Outside, Lilia has joined Reinaldo and Jeanette. They are doubled in laughter, some joke I’ve missed.
“It’s going to take all day,” I announce, puncturing the group’s joy with bad news.
Jeanette looks troubled, Reinaldo unsurprised. Lilia is bored again, fanning herself.
We decide on a plan: We will go back to the car, and on the way, Reinaldo will stop by the house of his buddy who, he says, “can fix anything from a TV antenna to a rocket ship.” His buddy will see if he can get the car running. I will distract El Alemán somehow. Or bear his anger and paranoia, hoping he doesn’t insult Friend of Reinaldo and leave us to the rental agency, which, I predict, will take double their time estimate. We set off after kissing Lilia goodbye.
We pass the apartment complex again. We step from the dirt road onto the sidewalk that crosses the whole small town, walk under the shade of sprawling trees and past empty stores, wave hello to a man on horseback dragging a cart full of vegetables. We answer questions from a few nosy townspeople. See the girls jumping rope again.
It’s all so familiar, but then midway back, Jeanette surprises me.
“What if,” she says, glancing away from Reinaldo and lowering her voice, “we pay someone to drive us instead? What if we run off and leave El Alemán?”
I think she’s joking, so I laugh, shield my eyes from the sun, and kick away the branches along our path as a red-skinned dog wanders by our side, scratching itself.
“I’m serious,” she says. “What do we need him for?”
The dog’s rib cage is outlined like a dental impression. It looks up with droopy, sad eyes.
“Don’t you remember? He was going to pay,” I say, “for the hotel in Varadero. It’s expensive.”
“Psshhh,” Jeanette says, sounding like Reinaldo in a way that annoys me. “We don’t really need to go to Varadero anyways. Isn’t it just full of tourists?”
“Yeah, and beautiful beach.” I want to say that she is a tourist but hold my tongue. “Where would we go if we don’t go to Varadero? Back to La Habana?”
“You don’t want that, do you?”
Ahead of us, Reinaldo shoos the dog away. I look up at the sun filtering through the branches of a tree until my eye squints of its own volition. I think of Ronny playing dominoes on the promenade in front of our house in Playa. I think of the hole in the ceiling, which still leaks even though he “fixed” it. I think of Ronny in his checkered shirt with a Bucanero in hand, arguing loudly with passersby for hours.
“No, I don’t,” I say.
“What about Camagüey?” Jeanette says. “I always wanted to see Grandma Dolores’s house.”
I swallow hard and look at the orange outline of dirt on my white sandals. Something has ruptured on the car ride here. Maybe something ruptured long before that. Fuck it, I think, picturing El Alemán receding in the background, picturing my husband. Wondering if I’d have to send Ronny money from Miami. How else would he agree to a divorce? And knowing the truth though I won’t let myself near it: I’m probably never leaving—not the country, not Ronny. But I need the fantasy. I need the made-up plans. Auf Wiedersehen, Germany. Adiós.
“What about Santa María del Mar for a few hours and then Abuela Dolores’s house?” I say.
She smiles and takes my hand. “A beach is a beach, no?”
I feel shivers of exhilaration, an exhilaration I’d felt the night before, convulsing man beneath me, shouting my name like he worshipped at my feet. The rest is easy.
Jeanette offers Reinaldo more money than he’ll see in months, fifty or sixty US dollars. We offer to fill his tank too. I don’t know the address of the beach house, but Reinaldo knows how to get to Santa María del Mar and I’m familiar with the area. I’m nervous, but I tell El Alemán the rental agency has someone on the way. It’s not a lie, and that makes me feel better. I tell him Jeanette and I are going in search of a bathroom and need our bags to freshen up. He tells us we’re asking for trouble, and I wonder if he means murder or rape or something else entirely. I don’t wait long enough to find out.
Reinaldo, Jeanette, and I turn the corner past the cafetería, and I glance back at the rental car, stout and red, in the middle of a barren field like a miniature barn house in all those US movies. I see El Alemán shading his eyes and looking small. We run. We run in the direction of Reinaldo’s house two blocks away and hop into his car. Then the wind is whipping at my face again and all the island feels like a blur.
9PEOPLE LIKE THAT
Jeanette
Camagüey, 2015
We are sitting in rocking chairs by the front door, open to a field of guava bushes, when a man arrives. My grandmother introduces him as her neighbor; he says he heard she had a visitor from the United States. He is my age and Black. My grandmother squints her eyes when he speaks, but I can’t read her response. Maydelis seems uninterested in the man. She stubs her filterless cigarette, the ones offered at the bodega, and leaves for the kitchen without saying a word to him. The man wears red skinny jeans, a red-and-white polo shirt. He has a kind of mohawk buzz cut. I follow Maydelis to the kitchen to fetch the visitor a beer because that seems like the thing to do.
“Repartero,” she says. Maydelis settles at the little kitchen table beside the ancient stove and pulls out another cigarette. She sucks hungrily and blows delicate wisps and I wonder where the rest of the smoke goes, does
