Uptown Thief

by Aya De León

  “Why?” Marisol asked. “I look just like all the Cuban women here.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not a Cuban woman. You’re an American woman.”

  “I’m a Puerto Rican woman,” Marisol said.

  “With a purse full of American dollars.”

  “They wanna rob me?” Marisol asked.

  Cristina burst out laughing. “Hardly.”

  “Then what?”

  Cristina poured some sugar into her coffee. “A lot of these guys, Vladimir in particular, are jineteros.”

  “Gigolos?” Marisol asked.

  “Not exactly,” Cristina said. “I don’t think there’s an English equivalent. They see a woman like you, and you’re . . . you’re coming from the States, and you have money, and you’re Latina, and beautiful, and any one of them would gladly be your boyfriend for the time that you’re here. And if you wanted to marry them and bring them to the States, all the better.”

  “Did you get the same treatment when you came?” Marisol asked.

  “I was an incoming medical student, not a woman on vacation.” Cristina drank her coffee. “Most Latino students come from countries poorer than Cuba.”

  “They see me as a sex work client?” Marisol asked.

  “It’s different here,” Cristina said. “After the revolution, the government outlawed prostitution. I came back when Cuba broke ties with the Soviet Union, but women have a lot more control.”

  “Which is good,” Marisol said. “But what does that have to do with your neighbor?”

  “Jineteros like Vladimir—male or female—are more like gold diggers than sex workers. Maybe no money changes hands. Maybe you come back twice a year, and Vladimir is your boyfriend when you visit. Maybe you bring clothes or stuff for his family, even furniture. Vladimir is attracted to you. He assumes you’re good people because you’re Juan’s girlfriend’s sister. He’s excited because he can get to know you better than his Swedish or German girlfriends who don’t speak good Spanish.”

  “Would he marry them, too?” Marisol asked.

  “Probably not.” Cristina shrugged. “They live too far. Too hard to visit his family.”

  “I just can’t wrap my mind around that,” Marisol said. “In my experience, it’s only a fantasy that sex workers would have done it for free under different circumstances. As a client that would be a total turnoff. I’d always be worried that they didn’t really like me, that they were just doing it for the money.”

  “Maybe socialist sex work is different,” Cristina said. “Maybe the money is just a bonus.”

  “Picture that,” Marisol said, noticing her coffee had grown lukewarm. “Some young stud wanting to marry me for my money.”

  “He’s a complete hunk, right?” Cristina said, fanning herself. “The first day I met him, he was wearing his jeans so low I could practically see his pubic hair. Those lower abdominal muscles are insane.” Cristina carried the coffee cups to the sink. “And I hear he knows how to handle his business.”

  “As in financial business?” Marisol asked.

  “As in handle his business.” Cristina thrust her hips forward a few times.

  “How do you know all that?” Marisol asked.

  “Like Juan said, Havana is a city of gossip.”

  * * *

  Later they took a taxi back to the hotel and lay down for an evening nap in the air-conditioned suite. Kim and Jody had turned in for the night. Tyesha studied in the living room while Marisol and Cristina slept in her bed.

  “Just like at abuelita’s house under the mosquito net,” Marisol said.

  “Except without the heat and mosquitoes.” Cristina laughed. “God, I’ve missed the luxury of AC.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t get that here as a doctor,” Marisol said.

  Cristina shook her head. “I’m still a student. And being a doctor in Cuba is nothing like being a doctor in the States. That’s why I wanted to study here. It’s all about public health.”

  “Are you still gonna come back?” Marisol asked. “And work at the clinic?”

  “I have to,” Cristina said. “It’s a condition of my education.”

  “But you would anyway,” Marisol asked. “Even if you didn’t have to?”

  “Of course,” Cristina said. “That’s our plan.”

  * * *

  That Thursday night, Cristina kept vetoing Marisol’s dress options for the party. “You know people don’t have a lot of money here.”

  Marisol looked at the fuschia halter dress. “I got this for twelve ninety-nine on Twenty-seventh Street.”

  “It’s not just about cash,” Cristina said. “La gente don’t have access to a lot of cheap consumer goods, either.”

  She rummaged through Marisol’s suitcase. “How about this?” Cristina held up an emerald-green spaghetti strap top. “With the jeans you’re wearing.”

  “I guess . . .” Marisol said, but when they got to the party, she fit right in.

  Everyone greeted each other with a hug or kiss. Even more so than in Puerto Rico, there didn’t seem to be a concept of personal space. Vladimir welcomed her to the party, hugged her, stood with his arm draped over her, heedless of the moisture on her skin and under his arm. Cristina’s other neighbors did the same. Men and women, standing close enough to smell her breath, touching her shoulder for emphasis as they talked.

  Vladimir attended to her every need. More rum? Was she hungry? She must let him take her to the beach, to the discoteca during her stay. His brother was in a folkloric dance ensemble. Could he take her to their next performance?

  He put his arm around her waist. He did it casually, like Juan, across the room, had an arm around the shoulders of one of his buddies. Marisol could feel a heat between them that crackled independently of the thick, humid evening. His firm thigh pressed the side of her ass with a pressure that was just shy of insistent. He finessed it, so that she could easily move away if she didn’t like it. She stayed.

  Vladimir was a paradox of hard and soft. His frame was tightly muscled, but his body was relaxed. Confident but not tightly wound. Unlike the Latino men in the United States. It wasn’t so much the confidence that he could get her—would get her—in bed. More the confidence that everything would work out for him one way or another. That his life would be filled with beautiful women and good times. Such confidence was quite appealing. Particularly when packaged in such broad shoulders and such a firm ass. The cotton T-shirt clung to the ridges of muscle in his chest and abdomen. The shirt itself, an American relic from the eighties, was bright green with giant letters that said RELAX across the front. The shirt might be older than Vladimir himself.

  He stayed close, but didn’t monopolize her time. Friends and neighbors were eager to meet her, inquire about her life in Nueva York. Many were doctors, so she had to explain several times why she needed to run a community clinic in one of the most industrialized cities in the world.

  Around 2 a.m., neighbors went down the block to their houses with sleeping children in their arms, little open mouths lightly snoring in the night air. Medical students hopped onto bicycles and rode off into quiet streets.

  “So has our boy swept you off your feet yet?” Cristina asked, back at the house.

  Juan had crashed out in the bedroom a few hours before. The two sisters lay on the couch, talking.

  “He’s very attractive,” Marisol said, stifling a yawn.

  Cristina laughed. “What are you trying to say? ‘He’s so sexy it’s boring’?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisol said. “I was sort of dating someone for a minute.”

  “You were dating?” Cristina asked.

  “Do you remember Raul?” Marisol picked at a stray thread in the sofa. “His sister was my friend Gladys from high school.”

  “The skinny one?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What happened?” Cristina asked.

  “I guess I fell in love.” Marisol shrugged. “Since we go so far back, he sort of slipped
past my defenses. I never felt that way about anyone before.”

  “You broke it off?” Cristina asked.

  Marisol gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “He did,” Marisol said. “Damn hypocrite. So down for a woman who runs a clinic for sex workers, but when he learned I used to be one myself?”

  “What the fuck?” Cristina said.

  “I don’t know,” Marisol said, her eyes filling. “Maybe it was me. Maybe all the crazy shit when we were kids has made me—”

  “Scared of men?” Cristina asked. “You and me both. Juan had to work so hard to get me to trust him.”

  “It’s more than that,” Marisol said, blinking tears back. “I feel kind of shut off, split into pieces. Like I could love somebody or fuck them but not both.”

  Cristina raised an eyebrow.

  “And even the loving part is kinda not happening. I mean, the only person I really love, as in, think-about-them-when-they’re-not-even-there love, is you.”

  “Because coming up, we only had each other,” Cristina said.

  “Nobody else feels permanent,” Marisol said. “It’s fine when they’re there, but if they left, I’d just shrug it off.”

  “I love you, too, Maiso,” Cristina said, using her baby nickname for her sister. “But you gotta open up to other people. You can’t spend your whole life just loving me.”

  “What do you suggest? Vladimir?”

  “Definitely,” Cristina said. “A heartbroken woman could always use a little stiff dick to get her mind off it.”

  Marisol’s mouth fell open. “You did not just say that.”

  “Your baby sister isn’t a baby anymore,” Cristina said. “It wasn’t just Juan’s sensitive demeanor that won me over, tú sabes?”

  “Whatever,” Marisol said, and kissed her sister good night.

  Chapter 29

  Havana’s Spanish colonial architecture, botanical outdoor plazas, towering Catholic churches, and brightly colored stucco apartment buildings reminded Marisol of Puerto Rico. The unexpected visual factor was the presence of Soviet buildings throughout—hulking, gray, industrial blocks. Nineteen fifties–era American Fords and Chevrolets dotted the landscape like dinosaur remains, but they still ran.

  A couple of weeks after the party, Marisol told Cristina not to wait up for her.

  She and Vladimir walked along the malecón—the seawall in Havana. It was humid, twilight, with a few dark clouds threatening rain, but the Habaneros were out in droves. Couples, families, clusters of young people, strolling up and down the sidewalk next to the sea. Cars driving by with windows wide open.

  Marisol wore flip-flops with a low-cut pink top and a peasant skirt. Vladimir was gorgeous in a Brazil soccer jersey and jeans.

  “You’re very beautiful, Marisol,” he said in Spanish, as a wave crashed against the railing in front of them.

  Marisol shrugged. “I just look like the average tri-gueña here in Cuba.”

  “Much more beautiful than average,” Vladimir said. “And you’re very interesting—different. I’ve never been able to travel outside of Cuba, so I’m always curious about foreigners. You’d rather stay in a crowded house than at a big hotel. It makes me want to know about you, about your life in the United States. I wonder why aren’t you married.”

  Marisol laughed. “I got close to getting married once,” she said. When she had told the sugar daddy she was leaving, he had suggested marriage. Like a business negotiation. She’d proved her worth, and he was willing to improve the compensation package.

  “You didn’t love him?”

  “How old are you, Vladimir?” she asked.

  “Twenty-four,” he said.

  “I was around your age,” she said. “He was okay, but he couldn’t offer anything but money.”

  “Not a bad thing to have,” Vladimir said.

  “But I could never be independent,” Marisol said. “It would always be his money. And I’d be the one earning it by sitting around all day, waiting for him to come home and then waiting on him. That’s no life.”

  “But it would be better after you had children,” Vladimir said.

  “He didn’t want kids,” Marisol said.

  Vladimir shook his head. “A wealthy man who doesn’t want children?”

  “Guys like him have no concept of family,” she said.

  Vladimir frowned and tilted his head to the side. “I can see that,” he said. “I’ve dated foreign women who took me to nice hotels and restaurants, and for spa massages, but I wouldn’t want to live in their countries with them full-time. I’d miss my family.”

  “Exactly,” Marisol said.

  “No amount of money is worth being apart from the people you love,” Vladimir said.

  “Or the work that you love,” Marisol said. “I’ve had plenty of jobs I didn’t love just to pay the bills. But now I’m passionate about what I do. Aren’t you socialists supposed to believe in the working class?”

  Vladimir laughed. “I’m not much of a socialist. I’d move to the States if I could.”

  “What about your family?” Marisol asked.

  “I’d get settled and send for them,” he said. “My heart will always be in Cuba, pero no es fácil, even with the blockade lifted. If I want to start a family with someone, where will we live? All together in one bedroom in my parents’ house, like my sister? Maybe my time in fancy hotels has spoiled me, but I want more.”

  “And you think it’s in the States?”

  “It’s definitely not here,” Vladimir said. “My life is fine for now, while I’m young. But in the future, I want options.”

  “Cristina thinks you want a woman to take you to the States.”

  Vladimir laughed. “Guilty as charged. But it’s not you. If you didn’t want the older man who could keep you, then you don’t want to be the older woman who can keep me.”

  “So what do you want with me?” Marisol asked.

  Vladimir laughed. “I’m hoping you’ll take me to a nice hotel and let me make love to you. And let me show you Cuba. And make love to you some more. I want to enjoy you, Marisol.”

  His arm had been slung over her shoulders, but now he walked his fingers gently, stealthily, down toward her breast, not groping, not tickling, just brushing.

  “Would you still want to make love to me if I didn’t have any U.S. dollars? If I was Cuban? A woman who lived in your neighborhood?”

  “If you were Cuban, I would have already made love to you.”

  * * *

  Marisol checked them into the Hotel Palacio. The moment they stepped into the room, Vladimir pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He was incredibly tuned in to her. Like in dancing salsa, the pressure of the man’s hand against the woman that maintains the connection and checks in: Are you ready for me to turn you?

  His kisses were like questions. Do you like this? He didn’t crowd her; he held her close, but not crushing. Just when she worried that maybe it really was a gigolo act, she got close enough that she could feel his erection. From the hardness between his legs, she could tell that whatever the context, the circumstances, his desire was real. She surrendered to it.

  She kissed him back, pressed her tongue into his mouth, answering: Yes, I like it. She pressed her body against him, her navel against his erection, her breasts against his chest. He caressed the back of her neck, delicately licked along her earlobe, slid a hand down the side of her thigh.

  He didn’t rush. He moved with the confidence of a man who was used to getting and giving pleasure, without worry that anyone would have to do without. Vladimir slid a hand down the back of her skirt and caressed her ass, pressing her hips into him.

  Suddenly, Marisol had a flash of her Washington Heights hotel. Vladimir was the taste of home she’d been chasing all those nights. But without the random, razor edge of danger. And without the mutual suspicion of immigrants armored for a game of take-or-be-had. She could relax with him. Let him lead.

  She slid her hands up under his shirt, her fingers stu
mbling for a second over a scar on his side. His hands were under her shirt, sliding beneath the wires and fabric of her bra, cupping her breasts, gently stroking her nipples, and she felt a surging ache. She walked backward, pulling him toward the bed, kicking off her flip-flops.

  Vladimir looked into her face and grinned. Lifted her up and sat her on the bed, sliding his hands up her thighs. He hooked one of his index fingers in the front of her panties, and Marisol lifted up her hips so he could slide them down over her ass. When he had pulled them off, he hiked up her skirt and began to kiss her thighs. Marisol tangled her hands in his hair, ran her fingers along the strong bones in his jaw, caressed his shoulders.

  He kissed her outer lips, tangling his tongue in her hair, nuzzling along the opening. She moaned and he placed a string of tiny kisses along the line where her lips met. He had an authentic enthusiasm and curiosity about her body.

  Marisol threw her head back and gripped his shoulders.

  Vladimir pushed the skirt out of the way, reached up, and unhooked her bra. As he ran his tongue up and down, just inside her lips, teasing, he slid his hands around to the front of her body and caressed both her breasts, stroking his thumbs back and forth across the tips of her nipples.

  Marisol groaned with anticipation, feeling her own eagerness, feeling his enjoyment of her pleasure, feeling, even without seeing or touching him, that he was just as turned on.

  And then, without warning, he plunged his tongue right to the tender spot of her clitoris, and she gasped and collapsed back on the bed.

  “Sí, cariño,” he encouraged in a low murmur that vibrated between her legs.

  He teased her. Used his tongue slowly and skillfully. His fingers on her breasts, tongue on her clit. He moved one hand down and gripped her ass, pulling her in closer to him, sliding his tongue inside her. He felt her tense up and slowly pulled his mouth away.

  “Don’t stop,” she murmured.

  He pulled back and she could hear him unbuckling his jeans and stepping out of them. He produced a condom, and rolled it on himself.

  As she looked down across the tangle of her blouse, unhooked bra, hiked-up skirt, and open thighs, she beheld a huge erection.