Meanwhile, Diane gamely took Pepín’s hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
Pepín finished the greeting and turned on Cuco. “What’s the matter with you, chico?” he asked. “Did you ask if they want coffee?” he demanded, wandering in the direction of the kitchen.
Cuco danced beside Grandpa as he moved, keeping him covered. He nodded at the old man’s waist and said in an intense whisper, “Mira!”
Pepín looked down. He frowned at the confusing sight. He was draped by the yellow bottoms and wearing the red top. He felt the yellow fabric, pressing it against his thighs. He reached around and touched his naked buttocks. “What did you do?” he asked Cuco in Spanish.
“They’re not on you,” Cuco answered in Spanish. “You came out with nothing on.”
“But why are they yellow?” Grandpa said.
“The red ones are wet.”
Grandpa thought hard. He touched the red top I had put on him. “This isn’t wet.”
“It’s okay,” Diane said, guessing incorrectly about what they were debating. “I’m a doctor.”
“You’re a doctor?” Grandpa asked her in Spanish.
She repeated, uncertainly, “Yes, I’m a doctor. So don’t worry.”
Pepín looked at me and said in English, “You said she was your girlfriend.” His face changed: chin pushing up pugnaciously, eyes narrowing. He walked over to accuse me in English, “You trying to fool me?” He had exposed himself with this maneuver. Startled, Cuco wasn’t quick to cover him. “You bring doctors and say they’re girlfriends.” He must have felt the air on him. He looked down as Cuco came over, waving the yellow bottoms like a bullfighter. Pepín saw his nakedness. “My God,” he exclaimed in Spanish. “They’ve stolen my pajamas!”
Eventually, Cuco and I convinced Grandpa that Diane was both my lover and a doctor and that we were not interested in acquiring his pajamas. Once fully dressed, resplendent in yellow, Pepín again introduced himself to Diane. “I’m Rafael’s grandfather,” he told her solemnly. This time he took her hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I get confused when I wake up.” He rubbed her hand for a moment. “Cuco,” he said, “did you make them cafe?”
“It’s too late,” Diane said. “I’m fine.”
“I asked you before,” Pepín remembered. He turned and shuffled toward his bedroom pensively.
“Good night, Grandpa,” I said and kissed him on the forehead.
At my touch he looked at me, the rims of his eyes white, the centers dull. “Good night,” he mumbled. “Must be going senile,” he added and tried to laugh it off, although he waited for me to comment.
“No, you’re not,” I mumbled and then regretted it, since I didn’t know if he was aware of the nursing home plan or what he might have to be persuaded of to agree to go.
I had trouble falling asleep. Cuco was right. There were crazy sounds. Sirens every half hour, and those popping noises, so many I concluded they couldn’t be gunfire. At one point, from the street facing the backyard, I heard several people running hard until there was a loud clattering noise, as if a row of aluminum garbage cans were rolling on concrete; that was followed by a profound silence. By then I was wide awake. Diane, to my surprise and annoyance, had fallen asleep quickly and remained out, undisturbed. Probably I couldn’t have slept no matter how tranquil the night. After the crashing of metal, I listened to what should have been the soothing rustle of palm trees brushing against the porch. Instead they reminded me of lying on my mother’s belly after the attack, her heat healing my bruises, peering up before I dozed off, to watch in the half-light the wild restless motion of her eyes as they checked the door, the windows, or sometimes stared ahead, at a terror I understood, but couldn’t see.
Finally, I must have fallen soundly asleep since I woke up alone, roused by loud and cheerful talk from the kitchen. That was not so different from waking as a child to the lively background noise of Grandma feeding my parents while Pepín interrogated my father about Cuba. The Florida sun striped the room through the bars and Venetian blinds, one set horizontal, the other vertical, making a shifting graph paper of the bedsheets. I listened. To my surprise, the friendly conversation was between Diane and my father. This got me out of bed quickly. On my feet, I staggered for a moment, dizzy with fatigue. I heard Diane laugh and say, “Oh, but you have to finish your book. It would be fascinating for Americans to read what it’s really like.” I was excited. I dressed quickly in the jeans and polo shirt I had stuffed into the overnight bag. I heard my father answer, “You’re an easy audience. You’re already in love with a Neruda. God help you,” he added. The buoyant happiness I felt was like a miracle cure. Was it possible? Could it be that this was all I needed, that years of recrimination and loneliness were going to be washed away in a single scrubbing?
I went to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. Diane was saying, in answer to an offer from my father, “I would love to visit Cuba. Shouldn’t we, Rafe?” she asked me. Her casual tone was effortless.
“Yes, we should.” My father was in a chair next to Diane. In front of him was a cereal bowl with a puddle of milk and a few drowned Cheerios. Behind him stood Pepín, his hands resting on my father’s shoulders. Grandpa’s face was impassive, a distant look in his eyes. He was dressed in clean linen black pants and an ironed white shirt without a tie, although it was buttoned to the collar. He was clean shaven. Here and there, on his chin, under his nose, by his left temple, were dots of dried blood where he’d nicked himself. Diane wore white shorts and a oversize blue cotton top that would gradually slide off her left shoulder until, when it was bare, she’d pull it up and the erosion began again. Her plate was covered with toast crumbs. The room was already hot from the morning sun and pungent with the smell of brewed coffee.
“Quieres cafe con leche?” Cuco asked from the stove. He shook a tall tin pot at me.
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
Cuco put the espresso maker on top of a low flame. He poured milk into a saucepan and lit another burner to heat it.
“The coffee is incredibly good,” Diane said.
“Cuban coffee puts hair on your teeth,” my father answered.
“Good morning,” I said in his and my grandfather’s direction.
Neither answered. Francisco raised a coffee mug to his lips and sipped. Pepín looked through me.
Diane filled the silence before it widened too much. “So what’s our schedule?”
“We have to leave in fifteen or twenty minutes,” Francisco said. He stood up carefully, taking his father’s hands off him and holding one of them to maneuver him gently out of the way. “Speaking of hair I’d better brush mine. And comb my teeth too. We don’t want these gringos to think we’re white trash,” he said to Pepín. He seemed to notice something. “Don’t button this,” he said, unfastening Grandpa’s collar. “You’re not wearing a tie.”
“I’m cold,” Grandpa said in Spanish and redid the button.
“You’re cold!” Francisco answered him in Spanish. “Man, it’s already seventy. And the sky’s clear. By noon, it’s going to be eighty, eighty-five.” He reached for Pepín’s collar.
Grandpa slapped at his son’s hands. “It’s air-conditioned in those places,” he said.
Francisco gave up good-naturedly, patting Pepín on the side of his shoulder. “How do you know, old man?”
“Those crackers air-condition everything.”
“And they’re right. I’m sick of the tropics. You can’t think in the heat.” He said to Diane in English, “It’s too hot down here, that’s what we’re saying. The brain doesn’t work.”