Ricky orders another rum and Coke. He looks at his watch. Obviously I’m only the first of several appointments in his busy evening. I smile gently. “Look, Ricky, I know you’ve risked a lot, slipping out of Manhattan, going to Colorado, but I can take care of myself too.”
He nods slowly and sinks back into the chair. His shoulders slump as if all the life has been sucked out of him, as if I’ve just told him I’ve got terminal cancer. He starts to say something and stops. “You’ve never been out of Cuba,” he says.
“No, but I can speak English as well as you and I’m a damn fine cop.”
Before he can respond the beggar boy pulls at his arm. Really pushing his luck, this one.
“It’s your turn,” I tell Ricky.
Ricky reaches into his pocket and gives the kid a few pesos. The kid takes it to one of the jiniteras, who might be his mother.
Ricky looks at me, beams me that get-out-of-jail smile. “Ah, fuck it, it’s your decision, if you want to go, you go.”
“Thanks for the permission. Now let’s end this. You know I’ve made up my mind. And once it’s made, it’s made.”
“I like your outfit,” he says.
“Shut up. I didn’t want to look like a cop.”
“You don’t.”
The street has completely filled now. Whores back under the streetlamps, pimps playing craps against alley walls. A CDR man I know shooting dice with the pimps. Ricky finishes the cigarillo. “I suppose it should be me. The only son,” he says.
I hide the surprise on my face. “You’ve done enough,” I tell him.
“It should be the son. It’s my responsibility. I owe it to Mom, to you.”
I shuffle my chair next to him and put my arm around him. I kiss him on the cheek.
“No.”
He blinks, turns his head away. “It should be me,” he continues. “I thought about it when I was up there, but then-well, then I knew I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“You did what I asked you to do.”
He nods. “It wouldn’t be justice. It would be murder.”
“Maybe nobody has to die.”
A tour group of elderly Canadians comes up from the harbor and files solemnly into the Ambos Mundos. They walk through, buying neither a drink nor anything else. The piano player starts riffing on a song by Céline Dion, either to bring them back or perhaps as ironic commentary.
Ricky politely disengages my arm. “So how are you going to wangle the visa?” he asks.
“I’m telling Hector I’m interviewing for a master’s degree at UNAM in Mexico City. I am too.”
“Jesus Christ, when did you start planning that?”
“Three days after the funeral.”
Ricky laughs and takes my hand. “Oh, you’re good, Mercado, like I say, too good for the cops. You need an outlet. When was the last time you wrote a poem?”
“Are you kidding? When I was thirteen.”
He smiles. “You had talent. Your place is full of poetry books. You should start up again.”
“You need to be in love with somebody to write poems,” I tell him.
“That’s not true. Dad thought you were good.”
He is getting on my nerves again. “You wanna hear a poem?”
“Sure.”
“‘The singing bird is dead as dust, he won’t revive, alas, / so you can take that golden quill and shove it up your ass’-Heinrich Heine.”
Ricky laughs, shakes his head, looks at his watch, yawns. “Well, I suppose I better…” he says.
He stands and leaves a twenty-dollar bill on the table. I give it back to him.
“The police are paying for this one,” I tell him.
“Hey, you want to come with me? Yeah, you should come,” he says.
“Where to?” I ask suspiciously, imagining some sweaty basement Sodom and Gomorrah filled with rail-thin boys and army colonels with fat mustaches.
“To see Mom. I smuggled in American chocolate from Miami. Come on, she’ll be thrilled.”
“To see Mom?” I say, aghast.
“It won’t be that bad,” he says.
But of course it is.
Water leaking in her apartment. Buckets over the voodoo gods. The smell of incense and a backed-up toilet.
Ricky tells her all about Manhattan.
An isle of joy, he says. She doesn’t really understand. She brews herbal tea and casts the tarot. Makes predictions. Not a surprise when she mentions death. She always predicts death. We always ignore it. Laugh about it.
Death.
Oh God.
My eyes open.
Out into the hard blue night I gaze. Through the mountain and the desert. Through the tears. Tears for me. Tears into the black seat. My denim shirt thick with tears. I picked this shirt because it looked sexless, like a drab uniform for a drab nonentity. For an invisible. The person who cleared your table or cleaned your toilet or mowed your lawn.
I hadn’t wanted to be noticed. But two miles into the United States I’m noticed. I’m nearly raped. And now I’ve killed two men. Unmade them as if they never were.
And there’s nothing I can do but wipe my tears.
My face pressed against glass. Yellow lines. Scrub. Incandescent creatures following the van. What do they want?
More blood.
The deaf lady talking to me.
She can see I’m crying.
“We’re nearly there,” she’s saying.
Francisco gives me a handkerchief, asks me something.
“No, I’m fine.”
Headlights lick asphalt.
Moths call my name.
Close my eyes. Mom’s apartment, Ricky’s chocolate, me looking for the container holding Dad’s ashes. It isn’t there. No doubt Mother sold it to the witches on the floor below.
This is stupid.
This is crazy.
Hector was right. Ricky was right. They were all right.
Lights in the distance. Gas station. Another gas station.
“Ok, friends,” Pedro says. “We’re just about there.”
A strip mall. 7-Eleven. Liquor store. Smoke shop.
Bits of tire. Fenders. License plates.
A gender reassignment clinic.
What is this place?
“America.”
America.
“I don’t feel good.”
The car pulls into a parking lot.
“I don’t feel good, Francisco.”
“Call me Paco, everyone does.”
“Paco, I don’t feel…”
“Let me help you out. We’re here.”
“Where’s here?”
“Come on. I’ll help you to the motel room. It’s been a long day.”
His hand on my arm. The trucks. A chill in the air. Snow clouds to the north.
“It’s ok, you’re safe now.”
Safe. Burn this shirt when I get the chance. Burn all these clothes.
“I need to shower.”
“Yes, a shower.”
Voices. Paco to Pedro. “She’s in shock. Delayed reaction. Give her some brandy.”
“I’ve got some 4H, do you think she would take some of that? Mellow her right out.”
“Worse thing you can do. Get some hot chocolate.”
Chocolate.
Snow clouds.
An outdoor swimming pool.
“Does anyone have a bathing suit that I can borrow?”
“Well, I don’t know, I can check.”
“Check.”
A bathing suit.
“We got it in the lost and found,” Paco says, grinning.
Flip-flops. The edge of the pool. “Gotta warn you. The guy says it’s not heated.”
“It’s ok.”
I step in. The cold clears my head. The chlorine scalds my cuts. I stay in till midnight. Quarter moon. Stars between the clouds.
A towel.
Food.
Whispers.
“Get some rest. Long day tomorrow.”
“Rest. Yes.”
The women in one room. The men in another.
A picture of Jesus. Mosquito corpses on the walls. A calvary for mosquitoes. The fabled mosquito graveyard.
The bed sags. I lay the mattress on the floor.
Sleep comes like a guillotine. And I’m down. No bad dreams. No dreams of any kind.
It’s ok, Ricky. It’s ok, Mom.
It’s ok.
I’m in America and I’ve begun my task and the night is quiet and the world at peace.