The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Now relax, will ya? I’m not going to eat you.” But all the same he was still trying to hitch up her skirt and get his fingers inside the bottom part of her bathing suit, and then she pushed him away.

  And just like that he seemed more disdainful and tore at the top of her bathing suit, shredding the straps and pulling down on the front of the suit so that he could get his mouth on her breasts; she squirmed under him, under his kisses and thick tongue.

  “If you knew, Delores, how I feel right now,” he kept repeating. She tried to push him away, but he was a strong man and, at one point, annoyed with her resistance, slapped her face and said, “I’m not fooling with you, come on now, Delores. What the hell’s wrong with you, anyway?”

  Then it hit her all at once that she was about to lose her virginity in the worst way imaginable. With this pendejo! Oh, Papi! There was nothing she could do to avoid it. Where could she go? Run off under this boardwalk out into those streets where there wasn’t a soul? It was so desolate she wished she was a mermaid so she could swim out into the beautiful sea. And she went through the possibilities of resistance and of compliance and felt herself in a world of pure gloom. How could she have been so trusting, so stupid? What could she do but sit back in the seat, feeling pity and shame in her heart and almost a fondness for his ardor. All these thoughts turned into a feeling of overwhelming sadness about being a woman. And where was this man’s kindness now? She rested back in the seat and he stood up, pulling off his shoes and then his socks. Then with the same manic devotion with which he had torn at her bathing suit he tugged at the erection inside his trousers, grabbed it proudly . . .

  By the time he had undone his zipper she had gotten to the point where she wanted to get it all over with. He pushed open the door of the car and was standing over her when down to his knees went his trousers and his polka-dotted boxer shorts. And there it was, his member, slightly bent and wavering in the air. She thought, It’s like a child’s.

  Something between a look of pity, mirth, and pure contempt crossed her face as she told him, “Go to hell, hombre.”

  And as she turned herself around in that seat and drifted away like the wood and foam and debris that floated at the water’s edge, he kept trying to jam his thing into her bottom, he was so angry, and while this was going on, she had the impression of being in that room with her father the day she saw him naked; that she was now on the bed beside him and looking at his member, huge and powerful, an entity beyond the bodily weaknesses that would one day kill him.

  Her poor father would die in 1949, collapsing on a stairway while making a seltzer delivery, boom, down two flights of stairs, dumbfounded, his last sight twenty bottles of seltzer bouncing off the steps, spraying everywhere and shattering to bits. Years later, she would say to herself, “Whatever anyone says about you, Papi, you were a worker, a protector, and a man, a sweet and gentle man, Papi, not like that bastard who abused me.”

  That night, as she was assaulted on the beach, the word “virile” floated through her thoughts, brushed like a silk scarf against the edge of sexual speculation about her father. She was not on the beach but sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing oil into her father’s aching back, and running her hands up and over his shoulders, hearing him say, “Ay, qué rico!—How good it feels!” and happy at his sighs of pleasure, even if he was a spirit in her thoughts. But in those few moments, while the Pepsodent man tried to enter her womb, now dry as a bone, she heard the man crying out in frustration: “Bring me off!” And then, “Goddammit!” When she opened her eyes, he was masturbating himself to help along the ejaculation that had started against his will, during the moment of his failure . . . With a certain amusement she watched the temper and passion drain from his face, watched him hitch back his trousers and all the rest, his back to her. He said to her: “I should drown you in the water. Now get out of my sight!”

  That night he left her on the beach among the gnats and the fleas and the crabs that moved in clusters across the sand, feeding slowly, and she had to wander the streets searching for someone to help her. By morning she was sitting on a curb some seven blocks inland where there were houses. A milk truck pulled up and the man, dressed in white, leaned out and said, “Rough night, huh, lady?”

  Then he drove her to a subway fifteen minutes away.

  The night of the dance, Delores was thinking about what her sister Ana María had told her: “Love is the sunlight of the soul, water for the flowers of the heart, and the sweet-scented wind of the morning of life”—sentiments taken from corny boleros on the radio, but maybe they were true, no matter how cruel and stupid men can be. Perhaps there’ll be a man who’ll be different and good to me.

  And so Delores put on a red dress with a pleated midsection and slit skirt, dark nylons and black high heels, a fake pearl necklace, got her hair done up like Claudette Colbert’s, dabbed some Chanel No. 5 behind her ear and between her breasts, and poured a few drops over the talcum-powdered crotch of her panties, so that the woman who would walk into the ballroom only remotely resembled the cleaning woman Nestor had met at the bus stop.

  What Delores and Ana María saw posted outside the brass doors of the ballroom was:

  !!! CONTEST!!!!!CONTEST!!!

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  AT THE IMPERIAL BALLROOM

  for the

  BEST

  and

  MOST OUTRAGEOUS

  BALDHEADED COUPLES!

  ★

  $50 first prize! & CASE OF CHAMPAGNE &

  A SET of YOUR VERY FAVORITE RECORDINGS

  !!!!!!!MUCH MUCH MORE!!!!!!!

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  featuring

  THE FABULOUS MAMBO KINGS!!

  ★

  Adm. $1.06. Doors open 9 pm

  Checking their hats and coats, Delores and Ana María, their asses pinched by naughty hands, made their way through the bald and full-haired crowd gathered at the Imperial Ballroom. She was now in the world of courtship for which Delorita thought she had no use. But, just the night before, she’d dreamed about the musician she’d met at the bus stop. She was lying naked in a bed, pressed against him, and they were kissing, kissing; so tightly were they pressed together that her hair had wrapped around him like a coiling rope and their skin burned and, at the same time, she had the sensation that all the pores in her body had opened and that from each pore dripped a warm sweet liquid like honey. That dream soon blossomed into a funnel of sensations through which her body floated like a cloud: she awakened in the middle of the night, imagining the musician’s long, sensitive finger touching the juiciest valve in her body. As she moved toward the stage to point Nestor out to her sister, she blushed, thinking about that dream.

  The Mambo Kings were up on the stage, looking much as they did in photographs of them from that time, in white silk suits and set up in two rows across, the elegant Miguel Montoya seated behind a grand piano, a percussionist standing before a battery of congas, bongos, and timbales, a drummer before an American kit, then Manny with his stand-up bass, and then the trombonist and two of the horn players. And in front of them the saxophonist and flutist, their two violinists, and then the brothers, standing side by side before the microphone. The spotlight was on the handsome Cesar Castillo, and at first Ana María, liking his looks, asked, “Is that him?”

  “No, the shy one standing off to the side.”

  And there he was, waiting for the turnaround of a habanera, and then, given the nod by Cesar, he stepped before the microphone, tilted his head back, and began to play his solo. Like his older brother, who had slipped back, he was decked out in a white silk suit, flamingo-pink shirt, and sky-blue tie. He was playing the solo to his brother’s composition “Solitude.”

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Delores asked.

  And then, when the song had turned around again and Cesar sang the last verse, she stood under the stage where the trumpet player was standing, and smiled at him
. He had been lost in a stony-faced concentration, but he was happy to see her. Then they went into a fast number, a mambo. Sly smile on his face, Cesar Castillo gave a nod to the percussionist, whose hands were taped up like a boxer’s, and he started to bop, bop, bop on a quinto drum, and in came the piano with its Latin vamp, then the alternating bass. Another nod from Cesar and the others came in, and Cesar started dancing before the big ball microphone, his white leather, golden-buckled shoes darting in and out like agitated compass needles. And Nestor, standing in with the brass, blew his trumpet so hard in his exhilaration over seeing Delores, whose presence seemed to soothe his inner pain, his face turned red and his pensive head seemed ready to burst. And the crowds on the dance floor wriggled and bounced, and the musicians enjoyed Nestor’s solo and were shaking their heads, and he played happily, just hoping to impress Delores.

  Then another slow song, a bolero.

  Nestor whispered to Cesar, who said, “This little number is an original composition entitled ‘Twilight in Havana,’ and my brother here wants to dedicate it to a pretty girl named Delores.”

  Head back, he stood beside the microphone, a backlight throwing his shadow down over the floor and rising up along the insides of her shapely legs, lingering on the dampness between them and giving her a lick.

  That evening, Delorita and her sister Ana María were a couple of killer-dillers and would spend the night dancing with one man after the other. Ana María with pure joy, and Delorita with a sweet wistfulness, her chin on the shoulder of her dance partner, her eyes on the stage and that spotlight on the microphone and the pained, soulful countenance of Nestor Castillo. Though she could have ended up with one of the handsome men there that night, Delores waited for Nestor. When he came down off the stage during the band’s break, when the other orchestra played, he seemed happy and enchanted, his somberness broken, after two years of suffering over Beautiful María, by the prospect of a new love. He attended to Delores as if there was nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do for her. He bought Delores and her sister drinks from the bar, wiped a bead of sweat from her brow with his lilac-scented handkerchief, and when she said, “I like to dance, but my feet get so sore,” he offered to rub her warm, nyloned soles.

  When she asked, “Why are you so nice to me?” he told her: “Because, Delores, it feels like my destiny.”

  He remained at her side as if he had always known her, and when, for no apparent reason, he dropped his head melancholically, she touched the back of his neck with her hands gently, thinking, “My poor Papi was that way,” and because she seemed to understand his pain and because he did not have to make jokes around her and hatch romantic schemes to trap her, the way his brother did with women, he felt that there was a chance for a strong connection between them. Like a forlorn bird in a bolero, he felt his wings being singed by the flame of tender love.

  When the musicians returned to the stage, they were joined by the squat, mustachioed MC for the evening, who wore a black tuxedo and a thick red silk cummerbund around his immense belly, like a foreign diplomat. He stood before the microphone, announcing the event for that evening:

  “And now, ladies and gents, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: our best baldheads dance contest! Our judges for tonight are none other than the famed rumba dancer Palito Pérez, and his wife, Conchita.” And they bowed from the stage. “The ever-fabulous Mr. Dance himself, ‘Killer’ Joe Piro, and last, that crooning marvel with the Mambo Kings orchestra, the ever-fabulous Cesar Castillo! Before beginning, I would like to remind you that this event has been jointly sponsored by the Sons of Italy Organization and the Nostrand Avenue Rheingold brewery. Maestro, you may begin.”

  When the contest had been announced, mainly through pamphlets and posters and a few radio spots, there had been a rush to the barbershops of downtown Brooklyn, the Bronx, and central Harlem. A huge crowd had turned out, among them several hundred couples who had shaved off all their hair: purple and green eggheads, baldies in white tuxedos and evening gowns, baldies in giant baby diapers (the woman’s diaper discreetly pinned and joined at the back of her neck), Mr. and Mrs. Moon, baldies as oranges, baldies as people from the planet Mars, baldies as hydrogen bombs, baldies posing as baby chicks, and who knew what else. There were clowns and harlequins and couples draped with ball-bearing-sewn robes, couples with feathers and bells. The costumed entrants to this contest not only had to look weird but also had to demonstrate virtuoso and light-footed dancing, expertise in the arts of the mambo, rumba, tango, and cha-cha-cha.

  Standing amid the ring of tipsy onlookers, Delores rooted for a couple who were the prettiest pair of baldheads. The woman looked like Queen Nefertiti and wore glittering necklaces and bracelets, all reflecting light into the world, and a butterfly-sleeved red dress whose skirt curled upwards like the roof of a pagoda. Her partner had peacock feathers for a collar and wore huge loop earrings and oversized purple silk pants and resembled a genie; but the main thing about them was that they seemed so much in love, smiling and kissing with every turn, dip, and slide.

  They did not win, though they were good dancers. Another couple won: the man had an alarm clock tied to his bald head and numbers written all over his scalp. He was wearing oversized peg pants and pink spike-tipped shoes and a lavender shirt and jacket. His partner wore a tight black strapless gown in which she wobbled her way into the hearts of the males of the audience, her crowning moment arriving during a twirling spin in which the centrifugal forces tore free the top of her dress, revealing two plump breasts, large, quivering, and as bare as the top of her head.

  Afterwards, Delores and Ana María made their way into the ladies’ room, which was jammed with bald and full-headed women seriously going about the business of freshening up their eyeliner, mascara, lipstick. She sat down before a mirror to freshen up, too, and enjoyed the comings and goings of these pretty young women who were out to meet young men and have a good time.*

  Loud big-band Latin music slipped into the room when the door opened, ladies in the stall urinating, a scent of Chanel No. 5 thick everywhere, Sen-Sen, chewing gum popping in mouths. Cuban and Puerto Rican and Irish and Italian girls lined up before the makeup mirrors, applying mascara and rouge, and fixing their lipstick. Women pulling up on their skirts and getting their garters straight, thick thighs moon-white and honey-colored in the glare of the lights.

  And voices:

  “Tell ya, darlin’, some of these men, woooey! This fella fresh as hell, just met the guy and his bone is knocking on my door.”

  “You think I look all right, I mean, how do you think he’ll like the way I look if I put my hair up like this?”

  “And he wants me to go down to San Juan with him to a hotel there . . . Pay for it and everything.”

  “And the fucking bastard takes me for a walk. I’m a little tipsy and so I sit with him in the car out in the parking lot. All I want to do is sit there and just get some fresh air, and then he’s all over me, like he’s never been with a woman before. I don’t even really know the guy, just that he’s married, and I say unhappily married by the way he’s grabbing at me . . . We wrestle around for a while, I don’t even really mind that, but no way am I going to go to bed with a man when I don’t have anything going with him, know what I’m saying? And what does he do but pulls his purple thing out of his trousers and says, ‘Oh, please, honey, why don’t you give it a little kiss?’ and ‘Oh, please,’ squinting his eyes and all like he’s in the worst pain in the world. I told him, you go to hell, and left him in the car holding his thing, and so, even though I’m in the right, twenty minutes later he’s back on the dance floor doing the cha-cha-cha with another girl, and from the way she looked, I’ll bet she did put his thing in her mouth. I end up going home to the Bronx, number 2 line all the way uptown to Allerton Avenue by myself . . .”

  “Anyway, this guy’s six foot four, must weigh two hundred and fifteen pounds, works for the city, you know, and . . . he’s got a thing the size of my pinkie, what a
gyp!”

  “As beautiful as you are, there’s always some other girl out there beautifuller than you.”

  “I’d give it up for a wedding ring.”

  “Oh, God! Anyone have an extra pair of nylons?”

  “. . . Qué mono that singer is, huh? I’d go out with him anytime.”

  “Well, I’ve been out with him.”

  “And?”

  “He’d break your heart.”

  “His brother isn’t bad, either.”

  “You said it.”

  She’d remember heading out into the ballroom again, down along the shoeshine stand, that thick row of men smoking their cigarettes like mad and trying to get a little fresh air before an opened window. Couples in phone booths and in corridors kissing and fondling each other, chandeliers that were a rainfall of crystal and light, the music coming from a distance, as if down a long, long tunnel: the string bass, the percussion, with the crash of cymbals, banging of congas and timbales looming like a storm cloud, from which only occasionally rose a horn line or crescendoing piano . . . Life was funny: she was thinking about Nestor Castillo and moving through the crowd toward the bar when she felt a hand gently taking hold of her elbow. And it was Nestor, as if she had wished him there. He took her over to the bar, drank down a glass of whiskey, and said, “We have to play one more set, and then afterwards we’re going out, around three o’clock or so, to get something to eat. Why don’t you come along with us . . . You can meet my brother and a few of the other musicians.”

  “Can I bring my sister?”

  “Cómo no. We’ll meet out in front.”