Fifty Grand

11 PRAYER IS BETTER THAN SLEEP

Black orchid sky. Black moon. Black dreams. Back on bruised-mouth island. The beat in Vedado. Doctors. Informers. Tourists. Whores. Secret policemen. Secret asylums. Secret prisons. Calling me home. But not yet, I’ll come, but not yet.

I dream the song of waking and lie under the sheet, awake.

I pull back the curtain, look through the window.

It’s well before dawn. The night is full of dying stars and hidden mass.

A noise on the outside steps. A person.

Who is that over there?

My eyes adapt to the light.

It’s Paco. Kneeling. Fingering his rosary.

Does he do this every morning?

Poor kid. Must be scared shitless to be here.

I watch him, fascinated.

He finishes, lifts his head. I let the curtain fall back, lie down again.

A key in the lock. The door creaks open. He comes in.

He looks in my direction, squints, tries to see if I’m awake. Deciding that I’m not, he tiptoes to his bed and takes off his shoes. He removes a white bag of powder from his pocket and puts it carefully in the drawer next to his bed. He lifts the duvet, slithers under it, and rolls onto his side.

He drapes an arm over his eyes and tries to sleep. After a couple of minutes the arm falls to his side. His face assumes a different, more feminine posture. His eyebrows are thick and his features fine, his hair wiry but containable. It’s the eyes that give up his wildness, his begging years, his time running with gangs in Managua, or his time-probably exaggerated-as a camp follower of the Sandinistas, a wannabe boy soldier.

Sleeping, he has the face of someone deeper than the front he projects to the world. It’s a shame, Paco, that you love America so. You shouldn’t fall so hard on the first date.

Not me. In matters of love I take my time. Too choosy, everyone says. The Havana girl whose exception proves the rule.

But you, Francisco, everything’s coming to you too easily and too fast. Didn’t you listen to Esteban? There’s another side to this land, there’s a-

His eyes flip open and he catches me staring at him.

“I could feel your look,” he says.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I was awake.”

“What time is it?” he asks, sitting up.

“Six… Wait a minute, are you just getting in?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were you?”

“Denver,” he says after a pause.

“Denver? What were you doing there?”

“Manuelito came by at midnight, you were asleep. He was looking for someone to go with him.”

“Who’s Manuel?”

“You don’t know him?”

“No. What were you doing in Denver?” I ask, surprised.

“Clubbing, man,” he says in English with a huge grin. He pulls back the sheets and sits on the edge of his bed.

“Clubbing,” I repeat.

“You should go.”

“I don’t think it’s my sort of scene,” I tell him.

“What is your sort of scene?” he says with a bit of an edge to his voice.

“Not clubbing in Denver,” I reply.

He reaches into his boxers and scratches his balls. “You know what your problem is, María?” he says.

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“I am going to tell you. Your problem is that you act like you’re fifty, like you’re past it. Christ, man, you’re twenty-seven years old. You’re in a new country, full of opportunities and people and things, and you’re over there hunched with the fucking weight of the world on your shoulders, like you’re some old nurse in a cancer ward or something.”

“Tell me about the club,” I say, refusing the hook.

He shakes his head. “Man, those prices. And those white chiquitas. Shit, American girls. College girls,” he says to annoy me, which, bizarrely, it does.

“You’re disgusting,” I let slip.

“Is that what you think?” he says, standing up and walking across the room.

He’s all points and edges, and the booze or that white powder has loosened him up.

“Is that what you fucking think?” he repeats.

Oh hell, what next? The punch to the face? The stoned attempt at rape?

“You’re high,” I tell him.

“I’m not high, didn’t you hear what I was saying? I couldn’t afford to drink at those prices. Blow my hard-earned cash on ten-dollar beers? No thanks,” he says, folding his arms, glaring at me from a few feet away.

“I saw the bag.”

“Spying on me? Not that it’s any of your business, Esteban asked me to sell it for him and his buyer didn’t show, ok?” he says, his voice rising to an indignant bark.

“You’re scaring me, Paco. Go back to your own bed, please.”

“I’ll go wherever I damn well please,” he says, but after a moment he sits on his bed.

“We shouldn’t even be sharing a room now that all those guys went to L.A. I’ll talk to Esteban about it,” I say firmly.

“Esteban’s in Denver with his lady until Monday morning,” Paco says. “But he’ll do what you want. You must be the fucking golden girl.”

“What does that mean?”

Paco throws something at me. Two things. I pick them up. It’s the key to the Range Rover and a cell phone.

“Franco’s using the car today but Esteban says you can use it tomorrow to get supplies. Just give him a call.”

“I see. That’s good.”

Paco shakes his head and continues to glare at me.

I’ve hurt him somehow. I don’t need complications, I have to defuse this, now.

“Please, Paco.”

“‘Please, Paco,’ ” he repeats mockingly.

“You are high,” I say.

“So? You’re not my mother. Been working hard. I earned two hundred dollars this week already. I’ll make three hundred next week. Pretty soon I’ll be foreman of one of the work gangs. And when it gets too cold in January and all these Mexes fuck off to L.A., they’ll be begging me to stay.”

He grins again, wolfishly. He’s acting the big man but he can’t hold it for long. Finally the lines crack and a wave of unhappiness spills across his face. He crosses the room, sits on my bed, takes my hand, and kisses it.

“María,” he says.

“No, Paco,” I say, pulling the hand away.

“No, I’ll tell you what your problem is: you’re a virgin, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re a virgin or a fucking lesbian.”

“Get off my bed and get the fuck away from me.”

“Fuck you,” he says, and clicks his fingers in front of my face. He walks back to his side of the room with a satisfied look on his face, but again it doesn’t last long. I’m in no mood for this game. I tell him so.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, María, I’m not high. I tried a little, but I’m not high. I’m, I, I don’t know. I’m tired.”

He sits down heavily on his bed and closes his eyes. I know he’s young and he’s emotional, but there’s something about his behavior that smacks of… what? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“You have every right to be tired. You’ve worked hard all week,” I say conciliatingly.

“Not that kind of tired.”

He rubs his hands through his hair, thinking about something. Suddenly he sits up straight, places his hands carefully in his lap, and looks at me. He takes a deep breath and begins: “Listen, María, I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but I know you’re not what you say you are. I know you’re not from Mexico and that accent, that’s not Yucatán. I had a cousin who played baseball, professionally, for four years in the Cuban league. His wife talks just like you. I don’t know who you’re running from or what you did, but I know you’re not some fucking peasant girl from Valladolíd. You picked a pretty bad disguise. You don’t talk like no Indian, you don’t look like no Indian. You’re a liar and not a good one, either.”

He stares at me, trying to radiate trust through those dark green eyes.

For some reason it works.

We’ve been through the mill, Paco, you and me.

“I was never going to say I was from Yucatán,” I begin. “I was going to say I was from Mexico City. I’d picked out a neighborhood and everything-Coyoacán-I walked the streets, memorized a few names, but I got spooked on the bus when you said you’d lived there for a while.”

“So what are you?” he wonders.

“Cubana.”

After a few beats he finds his voice. “That makes no sense. I mean, what game are you playing? Cubans are guaranteed a green card. You don’t have to put up with this shit. You could be legal.”

“I know.”

“So what are you doing here?”

What am I doing here? Perhaps explaining it to him will explain it to me.

And now it’s me who crosses the room. Me who sits on his bed.

“I need to know that I can trust you, Paco.”

“You can trust me. And look, María, before you explain, I was only kidding about those American girls. I don’t care about them. I was trying to make you feel… I was… You see, over the last few days, I’ve become, I’ve…”

His voice fades.

Even in the half-light I can see that his face is crimson with embarrassment.

“Don’t say any more,” I tell him. “Please.”

“No, I want to. I know it’s a weird situation. All this. Maybe because we’re sharing the same room or because of what happened in New Mexico. I should have protected you there. I felt bad. Terrible. And now this, me and you, you know, I didn’t want this to happen, it wasn’t part of my big master plan for America, it’s just that, well, you know. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

I shake my head.

He looks at the floor. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“Besides, I’m older than you,” I tell him.

“I’m older than you think,” he mutters.

I put my arm around him and kiss him on the cheek. “Paco, I’m sorry. There are lots of reasons. You’re too young for me. I’m not-You’re not my type.”

He looks at me. “You are gay,” he says, hurt, angry.

“No.”

He smacks his hand into his fist. “It’s the fucking Americans, isn’t it? All those gringo cocksuckers. They’re all fags. They fake it for the movies, but it’s a well-known fact that they’re all sucking each other’s dicks.”

He’s humiliated. He put it all out there on the line and I’ve shot him down.

“No, it’s not them.”

He mutters something I don’t get and stands and looks at me, like an actor in a play who has forgotten his lines.

He shakes his head, walks to the window, and peers through the blinds.

Silence creeps into the room and lingers there like a louche relation.

“Cuba,” he says at last.

“Yes.”

“I can keep a secret,” he says.

My lips part, my diaphragm contracts, I breathe in. Oh shit, I’m going to tell him. “I can’t tell you,” I reply, and then in a deluge of words I unburden myself of the whole thing…

Francisco, it turns out, has many shades.

I wouldn’t have taken him for a good listener, but he is.

And the questions he does ask are short and to the point.

“How long was your brother in Fairview?”

“Three days.”

“Is that long enough?”

“It’s all the time we had. But Ricky’s good.”

“What did your father do here?”

“He worked for High Country Extermination-as a pest controller.”

“What’s that?”

“A ratcatcher.”

“What if Ricky got it wrong?”

“I went to the garage. I looked at their books. I think he got it right.”

“What if the person who hit your father didn’t use the Fairview garage? What if they had their car towed to Denver?”

“Ricky managed to check the Fairview Towing Company records for all of May.”

“Very resourceful, but what if they used a Denver towing company and a Denver garage to do the repairs?”

“In that case, they’re going to get away with it. There’s no way I can check every garage and every towing company in Denver for May and June.”

“If you turn this over to the U.S. police-” he begins but then changes tack. “You already know, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve eliminated one suspect, but there are many things up in the air.”

“Who’s your prime suspect? Tell me. You know I’m not a yapper, I won’t tell anyone,” he says eagerly.

“No.”

A pause. Yellow light filtering in through the window. Someone yelling in drunken Spanish at the far end of the parking lot.

“What are you going to do once you’ve found him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

His eyes narrow to a Mongolian squint. “You came here to kill him, didn’t you? He hit your father and left the scene of the accident. He left him to die by the side of the road.”

“It was worse than that. He knocked him off the Old Boulder Road into a gully. He tried to climb back up to the road but he couldn’t make it. His lung was punctured. He drowned in his own blood.”

Paco’s face loses its color. “The Old Boulder Road?”

“Yeah.”

“So this hypothetical driver of yours was one of those fucking movie people?”

I don’t want him to jump to any conclusions. I don’t want him going up there himself. You were the man in New Mexico, María, but now I’ll show you what I can do. He’s the type.

“No. Not necessarily. I don’t know for sure.”

“It’s one of those guys whose homes you’ve been cleaning. Someone up on Malibu Mountain. It’s Cruise, isn’t it? Fucking Tom Cruise killed your old man and the Scientologists covered it up.”

I roll my eyes. “Francisco, calm down, it’s not Tom Cruise.”

He nods, clucks his tongue. “So, when are you leaving town?” he asks casually, but we both know it’s the key question.

I don’t answer.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says.

He opens the window to let in fresh air. He keeps his back turned. He doesn’t want me to see his face.

“I have to be back in Mexico by Monday night.”

“Monday!” He turns. “What’s today? Saturday? Monday! Christ, when were you planning on telling me?”

“I was going to tell you,” I lie.

“You played me for a sap.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t have all the pieces yet, I have a lot to do, when I had it all I would have told you.”

“Jesus, María. I should have stayed in Denver. No, I should be going to fucking L.A. with everyone else. I only wanted to be here because I thought you’d be here.”

“I’m sorry I screwed you up.”

“Yeah, you did screw me up. You fucking did.”

“Paco-”

“Chupame la turca,” he says sadly, goes to the door, opens it, and tries to slam it behind him but even that fucks up and it catches on the back of his heel, tripping him.

“How far are you going to get in your socks?” I yell after him.

I wait for him for a minute. Two.

Bathroom. Mirror. Sink. Splash water. Reflect. My fault. A conversation I should not have had. There’s a time for the truth and there’s a time for silence. Any good interrogator knows that. Paco’s too young to understand. Too immature to be any kind of a confidant for me.

Faucet off.

He opens the door, comes in, crying.

He falls on his bed like a kid.

I sit beside him, stroke his back.

“What will I do after you go home?”

“You’ll be fine. You’ve got a job, friends, you’ll be fine.”

“I should have stopped those guys in the desert.”

“No. You should have done exactly what you did. You kept a cool head and I’m proud of you.”

“You’ve a boyfriend in Havana?”

“No.”

“Maybe I’ll come see you when I’ve got some money saved.”

“Sure.”

Sure.

“I saw you praying.”

“Yes.”

“What’s that like?”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t understand the question. He yawns.

Time flowing forward in single breaths. Entropy maximizing.

“I’m tired,” he says and yawns again.

He starts breathing like a cat.

Up on Obispo, at the Casa de los Arabes, lies Havana’s mosque. You can get in only if you’re a foreigner or a diplomat or a cop. I went once with Hector to question a man from the Iranian Embassy about activities proscribed by the Koran and also by Cuban law. We were there at dawn, when, Hector explained, an additional line is sung by the muezzin: Come to the mosque, for prayer is better than sleep.

I’ve always liked that. Prayer is better than sleep.

But what if you don’t know how to do either?

I want to pray, I want to sleep, both, either, I want to feel something, or nothing. Paco starts to snore, unmoved by such concerns.

“I wish I was more like you,” I whisper in his ear, kiss him, and put my blanket on him.

But anyway, it’s a lie. I wouldn’t want his certainty, the clarity of a believer.

Not yet.

I’ll lean into the confusion. The gray area. The dark. Embrace it. Sleep can wait and prayer can wait and into the comfort of the profane world I’ll go.