The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

by Anjanette Delgado

  As I walked toward the I-95 underpass, sometimes on tiptoe to avoid getting my leather flip-flops wet in leftover rain puddles, Hector’s face popped up as if my mind were a deck rigged to give you the same card no matter how many times you shuffled it.

  I should feel relieved that it’s over, I thought. Now I knew. No more wondering. No more mental limbo. And then there was the way he’d done it, so crude and heartless, so unlike him. (Or was it?) I tried to see the silver lining in that: By acting like an ass, he’d prevented me from romanticizing him, made me want to forget him faster.

  Tinta y Café was empty. Only the small window and outside counter for dispensing the ready-to-eat basics—toast, croquetas, and coffee—was open. I asked for a cortadito to go (a small amount of black coffee “cut” in half by a dash of evaporated milk and sweetened with a teaspoon of brown sugar or two), and strolled toward Alvarez Locksmith, a small shop that was part locksmith, part hardware, part whatever odd and end you might need, and where Gustavo worked when he wasn’t turning the scrap metal with which he occasionally littered my building’s backyard into sculpture.

  The shop was twelve blocks away, and I took my time walking through Little Havana, taking in its morning sounds.

  I’ve always thought that to really “get” Little Havana in general, and Coffee Park in particular, you need to be eye level with it, be an immigrant of some sort. You have to have traveled from someplace far away and gone somewhere else altogether by something resembling choice. And then you have to arrive in this strange place, strange to you, or maybe just strange, and find something here that makes you say: “It’s not my home, but it could be because I no longer fully belong to the place I’ve come from, couldn’t return there even if I wanted to, and so this will be just fine for now, because at last, at least, I’m somewhere.”

  If you’re Latino and live in Florida, there’s a good chance you were in Little Havana when you said those words, and that that “somewhere for now” was Calle Ocho and the things I walked by that Saturday morning: the little fruit and vegetable carts where you can get six juicy tomatoes for two dollars and a humongous just-ripe Florida avocado for a buck, the Tower Theater with its marquee announcing the varied art film offerings, the Lebo mural on Eighth and Seventeenth, the record shops not admitting to, but selling, pirated Cuban music, the pawn shops bursting with hostage treasures, and the space where the old Cervantes bookstore had been on Nineteenth. And yes, where the man I’d slept with until yesterday now owned his.

  At the hardware store, I found Gustavo in a sour mood, playing despondently with a handful of rusty pulleys.

  “Still working on that sculpture?”

  “Qué bola, Mariela?” he greeted me, putting the pulleys down on the old dark-stained wood counter. “Nice hair.”

  “Thank you, and a fair warning to you, mister: It’s my birthday, so think twice before making fun of me. I’m just saying.”

  “No, no. Qué va. It looks good. Bien loco. I like it.”

  “Bueno, oye, thanks for helping me take care of the Ellie thing the other day.”

  “Man, I knew she wasn’t right, but I told her que no te hiciera una mierda, you know, to do things right. Did she bring you your money yet?”

  “Nah, and I doubt she will. I’ll be happy if she just picks up her junk and moves on, you know?”

  “It’s not right,” he said, shaking his head. “Iris said she’d never seen anything like it, and she’s old as hell.”

  “Chico, let me put it to you this way: By the time you got there to change the locks, the worst was over. It was like Hurricane Andrew went through there, okay? But, you know? Onward and forward. So let’s see, I need some grease remover and some superstrong glue. Also primer, a caulking gun, some spackling paste, and cleaning supplies,” I finished reading from my list and followed him as he walked around the shop searching for each thing.

  “Don’t you worry, Mariela,” he said. “I’m going to help you find another tenant, call a few friends, see who’s looking.”

  “Thanks, Gustavo. And speaking of friends, how’s Jorge? Remember him?”

  That stopped him in his tracks and made him turn around and take a good long look at me before saying, “I sure do. Question is, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? Let’s see. I introduce you to a good friend. He falls for you like a comemierda, a total loser. You seem okay with that. Then, one day, you dismiss him for no reason.”

  “I didn’t dismiss him for no reason. He did have a wife, you know.”

  “She was in Cuba!” he said, as if that made it all right.

  “Still his wife.”

  “That’s not the point, and you know it. You hurt him.”

  “I hurt him? What did I do?”

  “You wouldn’t take his calls. You refused to see him!” said Gustavo.

  “That was a mutual decision and, again: He was, or is, married. How hurt could he have been?” I asked.

  “You really want me to tell you?”

  I didn’t. It’s the reason I’d never asked Gustavo about Jorge in all these months. What? And have Gustavo change my mind and drag me back into that no-win situation? Or risk him telling Jorge? Then Jorge would think I wanted him back or that I missed him, or the worst possible scenario: they’d man-talk about me. No, the worst scenario would be that they’d Cuban man-talk about me. You know what I mean, don’t you? How once you go Cuban, you never go back, and how they’re the best lovers in the world, and on and on. Don’t laugh. They do talk like that. And it shouldn’t surprise you. Everything Cuban is better. Bigger. Better tasting, or functioning, or whatever. It’s part of our thing, and it’s innocent, but I still didn’t want them talking about me, because the fact of the matter is that when I decided to get Jorge out of my mind, I’d gotten him out of my mind. (True, it had taken an Argentinean to help me do it. But I’d done it.)

  “Just forget I said anything,” I said, feigning interest in a tube of cement-colored spackling paste.

  “He was married in Cuba, which you knew when you met him. And I don’t think there was a ‘we’ in that breakup decision. I think you decided, and he just accepted it, because what else was he going to do? Stalk you?”

  “Like I said, married in Cuba is still married. And not that it’s any of your business, but she was finally coming to be with him here in Miami. She decided to come, then I broke up with him. That’s why I broke up with him. Not the other way around, okay?” I said, surprised that Jorge had shared this much about us, that I was having to defend my actions to Gustavo.

  “Oh. Really? And did you tell him this? That you were breaking up with him . . . for him?”

  “Yes, I told him and let’s drop the subject. I was just going to ask how he was. How the marriage was going. That’s all.”

  “Oh. Well, if that’s all, he’s doing fine. And the marriage is none of your business.”

  “Still working at Michy’s?”

  “Nah, thank God. Or I’d have to warn the man about the possibility of running into you there. We can’t keep letting you women stomp all over us whenever you want.”

  “No need. And I have no intention of stalking, or stomping, anyone.”

  “Okay. I mean, he’s a friend, you know?”

  “Okay then. If I saw him, all I’d do is say hello.”

  “Well, don’t go saying hello if you’re going to leave him worse than you find him. Let him be, will you?”

  “Okay. I get it. Sorry. God.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry too. Didn’t mean to get agitated, take my things out on you.”

  “What things?”

  But he kept trying to reach the back of a shelf, finally pulling out a black plastic bottle of degreaser, before answering my question.

  “Abril broke up with me.”

  “Oh,” I said, finally understanding his it’s-just-not-right mood and wondering what unloving, sex-hating, twenty-four-hour bug had gotten hold of my neighborhood recently
.

  “When?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  He looked about to cry, and if you knew Gustavo, you’d understand how strange, how unsettling, the mere possibility seemed to me that morning. In the six years he’d lived in my building, I’d only seen him cry once, and then only because he was drunk and got to talking about his family in Cuba and about how much he missed them. Don’t get me wrong—he’s a sweet guy. Just not one to share his problems, complain about his life, or give out X-rays of his heart in the form of information.

  Until he fell in love. The minute Abril moved into Iris’s building six months ago, Gustavo threw himself at her like Batman leaping down the side of the tallest of buildings, mask forgotten in her gaze, cape carelessly draped on his arm, and his face wearing his feelings, there for all to see what love could turn a man into.

  I didn’t blame him. Have you ever seen a model in a fashion magazine and said to yourself, “She’s not that pretty,” while still having to admit that there’s something about her? That’s Abril. Plus, like I said before, she knew how to be mysterious.

  “I’m sure you’ll patch things up,” I said, not telling him my feeling that somehow Henry’s father, whoever he was, was behind her decision to break up with him. Maybe she’d gone back to him and would leave as mysteriously as she’d come.

  “She says there’s no one else,” he said, reading my mind. “That it’s about sacrificing for her son. What does that have to do with anything?”

  He had a point.

  “I’m sure you’ll get to talk it out. Henry adores you.”

  “I know!” He shook his head, as if to say, “Exactly.”

  “And you know, maybe there’s hope. I happen to know she was crying yesterday, disimulando con Iris that she didn’t feel well, so at least you know she cares about you,” I said, trying to console him, and thinking, Unlike a certain Argentinean jackass.

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked him if he was going to submit a sculpture for the East Little Havana Development Agency contest. This was its second year, and it had been a big deal the year before, with Romero Britto and Nereida Garcia Ferraz sponsoring a debut one-man show at the Miami Art Museum for the winner.

  “I’m thinking about it. Kind of stuck for an idea. It would have to be something big, something that really says it all about Little Havana,” he said.

  “You could make it about Coffee Park instead.”

  “That’s what Iris said, but it’s Little Havana’s grant, and I really don’t want to stir up that kettle.”

  “Ah, the life of an artist, right?”

  “The life of a broke artist,” he said.

  “Well, okay, but, you know what? Tonight, after I finish at the apartment, I’ll go online and see if I find a few salvage stores willing to give you some extra material for a good cause, what do you say?”

  “Que eres la mejor y la más completa,” he said, which in Cuban means that I was the best.

  “Okay, okay, no need to promote my greatness. I’m sure I’ll be recognized when I’m dead like all the other greats.”

  “Well, I’m going to find a tenant for you,” he said.

  “An obsessive housekeeper, if possible, please. See you later,” I said, stepping out and waving good-bye to him with only the last three fingers of my right hand, the rest of my arms fully occupied with my purchases.

  I walked back to my building, looking at my cell phone display—eight forty a.m.—and thinking of Hector. Again. Like an annoying alarm. Good thing I was going to be very busy with the apartment. No time to think about stuff that was over. In fact, I decided, I’d make sure to be inside my apartment or Ellie’s at times when he might be home so that he wouldn’t be able to catch so much as a glimpse of me. I’d ask Iris, or Abril, who had a really nice voice, to record my answering machine greeting to deny him the slightest sound of me. I’d block my Facebook profile. I’d close the Twitter account I didn’t yet have, I’d . . .

  As I turned the corner at Eighth toward my building, a swatch of green and white fiberglass in my peripheral view brought me back from my Mariela mojo–denying plans: two Miami-Dade patrol cars. There was also a lime-yellow rescue truck, other cars I couldn’t identify, and it seemed as if people from all of Coffee Park were now standing around on my block, as if waiting for something.

  I thought, Henry! and quickened my pace. The crowd seemed thickest in the area in front of my building. I saw Abril with her ponytail all frizzed up, wearing one of Iris’s designs: a hot pink T-shirt cut up to resemble a Moroccan-scrolled iron window gate and jeans. She had a dazed expression on her face as she looked toward the park, while trying to restrain Henry from running off somewhere.

  Iris! Was it Iris? I walked even faster, searching for her with my eyes. There was the lady who had the huge Virgin Mary on her front lawn, wearing a house robe and curlers. There were Carmita and Betty, the couple who lived right across the park from me, with their five-foot-tall Great Dane.

  Then I saw Iris above the swarm of people, probably standing on a park bench. She seemed to be trying to see something over the crowd, and I exhaled, relieved. What the hell was going on? I ran toward her now, clinging to the paper bags I was carrying.

  “Iris! Iris, what happened?” I asked, cutting through the gossiping busybodies.

  I’ll never forget the shaken expression on her face when she turned, steadying herself to come down from the bench and hurry toward me, oblivious to the throng threatening to push her this way and that. As she reached me, she clung to my arm and turned me in the opposite direction, toward the sidewalk, only then opening her mouth to speak. But before she could say a word, somebody barked, “Excuse me! Stand back, please,” and an obviously exasperated paramedic emerged from the crowd rolling a gurney right past us, taking it from sidewalk to street with a sharp thud, and toward the vehicle shaped like a small ice-cream truck.

  “It’s Hector Ferro, Mariela,” Iris finally managed to hiss into my ear. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter 14

  The reason people go to psychics, santeros, psychologists, and spiritual consultants, the reason they pray with Buddhist monks, play Ouijas, pay to have their tarot decks, coffee cups, or tea leaves read, follow their horoscopes like gospel, get astral charts made, and try to decipher dreams, is to avoid regret.

  Regret is worse than death. Because death, like shit, just happens, swift as a gunshot. But regret is a migraine: a pain that goes on and on and on without ever becoming urgent enough to warrant cutting off your own head, tempted as you might be.

  My mother had a theory. She said that her generation, the first generation of Cubans exiled in Miami, aren’t as angry as they are sad. That they act angry to forget they’re sad they left the island, came here, and were never able to go back. She believed that no Miami Cuban over the age of fifty ever died of anything other than regret. Regret at having left, or at not having left in time, or at having left too soon. Regret of going to the wrong place, of not taking Pepito or Anita with them when they had a chance, not ever knowing if there was something they could’ve done differently. Regret that they’d never know if they’d have been strong enough to fight back, thinking the world would help them. It didn’t.

  They were so sure they’d be back soon, but weren’t, having to settle instead into, and for, what was then an inhospitable swamp that humidity made as hazy as the dirt they pretended to have in their eyes so they could allow themselves a good cry for their beaten-black-and-blue island. Like me, they regret not having been able to see the future.

  It’s the chicken feed of clairvoyance, regret. Because you think if you know all the information, if you know that if you leave you’ll never be able to go back (because even if you do, you’ll be going back to a completely different place that just happens to be in the same location), you’ll be able to escape second-guessing yourself. You think you’ll be okay because in the end your mother will still be your mother. You don’t know that she’ll be changed. Lovin
g you still, of course, but what you find out later is that her love now tastes different from all that time spent training to withstand distance, containing herself in order to live with impotence so strong, the phrase “so near and yet so far” was made for it. You think if you’d known all this, you’d be able to live with the results of your choices, never again wondering what would’ve happened if you’d never left.

  Having been clairvoyant, I can understand why people think information is the antidote to regret. Maybe they think knowing will allow them to say, “I did all that I could do” or “Nothing I did was going to change that,” and that this will give them peace. It’s as if they could deal with it all: death, loss, illness. But the prospect of the phrase, “If only I’d known”? No—that they cannot face.

  The truth is people will do what they’re going to do no matter what. The best clairvoyant in the world can tell them exactly what will happen, and they’ll just rationalize it and do what they will.

  Still, it helps to be prepared to rationalize, which I clearly wasn’t on this day that had so suddenly morphed from being “the day after my lover cared so little about me that he found it appropriate to break up with me on the eve of my birthday” to “the day I saw my dead lover’s body rolled out inside a black plastic bag.”

  One minute he’d been telling me his neglect was just his way of writing it “in” the wall for me. The next, there was no wall, and he was rolling away on top of a gurney, his face covered from me, his eyes closed forever.

  I sat there on my stoop, with my bag of cleaning supplies at my feet, looking out across the street at the crowd that seemed to cover the whole park square except for the area that had been cordoned off by police.

  Someone was taking my blood pressure. Actually, there were two paramedics. I wasn’t sure why two were needed when I was only one person. Had I fainted? To this day, I don’t remember.