Free Cubop City Blues by Pablo Medina

recurrence of the pain was a wake-up call. Now he had to find the attacker for sure or he would suffer forever. Angel was on intravenous morphine at the time, floating in a plane where everything made sense, or nothing made sense but it was too much trouble to unravel it: a skein of cause and consequence. Morphine takes you to the edge, and it’s amazing how clear things are from there. He looked at Amanda and saw concern shadowing her face. He wanted to kiss her. He couldn’t remember if he already had. He was absolutely certain he could fly and she could fly with him. He remembered the doctor coming. He remembered a CAT scan, blood tests, X-rays. He remembered the doctor saying he had an abscess—fairly common in these cases—that he would have to drain. He remembered nodding out, a tube in his stomach, nasty nurses and nice nurses, a spot of blood that seeped onto the sheets, the fellow next to him whose stomach had been taken out. He hadn’t eaten in three weeks. His eyes were sunken and his lips were gray. According to Amanda, he’d be dead soon. His aura was diminishing.
    While Angel was home recovering, he asked Amanda what language she and his mother used to communicate. No language, she said. What do you mean? he asked. The spirit world is beyond language, she said. We use signs and and we use thoughts. He dropped the subject and fell asleep on the sofa. He dreamed of a river on which words floated and sank and floated again. He dreamed of being dizzy with loneliness. Finally he dreamed of the man who knifed him, who lived in his neighborhood and was waiting for the right moment to knife him again, this time aiming better and deeper so that he would die miserably on the dirty chewing-gum-splattered sidewalk.
    Angel survived the abscess without complications or need of major surgery, due in no small measure to the surgeon who treated him, one of the best in the city, and he went on about his life as if he’d never been knifed. Few cities allow for that sort of continuation and Cubop City is one. Then he received a call from a detective in the Tenth Precinct. They had a suspect in hand and wanted him to identify the perpetrator that same afternoon. He and Amanda rushed to the station house, and, as the six suspects were lined up before them, she grabbed his hand and pressed it. One of the men had a handlebar mustache. He asked the detective, who was sitting next to them, if the man lived in their neighborhood, and he nodded his head yes. Police procedure prevented him from answering out loud. I think that’s him, he said. You sure of that? the detective asked. Angel could sense Amanda’s eyes boring into him. Yes, he said.
    After that it was only a matter of time. He testified at the trial a year later. The man had by now shaved off his mustache but it didn’t matter. He identified him and the court-appointed defense lawyer offered a weak and ineffectual cross-examination. He was found guilty. Then the judge discovered some inconsistencies in the prosecutor’s papers and the case was thrown out. The man was let go. Justice had been done. Amanda wasn’t so sure.
    She tried contacting Angel’s mother again on several occasions but she was unsuccessful. Her necromancy mentor told her that once the dead accomplish their goal they disappear forever. She’s joined the ether, the tutor said. She won’t hear you or see you, nor can you see or hear her. The best you can do is breathe in and breathe out and hope that a molecule or two that were once part of her is in the air. Let it in, the tutor added, let it all in. In physics lies redemption.

YOU SAY BEAUTY
    I t is a special night. You have left a party held in your honor in a big house once owned by the niece of a Philadelphia banking magnate. Mainline Brahmins used to visit the house, invited by the niece to spend a weekend in the country, away from the bustle of their urban lives. Now, after passing through