Ruins (9 page)

The sapos gave each other quick, knowing looks. Usnavy wondered how many of them were calculating their own odds against the currents of those ninety miles, how many would be up on that rocky beach in Cojímar that very night, testing their buoyancy and courage. Thousands of Cubans like them had already made their way to the Florida shores that summer, joined by almost as many Haitians fleeing their own island—in Usnavy’s mind, a place of real nightmares, a wasteland of wanton violence and rampant disease. (He could understand why those people left Haiti, that made sense to him.)

In recent days, there had been reports that the U.S. was planning to invade Haiti and Usnavy, wary of how expansive the assault might be, had allowed himself at scattered moments to fret about whether they were safe in Cuba, and what might happen if the Americans changed course and dropped on their coasts instead. With so many people leaving, everything was already so uncertain. Who would be left to put up a defense?

“Felicidades, Obdulio, mi hermano,” a teenage boy called out to their exiled friend as if Obdulio were across the street, down the block, or passing by on a bicycle. “Remember us, don’t forget us—send us something!” He formed his hands into a prayer and laughed, immediately joined by the others in his desire and resignation. Usnavy knew they were dreaming of Belgian chocolates and Schick razors, Motorola radios and Michael Jordan.

Almost instantly, Usnavy wondered how many of these guys had been involved in those unseemly riots earlier in the month, when hundreds of people had started yelling and fighting with the police on the Malecón. After the first flush of rage, some of the protesters had smashed cars and store windows, looting like rioters in American cities. Usnavy had been appalled. The rabble had been shouting epithets at El Comandante—“Down with the tyranny!”—until The Man himself showed up, stern and strong, and then the chant changed abruptly to vivas and hurrahs.

“I know Obdulio was going to check in with Reynaldo once he got there,” said Frank. “Diosdado, you heard anything from your son?”

Usnavy decided to keep as quiet as possible. He could tell Frank was circling Diosdado, intoxicating himself with the very idea of his prey.

“No,” Diosdado said sharply. “Who starts?” he asked, adjusting his bifocals and staring at his pieces as if each little dot made up a larger picture, like a constellation in the sky, Orion or Pegasus. It was Usnavy and Mayito against the tense partnership between Diosdado and Frank.

“Did Obdulio have Reynaldo’s phone number?” Frank dogged on. “You gave it to him, didn’t you? I know he was going to ask you for it.” He scrunched up his nose, as if the smell of the blood was already too strong, an ache almost.

“Are we playing or what?” Diosdado demanded, eyeing Frank over the rim of his glasses. The sapos stiffened at Diosdado’s frosty rejoinder. On the bottom half of his bifocals, his pores looked like moon craters.

“We’re playing,” Frank said, throwing down a double nine like a dare. He had a huge, malleable grin on his face.

Mayito quickly followed with a nine-eight and Diosdado tapped the other end with a nine-two. Usnavy dropped a double eight. Mayito’s eyebrows arched instantly.

“Man, I thought you said your luck had changed—you’re not packed with doubles again, are you? Because if you are, we’re stopping the game right now, got it?” Frank demanded of Usnavy.

The sapos giggled. Usnavy did too. He actually had a pretty good hand. Frank threw down his piece, followed immediately by Mayito. Then Diosdado made his play, an eight-two on Usnavy’s double, without a word.

“No commentary tonight, guapo?” Frank asked.

“I’m tired,” Usnavy said. “I’ve been running around all day.”

The spectators muttered among themselves but Usnavy couldn’t tell if it was curiosity or disappointment. He could hear the sloshing of upturned rum bottles, the gurgling of sloppy drinking even this early in the evening.

“Oh yeah? Tired from what?” Frank asked as he played.

“Errands, just errands,” Usnavy said.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his friends with knowledge of the injured lamp and Mr. Tiffany. But their whole lives, they’d been the ones with the street smarts, not him. He wanted, for once, to do something that might surprise them, something that could actually earn him respect instead of just affection. Besides, he was still unsure about what he was doing, exactly.

Somebody handed him a thimble full of coffee and he downed it without thinking. It was strong and black and delicious.

Mayito placed a piece on the table and Usnavy, glad to be able to play something other than a double, smiled broadly as he took his turn. The coffee’s taste lingered on his tongue and throat.

“Hey, maybe you’re not salao after all,” said Frank, leaning back, getting into position. The smile expanded even more, stretched until all his other features seemed to disappear behind it. “In fact, when you really think about it, guapo, maybe you were never salao at all. You got all the wonders and benefits of our socialist system, to which you subscribe like the Apostles to Jesus—except, of course, for the traitorous Judas, and maybe Peter too, because you have to wonder, don’t you, if the way he passed down Christ’s teachings was the way Jesus would have liked … I mean, with the church such an avaricious and oppressive institution …”

There were uh-huhs but also grumblings behind him from the audience, many of whom sported around their necks crucifixes or medallions with saints (right alongside brightly beaded necklaces that connoted other, contradictory beliefs). Their grumblings were less fervor than habit, but in either case Frank’s words were unsettling, like silent lightning before the shattering of thunder.

When it was his turn, Diosdado dropped his piece without even looking up.

“But that aside, yes, you’re lucky—you have a wife who loves you and would never cheat,” Frank continued with a fake felicity, “a daughter you can count on to be your daughter forever. Because Nenita is a real girl, after all, a real girl—”

“What do you mean?” Usnavy sat up straight. “Of course she’s a real girl …”

Frank played without hesitation, smacking each piece down with a broad, dramatic arching of his arms. “That’s what I’m saying—you can go to sleep knowing Nena’s a real girl and get up the next day knowing Nena’s a real girl—that’s a kind of security in this crazy world, no?” Mayito, disgusted, clicked his tongue as he pushed in his piece. “Frank …” he said softly.

The sapos started making faces at each other, not sure where Frank was going. (Frank produced enough good stories; he was worth the wait.)

“My god, yes, she’s a real girl! What are you saying, that she’s not Pinocchio?” Usnavy exclaimed. It seemed like a ridiculously obvious thing. “But that’s not luck—that’s natural!” The sapos giggled at Usnavy’s assertion.

“That’s what I’m saying! That’s it exactly! But in this world you can’t take that for granted, can you? What do you think, Diosdado?” Frank said, widening his eyes in mock innocence.

The sapos were startled: What was Frank getting at? They stared while Diosdado inspected his pieces as if in deep concentration, but Usnavy noticed a slight tremor in his hand. “Are you going to play, Usnavy, or are you going to continue with this ludicrous discussion?” Diosdado asked icily.

Was it his turn already? “Yes, yes, of course I’m playing,” Usnavy said, giving his pieces a quick glance. His stomach took a little bounce too.

“You didn’t say what you think, muchachón,” Frank dared Diosdado.

The sapos leaned closer. Usnavy could feel the heat of their bodies and smell the ever-present rum, like gasoline spilled around kindling. He slid his blistered foot back in his shoe, just in case.

Diosdado refused to lift his eyes from the slats in his hands. “What I think about what?” he asked.

“You know …”

The smile, Frank’s smile; it was a trap, Usnavy could see it coming down on his poor pal Diosdado and there was nothing anyone could do, not even Mayito, who was now staring at his dominos in utter revulsion. The murmurs from the sapos were creating a curtain of noise, like radio static, behind them.

“No, I don’t know,” Diosdado finally said, folding over his pieces with a hard slap that made both Usnavy and Mayito jump. Their own dominos wobbled then fell over haphazardly, exposing about half of them. The crowd hushed. Miraculously, Frank’s pieces stayed up.

“Yes, you do; you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Frank said, chewing his cigar ever more furiously, making it go up and down like a piston. He leaned up on the table and covered his pieces with his hands, laying them down without making a sound. “About Reynaldo … or should I say
Reina …?
”

A red-faced Diosdado shot out of his seat, taking the table with him and hurling the black and yellow dominos all over the street. Mayito lost his balance and almost fell backward while the sapos erupted in protests at Frank for goading Diosdado and at Diosdado for not being able to take it. Rum spilled, some even splashing onto Usnavy, who quickly tried to wipe it off, not wanting to show up at home later and have Lidia worry more than she already did.

Frank cackled wickedly. The autistic boy, expressionless and unmoved by the commotion, got up from his chair and stood expressionless, then began to pick up the dominos.

“Fuck, man, whatever it is, it’s not that big a deal,” said Jacinto, the neighbor from Tejadillo who’d sewn Usnavy’s shoe together. He called after Diosdado, but he was already a block away, his stubby legs hurrying from the scene.

“I hate this,” muttered Mayito as he scrambled to his feet.

“Be cool, man,” Chachi said to everyone and no one in particular. He was married to Yamilet, Usnavy’s neighbor.

“That was unnecessary,” Mayito said directly to Frank as he bent over to help pick up the scattered dominos.

Frank straightened his shirt, tucked it into his pants, and pumped his chest out like a shield. “That’s what he gets for raising a faggot,” he said in his own defense.

The sapos jerked to attention; Jacinto winced.

Usnavy shook his head. That was news? “C’mon, Frank, we’ve all known about Reynaldo since he was—what?—twelve? Why harass Diosdado now, for god’s sake?”

“Because,” said Frank with an unusually serious timbre, “Reynaldo is not Reynaldo anymore: He’s really Reina.”

“Cómo?” asked a skeptical Oscar Luis from the crowd.

“So?” asked Usnavy with a shrug. He was, admittedly, confused, but he didn’t really care what Reynaldo was doing with his life. It had nothing to do with him, or them, and he was so far away now.

“So, you dimwit—that little faggot had his wee-wee cut off. He had that operation. He’s Reina now. Legally. The motherfucker is a woman now!” Frank explained; he seemed to be marching in place as he talked, so proud was he of being able to deliver this information.

“Coño!” Jacinto exclaimed.

The sapos oooh-ed and aaah-ed, everybody suddenly covering, touching, or grabbing their own parts, imagining the agony of having them sliced away, their laughter a transparent defense.

Mayito nodded, not approvingly, but to affirm the facts of the story. “None of our business, though, none of our business,” he continued under his breath, his Buddha face sagging.

Almost immediately, Chachi started joking. “So did he get big ones, huh?” he asked, using his hands to shape two global spheres on his chest. The sapos yelped with glee.

“And what about back here?” Oscar Luis giggled, grabbing his own ass.

But Usnavy couldn’t fathom any of it. “How do you know about any of this, huh?” he asked Frank.

“How do I know? Because Obdulio arrives in Miami delighted to call Reynaldo, and who shows up but Reina!”

“Maybe it was a joke,” Usnavy suggested. “Maybe Obdulio got confused, huh, did you think about that? He just got there; he might not know how things are yet.”

Around him, the guys chuckled, shaking their heads. Was it at Reynaldo (or Reina), or at Obdulio, or at him? Usnavy pulled at his T-shirt, soaked from careless rum, and held it away from his skin.

Frank continued: “No, man, it’s true: Reynaldo’s a woman now. But you know what bothers me? You know what it is?” He poked Usnavy in the chest with his finger, right on the wet spot. “Diosdado knew—he’s known for years. And that jerk never told us. Never.”

Around them people nodded and shuffled. Mayito stepped away from the circle, shaking his head. “Why would he?” he grumbled, but he wasn’t talking to anybody in particular anymore.

“Imagine that!” Jacinto exclaimed.

The sapos, laughing and joking among themselves, were dispersing now. Whether they understood Frank’s gripe enough to process it didn’t matter. Each would take the story, chew it up good, then practice how they would tell it later, adding little bits and pieces to their individual versions, each according to his need.

That night when he got home, Usnavy found his worried wife out in the courtyard on Tejadillo, pacing among the tenement’s gossips and hustlers. It had taken him awhile longer than usual to arrive, not because he was walking instead of riding now, but because, first, he’d strolled over to the Malecón to replay the clapping that had scared off the tourists, to think through what he’d found out about Diosdado and Reynaldo, and then what Frank had done.

At the Malecón, he’d seen young girls Nena’s age strut as if on a runway for the benefit of the foreign men who drove by in rented cars. The girls were brazen: As if dipped in Lycra, their clothes accented every crevice of their young bodies, every slope and incline of their new breasts. They yelled out “Spain!” or “Italy!” to the cars, all loaded with men Usnavy’s age who looked as if they couldn’t believe they’d stumbled onto this paradise, their expressions of joy so exaggerated that even the most benign grandfather among them seemed maniacal.

As he neared the water, Usnavy had found himself particularly struck by the full figure strolling in front of him, flabby hips swinging wildly, almost like a bell. He thought he could hear it striking, a loud and forceful tone that paralyzed him. But when the womanly shape turned, she startled Usnavy—wasn’t there something a bit off in her face? Wasn’t her nose too bulbous, her mouth too cavernous and labrose, her laugh too robust?