Out of Luck

by Kendall Talbot

  “He said you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s never found another woman like you. That’s why he never married.”

  “Ahh, yes. I know.” A smile curled at the edges of her plump lips, but a heartbeat later, her eyes shifted, and her dark irises seemed to grow darker. “He left me. Did he tell you that?”

  She nodded and lowered her eyes to the black brew. “He did.”

  “Bastardo.” She didn’t say it with malice. It was more of a matter-of-fact comment.

  Charlene didn’t need a translation of Aleyna’s comment, yet she had no idea how to respond. She didn’t know either Marshall or Aleyna and had no right to choose sides or offer opinions. Her best option was to change the subject. “So, Marshall said you would know Legendarios del Guajirito.”

  “Si, everybody in Havana knows of it. If you have job there, you very lucky.”

  “When can you take me there?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Oh. We can’t go during the day?”

  “No. Show start eight-thirty tonight.”

  Charlene groaned. She had hoped they’d have a matinee show.

  “You have ticket? It always booked up.”

  “No.”

  Aleyna shook her head. “Well, then, is not possible—”

  “I can pay.” Charlene interrupted Aleyna. “I will pay double for a ticket. I have to go tonight.”

  “Double? Maybe I can get you ticket.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why you want to see so bad?”

  Charlene contemplated lying, but a plausible lie was impossible. In the end, the truth was the perfect answer. If nothing else, it might draw some sympathy. “My father passed away a few months ago. When I was cleaning out his things, I found a videocassette of him singing in the Legendarios del Guajirito show. I want to see the show for myself.”

  Aleyna’s shoulders softened, and she brought her mug to her lips and blew on it. “I will take you. You want sleep? You can have Tajo’s bed. Top bunk.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to put anyone out.”

  “I have orders.” She picked up the hundred-dollar note Marshall had placed on the table and slotted it down her top. “Wait here.”

  Aleyna strode away, leaving Charlene to glance around the kitchen. It was very tiny. But she’d had tiny before and knew that as long as everything had a place, then tiny was irrelevant. Practical was more important. And when funds and supplies were limited, you tended to get very good at practical.

  She returned her attention to outside. Other than Yelena, all the residents of the house were men. They were all similar in height and build; the only one who looked completely different from the others was the father, and it was only because of his gray hair. They seemed to be still arguing over the chocolates. She’d never had siblings to fight with.

  That thought produced another thought that’d never occurred to her before. Was she an only child?

  “Come.” Aleyna appeared in the doorway.

  Charlene pushed off the stool, grabbed her rolling case and Peter’s cane, and followed Aleyna down a dark hallway.

  “My husband,” she waved her hand in a flourish. “He still sleeping. He even sleep through big storms. My daughter too.”

  Charlene smiled at that. Peter had been the same way. There were many mornings when she’d complained about thunder keeping her up all night, but Peter had slept through the whole thing.

  Aleyna stepped into a room with two sets of bunk beds, and Charlene’s eyes darted about the room. “I can’t sleep here.”

  “Why not?” Aleyna snapped.

  “Your…your brothers sleep here.”

  “I will keep them out while you sleep.”

  Charlene flicked her hand. “It’s okay. I’m not tired anyway.”

  Aleyna shrugged. “Okay.” She strode from the doorway.

  Charlene took another glance around the room. The four beds all looked like someone had just jumped out of them, which was mostly likely true given that Marshall had woken them up well before sunrise. She’d slept in many rough beds in her lifetime. But at least they’d always appeared to have clean linen. The idea of crawling into those sweat-stained sheets gave her the creepy crawlies.

  She lugged her suitcase back up the hallway. Behind the counter, Yelena was busy slotting Marshall’s donations into the cupboards. Aleyna was outside with her brothers now, and they looked to be fighting over a razor. Charlene returned to her coffee and nodded at Yelena. “Hola.” The extent of her Spanish was dismal. But then, she’d never had a need for it before.

  “Si, hola. ¿Tienes hambre?” The old woman smiled, showing off her one solitary tooth.

  Charlene shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t understand.” She made a hand gesture that she hoped portrayed what she was trying to say.

  The old woman must’ve understood, because she demonstrated “eating” with her hands.

  Charlene shook her head. “Oh. No, thanks. Gracias.” She patted her belly and puffed out her cheeks like she was full. The truth was she wasn’t full at all; in fact, she was very hungry. But the thought of taking food from these people didn’t seem right.

  The old lady smiled again and then went back to shoving her goodies away. A piercing light caught Charlene’s eye, and it took her a moment to realize it was the sun cutting through the trees.

  The first rays of sunshine had the family members filing in from outside and disappearing into various rooms of the house.

  Charlene sipped her rocket-fueled coffee and watched the family morph from bickering siblings to a united team. Each seemed to have a job, and neither parent felt the need to dictate who did what. As the sun made its way over the treetops, two brothers, wearing just shorts and flip-flops, disappeared into the bushes carrying an assortment of gardening tools. One of the brothers collected a few buckets and headed for the gap in the trees that Marshall had vanished into. The last two brothers stayed near the house and flitted from one job to another.

  Aleyna appeared at her side. “I wash your clothes.”

  “Oh, no, no, it’s okay. Show me where the washing machine is, and I’ll do it.”

  Aleyna cocked her head in a way that implied Charlene was joking. Charlene slipped off the chair, wrapped her fingers around the handle of her suitcase, and nodded. “Lead the way.”

  After a shrug of her shoulders, Aleyna led the way through the house and out the back door. To the left of the yard was another small building. The door was open, and half a dozen chickens were pecking the ground in front of it.

  Aleyna shooed the chickens away and then fully opened the door with a grin at Charlene that implied she was enjoying this. When Charlene stepped into the dank space, she knew why. There was no washing machine and no dryer. Nothing that required electricity. Not even a light bulb.

  She wanted to slap herself for her naïveté.

  “Washing machine there.” Aleyna pointed at a square concrete sink with a green tinge lining the sides. A cake of yellow soap rested on the edge, along with a scrub brush that looked like porcupine roadkill.

  “Dryer out there.” Through the cracked window, she pointed at a clothesline. “I did offer.” Aleyna laughed all the way back into the house.

  Alone with her dirty laundry and troubling thoughts, Charlene’s resolve began to unravel. The urge to cry had her covering her eyes with her hands, and a sob caught in her throat.

  She’d never felt so alone in her life. Even her heartbeat sounded hollow in her ears.

  But she couldn’t give up.

  Not now. Not after risking everything to come this far. She had to get answers, if not to clear Peter’s name, then certainly to put clarity and sanity back into her life. She already knew her life would never be the same, but until she got answers, she was dest
ined to live in a spiral of hostile thoughts and impossible questions.

  She sucked in a shaky breath, wiped her eyes, unzipped her suitcase and placed the tin of money and her sodden handbag aside.

  By the time she finished rinsing the salt water from her clothes, her back was killing her, her hunger pangs were getting angry, and the sun was a blazing fireball in the sky. The heat coming off it, and the steady breeze drifting up from the creek below, would ensure her clothes would be dry in an hour.

  Deciding to leave her suitcase there, she reached for the tin containing the rolls of money and shoved as much cash as she could into her handbag. All the remaining rolls stayed in the tin. With her handbag slung over her shoulder and the tin in one hand and the cane in the other, she headed back into the house.

  Her first couple of steps through the door were met with silence. The bedlam from this morning was replaced with domestic calm. Yelena was sewing a patch on a pair of jeans. Aleyna was scrubbing dirt off a mountain of potatoes, and Rusian was weaving a few loose threads into a fishing net.

  “How did you do?” Aleyna’s grin confirmed she was enjoying Charlene’s welcome to Cuba.

  “All done.”

  “Good.” Aleyna returned her attention to the potatoes, and Charlene wondered what she should do now.

  “Is there anyone who can take me into town?”

  “No.” Her answer was abrupt.

  “Is it far to walk?”

  Aleyna burst out laughing. “Esta mujer tonta quiere caminar a la ciudad.”

  When both Aleyna’s mother and father started laughing too, Charlene assumed her question had been a stupid one.

  Charlene felt like a fool as she waited for their laughter to die down. “Would you like some help with those?” Charlene hoped her offer would alleviate the negative vibes coming off Aleyna.

  “No, thanks.”

  Apparently not. Charlene had met her share of unfriendly people, Aleyna was up there as one of the most blatantly obvious ones. She slipped onto a stool at the kitchen bench and shared her gaze between the potato scrubbing and handcrafts.

  Soon utter exhaustion took hold, and her eyes began to droop. When she glanced at the clock, she did a mental calculation to confirm that she hadn’t slept in twenty-seven hours. And even that had been a disjointed sleep while sitting up on the bus that had transported her from her relative safety in New Orleans to the vast unknown in Key West.

  Once her head bounced a few times, she knew she couldn’t fight the fatigue a moment more. Much to her surprise, the sweat-stained sheets were actually appealing.

  “Sorry, Aleyna, but I need to sleep. Is it still possible to use one of the bunk beds?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Without taking her hands from the dirty water, Aleyna pointed down the hall with her chin. “No need to lock the door; the lock doesn’t work anyway.”

  Charlene’s body seemed to crumble beneath her as she inched toward the bedroom. Once inside, she shut the door and turned to the beds. They were all made now, but the smell in the room was that of a male locker room after a football game. She’d know too; she once had the job of cleaning the locker room for the Jaguars college football team in southern Alabama. It had taken days to get that stench out of her nostrils, and by then, she’d be due to go back in again anyway. So if she survived that, she told herself, this would be a breeze in comparison.

  She took a top bunk, figuring it would be the safest. Crawling up there was a challenge, though; her arms were still like jelly, and the clothes washing hadn’t helped her recover. The mattress was rock hard and so narrow she had no idea how any of those men slept on it. Deciding to remain on top of the covers, she shoved her precious tin and handbag under the pillow and pulled her cane in behind her. She’d never been more proud of her decision to keep the cane than she was now. And she wouldn’t hesitate to whack it across someone’s head, if required.

  The extent of her loneliness ached in her chest, and sorrow hung in her belly like a wet, knotted towel. Trying to ignore her growling hunger pains was like trying to ignore a snake in a bathtub. She rolled to her side, curled her hand around the silver owl, and squeezed her eyes closed. The wise old owl always knows.

  Charlene woke with a jolt, and it was a couple of thumping heartbeats before she realized where she was. Pins and needles in her fingers confirmed she’d barely moved, which wasn’t surprising given how exhausted she’d been. The room was a strange sepia color, and when she glanced out the window between the bunks, her heart leapt to her throat. The sun was setting.

  She bolted upright and slammed her head into the ceiling. Wincing, she rubbed her head, and her next thought went to her money. She rammed her hand beneath the pillow.

  It was there.

  Ignoring the new throb above her eye, she climbed down, put her handbag across her chest, and clutched her tin and her cane as she headed toward the lively music coming from the other end of the house.

  It seemed the entire family was on the back patio, creating their own music. Aleyna and one of her brothers were dancing to the steady beat provided by a variety of instruments played by the rest of the family. A young girl who Charlene assumed was Aleyna’s daughter was singing.

  Music was the key that connected the family, and their obvious joy in sharing it was another nail in Charlene’s loneliness coffin. It seemed that every day she was shown another example of how unusual her upbringing had been. And it only served to increase the anger brewing inside her.

  When Aleyna spied Charlene, she separated from her brother, but he continued to dance, and the music continued to play as she skipped over to Charlene. “I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” Charlene hissed through clenched teeth.

  Aleyna waggled her head. “Do I look like your mother?”

  Charlene was seconds from letting her fury rip when she caught herself. Like it or not, she needed Aleyna. “We need to get going.”

  “Yes. But we’re not leaving till you get changed.” Aleyna ran her eyes up Charlene’s body. She was still wearing Marshall’s shirt and shorts. Charlene wanted to kick herself as she realized that her dress choice might have been the reason for some of Aleyna’s spite. “Hurry up.” Aleyna pointed at Charlene’s suitcase, which was on the floor by the table. The lid was up, and all her clothes had been folded back inside.

  Charlene palmed her chest in surprise. This was the last thing she’d expected. “Thank you.”

  “Not me. It was Mamá.”

  “Please, thank her for me.”

  Aleyna turned to the jovial crowd. “Ella dice gracias, Mamá.”

  Yelena held a battered tambourine above her head and banged it with her palm.

  “We go in three minutes,” Aleyna said. “Oh, and dress pretty.” The Cuban woman skipped back to her brother, and they fell straight into a dance like the move had been professionally choreographed.

  Charlene tossed her tin of money into her case and ran with it back to the bunk-filled room. She desperately wanted a shower. She’d even be happy for a quick wash. But there was no time. A mental summary of her clothes confirmed that she didn’t have anything pretty. Pretty wasn’t Charlene’s thing. If Aleyna’s fancy flowing dress with layers of frills was anything to go by, then Charlene had no hope of meeting Aleyna’s expectations of pretty. She was more of a practical girl.

  The one and only dress she did own was a simple red frock that came in at her waist and flared out into a flowing skirt that fell to her knees. The stretchy polyester traveled well and never needed ironing, and its simple design made it easy to dress up or down. She changed into it, dabbed on deodorant, pulled her hair up into a high ponytail, and put on flat sandals.

  That was the extent of her pretty.

  When she zipped up her case, she realized she had a new problem. What to do with her assets: the cane, the cash,
and the case. She couldn’t take all of them with her. Leaving them here wasn’t an ideal option, but it was all she had. With a bit of luck, they’d still be here when she returned.

  She put a wad of cash into her bra, then took several bundles out of her handbag, placed them with the remaining rolls in her suitcase along with the tin, and zipped it back up. Then, with nothing else to do, she slipped her handbag over her neck so that it sat diagonally across her body, grabbed her cane, and strode out the door.

  Aleyna was waiting for her in the kitchen, and when she cast her eyes over Charlene’s outfit, a look of disgust twitched at her lip. Charlene ignored it. “Ready.”

  The Cuban woman huffed, then spun on her heel and strode away. Charlene followed her outside to a car that looked like it belonged on the set of a classic movie. It was a long red convertible with shiny chrome trim and white leather seats. She’d only ever seen cars like this on the big screen.

  The man behind the car wore a big white cowboy hat, and his western-themed pink shirt was complete with fancy embroidery over the lapels. He tipped his hat when he saw the ladies approach and smiled a very broad smile.

  “Oh, wow, this car is lovely,” Charlene said as the driver opened the passenger door and tilted the seat forward for her to climb into the back.

  “It’s a 1960 Buick.” Aleyna answered for him. “This my husband, José.”

  Charlene held her hand forward. “Nice to meet you, José.”

  “Hola, welcome to Havana.” His Cuban accent was strong yet easy to understand.

  “Thank you.” Charlene slipped into the back seat, and after José pushed the seat back, Aleyna moved into the front passenger seat.

  José took his place behind the wheel, put the car into gear, and they drove off. Despite its age, the car was in immaculate condition. The leather seats showed little sign of wear, and the dashboard too looked to be in original condition. “Is this your car, José?”

  “No. We not so lucky.” Aleyna spoke for him. “It his boss’s car. José is driver, and he takes tourists around Havana.”