The Empanada Brotherhood by John Nichols

maudlin short story about a blind teenage guitarist visiting from Spain who got hit by a New York taxi and wound up in a hospital suffering from amnesia. The nurse who took care of him was practicing to be a flamenco dancer. She was beautiful but of course he couldn’t see her. I didn’t know how to end the story so it went into a pile on top of half a dozen other incomplete stories.
    Time for a little break. Dressed extra-warm, I traipsed downstairs and said “
Buon giorno
” to Rocco, the super, who was hauling garbage cans out from the boiler room to the sidewalk. I offered to help but he grunted me off. “
Vada via.
”
    So I walked north on West Broadway to Washington Square. All around the dreary park, tree branches were spindly naked, very black, icy cold. The dirty snow was pockmarked by a million footprints. Somebody had built seven snowpeople inside the fountain, which gurgled water only in summertime.
    A bus carried me up to Forty-seventh Street. My heart started beating faster six blocks before I got off. Nevertheless, I mustered the courage to walk west past the diamond exchange and a camera store to El Parrillón and found it closed. I was relieved and disappointed. Peering through the window, all I could see was a bar and many round tables covered by clean white linen. Where did Cathy and her parents live and what were they doing right now?
    On my way back to Fifth Avenue I stopped at a pay phone, making a collect call to my folks to wish them a happy NewYear. We didn’t talk long because it was too chilly not to be in motion.
    I took a bus south from Forty-seventh Street to Madison Square where I got off and hiked the rest of the way downtown feeling excited, desperate, and hungry for more in life. I wanted Fame, Fortune, Sex, Love, and plenty of delicious food and high-class alcohol. I wanted to be married and fly around the world, visiting Paris, Rome, and Istanbul, maybe even Manila. Too bad the holiday season had ended.
    Lo and behold, I bumped into Alfonso, Eduardo, and Luigi scurrying miserably north along MacDougal Street and we walked together up to the park. “Happy New Year,” I said. “How are tricks with Adriana, La Petisa, Renata, and Sofía?” That was supposed to be a joke.
    Eduardo didn’t think so. He thought Adriana should have a scarlet A branded on the center of her forehead prior to being deported from this country for hooking without a license. The night before he had tried to pick up a girl at the Ninth Circle and she told him to “bug off.” What did
that
mean? “I can hear Adriana cackling, the witch.”
    Alfonso explained, “It isn’t her fault. It’s just a puerile fixation inside your own adolescent head.”
    â€œLook who’s talking,” Eduardo grumbled. “The mugwump who can’t decide whether to marry the sexpot devil or a humdrum saint.”
    â€œAt least he has a choice.” Luigi flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter. “La Petisa hates my face. She cooks, she keeps the apartment clean, but she won’t even dole out kisses. I am treated like a eunuch in my own house. If I had a Sofía I’d be ecstatic.”
    â€œStop.” Alfonso held up one hand. “I feel so desperate I don’t even want to talk about my novias.”
    But while we were circling the fountain like hamsters in an exercise wheel he said: “In her last letter Renata implied that she might start dating other men if I don’t agree to marry her. My heart freezes when I think of that. It isn’t fair. Why don’t women play by the rules?”
    And Eduardo still never mentioned the ten bucks he owed me.

20. I Am Beautiful
    Though I wore a knitted cap, gloves, and my kapok jacket to the dance studio I half froze to death anyway. Jorge had on his porkpie hat and scarf and overcoat. Between numbers he shoved his hands into his crotch. Cathy started out wearing a sweater and a