The New York

by Bill Branger

  “What do you wear?”

  “English Leather,” I said.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “I left my Old Spice at home. Bought it at the airport on my way.”

  “It doesn’t suit you,” he said,

  — Orlando, get a bottle of Old Spice, pronto.

  Orlando ran out of the room and a moment later ran back in with a bottle of orange liquid. Castro handed it to me and I did what I had to do, even if I felt silly standing there in a room full of men slapping scented alcohol on my cheeks. The Old Spice strove mightily to overcome the English Leather and when it was sufficiently stinky for Castro, he resumed our dialogue.

  “If Maria accompanies Raul to New York, she must be treated to all amenities.”

  “We’ll get them a suite at the Plaza Hotel.”

  “Bueno!”

  “Get them a car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “What kind should it be?”

  “A Buick. I like Buick, I always have.”

  “A Roadmaster,” I said.

  “Good, good.”

  “And more money,” I said.

  “What?”

  “More money. We ought to hold up George Bremenhaven for more money. The kid is only getting $109,000 a year. He deserves a lot more.”

  “How much more?”

  “Let’s say two million,” I said.

  “Two million dollars?”

  “Well, it’s not as though it’s my money,” I said. “I’m sure George will spring for it and for the suite at the Plaza and everything. All we got to do is see if Maria wants to marry Raul as much as he wants to marry her.”

  “There is a complication,” Castro said. “The parents are not certain —”

  “Oh, come on, Supreme Leader, what’s the point of being dictator if you can’t dictate? If she wants to marry Raul and I know he wants to marry her, what parent is going to stand in the way? Particularly since you are the boss. Hell, you ought to marry them yourself.”

  That was pure inspiration. It just popped out of my mouth. It surprised me as much as it surprised Fidel. He switched languages all of a sudden for no good reason,

  — Very, very good, what an excellent idea. I will give them my personal blessings.

  — It’ll be the wedding of the century.

  — Of all time. The world will see that Cuba has a great soul and is a great romantic country where love is still honored and cherished.

  — Wonderful (I said).

  And it was, when you thought about it. I would get Raul back, Raul could stop buying out the stationery stores, and George … Good old George. Good old greedy, mean, rotten George Bremenhaven. Well, I was sticking it to George and the only thing that made it less fun is that he didn’t know it was all my idea. And sticking it to Baxter, not to forget him and the fucking State Department. I wasn’t going to lose, not for them, and I was going to make George pay for it as well. What if we did win?

  It was the first time I’d really thought about it.

  What if we did win the pennant? The fucking American League pennant? Twenty-four kids and one old boy from Texas who just won the damned thing? Think people howled about Toronto winning the Series? There’d be a howl on this one for sure. The government would be embarrassed, George would be out a major stack of change even by winning and would have to come up with real money to hold on to his players for next year. For all I knew, George didn’t want the price tag of winning a pennant. It would surprise some sports fans to know that it works that way in certain franchises. As long as they can fill the park, they don’t really care that much about winning because winners want more money, expectations rise, and pretty soon everyone is telling you how to run the business. I don’t know what Castro was getting — really getting — but it was a damned sight more than $2.5 million. Maybe winning the pennant would be the way to square everyone’s account. Or my personal account with people shoving me around like a chump. Starting with George and his Roxanne Devon shit. Maybe that Baxter guy with the State Department would be pissed off, too. But George. The thought of George actually winning the pennant and having to deal with a boatful of winners. It almost made me smile.

  I owed the veggie-eating son of a bitch for a lot and payback was going to come a drop at a time.

  30

  Part of the world made it to the midnight wedding in the presidential residence.

  There was Fidel in his newly pressed fatigues and a bunch of other guys, some in fatigues and some in suits, including Senor Martinez, who seemed to wilt every time Castro looked his way.

  There was Dr. and Mrs. Velasquez, too, and Raul’s family and a bunch of foreign dignitaries, including the Swiss ambassador who handles all the American business in Havana because we don’t have an embassy there anymore.

  Did I mention CNN? And Telemundo? And Miss Charlene Cleaver who had changed her dress after finally getting a shower at the Comrade Hilton?

  Deke Williams could have been there, but he got very shy about being around cameras, which makes me feel that whatever he was doing in Havana was less than sincere.

  George was in New York, but he was there in spirit. He was paying for it. When I called him and told him about Raul wanting two million for the rest of the year, I had the happy thought for a moment that George would collapse with apoplexy. His arteries were stronger than I gave them credit for and he merely went on a tirade that ate up three minutes of international phone charges. Then I dropped the other shoe, about the Buick Roadmaster that would be waiting to whisk the honeymooners to their suite at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. I was sounding like Monty Hall throwing in the prizes, and Raul never had to answer any questions.

  The only real question was whether Maria loved Raul as much as he loved her.

  Let me tell you, seeing Maria in person, up close, and not hugging and kissing someone on the tarmac at Havana airport, well, it’s something. She has eyes and ears and a nose and the rest of it, but it has been put together so beautifully that you would be content just to look at her, never mind the other stuff.

  About a half-hour before the midnight wedding, I met her in an anteroom of the president’s residence. She was dressed in white, and I believed it was appropriate. Her eyes glittered because they reflected the lights of all the candles in the rooms. Candles were romantic and they also cut down on electricity.

  I asked her in Spanish if she really wanted to marry Raul, because I didn’t want to get involved in something where someone had to do something against her will.

  Her mother was there, frowning at me and frowning at my Spanish. Her father was in the next room, working on his courage with a glass of iced rum and ersatz Coke.

  — Yes.

  — Okay, just so you’re not doing anything against your will.

  — And you are the man with the saddest story, is that true?

  I blinked at her.

  — The story of walking away from love because of a foolish game.

  — Baseball. It’s what I do. It’s what Raul does.

  — Oh, he can do whatever he wishes to do, it doesn’t matter to me. I only want Raul. But he said you were very sad about so many things that it made him feel even sadder when he was in North America.

  “I ain’t sad about much,” I said in English.

  “Good. Even if you deny these things, it’s good to be so sure of yourself,” she said.

  “You speak good English,” I said.

  “Of course. And French. And Russian.”.

  “Maybe you can teach Raul some more, so I could have a part-time translator in the field,” I said.

  “Interpreter,” she corrected me. “Is Raul really so very good?”

  “You don’t follow baseball?”

  “To please him, I follow but I have no judgment.”

  “He’s the best hitter anyone has seen in fifty years or more.”

  She smiled at that. She had proud eyes and they glittered so fine in the light of all tho
se candles that I could guess she came from royalty just by looking at her. She had the fine look people who have nothing to prove have. She could have worn jeans and still sat on a throne.

  “And he’ll make a lot of money.”

  “Money is not as important as love. Tonight, I have love fulfilled and that is more important,” she said.

  “Well, I hope it never rains on your parade, is all,” I said.

  “My parade? Raul wrote me about you and about how you always speak of the parade. You are obsessed with parades.”

  “That’s all there is. It marches by and you’re there and you see it or you don’t and you miss it. The parade don’t need you to make a parade, it just invites you along.”

  “I have my own parade,” she said then. I must admit, I sure admired her for saying that to me, even if I thought she was wrong. Actually, I was beginning to think maybe I was the one who was always wrong.

  So there we were, Charlene and me and all those swell people and Señor El Presidente himself signing the marriage license and starting to spout extemporaneously. He was marrying Raul and Maria, but he was also using the occasion to speak of the crisis in the dairy business and the need to increase exports of meat products to the former countries of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. This led him naturally into a ditty about the friends of Cuba and the enemies of peace, you were one or the other, and then into a mild diatribe about the United States government and its corruption.

  I have been at tent revivals that were shorter.

  About 1:30, I was getting tired of standing and Charlene looked like she was just out on her feet. CNN had run out of tape and Fidel didn’t seem to notice that the TV lights were turned off. His toadies, naturally, were used to this sort of thing and just stood there like good little soldiers and took it.

  Finally, after we detoured through the chaos in Russia and the need to cement relations with China, Fidel decided at two that he had spoken long enough. He put his hand over the hands of the joined couple and he said that in the name of the people of Cuba he blessed them and their union and that the Cuban people wanted Raul and Maria Velasquez-Guevara to be man and wife and all that that would mean.

  I didn’t really know what time I got back with Charlene to the Comrade Hilton, but it was late and I was dog-ass tired so that even the sight of Miss Cleaver in her nakedness did not do much for me. Come to think of it, I guess I didn’t do much for her. We collapsed in a mutual pile on the bed in her room — it was bigger, I mentioned — and slept under a sheet in the manufactured coldness until noon.

  Deke came by around then and roused us with a pitcher full of Bloody Marys and fresh bread and butter. Charlene put on her blue silk robe, which was not enough covering but we were both yawning and stretching and nobody seemed to give a shit one way or another.

  Deke said he’d called Chicago early that morning and the story of the wedding was on the front pages. The president had said he, himself, blessed the young lovers and hoped it would symbolize a new era in American and Cuban relations.

  “Our president or the one here?” I asked.

  “Ours, man. I told you, I’m in on the ground floor, brother. Democrats in the White House, got brothers to help me out, ain’t like when they got Republicans in; Republicans all the same, white. We get these relations normal between us and Deke Williams will be the king of catfish as well as shark, tuna, and whatever else is growing around this island.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said.

  “And it was all due to you comin’ through Chicago feelin’ so down and miserable last fall.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure, man, you told me that George was going to deal with Cuba for ball players long before anyone else in the world knew about it. So I was a jump ahead, got my congressman with the inside skinny on this shit, and he laid it all out for me. I just had to give him ten percent of found.”

  “Of course, a bargain.”

  “And when I set up Catfish Travel, man, there isn’t any way I ain’t gonna be making money comin’ and goin’, you might say. Sell packages to people that want a different kind of honeymoon.”

  “As long as they aren’t particular about showering all the time,” Charlene said.

  “Oh, honey, when Catfish gets cookin’, there’s gonna be water like manna running down here,” Catfish said.

  “Why don’t you ever do anything like that, Ryan?”

  “Like what?”

  “Think ahead. You told Catfish that George was going to deal with Cuba and he figures out a way to make money out of it for himself.”

  There she was going on again, holding up another ridiculous example of what it was I should be doing. She held up George to me until he called her a bad name, and now, just met the guy yesterday and she’s holding up Catfish Williams as an example of American enterprise in action. Why couldn’t Charlene at least give me credit for playing baseball or something?

  Catfish beamed on while Charlene drank her breakfast and gave me this “why don’t you amount to something” look. I was pretty sick of her and of Havana and I knew I was sick of Catfish Williams and his big schemes.

  Martinez got us all out to the airport in a large DeSoto, which meant I didn’t have to ride with Catfish. The newlyweds were there as well, holding hands and giving each other the look that means everything turned out just fine. Parents and kin were also there, weeping and gnashing, and it was all giving me a headache. I got on the plane way before takeoff and just sat by myself up front.

  The twin-engine job took off around three and we bumped up a few thousand feet so that we could see the waves forming in the Caribbean.

  Ninety minutes or so later, we landed at Mexico City and went through more bullshit and then we were airborne again on Mexicana, headed for John F. Kennedy on Long Island. Out there, we went through the customs and passport rigamarole again. Charlene was irritable and so was I, but at least the airport was air conditioned.

  We got into New York at eight, just in time to miss the rush hour. George had sent a limo out to JFK and the press was jammed in the terminal, asking questions and shooting pictures and tape.

  We pressed through the flush with me holding one hand on Charlene’s arm and the other on Raul, who was attached to Maria. We were all being battered around by news people. I got a tape recorder in the nose and a microphone in the mouth.

  Charlene had had enough. “Will you people show a little common courtesy?” she inquired in her loud way, and the answer was no, not much. She ended up punching a TV reporter in the chest, and a nice little punch it was, too.

  I shouted out that the newlyweds were heading for a honeymoon suite at the Meridian Hotel where they would hold a press conference. This was just a small lie, not like some I’ve told, but I don’t think anyone believed me anyway.

  I just wanted to fade with Charlene back to my little apartment in Fort Lee — but I thought I’d better check with the driver of the limo when we got out of the terminal. I didn’t trust George, and that was the only instinct I was going on. I came around by the driver’s window and he rolled it down.

  “Where you supposed to take them?”

  “East Side Hotel,” the limo driver said.

  See what I mean? You shake hands with George, you’d be smart to count your fingers afterward. Anyone willing to dump a $50-million payroll and replace it with a bench of Cuban kids who have to live in a slum is not worthy of much trust. “Gimme your phone,” I said to the driver and punched in George’s number.

  It rang six times before Miss Foster picked it up. I told Miss Foster that I wanted to speak to George. She said he wasn’t in. I said, “Well, you can tell George it was a nice try, but we’re going to the Plaza the way it was arranged and I’ll send him the bill.”

  She hesitated.

  A moment later, George came on the line. “You son of a bitch, you’re trying to rob me. I own the East Side Hotel, it’s got some nice suites in it, just as nice as anything in the Plaza.”

&nbs
p; “Any resemblance between the Plaza and your hotel is minor. Like they both have doors and windows. We’re going to the Plaza.”

  “Not in my limousine, you’re not.”

  “Then fuck your limo, we’ll take a cab. You’re trying to cheat your way through this, but it isn’t going to work, George. No cutting corners. And that goes for the new contract you’re going to offer Raul. No contract, no workee, comprende, Señor?”

  “You put that spic up to this, Ryan. I can fire your ass.”

  “Fire away, George. I ain’t gonna fight with you. Send the checks to me in Houston, Texas “

  “Is the media there?”

  “All over the place. We had to fight our way through the terminal.”

  The mood shifted, just like that. George was back to his old bonhomie routine.

  “Great, great, great. I was on the Today’ show this morning.”

  “Why, what did you do?”

  “I talked about the welfare of my ball players coming first.”

  “And then you want to pet them in a welfare hotel.”

  “All right, all right, but this isn’t a permanent arrangement, Ryan. You know what a suite in the Plaza can cost? Maybe I can work out a deal on this. All right, pet the driver on the line.”

  I handed the phone to the driver. He listened, said “All right,” and replaced the phone.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked, checking.

  “Take them to the Plaza Hotel. Get them registered.”

  “Okay, man,” I said, letting the weight of the world fall from my shoulders. I was so damned tired. “You take care of it, buddy, and here’s an extra ten for your trouble. This couple is from Cuba, you know. The woman speaks good English so if you got trouble getting through to the kid, talk to her”

  “What do I look like, a babysitter?”

  Said it in that chip-on-his-shoulder way that drivers in New York acquire with their licenses. Ten dollars is no longer enough to earn politeness from anyone in New York.

  “This kid is Raul Guevara, he’s hitting .435 for the Yankees.”

  “The last time I was at a baseball game, the seats were a dollar,” the driver said.