I stood up. “I have to go.”
He caught my wrist. “Please, baby. I can’t sleep thinking about you.”
I leaned down, my lips brushing his ear. “Take a sleeping pill.”
I stamped back across the square to the car. I wasn’t surprised that he had asked me to go to the beach with him a few weeks before he married another girl, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that I had been so tempted to say yes.
Chapter 14
Luis drove down La Rampa, toward the harbour. I stared out of the window but I didn’t see the shoeshine boys or the prostitutes on the street corners, the cobblestone streets where boys kicked soccer balls between the traffic. I didn’t even look around to watch the little kid run from the shop with a loaf of bread, the fat baker in his white vest yelling and puffing down the street after him.
Because my world consisted of Angel and me. This was all that mattered.
A few minutes later we pulled up outside Inocencia's apartment. I could feel the heat from the pavement as I got out of the car. It felt like it was going to melt my shoes.
As I climbed the stairs I thought about her performance at the club. It was hard to reconcile that torchy, tortured singer with the restrained and elegant Miss Velasquez, my piano teacher. But then I supposed we all keep a part of ourselves hidden from the world. If my father knew about Angel and me, the things I had done - about the things I had imagined and not yet done - he would have died.
But Inocencia's private self sang in public six nights a week; that was the secret of being a bolerista. My own bolero belonged in a diary I kept in a locked drawer in my bedroom.
I heard music playing on a scratchy Victrola. Edith Piaf, “La Vie en Rose.” The door was unlocked and I pushed it open. I stopped halfway into the room.
The bedroom door was ajar. How long was it before Inocencia realised I was there? Long enough. She was too busy enjoying herself, or it certainly looked that way. Her fingers were clawing at the sheets and her eyes were rolled back in her head.
Then suddenly she sat up and stared at me. She gasped.
They had both been making so much noise they hadn’t heard me come in. Inocencia's glasses were on the bedside table, her hair was loose and tangled; she was a bolerista even without her clothes, down to the beads of sweat between her breasts and the look of anguish and ecstasy on her face. Her lover hadn’t even got around to taking her blouse off. He, however, was naked - no, not completely, he still had on an expensive wrist watch.
It’s not the notes, Magdalena, it’s the music.
She jumped to her feet and slammed the door.
“It’s all right, I’ll start practising my étude,” I said to the closed door.
I put my music books on top of the piano, sat down and opened the lid, then I stretched my back and cracked my knuckles. I heard them dressing in the bedroom.
I closed my eyes. Bach’s prelude in C major. You have to live it, you have to feel it. I started playing, hardly thinking about the notes. I thought about what I had just seen. I didn’t know that a man might do that to a woman. Inocencia clearly loved every moment of it.
I thought that I would love it, too.
I had only ever seen one man naked, and that was Angel and Inocencia's lover was nothing like Angel. Angel was smooth and lean, he didn’t have such thick muscles and dark hair on his chest and his belly. And the rest of him...well he was not as...intimidating.
I wasn’t sure something like that would ever fit inside me. Not that I would ever be in a position to find out, of course.
What did I feel? Disgusted? Shocked? Or was I just jealous? I had never moaned or tossed about like that with Angel. Perhaps I was missing something, and perhaps, no matter what Angel might say, it wasn’t all my fault.
Inocencia came out of the bedroom, her face still flushed. Her hair had been hurriedly tied back in a bun, but a few strands were still loose. She smoothed down her skirt.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said. Her hands were shaking.”
“I couldn’t say the same for you.”
“Your lesson isn’t until tomorrow.”
“It’s Wednesday today.”
“No, it’s Tuesday.”
I stared at her. She was right, I’d made a mistake.
She looked at the piano. “I’ve never heard you play so well.”
I realised I was still picking out notes on the piano. I put my hands in my lap, as if I had been doing something wrong. “I wasn’t really concentrating.”
“Well, you play better that way.”
We stared at each other.
“Is that how you learn to sing bolero?” I said, and I think she knew I wasn’t making fun of her, that I meant it.
“Yes, that’s how you learn.”
“And Bach’s etude?”
A half smile. “You learn that by sitting at a piano and practising.”
Reyes came out of the bedroom, buttoning his shirt, a lazy smile on his face. He put on his white linen jacket and gave me an exaggerated bow. “You play beautifully,” he said.
“I have a very good teacher.”
“So do I. I should leave you both to finish.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do the same for you,” I said.
He paused at the door. “Well, sometimes even an unfinished symphony can be a classic.” He closed the door softly behind him.
After he left, I thought about the monogrammed handkerchief that Inocencia twisted between her fingers when she sang at the club. “RG.” Now it all made sense.
If you had asked me if I had spared a thought for Reyes Garcia since Angel’s party I would have said no, but I would have been lying. My first impression was that he was arrogant, conceited and unattractive. So why did I think about him so much? I told myself it was because he made me angry and I wanted to put him in his place. I hated that he had seen me so weak and that he had made fun of me, that he thought he knew so much about me when really he knew nothing at all.
And now I’d seen him naked. It should have made me feel like I had something over him, that I had settled the score. Instead I just felt agitated, and God help me, jealous. I couldn’t think.
Inocencia took me through the lesson. We sat next to each other at the piano for an entire hour, and I could not look her in the eye. We had stepped across a line that should not be crossed, except between lovers. When you know how someone comes, you glimpse a part of their soul.
We practised the étude, she gave me my homework for the week, and we talked about authentic performance practise against the theory of modern jazz technique. When the lesson finished I picked up my study books and made to leave, as if this had been a normal day.
Inocencia called me back.
“Your problem, Magdalena, is you don’t have a good ear.”
“At school, my music teacher said...”
“I don’t mean for music, I mean for your heart.”
“Pardon me?”
“When you love, you listen to your pride, but you don’t listen to your heart. Your love is all in your head. It holds you back musically, and one day it will hold you back in your life.”
I just stared at her.
“You have no idea what I mean, do you?”
“Is there a book I can read?”
She sighed and gave me a sad smile. “It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, but it did matter. As it turned out, it mattered a whole damned lot. But I was eighteen years old. Whoever listens to advice at that age?
Chapter 15
“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said as I came out into the sunlight. His car was parked under a ceiba tree right outside in the street; it was a brand new Chevrolet Impala with a cherry-red bonnet, boot, mudguards and doors. There were even virgin-white Firestone whitewalls.
“Nice car. Did you steal it?”
“No, but I’ve stolen cars just like it. I have many talents.”
“Yes, we know that.”
Luis got out of th
e car, started over, thinking I was being accosted, but I waved him back away.
“Do you come here for lessons, too?”
“Now and then. How much of our rehearsal did you see?
“Why, are you ashamed?”
He threw back his head and guffawed at that. “Ashamed? A long time since anyone accused me of that. Most people know me better.”
“You are never ashamed of anything?”
“Of course not.”
“Not even a sub-standard performance?”
“I’ve never been accused of one.” He took off his sunglasses and grinned at me. Was I supposed to be charmed? I wanted to score just one point over this man before I ignored him completely for the rest of my life.
“Didn’t you hear me come in?”
“I had my mind on other things. And Inocencia...”
“Was screaming the house down.”
“I took it as a compliment. So you saw everything. Did you learn anything?”
“I learned to knock in future. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone about it.”
“I don’t care if you tell the whole world. I don’t have a wife or a reputation to lose. Do you want to have dinner sometime?”
His effrontery was breath-taking. I was lost for words.
“Is that a “yes” or a “no?””
“I cannot believe you would even ask me. I just saw you making love to another woman.”
“Inocencia and I go back a long way. I’m not in love with her, she’s not in love with me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“Why, did she say something to you?”
“As if you would care.”
There, that was my exit line. I turned my back on him and started across the road. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he called after me. “You don’t think I’m going to give up, do you?
Against all my better instincts I turned around. “I don’t care what you do.”
“Yes, you do. Or you wouldn’t have turned around. You don’t like me, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“That’s all right, I’m an acquired taste. What about tomorrow night?”
“My father would never allow it.”
“Your father wouldn’t have to know. He never found out about Angel. Is that your only objection?”
“No, it’s not my only objection, Señor. In fact, I have so many objections I wouldn’t know where to start. It would be dark by the time I finished with them all. I told you, you would be the last man on earth I would have dinner with.”
“Oh you will, one day. It’s fate, Magdalena, and you can’t stop fate.”
“Well I can give it a good try.”
I hurried across the road to the car. Luis held open the door for me and I climbed in. I turned around and stole one last look at him as we drove away. He was leaning against the driver’s door of the Impala, grinning. He took a cheroot out of a silver case and lit it and waved his hand in a mock salute.
I ignored him.
But all I could think of all the way home was the way he had made Havana’s greatest bolerista sing. Why couldn’t Angel ever do that?
Chapter 16
Hotel bookings were down all across town, the war was keeping people away for the first time. Papi spent more and more time in the courtyard with his cigars. Early in the mornings I could hear him muttering under his breath as he read the morning newspaper. Everyone was on edge. No one knew what was going to happen.
That night at dinner I noticed the dark rings under his eyes were back. He barely touched his chicken, and when Maria clucked her tongue and tried to remonstrate with him, he made a languid flick of his hand to have her take away his plate. He put a pink tablet under his tongue when he thought I wasn’t looking and washed it down with a glass of rum.
“I saw Angel in town today,” I said to him, as casually as I could.
He put down his cigar and looked around at me, his eyes like slits. “You just bumped into him by accident. On your way to acting class.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“A coincidence.”
“Ask Luis, he’ll tell you.” Dios mio, I thought, if he asks Luis, I’m dead.
He puffed on his cigar. “Cariña, Angel is getting married soon. Forget about him.”
“I went shopping in the Nacional, he was in the lobby with his father,” I said, as casually as I could and hoped it sounded convincing.
“I guess there’s no law against going into the Nacional.”
“He told me his father says the rebels are winning, Papi. That’s why they’re getting out of Havana. What if the rebelde do win?”
“I told you, we have nothing to worry about.”
“It scares me that they’re leaving and we’re still here. What if they’re right about Castro and the barbudos? Everyone seems so afraid.”
“Everyone is afraid of change. But in the end, in Cuba, you find that nothing changes at all. It’s just different people stealing all the money, but it’s the same people losing it all. That’s the way life is.” He put his hand on mine. “Let’s forget all this ugliness. Tonight I want you to put on your best dress and come with me to the club. Let’s listen to some great bolero and forget about Salvatore and Castro and Lansky and the rest of them.” A smile lit up his face. “What do you say, cariña?”
I couldn’t help it. He utterly disarmed me when he smiled like that. “Sure, Papi. Let’s do it.”
Maria had run my bath. I slipped into the warm soapy water, leaned my head back against the towel she had put there and slipped a hand between my legs. I kept thinking about Inocencia and Reyes, couldn’t get them out of my mind. I wonder what someone would have thought if they had walked in on me and Angel in Calle San Lorenzo. Did I look like that?
That silent scream on her face. I always waited for it to finish, she didn’t look as if she ever wanted it to end. I thought I had this big secret because I wasn’t a virgin anymore, but perhaps I still didn’t know anything at all.
Sex for me was so much better like this, alone. Angel never knew how to touch me the right way, even when I showed him. A woman wasn’t like a man--there were folds and secret places. He didn’t understand. Or was it that he just didn’t care?
What was it that Inocencia said to me that day? You love with your head, not your heart. What did that mean? It made no sense. All this talk about the heart, like it was something with a mind of its own.
Thank God Papi couldn’t see inside my head. This was why a girl needed a mother, I supposed, someone to tell her what to do, what to think about all these crazy things. I loved my papi, but there was so much I couldn’t talk to him about, and I hated keeping so many secrets from him.
But what could I do? I couldn’t hurt him with the truth and I couldn’t be anything other than what I was. God knows I’d tried.
I thought about Inocencia and Reyes and came quietly, my toes curling around the lip of the bath, biting my lip to keep silent. Then I lay back in the tepid water and caught my breath.
Outside, the wind hurled palm fronds through the air and a shutter slammed somewhere in the house. There was a storm coming. I got dressed quickly.
The lights flickered.
Luis was waiting downstairs with an umbrella and held it over my head as we ran splashing through the puddles to the Bel Air. Papi was already waiting for me. He smiled at me and kissed my forehead. I was still his little girl and that’s what I wanted to be, at least when I was with him.
Rafa watched us hangdog from the portico as we drove away. He gave one long forlorn howl before Maria ushered him back inside. Dogs know things that people don’t, that’s what I’ve always thought.
There was a good crowd in the Left Bank, though not as many as there would be later in the night. Reyes was there, damn him, with some snake-hipped mulatto. As if I should care. They were dancing the mamba. I tried not to look but I couldn’t help myself. The woman slid against him
when they danced, like a lizard up a wall.
Afterwards he sat down at a table with some of Batista’s men.
“Look at him,” I said to Papi. “Who does he think he is?”
Papi dismissed him with a shrug. “There will always be men like Señor Reyes. He stands for nothing, so he is never going to be a problem for anyone. Our problem is all those men he is with, in their white uniforms. You see that one there, with the moustache? He’s the chief of police. Every time he tortures and murders someone he gets another strip of gold braid. A national hero.”
“What is Reyes doing with him?”
“Reyes is friends with everyone.”
“I heard he was running guns for the rebels.”
“Men like that, who knows what he does? Don’t entertain any thoughts about him, Magdalena.”
“Why would I do that?”
“He’s a handsome man. They say he’s had every woman in Havana under the age of sixty. Stay away from him.”
“I can’t understand what women see in him.”
He gave her a knowing smile and led her to their usual table near the front of the stage.
As they sat down a waiter immediately appeared with a bottle of sweet Santiago rum. Papi slipped a pill under his tongue and washed it down with the rum. I wondered what Doctor Mendes would say about that.
There was a commotion by the door as a large group arrived. I recognised Salvatore straight away, and I was relieved to see that Angel wasn’t with him, nor was his father. Most of Salvatore’s guests looked like Americans. One of them had a blistering smile and was impossibly handsome.
Papi stood up. “Excuse me a moment, cariña. I have to do my thing.”
“With Salvatore?”
“You see the man with him? He’s an American senator. They say he may be nominated in the next Presidential elections. I should mingle a little. It could be good for business.”
He gave her a tight smile and a squeeze of the hand and went over to welcome them.
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