by Ana Menéndez
For many months they didn’t know much about each other, these four men. Even the smallest boy knew not to talk when the pieces were in play. But soon came Máximo’s jokes during the shuffling, something new and bright coming into his eyes like daydreams as he spoke. Carlos’ full loud laughter, like that of children. And the four men learned to linger long enough between sets to color an old memory while the white pieces scraped along the table.
One day as they sat at their table closest to the sidewalk, a pretty girl walked by. She swung her long brown hair around and looked in at the men with her green eyes.
“What the hell is she looking at,” said Antonio, who always sat with his back to the wall, looking out at the street. But the others saw how he returned the stare too.
Carlos let out a giggle and immediately put a hand to his mouth.
“In Santo Domingo, a man once looked at—” But Carlos didn’t get to finish.
“Shut up, you old idiot,” said Antonio, putting his hands on the table like he was about to get up and leave.
“Please,” Máximo said.
The girl stared another moment, then turned and left. Raúl rose slowly, flattening down his oiled hair with his right hand.
“Ay, mi niña.”
“Sit down, hombre,” Antonio said. “You’re an old fool, just like this one.”
“You’re the fool,” Raúl called back. “A woman like that…” He watched the girl cross the street. When she was out of sight, he grabbed the back of the chair behind him and eased his body down, his eyes still on the street. The other three men looked at one another.
“I knew a woman like that once,” Raúl said after a long moment.
“That’s right, he did,” Antonio said, “in his moist boy dreams—what was it? A century ago?”
“No me jodas,” Raúl said. “You are a vulgar man. I had a life all three of you would have paid millions for. Women.”
Máximo watched him, then lowered his face, shuffled the dominos.
“I had women,” Raúl said.
“We all had women,” Carlos said, and he looked like he was about to laugh again, but instead just sat there, smiling like he was remembering one of Máximo’s jokes.
“There was one I remember. More beautiful than the rising moon,” Raúl said.
“Oh Jesus,” Antonio said. “You people.”
Máximo looked up, watching Raúl.
“Ay, a woman like that,” Raúl said and shook his head. “The women of Cuba were radiant, magnificent, wouldn’t you say, professor?”
Máximo looked away.
“I don’t know,” Antonio said. “I think that Americana there looked better than anything you remember.”
And that brought a long laugh from Carlos.
Máximo sat all night at the pine table in his new efficiency, thinking about the green-eyed girl and wondering why he was thinking about her. The table and a narrow bed had come with the apartment, which he’d moved into after selling their house in Shenandoah. The table had come with two chairs, sturdy and polished—not in the least institutional—but he had moved the other chair by the bed.
The landlady, a woman in her forties, had helped Máximo haul up three potted palms. Later, he bought a green pot of marigolds he saw in the supermarket and brought its butter leaves back to life under the window’s eastern light. Máximo often sat at the table through the night, sometimes reading Marti, sometimes listening to the rain on the tin hull of the air conditioner.
When you are older, he’d read somewhere, you don’t need as much sleep. And wasn’t that funny because his days felt more like sleep than ever. Dinner kept him occupied for hours, remembering the story of each dish. Sometimes, at the table, he greeted old friends and awakened with a start when they reached out to touch him. When dawn rose and slunk into the room sideways through the blinds, Máximo walked as in a dream across the thin patterns of light on the terrazzo. The chair, why did he keep the other chair? Even the marigolds reminded him. An image returned again and again. Was it the green-eyed girl?
And then he remembered that Rosa wore carnations in her hair and hated her name. And that it saddened him because he liked to roll it off his tongue like a slow train to the country.
“Rosa,” he said, taking her hand the night they met at La Concha while an old danzón played.
“Clavel,” she said, tossing her head back in a crackling laugh. “Call me Clavel.”
She pulled her hand away and laughed again. “Don’t you notice the flower in a girl’s hair?”
He led her around the dance floor, lined with chaperones, and when they turned he whispered that he wanted to follow her laughter to the moon. She laughed again, the notes round and heavy as summer raindrops, and Máximo felt his fingers go cold where they touched hers. The danzón played and they turned and turned and the faces of the chaperones and the moist warm air—and Máximo with his cold fingers worried that she had laughed at him. He was twenty-four and could not imagine a more sorrowful thing in all the world.
Sometimes, years later, he would catch a premonition of Rosa in the face of his eldest daughter. She would turn toward a window or do something with her eyes. And then she would smile and tilt her head back and her laughter connected him again to that night, made him believe for a moment that life was a string you could gather up in your hands all at once.
He sat at the table and tried to remember the last time he saw Marisa. In California now. An important lawyer. A year? Two? Anabel, gone to New York? Two years? They called more often than most children, Máximo knew. They called often and he was lucky that way.
“Fidel decides he needs to get in touch with young people.”
“Ay, ay, ay.”
“So his handlers arrange for him to go to a school in Havana. He gets all dressed up in his olive uniform, you know, puts conditioner on his beard and brushes it one hundred times, all that.”
Raúl breathed out, letting each breath come out like a puff of laughter. “Where do you get these things?”
“No interrupting the artist anymore, okay?” Máximo continued. “So after he’s beautiful enough, he goes to the school. He sits in on a few classes, walks around the halls. Finally, it’s time for Fidel to leave and he realizes he hasn’t talked to anyone. He rushes over to the assembly that is seeing him off with shouts of ‘Comandante!’ and he pulls a little boy out of a row. ‘Tell me,’ Fidel says, ‘what is your name?’ ‘Pepito,’ the little boy answers. ‘Pepito—what a nice name,’ Fidel says. ‘And tell me, Pepito, what do you think of the revolution?’ ‘Comandante,’ Pepito says, ‘the revolution is the reason we are all here.’ ‘Ah, very good, Pepito. And tell me, what is your favorite subject?’ Pepito answers, ‘Comandante, my favorite subject is mathematics.’ Fidel pats the little boy on the head. ‘And tell me, Pepito, what would you like to be when you grow up?’ Pepito smiles and says, ‘Comandante, I would like to be a tourist.’”
Máximo looked around the table, a shadow of a smile on his thin white lips as he waited for the laughter.
“Ay,” Raúl said. “That is so funny it breaks my heart.”
Máximo grew to like dominos, the way each piece became part of the next. After the last piece was laid down and they were tallying up the score, Máximo liked to look over the table as an artist might. He liked the way the row of black dots snaked around the table with such free-flowing abandon it was almost as if, thrilled to be let out of the box, the pieces choreographed a fresh dance of gratitude every night. He liked the straightforward contrast of black on white. The clean, fresh scrape of the pieces across the table before each new round. The audacity of the double nines. The plain smooth face of the blank, like a newborn unetched by the world to come.
“Professor,” Raúl began. “Let’s speed up the shuffling a bit, sí?”
“I was thinking,” Máximo said.
“Well, that shouldn’t take long,” Antonio said.
“Who invented dominos, anyway?” Máximo said.
“I’d say it was probably the Chinese,” Antonio said.
“No jodas,” Raúl said. “Who else could have invented this game of skill and intelligence but a Cuban?”
“Coño,” said Antonio without a smile. “Here we go again.”
“Ah, bueno,” Raúl said with a smile stuck between joking and condescending. “You don’t have to believe it if it hurts.”
Carlos let out a long laugh.
“You people are unbelievable,” said Antonio. But there was something hard and tired behind the way he smiled.
It was the first day of December, but summer still hung about in the brightest patches of sunlight. The four men sat under the shade of the banyan tree. It wasn’t cold, not even in the shade, but three of the men wore cardigans. If asked, they would say they were expecting a chilly north wind and doesn’t anybody listen to the weather forecasts anymore. Only Antonio, his round body enough to keep him warm, clung to the short sleeves of summer.
Kids from the local Catholic high school had volunteered to decorate the park for Christmas and they dashed about with tinsel in their hair, bumping one another and laughing loudly. Lucinda, the woman who issued the dominos and kept back the gambling, asked them to quiet down, pointing at the men. A wind stirred the top branches of the banyan tree and moved on without touching the ground. One leaf fell to the table.
Antonio waited for Máximo to fetch Lucinda’s box of plastic pieces. Antonio held his brown paper bag to his chest and looked at the Cubans, his customary sourness replaced for a moment by what in a man like him could pass for levity. Máximo sat down and began to dump the plastic pieces on the table as he always did. But this time, Antonio held out his hand.
“One moment,” he said and shook his brown paper bag.
“¿Qué pasa, chico?” Máximo said.
Antonio reached into the paper bag as the men watched. He let the paper fall away. In his hand he held an oblong black leather box.
“Coñooo,” Raúl said.
Antonio set the box on the table, like a magician drawing out his trick. He looked around to the men and finally opened the box with a flourish to reveal a neat row of big heavy pieces, gone yellow and smooth like old teeth. They bent in closer to look. Antonio tilted the box gently and the pieces fell out in one long line, their black dots facing up now like tight dark pupils in the sunlight.
“Ivory,” Antonio said. “And ebony. It’s an antique. You’re not allowed to make them anymore.”
“Beautiful,” Carlos said and clasped his hands.
“My daughter found them for me in New Orleans,” Antonio continued, ignoring Carlos.
He looked around the table and lingered on Máximo, who had lowered the box of plastic dominos to the ground.
“She said she’s been searching for them for two years. Couldn’t wait two more weeks to give them to me,” he said.
“Coñooo,” Raúl said.
A moment passed.
“Well,” Antonio said, “what do you think, Máximo?”
Máximo looked at him. Then he bent across the table to touch one of the pieces. He gave a jerk with his head and listened for the traffic. “Very nice,” he said.
“Very nice?” Antonio said. “Very nice?” He laughed in his thin way. “My daughter walked all over New Orleans to find this and the Cuban thinks it’s ‘very nice’?” He paused, watching Máximo. “Did you know my daughter is coming to visit me for Christmas, Máximo? Maybe you can tell her that her gift was very nice, but not as nice as some you remember, eh?”
Máximo looked up, his eyes settling on Carlos, who looked at Antonio and then looked away.
“Calm down, hombre,” Carlos said, opening his arms wide, a nervous giggle beginning in his throat. “What’s gotten into you?”
Antonio waved his hand and sat down. A diesel truck rattled down Eighth Street, headed for downtown.
“My daughter is a district attorney in Los Angeles,” Máximo said after the noise of the truck died. “December is one of the busiest months.”
He felt a heat behind his eyes he had not felt in many years.
“Feel one in your hand,” Antonio said. “Feel how heavy that is.”
When the children were small, Máximo and Rosa used to spend Nochebuena with his cousins in Cardenas. It was a five-hour drive from Havana in the cars of those days. They would rise early on the twenty-third and arrive by mid-afternoon so Máximo could help the men kill the pig for the feast the following night. Máximo and the other men held the squealing, squirming animal down, its wiry brown coat cutting into their gloveless hands. But God, they were intelligent creatures. No sooner did it spot the knife than the animal bolted out of their arms, screaming like Armageddon. It had become the subtext to the Nochebuena tradition, this chasing of the terrified pig through the yard, dodging orange trees and rotting fruit underneath. The children were never allowed to watch, Rosa made sure. They sat indoors with the women and stirred the black beans. With loud laughter, they shut out the shouts of the men and the hysterical pleadings of the animal as it was dragged back to its slaughter.
“Juanito the little dog gets off the boat from Cuba and decides to take a little stroll down Brickell Avenue.”
“Let me make sure I understand the joke. Juanito is a dog. Bowwow.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“Yes, Juanito is a dog, goddamn it.”
Raúl looked up, startled.
Máximo shuffled the pieces hard and swallowed. He swung his arms across the table in wide, violent arcs. One of the pieces flew off the table.
“Hey, hey, watch it with that, what’s wrong with you?”
Máximo stopped. He felt his heart beating. “I’m sorry,” he said. He bent over the edge of the table to see where the piece had landed. “Wait a minute.” He held the table with one hand and tried to stretch to pick up the piece.
“What are you doing?”
“Just wait a minute.” When he couldn’t reach, he stood, pulled the piece toward him with his foot, sat back down, and reached for it again, this time grasping it between his fingers and his palm. He put it facedown on the table with the others and shuffled, slowly, his mind barely registering the traffic.
“Where was I—Juanito the little dog, right, bowwow.” Máximo took a deep breath. “He’s just off the boat from Cuba and is strolling down Brickell Avenue. He’s looking up at all the tall and shiny buildings. ‘Coñoo,’ he says, dazzled by all the mirrors. ‘There’s nothing like this in Cuba.’”
“Hey, hey, professor. We had tall buildings.”
“Jesus Christ!” Máximo said. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. “This is after Castro, then. Let me just get it out for Christ’s sake.”
He stopped shuffling. Raúl looked away.
“Ready now? Juanito the little dog is looking up at all the tall buildings and he’s so happy to finally be in America because all his cousins have been telling him what a great country it is, right? You know, they were sending back photos of their new cars and girlfriends.”
“A joke about dogs who drive cars—I’ve heard it all.”
“Hey, they’re Cuban super-dogs.”
“All right, they’re sending back photos of their new owners or the biggest bones any dog has ever seen. Anything you like. Use your imaginations.” Máximo stopped shuffling. “Where was I?”
“You were at the part where Juanito buys a Rolls-Royce.”
The men laughed.
“Okay, Antonio, why don’t you three fools continue the joke.” Máximo got up from the table. “You’ve made me forget the rest of it.”
“Aw, come on, chico, sit down, don’t be so sensitive.”
“Come on, professor, you were at the part where Juanito is so glad to be in America.”
“Forget it. I can’t remember the rest now.”
Máximo rubbed his temple, grabbed the back of the chair, and sat down slowly, facing the street. “Just leave me alone, I can’t remember it.” He pu
lled at the pieces two by two. “I’m sorry. Look, let’s just play.”
The men set up their double rows of dominos, like miniature barricades before them.
“These pieces are a work of art,” Antonio said and laid down a double eight.
The banyan tree was strung with white lights that were lit all day. Colored lights twined around the metal poles of the fence, which was topped with a long loping piece of gold tinsel garland.
The Christmas tourists began arriving just before lunch as Máximo and Raúl stepped off the number eight. Carlos and Antonio were already at the table, watched by two groups of families. Mom and Dad with kids. They were big; even the kids were big and pink. The mother whispered to the kids and they smiled and waved. Raúl waved back at the mother.
“Nice legs, yes,” he whispered to Máximo.
Before Máximo looked away, he saw the mother take out a little black pocket camera. He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. He sat down and looked around the table; the other men stared at their pieces.
The game started badly. It happened sometimes—the distribution of the pieces went all wrong and out of desperation one of the men made mistakes and soon it was all they could do not to knock all the pieces over and start fresh. Raúl set down a double three and signaled to Máximo it was all he had. Carlos passed. Máximo surveyed his last five pieces. His thoughts scattered to the family outside. He looked to find the tallest boy with his face pressed between the iron slats, staring at him.
“You pass?” Antonio said.
