Queen of the Underworld (29 page)

“Ay, ‘Bonito y Sabroso’! Who can resist? Emma, may an old man have the honor of this dance?”

Having acquired the rudiments of Latin dancing under Bev Nightingale’s tutelage, I accompanied Don Waldo more or less confidently to the dance floor. The music was fast, but hadn’t I cha-cha’d successfully with Tess’s precise and sinuous Hector Rodriguez earlier this evening?

However, I was no terpsichorean match for Don Waldo. At first I tried to follow, always a half beat or more out of time with his confident, high-bellied prancings. We were doing, as it turned out, the mambo, a much faster and more syncopated cousin to the rumba and the cha-cha. Every time I tripped over one of his sudden dips or pivots I apologized profusely, but he gamboled blithely on, singing the words to “Bonito y Sabroso” along with the vocalist, smiling as though he had Isadora Duncan in his arms. He was astonishingly dainty for a man of his height and girth. When I finally went limp and let him take over, it worked better. Several times he literally swept me off my feet.

Once the ordeal was over, I expected to be led back to my appointed chair next to Lídia, after which he would select a more competent partner—his lovely young wife, for instance, or Marisa Ocampo, or Lídia herself, who had shot several disapproving looks my way.

But the next song was “El Manisero,” which Pepe Iglesias and I had danced to at St. Clothilde’s. Pepe had brought his very own 45 single of “El Manisero” to a tea dance and Mother Patton had allowed it on the turntable—“A simple Cuban folk melody about a peanut vendor,” she had announced. (She also endorsed the rumba, with its arm’s-length requirement for good form.) With no part of our torsos touching, Pepe took gloating pleasure in coaching me in the song’s double entendre lyrics. “Here, listen: in this passage, the
manisero,
the peanut vendor, is advising the housewives and young girls not to go to sleep without first tasting some of his hot nuts!”

With a rumba one could combine conversation. For half a second I was on the verge of sharing my Pepe and “El Manisero” story with Don Waldo, but I realized in time that the possible loss of respect from that gent was not worth the joke. I opted instead for safe Old World courtesy and congratulated him on his marriage.

“
Muchas gracias,
Emma. Altagracia has no need for an old rooster like me, but it is my good fortune that she desires to serve. I don’t mean like
una criada,
a servant, but like a
religiosa.
She has the soul of a nun. She offered to leave me and enter a convent, but I said, Wait! Enter my convent and see the world. She was raised in my house, her mother abandoned her to her grandmother, Altagracia, who was my
ama de llaves,
my housekeeper. When Altagracia died, the girl asked permission to take her grandmother’s name. Rosita, the name the girl was given by her unfortunate mother, did not match with her soul, she said. She was perfectly willing to leave Cuba with me as my
ama de llaves,
but I explained why she must go as my wife. In Cuba, you see, we are all shades of the rainbow. Batista himself was a mulatto, though he’d have you executed if you reminded him after he became dictator.
Mulato lindo,
that’s what they called him when he worked as a water boy on Enrique Ocampo’s father’s plantation, ‘the pretty mulatto.’

“ ‘We are going to the United States of America,’ I told Altagracia, ‘where people of color use separate
baños
and must sit in the rear of the
guagua,
the autobus. You must be Doña Altagracia Navarro in order to receive the respect to which you are entitled.’ ”

“What is the difference between calling someone
señora
and calling her
doña,
Don Waldo?”

“
‘Don’
and
‘doña’
are marks of respect to a superior person—or else to a very old monument like myself. The use is dying out, however.”

Alex must really be vexed with his mother to have addressed her coldly as “Doña Lídia.” And she, who now regarded me none-too-warmly from the sidelines, had picked up on it, too.

The peanut vendor was urging the housewives and maidens to partake of his hot wares before they went to sleep, and I thought it prudent to cast my eyes down while knowing laughter rippled from the surrounding tables of Cubans.

“How long will this revolution of Castro’s last, do you think?” I asked Don Waldo, when we were back on safe ground.

“It is not easy to predict, Emma. Fidel insists that his revolution is as green as the palm trees. But there are those of us who have lived through previous revolutions who are saying this one begins to look more like a watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside. If Mother Russia does decide to play godmother, we may live to see some very strange fruits growing from Cuban soil.”

17.

“C
OME,
E
MMA,
”
BOOMS
Don Waldo’s sepulchral voice.

“Where are we going, Don Waldo?”

“You are embarking on your journey. Tell me when you are ready.”

“Is it far?”

“Geographically, no. We need only cross the lobby of the Julia Tuttle.”

“The Mother of Miami. My aunt Tess’s grandmother sewed Julia’s dresses before her untimely death. Julia’s death, I mean, not Tess’s grandma’s. Julia worked too hard at her dream and now nobody knows who she was.”

“
Granma
in
COO-bah
is the official newspaper of the Revolution.”

“The Watermelon Revolution.”

“Very perceptive. May I offer you my arm? We will cross the lobby together.”

Our passage is sluggish, as though we are dragging through ankle-deep water. But there are the dry Mediterranean tiles below us, though for the first time I notice that each tile bears the face of a different primitive god. All of the faces are spiteful or malevolent.

Don Waldo stops to converse in Spanish with the dominoes players. I can follow the gist, though they rattle along at breakneck speed. Don Waldo is explaining that the American
señorita
understands more than she lets on. He tells them I am going on a journey.

“We will miss her,” says one.

I feel ashamed of not perceiving them as individuals. When will I learn to pay more attention?

Now we’re standing outside the Julia Tuttle, where the cars pull up.

“Any minute now,” says Don Waldo. “Ah, here they come.”

A sleek black Cadillac materializes out of the darkness and glides to a stop under the canopy. The chauffeur, in full livery, is Tess. In the backseat, head modestly bowed, is a woman whose face is obscured by a dense bridal veil. Next to her, looking heartbreakingly desirable, is Paul Nightingale in wedding clothes.

“It is a great match,” Don Waldo intones. “Beneficial to everyone! They are embarking on their honeymoon.”

“La luna de miel,”
I translate, trying to hide my pain.

“You will be bilingual in no time, Emma. Aren’t you going to offer them your
felicitaciónes
?”

“They aren’t even looking at me, Don Waldo. I seem invisible to them, or are they under a spell?”

“The spell of
el corazón, sí.
But you are a young woman who started ahead of the game and will want to do the correct thing. Think of Jane Austen. Ay,
niña,
don’t let them see you cry!”

“I can’t—” I am dissolving.

“Then simply raise your hand in farewell,
señorita.
They are your
compañeros primeros,
the ones closest to you when you fall asleep.”

I make a supreme effort and lift my arm and flutter the fingers in a limp, childish way. Tess in her natty chauffeur’s cap continues to face front serenely, but Paul has seen my gesture. He gives me a cool, curious look—Who is that woman going to pieces outside the car?—then returns his attention to his bride. He lifts her veil and raptly contemplates his prize: Ginevra, Queen of the Underworld.

“They were made for each other,” booms Don Waldo. The front door of the Cadillac swings open and Don Waldo moves forward and without a glance at me folds his great bulk into the front seat, beside Tess. The black door swings shut and the four of them glide soundlessly off into the night.

Oh God, how did I not recognize it, when the signs were all over the place? Tess putting me off about getting together with Ginevra, Paul pretending to be up at the Inn in North Carolina, Bev offering the decoy of Aunt Stella’s death, Don Waldo keeping me dancing and chattering inanely to “El Manisero.” This was too much to bear, it must be a dream, any moment now I would wake up.

But it’s not a dream,
a voice-over says,
because didn’t you see the Cadillac sink when Don Waldo transferred his weight inside? That is a detail from reality. And here is Lídia in her red dress of the evening: more reality.

“Oh, there you are, Emma. I have been looking everywhere for you. We are going to need your help in the kitchen.”

“But Don Waldo said I’m going on a journey.”

“What journey? Nobody told me about a journey. Your journey is here with us. Look what I have done, to save you time.”

She unfolds an apron with something embroidered on it. “You like it,
querida
?”

She has cut my initials, Loney’s beautifully embroidered handwork, out of my new blouse and carelessly tacked them onto the apron, which she now attempts to tie around my waist.

“Hold still, Emma, there is much we must do.
Dios mío,
what is the matter now?”

YOU . . . YOU . . . HAD NO RIGHT . . .

Though my wail of outrage was enough to awaken me mid-cry, the malign residue of the experience hung thick in the room.

What was the purpose of these melodramas authored by the nether side of my own mind while I slept? Or
was
there any purpose? Assuming there was, then you either looked for omens—Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams—or you looked for a pattern in the story that pointed to something in your waking life that you needed to pay attention to.

I lay very still and set about detoxifying myself. This was Room 510 at the Julia Tuttle and it was Saturday. For the second day in a row there was sun on the other side of the blinds. The television was on in the next room. The electric clock on my bedside table said half-past nine. The first week at work was over. I had comported myself honorably throughout and shone on one or two occasions. Lídia was miffed that I had danced and jabbered with Don Waldo and then added insult to injury by pleading journalistic exhaustion and leaving the party without ever sitting down in the chair she had ordered placed next to her. Tess was learning to fly an airplane and had neglected to tell me, but that did not mean she was plotting perfidies behind my back. Ginevra was not on her honeymoon but most likely lying in bed over on Key Biscayne right now, postponing beginning another day as Mrs. Brown. Did her dreams assemble collages torn from the colorful old days and nights on Palm Island when she supervised wardrobes, ordered food and drink and flowers, penned Federal Judge So-and-so’s name neatly into the incendiary little black book, summoned the girls when their escorts arrived by Cadillac or yacht? How frequently did
her
unconscious construct melodramas from which she woke herself wailing? Or did the chloral hydrate Dr. Brown doled out to her smother all dreams?

Bev had said Paul would be arriving in Miami on the noon plane. Even if the plane was dead on time, it would be close to one before he could get to the Julia Tuttle. I had three, maybe four hours to put to use.

First, as always, came sustenance, but how was I going to negotiate the distance between me and breakfast without passing through Lídia’s orbit? She was sure to be whipping about, radiating her
menos mío
toxins, and a quick flip-up of my window blinds revealed this to be so.

There she was below on the pool terrace, darting from table to table in a pert white blouse with sailor collar, navy pedal pushers, and matching espadrilles, pouring coffee from a silver pot. You could see from five floors up that she was playing herself as the
“doña,”
who had instigated
desayuno
for her guests in less than twenty-four hours and was now graciously serving them.

Though I had met her only yesterday, I felt capable of providing her lines as she addressed the captive audience under each umbrella. To the dependable beat of “I” and “my,” every topic from revolutions to embroidery would be orchestrated to provide a gloss on the life and times of Lídia Prieto Maldonado (plus wherever the surnames of her five husbands wedged a place for themselves).

I could sneak out to Howard Johnson’s, but what if Paul got delayed or something and tried to reach me and whoever was on the desk said “Five-ten doesn’t answer.” What would he think then? Ah, the kid couldn’t be faithful to me for one week.

I picked up the phone and dialed the desk. Please let Alex, or at least Luís, be on. I wasn’t up to communicating with Enrique Ocampo without benefit of gestures.

“Emma! Good morning, how are you?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Your room lit up on the switchboard.”

“Listen, Alex—”

“You don’t sound so good, Emma.”

“As a matter of fact”—he had given me the perfect alibi—“I’m definitely under the weather, but I’ve got to feel better because I’ve promised to help Bev’s husband clear out his aunt’s house this afternoon.”

“You need some nourishment, Emma. Mami and her minions have assembled the promised
desayuno,
such as it is, down here, but I rather think you’d be better off with American coffee and your usual eggs or pancakes. Shall I send Luís over to Howard Johnson’s?”

“Oh, Alex, would you?”

“Our pleasure. I’ll send up a paper, too. You have a nice big appearance today on the front page of the Metro Section—about the lady who forecasts the weather.”

“Oh, is it in already?” With all the events of yesterday, I had completely forgotten about Martha Seawell and her low-pressure area.

“It’s on the upper half, or whatever you call it—”

“Above the fold.”