Learning to Die in Miami

by Carlos Eire

  Rain is pouring down in sheets this Christmas Eve. I can hear it pounding on the skylight directly above me. The raindrops are drumming madly, the way they do in a storm, without a steady beat. But they’re falling in patterns all the same, like waves. It’s much too warm for snow. No white Christmas this year. No way. It’s about twenty degrees Fahrenheit above freezing. And tomorrow promises more of the same treasonous disillusioning weather.

  The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fill all three of the front window frames. They eclipse everything else, they’re so huge, and so near. They’re just a few blocks away, and even though no one is working in there, they’re all lit up, like two colossal Christmas trees. Years later, my friends’ daughter will see people jumping from them to their death, close up, just before the Towers come tumbling down and fill that loft with the ashes of the dead and all of their hopes and dreams.

  But tonight, on this Christmas Eve, that horror can’t be foreseen. All that’s certain is the lousy weather and my own dismal personal failure.

  Crap like this is not supposed to happen. Where’s the goddamned snow? Where’s the comfort and joy? Where’s the cheer?

  I’m in this apartment with my soon-to-be-ex-wife, from whom I’ve been separated for the past two months. She’s the first girl I dated, and the only one, ever, but I’m certain that I can no longer live with her, ever, under any circumstances. That’s a hard thing to admit, and even harder to blurt out. Harder even than admitting that you have to leave a perfectly good couch on the street because it won’t fit through the stairwell. This so-called holiday get-together is a last-ditch effort to live up to a vow I can no longer fulfill. Tonight, I’ve tried to be honest with myself and with her, and that’s only made things worse.

  If I were still able to think in Spanish, I’d say “Coño, que mierda.”

  This is as bad as it gets, short of some terminal illness, or war. Give me exile any day, or abandonment by your parents and foster parents. It’s much easier than this. I don’t want to be here with her. Not now. Not ever again. But it’s not supposed to be that way.

  The rain pounds on the skylight, right above my head. I’m looking at it, from the goddamned narrow couch that replaced the one we couldn’t get through the door a few years ago, my arms folded under my head. I listen to the falling rain, searching for a rhythm. I study the fishnet pattern of the steel mesh embedded in the skylight’s glass panes, lit from above by the glare from the gargantuan Twin Towers down the street. My soon-to-be-ex-wife is fast asleep. How she can do that, under these circumstances, I don’t know. But, then again, I don’t understand her at all and never have, and I don’t know how I got myself into this mess in the first place.

  I don’t know anything.

  I don’t even know if I’ve wasted the last five years in graduate school, earning a doctorate, even though it sure seems like it. Two years of searching for a teaching post, and I still don’t have one. I’m working at the Yale library for something close to minimum wage, at a job that requires a reading knowledge of five languages, but is every bit as tedious as any factory job I’ve ever held. My task is to make sure that none of the books being ordered for the library is already owned by it. I spend every workday pawing through card catalogs in one of the largest libraries on earth. I thought I could move “up” to a job as a salesman at a wine shop, but they’ve just rejected me for being overqualified. So much for the money I had to borrow to buy a pair of slacks for that interview. Of what use will those goddamned pants be to me now, save to wear to divorce court?

  I don’t know anything, except for two facts: First, nothing was supposed to turn out like this. Second, this Christmas is the worst ever.

  As I try to force myself to sleep, an image creeps up on me, from an unexpected corner of my memory, probably from the antechamber to the Vault of Oblivion. I see trees. Lots of them. Big trees that have always existed, trees older than the earth. They’re all lined up like soldiers ready for battle. Their enormous branches blot out the sun and filter all rainstorms. Each and every one of them is good, the very definition of goodness. Their will is one with the Creator’s. They know things I don’t, and that no one else on earth knows either.

  Suddenly, the knot in my chest begins to loosen, and the fire raging in my mind is extinguished. I’m at peace, for the first time in months.

  Sleep, sweet blessed sleep, begins to hover between me and the skylight, and it descends on me like grace, which is always the opposite of what we deserve. The trees reveal their true identity. Like Christmas trees, they’re not what they seem to be; unlike Christmas trees, which are as hollow as any idol, they’re much more, so much more than they seem to be. Suddenly I’m seeing angels, legions of them, lined up in perfect order, their weapons held high, bright shining as the sun. Big, serious weapons, all aflame. Their wings are huge, and they stretch across the entire span of Coral Way, like Gothic archways. These aren’t wimpy angels with harps. They’re terminators, as well muscled as an Olympic weightlifter, and just as incapable of plucking notes out of a harp.

  They sing in unison, their voices in perfect harmony.

  Hosanna in the highest.

  Glory to God in the highest; glory to the lowest on earth.

  Glory to the lowest of the low; glory to God in the lowest.

  Glory to the stinking manger in stinking Bethlehem.

  Peace on earth to those who fail most miserably.

  Peace on earth to those who are stripped clean of their illusions and of their love for them. This day is for you.

  Fade to the blackest of blacks. Then, suddenly, flash forward to today, the fleeting here and now, the day when I’m writing this chapter, on a perfectly hot July day, as far from Christmas as any day can be.

  A certain feather reappears on my back deck, in the teeth of a tough old cat who’s dying of cancer.

  The veil rips open, and makes a roaring sound.

  Thirteen

  She’s sprawled on the staircase, upside down, her head only about three or four steps up from a doorway on Flagler Street. Sleazy Flagler. Her sky-blue eyes are wide open, and they stare blankly at the three of us. Her handbag is lying on its side at the bottom of the stairs, within my reach, almost on the sidewalk. A thin man in a light-colored jacket stands above her, straddling three of the steps on the staircase. He’s not moving at all; he’s just staring at her face. The fluorescent lights in the stairwell seem as bright as any at the Orange Bowl, and they’re reflected in her pupils, like sideways equal signs. Two bright vertical parallel lines in each eye. She’s a blonde, probably bleached. Too old to be a babe, but not old enough to be a hag; too shapely to be called skinny, but not plump enough to be called fat.

  One of her black high-heeled shoes is perched sideways on the edge of a step, about half a yard above her bare right foot. Her skirt is all crumpled about midway up her thighs. And she’s wearing fishnet stockings.

  I’ve seen eyes like hers only in the newspaper, back in my native land, Plato’s cave, where the journalists loved to publish photographs of all the revolutionaries who’d been shot dead the night before.

  “Keep moving,” says Tony.

  “But . . . take a look; I think she’s dead.”

  “Keep moving, let’s get out of here. It’s none of our business.”

  José chimes in: “Sí, vámonos.” Yes, let’s go.

  “But what if she’s dead?”

  “Never mind; we’ll miss the parade.”

  Happy New Year. Feliz Año Nuevo.

  There are only a few hours left in the year 1962, and we’ve walked all the way downtown from our warm and fuzzy house to watch the Orange Bowl Parade.

  We’ve just crossed the bridge on Flagler Street that spans the Miami River—a bridge that will disappear some years later when the wide concrete snarl of Interstate 95 is rudely shoehorned into this seedy corner of downtown Miami. The building and staircase we’ve just passed will disappear too, along with lots of other stuff.

  O
ur three-mile walk had been uneventful up until then. There’s not much to look at on this stretch of Flagler: nothing but rinky-dink shops, liquor stores, run-down apartment buildings, gas stations, vacant lots, used-car dealerships, and a sad-looking church or two. The clientele in this neighborhood—our neighborhood—is always a bit short on cash and liquid assets. They’re not much into buying stuff or dining out. And shabbiness doesn’t seem to trouble them much. The only remotely interesting thing we’ve seen on the way down here is a handwritten Se habla Español cardboard sign on the door of a barbershop. I hadn’t seen one of those ever before.

  We’ve been told that the parade is quite a sight, but that it can’t hold a candle to any Carnaval back in Cuba, in the old days, back when having fun was still legal, back before the entire island was turned into a giant slave plantation.

  I don’t care how good or how lousy the parade is; I just want to be somewhere other than that stinkhole of a house. Tony and José feel the same way. José is quickly becoming our friend. So we’re out on the town, the three of us, on the first of what will be countless excursions down ugly-ass Flagler Street, into downtown Miami, where—as we’ve just discovered—almost anything can happen.

  The blonde sprawled upside down on the staircase lends an aura of mystery to our journey. I want to gawk at her and the man who towers above her, but Tony pulls me away and steps up the pace. I’m sure that I’ve just seen my first corpse, but I don’t get the chance to find out for sure.

  Rats; I’ll never know.

  So we leave her there, upside down, and walk a few more blocks eastward, toward Biscayne Bay. We find a good spot on a curb and watch the parade. Lots of marching bands and floats, but most of the music isn’t that great. Neither are the uniforms on the marching bands. Where are the girls in skimpy outfits, shaking their assets to the beat of conga drums? What’s the deal with these uptight girls and their baton-twirling, anyway? What genius came up with something so utterly vapid, so painfully far from a real Carnaval?

  We endure the whole damn parade, even though it’s as exciting as watching an old lady fall asleep while knitting. It’s free entertainment, outdoors, and far from our foster home. If we could, we’d stay out forever and never go back, but we know we can’t do that. So, as soon as the parade is over we head back to the house of family warmth.

  We pass that same doorway again on Flagler, but there’s no upside-down blonde on the staircase anymore. The glass door that opens out onto the sidewalk is closed, but I can see inside, and this time around the fluorescent lights have no dead-looking eyes to use as a mirror.

  We get home a little before midnight, just in time to watch some of Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve show on television with the whole gang, including the Three Thugs, who have a wisecrack for everything that flashes on the screen. If they weren’t such jerks, I’d be laughing at their jokes, all of which are dirty, and some of which are very funny.

  We all refuse to show any enthusiasm as the clock strikes midnight, and we go to bed shortly afterward. So what if it’s 1963? We’re all stuck here, and the date on the calendar changes nothing.

  Having to go back to school in a few days seems a blessing, and it’s just about the only thing that cheers me up. But before we all return to school, Tony and I are handed an unexpected present from an unlikely source. Juan Becquer shows up one morning and tells us that he’s found us jobs. He says that we need to start saving money for the day when our mom finally arrives, and that we might as well begin right now.

  Juan has begun to keep a close eye on us, now that the Rubins and Chaits have let go of us. He’s been hovering as much as he can since we left those foster homes, calling on the phone, reassuring us that everything will be all right. So, we’re not too surprised to see him show up.

  We ask no questions, get into his car, and it’s off to work we go. Before we know it we are standing inside a huge warehouse, somewhere in an industrial section of the city. It’s Sid Rubin’s warehouse, the place where Juan works as a janitor.

  I’ve never been in a room like this before. It’s enormous, about the size of half a city block, and it’s all open space, save for the columns that hold up the roof, about twelve or fifteen feet above our heads. The walls are practically nothing but huge windows, with frosted glass, and most of them are open. It may be January, but this is Miami, and it’s pretty hot inside. Boxes are stacked here and there, neatly, in piles.

  The echo in this place reminds me of the glorieta, the huge gazebo in the park with the huge trees, near my house in Havana, the one where the firecracker ripped up my hand.

  “It’s high time that you boys learn some useful skills,” Juan says, as he hands us big push brooms.

  “Sweep the whole place, from one end to the other. Tony, you take this half; Carlos, you take the other. Start sweeping at that wall over there and work your way to that other one, then turn around and sweep in the other direction, and so on, until you’ve covered your half of the place. Here, this is how to get the most out of every sweep: press down hard on the broom handle with both hands as you push forward, and . . .”

  He shows us how to be the most efficient sweepers on earth, and how to handle our dustpans like professionals.

  It takes us about two hours to sweep the whole place, and we can tell that Juan is getting impatient. He keeps coming up to us, again and again, and asks why we can’t move any faster. He also shows us all the dirt we’ve missed, and he keeps shaking his head.

  “You know, you guys are lucky to have this job. I know grown men who would sell their soul for the chance to do what you’re doing. Both of you are underage and can’t get legitimate jobs; it’s a good thing that you know me, and that Sid Rubin was willing to hire you.”

  He fails to expand on the fact that it’s illegal for us to be working at our age and that our wages—thirty-five cents an hour—fall far short of the minimum required by the federal government of the United States.

  Coño, que mierda.

  I’ve never worked harder in all of my life. Not even that time when I had to clean up our street back home after we smeared it up from end to end with ripe breadfruit during a monster breadfruit fight. Ay. If this is what work is like, I’m not going to like work very much, I tell myself.

  Sweeping is only our first task. Once we’re done, and once we’ve gone back over all of our mistakes and all of the dirt we missed, Tony and I are assigned all sorts of other tasks, including moving boxes from one place to another and arranging them in a certain order.

  By the end of the workday, Tony and I are both exhausted and stunned. We’ve worked about an eight-hour shift, and we can’t fully take in what we’ve just been through. I can’t tell what’s worn me out the most: the sheer monotony of the tasks we performed, or the sustained physical effort. I’m not used to either of these things, and neither is Tony. Nor are we fully prepared to admit that we’ve now officially sunk to the rank of mere laborers. Quite a comedown for two boys formerly listed in the Social Register, and who were raised to believe that certain tasks were to be performed only by others, never by us.

  We’re both so sweaty and dirty we could pass for coal miners.

  “You guys can come to work with me every Saturday from now on, starting next weekend. I’ll pick you up and drive you back home.”

  I don’t know what Tony is thinking, but as far as I’m concerned, this sounds like very good news to me. A whole day away from the warm and fuzzy house, the Palace Ricardo. Money in my pocket. Lots of money, more than I’ve handled since going into exile. For God’s sake, I’ve just made three whole dollars. Juan was nice enough to give us a bonus for our efforts: an extra twenty cents. This rounds out our earnings to three dollars. Between the two of us, we now have six dollars.

  “This will sure come in handy when our mom gets here,” I say to myself. “And who’s going to notice if I take out a little every week for myself?” Our weekly allowance at the Palace Ricardo is seventy-five cents per week. And that is suppo
sed to cover all of our snacks and incidental expenses, like movies or a comic book now and then. Since most snacks cost about fifteen cents apiece and drinks about five cents, I’ll have to be more frugal than Scrooge McDuck, or even my mom’s parents, the greatest skinflints in the world. This extra cash can sure help me right now. Yeah. A lot.

  Tony knows for certain that he’s pocketing the whole sum for himself. I don’t even have to ask him. I know how he thinks. His heroes all along have been Scrooge McDuck, Lex Luthor, and Ming the Merciless.

  “Now, you be sure to put that away,” says Juan. “You’ve got to start saving for your mom’s arrival. Maybe next week or the week after that we can find some time to open a bank account for you.” This is Juan’s way of reassuring us that all is not lost, that our mom is still on her way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

  On the way back to Palace Ricardo, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve just done. I’m wiped out, physically and mentally, and I’m hot and grimy, so drenched in sweat that even my pants are wet, but deep down I feel a very special and very new sort of thrill. Later on I’ll learn to recognize it as satisfaction, but on that first day, all I know is that I feel good despite the fact that working was a pain.

  I feel as if I’m almost a grown-up, and I am almost giddy at the thought of that. I’m not sure Tony feels the same way. His face shows no trace of joy, much less of giddiness over what we’ve just done and what awaits us every single weekend from now on.

  I should have known better than to relish that moment. Disenchantment pounces on us the minute we walk through the front door of the Palace. Desengaño, of the worst sort.