Visiting a shrine to Walter Mercado at a Puerto Rican mall

One day at the beginning of summer, I was walking around Plaza Las Americas in Puerto Rico on my day off from work, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a strange and fabulous-looking mannequin standing guard at the entrance of an antique shop. On a plain yellow Post-it note stuck to the mannequin’s face, someone had casually written the five most incredible words: CAPA DEL ASTROLOGO WALTER MERCADO. “I mean, I have to have it!” Jose Fernando, also known as Paca, tries on a royal-purple cape by Walter Mercado with sequined and embroidered details at Epoca de Abuelos in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I asked Paca, who shrugged, took the cape off and simply said, “One day.…” Over the next few months, I continued visiting Mercado, sometimes bringing a cafecito along, paying my respects as I would at a relative’s grave. Buried underneath that question was the one I really wanted to ask: Were Mercado’s things being treated so casually because the astrologer had, well, “sexuality with the wind”?