1
It was Christmastime in Miami, and Hugo hadn't been sleeping well because every time he tried, he'd feel his indebtedness drop into bed with him, this invisible thing. Sometimes it would take hold of his hand, kiss him, then wrap itself around his chest so that it hurt to breathe, or it would slap him awake and demand attention. It was impossible to sleep. It was impossible to imagine a future.
He lived in an efficiency. When he sat at his table drinking tea, he could hear the murmur of another family through the drywall. The children whined, laughed, dribbled basketballs. Their noises made him feel like he lived in a real home. From his window, he'd watch them-all in school uniforms-march across the street at 7:05 a.m. to catch the school bus. He'd wanted to be a father.
But Meli was dead, and even if she were still alive and he'd managed to be a better husband, they'd always been broke and in want of what they could not afford. They used to browse retail catalogues in the golden hours of the afternoon, but now Hugo tossed them directly in the trash. He avoided her favorite fast-food restaurants and instead practiced growing romaine lettuce on his windowsill. He had no desire for new romantic partners. He barely had the will to eat.
His only splurge: On Fridays, he'd drive to La Carreta and order a $2.25 café con leche. He kept a quarter on him for a tip. This one extravagant outing amounted to $10 per month, and though it pained Hugo to overpay for coffee, he needed the company of others. More than the coffee, making a transaction with Barbara, the eldest of the cafeteria workers, brought him dignity.
Perhaps it was because she always had nice things to say about his appearance-the clean linen of his tunic, his ceremonial orisha hat, his beaded amulets. When Barbara would reach out and hold his hand, Hugo would pretend he was a true priest, like Lourdes, his supervisor at the Miami Botanica & Spa in Hialeah. He pretended because he was an imposter. He knew this, yet his work depended on him acting as if he were ordained and capable of giving the divination that is received in Ifa.
Sometimes, while enjoying a cafecito at the window, he'd hear other patrons take note of him-neither Cuban nor Afro-Cuban nor Caribbean. Hugo looked Quechuan or mestizaje. You'd think, in a city like Miami, the larger Cuban American population would be used to seeing more Indigenous-looking South Americans, but it did not feel that way. He tried not to pay attention.
It being just days before Christmas, he'd gone to the window to give Barbarita a little gift-a devotional from his place of employment. He knew the present was nothing extraordinary, but he'd wrapped it using the remainder of the gift paper he'd found tucked away in Meli's closet. It was nice paper, blue with white snowflakes, and even though Meli used to do all the wrapping, he did well wrapping it on his own. At the counter, Barbara greeted him with her customary "¿Qué me dice?" She slid his coffee over. "Do my eyes deceive me? Hugo. It's not Friday! Got your days scrambled?"
"I wanted to surprise you," he said, and he blushed feeling all the warmth of the season inside him. And Barbara, in her response, squeezed his hand with a strength he did not know that she had. Suddenly, his phone buzzed and rang, startling him badly. Hugo excused himself and studied the unknown number. It seemed familiar, and he wondered, Should I answer it or let it go to voicemail?, and feeling a sense of optimism, he answered, "Yes. Hello."
"Is this Hugo Contreras?"
He'd heard the man's voice before, but he did not know where.
"Hello? Hello?" the voice probed. "Can you hear me?"
"Who is this?"
"Alexi Ramirez." Hearing that name uttered by that man sent Hugo way back-to him and Meli curled under the bare down duvet insert of their bed, the murmur of Ramirez's late-night commercials carrying them off to sleep, A/C blasting. How Hugo missed those quiet nights.
"Is it really you?" Hugo asked. "The attorney on the bus benches?"
When the voice chuckled and responded, "Wow! Yes. That was me. A long time ago," Hugo took Barbara's gift and walked off, even though he hadn't sipped his coffee or paid. He paced the lot, weaving in and out of parked cars; then he paused and whispered into his phone, "Do you know who I am, you son of a bitch?" Before Alexi could respond, Hugo raised his voice and said, "You need to stop calling me! What do I got to do to get your people to stop fucking calling me?"
"Hugo . . ."
"It's every day. Every fucking day. And you hide your number on caller ID. Isn't spoofing your number illegal? Tell me, Alexi. Should I file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission?" He yelled all of this, even with police officers nearby. Hugo's indebtedness, which had been trying to latch onto him all day, slunk to the ground and pooled around his feet. Hugo stomped through it, kicking it so that it felt, for a moment, as if he'd actually conquered his debts once and for all.
Alexi didn't hang up. He waited for Hugo to stop yelling; then he delicately explained why he'd called: "Look. I get it. I'm a debt collection attorney. But I'm being haunted. And it's not just me. I have a wife, a daughter. There's more to me than the work I do. Can you please help me?"
Hugo sat in his car considering the attorney's plea. He pitied him. But even with his indebtedness festering and crawling on his skin like worms, he said, "I'm sorry. I won't help you."
l
In Miami-Dade County, most people remember Alexi as the traffic-ticket attorney on the bus-bench ads. He was something unfortunate to stare at during the monotony of rush hour. The ad was so dramatic, like a bad yearbook photo: Alexi, fat, bald, posing with his clenched fist under his chin-an angry American bald eagle squawking behind him. It was the kind of face that made you want to stop your car and doodle something all over it. Whenever Meli would notice one of the ads, she’d close her fist and press it against her chin and say, “No pagues ese ticket.” What could Hugo say? When she got a ticket going fifteen over the limit, he knew whom to call without even consulting the Yellow Pages. Alexi’s firm got her off with a small fine and no points. And there was even something of the jingle (No points, no points, Ramirez. No points. No points, zoom zoom.)-Meli would sing the tune without realizing she was doing it. This is to say, Alexi was in the background of their life, creeping in, but they barely paid attention to him.
It took Hugo and Meli quite some time to notice when, in 2015, the bus-bench ads began to bleach in the sun. Those that remained were in bad shape, hardly recognizable and marked up with mustaches and penises. Meli noticed first. "Mira, Hugo. The ads are leaving us. Where's our friend going?" She was so shocked that she called Alexi's ticket clinic while sitting in traffic. She put her phone on speaker so that Hugo could hear the "We're sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service." "No, I don't believe it," she said. "We need to find him, bro."
"Ask Siri."
"No!" Meli said. "Who cares about him! We need to find a bench with his pudgy little face."
In rush hour, they searched the streets. It was nonsensical. Something about finding Alexi had infected them, much in the way that searching for a lost set of keys can drive a person mad. It was clear to Hugo that finding Alexi's face meant something more to Meli, and though he grew tired and hungry and annoyed by the desperation of commuters, he persisted until they did find one of his ads, completely intact. No mustaches. No penises. Just a piece of gum on Alexi's nose, which she easily scraped off with her fingernail. Meli said, "How do you think he'd look with hair?" Then, using a red Sharpie she kept on her for tagging up commonplace signage, she conjured up a trendy little hairdo, all spiked up in the front like Ricky Martin. It was ridiculous, yet it brought Hugo and Meli such joy. Afterward, they said their goodbyes to bus-bench Alexi and, for years, forgot him.
Until the phone calls started.
They'd be out, usually at Islas Canarias eating Cuban food, when Hugo's phone would go off, always so damn loud. In those situations, he'd pretend that he didn't hear the ringing, that he didn't see his phone vibrating off the table, that he wasn't aware of the patrons staring, wondering, Why doesn't he just answer it? He'd cut into his steak and continue his conversation with Meli, and she learned not to ask who was calling. She tried to teach him how to silence his phone, but even that unsettled him. She'd asked, once, "So how many girlfriends you got, anyways?" And she laughed real good, though Hugo could see that she meant it. "Don't say things like that," he said. "Not ever."
Back then, Hugo's indebtedness was like a mosquito splattered on his car's windshield. It annoyed him, but only mildly. It was easy to ignore. It had only taken a little blood. Hugo knew about the statute of limitations. He knew there was no reason to pay the $2,000 he'd defaulted on during his twenties. He knew that the original creditor had, long ago, sold the debt to a third party; the creditor had written off the loss to reduce the tax burden on profits from other accounts. It wasn't like he'd taken money from someone. He'd taken it from a corporation that had anticipated, in its business plan, that some debtors would default. This is to say, Hugo had zero remorse. As far as he was concerned, he'd always been in debt. He was indebted to God the day he was born. Carrying such debt, in his mind, was like forgetting that you are also made of flesh and bone.
But he hated the phone calls. He hated how invasive they were and what they implied. Meli would pretend not to notice, and Hugo hated that he was putting her in that situation in the first place. That one time she'd taken his phone to put it on silent mode, he'd seized it back and said, in public, "Don't touch," with such a force that Meli looked as if he'd slapped her. His words made her cry. How he wanted to simply be free of his past blunders-to be an unbaptized child, forgotten by God and devil and belonging only to himself-which was why, one night, after he'd looked at his savings account, he answered one of those unwanted calls. It was bold. He was in bed with Meli, watching reruns of Mr. Bean and eating popcorn, and he blurted out, "Won't. You. Stop calling?"
The way he said it, with no warmth, really startled Meli.
On the line, a prerecorded message noted that the phone call was an attempt to collect a debt. It was a message on repeat, vocalized by someone for whom English was not their dominant language. There was something menacing about the recording, the way it'd repeat, all staticky and silvery, as if it were just some transcript reverberating endlessly in some metallic void. The recording reminded him of the complex and frayed speakers within the mine he'd once worked in-a lifetime ago as a young child-and how the supervisor would announce lunch breaks and shift changes, always in a voice that was distorted and far-off-seeming. Hugo could almost see the sadness of his brother's face, soft under the glow of the many oil-lit lanterns. He didn't want to go back there.
When the debt collector finally came to the line, Hugo said, "Come on! It's Sunday night."
The young woman on the line asked, "Am I speaking with-"
"You know that it's me."
Meli pulled at the sheets. From beneath the nest of the duvet insert and the unfolded laundry, she kicked him off the bed with her bare foot and whispered, "Go get me some Diet Coke."
Hugo took the call to the kitchen.
"I'm calling regarding your Bank of America credit card debt."
"I know. I know. Can't I just pay it right now, over the phone?"
"Yes! Great! I can walk you through the payment options-"
"I just want to pay."
"But sir-"
"Are you going to take my checking info or what?"
"Of course, Mr. Contreras. How much would you like to pay?"
Hugo told her that he'd pay the $2,000. He gave her his checking information, and he asked her to mail him a receipt. That night, he jumped back into bed with Meli, and he felt liberated, exorcised of his past financial missteps, even if he'd blown through half of his savings. He kissed her, climbed between her legs, and told her what he'd done as if he'd conquered a mountain-as if the many peaks and walls and barriers surrounding him had fallen away to some celestial halo.
"That was so stupid," Meli said. "We could have gone to Disney!"
"Disney?"
"And you forgot my Diet Coke," she said, kicking him off the bed again. "Please!"
For Hugo, making the payment was absolutely worth it-even if Meli didn't see it that way-until he received his receipt in the mail. It showed that he still owed $14,476. The law firm had calculated sixteen years of high interest. He called, disputing the amount and refusing to pay, always prompted to listen to that recorded message, but in the end there was no escaping the total debt.
What the firm did was a crime. Yet they sent him to court, and the judge ruled in their favor. The statute of limitations had reset when he'd made a payment. He'd opened his door wide open and invited that attorney right in. By the end of the year, Hugo's wages were being garnished. The little he made at the botanica was less, so he relied on credit cards for groceries and gas. With the high interest, Hugo knew that he'd never pay off his debt, and it angered him-how the missteps he'd made could haunt him forever. He didn't want to talk about it. Meli wished that he would.
Maybe Hugo could have forgiven Alexi for that mess, but six years after Hugo's $2,000 payment, Alexi came for them all over again. Hugo's credit cards were maxed out, and Meli was gone, and there was still Diet Coke in the fridge, unopened, and the phone calls were becoming incessant, this time for another kind of debt. Hugo had, without fully realizing it, cosigned on Meli's hospital bills. He could only vaguely remember having done so. Through the wake and the funeral, he ignored the calls, but between the phone ringing and Meli's aunt Lena shoving him and saying "Have you no respect?" and the priest reading the rites and giving Hugo the side-eye, there was no peace. On the road nearby, a dozen or so motorcycles revved their engines. Overhead, a traffic helicopter hovered. It was so ordinary. And maybe there was something else preventing him from grieving her loss. In remembering Meli, he could only recall another person. The thought was parasitic.
Copyright © 2023 by Raul Palma. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
