“A father figure?”
His face grew stiff. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Is your father here in Miami?”
“No. My mom said he died coming over from Cuba.” His tone did not invite further questions.
They drove in silence to a crowded parking lot off Calle Ocho. Jane looked at the restaurant with interest. It was a large, brightly lit place, with the name splayed in loose blue neon script over faded pink: la guantanamera. Entering, she was hit with the delicious and barely describable perfume of a good restaurant running at full tilt. The place was packed; panic had not cut into business at Guantanamera, or perhaps the rumors of disaster had brought people out to die replete. Paz was obviously well known here, she saw; the maitre d’ at the tiny front desk gave him a big smile, smiled at Jane, too, and at the fascinated yet shrinking Luz. Ignoring the clot of patrons waiting in the little lobby, he immediately led the party to a nice banquette table, right under a huge saltwater fish tank. The child stood on her chair and watched the fish. Paz stood by her and named them as they drifted by: the beaugregory, the moorish idol, the damselfishes in their varieties, the French and regal and queen angelfishes, the neon goby and the rock beauty. She poked the glass and gave them her own private silly names.
“This is great,” Jane said. “She’ll probably crash in two minutes.”
A waitress arrived and gave Paz a gold-toothed smile. “Hey, Jimmy! You’re out front today.”
“Julia, how’s it going?”
“It’s been crazy tonight. She was looking for you.”
“I bet. Why don’t you bring us a couple of special daiquiris and a Shirley Temple for the kid.”
Then he spoke to her in Spanish for a few minutes and she left. Paz said, “You don’t speak Spanish?”
“Hardly a word, I’m ashamed to say. I usually speak French sprinkled with random a ‘s and o ‘s. And I caught ‘daiquiri’ just now. They seem to know you pretty well here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here a lot.” They watched the fish and Luz for a while. Jane became aware that the music system was playing the same song over and over, with different singers and arrangements.
“That song,” she said, “I know that song. It’s famous. Didn’t Pete Seeger do that way back when?”
He laughed. “Oh, right, the definitive version. Christ, Pete Seeger! Right now this is Abelardon Barroso and la Sensacion. It’s “Guantanamera,” the greatest song ever written. Back before the revolution, Cuban radio used to play it five minutes before the hour, every hour. People used to set their watches by it. There are thousands of versions. But this next track is the original, by Joseito Fernandez. He wrote it sometime in the thirties.” She listened. A rock-solid beat and a man with precise diction and a rough friendly voice, singing from the heart.
“What do the words mean?”
“Oh, they have all kinds of verses. In the old days, Joseito used to make up verses on the news?murders, scandals, famous people.” He sang along softly: ” ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma, y antes de morime quiero, echar mis versos del alma.’ “
He translated this and she said, “I believe that. I believe you are a sincere man from the land where the palms grow. And maybe you’ll actually get to sing the song of your soul.”
He shrugged. “Who can tell? Anyway, the chorus is always the same: ” Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera… the girl from Guantanamo, the girl from the farm.”
She stared at him. “From the farm?”
“Yeah, a guajira ‘s like a country girl, a hillbilly.”
“And they named this place after the song?”
“Not really.” He laughed, mildly embarrassed. “Okay, I confess?it’s my mother’s place. She’s the guantanamera it’s named after. We always play this CD after midnight, kind of a trademark. The people like it too.”
“Does she really come from a farm?”
“Oh, yeah, from back in the mountains north of Guantanamo. When I was a kid, I was always hearing what they didn’t have on the goddamn farm. What, you want sneakers! I was seventeen before I saw my first pair of shoes. What, you want a car! I was twenty-two before I even rode in a car, and that was a truck.”
“Well, she seems to be doing okay now. This place …”
“Oh, yeah, now. But they never get over it. My mom left in ‘72. Came over on a couple of doors lashed to four inner tubes. She could always cook, so she got restaurant work. She slept on a mattress in the stockroom to save money. Then I was born, and she got one of those little food trucks, going around to all the construction sites, feeding the Cubano working humps their rice and beans and media noche and the coffee and cakes. I was up there in the front seat until I started school. And she hung on to every goddamn penny and opened her first real place, a counter-and-four-tables joint on Flagler. Comidas criollas. And then this one here, fifteen or so years ago. An American success story.” She could see his face get tight as he said this, tight behind the bright, faintly mocking smile. She controlled her own excitement. “And your dad? What was he like?”
His face shut down completely. “I told you?died before I was born. Crossing over.”
The waitress returned with the drinks and a straw basket full of warm platano chips and a pottery bowl of mojo criollo.
“I ordered for us. You don’t mind?” She smiled, shrugged, and took a plantain chip and dipped it in the sauce. She ate and sighed, closing her eyes. She took another. And another.
He watched her eat and drink. In five minutes she had consumed half the basket and finished the daiquiri. Paz polished off the rest of the chips, except for the half-dozen or so the child took. He ordered another round. “You’re hungry.”
“Oh, yes, ” she said, her eyes lit with a crazy light.
Then came a plate of frituras de cangrejo and bowls of cold sopa de aguacate, and then a beefsteak palomilla, with mounds of curly fried potatoes, with plates of black beans and rice on the side. The child ate the fries and some rice and beans, whined briefly, and fell asleep on the banquette, with her head on Jane’s lap. Jane ate most of the fries and most of the rice and beans. Paz looked on admiringly. “You’re a good eater.”
“It’s good food. I haven’t had a square meal in two and a half years. Actually, the fact is, I shouldn’t be hungry at all. I’ve been on uppers for the last twenty-four hours or so. I should take some more, but I can’t bear to. This is so pleasant. Thank you.”
” De nada. Why are you taking uppers, if I may inquire?”
“You may. It’s so I don’t fall asleep until all this is over. He can get to me if I’m dreaming, in a way that could put me in his power more or less permanently.”
“I thought you said he couldn’t get to you. You had … you know, those charms, or whatever.”
“Yes, in the m’fa.” She waved a hand. “This world. But in sleep we open a door to m’doli, a world between the real world and the world of the spirits. Spirits can visit us there, that’s what a lot of dreams are, and it’s also the arena where magic takes place?a borderland. I have to meet him in m’doli, but awake.”
“And how do we do that?”
“More drugs. I have some of the stuff made up. But as I told you, I need allies.”
“Yeah, that’s what I don’t get …” He broke off and stared.
A striking figure was wending her way through the dining room, a mahogany-colored woman dressed all in yellow silk, with a fresh white gardenia placed in the coils of black hair piled on her head. She stopped at several tables and exchanged a few friendly words with the customers. Then she arrived at their table. Paz stood up, embraced the woman lightly, kissed her cheek.
“How are you, Mami?”
“I’m fine. I’m working myself to death in the kitchen of my restaurant because I have a son who doesn’t care about me, but otherwise I’m just fine. Who is this woman?”
“Someone from my work. She’s an important witness. Shall I introduce you?”
“If you like.”
Paz stepped back and switched to English. “Mother, this is Jane Doe. Jane, my mother, Margarita Cajol y Paz.”
Jane rose, nodded, extended her hand, looked into the woman’s face. There was no doubt about it. She felt a warm tingling in her hand; the woman must have felt it, too, because she pulled her own hand abruptly away. The expression on Margarita Paz’s face changed from its habitual cast of superior dissatisfaction to amazement, and then to something much like fear. Paz watched this with interest, having never observed this particular face-show before. He was about to prime the conversation to discern its cause, when his mother made a hurried excuse in
