The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

by Anjanette Delgado

  As he looked at me, patiently but questioningly, I hesitated because as much as I needed a friend right now, he happened to be a friend I’d been in love with. A friend I might not be able to deny “benefits” to after he’d respected my wishes and stayed away, and I’d been the one who’d called him back onto my troubled road of a life.

  Then again, he could be the bridge to getting my sight back, and with it, possibly the letter I hadn’t recovered, the only other proof that Hector and I had been lovers.

  “I have to see your godmother. I want to do what she says now.”

  He looked surprised, then shook his head.

  “She died last year.”

  “Oh, no! I mean, I’m sorry. Was she sick?”

  “Not at all. Died in her sleep. No pain.”

  “I’m glad,” I said honestly, despite feeling let down.

  “Exactly what kind of trouble are you in?” he asked.

  “Ay, Jorge, I wish I knew. It’s why I was hoping to be able to talk to your madrina. I don’t know any other true psychics whose sight I can trust.”

  “Okay. Understood,” he said, nodding.

  “You know what? Don’t worry about it. I’m really sorry about her death.”

  “Mariela, saying there was no love lost between you and my godmother would be putting it mildly; so I may not know what’s going on with you, but when you say you were hoping to see her, I know it’s serious.”

  I sighed and shook my head, words failing me.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I can’t take you to see madrina, but let me make a couple of calls. I may be able to take you to see the next best option. And you can tell me all about it on the way there. Deal?”

  Chapter 19

  The next day, I opened my eyes to a song made of the sounds of the neighborhood’s weekday routines taking place all around my building. There was honking, and bus whistles, and people rushing by on cell phones, and kids screeching when they meant to laugh, as if someone were stealing their book bags. It was Tuesday, and these were Tuesday sounds but, somehow, they sounded different. Everything was different. Things had changed inside and around me, just like the song had predicted.

  For one thing, I was finally able to really cry for Hector. It was a slow cry that took a long time, like a river trickling down a mountain from someplace within my soul’s eternal earth. He hadn’t deserved to die, I thought as I cried my strained cry. Hector was many things, and he would have been those things well into his old age, but he was also life, a mixed bag of wonders and lesser treasures each with its own purpose. Who had taken him? Who’d taken him when I wasn’t looking, leaving me no choice but to cry, my tears the transport system for the toxins of impotence threatening to make me explode. Hector was like the tree in your neighbor’s yard that you never notice, but whose shade you miss when the misanthrope chops it down to build a stupid terrace in its place. That’s how Hector’s death felt to me: stupid and unnecessary and heartbreaking, and all my tears didn’t make it right, but I still cried them.

  On the positive side of these changes, thank God, was a strength that had swooped in to save me from some part of me I hadn’t known existed. It had warned me of Hector’s death. It had pushed me to keep reading my great-great-grandmother’s journal after decades of ignoring it, not resting until I’d found the words that would liberate me from the jail of sorts I’d locked myself in since my mother’s illness. And it had made me want to see Jorge again, to put the fear of my own heart aside, and to seek help so I could once again see all I’d been meant to see.

  And then there was Jorge himself. One day, we’d managed to stay away from each other for almost a year. He had a wife; I had a lover, and we were safe.

  The next day, I’d come face-to-face with the truth of my sight and, within minutes, as if the two were connected, he’d been in front of me and it was clear that whatever used to be there, still was.

  Before he left the night before, Jorge had explained that though his godmother had died just a few months earlier, there was someone else who’d never failed him, and who’d be able to help me, he was sure. He promised to pick me up tomorrow, which was today, and I hadn’t stopped being nervous since.

  At two on the dot, he knocked on my door, rat-a-tat-tat, wearing a navy blue cotton shirt, gray slacks, and the thick wedding band he’d had the day before, but never worn when we were together. He had a plain canvas tote in each hand, and several plastic bags and bundles of string and wax paper peeking out of each one.

  “Okay if we eat something first?” he asked, and I said, “Of course,” taking a step back and waving him in, aware of the same sensation of time stopping, with a jolt, that I’d had the night before and attributed to his showing up without notice and to my shock over Hector’s death.

  Thing is I recognized that jolt. It was want. And confusion over seeing him again, now more mature, clearly more comfortable with himself, looking like the man I’d wanted him to be, on unexpected loan from another life. The jolt was that craving I thought I’d suffocated, and recognizing it put me on edge, as if I were somehow cheating on Hector just by following Jorge into the kitchen.

  “Trust me, you wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing madrina again,” he was saying now, switching on lights, raising the wooden blinds to let more light in through the kitchen window, while I stood at the entrance to the kitchen, watching him. “Toward the end, her predictions were off and she was grumpy, biting people’s heads off, that kind of thing,” he added, quickly laying out what looked like spices, some pieces of fish, and some cooked brown rice on my table before confidently opening the second upper cabinet to the right of the sink to find the cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil in the beautiful Italian tin can that he had given me, promising it would last me for years if I always remembered to cap it tightly.

  He snuck a quick glance at me to see whether it had all landed. That he remembered where everything was. That he remembered us.

  “You say she was grouchy? Strange. She used to be so cheerful,” I teased, waiting while he rinsed his hands to hand him a dishcloth and an apron, since it was clear that he intended to cook a meal.

  “Very funny,” he said, and when he tousled my bangs playfully before turning back to his ingredients, a whiff of his perfume flew from his hands and into my mind through my nose and I felt desperate to retreat to the safety of the distance I’d allowed him to breach.

  I busied myself picking a knife from the ones suspended on the magnetic metal strip on the tile above my sink, intending to offer my help as an impromptu sous chef.

  “You hungry?” Jorge asked.

  “No. Well, not really. But it depends on what we’re making here,” I said, and began peeling and slicing the piece of fresh ginger he put in front of me.

  “Really? Then why are you looking at my food as if you could lick it with your eyeballs?” he said, grinning as he sliced scallions and tossed some cooked brown rice in a bowl to loosen it up.

  “I’m doing no such thing.”

  He stopped tossing and smiling and fixed his eyes on mine until I asked, “What?”

  “Need a large skillet.”

  “Uh, of course,” I said, heading to the cabinet behind him, next to the stove. But I hadn’t bent down to look for it when he grabbed my hand and spun me around to face him, wrapping his arms around my waist so forcefully and suddenly that I lost my balance.

  Not that it mattered. He had me in more ways than one, and I clung to the bony outline of his shoulders, feeling the muscles of his chest through his shirt, his forearms circling me, his hands rubbing the fabric of my T-shirt up and down against the small of my back.

  “What are we doing?” I asked a minute later.

  But he just shook his head, not letting me go.

  Finally, he leaned me against the sink.

  “Why did you break up with me?” he asked, looking me in the eye.

  “You know exactly why I broke up with you.”

  “Why did you really break up wi
th me?”

  “For the same reason you stayed away after I broke up with you.”

  “That’s not fair. I called you many times. I gave up because I thought it was what you wanted. I thought you were Miss Independent, that you’d be scared if I’d told you I wanted to be with you, but needed to honor my commitment to bring Yuleidys, to at least get her out of Cuba. That I was just bringing her over to help her.”

  “I know you didn’t tell her that,” I guffawed.

  “Well, I couldn’t tell her immediately. She wouldn’t have accepted, I don’t think. But I would have told her once she was here and settled and able to help her family. You would’ve had to trust me.”

  “It’s been almost a year, Jorge. You know where I live. You could have said something.”

  But I knew he couldn’t really. I would’ve bolted even further had he come wanting to be with me, to really be with me. I’d ordered him to forget about me, and then I’d gone and replaced him in my bed within a couple of months.

  “You shut me out. I knew you didn’t think I’d get it together and that you were scared of being with me, but—” He looked around the kitchen, as if he couldn’t find a spot to rest his eyes on.

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  But I knew it was.

  “Mariela, I made mistakes. I wasn’t clear with you or with myself, but—”

  “But nothing. You have a new life. I have . . . a life. Let’s be friends.”

  But he kept looking at me, his eyes going from my eyes, to my cheeks, to my lips, then to the floor.

  “Let’s just go, okay? Let’s just leave things alone and forget about the food, and just take me to whomever we were going to go see, okay? Okay?”

  “Mariela, I’m freaking out here. You’re next to me for five damn seconds and—”

  “Jorge—”

  “One kiss,” he said.

  “Jorge, come on.”

  “One kiss, Mariela.”

  I sighed.

  “One kiss?”

  “Yes. One kiss. Let’s say good-bye right. And then, we’ll be friends. I’ll know where I stand. I’ll know you’re happy with whatever is going on in your life, though Gustavo says you’re not—”

  “Gustavo doesn’t know my life.”

  But then he’s kissing me and I’m melting and I realize how stupid I was to think I could turn a tenant into a substitute for this. His lips feel warm on mine, and my mouth recognizes them instantly, every one of my ribs, too, is welcoming the way his body is pressing against them, and I don’t want him to stop, but he does.

  “Okay,” he says, as if that’s settled. “Now, I’m going to make you my soon-to-be-famous arroz con sushi.”

  I’m confused, and I look at him knowing my face is a question, and he hugs me.

  “Not like this,” he says into my hair. “Not when you need me and we have to figure out what’s going on with you first.”

  I want to understand what he’s saying. I rally, try to save face, recover.

  “What’s this arroz con sushi? I’m pretty sure it’s just called sushi and that rice is already a part of it.”

  “No, no, no, no, no. This is completely different. Here, let me teach you how to make it and let’s get a move on or we’ll be late.”

  And so, even though there was nothing I wanted to do less than to learn a recipe I was never going to make on my own, I smiled and let him teach me to make what he insisted I call Chef Jorge’s arroz con sushi: You’ll need three ounces of fish, cubed and seasoned, as if for sushi (salmon, tuna, or yellowtail work well); one cup of brown rice, precooked; two tablespoons of fresh ginger, sliced; two tablespoons of fresh garlic, minced; and two scallion stalks, chopped. Also, olive oil and sea salt to taste, and half of a large avocado.

  Heat some of the olive oil in a skillet and place the strips of ginger and the minced garlic in it until they are lightly browned and crispy. Remove the ginger and garlic from the heat and set aside. Remove any excess oil from the frying pan and place the cooked rice in it, along with the scallions, until hot. Place the rice in single-serving bowls. Make some hollow spots on the mound of rice with your spoon and place your fish in. Top with the crispy ginger and garlic and garnish each side of the bowl with a sliver of the avocado. Sprinkle sea salt to taste and add a dollop of spicy mayo atop the fish, if desired.

  Drink with a cup of chilled white wine.

  Serves two.

  Chapter 20

  By four p.m., we were driving up a ramp that deposited us on the Palmetto Highway heading northbound, and all the things I still didn’t know about Hector’s death were back in force, troubling me.

  That very morning, killing time before Jorge arrived to pick me up, I’d emptied my humongous blue recycling bin and found nothing. No sign of breakup letter number two, the one with Hector’s smiley face on it that I had stupidly thrown out the morning after our blowup. I’d quaked imagining the police finding it and making God knows what out of it. And even now, as Jorge drove, stealing glances at me every few seconds and trying to keep the conversation going, I prayed the psychic we were going to see was as good as he believed, that he or she could help me see what had happened and what was in store, help me get rid of this fear of being blamed for his death.

  “So tell me, what’s new with you, other than that haircut and the birthday you had the other day?” he asked. (He remembered my birthday, but seemed to have forgotten the kiss we’d shared a while earlier.)

  “Oh, God, don’t remind me. Nothing much. Just trying to get the get-up-and-go to fix that empty apartment, but there’s just so much to do, I don’t know where to start.”

  “You know, I could help you out.”

  “No, I’ll take care of it. I’ve just had a hard time focusing with all that’s happened. But . . . what I could use is some of that great coconut soup you used to make, and maybe, for you to stop trying to make a little helpless woman out of me.”

  “Mariela, there’s no shame in letting yourself be helped, you know?”

  “I know. And I’m fine, and it’s my fault for whining, so, change of subject: Tell me, how’s the marriage going?” I asked, pointing to his ring with my chin and jutting out my lips, wanting to know once and for all what was happening and if that kiss had just been about giving his male ego some closure.

  “You’re such a woman.” He laughed at my gesture.

  “And don’t you forget it. Now, how’s the wifey?”

  “There’s no wifey.”

  Yeah, right.

  “But I do have a question for you,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Does the death of your tenant have something to do with your wanting to, you know, to see, after all this time?”

  I said nothing, afraid I’d say too much to someone who’d always known me too well.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s try this: Were you and he, um, involved?”

  For a moment, I wanted to tell him. But I couldn’t do it yet. Besides not denying it to Olivia after it was clear that she already knew it, I’d never told a soul about Hector. It seemed pointless to start now. And besides, it was none of Jorge’s business.

  “No.”

  He seemed to exhale. “Yeah, well, you know, I’m sorry to be so curious, but you seemed so out of it on Saturday that if you were, you know, mourning, I, um, I wanted to make sure I didn’t—”

  “Maybe you still shouldn’t.”

  He looked straight at me.

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. It wasn’t just Hector. It was me, still afraid of getting hurt. “Now, how’s the wife? Where are the ten kids you were supposed to have by now?”

  “Well, I’d tell you, but we’re here.”

  It was the typical, blue-collar Hialeah house, a square, little, peach-colored house, all irregular like the city it sat on. The front windows didn’t quite match, the roof looked like it was about to cave on one side from the weight of all the bright terra-cotta roof tiles, and the por
ch looked like an afterthought, barely held up by keystone pillars that looked like even they were ashamed to be so out of place.

  A pretty woman in a housedress stuck her head out of the front door, her hands holding a bowl full of something.

  “Hi, Jorge, go around back. He’s waiting for you.”

  “Thanks, this is Mariela.”

  I said hello, but she just nodded and smiled at him as if my being there were a private joke between them.

  We went around the back to what looked like a detached garage with doors that opened out like a barn’s. There was a lot of clutter: electronic gadgets, computer parts, several chairs, textiles, and a poster of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity, purity, and generosity. There were also a couple of Buddha statues, one of them huge and a deep turquoise blue. And in the center of all this, with his fingers stained orange by the Doritos he was eating, was a young guy, early twenties maybe, in white jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, also white. Black horn-rimmed glasses framed electric green eyes, and a diamond stud pierced his left earlobe.

  “Dude!” he said.

  “Qué bolá, Asere?” replied Jorge, using the international Cuban “dude” greeting. “This is Mariela. Mariela, this is Eddie.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand, hoping the profusion of competing religious symbols was just a sign of an inclusive mind and not a confused one.

  He looked at Jorge as if I weren’t there and said, “Está bonita,” with a smile, giving Jorge his vote of approval as far as looks were concerned, before he shook my hand. Did he think I didn’t understand Spanish?

  To me, he said, “Café?”

  I nodded yes, then unable to keep from blurting out my anxiety, I asked, “So, are you a santero?”

  “No, not really. I just mix it up in my own way, you know what I mean?”

  I didn’t, so I said nothing.

  “Okay. Let’s start,” he said, bringing three little cups of coffee to the round dining table at the center of the space and placing a brand-new iPad next to them.