“It’s just his way. He’s thinking a lot about college. Just leave him alone. Entiendes?” said Alberto, still not turning to look at Sharkey as they ambled along the hot sidewalk, the humidity heavy as wet gloves in the air.
They kept walking in stride until they hit Southeast 2nd Street and took a right, the park now a block ahead.
“Look, Alberto, I don’t mean to bring it up again, but you ever notice how your brother never talks to girls, and when we bring up kissin’ or somethin’, he looks disgusted? You think . . .”
Alberto halted his stride and turned to stare at Sharkey. He raised the lines on his brow: “Hey, didn’t I say to leave him alone!”
“All right,” said Sharkey, putting up his hands as if pretending to take a defensive posture. “But don’t you think it’s strange, though? He’s the older of you guys, and yet you’re the one chasing ass.”
“Sharkey, I asked you to lay off him! All right? He’s mi hermano, and he can do whatever he wants. Got that?”
Alberto had taken a half step towards Sharkey to emphasize how much he meant for him to drop the talk about his brother.
“Wow, man, I’m cool. I ain’t got nothin’ against nobody. Especially not Juan. He’s one of my boys. I just happen to like tits and ass.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
When they reached the park, it was nearly five o’clock, so Alberto knew he had to be home for dinner within an hour. Since arriving in America, even with Emilia constantly on his mind, he started to think more and more often about a girl at school named Guadalupe Herrera. She was a real bonita, just like he remembered feeling about Emilia. However, nothing could change the fact that she was in Cuba and he was now in Miami. He had no control over those circumstances. He also felt as though he had no control over his growing urges for all the pretty girls at school, in particular Guadalupe. He was a young man, and he knew when he felt something. His yearnings for other females besides Emilia were definitely real.
What would be the point at his age, he’d been pondering, of putting all his hope in one girl, in Emilia? It was crazy talk, stupido, Sharkey told him. Alberto’s quiet self-confidence attracted the girls at Immaculata High School, now coed with La Salle. He relished how the ladies were always quick to talk him up, check him out, no matter who he hung out with. But he’d taken an interest in Guadalupe since the first day he’d seen her walking the same streets home from school that he did: Bayshore to 17th to 22nd then the long walk up 22nd. Not until they reached 15th Street did they part in opposite directions. For several weeks now they had been easing forward with their talk after school. Their initial shroud of shyness had been pushed aside, and flirtation sparks had begun to fly. Before long, they started meeting up at different parks, and Alberto brought Sharkey along because it was easier for him to focus on Guadalupe among her friends if he had someone else with him, especially Sharkey, who enjoyed the opportunity of talking to the other ladies. Even with Sharkey’s weight, he had an attractive wave of thick, dark hair, a likeable pair of slightly oversized front teeth, and a quick wit to flirt. He was a big teddy bear with an effervescent personality, and girls latched on to him.
When they reached the park, Alberto immediately caught sight of Guadalupe with her heart-shaped face and her complexion smooth as butter, except for a small mole, a beauty mark, smudged on her right cheek. She also had a slender neck, long eye lashes, and silky brown locks. Alberto liked how she parted her hair in the middle and pushed her strands behind her ears. When she smiled, the glow of her skin became peachy. She was sitting with her friends, Amanda and Josephine, at one of the picnic tables under a latticed awning. Amanda had short, curly hair, which bobbed at her shoulders. Her smile exposed a bit of her upper gums, but she had nice skin and a set of perfectly curved eyebrows. Josephine was a bit on the plus size compared to the svelte figures of Guadalupe and Amanda, but her weight was not unattractive, rather ample in the right spots, such as in her jiggling breasts and sashaying backside. She had a round face and silky auburn hair. As the three girls sat at the table, two large eucalyptus trees loomed over them and casted a sweet honey smell while providing extra shade against the last heat streak of the afternoon.
The girls giggled and eyed Alberto and Sharkey as they walked up.
“What are you girls laughing at this afternoon?” asked Sharkey.
“Like we wouldn’t be out here on a Friday,” said Josephine.
“Hey, we don’t know what you girls do when you’re not talking to us fine gentlemen,” said Sharkey, spanning his arms and nodding as though he was the coolest guy in Miami.
“Who said you guys were guapo?” asked Amanda.
“Oh, please,” said Sharkey, grinning wide. “You hear that, Alberto? They tryin’ to question our good looks and our machismo.”
“We don’t know about your machismo, either,” said Josephine, and the girls laughed again as they looked Sharkey and Alberto up and down.
Alberto smiled at them as they laughed. He enjoyed listening to the banter, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Guadalupe, who pretended not to be sending signal glimpses at him.
“So what are you girls doin’ mañana?” asked Sharkey.
“Nothing with you guys,” Amanda replied with sass.
“Amanda, speak for yourself,” said Sharkey. “I’ll go ahead and ask Josephine and Guadalupe then.” He faced them. “What do you two wanna do tomorrow?”
“We’re not busy,” said Guadalupe, looking straight at Alberto.
“Neither are we,” said Alberto without hesitation.
“So what do you guys wanna do?” asked Josephine.
“We could meet you fine señoritas at South Beach,” said Sharkey. “Afterwards, we can have fun at the suite. My dad’s back in Venezuela this weekend.”
“What are we gonna do there?” asked Josephine.
“We can hang out. Smoke some weed,” Sharkey suggested, as though it was no big deal.
“Where you gonna get that?” asked Amanda.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Sharkey, a sly look surfacing on his face.
“What about Amanda?” asked Guadalupe. “She won’t have a date.”
“Hey, Alberto, we’ll get Juan. He ain’t doin’ nothin’ this weekend,” said Sharkey.
“I’ll ask him,” said Alberto.
“Then, we’re set,” said Sharkey to the ladies. “Meet us at the corner of 2nd Street and Ocean Drive at seven thirty tomorrow. We’ll have some fun.”
Alberto winked at Guadalupe. She blew him a kiss. He pretended to catch it and put it in his pocket. She lifted her eyebrows. He nodded and pretended to whistle. She put her finger to her lips, indicating to him to protect a secret. He joined his index finger to his thumb and gave her an “okay” sign. She threw her eyes at him. He wanted to hit a homerun.
Alberto and Sharkey hustled back to the store at the DuPont Plaza in hopes that Alberto’s mother hadn’t left for home yet. When they got to La Tienda, Juan was still checking out customers, so Alberto knew he made it in time for a ride home with his mother and brother back to their grandparents’ house for dinner. Lucretia remained in back finishing up paperwork and counting the money in the safe. After Juan finished with a customer, he pulled out a book from beneath the counter, a thick volume detailing landmark Supreme Court cases.
“Hey, Juan, we’re gonna need you mañana,” said Sharkey.
Slamming the book shut after he had barely had a chance to open it, he said, “What for? I’m planning on reading through some books I took out from la biblioteca.”
“No way, hombre,” said Sharkey. “Not tomorrow, not on a Saturday night. Those libros aren’t going anywhere. We need you to hang with us.”
“Why?” questioned Juan, annoyed because he knew Sharkey was going to mention girls.
“We got a three-way date going. But one of the girls needs a cool dude like you to escort her. So we told her about you,” said Sharkey.
“What? I don’t even know her,” said Juan
, his heart sinking in a bucket of nerves.
“Sure you do. She goes to Immaculata. I’m sure you’ve seen her around.”
“I don’t wanna go,” said Juan.
“Oh, come on Juan. You’ll ruin it,” begged Sharkey. “Alberto, tell him.”
“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” Alberto told his brother. Then he added, “I think it’ll be fun.”
“I’m not sure,” said Juan.
“You don’t have to be sure,” said Sharkey. “It’s not like you’re marrying the muchacha or something. You’re just hanging out with her. So what do you say?”
Sharkey and Alberto waited as Juan traced his finger over the title of the book, The Supreme Court: Its Landmark Decisions.
“All right,” he agreed.
Sharkey began slapping Juan on the back when Florida Senator George Smathers, a regular customer in the store, appeared around one of the aisles. The senator was a handsome man, what Juan imagined a Roman aristocrat would look like. He was tall with wide shoulders, a long nose on an oval-shaped face, light chestnut-colored eyes, neatly-parted dark hair, and a coy, alluring smile that barely revealed his teeth. As the senator came into full view, he had his arm around the waist of a beautiful Hispanic woman, a model type with long dark hair, long legs, and cleavage showing in her V-neck dress. She glowed with energy as though connected at the hip with the seductive senator. And behind the senator was a man with a wide, generous smile that opened up to the pearliest white teeth imaginable. He had dusty, reddish-brown hair parted to the left with a large tuft thrown and layered to the right. He was noticeably thinner than Senator Smathers, even a bit frail and sickly-looking, his eyes a little bulgy, but his charm was a coat of armor as he too had his arm around the waist of a beautiful woman, a buxom blonde.
“I heard you guys talking,” said Smathers, placing a box of Chanel No. 5 on the counter for purchase. “Your evening plans for tomorrow sound like fun.”
He looked at the boys across the counter as he pulled out his wallet from his back pocket.
“Yeah, we like to have a good time,” said Sharkey.
“I bet you do,” said the man with the white teeth and russet hair. His smile and accent were contagious, making the stunning blonde at his hip giggle and squirm against him.
“Go ahead, sweetheart, put the earrings on the counter. I’ll pay for everything,” said Smathers to his equally-beautiful date.
The boys watched as the woman with Smathers placed a set of rhinestones on the counter next to the box of perfume. Her low-drop, checkered dress drew the carnal attention of Alberto and Sharkey, their eyes exacting straight to her cleavage on display. Keeping his eyes tamed, Juan rung up the bill, and the Senator handed over two twenties.
“Let me get you a bag,” said Alberto, diverting his stare.
“It’s no trouble. Don’t bother,” said the senator, picking up both items, the perfume and the earrings, and handing them to his woman.
“Here’s your change, Senator Smathers,” said Juan, reaching to hand the senator a ten and a five and thirty-one cents.
“Go ‘head and keep it for you guys. Use it to have a good time with your ladies tomorrow night,” he said to Juan. He then turned to his friend, “Right, Jack?”
“Certainly, a good time is essential to keeping you young at heart,” said the man named Jack.
The boys detected a Boston accent, its enticement a babe magnet because Jack’s blonde clung to him like wetness to water, like sunshine to the sun. After Smathers was finished paying, Jack stepped up to the counter and purchased perfume and a pendant for his blonde beauty. And again, as Juan registered the transaction, his brother and Sharkey gawked at the woman’s princess-white skin, plunging also in a V-cut dress to expose her ample front.
When the Florida Senator and his friend Jack and their dates exited, Sharkey said, “Wow, I know why those guys got hot chicks. They’re some smooth motherfuckers.”
“Yeah, but we’ve never seen Mrs. Smathers. He’s got a different señorita every time he comes through here,” Juan pointed out. “And I bet that other guy isn’t with his wife either.”
“Well, then,” said Sharkey. “Those bastards are getting a lot of hot babes.”
Juan ignored his friend and opened his book again, trying to read.
* * *
Chapter 23
They put on their nicest button-down, collared guayaberas: Juan’s oyster white, Alberto’s kingfisher blue. Their slacks were similar too, fine linen, both light-colored: Juan’s daylight blue, Alberto’s mineral brown. As they stood next to each other in front of the mirror in the bathroom combing their hair, their grandfather appeared at the open door.
“Well, if I don’t have two of the finest young gentlemen in Miami living in my house. You two look ready to have all the girls chasing after you.”
“Abuelo, let us get ready,” said Juan, flipping his floppy russet hair out of his face.
“I understand. I was young once, you may care to know,” he said, smiling. His full goatee was a little white cloud floating around his mouth. “So I have something you’ll want.”
Their grandfather held out a bottle of Cubano cologne and demonstrated how to dab a few drops on their wrists and necks. Juan hesitated for a second, so Alberto reached out and secured the bottle. He untwisted the lid and lifted the bottle to his nose to whiff the scent.
“A little bit of that, you’ll drive the ladies crazy,” said their grandfather.
Alberto leveled his left wrist and flipped the glass bottle upside down and shook it lightly, allowing several drops from the nozzle to dot his wrist. He rubbed his wrists gently together and then patted them against the sides of his neck. He handed the bottle to his brother, who followed suit.
“It’s called Ocean Breeze. For men,” added their grandfather. “My young men. Now you boys have a good time.”
He winked at them as they left the house. Their grandmother smiled from her rocking chair with a roll of yarn in her lap that she was knitting into a winter shawl. She told them to be careful. They said they would. Their mother told them not to be out too late. They said they’d try, but weren’t sure what time they’d be home.
As they rode the 27th Street bus north to the Dolphin Expressway that took them over the bay at the MacArthur Causeway to Ocean Drive at South Beach, Juan kept pushing his russet bangs to the left side because he had parted his hair to the right. Alberto told him to relax, but Juan commented that Alberto didn’t have to worry about his appearance because his black hair, gelled back and glistening, made him resemble a movie star, an Errol Flynn or Cary Grant.
“Stop it Juan, you look great, so quit worrying.”
When they arrived at South Beach, Sharkey was already waiting. He was dressed in a marble white collared shirt with buttons and thin vertical blue stripes, and he sported cologne with the dewy scent of a rain forest.
“Donde está las muchachas? Where are the girls?” asked Juan.
“Paciencia, patience, bro’. They’ll be here. There are three of them. It takes ladies longer to get ready. You know that,” explained Sharkey. “It’s good we’re here first anyways. Shows initiative.”
Just as Sharkey was about to say something else, he spotted their date trio. “See, what did I tell you? There they are.”
He started walking down the sidewalk to greet them. Alberto walked beside him, looking guapo and confident. Juan trailed behind, his tongue cottony with anxiety. When they reached the girls, Sharkey first took Guadalupe’s hand, then Amanda’s, and finally Josephine’s. He gave each a gentle kiss on the back of the hand, giving Josephine a slightly longer and more tender kiss before weaving his fingers through her hand. Alberto followed Sharkey’s lead, starting with Josephine, then Amanda, and finishing with Guadalupe, whose hand he held after he kissed it. Juan watched the display of greeting and did the same, but when it came to taking Amanda’s hand in his, he wasn’t certain so instead he stood close to her.
“Where we goin’?” asked Josephine.
“We’re gonna walk to the end of the beach and watch the sunset,” said Sharkey. “There’s a snow cone vendor by the breaker at the north end. Dulceria, I think it’s called. We’ll get cones there and enjoy ourselves. Later, we’ll head back to the hotel suite. I got money for a cab, so we don’t have to walk.”
As they strolled a block up the street, Alberto and Sharkey held their girls’ hands. At the crosswalk, Amanda reached out to take Juan’s hand, and he allowed his fingers to interlace between hers. When they reached the other side of Ocean Drive, they walked to a bench, where they took turns sitting and taking off their footwear. The girls had on sandals, the boys each had on shoes and socks. The boys stuffed their socks in their shoes and rolled up their pantelones. Then they took their girls by the hand again and walked out onto the sand together. The beach was still warm and the sun still pressed out sheets of dusk, the clouds arranging different shades of blue and yellow against the graying sky. They made a straight line out of the soft sand towards the shore, where the waves picked up, rolling in and ironing forth the opal sands. Their footprints displaced the water as they stepped their way along the beach. The couples spaced out about two dozen feet between each other so they could share conversation. Sharkey complimented Josephine’s spaghetti-strap dress and told her how good she looked. Alberto told Guadalupe he liked her lavender summer dress and the way she let her long hair flow down her back. And against the gentleness of the setting sun, he realized her lithe beauty made him forget how the polished green of her eyes matched that of Emilia. Perhaps, he was still thinking too much about his departure from Cuba? Just let those days set like the sun overhead. This is my life now, he repeated to himself, and I have a beautiful girl with me, so don’t think of Emilia. Seriously, what’s she got on Guadalupe?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked after he hadn’t said anything for a long minute.
“Nothing,” Alberto said, giving her hand a little extra squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy Page 18
