Naked in LA (10 page)

The ambulance took forever to arrive, but perhaps it was just a few minutes. He was unconscious when the two medics ran in with the gurney. They clamped an oxygen mask on his face and rushed him out to the ambulance. I rode in the back with him to the hospital and prayed.

When we got to Jackson Memorial the medics ran the gurney down the hall to the nurses’ station. I ran along behind. Everyone was shouting at once. An intern ran out, then another. They transferred him to a bed in the casualty ward and pulled the curtains. A nurse hustled me into the waiting room.

The swing doors closed behind us. Suddenly it was quiet.

She sat me down in a plastic chair. She started asking me questions but I could barely hear her. I had been ready for this moment for weeks, for months, but now it was here it seemed surreal. Everything seemed to be happening very far away from me.

The nurse finished filling out her clipboard and then she went back down the corridor to get Papi’s file. I sat there and watched a policeman bring in a drunk he’d found lying in the road. Another ambulance arrived and a man was brought in on a gurney with a swollen eye and blood seeping from his nose. The medics told the duty nurse he’d been in a bar fight.

I stared blankly at the tiles on the floor.

I wanted Papi to live, but there was a part of me that wanted it all to be over, for me as well as for him. I was ashamed for even thinking that way, but that was the truth of it. I just wanted the end to be easy for him. He had suffered so much and he didn’t deserve this. I didn’t understand a god that would do this to a man who had lived a good life. It made no sense.

I tried to shut out the buzzing of the strip light overhead, ignored the sympathetic glances of the duty nurse. I disappeared somewhere inside. At some stage someone asked me if I wanted a coffee and I shook my head, numb.

I thought about Reyes, I wished he were there with me. I thought about that afternoon in the Fontainebleau. I had always hoped I would see him again, but not like that. I could still see his face when Angel had walked into the bar. If there had ever been any hope for us, it had been extinguished right then. So now I really was alone.

Well, not quite. Lena arrived a little while later, she had locked up our flat and driven to the hospital in her nightgown. She didn’t say anything, just sat down on the plastic chair beside me and put her arms around me.

We waited.

An hour later the doctor came out of the emergency room. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t need to. His face told me everything I needed to know. I didn’t cry. I was way past that. I just said: “Can I see him?” and he led the way.

Chapter 14 

He didn’t look like my papi anymore.

His eyes were already clouded, his jaw slack. I picked up his hand and held it. This was my fault. I had wanted my freedom and now I had it.

He had been my rock since Mama died, the one certainty in the midst of so much upheaval. I sat down on the chair beside the bed and waited to feel the upwelling of grief I had expected to come, but there was nothing.

This couldn’t be him; this was someone else’s father.

I laid my head on his chest and kissed him.

I remembered the last thing he had said to me. “I’m holding you back, cariña, it’s time I moved on.”

I slipped the silver wedding band off his finger and put it onto mine. “There,” I whispered. “You’ll always be with me now.”

He felt so cold. I pulled the sheet up to his chin to try to keep him warm. “Goodbye, Papi,” I said. He was finally free.

And so was I.

Angel was waiting for me in the corridor with two of his bodyguards. “Where’s Lena?” I said.

“I sent her home. I can take care of you.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. Come on, the car’s waiting, we’ll take you home.”

I barely knew what was going on. I let him lead me out to the car. I didn’t remember driving back to the flat, I just remembered thinking:
I can’t leave Papi there at the hospital on his own, there’s no one to take care of him.

If I could have been more positive, perhaps he would have held on. He knew I wanted to get away, that was why he gave up.

We got back to the flat in Little Havana, and Angel made his goons wait in the car. It was the first time he’d been in the flat. He looked around at the motel furniture crammed into the tiny room, the newspapers Papi had left piled up on the table beside his bed, the sweat-stained sheets on my father’s bed, and his face twisted into a grimace. He looked so tailored, so out of place there. “Jesus,” he said.

“Do you want coffee?” I said. I just stood in the middle of the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

“You can’t stay here.”

“This is where I live.”

“Baby, listen to me, you can’t stay here.”

He was right. I couldn’t stay there, not anymore. I found a suitcase and started blindly throwing clothes and shoes in it. When it was full I shut it and sat down on the bed.

“I can’t find my purse,” I said.

He found my handbag next to the bed, found my wallet inside. He opened it and looked through it like he was a cop and I was under arrest or something. I realized then:
he does think he owns me.

“What’s this?” he said. It was the newspaper cutting of Reyes and me, the one I had torn out of the
Diario del Marina
. “You keeping pictures of Garcia?”

I didn’t answer him. I made Papi’s bed, fluffed up the sheets, arranged the pillow just the way he liked it. I tidied his books beside his bed.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“He hates it when the flat looks messy.”

“He’s dead, baby. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Dead? No, that didn’t make sense.

I sat down, then stood up again. “Do you want coffee?”

“No, I don’t want any fucking coffee. Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

I heard a woman screaming from a very long way away and I realized that it was me. Suddenly I was on the floor, curled up in a ball, and Angel was talking to me but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I saw Lena standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth, and then Angel’s goons barged in and one of them scooped me up in his arms and carried me outside to the car.

Chapter 15 

When I woke up the sun was streaming in through the window, it was another fine day in Miami. I stretched, looked at the digital clock beside the bed. It read two sixteen, but that couldn’t be right.

I looked around, tried to work out where I was. The sun glittered on the ocean, the cars streaming up and down Collins Street. I was in the Fontainebleau. How did I get here? Then I remembered:
Papi is dead
.

Angel walked in from the balcony holding a copy of
Life
magazine. He took off his sunglasses. “Hey, you’re awake.”

“How did I get here?”

“I brought you in the car. You couldn’t stay in that dump you were living in. You needed someone to look after you. I had to call the doctor, he gave you something to help you sleep.”

I was just in my underwear. I started looking around for my clothes.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to get out of here.”

He grabbed me and tried to put me back into the bed. I twisted away. “The doctor said you have to rest.” He fumbled on the bedside table for some pills, unscrewed the lid, dropped a couple into his palm. “Here, take these, it’ll help.”

“Why are you here?”

“I told you, baby, now your father’s gone you’ll need someone to take care of you.”

He couldn’t show up to the hospital when his wife was having a baby, but here he was with his girlfriend, holed up in one of his father-in-law’s hotels when his girlfriend’s father dies. He was a strange guy. “Angel, I appreciate how you’ve helped me, I really do, but I have to get home now. I have things to organize.”

“You don’t have to worry about anything, I’ll take care of it.”

“No, you don’t have to take care of anything, not anymore. I can look out for myself. Where’s my clothes?”

“You’ve had a terrible loss, you can’t go home, not like this. You’re staying here.”

“You mean you’ve kidnapped me?”

“No, I haven’t kidnapped you.”

“Then where are my clothes?”

He debated with himself. Then he lost it and threw the pills at the wall. “Jesus H!”

I opened the closet. He’d hung my dress up for me. It hit me then, that he probably did love me, finally, in his own way. Life was a funny thing.

I slipped my dress over my head, found my shoes and put them on. “Where’s the rest of my things?”

“What the hell are you going to do?”

“I’m going to organize a funeral for my papi, and then pack up my things. I don’t have a whole lot to move, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

“And go where? You want me to find you a place? I can get you a nice apartment, right on the beach, a fancy car. You can have a nice life, baby, you won’t have to worry about anything anymore.”

“You want me to be your mistress?”

“Sure, what’s wrong with that?”

“That’s sweet of you, Angel, but I have to pass.”

“You should think about this, it’s a good offer.”

“If I was a ten-dollar hooker, it’s a great offer. Call me crazy, but I’m setting my sights a little higher than that.”

“Yeah, on what?”

“I have this dream. You remember all those actresses used to come to the Left Bank? They were always so glamorous and so assured. It’s the kind of confidence you get from knowing you can make any kind of money you want and you don’t need a man to do it for you. I want to have people shout out my name and I want to see a flashbulb pop when I smile. That’s my dream. Not spending all day in a hair salon and looking in the mirror for wrinkles, worrying about losing my meal ticket. I want the fairy tale, the happy ever after. I don’t want to be anyone’s mistress.”