enough to be surrounded with well-grown foliage: a huge bougainvillea covered one side wall and part of the roof with purple blossoms, and the backyard was shaded by a large mango, beyond which was a good assortment of fruit trees-lime, orange, grapefruit, guava, avocado. Inside she had furnished it with spare Scandinavian wood and leather, fanciful or abstract pictures in mirror-steel frames, and rya rugs. Not his taste; he preferred old stuff, eccentric junk, the Last Supper on velvet-no, not really, but that was occasionally implied by the wife. His mother claimed the house looked like a doctor’s office.
Yes, the mother-that had come up, too, big-time. Paz reviewed what he could recall of the charges and countercharges while he waited for the coffee to kick in. He had come home drunk, had endangered the life of their precious by driving drunk. How could he? Well, first of all, four beers did not make drunk. Then the lecture from the doctor on alcohol impairment. Okay, guilty, never again, at which point the kid pipes up with guess where we were today, and tells all, the voodoo ceremony, the yams, the stinky smoke, worshipping at false idols,plus the visit to the ladies who kiss boys for money and Daddy was talking to that lady who came to dinner. Easily explained, of course, although not the card from Morgensen. Paz had idly tossed it out onto his dresser, and when the wife, that skilled researcher, had discovered it lying there it proved to have on its reverse a set of lips imprinted in red lipstick. That Beth! What a kidder! And so the story of Beth and Jimmy way back when had to be told, or wrenched out, each perfectly honest statement out of Paz’s mouth sounding like a philanderer’s evasion. Paz was in the peculiar position of having done nothing wrong with Beth Morgensen but also secretly knowing he had wanted to,still wanted to, if it came to that, but wouldn’t, being an honest guy, but might if this kind of shit went on much longer, and who could blame him?
Not a profitable line of thought. He was squelching it when Lola emerged from the house, dressed in her usual T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers and carrying a canvas bag with her work clothes in it. She shot him a venomous look and strode on through the patio and out to the shed in the yard where she stored her bike.
“Good morning!” Paz called. No answer. She got the bike and was wheeling it to the driveway when Paz got up and intercepted her.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he asked, grasping the handlebars.
“I’m still too angry. Let go of the bike, please.”
“No. Not until we talk.”
“I have to get to work,” she said, struggling to free the handlebars. “I have patients…”
“Let them die,” said Paz. “This is more important.” At this, she sighed ostentatiously and folded her hands across her breasts. “Okay, have it your way. Talk.”
“Okay, we had a fight, I apologized, and now it’s over. You forgive me and we move on, just like always.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Explain the complexity.”
“I feel totally betrayed. I don’t know if I can trust you now.”
“What, because I had a couple of beers?”
“Don’t be smart! I still can’t believe that you took our daughter to a voodoo ceremony, fortune-telling and blood sacrifices and…and yams. Without even the courtesy of discussing it with me. Filling her head with frightening toxic nonsense. How could you!”
“It’s not voodoo, Lola, as you know. I wish you’d stop calling Santeria voodoo. It’s insulting.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Right, like Catholic and Jewish is the same because they both come from Palestine. I explained all this to you last night. It’s not a conspiracy. It was spur of the moment. Margarita was there, and Amy asked me, and I didn’t see the harm in-”
“It’s ridiculous barbaric nonsense. You don’t even believe in it!”
“Maybe that’s true, but my mother does, and I have to respect that. And Amy only has the one grandmother, and they love each other, and I’m not going to stand up and tell her her grandmother is full of shit because she follows the santos. It’s part of her culture, just like science, just like medicine.”
“Except medicine is real. That’s a slight difference. Medicine doesn’t cause nightmares in little girls.”
Something in her tone, a higher pitch, a shake in the voice, made Paz stop and examine his wife more closely. This stridency was not like her at all; a joke, a light mockery, was more in her line when discussing the peculiarities of his culture.
“What’s going on, Lola? This can’t just be about Santeria. We been married seven years, and you never went nuts about it before.”
Therewas something wrong. She was not meeting his eye, and Lola was ordinarily a major fan of eye contact. “Maybe,” he added lightly, “you should’ve married a Jewish doctor after all.”
“Oh, and a little sneaky anti-Semitism added to the mix now? Look, I absolutely have to leave now or I’ll be late for rounds.”
Somewhat stunned at this last interchange, Paz lifted his hands. She jumped up on the bike and rolled clicking down the shell driveway.
Later that morning, Paz was at work in the restaurant, having deposited his daughter at school without incident and without discussion of any bad dreams. She had summoned him (he lying awake alone in the marriage bed) with a shrill cry in the night, and he had arrived at her side to find her still in a sense asleep, but whimpering and shaking, eyes open but unseeing-terrifying. Paz had neglected to mention this episode to the resident psychiatrist: Lola had (mercifully) slept through the whole thing. Nor did he intend to.
Paz was preparing yuca, a tedious task, which he now welcomed. The yuca is a pillar of Cuban cuisine, but it is a tricky tuber, devious like life itself, Paz was now thinking. It has an ugly rough bark, which must be removed, and then the toxic green underskin must be carefully stripped off, without losing too much yuca. It bleeds a white liquid while this is happening. The core must also be removed, as it is inedible. Paz, too, felt stripped and bleeding, and he knew there was something poisonous at his own core. He laughed out loud. The Yuca Way to Personal Growth, a book he might write: A Cuban Line-Cook’s Guide to Enlightenment.
He prepped a bushel of yuca and then ran it through a food processor. The sludge would be the basis of Guantanamera’s famous conch ’n’ crab fritters and also a new dish Paz was trying out, deep-fried prawns in yuca batter mixed with rum. He made a handful of these, adjusted the flavorings, shared samples with the rest of the kitchen crew, took counsel, and then played with seasonings and the temperature of the deep fryer. By eleven he’d decided it was good enough to serve as a special with a raw jicama salad, and so informed the waitstaff. His mother was absent, so there were no arguments that yuca tempura prawns had not been thought of in Cuba in 1956 and hence were not to be served in her restaurant. But where was she? She’d gone to pick up Amelia at the usual time. A little tick of concern started, which was quickly submerged in the violent amnesia of the lunch rush.
Surfacing around half past two, Paz looked down to see his little girl soliciting his attention. She was dressed in an ankle-length armless sheath of yellow silk patterned with large green tropical leaves, and tiny white strapped sandals with a modest heel. Her hair was braided and arranged in a shining crown around her head set off by a white gardenia behind her ear. Around her neck was a necklace of green and yellow glass beads.
“That’s quite an outfit. Been shopping with Abuela?”
“Yes. We went to a special store.” She fingered the necklace. “These beads are blessed. It’s not just a regular necklace, Daddy.”
“I bet. How’s the room? Everybody enjoying?”
“Yes. There’re millions of Japanese people all dressed the same. Why do they do that?”
“I don’t know. It’s a custom, I guess.”
“Anyway, the because I came in is there’s a man outside who wants to see you. He knew you were my daddy. Table three.”
“Thank you. What does he look like?”
She thought for a moment. “Like a football player, but bald, too.”
“Right. Tell him I’ll be out as soon as I finish these orders.”
Police Major Douglas Oliphant did look like a football player and had actually been one in college, a linebacker for Michigan. He was dark brown in color and calm in mien, and Paz liked him as well as any man he had ever worked for. Oliphant ran, among other things, the homicide and domestic violence unit of the Miami Police
