Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  An hour and a half after landing, Elliot Steil took a left onto Rancho Boyeros Avenue. Well aware that many Cuban drivers disregard speed limits and traffic regulations, he chose the center lane and concentrated on being careful. Waiting at stoplights, he gazed around with curiosity. Yes, some buildings had been repaired and painted, lawns were well tended, no potholes in the road. However, this was the red carpet for tourists; he had to wait and see. Pedestrians were not in rags, yet crowded bus stops and tractors hauling big trailers crammed full of people—the Cuban contribution to mass transit, known to passengers as “camels”—suggested that transportation was still a mess. The avenue widened from six to twelve lanes and became spotless after the Calzada del Cerro intersection, yet the view was spoiled by antediluvian vehicles spewing dense black smoke from their tailpipes, a slew of mangy dogs, and the slogans on government billboards promising to never surrender to aggressors.

  Alone at last in Room 2124 of the Habana Libre, Elliot scanned the cityscape. The blinding sun made it seem bleached. Charcoal gray asphalt formed intersecting quadrants. Parks and tree-lined streets added green spaces. From an architectural and zoning standpoint, a city akin to many others. What made it different were intangibles: its unique problems, culture, economy, politics; in two words, its people. Most were gullible, kind, more inclined to heroic deeds, music, and loafing around than to the boring routine of work. Many waited for the solutions to their problems to fall into their laps. He had been one of those. It was the inevitable result of smothering individual initiative.

  The danger of generalizations dawned on him. He was being unfair to some and forgiving to others. Then he felt judgmental, which is to feel stupid. He wanted a drink, so he called Fidelia instead, let her know his room number, unpacked, and took a shower.

  …

  While doing the wash, Victoria had been pondering how to fix Pardo’s grave error. All the explanations and subterfuges she could think of sounded difficult to believe and she was sure the server’s administrator would report that an online bank had been accessed from her computer. Her husband refused to see any danger, accused her of being overly negative, and had not helped her with her list of possible justifications. Upon hearing her front door close, she dropped the last piece of freshly laundered clothing into a white plastic basket and hurried into the huge living area.

  “What does he look like?” she asked eagerly.

  Pardo took off his green Pinar del Río baseball cap, pocketed his keys, left Victoria’s laptop and a newspaper on the coffee table. “Standard. White, my height, weighs around 180 pounds, my age or so. You dress him in Cuban threads, take away the rental, he’s just a regular habanero walking the streets.”

  Victoria gave a slight approving nod. Like all professionals in her trade, she empathized with people who escape notice. “He rented a car?”

  “Yep.”

  She disliked that. What if he had an accident? “Room number?” she wanted to learn next.

  “2124.”

  She turned and approached a nicely upholstered, wraparound sofa in a corner and slid onto it. She invited her husband to join her with a glance, a tilt of her head, and three slaps on the seat. Pardo reached the sofa, sat, rested his right arm atop the back of the piece of furniture. He noticed that Victoria was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved blouse over nothing else. Doing without underwear was part of their mating ritual. They had had sex on Wednesday and Friday evenings, but it seemed that the risks they were running had made their sex life more intense.

  “Give it to me,” she said.

  “Now? Here?”

  “I mean the story.”

  “Oh. Well, it wasn’t difficult at all. He left customs disoriented, craning his neck around, like all first-timers. That was sign number one. Number two was that he approached a rental agency, signed the papers, and left the terminal speaking Cuban Spanish with the guy from the agency. Nobody was there to greet him; clue number three. When the agency guy was going back inside the building I asked him: ‘Hey, I’m here to pick up a man I’ve never seen before. Was that Señor Martínez?’ And he said no, that was Señor Steil. So, I started the car and beat him to the Habana Libre. I was sitting in the lobby by the time he approached the reception desk. I waited an hour, went to the hotel’s business center, hacked into their database, and learned his room number. Piece of cake.”

  “What baggage did he bring?”

  “A medium-sized roll-on.”

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  “Twenty-two inches? Twenty-six? Four wheels? Two wheels?”

  “Hey! I don’t know! I think it has two wheels, but I’m not sure. Why do you want to know that for?”

  “Just testing your powers of observation, Mayor.”

  “Why don’t you test my powers of fucking you right now?”

  Victoria mulled this over. “Okay,” she said at last. “Let’s first hang the laundry out.”

  Pardo picked up the white plastic basket and a small cotton sack with clothespins, then they both climbed the spiral marble staircase to the upper floor. She led the way along the hall connecting three bedrooms and two bathrooms, opened a door at its end, and entered the building’s tiled rooftop. The former tenant, a Ministry of the Interior mayor who defected in Mexico and presently lived in Miami, had affixed two T-shaped metal frames to the four-foot-high wall bordering the covering. Plastic clotheslines connected the frames.

  On tiptoes, Victoria began hanging the bed and table linen first. Holding the basket and the clothespins, Pardo took a deep breath of seabreeze and scanned his surroundings. Only the Cohiba Hotel was higher than their building, and the striking view never failed to amaze the former country boy. The vast Florida Straits to the north; the long seawall known as Malecón and the most populous part of the city to the west; the rocky coastline and the classy Miramar to the east; middle-class El Vedado to the south. On lower rooftops, sheets, towels, and clothes billowed gracefully. A flock of pigeons flew over their heads. From the street came the sound of traffic and a trace of exhaust fumes.

  He fastened his eyes on Victoria for nearly a minute. He enjoyed watching her small, firm breasts as they moved up every time she raised her arms, then fell to place when she turned to get hold of another piece of clothing. His first marriage had made him conclude that women with great bodies and lovely faces are neither necessarily bright nor fantastic in bed. He doubted very much that any other woman could give him the sexual pleasure that the physically nondescript Victoria so enthusiastically rendered to him year in, year out, so he had never cheated on her. He considered it unlikely that he would ever find a person, male or female, as brilliant as his wife. To watch such an extraordinary human being doing menial house chores inflamed him with desire.

  “I think we should get there a little earlier, around eight,” she said while pinning the final piece, a shirt.

  “Why?”

  “Just in case he decides to go out, or arrives late. We’ve got to make contact tonight. I don’t like his driving around. He may decide to go to Santa Cruz del Norte. Then you’d have to go alone, ’cause I have an important meeting tomorrow morning. And what if he has an accident and is taken to a police precinct or to a hospital?”

  “Victoria, please, think positive.”

  “Best way to think positive is to take precautions.”

  “Okay, we’ll be there at eight. Now, what do you say to …?”

  “Let’s shower first,” putting her arm around his waist.

  …

  Elliot’s former mother-in-law, Josefina Montes, had been crying on his shoulder and clinging to his neck for almost two minutes. Her husband, Gustavo Cano, was patting her back and mumbling words of comfort.

  “Josefina, please, it’s a cause to rejoice, not to cry,” he kept repeating as he eyed Elliot with an apologetic look. “Elliot will think he makes you sad. C’mon mother, please, stop crying.”

  After a lousy sandwich (four dollars) and a Coke (two-fif
ty) at the hotel’s cafeteria, he had driven to his ex-wife’s, in Santos Suárez. Off the beaten track he found potholes, decaying buildings, and neglected lawns. His rental was stared at suspiciously. He should have anticipated this would happen. Out of touch with Cuban reality, he had acquired the behavioral patterns of American businessmen abroad: the nice hotel, the rental, the myriad superfluities, from the shaving cream to the shoehorn. With just a glance, people knew he did not belong. Maybe he should not have rented the car; taxis abounded. Not wanting to alert Natasha’s neighbors of his arrival, he had eased the vehicle by the curb two blocks from her home.

  Now he felt like running away. When Gustavo had opened the front door for him, he had seen a ghost in the hallway. The apparition first squinted, then gaped at him for a couple of seconds before bolting into her bedroom. The levelheaded, cheerful, beautiful human being that he had loved madly, the woman who had taken his sexual desires to new heights and had given him the best orgasms of his life, his junior by six years, had turned shockingly gray-haired, toothless, and wrinkled. Unaware that Elliot had seen his daughter, Gustavo embraced him and gave him the instant he needed to recover. The old man had stepped back to examine him from head to toe. He had been muttering something about how well his sometime son-in-law seemed when Josefina had appeared in the doorframe to the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel, asking who it was. Then her placid expression evolved into a combination of bewilderment, happiness, sadness, gratitude, and love that shook Elliot. She had run into his arms and he felt the wetness of her tears on his shirt. Having recovered, he now had enough sense to start pretending. He seized her by the arms and stepped back.

  “You look wonderful, Josefina. Well, perhaps a trifle overweight, but it suits you.”

  “Oh, Elliot, my son. If it hadn’t been for you …” wiping her cheeks with the edges of her hands.

  “Gustavo looks fine, too. You better watch out, Josefina. I’ve been told young Havana chicks prefer older men,” interrupting her to change the subject. He feared she was getting ready to thank him for the few thousands he had sent over the past seven years.

  Gustavo said, “You still tickle the hell out of old people.”

  “And … Natasha, how is she doing?” He was asking because he was supposed to.

  “I’ll go fetch her,” Josefina said, and turned on her heels with a teenager’s alacrity. Gustavo’s gaze followed his wife, a touch of compassion in his eyes.

  “Natasha has worsened, Elliot,” the man said sadly when Josefina closed the door to Natasha’s bedroom behind her. “All possible treatments have been tried to no avail. We keep her heavily sedated and under constant observation. You can’t find something with a cutting edge in this house. We’ve had to get rid of all the knives, scissors, needles, sewing needles, and safety pins. I keep my disposable razor here,” Gustavo pulled the object from a side pocket of his trousers, showed it, and slipped it back into the pocket. “Before starting to cook, Josefina goes to the neighbor’s to cut and slice what she’ll use. But sit down, please,” he said pointing to the well-worn couch. Steil complied and glanced around.

  The living area had been freshly painted and looked classy. Beautiful paintings, drapes, vases, antiques, and knickknacks left behind by Natasha’s wealthy grandparents when they emigrated in the sixties still hung upon walls or adorned side tables and the coffee table. From a framed enlargement taken on their wedding day, his adorable young bride smiled gleefully. Josefina was a wonderful cook and the smell coming from the kitchen was mouthwatering.

  “She’s lost all interest in herself,” Gustavo went on after easing himself into his favorite armchair. “Josefina bathes her daily, feeds her, combs her hair, cuts her nails. She refuses to go out, dye her hair, go to the dentist. It’s hopeless, I tell you, it’s hopeless,” this said as though he was relieved that, finally, he could unload his innermost worries to someone.

  There was much sadness in his voice. Steil wished to allay Gustavo’s desolation with a few well-chosen words, but could not. After having glimpsed his ex-wife, anything he said would sound insincere. A thought that had never crossed his mind flashed ominously. Who would care for Natasha when both her parents had died?

  “When she goes critical, we have her committed to the psychiatric hospital for two or three weeks. She gets better there, not because they give her special medication—she takes the same pills we give her here—but because she’s afraid of the place, so she quiets down and they send her back. Then a new cycle begins.”

  Steil rubbed his hands and lifted his gaze from the floor when something occurred to him. “Maybe if I get a copy of her medical file, I could have it translated, then send it to some psychiatric hospital or research laboratory in the States. There may be new drugs unavailable here that I could send you.”

  Gustavo pondered the suggestion, tilting his head to one side, then to the other. “It’s a long shot, Elliot. Her doctor says she’s taking forefront medication, very expensive, imported from Switzerland.”

  “You have to pay for it?”

  “No, it’s supplied free of cost.”

  “Well, in any case …”

  Although smothered by the walls and the door, the men overheard Natasha bawl “I SAID NO!” at the top of her lungs. “I don’t want to see him! Throw him out of here! Get out and tell him. NOW!”

  Gustavo and Steil exchanged embarrassed looks.

  Josefina bolted out of her daughter’s bedroom and pulled the door shut. She hurried to Steil and Gustavo. They got to their feet. “Please forgive her, Elliot. She’s …” she groped for words, trying to say something that wouldn’t be “out of her mind” or “not herself anymore.”

  “Don’t worry, Josefina. I know how it is. I’ll leave now.”

  “Oh, no, Elliot, please! I beg you. Stay for dinner. You must tell us how you are doing, where do you live. You still a teacher?”

  “No. I’m working for a trading company. But I can’t stay, Josefina. I have other things to do, people to see,” he lied. “Thanks anyway. Let me give you something.” He fished into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. “There’s three thousand here. It’s for you.”

  “No, Elliot,” Gustavo said. “It’s too much. We don’t need that much.”

  “Throw out the sonofabitch, goddammit! I told you to throw him out!”

  “Keep it. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come again, or to send more.”

  “But—”

  “I’m leaving now. Take care. I love you. The three of you. She loved me immensely and you cared for me like a son. I’ll never forget that. Bye.”

  Josefina began to sob inconsolably. A single tear slid down Gustavo’s cheek.

  Elliot marched to the front door and turned the lock he had operated thousands of times when he had dwelled there. He waved good-bye. Gustavo and Josefina seemed petrified.

  “THROW HIM OUT!”

  He exited, closed the door, trotted down three steps, strode past the garden, opened the gate, and gained the sidewalk. Then he heaved a deep sigh.

  …

  Victoria named it “the prehistoric fuck.” She had discovered the position in a movie she could not remember. One of those made in the wake of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the actors, dressed in furs and with advanced prosthetics and special effects makeup, play the hunters and gatherers that thirty or forty thousand years earlier roamed the plains and forests of Western Europe.

  She still remembered the scene vividly. Inside a cave, by the poor illumination coming from smoldering embers and a torch, ten or twelve hominids were spending the night. Some slept, others sat on their haunches gnawing on pieces of meat. Farther into the cave, the camera discovered a copulating couple. The beardless female, on all fours, was being penetrated from behind. The male bumped into her bottom spasmodically, wanting to reach his orgasm immediately. Yes, Victoria had sadly admitted to herself, in the Pleistocene probably no male thought about the female’s pleasure. Anal or vaginal sex? Victoria h
ad wondered next. Vaginal, she decided. Primitive people clearly grasped the raison d’etre of every organ.

  Having never made love in that position, she had wanted to take a shot at it for years, but her previous sexual partners had always tried to talk her into sodomy, and she feared that if she told them what she wanted, they would try to force their way into her rectum. Eventually, with Pardo she had satisfied her curiosity. It was great! She loved it! The hominids had not been so ignorant after all.

  Gradually they refined the position. Doubled over in bed, leaning on her forearms, she raised her pelvis as high as possible. Behind her, also on his knees, he would guide his penis to the entrance of her vagina, penetrate her in his entire dimension, stay there for an instant, grab her hips firmly, pull his penis back to the point in which merely his glans remained inside her, and then push it in again. Pardo fondled a nipple while doing this. After she revealed her desire to be beaten with moderation, he alternated caressing her breasts with spanking her. When her buttocks were smarting, she had magnificent orgasms.

  That Sunday afternoon in April 2002, though, he did something for the first time ever. While inside her, he sucked his forefinger to lubricate it with saliva, placed its pad on her anus, then slid the tip inside her rectum.

  “Ouch,” Victoria complained feebly. From her tone, Pardo knew he could disregard such lame protestation. She had already come twice, once riding him; the other while her husband licked her. He started flexing his finger slowly, buried his penis deep inside her, spanked her once.

  Supported on a forearm, the left side of her face on the pillow, Victoria brought up her free hand to her clitoris and began stroking it gently. Her rectum contracted spasmodically, its numerous nerve endings reacting to the wiggling intruder that acted undecided about leaving or going all the way in. She wanted to prolong the newfound pleasure when Pardo spanked her hard. It was too much. Victoria realized she would soon have an intense orgasm.