8:05 a.m.
She wakes up thinking: How can I undermine the patriarchy today? I won’t be doing it lying here. But the AC has created a lovely cold in the room, and she is mummied under an enormous comforter. She doesn’t want to get up, but she has to be at the office at El Flamboyan Community Human Rights Organization by 9.

9:07 a.m.
Magaly skips by the local fancy coffee shop on Driggs Avenue, noting through the window the long line, the lack of diversity in that line, the high prices on the menu, and the golden almond croissants right there by the cashier.

But she skips past it and goes to La Quisqueya Deli & Grocery in the middle of the block. There are platanos piled high by the counter, cheese and avocados and eggs in the fridge. Ana makes the coffee dark, strong, and Magaly puts in a swirl of sugar and half and half that almost makes her forget the almond croissant. When she turns to the counter, her buttered roll is already waiting for her. The roll comes from a bakery on Grand Street and it’s soft inside, crunchy outside, and Ana likes to pile the butter high for her.

Screw almond croissants.

She fishes out just enough change from the infinite black hole of her purse. “Que pasa buen dia!” she and Ana say to each other.

9:22 a.m.
She’s late but only her assistant Yahira is there.

“Where’s Luis?” Magaly says, “We had a meeting.” Luis De Moscoso is her boss.

Yahira says, “He called an hour ago and said he was going to a quick meeting with Councilwoman Santiago. But you know they both like to talk a lot.”

“Tell me about it.”

11:37 a.m.
She has a pile of work and a line of people to see. There are no typical days here, for which she is glad. People may come in needing legal advice regarding felony charges, to petition for child support, to get nutritional assistance, to get help finding a new place to live because they’ve been displaced, or just to get a ride to an interview.

When Luis shows, he takes her away from her work, doesn’t apologize for missing their meeting, and adds, “Maybe we can get together tonight.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll be tired.”

“Are you sure? We can order Chinese.”

She thinks about her empty fridge. But still she says, “Not tonight.”

3:10 p.m.
At some point around lunchtime, while she is biting into a ham and cheese and listening to a just-widowed mother of three, she realizes she was supposed to go to McCarren Park to see Chino, an old ex. But he is there every afternoon, playing with his petanque balls. Maybe it is better this way. She has been seeing a lot of him, working together to find out what happened to Rosa Irizzary, and she doesn’t want to complicate her life any further, to give him any wrong signals.

9:56 p.m.
It’s surprisingly a little chilly out after a day of summer showers she’d only heard about. The streets are empty and dark. She realizes this slasher who’s been killing hipsters in the neighborhood, who is killing everyone now it seems, could easily pick her off as she walks home. Go ahead, she thinks, with all my worries, it’d be a relief. Then she stops herself. Stupid. If that slasher came after her, she would fight the son of bitch to the ground and fill his mouth with pepper spray.

But just in case she says a “Hail Mary” and walks a little faster.

You can read more about Magaly Fernandez in Hipster Death Rattle, the debut hard-boiled crime fiction by Richie Narvaez, coming March 11, 2019.

Murder is trending . . .

Hipsters are getting slashed to pieces in the hippest neighborhood in New York City: Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As fear and tension rise in the summer heat, police detectives Petrosino and Hadid eye local gangbangers for the crimes. Meanwhile, slacker reporter Tony “Chino” Moran and his ex-girlfriend Magaly Fernandez pursue a cold case involving an old woman who mysteriously disappeared a year before. But the closer they all get to the truth, the closer they get to losing their heads.

Filled with a broad cast of local characters and told with sardonic wit, this fast-moving, intricately plotted story plays out against a backdrop of rapid gentrification, skyrocketing rents, and class tension, written like only a true native could.

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Meet the author
Richie Narvaez is the author of the award-winning fiction collection Roachkiller and Other Stories. His work has appeared in Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Long Island Noir, Shotgun Honey, Skin & Bones, and Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder, among others. He was recently named Bronx Council on the Arts Artist in Residence at the Morris Park Library.

Connect with Richie at richienarvaez.com, on Twitter and on Instagram.

All comments are welcomed.