Fifty Grand

“Can we go home now?” Paco said.

“Yeah. I’ll say our good nights.”

Esteban went into the living room and after a moment he came back with Jack Tyrone. Jack’s eyes were red and his face puffy.

“I want to thank you for helping out tonight. You guys were probably on the go from early this morning,” he said.

You don’t know the half of it, I thought.

We nodded and Esteban said, “Well, good night, Senor Tyrone.”

But Jack wasn’t ready to let us go just yet. “Wait a minute,” he muttered, then yelled “Paul!” back into the living room.

Paul was another giant. This was the land of the giants. I wondered if this was Paul Youkilis from Ricky’s file?

If so-

“What is it?” he asked Jack.

“Tip?” Jack wondered.

“Oh God, yeah, fantastic job. Where’s what’s-her-name? Left already? You guys did the hard work, I’ll bet,” Paul said. Jack opened Paul’s wallet and gave us each a fifty-dollar bill.

“Oh, come on, Jack, a hundred bucks?” Paul complained.

Paco took the bills quickly. We nodded a thank-you.

“Job well done, even if fucking Cruise or Travolta didn’t show. Pitt came and he can buy and sell those guys,” Jack said and leaned against a door. He shook Esteban’s hand. “Esteban, is it?” he asked.

Esteban nodded.

“Yeah, I swear to God, I’m on your wavelength, man, Mexicans are just like us Micks, we’re Catholics, we have lots of kids, we’re religious. Difference is that you guys work harder and, truth be told, you have better food.”

Esteban faked a laugh and Jack started laughing. The laugh turned into a hacking cough. Paul got him a glass of water and led him back to the others.

“Let’s go,” Esteban said with disgust.

We grabbed the fruit and went outside into the cool mountain air.

At the side of the house I noticed a white Bentley. The white Bentley. No chills this time. Over that.

“Whose car?” I asked Esteban.

“Senor Tyrone’s, I think,” he said.

It was too dark to examine the paintwork but I’ll bet the garage had done a good job. Invisible mending. All traces gone.

“Home?” Paco said to Esteban.

“Wait a minute,” Esteban muttered, then took one of Jack’s fifties from Paco and pocketed it. “I take fifty percent of all tips. You two can split the other.”

Paco was too tired to complain. I was hypnotized by Jack’s car.

Esteban drove back to the motel and showed us to our room. Clean, small double with two beds, a shower, and a heater that you had to feed with quarters.

Beat as we were, we were too pumped and hungry to go to bed just yet and we found ourselves in the second-floor communal kitchen.

“Beer?” Paco asked and passed me a Corona.

I knocked it back in one and he cracked me another.

“What’s there to eat around here?” he asked.

“Let me see,” I said.

I opened up cupboards. An embarrassment of riches. Cilantro, chives, tomato, onion, garlic, peas, lettuce, peppers, and a fridge full of meat and cheese and beer. Like the house of a Party member.

I found that I wanted to cook for him, this kid, this man. I wanted to provide, the way you couldn’t in Havana.

“Put some rice on,” I told him. “And look for tortillas.”

While he did that I chopped an onion, mashed the garlic, diced a jalapeno, and fried them in olive oil. I threw in some cooked chicken and chicken stock and when they had all gotten to know one another for a while I slid in chopped tomato and minced cilantro and let them cook. When the chicken was brown I added a can of black beans and a can of red beans and let it reduce while the rice finished. Finally, I took a couple of tortillas and placed them in the oven.

“Man, this is good. What do you call this?” Paco asked.

“Havana chicken stew.”

“Havana?”

“Oh, I mean, just a regular chicken stew, that’s all it is.”

“Well, it’s good.”

It was good. The ingredients were fresh and plentiful and we were famished. It made me feel good. This was how life was supposed to be. Not scrimping and saving and fighting over scraps.

We ate by the window and looked out at the street. No cars, no snow, just trees and vague distant lights on the highway. We talked. He told me about Nicaragua. He’d been orphaned early, begged in Managua, ran off to the jungle to be a soldier, drifted to Guatemala and then Mexico.

I made up lies about Yucatan, bringing in things from Santiago and Havana. Paco nodded and was so kid sincere it made me feel terrible.

For dessert we had more beer and I ate the orange, the kiwifruit, the banana, and an apple. I couldn’t figure out the kiwi and Paco had to show me how to prepare it. He took the skin off with slender cuts and sliced the inside into five pieces. It was delicious. All the fruit was delicious and it made me hate the Party bureaucrats who deprived us of fruit so that it could be exported for foreign currency or turned into juice or made available only in the off-limits beach hotels.

One more beer and we staggered to our room and before I even hit the pillow I was gone, gone, gone.

6 ALONG THE MALECON

Gone to the dream island.

A city in free fall.

A country in free fall.

Every one of us on deathwatch, waiting out the Beard and his brother’s final days.

Tick-fucking-tock.

Hector says (in whispers), After Fidel and Raul, le deluge. The successors will end up like Mussolini-upside down on a meat hook in the Plaza de la Revolucion, if there’s any justice. Which there isn’t.

Calle Gervasio to San Rafael. Walking. Everyone walks in Cuba. You need to be in the Party or have at least a thousand in greenback kiss money to get a car. Early. So early it’s late. High on brown-tar heroin, the whores don’t care that I’m a woman or that I look like a cop. They raise their skirts to show pussy lovingly injected with antibiotics or mercury sublimate by our world-beating physicians.

“Que bola,asere?” they ask.

“Nada.”

“Que bola, asere?”

“Nada.”

“We swing with you, white chick. We’ll show you tricks to impress your boyfriend.”