Chapter 6
His gorilla drove straight to the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach. He didn’t ask me, he didn’t tell the guy where to go, it was all taken for granted. We walked straight across the lobby to the elevators. “Presidential suite,” he said to the bellboy. I might be a whore, but apparently I wasn’t a cheap whore.
We stepped out into a hallway with two massive mahogany doors. He unlocked them with his own personal key. He stood back and I walked in.
I felt as if I was going to fall. Miami was spread out in front of me, twenty-something floors down, looking like a beautiful ocean city and not the grimy and desperate place, smelling of stale coffee and hamburger grease I sometimes glimpsed through the windows of the diner.
There were strawberries in a crystal bowl and champagne in a gold-sealed ice bucket. There was antique furniture, three televisions and two telephones.
I wanted to look at the view but as soon as Angel had kicked the door closed, he pushed me against the wall and started ripping off my clothes. It was Angel as I had always remembered him, another state of emergency, fuck her quick before someone comes. You can take the boy out of Havana, but you can’t take Havana out of the boy.
I heard the shower running in the bathroom. I think that was what woke me. My clothes were scattered about the floor, the Cardin dress and the corner store underwear. I threw off the sheet and padded across the thick carpet to the window. I found a towel, drew back the curtains, and went out onto the balcony.
The black and white tiles burned my feet and I retreated again. I left the window open, there was a humid breeze whipping the flags along the pier of the yacht marina. I closed my eyes and breathed in the strong, salty taint of the sea. I had forgotten what it was like to open the curtains to a view. All I ever saw from the patio of our little flat were two ragged palm trees and the concrete rim of the Orange Bowl stadium.
Far below there were gardens with neat gravel walks weaving between the beds of croton shrubs and bougainvillea. Gardeners were busy raking the paths. I heard the hiss of the sprinklers on the lawns, spray drifting with the late afternoon breeze.
The Cabana Club was directly below us, I could make out red and white striped shade umbrellas and the brilliant blue oblong of the swimming pool, fringed with steamer chairs. White-jacketed waiters shuttled to and fro with cold drinks. The sea glittered, tranquil in the bright sun. This should have been my life, if we had gotten out of Cuba in time. I was the one who had talked Papi out of it.
I went back to the bed and flopped down. It was the size of our living room, and the sheets were Egyptian cotton. I was ashamed for enjoying it so much. I didn’t need to hear Angel’s lies about his wife, or how he loved me, just one sea-facing hotel room and already I didn’t want to leave.
I turned on my side, supporting my head with my hand, and watched him get out of the shower. He was smooth, except for the triangle of black curls at his groin. Perhaps he shaved his chest--I wouldn’t have been surprised. He dried his hair and stood in front of the mirror combing it.
He spends as long there as I do, I thought.
Wasn’t this how it had all started, in a room overlooking a beach? I was barely eighteen years old then and I was head over heels in love with him. It all seemed such a long time ago, but it was barely four years. In that time we had lost everything: our villa, our night club, our money, and I had almost lost Papi as well.
Meanwhile Angel had passed from a boy to a young man who rode in the back of limousines and snapped his fingers at waiters.
I thought about Papi. He would be dozing in front of a quiz show right now. What would he say if he knew I was here? He would die of shame. But he doesn’t have a say in these things any more, I reminded myself, if I’m going to look after him, then he has to let me take care of the details.
Angel turned around and caught me staring at him. He grinned. He was never a modest guy, and so he leaned on the doorjamb so I could have a better view. “That was amazing,” he said.
I gave him a tight smile.
“I have to be getting back, I have some business this afternoon. I’ll drop you home.”
I was now surplus to requirements. I slid past him into the bathroom. He stood watching me, waiting for me to drop the towel, so I shoved him out and locked the door. It always seemed to me that sharing a bathroom with someone was more personal than sleeping with them, and I had always promised myself that one day I would shower with the man I loved. It was just a game I played in my head. I still had something to offer someone that no one else had ever had.
As we went down in the elevator he kept his eyes on the ceiling. He didn’t want to look into my eyes, not this close anyway. The bellboy, in his plum and gold uniform, kept his back to us. I guess it was the presence of the third party that made me do it. I thought it would be fun to embarrass him. “How old are your kids?”
“I have twins. They’re two years old. And then there’s Junior.”
“How old’s Junior?”
“He’ll be a year old in...fifteen months” time.”
“Esme's pregnant?” I said.
The lift doors opened.
“Sure,” he said.
The only one of us who wasn’t blushing was the bellboy. At least Angel had the grace to look just a little uncomfortable with his confession. Or perhaps he was just disappointed that I didn’t think to congratulate him.
Chapter 7
We stopped on the corner of our block. I wouldn’t let him go any closer. I didn’t want anyone seeing me in a limousine. I changed out of the new clothes in the back seat, and slipped back into my waitress uniform. I left the Cardin suit and the shoes in the Burdine's bag.
“Don’t forget the clothes,” Angel said to me.
“What am I going to do with those?”
“I don’t know. Wear them?”
“On the bus to work?”
“Next time.”
“You haven’t asked me if there’s going to be a next time,” I said.
“Sure there is,” he said. He handed me an envelope. “This is for your father from me.”
I held the envelope in my hands and stared at it. I wasn’t a whore until I took the money. I peeked inside. Dios mio, if I was selling myself at least I was getting an exorbitant price.
I slipped the money into my purse.
“Thanks. This is going to help out a lot,” I said, trying to make out it was a loan.
“Sure, baby.” He looked over at the house, the trash spilled in the yard by the neighbour’s dog, the dead lawn.
“We have to get you a new place.”
“That’s not my place,” I said. “My place is the back of that place. And I don’t need a new one, we don’t need a new one. It suits us just fine.”
“My father-in-law owns a real estate company. I can get something in a better part of town, won’t cost you anything.”
“No, I don’t want you to.”
“You’d rather live in that dump?”
“Yes.”
I put my hand on the door and made to get out.
“Let me at least get you a better job.”
“Enough, Angel. We revisited old times for an afternoon, that doesn’t mean you can start running my whole life.”
“Can you type?”
“Do I look like I can type?”
“I can get you a job in a typing pool at one of our offices. You don’t have to type.”
“Are you not listening to me?”
“You’ll get twice what you’re getting now.”
I got out of the limousine. “Thanks for the crab.”
He grabbed my arm, pulled me back towards him and kissed me on the mouth. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said.
Papi was dozing in front of the news. He heard me come in and opened his eyes. “Is that you, cariña?”
“Hi, Papi,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“You’re wearing lipstick,” he said.
Mierda, I’d forgotten to take it of
f. Of course he would notice, there might be a lot wrong with his heart, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. “Can’t a girl wear lipstick once in a while?”
“Is there a boy you like?”
“Of course not.”
“Why “of course not?” At your age, there should be a boy, you should be out dancing every night not stuck in here taking care of me.”
“Don’t talk like that, Papi. You took care of me all those years.”
I went to the kitchen - bathroom - whatever it was, and looked in the pantry for something to cook for his dinner. Perhaps I should have brought home the stone crabs. I remembered the money in my purse. Tomorrow I would make him one of his favourite dishes, like Maria used to make back home, like garbanzo or caldo Gallego. I’d tell him I won the money on the lottery.
But first I’d pay those hospital bills.
One afternoon with Angel and I’d earned more than I made in a whole month at the diner. I hoped he thought it was worth it.
It was three o’clock in the morning, I lay there listening to the click of the fan, slick with sweat. I finally threw back the sheet and sat up. It was impossible to sleep.
I got out of bed, moving softly so as not to wake Papi. I slipped outside onto the concrete patio. There was a canvas director’s chair left behind by some previous tenant and I sat down, put my face in my hands and started to cry. All the shame and fear and grief poured out.
I didn’t want to live like this anymore.
This wasn’t the way it was meant to be. I never thought about it when we were in Havana; I thought the nice house, the servants, the chauffeur-driven Bel Air, all of it would last forever. But I’d learned very quickly that nothing is forever, life can change in an instant. Now I was twenty-one years old, working in a diner and living in a single room with a sick father. By now I was supposed to be married to Angel Macheda and living in a big house in Marianao.
But had I ever thought past the wedding reception and opening the presents? That wasn’t a life, it wasn’t even a bit of one. My future had never extended further than my moment of triumph in the cathedral in San Cristobal, the white dress, the tear in Papi’s eye as he gave me away.
I didn’t even get that--it was part of Esmeralda Salvatore’s memories now. And look at the future she had earned! Six months gone with Angel’s baby while he’s screwing a new mistress in one of her father’s hotels.
Whatever my future was supposed to be, it wasn’t this.
There were a few times I caught myself thinking, What if Papi... I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the thought, ashamed that it had ever occurred to me. And yet this was no life, not for him or for me.
I couldn’t stop crying. I’d held on to so much for so many years, ever since I sat in the waiting room of the hospital that night we arrived from Havana with only the clothes I had on my back. I had held myself together for month after month, year after year, thinking: I’ll cry tomorrow.
Well tomorrow had arrived. I couldn’t do this anymore. I was coming undone.
I started to whisper a prayer, very softly so as not to wake him.
I had prayed before, decorously in the cathedral in Havana, in public view, lighting candles and slipping coins into the tin box. This was different. This time I grovelled before God, my face was wet with snot and tears, and my prayer was just the same words repeated over and over.
“Please help me get out of this. Show me a better life than this.”
Chapter 8
“What are you doing home this time of the day?” Papi asked.
It was lunchtime, I’d only left for work a couple of hours ago. “Papi, I have some good news.”
He forced a smile. He was not having a good day, he was coughing a lot and there were dark rings under his eyes.
“I quit my job at the diner. I’ve got work somewhere else, somewhere better.”
“A new job?”
“In an office. I’m a secretary now. I don’t have to wait tables anymore.”
“That’s wonderful, cariña. Where is this?”
“Not far, just in Dade County. It’s a construction company, and it pays a lot more money.” Angel was actually putting me on his payroll at four hundred dollars a week, crazy money for a secretary.
But he’d probably break even for a mistress.
Papi was smiling but I could see the look in his eyes, he was calculating. “How did you get this job? You can’t type.”
“I ran into Consuela Caballero. She was a friend of mine from Havana. Do you remember her? Anyway, her father, he works in construction now, he said he’d hire me, it’s on the job training.”
I could tell by the way he looked at me that he didn’t believe a word of it. He was debating with himself whether to call me on the lie, or whether maybe, in this situation, it was better not to know.
I held my breath--and gracias a Dios--he let it slide.
“I remember Consuela,” he said, “her father was in the army, wasn’t he? I didn’t know he made it out of Cuba. Why don’t you ask them over?”
“Oh, Papi, how are we going to do that?”
“Is it this place you’re ashamed of, or is it me?”
“Papi, don’t say that.”
“Anyway, it’s good you don’t have to work at the diner anymore.”
“We’re going to have a special dinner tonight to celebrate. I’m making chickpea soup and peccadillo with white rice. Now let’s get you out of this bed and into the sunshine, your colour doesn’t look too good.”
It took me a while to get him out of the bed and into his wheelchair. He got out of breath now after even the smallest exertion, and he had to keep stopping to rest or he’d have another coughing fit. Soon, I’d need help to take care of him, I wouldn’t be able to leave him alone to go to work. What was I going to do?
I decided I would spend part of my new lavish wage on someone who would sit with him during the day. I wouldn’t let him go into a nursing home.
I’d ask Lena. She’d probably do it for free if I asked her, all she did these days was watch television, same as Papi. But she’d be happy for the extra money, she only had her pension and the tiny rent we’d paid her until now.
So Angel was right. I did need him.
I wheeled Papi outside onto the patio. He lifted his face to the sun. “That’s good,” he said. He looked at the two ratty palm trees at the end of our yard as if they were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. “Nice.”
I pulled up the old director’s chair and sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm. I knew he couldn’t go on like this too much longer, and I wondered what I was going to do without him. I would be free to make my own decisions soon. I’d be a boat losing its anchor and its compass at the same time; I could finally head out of port but I wouldn’t know true north.
Had he really been my moral compass, though? Perhaps the truth was I had always sailed blind; I lied to him about sleeping with Angel when we were in Havana, and now here I was covering it up again. I told myself it was for his sake this time.
I saw him wince. “Are you okay, Papi?”
“Get my pills, will you, cariña? The pink ones.”
I fetched them from next to the bed and he slipped one under his tongue. After a while he seemed to relax.
I rested my cheek on his arm. “It’s going to be all right, Papi,” I said.
He put his hand on my head. “Of course it will,” he murmured.
The son-in-law of the man who ran Miami kept an office on the sixth floor of an anonymous office block near Flagler and Biscayne. The sign in the lobby said Resorts International. Angel had an enormous corner office turned out in blond Danish pine with views over the bay. His desk was the size of a small boat and was immaculate; there was a green blotter and a white telephone and that was it. Behind it there was a swivel chair in soft black leather you could have crowned heads of state in.
It looked like no one had ever sat in it.
“You left the price tag on,” I said t
o Angel. Maybe he never had sat on it, because he actually looked underneath the seat until he figured out I was messing with him.
I had a smaller office just outside. There was a Remington typewriter, a telephone with a lot of buttons and a filing cabinet. It was like something I had seen in magazines: no mess, no clutter.
“Okay, I have a meeting,” he said. “I’ll pick you up for lunch.”
“Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do? You want me to type something?”
He shrugged, like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “If the telephone rings, answer it.”
“And what do I say?”
“You ask who it is.”
“And then?”
“You say I’m not in. Take their name and number and tell them I’ll call back. Unless it’s me.”
He was serious. “What am I going to do all day?”
He opened the drawer in the desk and took out a copy of Life magazine. There was a picture of John and Jackie Kennedy on the cover, taken inside the White House. He tossed it on my desk. “Read that. But tidy up a bit first.”
He went out. One of his goons was standing outside waiting for him.
I looked around the office. Tidy up? There wasn’t even dust. I looked through the rest of the drawers in my desk; empty. So was the filing cabinet. I went into his office, checked the drawers in SS Desk. I found a packet of Chesterfields and a stick of gum.
I went to the door and peered out. There was a regular office out there, a typing pool, cubicles, people walking around with files and telexes, people doing actual work. A couple of the clerks looked up from their desks and stared at me. I shut the door.
I stared at the telephone. It didn’t ring.
During my first week on the job the telephone rang twice: once it was Angel checking up on me, the second time it was a wrong number.
Naked In LA (Naked Series Book 2) Page 3