Death Comes in Through the Kitchen

by Teresa Dovalpage

  The room smelled of coffee and fried fish. There were seven rows of seats and a food stand. A queue had already formed around it. A television on the wall showed the same footage that Matt had seen at Villa Tomasa: rockets blowing up over a city that he assumed was Baghdad with Castro’s speech in the background, condemning the attack. His voice reverberated. The colors were vivid and rich, much more than on Román’s TV. The images looked three-dimensional.

  All of a sudden, a fighter jet came out of the screen and started making low passes over people’s heads. It was twelve inches long. It barely missed Matt’s right ear before returning to the television. He leaned against a wall. A buzzing sound filled the room.

  “We are out of coffee!” the woman at the food stand yelled.

  Matt composed himself and chose a seat as far as possible from the TV. His heart was beating fast and his head was spinning. The conversations around him echoed inside his skull.

  This is no regular high. Who knows what the hell they grow in Baracoa? Maybe it was laced with something else, something strong and weird.

  No use fretting about it now. He made an effort to stay quiet and closed his eyes. But the sounds intensified and became louder and clearer. He followed, unwillingly, a dialogue in Spanish between a couple seated three feet away from him.

  “Are you happy to be coming home with me?” asked a male voice with a Texas accent.

  “Yes, Papito,” a woman replied. “You know how much I love you.”

  “I’m worried you’ll miss your family. You’ve never been away from them, have you?”

  “Oh, I’ll miss my mom. We are very close. But she can visit us for Christmas, don’t you think, my love?”

  “It may take longer. All this has been very expensive: your ticket, the exit visa and everything.”

  “I know. You have been so generous!” A kissing sound and then, “But let’s try, okay? She sees you as a son, Papito. She adores you!”

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  “Speaking of Mom, let me call her quickly before we board the plane.”

  “Go ahead, darlin’. Give her my regards.”

  Matt opened his eyes long enough to see the curvy brunette walk away from the middle-aged American. She took a cell phone out of her purse. He caught a few sentences in her rapid-fire Cuban Spanish.

  “—leaving in a couple of hours. Make the money last, he’s already complaining about how much—will call you as soon as I get there. Yes, mi amor, I’ll send for you. No need to be jealous of that geezer. What? No, you don’t go screwing around! Ah, no worries—you’re the man of my life.”

  Matt fought the impulse to warn the unsuspecting Papito, whose solid and stolid back was covered by a sweat-stained guayabera. If Yarmila had lived, he would have been in the exact same position, he thought. He thanked the pot from Baracoa that allowed him to observe the scene with amused detachment and to laugh silently at his own lost innocence.

  Soon it would all be over. He wouldn’t think of Yarmila again. As Padrino had predicted, he would even forget the saint she was named after, though she hadn’t been named after any saint. He would go on working for El Grito de San Diego, interviewing chefs, and penning features for Foodalicious.

  But what if he couldn’t forget? Ah, then he would write about his Cuban experience. Not a news article, but the semi-autobiographical novel he had started on Román’s typewriter. Yarmila, Yony, Pato Macho, Taty and their shared night at Villa Tomasa would inhabit the pages of a dystopic book.

  When Matt opened his eyes again, it was a quarter to twelve. An officious woman’s voice reminded passengers to keep their passports and tickets with them because they would be checked again before boarding.

  Matt’s head was throbbing, but at least the sounds had toned down and nothing unusual came out of the TV. They were now broadcasting an interview with a chivato who had infiltrated an independent press agency. A presenter announced, “Compañero Manuel David Orrio, also known as Agent Miguel, was able to deliver valuable information to the revolution. He outsmarted the mercenaries paid by Yankee imperialism!”

  Orrio, a curly haired, smiling guy in a blue shirt, went on to explain that his task hadn’t been too difficult.

  “They believed everything,” he stated. “The more lies I fed them, the more they lapped them up. The hardest part was hiding my real work from my family—Mom nearly disowned me, thinking I had become a gusano. Dad wouldn’t talk to me, and my poor son was traumatized. They were all so relieved when the truth finally came out!”

  Orrio was part of a big Seguridad network. Other agents were interviewed after him but Matt, though interested, couldn’t concentrate on the story. He was starving. Luckily, the line in front of the food stand had dwindled down to four people. He ordered a pan con pasta that turned out to be two slices of bread with a pinkish spread inside. Though similar in consistency to meringue, the “pasta” tasted like a cross between imitation crab and hot dog.

  The gate to the tarmac opened and two guards came in. A plane was outside, so small that Matt doubted it had room for the thirty people who were waiting for it. A Boeing 777 parked nearby dwarfed it even further.

  “That’s some beast,” a young Cuban said, pointing his finger to the Boeing. “Coño, it looks like a building!”

  “I could live in it.”

  “Me too! It’s larger than my apartment.”

  The passengers that had been in the adjacent waiting room, European tourists for the most part, began to board the Boeing.

  “We’re next!” the Cuban yelled and his friends applauded. “Cancun, here we come!”

  They improvised a conga, a spontaneous song-and-dance mix.

  Nos vamos pa Cancun

  a formar el fetecún.

  Venimos de La Habana

  y nadie nos gana.

  Kumbakin kin kin,

  kumbakin.

  They kept it up until a guard shushed them. “Compañeros, behave! This is an airport, not a beer garden! Shut up or nobody will leave today, hear?”

  The conga died fast. The Cubans looked embarrassed, like children caught in the act. Even the Mexicans stopped talking. Then, in the total silence that followed the guard’s words, Matt heard a name: Yarmila Portal.

  He was hallucinating again. He had to be. But Yarmila’s face appeared on the TV screen. It pulsated, as if it wanted to break loose and burst into the room. These were her eyes, big, brown and intense; the smile that had won his heart, the pretty button nose . . . That was the very same picture she had once posted on her blog.

  “Compañera Yarmila Portal Richards is going to posthumously receive the José Martí Medal of Honor for her services to the revolution,” said the same presenter who had interviewed Orrio. “Comrade Yarmila, like Agent Miguel and many other silent defenders of our motherland, had infiltrated a counterrevolutionary group and was able to prevent them from causing harm to the revolution. She also served our country, with her pen and her brain, in a number of other ways. She carried on her work in obscurity until a despicable element, paid by Yankee imperialism, cowardly took her life. The killer, citizen Yony Nogales, was apprehended as he tried to flee Cuba and is now awaiting trial. Sergeant Yarmila Portal, also known as Agent Katia, will be promoted posthumously to the rank of Lieutenant of la Seguridad del Estado.”

  An older couple was shown receiving the medal. The man’s face was streaked with tears, while the woman’s reflected both satisfaction and proudly suppressed pain.

  Yony Nogales. Matt repeated the name and shook his head. That had to be the Baracoa weed’s effect. It couldn’t be real, could it?

  A security guard asked the passengers for the Cancun flight to line up by the door.

  “Passports and tickets in hand!” he commanded.

  Matt joined the queue behind the Texan and his girlfriend. His hands trembled when he took out the passp
ort and opened it to the first page.

  The guard took his own sweet time inspecting the documents. Matt looked back at the television, but the Seguridad ceremonies had given way to images of the Iraq bombing again.

  His gaze wandered to the glass window. He gasped. There, his face pressed against the glass, was Taty, in the black sequined top he had worn to impersonate Sarita Montiel. Matt felt guilty for not noticing earlier. Had the poor guy come all the way from Las Villas, or wherever he was, only to say goodbye to him?

  But how in the world did he know—?

  He let a group of Mexicans go ahead. He wanted to talk to Taty. But the young man wasn’t alone. Next to him were Isabel and Luis, smiling and waving. Matt waved back, cautiously, and discovered Padrino, all in white, behind them.

  “Con permiso, señor.”

  A couple walked in front of Matt. By then more people had gathered in the window, their faces elongated, their eyes shinier and bigger than they should have been. Pato Macho was among them, and that seemed highly improbable. Why would he want to say goodbye to him? And even more improbable, Matt realized with a chill, was Yarmila’s presence, her right arm around her lover’s shoulders. Yes, Yarmila, wearing the wedding dress he had bought for her at Buffalo Exchange, was right there, winking wickedly at him.

  “Aren’t you boarding too?” the guard asked.

  Matt was the only passenger left in the waiting room.

  “Yes, I—”

  “Let me see your passport. Are you okay?”

  Matt looked back at the window. It was now empty. His head thumped as if the entire crowd had taken residence inside.

  “Just a little dizzy.”

  “Too much Cuban sun, eh? Do you need help?”

  “No! No, thanks.”

  “Go ahead and hurry up.”

  Matt steadied himself and, without looking back, left the waiting room and began to walk briskly toward the pocket-sized Aeroméxico plane.