Note from Author: This is for Edgefire who needs a Rico story. :) There is another novel I am beginning over at fiction press dot com (Red City) published under username CabbieEsq if you want more of Rico's adventures (takes place about a year after the bombing).
Sleepless City, a Rico Macias Story
Chapter 1
Rico Macias tilted his head, long dark hair falling into his face he didn't bother adjusting. He took in the massive sprawl of lights he knew to be New York City. He thought of a snow globe he once had, tall buildings of NYC, a treasure he and his brothers would admire and question in their shared Havana bedroom. He had no idea how they came to have such a thing. He should be in awe at seeing the city in person, should be a little excited, or anxious, or something. He felt little of anything though, settling back and staring at the buttons overhead. He fussed with the air vent, opening it so a blast of empty air hit his face.
The plane dipped lower and lower and he wondered what it would feel like when they landed. He'd never flown before. At least, not in his accessible memory.
"You okay?"
He heard the words, the gentle voice, the maddeningly considerate tone. He could make out the curly sandy-blond hair in his willing peripheral vision, the glint of silver-rimmed glasses. He shrugged. What did that mean…to be okay? He used to have a sense of that, being okay.
Not anymore.
Next to him sat Kenneth McNair, an FBI agent sent with him, to escort him from Havana, Cuba, the only place Rico knew as home. Kenneth knew Rico's story, a little of it, enough that Kenneth treated him carefully. He was scheduled to meet his real family. His mother, actually. Just her, for now. His real name was different than what he knew. What he thought he knew.
Enrico Juan Diaz.
Who was… that? Who would he have been? With that name.
"Do you need more time, before meeting your mother?"
"No, esta bien."
"Her name is Patricia… and your father is Samuel."
"Sah-m-WEL," Rico corrected. "Pah-TREE-syah."
"Right, Spanish pronunciations. Sorry. You have an older brother, Lucas, and he has a young daughter, Mia."
He couldn't hear anymore. His entire life had been stolen from him. He learned he'd been abducted when he was three years old from a park just a block away from where he lived with his parents in New York City. He learned that the family who raised him in Havana was of no relation. They kept him for the very purpose of grooming him to serve Manuel Caro… which he had done, done well, from age six until he was too old for Manuel's taste, near 14.
But he found love in a beach house, most unexpectedly, and that love led to this flight. Except that love died in a violent explosion, his retribution against those who wronged so many.
El Diablo Blanco.
Todd Manning.
The Mad King of the Mambo Kings, a Cuban-American gang.
Of course, Blanco made sure to rip Rico's heart out first before he embraced his destiny, before he awarded himself retribution. He kept hearing the last words spoken to him by his love, words that burned right to his core.
Are you healed? Are you better? Are you sated? You took him out, you saved the fuckin' world, but she fuckin' paid for that didn't she, for you to have his heart in your mouth, for you to suck him dry one… last… time. Get the fuck away from me. You killed her.
Where was he when he heard his lover had died, that Blanco was gone forever? In Manuel Caro's apartment—beautiful boy, beautiful noise, my god how you fuck, you are a swan on a glass pond, a dancer on a world stage—swearing up and down that they found Blanco's wife, Téa there, lying, not able to tell them the truth. The Havana police had been talking amongst themselves without a thought of Rico who was on the couch as their comrades turned the place upside down because he was nothing but a street whore.
Positive identification. Todd Manning. Just by his boots. Imagine! He took his shoes off then blew the place up! Took 12 or 13 others with him. Typical American.
Laughter.
Rico couldn't breathe. No, no, no, he had cried into his hands. He knew Blanco wanted retribution, that he didn't plan on surviving it, but he and Téa had derailed that intention, had loved him until he was full and sure and wanting nothing but home again. He had wanted to live and love…
Rico had wanted to throw up on that couch. Then he wanted to die with Blanco, for Blanco. Because maybe it was his fault that Téa had died although she didn't actually die. Didn't matter though. Blanco walked out of that hospital thinking she died, blaming Rico for it, walked out hopeless, raging, and in the darkness of that Havana night decided to follow through with his plan of retribution and blow up thirteen pedophiles, adding himself to the mix.
No, no, please no...no, no, no...
A captain admonished the thoughtless police officers when he noticed how upset Rico was.
No evidence this… Todd Manning...was there. Stop spreading rumors.
But—
Another American died today, too. Media will go crazy for a day or so. Drug overdose. Todd Manning.
Wait—
You heard me. Todd Manning was not in the bombing.
Oh so that was how it was going to go. Cuba was going to play with the story the same way they played with the killing of Yanko, his circus bear. It didn't matter. El Diablo Blanco, Todd Manning, was dead just the same no matter how the Cuban government played it.
Mí león.
Blanco.
Mí amor.
"Hey, hey…"
Rico cried again, now, on the plane about to land, cried at the reality of all that had happened and was about to happen. He trembled with the physical effort to stop a grief-soaked meltdown and sure it worked somewhat but the tears, they kept coming. A warm hand on his arm squeezed and then the hand caressed the back of his head and that soft voice of Kenneth came at him, trying to soothe him but soothing was an impossible task.
"I'm so sorry, so so sorry," Kenneth murmured.
Sorry. The worst fucking word, yeah, because it means nothing, can do nothing. It's total and absolute bullshit. I fucking hate the sound of it, mari.
Rico couldn't be soothed because he wept from a wound that would never heal because there was no ingress to reach it. There were no edges to pull together, no way to sew stitches. It lived in the center of him, an edge-less hole so wide, so vast, an expanse of emptiness that would only spread, consuming every bit of him until he would disappear entirely.
His love, his only love, the only love he had ever consciously known in his entire life… was gone.
The plane bumped and they were speeding down the black runway as the brakes squealed to slow down, to stop. He was in New York City, a strange and foreign land, a home he did not know. Alone. Strangers that called themselves family waited for him. He grabbed hold of Kenneth with his night-sky eyes and the man's face fell with empathy, concern. A decision in his blue-sky eyes.
"Hey," he said, "I won't leave your side. Not for a minute. They'll have to tear me away from you."
Kenneth had no reason to make such an offer, such a grand promise, but in some strange way, it comforted Rico. See, Kenneth had known Todd Manning in an American prison and that meant the smallest bit of Blanco then lived inside Kenneth.
It was all Rico had left of love.
"Okay," he said, his voice so choked, hardly anything could be heard over the rustle of departing passengers.
Okay.
To be continued...