I realize that she’s trembling fearfully. I stop touching her. I feel pity for her. I take one of her hands and kiss it.
“Thank you, my angel,” she says absentmindedly.
Arsenio comes in. He’s done handing out breakfast and he comes to the TV with his usual can of beer. He drinks. He looks at the new crazy woman, amused.
“Mafia,” he then says to me. “What do you think of our new acquisition?”
He puts a bare foot on Frances’ knee. Then he puts the tip of his foot between the woman’s thighs, trying to drill into her sex.
“Yes, my angel,” says Frances, without taking her eyes off the television. “Whatever you want, my angels.”
She trembles. She’s trembling so much that it looks like the bones in her shoulders are going to come off. At that moment, the preacher is talking about a woman who had a vision of paradise.
“There were horses there …,” he says. “Tame horses grazing on grass that was always delicate, always green …”
“Mafia!” Arsenio screams at the television preacher. “Even you are in the mafia!”
He takes another sip of beer and leaves.
Frances closes her eyes, still trembling. She leans her head on the back of the sofa. I look around and there’s no one. I get up from my chair and get on top of her gently. I put my hands around her neck and start squeezing.
“Yes, my angel,” she says with her eyes closed. I squeeze harder.
“Keep going, my angel.”
I squeeze harder. Her face becomes a deep shade of red. Her eyes tear up. But she remains that way, meek, uncomplaining.
“My angel … my angel …,” she says in a small voice.
Then I stop squeezing. I take a deep breath. I look at her. I feel pity for her again. I take one of her emaciated hands and kiss it all over. Upon seeing her like that, so defenseless, I feel like hugging her and crying. She remains still, leaning her head on the back of her seat. With her eyes closed. Her mouth trembles. Her cheeks, too. I leave.
Mr. Curbelo has arrived and he talks to a friend on the phone.
When he talks on the phone, Mr. Curbelo sits back in his chair and puts his feet on his desk. He looks like a sultan.
“The competition was yesterday,” Mr. Curbelo tells his friend through the phone receiver. “I came in second place. This time I shot with a sling speargun. I got a fifty-pound jewfish!”
Just then, old one-eyed Reyes goes up to Curbelo and asks for a cigarette.
“Shoo, shoo!” Mr. Curbelo waves him away with his hand. “Can’t you see that I’m working?”
Reyes recoils toward the hallway. He hides behind a door. He looks all around with his one eye and, sure that no one can see him, takes his penis out and starts to urinate on the floor. That’s Reyes’ revenge. Urinating. And a storm of the most brutal beatings can come down on him, but he will always urinate in his room, in the living room and on the porch. People complain to Mr. Curbelo, but he won’t kick him out of the boarding home. Reyes, according to him, is a good customer. He doesn’t eat; he doesn’t ask for his thirty-eight dollars; he doesn’t demand clean towels or sheets. All he does is drink water, ask for cigarettes and urinate. I go to my room and throw myself on the bed. I think of Frances, the new little crazy woman whom I nearly suffocated a few minutes ago. I become angry with myself as I recall her defenseless face, her trembling body, her sad voice that never asked for forgiveness.
“Keep going, my angel, keep going …”
My feelings about her are a confusing mix of pity, hate, tenderness and cruelty.
Arsenio comes in the room and takes a seat in a chair next to my bed. He takes a can of beer out of his pocket and starts to drink.
“Mafia …,” he says to me, looking over my head toward the street. “What’s life all about, mafia?”
I don’t answer. I sit up in bed and also look out the window. A homosexual dressed as a woman walks by. Then a black sports car goes by, with its radio at full blast. Scandalous rock music invades the street for a few seconds. Then it starts fading as the car gets farther away. Arsenio goes over to the dresser belonging to the crazy guy who works at the pizza place and starts to root through his things. He takes out a shirt and some dirty pants and throws them on the floor. He comes upon a drawer with a lock on it, but he takes a screwdriver out of his pocket and inserts it between the lock and the wood. He pulls hard. The screws give. Arsenio opens the drawer and searches anxiously among the nut’s papers, soaps and combs. Finally, he pulls a leather wallet out. He opens it and grabs a twenty-dollar bill. It’s the nut’s earnings from six days of work. He shows it to me. He smiles. He kisses it.
“Tonight we’re going to eat well,” he says. “Pizza, beer, cigarettes and coffee.”
I look at him, speechless.
“Mafia!” he yells at me with a smile. He takes a swig of beer and leaves the room.
I’m left alone. I don’t know what to do. I start looking out the window. A group of ten or twelve members of a religious order dressed immaculately in white go by. The homosexual dressed as a woman goes by again, this time on the arm of an enormous black man. And cars, cars, cars go by with their radios at full blast. I leave my room without any particular destination. Mr. Curbelo is still talking to his friend about yesterday’s competition.
“They gave me a plaque,” he says. “I hung it with the rest of them on the living room wall.”
The house smells of urine. I go and sit in front of the television set, next to Frances again. I take her hand. I kiss it. She looks at me with her trembling smile.
“You look like him,” she says.
“Who?”
“My little son’s father.”
I get up. I kiss her on the forehead. I hug her head tightly in my arms for a few minutes. Then, when my tenderness is exhausted, I look at her with irritation. Once again, I feel like harming her. I look around. There’s no one. I put my hands on her neck and start to squeeze slowly.
“Yes, my angel, yes,” she says, with a trembling smile.
I squeeze more. I squeeze hard, with all of my strength.
“Keep going, keep going…,” she says, in a small voice.
Then I let go. She has passed out and falls sideways in her seat. I take her face between my hands and start kissing her forehead madly. Little by little, she comes to. She looks at me. She smiles weakly. That’s enough for me.
I leave. I pass by Curbelo’s desk. He’s done talking on the phone already.
“William!” he calls out to me. I go over to him. He takes a bottle of pills out of a drawer and grabs two.
“Open your mouth,” he says.
I open it. He throws two pills inside: clack-clack.
“Swallow,” he says.
I swallow.
“Can I leave now?”
“Yes. Find Reyes for me and bring him over so he can have his pills too.”
I go to Reyes’ room. He’s lying down on a sheet soaked in urine. His room smells like a latrine.
“Listen, pig,” I say, punching him in the sternum. “Curbelo wants to see you.”
“Me? Me?”
“Yes, you, you filthy pig.”
“Okay.”
I leave holding my nose. I go to my room and throw myself on the bed. I look at the blue, peeling ceiling covered with small cockroaches. This is the end of me. I, William Figueras, who read all of Proust when I was fifteen years old, Joyce, Miller, Sartre, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albee, Ionesco, Beckett. I who lived twenty years within the revolution, as its victimizer, witness, victim. Great.
Just then, someone pops up in my bedroom window. It’s El Negro.
“Are you sleeping?”
“No, I’ll be right out.”
I button my shirt, smooth my hair with my fingers and go out to the garden.
“Hey,” El Negro says when he sees me. “If you were sleeping, keep sleeping!”