“Are you homesick?”
“Pah!” Leila was embarrassed. “How important is bread, anyway?”
Enrique took a bite of his grilled cheese. It was already cold and congealing to plastic. He wanted to say that he understood her perfectly. The smallest details—a Spanish street name, the taste of pineapple jam—could catapult him back to a life that no longer existed.
“Where do you pretend to be from?”
“An Arctic tribe called the Pedersags. In Farsi it means ‘Your father’s a dog.’”
“I should be flattered that you didn’t try that on me,” Enrique laughed.
“Yes,” Leila said, staring right at him. “You should be.”
Enrique got so flustered that he went on about some nature program he’d watched on Alaskan otters during one of the many nights he couldn’t sleep, thinking about how he was wasting his life away. In the show, the otters floated on their backs leisurely cracking clams on their stomachs. What if everyone could be that self-contained?
“Your hair, it’s beautiful,” he practically shouted.
Leila scrutinized his fringed suede jacket and his western shirt with the mother-of-pearl buttons, which were his finest clothes. Then she looked down at his pressed jeans and rattlesnake-skin boots. She probably thought he was some kind of cowboy. Did she like what she saw? Enrique couldn’t tell. His senses were in disarray under her gaze.
“Where are you from?” Leila asked, breaking the spell.
“Cuba. I’m from Cuba.”
Then, for no particular reason, Enrique told her about the time he was three years old and jumped out the second-story window of his grandparents’ house in Cárdenas, determined to fly. Word of the “miracle” spread and the whole neighborhood crowded into his grandparents’ kitchen. Tía Adela predicted that Enrique would become the next pope. “¡Imagínate! A Cuban pope!” That same year, his aunt was forced to fight in the Bay of Pigs and got shrapnel in her stomach that lurched north like a compass after every meal.
“Do you ever wish you’d stayed?” Leila asked.
“Sometimes. But I’d probably be off fighting in Angola or someplace.” Enrique felt his throat swelling up. “So where do you live?”
“Los Angeles.”
“I lived in Santa Monica when I was a kid. What keeps you there?”
“School.” Leila hesitated. “And my fiancé. We’re getting married in two weeks.”
Enrique tracked the rapid descent of his heart. “You’re engaged?”
“We leave for Tehran next Friday. Hundreds of people are coming to the wedding. Relatives I didn’t even know I had.”
“What brought you here then?”
“I guess you could say I was testing my luck.”
“And?” Enrique winced, anticipating more pain.
“So far, so good.”
Coño, she was making him crazy. What kind of chance did he have with her? The same principles applied in love and poker, Enrique reminded himself, or so his Texan friends claimed. When in doubt, opt for the bolder approach.
“May I invite you to dinner?”
“We haven’t even finished lunch,” Leila teased him.
“The International Ballroom Competition is on at the Tropicana tonight. Do you dance?” He had to think of something to keep her near.
“Will you be performing?”
“I will if you come.” Enrique issued a pleading smile.
“What’s your specialty?”
“The maxixe. It’s a Brazilian two-step. Not too many people know about it outside Rio. Actually, my father is competing. He’s a hell of a dancer. I’d love for you to meet him.”
“Meet him or dance with him?”
“There usually isn’t much difference.”
“I’d like to go, but I need to get home. My fiancé will worry.”
“He didn’t mind you coming to Las Vegas?” Enrique figured things couldn’t be that great between them if she was here by herself.
“We made a deal,” Leila said.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell?”
“Sort of. But he’s still expecting me back tonight.”
“Fear makes no exceptions then.”
“What?”
“Let me take you.”
“To L.A.?”
“Why not?” Enrique felt exhilarated all of a sudden, as if he were playing poker with wild cards. What were the odds of having her to himself for the five-hour drive? Low, he calculated, exceedingly low. A monkey typing out the word Hamlet (one in 15,625,000,000) had better odds.
“I’m not sure—”
“Look into my eyes,” he insisted.
“Now what? Are you going to hypnotize me?”
“Trust your instincts.”
Leila inspected him again, then offered him her arm. Enrique, exultant, escorted her through the maze of flashing slot machines, toward the exit. On their way out, they ran into Papi walking through the door dressed in full Ching Ling Foo regalia. What the hell was he doing at the Diamond Pin this early?
“Mi hijo, ¿qué tal? And who is this ravishing beauty at your side?” he crooned, dropping his many acquired accents and reverting to his original Cuban one. Papi held out his hand and took Leila’s, planting a languorous kiss on her knuckles. “I haven’t seen you around here, mi amor. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“I thought you said you were Cuban,” Leila accused Enrique.
“We are. This is just his costume. I mean, my father’s a magician and this is his stage persona.” Enrique shot his father a desperate look. “Dad, help me out here.”
“Sí, preciosa. Beneath the sophisticated veneer of the Great Court Conjurer to the Empress of China lies someone—believe it or not—even more intriguing. Here,” Fernando said, pressing Leila’s hand over his brocade-upholstered chest, “lies a heartbroken man, a man of exile, a man whose adventures throughout the uncivilized worlds could fill many volumes. Did I tell you, my jewel, that I have the hearing of a desert hare?”
This was too much for Enrique. His father’s hearing had returned to normal years ago, even before he’d left the hospital. In fact, he was probably half deaf by now. No matter that Papi was obese or that his scars were visible through his thick stage makeup. When it came to women, he was one hundred percent Cuban.
“I’m driving Leila back to L.A. today,” Enrique said tightly. “She’s getting married in two weeks.”
“But you are much too young! Ay, I was married once to a wonderful woman. My son’s mother, in fact. Everything I do is in her memory.”
Enrique wanted to say: including putting the moves on other women. But he kept his mouth shut. Maybe if he stayed quiet, this would all be over sooner.
“My darling dove!” his father began to sob. “My rivulet of honey! How I miss her so!” His tears left tiny tracks in his makeup.
“You poor thing,” Leila said, patting him on the shoulder with her free hand.
“She was my mother, too,” Enrique chimed in pathetically. He couldn’t believe that he was competing with his father for this woman’s sympathy. They were both sinking to new lows. “We need to leave. Dad, please let go of Leila’s hand.”
His father looked up forlornly. “Perhaps I could accompany you? I have some business to attend to in Los Angeles.”
“No fucking way!” Enrique blurted out. “I mean, no. No, Dad. You need to stay here. Remember the ballroom competition tonight?”
“Yes, of course.” Papi straightened up. “Many people are counting on me.”
“Do gamblers bet on dancing, too?” Leila asked.
“Everyone bets on everything here,” Enrique said glumly. “Even the number of sugar packets in a bowl.”
“I am favored to win third place,” Papi offered modestly.
“But he’ll probably place first. He usually does.” Enrique was feeling more charitable now that his father had backed off from the trip.
“It requires gyrations of the utmost finesse,” Papi added,
trilling his r’s and winking at Leila. “But I must be inspired. And you, bright light of the Orient, feast for my tired eyes, have provided it for me. Are you a Gemini?”
“Why, yes.”
“I knew it! Just like my son. June twentieth?”
Leila looked surprised. “Are you an astrologer, too?”
“Well, my dear—”
“Pure coincidence,” Enrique interrupted.
“Would you do me the honor of attending the competition?” Papi ventured. “With you in the audience, my nightingale, how could I not dance my best?”
Enrique began to protest, but Leila interrupted him.
“I would love to,” she said.
“What about your fiancé?” Enrique stammered.
“He can wait one more day.”
“How delightful! You know, my goddess, you are in the best of hands with my son,” Papi threw in generously. “He is a man of character, an exemplary man. Above all, he is sincere. Trustworthy, kind, to be cherished—”
“No need to overdo it, Dad.”
“You float over everything! Son of my soul!”
“Okay, we’re out of here,” Enrique said, quickly steering Leila into the bright shock of the afternoon.
“Be gentle with him, my beauty!” Papi called out after them. “He is my greatest treasure!”
“He’s cute,” Leila said once they were outside.
“Cute?”
“No, I mean it. He looks just like that—”
“Please don’t say Ricky Ricardo.”
After dinner at the Flamingo’s penthouse restaurant, Enrique escorted Leila to the ballroom dance competition at the Tropicana Hotel. His father had arranged a ringside table for them. Enrique was used to glitzy events in Las Vegas but the jungle decor and the sequined-and-feathered contestants far exceeded his expectations. Papi looked more elegant than most in his white tuxedo with the plum-colored lapels. His shoes were black and blindingly shiny, the better to show off his intricate steps. His partner was a Brazilian woman four inches taller than him. Her stage name was La Víbora, and Enrique soon saw why. At the climax of their routine, she had a gyrating Papi suspended horizontally between her powerful thighs.
In the heat of a competition, his father’s health ailments evaporated entirely and he moved like a man decades younger. He spun La Víbora across the dance floor, then lifted her high above his head as he executed a series of dizzying pirouettes. When they finally came to a stop—Papi was balanced sculpturally in the palms of La Víbora’s hands—the crowd went wild, jumping on tabletops and roaring their approval.
Leila got caught up in the excitement and twisted an ankle trying to clamber onto a chair in her high-heeled gold sandals. Papi blew kisses in her direction, which she avidly returned. Enrique was impressed with his father, of course—how could he not be?—but he was flooded with a growing sense of resentment. When would he ever be the star of the show? Why was it so impossible to escape his father’s shadow? What woman had ever jumped on a chair for him?
Enrique didn’t want to wait until the end of the competition but Leila insisted on staying. Unsurprisingly, Fernando Florit and La Víbora won first prize with a special citation for their “extravagant creativity.”
When Papi approached their table, still holding his trophy, Leila threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss.
“You were great, as always.” Enrique tried to muster up some enthusiasm. Whatever his feelings, there was no denying his father’s talent.
“Gracias, hijo. I couldn’t have done it without you. And I was doubly inspired by the presence of our lovely desert rose from Arabia!”
“Leila’s from Iran, Dad. It’s not the same thing.”
“Bueno, what are you two going to do now?”
Enrique hesitated. It was nearly three in the morning. Would Papi try to horn in on his date?
“Why don’t you go swimming?”
“Swimming?” Enrique asked.
“To refresh yourselves before the long drive back.”
“That’s a great idea,” Leila said. “I’m not sleepy at all. Won’t you join us, Fernando?”
“No, no, my dear. My exertions have been sufficient for one evening. But I wish you a safe journey, and”—he leaned over to kiss her hand, his forehead still shiny with sweat—“my enduring veneration.”
An hour later, after buying swimsuits in a twenty-four-hour gift shop, Enrique and Leila ventured into the Flamingo Hotel’s swimming pool. It was closed but the guard, who’d known Enrique since he was a boy, unlocked the gate for them. Leila looked stunning in the remains of the moonlight, her face like mahogany, her dark eyes steady on his. Why did she make him so nervous? Why couldn’t he be as easy with her as his father?
“Will you have to return home for good?” Enrique asked. They’d been talking about the revolution in her country.
“Maybe.” Leila said her worst fear was that everyone would be forced to swim in a divided sea again, like in the old days: men on one side; women on the other, dressed in yards of black nylon. More than anything, she wanted to swim freely in the Caspian Sea. Her family had spent a happy summer there when she was nine. The best caviar came from the sturgeon in those waters, she said, and they’d eaten it daily for weeks.
“Caviar every day?” Enrique was incredulous, although he knew some high rollers in Las Vegas who boasted the same. He noticed the tan lines along Leila’s neck and wrists and fought the urge to lick them. “Do you scuba dive?”
“How did you know?”
Enrique pointed to her wrists.
“I can see why you’re good at poker.”
“Where do you dive?”
“San Diego, mostly. Once in Baja. Everyone there spoke to me in Spanish.” Leila shrugged. Then she told him about the time she’d seen a baby leopard shark off the coast of Rosarito. A huge school of baitfish also spotted the shark and turned together, as if on cue. “Do you think they take turns being leader?”
“Baitfish: democracy or dictatorship?” Enrique said in his best newscaster voice, but Leila didn’t laugh. She seemed preoccupied. He would give up a year of his life to read her mind.
Enrique watched her swim back and forth along the length of the pool. She favored the breaststroke but she also swam on her back and side. She was more graceful than any human had a right to be. He could have watched her for the rest of his life. If only he felt confident enough to kiss her. But he couldn’t get past the fact of her impending marriage. This was just the kind of wavering that Papi would have deemed defeatist, even unpatriotic. Every Cuban man, no matter his looks or his station in life, believed that even the most unattainable woman was within his reach.
At dawn, they finally got on the road. Enrique opened the car door for Leila (he was relieved that he’d cleaned his Maverick the day before) and waited until she was settled before closing it. American girls made a point of commenting on his good manners—Papi said that it was the one thing that never failed a man—but Leila seemed accustomed to the royal treatment. They picked up cigarettes, beer, and some spicy tortilla chips at a nearby convenience store.
On the outskirts of town, Enrique was tempted to stop at Sol’s Tattoo Parlor. He wanted to have Leila’s name seared onto his shoulder in Persian lettering but he didn’t want to scare her off. Would the Texans have risked it? Hell, yeah. So what did this say about him? Instead Enrique talked to Leila about mechanical engineering. It turned out she was majoring in it, specializing in factory robots. Leila was a junior at UCLA, where her fiancé was getting a double Ph.D. in nuclear and accelerator physics.
Enrique tried not to feel too wretched. Fact: Leila was sitting next to him right now. Anything could happen in five hours. He’d also managed to keep his father from coming along and ruining everything. That was a victory in itself. Enrique needed to concentrate on maximizing his possibilities. The rest he would figure out later. He suspected, though, that even the most accurate predictive systems could be wrecked by love.
> It was a clear day. The clouds were piled high and spaced far apart. Nearby a train trundled by on its way to Salt Lake City, past a dusty clump of prickly pear. Dogs barked against the barbed-wire fence of a fallen-down house, all emptiness and neglect. Now and then tumbleweeds crossed their path. Enrique drove in the right lane, as slowly as he could without arousing suspicion. He wanted to make the trip last as long as possible.
Leila fiddled with the radio, trying to find a news station. She was curious about where the Shah and his wife would end up. She’d lost track of the countries that had rejected them since they’d fled Iran. Many of her relatives were leaving the country, too, unsure if they would ever return. Leila said that her father had been tortured by the Shah’s secret police, that patches of his back were hideously scarred.
She said that her Iranian friends in Los Angeles wasted time endlessly comparing the two countries, in pointless debates fueled by cigarettes and tea. It got to the point that she could barely stand listening to their Persian classical music tapes. Too much nostalgia was like eating too many sweets, she said. It left you sick to your stomach.
Enrique drove past a diner with a huge American flag hanging limply on its pole. Several trucks idled in the parking lot, their tire flaps sporting the same chrome silhouette of a naked woman. A pile of gravel took up most of the lot’s north end. Everyone talked about living the American dream, but what about its ravages? Wasn’t that the more common story?
“Green card, green card. It’s all anyone talks about here. But even if they hate it, they don’t want to go home.”
“Are they hard to get?” Enrique asked.
“The best way is to marry an American citizen.” Leila lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. Her mouth made a perfect pink O as she blew. “But that costs money.”
“How much?”
“Two thousand dollars. Easier than falling in love, no?”
Leila turned the radio knob again, switching rapidly from station to station, singing along to random songs, moving to the music in her beige cashmere top. It was all Enrique could do to keep his eyes on the road. Remarkably, Leila knew many of the lyrics. Her voice wasn’t worth a damn but her accent made the words sound elegant somehow.
A Handbook to Luck Page 11