Queen of the Underworld (12 page)

After writing a single sentence to sum up my second day at work— “I’m sick of being a goddamned nobody!”—I closed my “Go, Tar Heels!” notebook and sank back on the pillows in Room 510. It was dinnertime and I had skipped lunch. But I was too demoralized to shove my aching feet back into my high heels and clop over to Howard Johnson’s or White Castle. What I wanted was someone to bring me a perfectly cooked cheeseburger (slightly pink and juicy in the middle) on a toasted bun with mayo, lettuce, tomato, and a slice of raw onion, with potato chips on the side and a Coke with crushed ice and a wedge of lemon. But the Julia Tuttle didn’t have room service; it didn’t even have a coffee shop.

I’m sick of . . .

Estoy harta de . . .

being . . .

ser . . .

There was no Spanish word for “goddamned”; I’d have to settle for
una maldita nadie. Estoy harta de ser una maldita nadie.
I’m sick of being a damned nobody.

But wait.
“Ser”
indicated a permanent state of being. I certainly didn’t intend being a goddamned nobody permanently.

Estoy harta de
estar
una maldita nadie.

By seven tomorrow morning I could be eating scrambled eggs and bacon at Howard Johnson’s. I’d buy Wednesday’s
Miami Star,
and there would be, not even an above-the-fold headline, but “shunted off” to one side:

CASTRO’S REVOLUTION FIZZLES

Just an AP wire story, no picture; Joelle and her pet photographer Don Kingsley already would have been recalled to Miami.

At work people would congratulate me on my story about Charles P. Rose. “Nice twist in that last paragraph, Emma” (Lucifer, above my right shoulder); “You’re off and running, girl” (Dave Bisbee, at lunch, unless somebody better asked me); “you may think it was just an ordinary story, but his counterpart is found throughout human history, it’s the stuff of great literature, the little man trying to hold his own against the giant powers, from David and Goliath and Job right up to Kafka.”

7.

R
OOM
510
WAS IN PITCH
darkness. I had fallen asleep with my clothes on.

What were those snuffling animal noises in the hall? The noises came closer until they were right outside my door. Some small dog trying to find its owner’s room? Did the Julia Tuttle allow pets? These Cubans were fleeing with their families, and pets are family. I was sure Alex de Costa would think so, with his desire to provide the right
ambiente
for his guests.

I turned on the lamp. Ten forty-five. My clothes were a wrinkled mess. I decided to investigate, previewing a scene in which I would find a cute little Cuban dog, maybe bring him into my room for a few minutes while I called down to whoever was on the desk and became the agent of reuniting the little fellow with its exiled owners and having a chance to practice my Spanish.

I undid the safety latch and opened the door, and there, squatting in front of the door opposite mine, was Alex de Costa, a brush in one hand and a woman’s high-heeled shoe in the other.

“Oh, Miss Gant,” he said, struggling awkwardly to his feet, exposing an ample rear end in the process. He wore a striped bib apron over his shirt and tie.

“I heard these sounds,” I said.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“I’m glad you did. I fell asleep with my clothes on.”

“Luís is indisposed, so I’m doing the shoe detail tonight.”

“You mean you’re polishing people’s
shoes
?”

“It’s not an American custom, but yes, our guests expect it. Anytime you want a shine, just leave your shoes outside your door.” He looked down at my stockinged feet. “It’s not too late for tonight.”

“I think I’ll pass for tonight,” I said, appalled by the notion of handing over my aging high-heeled pumps, stinking of sour feet. “But I’m glad I did wake up, I would have been furious with myself if I’d spent the night in my clothes. That will teach me to work all day and go to bed without eating.”

“You haven’t eaten?”

“I wasn’t hungry at lunchtime, I had this story to write, and then when I came back to the hotel I was too tired to go out again.”

“I keep
telling
Abuelito that we need to serve food at the Julia Tuttle, but he’s too busy buying up swamps. I have a tin of goose liver pâté and some water biscuits in my room.”

“Oh, no, it’ll be breakfast time soon. But thanks anyway.”

“I didn’t mean come to my
room.
” That vehement Spanish
r
bursting out like a drumroll. “I would bring them to you. There are many hours until breakfast.”

“Oh, no, really, I—”

“Or we could walk over to La Bodega and have a
medianoche.
That’s a popular late-night snack for Cubans, a fried sandwich with fresh pork and cheese. At Bodega’s it also comes with fried plantains. I was going myself when I have done with these.” He held up the woman’s shoe.

A fried sandwich with pork and cheese was a lot harder to resist than goose liver, which sounded disgusting, and water biscuits, whatever they were.

“It’ll take me a few minutes—” I looked down at my slept-in skirt and blouse.

“ ‘Tá bien
—I’ll finish the shoes. Shall we meet in the lobby in half an hour?”

O
UR WALK
to La Bodega went in the same direction as my walk to the
Star,
only we turned off at Eighth Avenue. The first thing I accomplished was breaking Alex de Costa of the “Miss Gant” habit. Then he annoyed me in equal measure by drolly inquiring if I was “any relation to Eugene Gant.” I had thought leaving North Carolina would rid me forever of that tiresome literary witticism.

“Not any more than I am to the Gant shirtmakers. In England, up in Lincolnshire, they call the crested grebe a gant, and there are lots of Lincolnshire descendants in my part of North Carolina. I doubt if Thomas Wolfe even knew about the crested grebe. He probably just knew somebody in town named Gant and appropriated the name. That was his style. He sometimes put in their addresses and phone numbers as well.”

I had spent years perfecting this comeback. Then fatuously I added that I was surprised someone from Harvard had read
Look Homeward, Angel,
only to get shot down when Alex de Costa reminded me Eugene Gant had gone to Harvard.

He had a different walk from the men I was used to; he neither loped or bounced like the big-footed mountain boys, nor swaggered or toed-out in the manner of Southern gents like Rod Reynolds. It was kind of a tight-assed walk, only with his high rump it took on a certain ponderous dignity. Since Bev’s tutelage, I had become more conscious of people’s walks and what they might reveal about them. The mannikin’s walk Bev urged on us was of course the stripping away of telltale idiosyncrasies. When I was trying to look stately and glamorous, I walked in this way, but soon slipped back into my wary sashay, which I supposed expressed my basic mode of encountering life. Paul’s walk was a discreet, fastidious stroll. Bisbee’s was a nervous dance and Lucifer’s was that stealthy glide, as if he moved on invisible wheels.

“How did you know I went to Harvard?” Alex de Costa asked.

Alarm bells jangled aboard my carefully compartmented ship of life. Paul had told me Alex went to Harvard, but that got us into dangerous waters. And I was wary of using Tess, because there was a chance she wouldn’t have known and Alex would know she wouldn’t have known.

“I heard two men discussing you on the elevator.” Opting for the far-fetched lie that couldn’t be checked rather than the believable one that could. “They were speaking Spanish, but I heard your name and ‘Harvard’ and put two and two together.”

“Ah.” He sounded convinced.

La Bodega was a noisy, pulsating glow in the middle of a dark street of shops with latticework metal grilles pulled down over their fronts. Loud, excited voices, a Spanish crooner on the jukebox, cigar smoke curling upwards into ceiling fans, and sweet, spicy cooking smells embraced us at the threshold. A potbellied man in an embroidered guayabera thumped Alex on the back, addressing him as “Alejito,” and made rapid sweeping-away gestures at two men drinking beer at a corner table. They stood up at once and removed themselves to the bar. A waiter quickly put down a cloth on the table, and we were seated with fanfare.

“You must be a favored patron,” I said. “He ousted those two men from their table.”

“Not really. It’s my grandfather’s special table; Victor leases this building from him. Abuelito hardly ever comes here at night, so Victor lets others use it with the understanding I may be showing up around midnight. Only I’m ahead of schedule tonight.”

“Because of the girl who neglected to eat all day.”

“Alejito?” Victor was back.
“¿Qué quieres tomar?”

“I’ve been talking up your
medianoches.
Miss Gant has just joined the
Miami Star
as a reporter.”

“
¡Felicidades, señorita!
You may do a story on me anytime.
¿Dos medianoches?
”

“Unless you see something else you’d rather have,” Alex said to me.

“Oh, no, I’ve been looking forward to that sandwich ever since you described it.”

“What would you like to drink? I’m having a lager.”

“Just water for me. My aunt Tess and I overdid on daiquiris last night. I had to stay over at her place.” That should take care of my reputation for last night.

“Your aunt makes going to the dentist a treat.”

“I’m glad to have her here. And the Nightingales, too. They’ve been so good to me, Paul and Bev have.”

That should take care of his seeing me with Paul on Sunday night.

“How do you happen to know them?” I could tell from the way he asked that he had wondered about Paul coming to the hotel.

“They own a small Jewish family hotel in North Carolina. I worked as a waitress there last summer. They’re almost like a second set of parents. Bev’s already gone up to North Carolina to open the Inn, but Paul didn’t want me to eat alone my first night in Miami.”

“I play cards at his club during the season. With my gambling record, it’s a good thing he closes down in April. I like to think I’m better off playing bridge with my friends over on the Beach, but lately I wonder if Nightingale’s isn’t the lesser of two evils.”

When the waiter set down Alex’s frosted lager, I regretted playing Miss Abstemious. But I couldn’t risk another hungover day at the
Star.

“You look worried,” Alex said. I realized he was a face watcher, like me, so I must be superdiscreet. “I hope I didn’t give away anything about the card playing over at Nightingale’s.”

“Oh,” I said lightly, “I knew all about that. It’s nothing illegal since it’s a private club, just like a country club. In fact, he’s putting in an upstairs kitchen that will be ready this coming season. So his club members can have late-night snacks.”

“If only I could persuade Abuelito to let me open the hotel kitchen! Our guests need to eat, and they’re short of cash. Most of them have hot plates in their rooms, which is against the fire code. But we’re at cross-purposes. For my grandfather, the hotel is just another piece of North American real estate. He sees the Julia Tuttle as a basic training camp for me. I make all my mistakes here, he declares it a tax loss, and as soon as Fidel’s out he’ll buy another establishment on the Malecón for me to manage.”

“And what do you see it as?”

“Young men with useless degrees and gambling habits need jobs like everyone else. I’m grateful he was willing to set me up, though I never imagined myself a
hotelero.
But when these people started arriving in January, I thought I could be a bridge for them. You know, provide them with a familiar
ambiente,
help them adjust. It sounds strange, but for the first time in my life, it seemed that this peculiar mixture of me was the perfect fit for something.”

“Why are you a peculiar mixture?”

“I’m Cuban on both sides, but raised
norteamericano.
I used to think of myself as a spy, only I was never sure which side I was spying for. I wouldn’t make a good spy for
either
side because I have a Spanish accent in English and my Spanish is too
castellano
for my father and half brothers in Camagüey. When I was at boarding school in Palm Beach, I never felt at home with the other Cubans whose backgrounds were similar to mine. Yet with my closest American friends I also held back a part of myself. The same when I’m with my mother and whatever husband she’s married to, or when I’m in Cuba on the ranch with my father and my half brothers. Always a part held back.”

“Is there one part that you always hold back, or do you hold different parts back depending on whom you’re with?”

“You are going to be a formidable reporter, Emma.”

“Oh, thank you, I hope so.”

It was the first time he had called me by my given name. He broke the syllables delicately between the
E
and the
m,
making it sound both feminine and foreign, less like the name a flat-voiced hillbilly woman might shout across the hollow to her friend. (“Emm-
MA
!”)

“To answer your question, it’s a combination of both. One part of me is always held back from everybody, the other parts depend on whose company I’m in.”

“So right now, with me, what are you holding back?”

“I am trying not to find you too charming.”

I kept my moat of reserve intact by folding my paper napkin into small squares. “I suppose you won’t tell me about the part you hold back from everyone.”

“I hold back the part of me that is
el más mío
—the most mine.”

“And what is that?”

“I wish I knew. That’s why I’m unable to share it with anyone. But what about you? Have you found your
más mío
?”

“Some days I feel I’ve been swimming in it all my life, though I don’t always remember it’s there. It’s like this element that can’t be separated from me, however wretched I am. My Emma-ness, I guess you could call it.” (Thank you, Tess.)

“The last thing you seem to me is wretched,” declared Alex with his passionately rolled
r.