Free The Empanada Brotherhood by John Nichols

impolite to speak harshly with a woman, so please forgive me in advance. But why don’t you shut your stupid mouth?”
    Adriana did not hesitate even a beat. “Why don’t
you
put your face between two slices of a sesame bun and call it a hamburger, charcoal man?”
    Roldán lunged against the counter trying to grab Luigi but he wasn’t quick enough—the burnt man slapped Adriana.
    She broke apart, bursting into tears, and banged backward out of the alley shrieking. Then she stood on the sidewalk exercising her lungs like a drowning lady on the
Titanic.
    Some disheveled beatniks came out of the Hip Bagel. Other pedestrians stopped, inspecting Adriana curiously. Her shrill Spanish invective drew two cops on horseback who galloped down MacDougal Street, dismounted at the kiosk, and gaped at her. One of them shouted, “What the hell happened here?”
    Luigi explained in Spanish, “She’s drunk. She’s insulting everybody. So I hit her.”
    The cops asked me, “What did he say?”
    Before I could think I translated his words, so they arrested Luigi, clicking on handcuffs, and called for a squad car on their walkie-talkies. Two dozen tourists had gathered to watch the fun. Roldán was standing there in his filthy apron and beside him El Coco looked like a derelict that had just crawled out of a rathole. Adriana kept hollering invective at Luigi and Eduardo at the top of her voice. Eventually she spit at one cop so they manacled her too, treating her roughly in the process. By now two cruisers had arrived with their cherry tops blinking. They blocked traffic on MacDougal below Bleecker. Luigi and Adriana were hustled to the rear seats of separate squad cars and Adriana shouted more obscenities about Eduardo. An officer finally asked me, “Who the hell is Eduardo?”
    â€œHer ex-husband.”
    â€œAnd who’s the burnt marshmallow?”
    I summoned the courage to reply, “He is not a burnt marshmallow.”
    The cop rolled his eyes. “Excuse me, sir. Let me rephrase my question. Who is the handsome little man wearing the bomber jacket?”
    â€œHe’s just a friend. He didn’t do anything. She’s crazy when she drinks.”
    The cop snorted. “I hate to tell you, but everybody in this city is crazy, even when they don’t drink.”
    â€œLuigi’s a good guy,” I insisted timidly. “Where are you taking him?”
    â€œNone of your damn business.”
    The squad cars drove away, the crowd dispersed, and soon enough the police horses clip-clopped south toward their stables below Canal Street.
    Luigi arrived at the kiosk on the following night none the worse for wear. “Adriana is like an atomic bomb,” he said, laughing. “I like that in a woman.”

25. An Impromptu Diatribe
    â€œThat empanada stand is a silly place,” Cathy said to me. “It’s a club for little boys to hang out in who don’t want to grow up. The men in my country are all like that. The fat man who owns the joint is a child. And that friend of yours, ‘Carlos the Artist,’ is a goofy numskull. Who does he think he is, Cantinflas? If you spend too much time there with those infants you’ll turn into an adolescent basket case yourself, a real boludo. You’ll even begin to look like an empanada. And one day you’ll just be standing on the sidewalk minding your own business when somebody will walk up behind you and shake half a bottle of Tabasco sauce onto your head.”
    I don’t know what had prompted the diatribe. She and Jorge had been working on a solear, which was stern and slow moving at the start. You had to enter it carefully, with constraint and melancholia and deliberate moves that were dream-like and ponderous. The effect was created not by flashy footwork or by explosions of artistic zeal, but rather by a slow liberation of dire emotion translated through minimal guitar work and