like Catalan; Puerto Ricans found it soft and melodious,like Portuguese. Even the other Dominicans on the movingcrew were baffled by Alvaro's speech. To Eugene, it sounded likeAlvaro was speaking with a mouth full of porridge. Alvaro's attemptsto learn English were, despite his most strenuous efforts,pitiful, but he was able to make himself understood in otherways. Since words failed him, he communicated through vividintonation; forceful hand gestures; and dynamic facial expressions,made with contortions of his rubbery face, the muscles ofwhich were flexible to an uncanny degree. An arched lip or awiggled ear was a disquisition in itself, conveying meaning farmore articulate than, say, one of Eugene's father's monosyllabiclectures. After several weeks, it no longer mattered that Alvarocouldn't speak a word of English. Eugene believed that he couldunderstand him just fine.

Alvaro's flexibility was not limited to his facial muscles. LikeEugene, he looked too small to be a moverhe was lithe, almostbonybut his suppleness compensated for the lack of bulk in hisback and upper arms. During a furniture-moving job, his bodywould arch, twist, and buckle out double-jointed, engaging eachmuscle to its greatest capacity. He could support a loveseat on thestraining tendons of his neck, an ottoman on his bulging rib cage,and even an armchair on his flexing toes, if he walked on hisheels. He was blessed with a jigsaw anatomy.

Although Eugene often feared that his friend's spine mightrupture, or his fingers snap back in compound fractures, Alvaronever suffered any serious injuries. After an especially arduousjob, however, his whole body, and not just his arms or his back,throbbed madly. Each vertebra, rib, and abdominal muscle, hispelvis, his quadriceps, his collarbone, and even his jaw ralliedtogether, a ragged band of crippled assassins, raising hammers,gouges, and pliers to his frayed nerve endings. Using a wild arrayof gestures, Alvaro explained to Eugene how he spent entirenights limping between a bath filled with ice cubes and a bedinsulated by a carefully choreographed patchwork of electricheating pads. He also mimed tears, for the sadness he felt aboutthis sorry state of affairs. But he was good at the work, and heneeded the salary. He had to feed his family.

When Alvaro showed his apartment to Eugene, he apologizedfor its meager furnishings. He had scavenged everythinghe owned from moving jobs. The front door opened into a longliving room, occupied only by a broad player piano, an orangefloor lamp, and stuffed into the space on the parquet floor behindthe piano, a king-sized mattress. A rough kitchen nook hadbeen built into one corner, delineated by a wooden counter andtwo stools. Pipes jutted out from the crumbling white brick behindthe stove. A doorway, minus door, led to the sole bedroom,which ran parallel to the living room and was almost as long.This, Eugene realized, would be his room. It contained a secondmattress, a single; a crumpled sheet was balled up on the floornext to it. Blushing, Alvaro shook it open and laid it over themattress.

"I can make my own bed," said Eugene. "It's really noproblem."

The sheet was spotted with discolorations like diseased flowers;Alvaro smoothed it apologetically. Eugene was about to repeathimself, to make certain his friend understood, when Alvarolet out a loud, embarrassed chortle. Eugene took that to meanthat they had reached an accord.

As it turned out, Alvaro was rarely in the apartment. That wasbecause he had another home down in Washington Heights,which he shared with his wife and their two young sons. He wasthere for most of the connubial hoursbreakfast, supper, andbedtimebut would visit the Inwood apartment on off-shiftsduring the day and on the weekend. He usually brought with hima nurse, a secretary, or sometimes a physician's aidewomenfrom St. Valentino, the hospital that regularly employed Aaronsenand Son to move machinery. On Sunday nights, he broughthome prostitutes. Eugene had never seen one before, at least notup close, not within his own living space. They were less exoticat close range, in the apartment's murky orange light. Theydressed cheaply, but not as ornately as he might have guessed(though perhaps that was a reflection of Alvaro's tastes). Theylooked a lot like the secretaries.

Eugene usually knew when to expect Alvaro, so he was ableto avoid any real unpleasantness. Even though there was no doorto his room, and the walls were dangerously thin, the king-sizedmattress was on the opposite side of the living room, so thesounds never rose beyond muffled grunts and creaks. If Eugeneput on his headphones, it was only to block out any of the noisesthe girl might, accidentally, let escape. Eugene didn't actuallymind listeningin particularly lonely moments he sometimesremoved his headphonesbut for the most part his modesty, andhis respect for Alvaro, kept him from spying on his friend.

At least until one bright, full-mooned night, several monthsinto Eugene's stay. Alvaro had brought home Betty, a Filipinanurse whom Eugene knew from St. Valentino. During a nightshift in October, while Eugene and Alvaro's crew had been haulingin three new CT-scan machines, she had brought Eugene apaper cup full of instant hot chocolate. When the other moversprotested, Betty told them to shut up. Then she cupped Eugene'sface in her soft, latexed hands, and winked at him. Though themen had catcalled and cackled, Eugene was elated. Part of thegoal of this period of self-imposed exile was to meet a girl, andthis was the closest he had come yet. But he had barely seen Bettysince then. His habitual timidity prevented him from going outof his way to seek her out, and soon she seemed less desirable tohim. In recent weeks, the other guys on his moving team toldhim that she'd been hanging out in the hospital stairwells withAlvaro off-shift.