“Fuck you! Go fuck yourself!” He yells from inside.
Then Pepe, the older of the two mental retards, lets out a terrifying scream, lowers his pants, and defecates right there, in the hallway, in plain view of everyone.
Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in international politics, kicks on the bathroom door again.
“Leave me alone, you fucking chicken!” Louie screams from inside.
I leave. I go to the garden and urinate behind an areca palm. Then I wash my hands and my face in a gush of water coming out of a spigot. I go back in the halfway house and hear the ruckus in front of the bathroom still going on. I go over there and arrive just as Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in politics, throws his entire body against the bathroom door and busts the lock. Louie, the American, is sitting on the toilet, wiping his behind with a raincoat.
“It’s him!” Eddy yells. “He’s the one who sticks clothes and cardboard in the toilets!”
Louie howls like a trapped animal. He puts on his pants quickly and hurls himself at Eddy, punching him in the mouth. Eddy falls to the floor with bloody lips. Louie shoves his way through the locos and leaves the crowd for the living room. He howls like a mad wolf.
“Go eat your chicken feed, chickens!” he shouts from the living room. He opens the front door forcefully, yells more curses and goes outside slamming the door so hard that three or four glass panes fall to the floor in pieces.
“Son of a bitch!” Eddy screams, his mouth bloody. “Now they’ll finally kick you out!”
Ida, the grande dame come to ruin, comes over to me with an angry expression and takes on a confidential tone of voice:
“Curbelo won’t kick him out. Don’t you see that Louie receives a check for six-hundred dollars every month? He’s the best customer here. He could be a crazy murderer and he’d never get kicked out.”
Arsenio goes over to the bathroom. The nuts’ screams have woken him up. His eyes are glassy, and his long, wiry hair is standing straight up and looks like a huge metal helmet. He looks at the blood on the floor, at Pepe’s huge pile of shit, at Eddy’s broken mouth, at the rain coat stuffed in the toilet, all with indifference. It’s nothing new. It’s all part of everyday life at the halfway house. He scratches his robust chest. He spits on the floor. He burps. He shrugs his shoulders and declares,
“You really are animals!”
He turns around and walks slowly to the living room.
“Breakfast!” he screams from there at the top of his lungs and the nuts fall over each other to follow him to the dining room. I don’t feel like drinking cold milk. I need coffee. I search my pockets. All I have is a dime. I go to my room and stop in front of the bed belonging to the crazy guy who works at the pizza place. I take his shirt from the top of the wardrobe and search the pockets. Then I grab his pants and do the same. I find a quarter and half a pack of cigarettes. I put it all in my pocket and go out to the corner coffee shop. On the way, I run into Louie, the American, who is avidly going through a garbage can. A little further on, Hilda, the decrepit old hag, lifts up her dress right in the middle of the street and urinates next to a bus stop. On the bus stop’s bench, a young vagrant is sleeping with his head propped up on a dirty backpack. Two huge dogs cross the road toward Flagler Street. Cars race by toward downtown. I get to the coffee shop and ask for coffee. They give it to me cold since they know I live in the halfway house and I won’t complain. I could protest, but I don’t. I drink the coffee in one gulp. I pay and return to the boarding home. It’s time to listen to my preacher, so I turn on the TV and slump into the tattered armchair. The preacher comes on the screen. He’s talking about a rock ‘n’ roll star who threw his guitar down in the middle of a concert and proclaimed, “Save me, Lord!”
“He’s a well-known star,” the preacher says. “I don’t have to name names. But that guy … still young, sick of acting, up to here with living a lie, threw his guitar to the ground and proclaimed ‘Save me!’ And I said, ‘Satan, squalor of darkness … you can’t fool a man who has called for Him. Hallelujah!’”
The preacher is crying. His audience is also crying.
“There’s still time,” the preacher says. “There’s still time to come to the Lord.”
Just then, a strong whiff of cologne water reaches me. I turn around and see Frances, the new little loca, sitting in a chair behind me. She has made up her face carefully and is wearing a thin blue dress that makes her look younger. Her hair is all done up. And her skin looks clean and fresh. I look at her legs. They’re still pretty. I get up from my seat and go over to her. I take her hands and examine them carefully. They’re clean and elegant, although her nails are too long and unkempt. Then, I open her mouth with my fingers. She’s just missing a few molars. I look around and don’t see anyone. I kneel on the floor and lift her skirt. I sink my head in between her legs. She smells good. I sit her back in the chair again. I take off her shoes and examine her feet. They’re small and pink and also smell clean. Then I stand. I hug her. I kiss her neck, her ears, her mouth.
“Frances!” I say. “Oh, Frances!”
“Yes, my angel,” she says.
“Oh, Frances!”
“Yes, my angel, yes …”
I take her by the hand and take her to her room. It’s the women’s room and it has a lock on the inside. We go in. I lock the door. I take her gently over to the bed and remove her shoes.
“Oh, Frances!” I say, kissing her feet.
“Yes, my angel.”
Hastily, I remove her panties. I spread her legs.
She has pretty brown fuzz. I kiss it anxiously. While I kiss her, I take out my throbbing sex. I know that the minute I enter her, I’ll ejaculate. But I don’t care.
“Frances,” I say. “Frances.”
I start to penetrate her slowly. While I do so, I kiss her frantically on the mouth. Then I shudder to the very marrow of my bones and a wave of lava comes from deep inside of me and floods her inside.
“Yes, my angel.” Frances says.
And I lie there, as if I were dead, with my ear to her chest. I feel her delicate hand beating softly on my back, as if I were a newborn who had hiccupped at the breast.
“Yes, my angel, yes …”
I pull out. I sit on the edge of the bed. I take my hand to her very thin neck and squeeze slowly.
“Yes, my angel, yes …”
I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I squeeze a little more.
“Yes … yes …”
I squeeze tighter. Until she gets red in the face and her eyes fill up with tears. Then I stop squeezing.
“Oh, Frances!” I say, kissing her sweetly on the mouth.
I get up from the bed and straighten my pants. She straightens her clothes and also jumps up from the bed, searching for her shoes with her feet. I leave the room and go back to the tattered armchair to watch my favorite preacher again. It’s the end of the show. The preacher, seated at a piano, sings the blues with a splen-did black man’s voice:
There’s just one way
And it’s not easy to get there
Oh Lord!
I know.
I know.
I know it’s not easy to reach You.
Mr. Curbelo arrived at ten. He goes directly to the kitchen where Caridad, Josefina and another employee named Tía, who occasionally cleans up the retards Pepe and René, are waiting for him. They meet. From the porch, I see Curbelo talking to his employees with gusto. Then he claps his hands and they disperse. All of a sudden, everything’s a rush of frantic activity. Arsenio runs around the rooms placing large rolls of toilet paper at the foot of every bed. Caridad the mulata sends Pino, the peon, to bring, as a matter of urgency, a piece of ham for the stew from the bodega. Josefina runs from room to room armed with a broom to clear the cobwebs from the corners and ceilings. Tía, loaded down with sheets and clean towels, runs quickly through the halls changing dirty, pissed-on bed sheets. Curbelo himself breezes easily through the living room and lays new rugs, brought hastily from his own house, down over the dirty, peeling floor.