Sunday’s short Stories

Israel Centeno

Some cemeteries in Pittsburgh appear abruptly behind a hill, next to a house, or in front of a neighborhood. Others are beautiful places of solace where we stroll, absorbed in the most idle attractions, transcending ourselves without even thinking about death. These were the thoughts of Rubén Tenorio, sitting on a bench in Lawrenceville Cemetery. He was waiting for Lucas, a very particular contact given to him by Father Ferguson to solve the case of the Carmelita’s nun. This Lucas seemed to be a geopolitics professor at the university and a close friend of the Maracucho brothers, who he had organized into a militant group for Latinx rights. Rubén Tenorio smiled at the term, letting his head slowly turn from left to right, following the dance of a withered leaf.

Lucas, a man of medium height, large nose, and a pompous demeanor, arrived hurriedly. Without greeting or introducing himself, he sat on the bench next to Rubén Tenorio and said, “These are very hot times; it’s undeniable that at this very moment, somewhere in the world, a glacier is melting.”

Rubén Tenorio didn’t take his eyes off the dancing leaf but couldn’t help but sigh, acknowledging the presence of his contact and preparing to initiate the conversation. “How many afternoons like this has humanity experienced?” he responded with a question.

Lucas snapped a thin twig he had picked up from the ground. “Only one,” he replied, “because there is only one afternoon, my friend, and it is this one. We have no certainty that the previous one existed and probably know little about the next one. This is the afternoon when glaciers melt and minorities around the world raise their voices to be seen.”

Rubén Tenorio felt a bitter taste rise from his stomach, burning his esophagus. It was the irritation turned pathology, the daily dying anchored in Pittsburgh, a meaningless case to which he felt increasingly tied with each passing day. Then he said to his small and pompous interlocutor, “You only believe in the present, don’t you?”

Flinging the twig toward some indistinct spot where a few tombstones were drawn, Lucas replied, “Not even that. You don’t even begin to utter a word, not even the sound of a letter, before the present becomes elusive. Don’t you think?”

Exhausted by the idle speculation of the cultural and geopolitical studies professor, Rubén Tenorio finally raised his face and looked him in the eye. He had very prominent cheekbones. “If we lived in another time, he’d surely be consumptive,” he thought. His skin was the color of old leather, and the dullness in his eyes, the only sign of life, was reflected in the excessive shine of his lips, a very vulgar matter.

He sighed. “Let’s get to the point. Tell me how I can connect the Maracucho brothers with the not-at-all-original idea that the world is ending.”

The man immediately responded, “Precisely because it’s not original, I could connect it in thousands of intersections. However, if even one part of the predicate is original, you’ll probably find them behind the observatory on Brighton Hill.”

“Caramba,” replied Rubén Tenorio. “It seems that after all, I’ll move within this impossibility of existence you’ve sold me. I’ll take bus 58 and then number 13 on North Avenue to get off in front of an observatory.”

“Of course,” Lucas responded, “if you find an original particle in the predicate.”

“I already did,” said Rubén Tenorio. “It’s in the Maracucho voseo. So, what are you waiting for?” asked Lucas.

After standing up and brushing off his linen suit, a fresh and elegant outfit for these summer afternoons, Rubén Tenorio said to the geopolitics professor, “You know something, my friend? I’ll move within the possibility of any potential existence because, according to you, I’m incapable of catching a cause that generates them. A micro unit of time where all reality would be contained. All the present is already past, and the past is a restoration of the future, or something like that, Borges said as an epigraph to one of his stories. In other words, dear professor, I’ll try to break the cellophane and find in the haystack this pair of countrymen who have scammed their Latin community.”

“Latinx,” the professor corrected.

Rubén Tenorio, lengthening his stride and walking away from him, wished him good afternoon and told him to eat a shit cone while smiling at a lady running past him like a gazelle, fragile and elegant, like the last afternoons of summer.