The Mortifications (15 page)

I miss my women, Ulises thought. He knew the sentiment was a little perverse. Inez's presence was not the same as his mother's or sister's. He also knew, however, that he'd spent his entire life between those two women, one far ahead of him and one just behind, and there was no separating their DNA from his, no way to extract genes from the skin or memories from the mind. Reflected at the bottom of his empty glass were his face and his eyes, both offshoots of his sister's, both products of his mother. He began to understand his family, the Encarnacíons, in the same way he was beginning to understand his mother's body: short on time. He felt an urge for Inez, but in that urge was the strange, regenerative force of procreation, and Ulises thought of a future when he had daughters who looked like Soledad and Isabel. But he could not parse exactly between the want of his body and the longing he had for his family. I'm fucked, Ulises concluded, and he ordered another beer.

But then Ulises considered that it might just be the heat and the city, the excitement of being a solitary man for the first time in his life. Havana was an aphrodisiac inasmuch as the weather, the low-hanging moisture, kept shirts loosely buttoned and feet mostly bare. He remembered his steel-toed boots back home and how tight he would tie them in February to trap the heat. Beneath the table he could see Inez's toes wiggling, and though Hartford summers were damp, they had an end. Willems had once told Ulises that on the hottest days in Cuba the laborers drank steaming coffee from the moment they woke straight through to the end of their shifts to keep their sweat up. One was cooler if one was a little clammy, and it occurred to Ulises that the only way to sleep at night in Havana, besides vomiting oneself to exhaustion, was to find another body and sweat it out together. And where Ulises had expected the city to dull a little in the evening, to rest quietly in the welcome dark, the streets were, instead, filled with the humming of a thousand electric fans all spinning at once. His hotel room, he recalled, had two fans, and the restaurant they were in had six. On their walk he'd seen a twirling blade atop almost every windowsill, as if Havana planned to take a large, collective breath as soon as the sun set. The sea breeze, he imagined, was wonderful at night, and it took a mechanical effort to bring that moving air into houses and bedrooms.

The waiter brought Ulises another wet glass of pale beer, but before Ulises could take it from the man, Inez asked, May I? I'm not thirsty enough for my own, but a sip would be wonderful.

Ulises watched as Inez drank from the glass, and he saw some of the grease from her lips smudge the rim. She picked up a napkin, and he thought she would wipe away the stain, but, instead, she used the cloth to soak up the condensation. With the damp rag she wiped her forehead.

Like living in a rain cloud, she said, and she laughed a little at her own joke.

She swiped the napkin across her cheeks, and then she pressed it against her chest. Ulises watched as the smallest trickle of water ran down her sternum and into her blouse. Ulises wondered at the effort it would take to bring Inez back to his room, but then he realized he had no idea where they were anymore, and she, perhaps fortunately for Ulises, would have to walk him home. He had never been alone with a woman who wasn't his mother or sister, and this he knew was partly due to his size and appearance. The scar on his head was magnified by his bulk, and the two together afforded him as much solitude as he could want, a condition he'd grown so accustomed to that he'd barely ever noticed the few women who populated his introductory classics courses at the university.

Moreover, his earliest memories of sex were filled with his mother and Willems's moaning, and alongside such noise he had endured the distinct and overwhelming asexual silence of his sister. Yet drinking his beer and looking at Inez, Ulises saw how unafraid of him she was; she might have been even arrogant in front of him, speaking knowledgeably about Havana, sometimes, as if he was a younger man or a cousin of hers. At the same time, she was flirtatious, though Ulises couldn't tell if this was intentional or accidental. He couldn't classify the difference between their erratic arm-locking and the dictatorial manner in which she sometimes pointed out landmarks or told him where to turn. But above all that, she didn't shy away from him or his body, and though that was a far cry from attraction, it was still fresh territory for Ulises, a place in which he could talk to a woman—and it felt like he was meeting a woman for the first time, unfair as that was to his mother or sister—as though he had no body, or as though his body was no longer a wall between him and routine conversation. And when Inez did seem to flirt, when she touched him for no reason, all of a sudden Ulises
was
a man—again, as though for the first time—because he was wanted. He began to think, as the girl stole yet another sip from his lemon-colored beer, that sexuality was a gift given from one person to another, that desire begat desire in a way that was both more subtle and permanent than he'd ever imagined.

After Ulises paid for dinner, Inez did lead him back to his hotel. Outside, clouds had gathered in the sky above the harbor, and on their walk it rained in little spurts. The air smelled of salt and fish, and just enough precipitation fell to wet their clothes for Ulises to offer Inez a towel from his bathroom. He told her he could also ask the front desk for an umbrella if she'd prefer. Inez refused the umbrella but accompanied Ulises upstairs.

A hurricane is coming, Inez said to him once they were alone—sitting on the edge of his hotel bed. The room was cool compared to the air outside, and someone—a maid, perhaps—had come in while Ulises was gone to turn on his two fans.

You're the second person to tell me a storm is coming, Ulises said, but no one else seems to know. The clerk at the desk knew nothing when I asked him.

The showers we walked through are the outer rain bands, she said. They stutter like that before a storm hits. There was some time between them, so maybe two days until it's here.

Inez's shoulders were wet, and her shirtsleeves clung to her elbows as she spoke. Sitting close to her and with the lights on, Ulises could see that her face, which he had first thought was rounded and full, was really just square. The jaw, which maybe in another kind of light seemed to curve, possessed a sharper line, and it stretched beautifully when she spoke.

What happens here during a hurricane? Ulises asked.

Nothing, except most folks get a day off from work, she said. If the water rises too much, they'll evacuate the city.

It doesn't seem like they have plans for an evacuation.

It's too soon to tell.

Where do you go when they evacuate you?

They send people inland to the sugar plantations, where they set up makeshift dormitories, Inez said. Men in one dorm, women and children in the other if there's time.

It seems odd that they would separate families.

It was odd to me at first, but it's to protect the young women.

Have you ever lost your place? Ulises asked.

No, she said. I have an apartment not far from here. It's in a newer building and on the seventh floor. It's usually safe. Sometimes I don't evacuate. I'll probably stay there for this storm as well. The rain was not so bad.

Will you stay there tonight? Ulises asked, and he realized as he asked this, a question about where Inez would sleep, that he could be no worse a coward. He wished that instead of speaking he'd touched her neck and gambled for something more than the curt
no
he was hoping for.

You haven't paid me yet, she said.

For the tour?

For the evening, Inez said. She blinked and added, They'll charge you more if I stay the night.

He said, It's all one rate, isn't it?

For couples, yes, Inez answered, but not for hookers.

You told me you were a history student.

I am, she said, but books aren't free. If you're worried, I visit the doctor once a month. You don't want to pay for it?

I feel tricked, he told her. Take whatever you want out of my wallet.

She said, I'll take seventy, but I deserve more. The money is for what we're going to do, not for the dinner or the walking together.

I don't know what to make of that, Ulises said. One led to the other, but you're telling me you were a separate person for each. Would you have slept with me without being paid?

Of course not, she said. You're a traveler passing through. Why bother when we talked first about your going east and second about my spending the night?

You worked me, he said.

I could have lied to you, Inez said. I could have slept with you and then left in the middle of the night, taken whatever I wanted out of your wallet. I could have propositioned you from the start. You
were
nearly passed out, and I would have had every right to drag you straight back to this hotel room, nurse you with more beer, and then take off your pants. Do you think, she asked, that when I work, I sleep with only one man a day? That I walk the streets with every man before I bed him?

Inez stood up at the side of the bed and placed a hand on her hip. She was waiting for him, and Ulises, seeing the rigidity of her pose, was reminded of the
Giraldilla
weather vane. The severe figure supposedly awaited her husband, but the fleshy, exposed right leg—Inez's right leg held beneath her skirt, though Ulises could see the faint outline of her thigh pressing through the damp fabric—seemed to call for any man. It lacked modesty, but Ulises would hardly call it vulgar; instead, the iron thigh exhibited the same bravado that Inez displayed. They shared clarity of intentions. But as Ulises thought about it, the truth of the matter—whether or not their walking together had been a scheme or an unexpected joy—became less and less important. He wanted to consider their meal together a brief romance, and the possibility was enticing enough. She had already confessed some affection, and Ulises didn't know if it was fair to ask her to abandon her role entirely, to ask her to live beyond what were her normal means.

Inez asked, Do you want me to touch you or not? Do you want to sleep alone tonight? There's still time for me to find another passerby, but I'd rather stay with you.

She approached Ulises and placed her hands around his collar. She pressed her palms into his skin, and then she slid her fingers into the gaps between the buttons on his shirt. Ulises had not worn an undershirt, and he could feel Inez's hard nails tap against his perspiring skin.

She asked, Do you want me to take this off?

Please.

The sex was painfully slow for Ulises, who, once he was naked, was more adventurous and forthcoming but clumsy. He did not know when to move his lips from the neck to the collarbone or to anywhere else. He did not know where his lips were welcome. He stalled for long seconds, like a plane headed straight for the sun, until Inez became the timekeeper and the pacesetter: she eventually made him undress her one article of clothing at a time, and she asked that each bit of fabric be placed on the chair near the room's desk instead of being tossed onto the floor.

I don't have so many pretty skirts and blouses, Inez said, and when Ulises made to bite at her neck, she bit him first on the ear and whispered, You can't leave any marks.

He came to a standstill when she took his penis first in her hand, then in her mouth, and she seemed to know when to slow down or stop altogether so that the act might last a little longer. He wasn't sure if he should kiss her when she stood, but he did, and he was glad he did, because she pushed him then onto the bed and slid her hips over his crotch. Her hands were in his stubbled hair, and miraculously he was inside her. Gusts of wind knocked at the fan on the windowsill, and their two bodies rocked like icebergs in the night, which was a soothing image under a full moon but a dangerous thought for a sailor in the dark.

Ulises came quickly but was atop Inez when he did, and he felt both a masculine pride he associated with Cuban machismo as well as a lingering Catholic guilt despite his agnosticism. The hazy duality reminded him of his mother and sister; for as long as he could tell, a woman was reason enough to leave a place behind—his mother, Cuba, his sister, the United States—but he decided, while catching his breath, that a woman was also reason enough to stay. He knew he was drunk on sex, but seeing Inez's naked body, the way she pushed the black hair out of her eyes and, reaching down to her crotch, the way she readjusted the folds of her labia, he thought stupidly that lost things could be replaced.

Dreaming in this fashion, he worried about Inez, who sat next to him drinking a glass of water. He thought of leaving her, which he would do in the morning with Simón, and he wondered if they might have sex again, which caused his flaccid penis to rise a little, though it still ached. He touched his foreskin, which was wet, and saw a milky drop of semen pool at the tip.

He said to Inez, I'm sorry.

For what? she asked.

I didn't think of getting you pregnant.

Inez handed him the glass of water and said, I'm infertile.

I assumed otherwise, he said. I'm sorry.

Would you have behaved differently?

No.

Inez got up from the bed and went to use the bathroom. When she returned, she began to dress.

Is this why you never go home? Ulises asked. Because they know what you do here?

I don't go home, Inez said, because a man I was married to still lives there. He divorced me to marry a woman who can have children. I don't go home because I don't want hear about the man's children growing up down the street. My mother knows that I support myself and that I attend the university. She knows that I don't plan on ever going home.

We all have to at some point, Ulises said without thinking, though he knew immediately the idea had grown out of his own guilt. He sensed the unspoken promise he'd made to himself a long time ago to never go home, mostly because of his father's offenses but more likely due to his fear of finding Buey Arriba a sham and a mess: rotten tomatoes, a dilapidated town, a meek and ruined father, an enemy without power despite what he'd convinced himself was actually there.