Meanwhile, in the week since Javier and the Jotas’ arrival, there was no sign of Román. Total anti-climax.
I started looking for excuses to leave the house as often as possible, in the hope that he might turn up somewhere like he had at the Lit Fest. I went to the gym every day, lingered outside the grocery store and the mall, pretending to fumble with my keys, hoping that the black jeep would appear.
Nothing.
I wasn’t sick about it or crying into my pillow at night, but the guy was on my mind. A lot. I threw myself into work as a distraction. I blazed through translation projects, cranked out pages for my novel draft (most of which were shit but at least shit could be edited later), and turned to Aunt Celia’s Panama City excursions for inspiration and entertainment.
Mr CEO’s playing big and bad, walking me to my car after all night pressed up against me on the dance floor, asking how does he know I’m worth the trouble. I say, ‘You tell ME if I’m worth the trouble.’ I lean up against the car and pull my dress up to my hips, give him a good glimpse of what all the fuss is about, then flick my cigarette onto his fancy shoes, get in the car and leave, don’t return a single one of his phone calls for two weeks. Fucker’s sent so many roses since then I could go into the potpourri business. That’s how you handle rich men with big egos – just show ’em something shiny then take it away. They’re all yours after that.
If those snippets of her early twenties proved anything, it was that Aunt Celia would never have pined over some guy or wondered why he was MIA. If she wanted to fuck a guy, she’d fuck him. And if he didn’t give her the time of day, it was on to the next. Feelings were never hurt, neuroses never hatched. The only sleepless nights she had were the ones fuelled by blow and amphetamines under the metallic glimmer of a disco ball, the Bee Gees ringing in her ears and vibrating in her platform heels.
That manuscript was my therapy. I drank it in and did my best to switch off whatever emotions Román’s kiss had stirred. No good could come of starting up with our blackmailer’s strong arm anyway.
Nearly two weeks into Javier and the Jotas’ stay, and still with no further contact from Román, I found the dining table laid with our version of fancy tableware and my parents’ silver candlesticks, one of the few luxuries they’d smuggled over from Caracas. I joined everyone at the table, where Papá was carving a joint of roast beef. Javier was passing a bowl of mashed yams to Zulema, and the Jotas were helping themselves to beans and fried plantain. I pulled back a chair and sat. ‘What’s the occasion?’
Mamá gave a dramatic sigh as she twisted the cork out of a bottle of red wine. ‘Javier and the Jotas are off tomorrow. Román called your father to say their permanent housing is ready.’
‘It’s gonna be, like, so weird without you guys around,’ whined Zulema while Mamá swept around the table in her pumps and a silk dress, pouring wine into everyone’s glasses, bemoaning the loss of Javier as her sous-chef, Papá interrupting with a toast to the best drinking buddies he’d ever had. Even I felt nostalgic – they’d popped our safe-housing cherry, after all. That had to count for something?
The next morning, we sent Javier and the Jotas off with bacon-and-egg sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, like they were going on a camping trip. Lots of hugging, clapping on the back and promises to stay in touch. Mamá was given a book of Colombian poetry and Papá another bottle of rum. These tokens were a relief to everyone: proof that Javier and the Jotas weren’t that badly off if these were the kinds of things they still had floating around in their garbage bags.
When all the well-wishing was finally over, they got into a waiting taxi and our very first illegals were gone. Only when one of the Jotas leaned out the back window, waving goodbye, did I notice the rich ochre hue of his shirt – unmistakably Autumn. I guess we’d left as much of a mark on them as they’d left on us, even if it was just by way of getting them through their new lives in Trinidad in the best possible colours for their complexions.
BEHIND EVERY CRAZY BITCH
Reports rolled in that all the other Palacios households had been emptied that day as well. So to commemorate our collective first round of safe-housing, Aunt Milagros invited everyone over for dinner. Standing on her doorstep we could already hear the rest of the family around the back, more boisterous than they’d been since Aunt Celia’s death and Ugly’s subsequent overhaul of our lives.
Aunt Milagros opened the door. Though her hair was still bizarrely unbrushed and dense with grease at the roots, she had gone out on a festive limb and was wearing deep pink lipstick, the boldest she’d ever dare! No doubt about it, this was going to be a night for celebration, though of what I wasn’t sure – that we hadn’t been killed in our sleep by the strangers we’d been forced to let into our homes? Good enough, I guess.
‘¡Hola hola!’ Aunt Milagros stained all our cheeks with pink and led us through the house.
Aunt Milagros’s home was everything you’d imagine of a Catholic spinster’s house. Covering every shelf were figurines of Nuestra Señora del Valle, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Nuestra Señora de you name it. The mournful eyes of Christ were ubiquitous, staring down from crucifixes and framed paintings. And of course, there was the mandatory spinster’s cat. A raggedy, green-eyed thing with ginger fur and white socks. Aunt Milagros didn’t pay it any attention. I don’t even think it had a name. Never saw food bowls or a litter box either. Maybe cats just manifested where there were lonely women.
Out on the porch, the overwhelming sense of Christian martyrdom dissipated and gave way to bright Peruvian wall hangings, potted bougainvillea, and other décor that was markedly less guilt-inducing than the house’s interior. My family and I were greeted with a collective ‘¡Holaaaa!’ and then we went our separate ways: Papá to sit with Mauricio; Zulema to the bathroom to reapply lipstick or mascara or whatever; and Mamá to the kitchen with Aunt Milagros. Sancho was at his usual post by the grill, prodding sausages and swaying with a glass of something undiluted and amber in his hand. Catastrophe waiting to happen. The girlfriend, Megan, was at his side, stuffed into a size-too-small floral dress, eyes flitting constantly to Vanessa, who was playing a noisy game of cards with the twins and wearing a painted-on romper with a zipper that started at her cleavage and ran right down to her crotch. Good luck, Meg.
I went back into the house to see if Mamá and Aunt Milagros needed help in the kitchen.
‘Just a dream,’ Aunt Milagros was saying while removing the foil wrapping from a baked potato. ‘To finally have my house back to myself with my safety intact.’
‘Ay, Milagros, but what harm could a sweet family with three little children cause? We thought our illegals were great – those Jotas and that Javier, always so helpful around the house. Javier was a good catch for our Yola. Wants to be a chef, you know. But she didn’t even give the boy a chance. Just locks herself in that bedroom all the time. One of these days she’s going to—’
‘Going to what?’
My mother jumped at the sound of my voice.
‘Yola! Don’t sneak up on people like that!’
‘One of these days I’m going to what?’
Mamá tutted and continued unwrapping the potato in her hand. ‘One of these days you’re going to find yourself all alone and you’ll want to know why, and it’s because all you do is stay locked up in that damn room!’
‘I’m working, Mamá. I work from home. You want me to translate on a table in the front yard like I’m selling lemonade?’
‘Don’t be so touchy, honey,’ said Aunt Milagros. ‘Your mother is just concerned. She wants you to meet a nice boy.’
‘You never met a nice boy and you’re perfectly fine.’
Aunt Milagros sniffed. ‘We’re talking about you, not me.’ She brought her thumb to her mouth and tore off a hangnail. I noticed then that all her nails were ragged and short – which wasn’t like Aunt Milagros, who usually kept her nails carefully manicured in the same soft pink she claimed Queen Elizabeth wore, her one act of Latina vani
ty. I’d have asked her about it, but she and my mother were doing this classic woman thing where they didn’t say a word but were doing everything with passive-aggressive force, slicing into baked potatoes like they were disembowelling torture victims, launching balled-up foil into the bin with the undue force of an Olympian hurling a discus.
I left them to their wordless seething and went back out to the porch, joining the twins and Vanessa at the picnic table where they were still at it with the cards.
‘Can I join?’ I asked.
‘Sure! Take my hand.’ Vanessa jumped up and gave me her cards, tugging at the edges of her romper in a failed attempt to stop her ass cheeks peeking out. ‘I’m fed up of playing anyway.’
I took the cards and sat while Vanessa tripped off to Sancho’s side, curls, tits and ass bouncing with every step.
Aside from Mamá and Aunt Milagros being cold with me the rest of the night, and Megan looking like she was on the brink of tears when Vanessa usurped her position next to Sancho at the table, the dinner went off without any hiccups. Everyone was in good spirits, especially Aunt Milagros, who raised her glass to merrily toast that she could finally get a full night’s sleep now that there weren’t ‘possible sadists, Peeping Toms and murderers’ under her roof (which seemed a tad dramatic given that the kids who’d stayed with her were all under age eight and their parents were schoolteachers). Weird toasts and all, the mood stayed buoyant, even when Sancho, drunk, tried sitting in the porch hammock only to flip the thing right over and land face down on the tiles, breaking his front tooth. We all had a good laugh in fact – especially when we saw how insane Sancho looked with his drunken leer and half a front tooth missing. The only one who didn’t laugh was Megan, but this could’ve been as much from Vanessa running to Sancho’s aid as the spectacle of Sancho himself.
Home later, with a bottle of wine in me, I felt pretty good. Familial bonds had been renewed, I’d had a laugh at Sancho’s expense, and I’d successfully forgotten about Román for a few hours – no easy feat since his ongoing absence had been a persistent snag in my mood.
I undressed and got into bed. My head felt light as a bubble with all the wine, but my eyes weren’t heavy. Román was creeping into my mind again, tempting me to remember the spearminty taste of him, sliding my imagination into a spiralling Mills-and-Boon narrative punctuated by scar-dappled burnished skin, rough hands, heavy breath, mossy eyes, and a warm thumb on my lip. Frustrated, I kicked off the blanket and padded out to the kitchen, hoping a cold beer would be an effective nightcap.
Papá had beaten me to it. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, a beer to his lips. Seeing me, he lowered the bottle. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’
I took a beer out of the fridge, cracked it open and took a few glugs. ‘Have a lot on my mind,’ I said.
Papá’s eyebrows were drawn together, his expression soft. It reminded me of the way he’d look at me when I was a kid if I’d scraped my knee or had a nightmare.
‘I know this whole thing with Ugly must be hard on you,’ he said. ‘It’s a real upheaval on top of everything else you’re already dealing with.’
‘Everything else?’ He couldn’t possibly know about Román …
‘You know, Aunt Celia’s passing. She must be on your mind a lot. You know you can talk to me about it, right?’ He hesitated almost shyly. ‘And about your writing stuff too. I’m not a big reader, but I’m always interested to hear about whatever you girls are into.’
I took another slug of my beer, then kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t you worry, Papá. I’m fine, and remember, I told you if there’s anything worth telling about writing, I’ll tell you.’
‘Or about anything else, gordita. I know you and Zulema are grown, but I’m always here if you need me.’
For Papá, a little bit drunk usually equated to a lot mushy.
‘I know.’ I clinked my bottle to his and said goodnight.
Propped up against my pillows, sucking on the beer, I wondered how my father would really react if he knew what was on my mind: how to make Román regret his little disappearing act. I pressed the bottle to my mouth, bubbles streaming upwards as I drank, fantasizing about how aloof I’d be the next time I saw him. He’d try the old thumb-on-my-lip trick, the old dramatic kiss outta nowhere, and I’d roll my eyes. ‘Control yourself,’ I’d say. But even aloof seemed impossible. I was just so curious about him – curious, the same thing he’d said he felt about me – I wanted to know how he knew writers like Neruda and Echeverría, what he thought of my writing, where he’d gotten the faint scar across his mouth, why he was working for Ugly. I wished in that moment that I had Aunt Celia’s hardness, that I could squelch that curiosity, forget what I’d felt when he left me shaken in my bedroom, or at the very least smother my licentious imagination that kept thrusting me into saxophone-soundtracked soft-porn reveries of him.
I reached into my nightstand for the manuscript, hoping that Aunt Celia’s anecdotes would have their usual steeling effect, or at least distract my thoughts enough to be able to fall asleep. I’d finished the chapters on the bacchanalia of Panama City. Now Aunt Celia was in Miami, and I had come to the page that recalled the momentous event that would change her life forever: the night she met Mauricio.
1984, cocktail waitressing at Tuttles disco club. Twenty-two years old, tits up to my chin, a waist the width of a celery stick, and an ass like a shelf. The night I met the man who would be my downfall, I’m there at Tuttles doing my thing, mixing drinks, shaking the goods God gave me and milking as much cash as I can from all the small-time drug runners flashing their firearms like the phallic compensations they are. It’s just a half-hour before closing when some guy leans over the bar and puts a hand on my wrist – heavy gold watch, bronzed hairy forearm. Unmistakably Latino. I look up and there’s this slick motherfucker – wavy dark hair smoothed back from his face, white blazer, electric blue V-neck, thick gold chain. I could see he was a jefe, a big boy.
‘Do a shot with me?’ he says – a Venezuelan, I hear the accent.
I pour us a couple of Jose Cuervo shots and flash Big Boy a smile. ‘Why not?’
We do a shot then a couple more waiting for the last of the cokeheads to traipse off the dance floor.
‘Wanna go for a ride?’ Big Boy asks at closing time.
He tells me his name is Mauricio and a couple minutes later we’re in his low, boxy sports car painted fire-engine red. That car knocks my socks off. I sink back into the bucket seats and think: This is a man to keep around.
Irony – gotta love it.
Now seeing that this Mauricio has money and plenty of it, I don’t lay a finger on him. I see the jeans bulging, the big hard outline, the blue balls in his eyes, and I say to myself – this one is for the long haul, the diamond – and so I actually let him date me. Fancy restaurants, snippy white maître d’s with iron rods rammed up the rectum serving me like I’m the Queen of fucking Sheba. Hotel suites every weekend, champagne for breakfast, mountains of the purest blow on gold-edged mirrors, Mauricio hand-feeding me oysters, caviar, truffles and all the other bullshit rich people are supposed to eat. That pussy power plays Mauricio like a fiddle. In two months I get the ring – a pink diamond – and I even cry when he gets down on one knee, like I’m really in love and not just off my face on Bollinger and class-A drugs.
Eyes finally heavy, I dropped the manuscript onto the floor and slid down beneath the duvet. So that’s how it had all started – with a tequila shot. And Mauricio, once a big boy with money to throw around, with flash and attitude. What the hell had happened to him since then? And how depressing to bear witness to how a hot-and-heavy romance could, over a few decades, curdle into something as miserable as whatever Mauricio and Celia had by the end. Way less than a few decades actually – I remembered Aunt Celia once telling me, over an especially wine-soaked lunch, about what a shit husband Mauricio had been before they’d even had kids:
‘There I was, Yola, seven months pregnant with Ava. First kid. I
should’ve been happy as hell, glowing and sitting on a lily pad being worshipped by Mauricio without a care or a stress. But let me tell you something about women’s intuition. You can always tell when a man is sniffing around for trouble. I knew he hadn’t done the deed yet – a woman can tell these things, Yolita – but I knew he was out there sniffing. Instead of rubbing my back and feeding me bonbons, the hijo de puta has me working around the clock like a private eye just to keep his verga out of holes where it doesn’t belong.’
‘Aunt Celia, you sure you wanna be telling me this?’
‘Coño, you’re twenty-three now. Time you learned how marriage really works. Now shut up and absorb some pearls of wisdom. So Mauricio wants to play with fire, and you mightn’t believe it, but back then my Mauricio was something to see. He had a body on him, bruja. And this one little troublemaker, María, a Miss Sucre who couldn’t even rank at the Miss Venezuela competition on account of a badly timed cold-sore outbreak, I catch her eyeing Mauricio in the streets, licking her lips like there’s not a whole hotbed of herp under there. Bitch has a hungry little pussycat and thinks my husband is just the one to feed it. So imagine my surprise – or lack thereof – when Mauricio has the huevos to turn up at our house parading María like a bouquet of roses he’s brought to surprise me. The pendejo actually had the audacity to say: “Meet the new nanny! Here to help when the baby comes!” I watch this bouncy-haired, big-toothed homewrecker grinning at me in the foyer, waiting for a hug and a doggy biscuit, and I tell her one thing and one thing only. It’s the only thing you ever need to tell some bitch who comes up in your territory trying to take your man.’
‘And? What’d you say?’
‘To get the fuck out.’
I’d laughed. ‘And what’d you tell Mauricio?’
‘Now here’s the thing you need to know about men and marriage. Sometimes words aren’t enough. Men aren’t so cerebral, not so good with the verbal communication skills, you know? They respond better to actions. So let’s just say I took action.’
One Year of Ugly Page 8