Coco’s Song
A “Coco” fanfiction
{set in the early days of Hector’s time in the Land of the Dead}
The first time he’d heard it was the worst.
He’d been walking through the plaza after yet another unsuccessful day at scraping up cash, Ricardo’s borrowed guitar bouncing sadly at his side. Ricardo would be angry with him, he knew. Not just because Hector had broken a string while strumming an exceptionally complicated riff, but because he didn’t know that Hector had borrowed his guitar in the first place.
Hector had already been feeling bad about that, for Ricardo was one of the only people left here who was willing to put up with him anymore. The number seemed to decrease every year since he’d arrived– and now he’d gone and done this.
In fact, he was so caught up in practicing his apology speech (he’d been making so many these days that he was getting rather good at it. A charming smile, a slight tilt to the head. Admit what you had done and offer no excuses: “Yes, I borrowed your prized guitar without asking, and I apologize for that…”) that he hadn’t realized what he was hearing at first. He only knew that it was suddenly like he’d been caught up in a dream, the world going hazy around the edges like a photograph dipped in water, memories seeping through reality. Through everything, until all he could see was his Coco. Her beautiful little face, her big brown eyes full of adoration for him. For the man who–
“What?” He’d nearly dropped Ricardo’s guitar, but then he caught it and held it too tightly, his fingers squeezing the fretboard in a vise. Wildly, he searched for the source, and found it: A short, skeletal man in a nice white shirt and crisply pressed pants, standing near the center of the plaza.
“Remember me, though I have to travel far. Remember me when you hear a sad guitar. Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be…”
Tears came, hot and blinding. What a joke. What a joke those lyrics had been. He could have been with her all this time, if only–
“Hey! Hey, excuse me!” He called, but the man didn’t hear him. He continued to sing, his voice carrying loudly over the plaza.
“And until you’re in my arms again, remember me-eeeee!”
He wasn’t singing it right. It was too happy, too bouncy, like some gaudy romantic show tune. It was supposed to be quiet, bittersweet…sad even. The way he’d felt when he’d had to leave–
No. No, don’t think about that.
But the tears were still there, as hard as he was trying to blink them away.
The man had finished singing and was smiling winningly at his small audience, who politely clapped their approval. Hector was the only one distressed, the only one who knew this wasn’t right.
“Perdóname!” At last, he had captured the singer’s attention. The man turned his too-white grin upon him, which faltered at the sight of Hector’s expression. Hector could only guess how he looked, but he could hear the slight rattle of his hands quaking. “Señor, uh, wh-where did you hear that song?”
The man gave him a look of amused bewilderment, tucking his shining guitar under his arm. “Why, sir, it’s only Ernesto de la Cruz’s greatest work! You know of him, certainly?”
Oh, certainly. How could he not know of him? His still-living best friend, who had gotten famous off of his songs– songs that Ernesto himself had supposedly written. Un Poco Loco, The World Es Mi Familia…
And now this one.
Shock and fury filled him in equal measure, rendering the man’s next words incomprehensible. As he continued gushing on and on about how he wished he could have met the great Ernesto de la Cruz before he’d died, Hector heard only white noise. White noise and…
“Papa!”
His rib cage rose and fell erratically, a mockery of staggered breathing. His hands had begun to shake so badly that the rattling sound was a steady backdrop against the man’s continued chatter.
“No.” He was so enraged that he didn’t even realize the words were coming out of his mouth. Ernesto had taken credit for his songs. Hector had known that for years now, through word-of-mouth from new arrivals. Known it and hated it; yet he’d borne it with the defeated understanding that no one would believe him if he tried to explain the truth. How could someone like him– a poor, forgotten bum with no guitar of his own– have written the most popular songs in Mexico?
But this, this was too much.
“Not that song.” He whispered, unaware that the man in front of him had stopped his egocentric prattling and was now staring at him in concern. “Not that song! That was hers! That was–”
“Mi amigo, are you alright?”
Hector gasped, snapped out of his thoughts, and suddenly realized that he was the one with the audience now. The small crowd of skeletons who had been listening to the musician were fixated upon him with the hungry eagerness of dogs under a dinner table, cold smirks on their faces as they enjoyed their newfound entertainment. In another surge of misery and rage, he realized exactly what he looked like to these people: A blithering lunatic.
“Si. Fine.” He bit, forcing the false smile that had become his staple. “Thank you. I apologize for bothering you.”
“Not at all.” But there was an undertone of condescension that wasn’t lost on Hector, “I’m always happy to have people interested in my playing.”
Hector was already backing away, knowing the smile would only hold for so long. “Yes, of course. Gracias.”
As soon as he was out of view from those laughing, condescending eyes, he could no longer hold back the tears from his own.
Since that day, Remember Me had quickly become Ernesto’s theme song, each version bandied around by his fans more atrocious than the last. Yet perhaps it helped in a way that it had become so butchered. It hurt like a dagger in his nonexistent heart each time Hector heard the words, but if he’d been forced to hear them the way he’d originally intended the pain would have been too much to bear.
Ricardo had not been forgiving about the guitar, especially when Hector had admitted that he had no way to replace the string. His friend was almost as impoverished as he was, with only (ironically, Hector thought with a searing jealousy that left him ashamed with himself) his elderly, unwed daughter to leave him offerings each year. The older and more feeble she’d grown, the more the offerings had waned and the closer Ricardo grew to his Final Death. He had tongue-lashed Hector and punched him so hard in the face that a bottom tooth had popped out and been lost in the grooves of the street. Hector had not had the courage to seek him out since.
It had come at the perfect time, though, for he no longer felt like playing music.
Ricardo had been forgotten the same year Ernesto had entered the Land of the Dead. Hector had found it strangely fateful, especially since his former best friend had shown about the same amount of appreciation for him as Ricardo had in the end– which was to say, none at all. Within a week of his arrival, Ernesto was already living the high life, rubbing elbows with the finest, and he seemed to have forgotten completely that he’d once had a friend named Hector Rivera who wrote all his hits.
Hector had tried to reach out to him several times. To ask him about the music, some tiny shred of hope lingering inside him that his old friend would listen to him, give him the credit in death that he’d deserved in life…
Explain why he’d taken Coco’s song.
It had never happened. Each time he tried to get close, bodyguards turned him away.
“But I was his friend! If you would just listen!” He’d pleaded time and time again.
“I’ve never heard of any Hector Rivera in his interviews.” One had said, spatting out his name like it tasted foul in his mouth. “You’d think he would have mentioned someone as important as you.”
The same laughing, condescending eyes. The same cold smirks.
At last, Hector had stopped trying, but Coco’s song never stopped playing. Year after year, version after version, now sometimes blaring from speakers in Ernesto’s polished voice. “Remember Me” had even been emblazoned on the sides of buildings, his handsome face painted beaming over it with pride. Funny, Hector had thought bitterly, as Ernesto never need worry about being forgotten.
He, on the other hand…
The first time he’d heard it had been the worst, but that didn’t mean it ever got any better.
