Naked in LA (6 page)

I’d ask Lena. She’d probably do it for free if I asked her, all she did these days was watch television, same as Papi. But she’d be happy for the extra money, she only had her pension and the tiny rent we’d paid her until now.

So Angel was right. I did need him.

I wheeled Papi outside onto the patio. He lifted his face to the sun. “That’s good,” he said. He looked at the two ratty palm trees at the end of our yard as if they were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. “Nice.”

I pulled up the old director’s chair and sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm. I knew he couldn’t go on like this too much longer, and I wondered what I was going to do without him. I would be free to make my own decisions soon. I’d be a boat losing its anchor and its compass at the same time; I could finally head out of port but I wouldn’t know true north.

Had he really been my moral compass, though? Perhaps the truth was I had always sailed blind; I lied to him about sleeping with Angel when we were in Havana, and now here I was covering it up again. I told myself it was for his sake this time.

I saw him wince. “Are you okay, Papi?”

“Get my pills, will you, cariña? The pink ones.”

I fetched them from next to the bed and he slipped one under his tongue. After a while he seemed to relax.

I rested my cheek on his arm. “It’s going to be all right, Papi,” I said.

He put his hand on my head. “Of course it will,” he murmured.

The son-in-law of the man who ran Miami kept an office on the sixth floor of an anonymous office block near Flagler and Biscayne. The sign in the lobby said
Resorts International.
Angel had an enormous corner office turned out in blond Danish pine with views over the bay. His desk was the size of a small boat and was immaculate; there was a green blotter and a white telephone and that was it. Behind it there was a swivel chair in soft black leather you could have crowned heads of state in.

It looked like no one had ever sat in it.

“You left the price tag on,” I said to Angel. Maybe he never had sat on it, because he actually looked underneath the seat until he figured out I was messing with him.

I had a smaller office just outside. There was a Remington typewriter, a telephone with a lot of buttons and a filing cabinet. It was like something I had seen in magazines: no mess, no clutter.

“Okay, I have a meeting,” he said. “I’ll pick you up for lunch.”

“Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do? You want me to type something?”

He shrugged, like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “If the telephone rings, answer it.”

“And what do I say?”

“You ask who it is.”

“And then?”

“You say I’m not in. Take their name and number and tell them I’ll call back. Unless it’s me.”

He was serious. “What am I going to do all day?”

He opened the drawer in the desk and took out a copy of
Life
magazine. There was a picture of John and Jackie Kennedy on the cover, taken inside the White House. He tossed it on my desk. “Read that. But tidy up a bit first.”

He went out. One of his goons was standing outside waiting for him.

I looked around the office. Tidy up? There wasn’t even dust. I looked through the rest of the drawers in my desk; empty. So was the filing cabinet. I went into his office, checked the drawers in SS Desk. I found a packet of Chesterfields and a stick of gum.

I went to the door and peered out. There was a regular office out there, a typing pool, cubicles, people walking around with files and telexes, people doing actual work. A couple of the clerks looked up from their desks and stared at me. I shut the door.

I stared at the telephone. It didn’t ring.

During my first week on the job the telephone rang twice: once it was Angel checking up on me, the second time it was a wrong number.

After a week I was going out of my mind. I started walking around the office, talking to the office girls who were my age, just trying to be friendly. They treated me like I was the President’s wife. They were polite to me, but so nervous one of them spilled her coffee all over her desk. I realised they were frightened of me. They knew who I was and they wanted to keep their jobs, so for them it was all about being nice to Angel’s new mistress.

I soon realized there was no chance of any real friendship with any of them.

Every day Angel would come back around twelve and take me out to lunch somewhere on Collins, places with men in double breasted suits and silk shirts smoking big cigars, their pinkie rings clinking on their daiquiri glasses. It took us five minutes to cross a room sometimes, everyone wanted to shake his hand and say hello. I didn’t think it was because of his personality.

He was a regular at Capra's on Biscayne. Anyone who was anyone in Miami went there, from the mayor to movie stars.

I noticed we never went to lunch at the same place twice in a row and never ever went out at the same time. “Basic security,” Angel said. It was hard trying to remember that this was the same beautiful boy I’d fallen in love with in Havana. Perhaps he never existed anywhere except outside my own mind.

Sometimes we’d go to the Fontainebleau afterwards, other times he’d drop me back at the office if he had business. I guessed maybe he had a body to drop off in the river somewhere.

It was a surreal life. At three in the afternoon I could be sitting naked in the Presidential suite of the Fontainebleau sipping champagne, having busboys tip their hat to me in the lift, and that night I’d be chasing roaches in the kitchen with a broom.

But at the end of every week Angel gave me an envelope equivalent to the vice president’s salary plus a bonus. I was literally sitting on a fortune. I guess I was the only whore in Miami who had a street corner made out of Norwegian wood.

Chapter 9 

Angel unbuttoned his shirt and hung it up in the closet. He did the same with his pants before he offered himself for inspection. His body was still lean and hard, as it was when we were teenagers. He was still very physically attractive.

It was his personality that repelled me.

“I have to leave by four,” he said, as if he wanted me to make a mental note. I guess I was his secretary now, I had to keep track of his appointments even while he was penetrating me.

But today he wanted me to use my mouth. Well, okay, I could do that, if that was what he wanted.

As soon as I touched him he gave a moan and grabbed my head. I untangled his fingers. “Be careful of my hair,” I said.

He lay on his back on the bed. He liked to be on his back, he liked to be admired more for his presence than his performance. Perhaps it was a religious thing; he lacked the Protestant work ethic. He would provide the erection, and after that…well, that was not really his concern. When you have a lot of money and a chauffeur-driven Chrysler Imperial, you don’t need to be a great lover.

I had never seen him lose control. He was perfectly still, hardly made any noise while I pleasured him. He kept his eyes closed like he was trying to concentrate. I guessed he was trying not to think about his meetings, who owed him money and how much. Perhaps that was why it always took so long to get him off. Whenever I think about Angel these days, my jaw starts to ache. I think they call it cellular memory.

He finished at 3:23 by the digital clock next to the bed. I kissed him and stroked his curls and held him as his ragged breathing slowed. “That was amazing,” he said. “You are something else, baby.”

I was so grateful now that I had not married him. I remembered that day in the San Cristobal cathedral, watching Esmeralda walk up the aisle. I thought she had stolen something from me. Now I just felt sorry for her, even though I was living in a tiny room with a bedridden father and performing sexual favours on my old boyfriend for money.

I figured it would be far worse being his wife.

I started to cry anyway. I didn’t know why. Angel held me, and when he asked me what was wrong I said it was because I was so happy and he believed me.

Angel rang down for room service, and a waiter brought a little trolley in while he was in the shower. I told him to leave it by the window; there was a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a lobster. As the busboy was uncorking the champagne he looked up at me. I was just wearing a robe. It was only a quick and rather furtive glance, but it made me feel so cheap.

Angel walked out, wearing just his shorts, and handed the guy a twenty-dollar tip.

“Am I worth it?” I asked him.

“Are you worth what?”

“You know, a hooker would be cheaper.”

“You think that’s what this is?” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m not going to let you starve.”

I sipped the champagne and popped some lobster in my mouth. I was such a hypocrite.

“Besides, yeah, you’re really something. I like that new thing you did. The Stanberg technique or whatever it is.” He lay back on the bed and grinned, like he knew something he wasn’t supposed to know. For a moment I was baffled.

“The what?”

“I saw that book you were reading. You left it on your desk.”

“The Stanislavski method.”