by Plakcy, Neil
Roberto’s body was slimmer and less muscular than Walter’s. Walter was more robust, Roberto more delicate. Walter was boisterous, Roberto courtly. I felt guilty when I realized that Walter was the more attractive to me. That was stupid; I needed to focus my attention on where it was rewarded.
But then, I thought as I rode the elevator down to the garage, Walter had sent me a couple of signals, most recently when we stood side by side at the urinal on Friday night. He thought I was handsome and charming, and his eyes had glinted with sexual longing. Was he as unavailable as I’d thought?
I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on driving to my parents’ house. Once there I was caught up in family drama, and I didn’t think of Roberto again until midmorning on Monday, when I was observing the fine grading of the first warehouse pad.
A rolling mixer, which kept the concrete moist until pouring, stood idling beside the building while Camilo argued with a guy in a yellow hard hat. Finally they came to some agreement, and one of the men stepped over the hose, guiding it with his legs, and the mix began to spew out. A team of men finished the backbreaking work of spreading and smoothing it out.
That was probably the way Roberto thought of men on a construction site. No wonder he didn’t see me in that kind of role—I didn’t see myself doing it either.
I was finishing up that afternoon when Walter appeared in the doorway to my office. “You’re a good guy, Manny,” he said. He hesitated, and I looked up at him. “I hope you didn’t take anything I said at the bar the wrong way.”
Oh, Jesus. When I thought he was flirting with me at the urinals, had I responded in some way that he misinterpreted? I did a quick rewind of our conversation in my head. “You mean you don’t really think I’m smart and hard-working?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
He tilted his head a bit. “That’s what I said?”
I wasn’t about to remind him he’d also said I was handsome and charming, especially if that’s what he wanted to take back.
“That, and a bunch of stuff about aiming high in my career.”
He nodded. “Good. Because anything else would be inappropriate, you know, because I’m your boss.” He rapped on my door frame with his fist. “Anyway, get out of here and go have a life. You don’t want to end up like your old boss.”
What did that mean, I wondered as I packed up and drove back to the Beach. Walter wasn’t old, and it wasn’t like he had no life—I’d seen photos on his office wall of him socializing, and heard him talking with his friends about weekend plans.
The next day, when I went to place my lunch order with Estefani, she said, “No meeting today. Walter’s got a lunch date.”
“So we’re free?” I asked.
“Como un pájarito,” she said. Like a little bird. She leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “He’ll be out for hours. I’m putting the phones on night service and meeting my girlfriend for lunch.”
The front door opened, and two Cuban men in business suits stepped inside. They were the kind of successful, assimilated guys I aimed to be like, kings of their own worlds. I moved over to the file cabinet as they flirted with Estefani. As I pulled out the contract I needed, Walter’s office door opened and he stepped out, greeting the two men with hugs. They laughed and joked in Spanish as he led them into his office.
“His school friends,” Estefani said. “You watch; when he gets back this afternoon he’ll be half in the bag and won’t stop talking.”
As soon as Walter left the trailer, Estefani called, “I’m leaving, Manny. You want me to lock the front door?”
“I’m right behind you.” I still didn’t have a key to the trailer. “What time are you getting back?”
“Not before two,” she said.
“All right. I’ll see you then.” I followed her out to the parking lot and had my car in gear and heading down the access road before I considered where I was going. It was an unaccustomed freedom, being on the loose in the middle of the day with no responsibilities.
My stomach grumbled. I had to get something to eat, but I didn’t want to sit down at a restaurant on my own; that seemed dysfunctional. Fast food? Even sadder.
I remembered that the Sedano’s where Del worked had a café where you could eat your deli sandwich and get a cup of Cuban coffee. I’d go over and see her.
The grocery was in a big suburban plaza on Bird Road, one of the main drags that head out toward the Everglades, sandwiched between karate dojos, pawn shops, and places that would send money overseas for you. I found a parking place between two mommy-vans and walked up to the front window. I saw my sister at register four.
I walked inside and sneaked up behind her. Pulling a growly voice up from my diaphragm, I said, “Hola, mi amor,” and kissed the side of her cheek.
She whirled around in surprise. “Manny! You scared me!”
“What else are big brothers for?”
She turned back to the elderly woman on the other side of the conveyor belt. “Es mi hermano,” she said.
“You are so alike, like twins,” the woman said.
“No, señora. No one can compare to my sister’s beauty.”
The old woman giggled.
“I have a break coming in ten minutes,” Del said to me. “Meet me in the café?”
“Sure.”
I walked the aisles, stocking up on some of the delicacies I couldn’t get over on South Beach—flan mix, quince jelly bars, fresh-baked Cuban crackers. I met Del at the café, carrying my shopping basket. She still looked tired. “Cómo está toda, hermana?” I asked.
“You had it easy,” she said, sitting in one of the white wire chairs. “Being the boy, and being smart. All you had to do to get out of that house was get that scholarship to FU and you were gone.”
“I hardly disappeared. Mami can give you an exact count of how many Sunday dinners I missed while I was in school.”
“Yeah, but the only way I could get out was to marry Hernan.”
I cocked my head. “Something wrong there? He not treating you right?”
“He’s a sweetheart. And he loves la niña. It’s just… I wonder if I made a mistake, getting married so young, when all I really wanted to do was get out from under Mami’s thumb. Like maybe I should have run away or something instead.”
I sat back in my chair. “Wow. I had no idea you were unhappy.”
“It’s not like I’m miserable. But I never had the chance to have any fun.”
“You still dance?” I asked. Del had been into every kind of dance as a teenager, from jazzercise to the habanera, salsa, and bolero.
“Estás loco? When do you think I can get out of the house to dance?”
“Ask Mami to babysit sometime. She’d do it.”
“Manny. Who do you think takes care of Fabi when I’m at work? I can’t ask her to babysit on a weekend too.”
“You don’t have day care or something?”
She laughed. “You think Delfina Garcia would let her granddaughter go to day care? I drop the baby off on my way here, and pick her up on my way home.”
“How about this Saturday night?” I said. “I have no social life. I’ll come over and babysit, and you and Hernan can go to dinner or the movies or dancing or whatever.”
She shook her head. “By Saturday night estamos muertos.”
“Come on, Del. You guys could have some fun.”
“You’d really look after Fabi?”
“Claro. She’s my niece. And you’re almost my twin, according to that old lady at your register.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek, and I saw the broad smile I remembered of her. “You’re great, mi ’mano. I appreciate it. This Saturday?”
“Hold on; let me check my appointment book.” I held up an imaginary book in front of me and pretended to page through it. “Saturday works,” I said. “Call me once you talk to Hernan and figure out what you want to do.”
Del had to go back to work. “Come check out with me when you’re read
y,” she said. “I’ll give you my discount.”
I ordered an Elena Ruiz sandwich from the deli counter—cream cheese, strawberry jam, and sliced turkey on sweet Cuban bread—and picked a Jupina pineapple soda from the display case. I ate there in the café, thinking about what my sister had said. I didn’t think it had been easy to get away from my parents; I remembered my father yelling, my mother crying, tirades about how ungrateful I was to be so eager to run away.
In the end, I won. My social life was my own business, and the only sacrifice I made was going home for Sunday dinner almost every week. I hadn’t realized at the time how eager Maria del Carmen had been to get out of there. Our parents had agreed Beatriz could go to Miami-Dade Community College to study medical records management, but she had to live at home. She didn’t seem to mind, but who knew what was brewing inside her head?
I drove back to the site thinking about my sisters. When I got there, Estefani was still out, but Adrian had unlocked the trailer and was in the conference room with a contractor. I went to my office and worked on the schedule for a while. Around three Walter returned, singing and laughing as Estefani had predicted.
His cheeks were ruddy, and a lock of his dark hair had fallen over his forehead. He looked like a mischievious boy as he laughed at something one of his friends had said. I felt such a pang of longing that I couldn’t stand to be in the trailer, so I went out to the site to check on a couple of things. As I approached the corner where the footers were being poured I saw Camilo deep in conversation with a laborer. I heard Camilo say in Spanish, “You must develop your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When you have this one-to-one relationship with Jesus, everything is possible.”
I recognized the rhetoric of the Charismatic Catholics because my mother had an aunt who was always spouting that. She belonged to a Holy Spirit ministry in Hialeah, and every time we saw her, she tried to convince us to join her. My parents dismissed her—her church was full of prophecy, faith healing, and praying in tongues, my father said. He liked his religion simple and straightforward, though he still preferred the Latin Mass.
“You must bring the sacraments into your everyday life,” Camilo continued. The man, who had the round, open face I associated with Mexicans, nodded eagerly.
Camilo looked up and saw me. “I’ll finish with you later,” he said to the man. “Y tú, Manny, que haces por aquí?” What are you doing here?
“Just checking on things,” I said. “How’s the pour coming?”
“Todo va bien.”
“Going to meet the schedule for the rest of the week?”
“Sí.”
“Okay then.” I walked toward the next warehouse, looking at Camilo out of the corner of my eye as he resumed his conversation. I noticed he kept watching me until I turned the corner and lost sight of him.
Conga
Friday afternoon, Walter stuck his head in my office around four. “Want to take a walk with me?” he asked.
“Sure.” I jumped up so fast I knocked my chair over, and Walter laughed. “That’s what I like about you, Manny. You’ve got a lot of enthusiasm.” He clapped an arm around my back, and my body tingled. I had to remind myself that Walter was a Latino, like me, and we were an effusive, touchy-feely people. Just because he put his arm around me sometimes, pinched my cheek, and swatted my butt didn’t mean he wanted anything more intimate.
“I had the same energy when I was your age,” he said. “I worked construction from early in the morning until the afternoon. I’d go to school for classes and stay late in the library studying. Never thought twice about it.”
“You must have had some friends,” I said. “Gone out on Saturday night.”
He shrugged. “I had one good friend, a guy in the business department who worked as hard as I did. We hung out together on the weekends.” He had a faraway look in his eyes and nearly walked into a pile of conduits. “Chucho and I were like this,” he said, holding up two fingers tight together, then crossing one over the other.
“Was he one of the guys who was here the other day?”
Walter shook his head. “We had a falling-out. His life was going in one direction and mine—well, I didn’t know that I could go that way too. I met Dolores, and got married, and…well, you know the rest.”
I didn’t, but Walter saved me from having to say anything. “Speaking of water, why is there so much standing water over there?” he asked, pointing to where contractors were laying pipe under what would become warehouse two. “Make a note of that, Manny. We might need to get some pumps in here.”
We were back to business. But I felt I’d learned something important about Walter—I just wasn’t sure what it was.
As we walked back to the trailer, he said, “You have plans for the weekend?”
“Sleep,” I said. “Sleep and more sleep.”
“You need to get out and have some fun,” he said, and there was a weird look in his eyes. “Sow your wild oats and all that.”
“Are you kidding? By the time I get finished with work, I’m too tired to toss any oats, much less sow them,” I said, hoping he’d see I was kidding.
He laughed. “You’re young. What, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Don’t let your twenties slip past you,” he said. He rapped his knuckles on my door. “See you Monday.”
“Yeah. Have a good weekend.”
He returned to his office, and I left a few minutes later. All the way home, I thought about our conversation and wondered what it was he regretted not doing when he was young. I realized I didn’t know much about his marriage other than it was ending. I imagined him meeting his wife when he was still in high school. Perhaps she was the first girl he ever dated—or at least the only one he ever went to bed with. Was he regretting that choice now?
It wasn’t like he was ancient, or homely. He could certainly get laid if he wanted to, now that he was separated from his wife. But was that all? Somehow it felt like there was something more to what he’d said, something I wasn’t quite catching.
As I told Walter I would, I slept most of the day Saturday. That night I drove out to the apartment where Del and Hernan lived—a few blocks away from my parents’ house—and spent the evening with my niece. On my way home, the streets were crammed with late-night workers and partygoers, and I wondered again how Miami could survive with such a huge population crammed into a few thousand acres of low-lying ground, jammed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades.
It was the only place I’d ever lived, and though I longed for different experiences, I wasn’t sure I could ever relocate. My father had left his family and his island behind when he joined the Mariel boatlift, looking for something better across the Straits of Florida. I couldn’t imagine the kind of courage that took.
Would I be able to stay around, though, if I came out to my family? My parents loved me, sure, but they had their own ideas about my future. My papi disdained maricóns; could he accept one as his son?
I pushed those thoughts aside as I reached the MacArthur Causeway back to Miami Beach. The high-rise condos glittered ahead of me, and I thought I’d stop by a bar on my way home. It was only eleven thirty, and things were just heating up.
Roberto had been cagey all week, sending ambiguous text messages and ducking my phone calls. I wondered if I’d turned him off by being too forward the week before. But hell, what was the use of dating someone if you couldn’t have sex with him? Sure, he was handsome and sexy and charming, but there was no reason why I couldn’t go out and have some fun with my friends if he wasn’t around.
I called Gavin’s cell and discovered he and Larry were at Score. Over the roar of the house music in the background, I yelled, “I’ll be there in twenty. Wait for me.”
I drove home, parked, and walked over there. The streets around my building were crowded with restaurant-goers, and once I crossed Alton Road I had to dodge around lots of other late-night revelers.
Gavin and Larry were h
anging out in a corner of the bar with a couple of our frat brothers who were still in school at FU. They were already a round ahead of me, so I gulped my beer and squeezed over to the bar to get a second. Our group grew to accommodate a couple of Anglos, a pair of drag queens, and two Latino boys who tried to cover up how young they were with wispy mustaches. The whole group laughed and drank and then the two Latinos and I demonstrated a couple of dance moves.
In the Cuban culture, everybody dances. We’d have birthday parties when I was a kid, and even Abuelo and Abuela would hit the dance floor, performing complicated steps they had memorized as kids in Habana Vieja. Their specialty was the bolero, a mix of slow and quick steps.
My papi, on the other hand, loved the bachata, a very sexy, rhythmic dance where the key is the correct hip movement, which comes from a small push off the floor. I remembered being a kid, Papi holding my hands and demonstrating the hip swivel, then imitating him on my own to the applause of my family. Even though it originated in the Dominican Republic, it’s a quintessentially Cuban dance, and Del and I used to perform it together at family parties. When I looked back at the home movies of those parties, I’d crack up at the two little kids miming these intensely sexual moves, having no real idea what they were doing.
I loved to dance and hardly noticed the time passing. It was close to two a.m. when the drag queens convinced us to join them in a conga on Lincoln Road.
One of them had an iPod with a speaker attached, and he led us out of the bar, kicking his long, slim legs covered with fishnet stockings. His pal was a Lady Gaga clone, and I ended up behind her, with Larry hugging my ass behind me. I was kicking my feet and singing when I came face to face with Camilo, the site superintendent.
He was wearing a dark suit and had his arm around a woman who was probably his wife. They were with two other couples, all of the same age and same background. His eyes widened when he saw me, then narrowed menacingly.
The conga line dragged me forward, and I passed him without saying anything.
After the conga line disintegrated, I ended up back in my bed alone, jerking myself off to hazy fantasies fueled by lust and alcohol. Roberto kissed me, told me I was beautiful, and went down on me—but when he looked up from my crotch, it was Walter’s face I saw. His eyes looked the way they had in the men’s room—filled with a kind of desperate lust.
