Chapter Six
San Juan, Puerto Rico
2023
Daisy’s soul is still in her body, but she can’t tell if that body is still fit for the world. She doesn’t feel cold or hot. The amplifying intensity of the storm does not exist on the same plane where Daisy truly is. There is no weather here. No blasting gale of wind. No sheets of hard rain. There is no pain either, in the wreckage of bones and skin that encase her. She is both conscious and unconscious because she can sense some of what is happening to her, even though she is unable to respond in any of the customary human ways. She can almost see the flashing of the lights when the ambulance arrives. There are voices, masculine and feminine, that she can hear but not apprehend. There are hands on her skin, which she is aware of but can’t exactly feel. There is a thin-drawn quality, a warp of space, a perception of herself as a rubber band, pulling taut and then loosening into a dangerous and terrifying wobble. Her soul ascends and descends with hideous speed, over and over, shooting into the atmosphere and then plummeting back into the stillness of her body, as if she’s trying to defibrillate herself. Back on Earth, the hands that are working on her body affix her to some kind of board, and when the board is lifted, her soul falls out of her again. Heedless of gravity, it plunges upward, and this time, it feels too far.
They are sliding her body into the back of the ambulance. There is the clicking and beeping of some medical machinery nearby. Daisy understands that her soul has to return now, right this instant, that they can’t close the ambulance doors yet, that they cannot leave without it or it might never find her again. Not yet, not yet. Wait! Daisy wants to scream.
Her voice is not available.
When Daisy arrived in San Juan almost two years ago, she brought some secret, far-fetched plans and a solitary suitcase of secondhand clothes with her. It was her second attempt to move to Puerto Rico in as many years, and despite her mother’s rigorous grievances, she had every intention of making this one stick. Her cousin Stefani, whose entrance into college in Florida was delayed by the pandemic, had finally gone, leaving a vacant bedroom behind.
“You’ll take Stefani’s room, stay with us!” Tío Benny said.
When Daisy was little and they’d come to visit on summer vacations, she would cry whenever it was time to go home. On the last night of the last visit before her dad died, Daisy and Stefani made a set of handcuffs for themselves out of gray construction paper and a stapler. They chained themselves together. They ate dinner and brushed their teeth that way, slipping out of the handcuffs only momentarily when it was time to wriggle into their nightgowns. They went to sleep wearing them, and then woke up heartbroken when they discovered they had ripped their paper chain during the night. Mom was unable to conceal her impatience with the whole display.
“You can’t pack wearing handcuffs!” she said. “Even paper ones!”
It was Dad who took Daisy onto his lap, smoothed her hair, and kissed the top of her head. He allowed her to make a damp spot on his clean shirt with her tears.
“We’ll come back again real soon,” he said.
But he never did come back. That was his last time, his last sunburned nose. Daisy remembered that every time she arrived in Puerto Rico and then again every time she left. She would never take it for granted that there would be another trip. She was bereft every time, just in case. Mom tried telling her that it wasn’t necessarily Puerto Rico she loved.
“It’s only because we’re here on vacation,” Mom reasoned. “We spend our time here doing all this fun stuff together, sleeping in, going to the beach. Of course you love it. If we lived here, things would be different. I’d have to work, you’d have to go to school. You wouldn’t be having sleepovers with Stefani every night.”
But Daisy had always known Mom was wrong about this. Or actually that she was right, but it didn’t matter. Because for as long as she could remember, Daisy had wanted to move to San Juan. The draw was partly Stefani and family and fun, yes, but it was also the fizz of energy, the light, the language, the flavors of the food. The chorus of nighttime sounds, the smell of hot asphalt and rain and flamboyán trees. It was the gestures and mannerisms she’d always presumed were particular to her own family, her own self, until she began to see them in abundance here: the way her mom always scrunched up her nose when she wanted Daisy to repeat herself, the way the stockperson at the grocery store might place her hand on Daisy’s forearm before directing her toward the olives she needed in aisle seven. It was the way communal pride emerged here in hard times, as a consequence of autonomy in a place that was supposedly not autonomous. It was grit and determination in balance with an ease of joy seldom seen in New York. It was the evolution of Daisy’s understanding of this place that was just foreign enough to be an adventure and still familiar enough to feel like home. Daisy knew that it was Puerto Rico she had always been in love with, no matter what Mom thought. She felt more alive when she was here.
On her twelfth day of her second time moving to the island, Daisy went to see an apartment Benny was thinking of buying. The apartment was not on the market, but a friend of Benny’s in Miami had inherited it from an elderly aunt, and wanted to sell it quickly with all of its contents. Benny was the guy for a purchase like that. He’d take care of everything and earn a significant price reduction for the effort of cleaning the place out, and then he’d earn even more when he sold whatever items were worth selling, and then he’d earn more again when he renovated and added the property to his rental portfolio, which had become an extremely lucrative second line of work for him. The deal was more or less done over the phone, so Daisy’s only job was to show up at the building, meet the neighbor who would let her in, and then take some pictures for her uncle.
Despite the simplicity of this task, Daisy felt unqualified for it. But Benny was busy and she was not, so he gave her a checklist and sent her on her way. She was to run water from every tap, locate every outlet and plug her phone charger into each one to test that they worked. She was to photograph the pipes beneath the sinks and the casings around the windows. She was to check the floorboards for warping or discoloration, any signs of water damage, search every corner for the tiniest hint of mold—even a single spore was unacceptable.
Daisy arrived at the small art-deco building with its curved balconies and geraniums in every window box, and she pressed the buzzer that said Fernández , waiting until a glamorous older woman appeared behind the glass. She was tall and stately with striking cheekbones, and her white hair had the personality of a skating cloud. She smiled warmly at Daisy, but refrained from opening the door until Daisy produced identification. After Daisy satisfied that requirement, the older woman twisted the handle and pulled the heavy door so Daisy could step inside. The woman smiled somewhat formally before turning to glide down the hallway, her loose hair and silken garments trailing behind her.
“You’re much younger than I expected,” Mrs. Fernández remarked over her shoulder. “You’re thinking of buying this place?”
“Oh, not me,” Daisy said. “My uncle. I’m just the eyes and ears.”
“Oh, you’re much more than that, I’m sure.” The older woman winked at Daisy, pausing at the bottom of the steps and gesturing upward. “Second floor, it’s the door on the left. Apartment 2B.”
“Thank you!” Daisy said, but her hostess had already disappeared.
In front of apartment 2B there was a welcome mat in the shape of a sunflower, where Daisy slipped out of her sandals. She closed the door behind her and hung her tote bag from the knob. When she flicked the kitchen switch, she didn’t expect it to generate light, but there was a pop followed by a mild hum as the long fluorescent bulb in the ceiling flared to life. Electricity was still on, and Daisy, too, felt suddenly lit from within.
This apartment was pristine and glorious and looked like a place where a woman wearing matte lipstick, kitten heels, and an apron might prepare a Bundt cake. The kitchen cabinets were a sunny yellow with chrome hardware, and the Formica countertops had the kind of sharp, pointy corners that hardly existed in Daisy’s lifetime. Beyond the kitchen, the wall-to-wall carpet was orange and plush, and the sofa was olive-green velvet with doilies on both arms. Daisy stared at the living room wallpaper for a full three minutes, trying to determine whether the cascading geometric shapes were waterfalls or rainbows or fruit trees.
She stood transfixed for some further number of minutes, barely aware of the passage of time until she felt a gathering of sweat at the nape of her neck that reminded her she was here to do a job. She roused herself, retrieving her phone from her tote bag. But first, air-conditioning. She found the modern window unit, the apartment’s only concession to the twenty-first century, and when she turned it on, it filled the small apartment with both cold air and enough white noise to stifle the passing traffic on the street below. Daisy unfolded her checklist and flattened it out against the counter. She was diligent in working her way through the list, but felt a stab of yearning each time she opened another cabinet and discovered inside a stack of plates ringed with palm leaves, or a set of colored glass tumblers in a weird miniature cart. Benny had to buy this apartment, he had to, and then she could rent it from him. I need to never leave this place , she thought. When she was finished and slipped her feet back into the sandals outside, she realized the welcome mat wasn’t a sunflower at all; it was a daisy.
That night at home in Tío Benny’s kitchen, she waited impatiently for her uncle to ask about the apartment. She’d already helped Tía Pamela clear the table and load the dishwasher. Benny was tired after a full day at the garage, but his energy for new real estate was inexhaustible. Daisy had been staying here for less than two weeks, and already she could tell that Benny and Pamela had an understanding: Benny could invest their savings in property as long as it was profitable and Pamela didn’t have to hear or worry about it, ever. So Daisy waited.
“I’m taking Karl Marx for a walk.” Her aunt kissed Benny on top of the head. Karl Marx was the French bulldog who filled in as their child now that all four of their kids had grown up and moved out, three to the mainland (including Stefani, who they all hoped would return after college), and one to Vieques. Daisy’s arrival had done nothing to threaten Karl Marx’s current position as favored child, and they all knew it. The door had barely clicked shut behind his stubby little tail before Benny asked to see the pictures of the apartment. Daisy opened her photo app and handed over the phone, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
“It’s in great condition.” She stood up so she could look at the pictures again over her uncle’s shoulder, as if she hadn’t been staring at them all afternoon, as if she hadn’t memorized every detail. “The whole building is in good condition, but the apartment itself is mint.”
“Hmm.” Benny made a noncommittal noise while he swiped through the pictures, pausing longer than necessary on the most boring ones, zooming in on pipes, on the spaces beneath the pipes. “Is that water?”
Daisy leaned down with a squint. “No, it’s just a shadow. It was bone-dry.”
“Wow, that is some wallpaper!” He said this without a trace of admiration.
Daisy nodded solemnly. He zoomed in on the carpet.
“Is that wall-to-wall?”
She nodded again.
He sighed. “I guess we could do laminate flooring in there.” He zoomed in on the countertops, the cabinets. “But it’ll be expensive enough to replace all the rest of this stuff.”
“But why would you need to replace it when it’s good as new?” Daisy asked.
He looked up at her with an arched eyebrow and did not reply until he came to the pictures of the bathroom, which was tiled to eye level with pink squares. The tub, toilet, and sink were also pink, and there were enormous pink flowers on the shower curtain.
“It’s like a life-size version of Barbie’s Dreamhouse,” Benny said.
“Yes, exactly,” Daisy said reverently.
“It’s almost a shame it’s in such good condition,” Benny said. “No one’s going to rent it like this.”
“I will!” she answered too eagerly. Daisy swallowed loudly enough that they both heard the gulp in the otherwise quiet kitchen. “I’ll rent it exactly like this, if you buy it. You wouldn’t have to change a single thing. Literally nothing.”
Benny looked from the screen to Daisy and back again, as if to gauge her seriousness. He zoomed in on the back of the pink toilet, where a crocheted cozy in the shape of an elaborate cake hid the spare roll of toilet paper. “Not even that?”
Daisy looked at him. “Especially not that.”
He set the phone on the table and sat back in his chair, folding his arms.
“And what about all the old lady’s stuff?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“Everything’s still in the apartment, right? Like, everything? Her clothes, shoes?”
It was true there were prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet, clothes in the closet, books on the shelves, a definite odor coming from the fridge.
“I can take care of it,” Daisy said. “I’ll take care of all of it.”
Benny nodded his head in an ambiguous way that didn’t mean yes. It meant he was thinking about what she’d said.
“I mean, I really love it actually.” Daisy said this because saying what she really meant would make her sound insane. There is a newly formed cavern in my soul that will only be satisfied by the presence of this apartment in my life, by the presence of my life in this apartment. “I would be really happy there,” she said instead, reaching for an articulation that would make sense to a normal person. “The location is perfect, and you wouldn’t have to invest time or money renovating it. You’d have it rented from day one.”
She had a plan for the contents, too, but she didn’t need to get into all that just now. Benny clicked her phone off and placed it face down on the table in front of him. Daisy sat back in her own chair and hopefully watched her uncle’s face.
“Tell you what,” he said after a few moments of quiet contemplation. “The asking price is more than fair. I’ll make an offer, get the deal done. You’ll take care of cleaning out the old lady’s stuff, right?”
She nodded, her breath quickening.
“Then, if you agree to manage the other vacation rental in Miramar and the two in Condado, and I mean everything, from booking to check-ins, cleaning, dealing with guests, all of it. If you do that, I’ll let you live in this one.” He pointed a finger to the phone. “Rent-free.”
Daisy felt a leap in her chest. “For real?”
“For real. I’m tired of fighting traffic in Condado every time we have a guest arriving. Parking over there is a nightmare. This is a win-win. It’s a solid investment.”
Daisy felt her rib cage rising and expanding. Benny held up a hand between them, a calming gesture.
“Just for now, though,” he said. “We’ll give it six months. See how it goes.”
Daisy’s face was a mess of suppressed emotion. She tried to keep it together.
“Maybe you’ll get tired of living in 1965,” Benny said.
“Never,” she whispered.
The only thing Daisy changed was the sheets on the old lady’s bed, which she laundered along with the lemon-embroidered hand towels she found in the linen closet. After the closing, Daisy stayed on in Benny’s house while she worked on the cleanout. When Stefani came home for Thanksgiving break, they tackled the old lady’s closets together. Daisy bought a bottle of cheap wine for the occasion, which she poured into two amber-colored glasses she found in an upper cabinet.
“This place is incredible.” Stefani sipped from her glass and then set it down on the heavy wooden nightstand in Daisy’s soon-to-be bedroom. Daisy rushed to get a coaster, trying not to make it obvious that she was rushing to get a coaster. Stefani kicked off her Converse beside the bed and pulled open the accordion doors on the closet, bending inside to retrieve a pair of tan loafers with a Velcro strap. “What size shoe we got going on here?”
Daisy surreptitiously slipped the coaster beneath her cousin’s wine glass and then bent down to retrieve the other shoe.
“Six and a half.” Daisy fiddled with the Velcro strap.
“Too small.” Stefani dropped both into the cardboard box they’d marked thrift and then reached back into the closet, pulling out a silk kimono-style robe covered in peacocks. “ This though!”
“Gorgeous.” Daisy whistled. “That one goes in the keep pile.”
Stefani tossed the colorful silk down on the bed. Two hours later the single thrift box was only half-full, dwarfed by an enormous heap of new, old clothes. The girls tried on everything: bell-bottoms, a host of belted miniskirts, shirts with enormous pointed collars. Wristbands, headbands, leotards, leg warmers.
“We can’t keep all of it, though!” Daisy said.
Stefani pouted into the mirror.
“We have to be reasonable,” Daisy said.
“Exactly what is it about this outfit that you find unreasonable?” Stefani gestured the full length of her figure-hugging, powder-blue leisure suit, and Daisy found herself at a loss.
The girls knew that their benefactor’s name had been Gloria Jiménez, so they began to reference her, as in, “Gloria really knew how to rock a silk turban,” or “I wonder where Gloria found this caftan.”
When they were finished, they retreated to Gloria’s living room, Stefani in a terry-cloth minidress, and Daisy in a gold lamé jumpsuit. They sat together on Gloria’s olive-green sofa and ripped into a bag of Chifles.
“I clash with the couch,” Stefani said.
“Nonsense.” Daisy held the bag out to her cousin, who plunged her hand in. “This couch goes with everything.”
Stefani made a dubious face but did not reply.
“What a cool old lady Gloria must have been,” Daisy said, kicking her shimmery gold legs up onto the coffee table.
“When are you gonna move in here?” Stefani asked.
Daisy shrugged. “We could stay here tonight? It’s pretty much ready now. I still have to bring my stuff over from your house, but I don’t have that much.”
Stefani shook her head, talked with her mouth full. “I’m only home for four days. Mom would murder us both if we don’t come home.”
“True.” Daisy tipped some Chifles into her hand and set the bag on the coffee table beside her cousin’s feet. “So I’ll move over here when you go back on Sunday.”
“Awesome.” Stefani leaned forward and began rummaging through the drawers in the coffee table. “Where’s the remote for this thing?” she said, gesturing at the television, which was an enormous box that stood on four spindly, gold-capped, mid-century legs, although the screen itself was no more than fourteen inches across.
“No remote.” Daisy smiled. She stood up and walked over to the box. She pulled a knob outward with a click, and the screen began to glow. It was several more seconds before fuzzy images began to appear there.
“No cable?” Stefani asked.
Daisy shook her head. “But there are a bunch of VHS tapes.” She squatted down to check the shelf beside the television. “We could watch an old movie.”
It took them a half hour to figure out how to work the VCR, but after consulting Google on Stefani’s phone, they eventually got it running. They watched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , and when it was finished, they stayed there, in Gloria’s clothes, with their feet stretched out across Gloria’s coffee table while the credits rolled.
“We should get back,” Stefani said. “Mami won’t sleep until we’re in for the night.”
“In just a minute,” Daisy said. “I want to show you something first.”
Stefani stayed where she was on the couch while Daisy went back to the bedroom and rummaged around beneath the bed. She pulled out three large pieces of poster board and an overstuffed green binder, and hauled everything back to the living room.
“What’s all this?” Stefani said, straightening up from the couch and stretching her arms overhead. “Looks like a middle school art project.”
“Just wait,” Daisy said, tossing the binder down on the recliner and then walking across the living room, where she propped the three posters up against Gloria’s sideboard.
“Oh!” It began to dawn on Stefani what she was looking at. “Girl!” She stood up.
“Pretty good, right?” Daisy said, standing back to admire her handiwork.
“Yes!”
Daisy had told no one except her cousin about her plan to start her own business here in San Juan, and her secrecy was born mostly as an avoidance strategy against having to bear her mother’s opposition. When Daisy anticipated all the possible reasons her fledgling business might fail, a lack of foresight or aversion to hard work would not be part of the equation. She had contingency plans for every scenario.
“You know there’s perfectly good software available that will do this work for you,” Stefani said, stepping closer to inspect the posters. “But, wow, doing this mood board thing the old-fashioned way is so much better. Look at this!”
Daisy watched as her cousin leaned in to admire the images she had mostly glue-sticked to the poster board. The almost-transparent edges of some scotch tape were visible in a few stubborn places where the glue wouldn’t hold.
“It’s so tactile, so cool!” Stefani knelt down for a better look. “It’s amazing. You’re a straight-up visionary, prima.”
Daisy grinned, and when Stefani stood, her kneecaps were crisscrossed by the indentations of the shag carpet.
“And what about this?” Stefani grabbed the green binder up from the recliner and collapsed back onto the couch with the heavy book on her lap. “What kinda analog situation we got in this three-ring dinosaur?”
“That’s the business plan.” Daisy sat down beside her and pulled open the cover so the binder spilled across both of their laps.
Daisy was quiet then, watching as Stefani flipped through the binder, shaking her head in admiration, asking occasional questions, expressing some degree of wonder when she noted that Daisy had ready, multilayered answers for every possible concern.
“This is incredibly impressive, Daisy,” Stefani said, looking up. “It’s like you’ve thought of everything.”
Daisy took a breath and made a small, tentative nod. “Yeah, I think so,” she said. “I’ve worked really hard on it. I think I’m ready.”
Stefani dragged the heavy binder closed and slid it off their laps and onto the waiting coffee table. “All right, then,” she said. “We better get some rest if you’re going to take over the world tomorrow.”
Stefani turned and reached out to Daisy, who allowed herself to be hauled up from the couch.
“I’m gonna change back into my clothes before we drive home,” Stefani said, retreating briefly to the bedroom.
Daisy took one last look at her vision boards and felt the quiver and thrill of determination, a new adventure. She was barefoot on the shag rug, the orange fibers coarse beneath the soft arch of her foot.
In the ambulance, Daisy is wearing only one shoe. Her sock is drenched, and the paramedic peels it from her foot. There is a rubbery, disconnected sensation, a stimulus against the arch of her foot. Rather than sensing the fingers against her skin, Daisy feels as though the fingers belong to her. She is the one animating them, pinching, tapping, flicking, probing for signs of life. The foot is cold and wet to the touch. The toes, which Daisy painted lilac just this morning, are pruned. Outside there is another bolt of lightning, the flash briefly changing the pallor of Daisy’s tepid skin, silver/gold/silver.