The Autographs Book

It could have been under the highway bridge in Commerce Street or in Franklin Street. Either or, it makes no difference. Some days she would just stand there, back curved, hair dirty as filth and that crusty flat nose. Not a word would come out of her mouth. She would stare at the pillars on the opposite side of the road and nudge the head forward. Cars would pass in front of her and she would not see them. She would not blink or swear at them. Other days she would sit leaning against one of the pillars of cement, one of the colored ones, rainbow style. Knees against the belly she would look at the pages of a book. She was fifty or maybe sixty, difficult to say with those lot. For months I have passed under that damned bridge and I have never seen her turning one bloody page of that book of hers. She would not beg. I have never seen her doing it. Her name was Rose. I found that out one day. It must have been a Saturday or a Sunday because I was not going to work, neither I was going to pick up my daughter. I had time and no one to grab a beer with. I was on the way to my house in McKinney Street, a rotten wooden shithole with the windows that did not close well as the frames were all tilted. As I passed by the bridge I decided to stop. I parked in front of one of the gallerias of some time-wasting artists, on the right side, one of those days when you can actually breathe in Houston and being homeless is not such a bad thing. I beeped the car locked as if anybody could be interested in that rusty Corolla without a back bumper and walked towards the bridge. For a moment I considered stopping at the café at the corner to buy the woman a cake, but then said to myself it would be a waste of money. Cakes in that place, packed with students with glasses staring at their laptops, cost a fortune. I had two quarters In my pocket. That would do I reckoned. She was coming out of her tent when I reached her side of the road. Down on her hands and knees, she moved like a sloth but she stank like a skunk. I stopped at two meters and she did not seem bothered by my presence. I peaked in her tent. There was a lot of stuff in there and many coverless books. I had not noticed earlier she was such a book hoarder. Her Kroger kart, which she used as a portable wardrobe, was full of books too so I thought that asking about her favorite one was a good way to start. She told me to go to hell and ask Satan which one was his favorite book. Here came another surprise. I did not expect her to put together so many words in a row. She continued crawling until she reached the rainbow pillar and put herself straight. She cleared her throat and marked the territory with a spit. Without me asking she said that her name was Rose and I would better get the fuck out of there because that was her corner. It did not seem to me she was willing to talk much. With one hand in my trousers, I felt the two quarters between my fingers but hesitated too long. Rose was already staring at the wall in front of her, on the other side of the street. She had made herself clear and I crossed the road to go back to my car. I drove home to watch some TV.

It was only two weeks earlier that her tent had disappeared and so had Rose’s kart. In the beginning I thought she would be back at some point. Maybe she had gone on holiday to the other side of the city. Ten days after her brown face was not yet in sight so I stopped the car, right under the bridge next to where the tent was. It was late and I had just had a fight with that punk of my ex because I had lost my daughter’s sweater at the playground. I had a beer or two in my stomach and no food but I was not drunk. I was not planning to get out of the car. I just wanted to see where Rose had slept in the last few months. I pulled down the side screen and stuck my neck out. There was nothing really to see but the place did not look empty. Somehow it was still Rose’s corner. Then I saw the books, right beyond the fence. They were a few paperbacks, five or six. The others were not there. One was different. It was a little black book, consumed on the hedges, a journal of some sort. I tried to reach but it was too far so I pulled myself up and jumped over. I doubted Rose could write but before meeting her I also thought she could not speak. That booklet got me curious. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Maybe it was Rose’s diary. Maybe it was not even Rose’s. Once on the other side of the fence, I checked that none of the other vagrants bumming around was looking at me and I picked the black book up. It was greasy on both sides. When I opened it the pages would hardly separate from each other. They were glued together by sweat and dust and food waste and god knows what sort of other organic shit. I quickly checked a few and they were all the same. There was not much in it, on each page a signature. That’s it. One page, one signature, filled for three quarters. I slipped the book under my shirt and hopped over the fence. When I got home I figured that even though I could not guess whose autographs were those, some might. I put a chicken soup on the stove and waited until it got warm flipping the pages. I had seen people selling all sorts of stuff on eBay. Signed books were one of them. I had seen a signed copy of a book by Schwarzenegger selling for nine hundred dollars. Nine hundred motherfucker dollars. There is long line of dumb people out there. And there I was, sitting in my old damp kitchen with a full collection of signatures of fuck knows whom. When I finished my soup I did not waste more time. I took a few pictures and uploaded them on the website. The black book was out for $20,000. I thought that if it had to go, it would better go for a good lump. I waited for three days. I would check in the morning and in the evening if anybody had written and then forget about it. Then one night I could not sleep and tubed some large titties videos to help out. When I finished before going back to bed I opened the eBay account. A guy from Austin had written. Johnny Burgos. People have all sort of weird names on there. It did not say one word about the price but wanted to know if those were a real Saul Bellow and a real E.L. Doctorow. I checked on Google who these fellas were and it turned out they were big. Two writers, Nobel prize and all that shit. Both dead. I wrote Burgos that he could bet they were real and it took him three minutes to respond. He asked if he could come over the morning after to collect. I told him that I could ship it but he said he wanted it from my hands and would pay only after he had seen it with his eyes. That was fine with me but I went to sleep without getting too excited. Surely it was going to be a scam or some sort of funny joke.

That Burgos turned out to be a surprise. A young man with a bald head and an unshaven face. He had a foreign accent but he was no güey. When he arrived I offered him a coffee but all he wanted was to see the black book which he held in his hands for twenty minutes sitting on my sofa. He did not even touch the cookies I served him while he was scanning the damn thing. At some point, he stretched and he pulled out a magnifier, one of those lenses to look at diamonds. Finally, he said he wanted it and he wanted me to take the listing down, immediately. He left the black book on the coffee table and went to his car. I watched him going back and forth through the window. This time he had one of those carrying cases with him. He asked if I had taken down the listing and I told him to chill. When was I supposed to do it? I asked what was in the case and he said that first he wanted to see the listing off. He looked at me while I did it and then he opened the thing. It was cash, all in $100 notes. He paid and two minutes later all that was left of him was his money. I recounted it a couple of times. It was all legit. To celebrate I took a beer from the fridge and watched some more titties thinking of Rose and that maybe she was taking a holiday on the other side of the city. With part of the money, I fixed the windows and also the roof which had been leaking for weeks, the rest I kept and made my days a little easier.