“Let her go.” I say. “Let her go already.”
“Mafia?” Arsenio asks.
“Yeah, I’m part of your mafia, but leave the poor old lady alone already.”
Arsenio laughs. He lets her go unexpectedly.
Ida quickly leaves and shuts herself in her room. I hear her lock it from the inside.
“I am a beast, just like you,” I then say, looking at the ceiling. “I’m a beast.”
Arsenio gets up. He goes to his room. He throws himself onto the bed.
“Mafia!” he says from there. “Life is just one big mafia! No more.”
I’m left all alone. I smoke my cigarette. Tato, the homosexual boxer, shows up. He sits in a chair in front of me. A ray of light bathes his pockmarked face.
“Listen to this,” he says to me. “Listen to this story. Which is my story. The story of the avenger of a painful tragedy. The tragedy of a final melodrama without any prospects. The fatal coincidence of an endless tragedy. Listen to this, my story. The story of someone imperfect who thought he was perfect. And death’s tragic end, which is life. What do you think?”
“Great,” I say.
“That’s enough!” he says, and leaves.
I fall asleep.
I dreamt about Fidel Castro. He was taking refuge in a white house. I was shooting at the house with a cannon. Fidel was in briefs and an undershirt. He was missing a few teeth. He was yelling insults at me out the windows. He was saying, “Cabrón! You’ll never get me out of here!” I was frantic. The house was already in ruins but Fidel was still inside, moving around as agile as a mountain lion. “You won’t get me out of here!” He yelled hoarsely. “You’ll never get me out!” It was Fidel’s last refuge. And even though I spent the whole dream shooting at him, I couldn’t flush him out of those ruins. I wake up. It’s already morning. I go to the bathroom. I urinate. Then I wash my face with cold water. I leave like that, dripping water, to go have breakfast. There’s cold milk, cornflakes and sugar. I only drink milk. I go back to the TV and turn it on. I settle into the armchair again. The American preacher who talks about Jesus comes on the screen.
“You, sitting there in front of the TV,” the preacher says. “Come now into the arms of the Lord.”
My mouth becomes dry. I close my eyes. I try to imagine that yes, everything he says is true.
“Oh God!” I say, “Oh God, save me!”
I remain that way for ten or twelve seconds, with my eyes closed, waiting for the miracle of salvation. Then Hilda, the decrepit old hag, taps my shoulder.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
I give her one.
“You have very, very pretty eyes!” she says sweetly.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I get up. I don’t know what to do. Go outside? Shut myself in my room? Sit on the porch? I go outside again. Go north? Go south? Who cares? I walk toward Flagler Street and then I turn to the left, going west, where the Cubans live. I walk on, I walk on, I walk on. I pass by dozens of bodegas, coffee shops, restaurants, barber shops, clothing stores, stores selling religious articles, tobacco shops, pharmacies, pawn shops. All of them are owned by Cuban petit bourgeois who arrived fifteen or twenty years ago, fleeing the communist regime. I stop in front of a shop mirror and comb my messy, straw-colored hair with my fingers. Then, it seems like someone is yelling “son of a bitch” at me. I turn around, furious. There’s only an old blind man walking with a cane on the sidewalk. I walk on a little more along Flagler Street. I spend my last bit of change on a sip of coffee. I see a cigarette on the floor. I pick it up and bring it to my lips. Three women working in the coffee shop start laughing. I think they’ve seen me pick up the cigarette and I’m infuriated. It seems like one of them says, “There he goes! The wandering Jew!” I leave.
The sun beats down strongly on my head. Thick beads of sweat run like lizards down my chest and armpits. I walk on, I walk on, I walk on. Without looking anywhere in particular. Without searching for anything. Without going anywhere. I go into a church called San Juan Bosco. There’s silence and air conditioning. I look around. Three believers are praying at the foot of the altar. An old woman stops before a statue of Jesus and touches his feet. Then she takes out a dollar and sticks it in an offering box. She lights a candle. She whispers her prayer. I walk along the aisle and sit in a pew at the back of the church. I take out the book of Romantic English poets and open it at random. It’s a poem by John Clare, born in 1793, died in 1864 in the asylum of Northampton.
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost
I get up. I leave the church through the back. I walk along Flagler Street again. I pass by new barber shops, new restaurants, new clothing stores, pharmacies and drug stores. I walk on, I walk on, I walk on. My bones hurt, but I keep going. Until I stop at 23rd Avenue. I spread my arms. I look at the sun. It’s time to go back to the halfway house.
* * *
I wake up. I’ve been here a month in the halfway house. My sheet is the same, my pillowcase, too. The towel that Mr. Curbelo gave me the first day is now filthy and damp and smells strongly of sweat. I take it and throw it around my neck. I go to the bathroom to wash up and urinate. I urinate on a checked shirt that some nut stuck in the toilet. Then I go over to the sink and turn one of the faucets. I splash cold water on my face. I dry off with the filthy towel. I go back to my room and sit on the bed. The nut who sleeps next to me is still sleeping. He sleeps in the nude and his giant member has an erection. The door opens and Josefina, the cleaning lady, comes in. She starts laughing, looking at the nut’s member. “It looks like a spear,” she says. And she calls out to Caridad, who is in the kitchen. Caridad pops in the door and takes my grimy towel and makes a whip out of it. She lifts it and brings it down forcefully on the nut’s member. He jumps on the bed and yells, “They want to kill me!”
The two women start to laugh.
“Put that thing away, you shameless fool,” Caridad says, “or I’m going to cut it off!”
The two women leave, discussing the nut’s member.
“It’s a spear,” Josefina says with admiration.
I walk out after them toward the dining room, where Arsenio is handing out breakfast. I drink a glass of cold milk quickly and go back to the TV room to watch my favorite preacher.
There’s a new crazy woman sitting in front of the set. She must be my age. Her body, while cheated by life, still has some curves. I sit next to her. I look around. There’s no one. Everyone is at breakfast. I reach my hand out to the loca and put it on her knee.
“Yes, my angel,” she says, without looking at me.
I raise my hand and get as far as her thighs. She lets me touch her without a complaint. I think the television preacher is talking about Corinthians now, about Paul, about the Thessalonians.
I raise my hand a little more and reach the crazy woman’s sex. I squeeze it.
“Yes, my angel,” she says without taking her eyes off the television.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Frances, my angel.”
“When did you get here?”
“Yesterday.”
I start stroking her sex with my nails.
“Yes, my angel,” she says. “Whatever you want, my angel.”