Back to Blood

13





A La Moda Cubana


It was about five minutes before noon when the Sergeant and Nestor walked three blocks from the Starbucks and arrived at the main police headquarters at 400 East Second Avenue N.W. They kept their cop shades on, even though the shades plunged the lobby, the waiting area, into the last dim dying moments of dusk… but not so dark that they couldn’t see all the cops looking at them and checking them out.

The Sergeant said, “The first one a these suckers tries to get smart with me, I’m gonna bite his f*cking nose off for him.”

The force was spared any impending proboscission when the hot cubana named Cat Posada—unh huhhh, Cat—appeared from out of nowhere—or nowhere to two men leading a twilight life behind their cop shades, and gave them a perfect Girl from Ipanema smile—goes ahhhhhh—and said they should come with her. Apparently, the Chief was smart enough to know that nothing cools off a young male’s rankles faster than a hot girl’s charms.

On the elevator up, Nestor practiced the look he wanted to show the Chief: I’m a real cop… shoulders back, military-style, correct posture to burn, head back, chin down. He wasn’t so sure about the chin down… it did something funny to his lips—and at that very moment the Sergeant glanced over and said, “What’s the matter with you?” Nestor decided he would only lose points with lovely Cat Posada if he opened that subject up in front of her… Why did he even care? He just did. Why did he care about how he looked in front of guys in the video game arcade he’d never see again?… the girl at the cash register at Starbucks?… two young black guys walking toward him on the street yesterday, minding their own business? Did he try to look so tough, they wouldn’t even think of f*cking with him? Half your life you spent wondering how you looked to this total stranger and that one…

When they reached the third floor, lovely Cat led Nestor and the Sergeant down a long, too narrow, too gloomy hallway lined with small offices, doors open… revealing the little bureaucratic cogs, many of whom really would recognize them as the two racist cops from YouTube… He took every glance to be an accusing stare. Un negro employee looked his way—nothing more than that—looked his way. He felt terribly embarrassed and falsely condemned. He wanted to stop and explain… it wasn’t like that at all!—not in my case!… They reached an office way down at the corner, and gorgeous Cat—men are terrible! Even under pressure of something serious, something he feared, Nestor kept thinking of her as lovely, gorgeous Cat—and maybe she’d like to go have some coffee later? The sublime Cat motioned for them to wait a moment while she went inside, and they heard her say, “Chief, Sergeant Hernandez and Officer Camacho are here.” When the radiant Cat came out, she smiled at them, the irresistible Cat did, and indicated that they should go in. She walked the other way without looking back pop went the fantasy.

Nestor was unnerved by the Chief’s expression. He was sitting at his desk and barely even looked up when Nestor and the Sergeant walked in. Now he did look up and aimed his forefinger like a revolver at a couple of straight-back chairs side by side directly in front of his desk.

“Have a seat,” he said in a not particularly hospitable way.

Straight-back chairs… the office was on a corner and had big windows with a view of… not much of anything. It was a lot smaller and less imposing than Nestor had pictured it in his mind.

The Chief leaned back in his big swivel chair and just gazed at them without any expression for a moment, and that moment stretched out s t r e t c h e d o u t… Nestor became acutely aware of just how big the man was… and how dark his face… and that plus the Chief’s dark-navy uniform made Nestor hyperaware of the whites of his eyes. He looked powerful enough to be a whole other order of Homo sapiens. A cop’s Heaven of gold stars, four on each side, ran along each side of his collar, making the Chief’s mighty neck official.

Finally the Chief spoke. “You two have any idea what’s been going on with your little YouTube performance over the past six hours or so?”

He hadn’t even gotten the “or so” out of his mouth before the Sergeant, eyes ablaze, broke in, “I’m sorry, Chief, but that wasn’t any ‘little performance!’ That was the performance of my duties! And some… bastard… tries to do me in by posting a… a… a tampered version of that uh uh uh illegal video on YouTube!”

Nestor was stunned. ::::::For God’s sake, Sarge, you’re crazy! You’re a two-legged case of insubordination.::::::

The Chief was stunned, too. What kind of impudent—whereupon he leaned across the desk and roared in the Sergeant’s face, “You’re telling me the thing is a fake? That it isn’t even you? Or somebody put words in your mouth? Or some bastard’s trying to do you in? And somehow he can fake your voice and have you ranting like some goddamn Ku Klux Cuban cracker? Who is this fiendish bastard, Sergeant? I’d really like to know!”

“Look, Chief, I’m not saying what I’m saying. That thing on YouTube’s not what I was saying… you know? I’m saying the bastard posts what I’m saying but he don’t say he’s cut out the part that made me say what I’m saying!”

Roaring: “Shut up, Hernandez! Nobody gives a good f*ck about what you’re saying you said. What you said is on the f*cking world wide web, and you made yourself very clear, and you got any idea at all what that racist YouTube segment a yours has blown up into? Do you know how many other sites, blogs, and news outlets have picked up the f*cking video?”

“It’s not any segment a mine, Chief—”

“What’s the matter with you, Hernandez? You deaf? You dense? You don’t know what shut up means?”

The “Hernandez” is a left hook to the ribs. Jorge Hernandez is no longer “Sergeant.” That gets his attention, more than the scolding. He’s sitting straight up, rigid in the straight-back chair with his mouth open, while the Chief says:

“I’ve been getting calls and e-mails, texts, and f*cking tweets, ever since six o’clock this morning, and the goddamned thing hadn’t been out for more than a couple of hours at that point—and these e-mails and tweets are not just coming from Overtown and Liberty City and Little Haiti. They’re coming from all over the goddamned world! I get shit from France like ‘You, with all your pious talk about human rights and freedom and the rest of it—and now we see what American criminal justice is really like’—that’s the kind of shit I’m getting, Hernandez, and what I’m getting—”

Hernandez—the guy is too much! He tries to break back in! “Look, Chief, they can’t say that, because—”

He never completes the sentence. He’s paralyzed by the look on the Chief’s face. The Chief doesn’t say a word. He gives an ominous smile, the sort of me-beating-the-shit-out-of-you smile that says, “You little faggot! Any time you want to take this off the official level, just say the word, and we’ll step outside and I’ll wrap your ascending colon around your head like a turban for you.” Chastened, the Sergeant shut up.

In a softer, calmer tone, the Chief said, “And what I’m getting is nothing compared to what the Mayor’s getting. It’s a goddamned shit flood over there. This thing has gone viral. This isn’t some picture from thirty-something feet away of police officers who look like they’re standing over some poor bastard on the ground and just whaling away at him with their billy clubs and you don’t know why and you don’t know what they’re saying. This time the camera was up close and right on top of the two of you, and it picked up every word you said, and not only the words but the expressions on your faces when you said them, and your faces said it all, louder than your words.”

The Chief paused in a… significant manner. He stared, not very pleasantly, at the Sergeant and then the same way at Nestor. “Either of you two ever been in a play? You know… onstage?”

Neither of them said a word. Finally the Sergeant shook his head no, and Nestor did the same thing.

“I didn’t think so,” said the Chief. “So it wasn’t some great job of acting. The two a you put on a genuine exhibition of racial bigotry for the whole f*cking world, didn’t you, a nice sincere exhibition.”

The Chief was glowering at them, but now it was Nestor who was desperate to break in. ::::::But this is totally unfair! You didn’t pay attention to what I actually said! You can’t just lump me together with the Sergeant! Don’t you have any idea of what started this whole thing? You’re not some clueless work-a-daddy who looks at the thing and thinks it all began with two Cuban cops throwing that big black hulk flat out on the floor and then calling him this and that just for the fun of it?!:::::: And then Nestor’s rope broke:

“That’s not fair, Chief”—his voice started rising on the way to a scream—“because all I said—”

“You, too, Camacho! Shut up! Both a you listen and listen carefully to every word I say.” The Chief paused. He seemed to be debating whether or not to let Nestor really have it. He must have decided no. When he resumed, his voice took on a tone of blunt reasoning. “Look, I know the video cut everything that explains what drove you to that point. I know the urge to kill some punk who’s just tried to kill me, because I’ve been there a hell of a lot more than you have. I know what it is to wanna bury the motherf*cker with every jab you can get out of your mouth. I’ve been there, too. But you two had to ring the f*cking gong, didn’t you. You had to come up with the worst brand of bigotry in America today. You had to come up with a goddamn thesaurus of the insults guaranteed to hurt black folks’ feelings the most. And I’ve been there, too. Me, I don’t take any a that shit anymore, and I’ll break every bone in the body of any fool who directs it at me, from the humerus to the hip socket to the hyoid. I guarantee I will f*ck up any cracker who tries to put that shit over on me.”

Nestor was dying—dying—to cry out. ::::::But it wasn’t me! I didn’t say anything wrong!:::::: Two things held him back… One, he had a live fear of the Chief and what he might do. And two, if he started trying to pin the blame on the Sergeant… he’d be ostracized—by these guys, the brotherhood, the police force, Hernandez, Ruiz, even americanos like Kite and McCorkle from the Marine Patrol, and yeah, even the Chief. ::::::I won’t take this kind of abuse from my dad, my papi, anymore, but I’ll take it from this big black man at that desk. Cops are my whole life, the only people I have now. And what if sixty seconds from now it turns out that the Chief’s bone-crushing anger is just the build-up to canning us, me and the Sergeant, firing us, dumping us like a couple of dead fish gone high?::::::

The next words out of the Chief’s mouth were “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna fire you, I’m not gonna demote you. I think I know you two guys. You’re two cops…” He paused, as if to let that sink in. “Whatever else you are—and you’re probably a stone-cold irredeemable racist, Hernandez—you both have medals for valor, and they don’t just get handed out to improve morale. But what we’ve gotta do in the short run, it’s not so understanding and forgiving of human frailty.”

He smiled slightly when he said “human frailty.” It was his first affable smile since he began this lecture. Okay, thought Nestor, ::::::but what is supposed to be amusing about “human frailty,” unless the Chief wants to show that he knows he was using a bullshit expression? And who was “we”—or was it just another one of these bullshit words politicians like to use by way of saying, “You’re not just looking at one man here, you’re in the presence of the Power”?::::::

“We’re going to have to relieve you from duty,” the Chief said. “As I said, this is what we gotta do in the short run. It’s not a permanent thing. You’ll be paid as usual.”

Nestor looked at the Sergeant. The Sergeant had his lips compressed and kept clenching his jaw muscles. He seemed to have some knowledge about just what “relieved from duty” meant that Nestor didn’t have. Nestor worked up enough courage to ask, “Chief… could you tell me what that means exactly? We come in and do desk work?”

“No,” said the Chief. “If you’re relieved from duty, you don’t do any work at all.” The Chief’s face was a stone once more.

“You don’t do any work?” By the time he finished the question, Nestor found himself no longer looking at the Chief but at the Sergeant. Somehow he had the feeling—only that, a feeling—that the Sergeant would give him a straighter answer.

The Sergeant was looking at the Chief with an almost impudent little smile.

“No, you won’t be doing any work,” said the Chief. Same stony expression. “And you won’t be coming in. You’ll have to be available for calls at home from eight a.m. to six p.m. every day.”

“Calls to do…” Nestor couldn’t pull himself together long enough to complete the question.

“Not to do anything,” said the Chief. “You just have to be available for the calls.”

Nestor looked at him blankly, catatonically.

“And you surrender your badge and your service revolver.”

::::::Surrender?… my badge and my service revolver?… and do nothing?::::::

“You might as well hand them over to me… now.”

Nestor looked at the Sergeant, who was looking at the Chief with a resigned twist to his lips. He had known all along, hadn’t he? Nestor was worse than stunned. He was frightened all over again.

Barely an hour after Camacho and Hernandez had left his office, Cat Posada brought the Chief a hand-delivered letter and arched her eyebrows in a way that says, “Oh ho! What do we have here?!”

The Chief had the same reaction, but he didn’t show it until she had left the room. ::::::God, she is some kinda hot, Miss Cat Posada—and I’m not gonna take one step down that road.:::::: He looked at the letter again and shook his head and sighed. The return address was in the upper left-hand corner written in ballpoint pen, and the name was Nestor Camacho. He had never seen an officer relieved of duty begin his appeal barely one hour later. ::::::Bad move, Camacho. There’s nothing you can say that won’t make it worse.::::::

He sliced open the envelope and read,

Dear Chief Booker,



Respectfully, can an officer relieved of duty give information he got before he was relieved of duty? Hoping that he can, please respectfully accept the following in the case of the teacher José Estevez who was arrested after an altercation at Lee de Forest Senior High School.



::::::The kid’s respectfulling me half-to-death, and he’s totally offing English grammar.:::::: But as the kid blundered on, he began to make sense. He was saying that the student whom Estevez had supposedly attacked, François Dubois, was the leader of a gang and that he and the gang had intimidated at least four students into giving false information to the investigating officers. He gave their names and said, “Two of them are sixteen years old, and two of them are seventeen years old. They are not ‘tough guys,’ they are not gang members”—he put tough guys in quotes, because he couldn’t come up with a more dignified term, no doubt—“they are only ‘boys.’ They are already afraid they are getting into serious trouble by false testimony. Our Department will get them to tell the truth quickly.” The grammar was getting bloodier and bloodier, but the potential of this information the Chief liked… a lot.

He didn’t even bother to summon Cat Posada over the intercom. He just yelled out the door, “Miss Posada! Get me Lieutenant Verjillo!”

Thank God he had Camacho figured wrong. He wasn’t making an appeal. He was just being a cop.

Magdalena kept her dressy clothes at her official address, the little apartment she rented with Amélia Lopez on Drexel Avenue. Her declarations about turning her back on Hialeah and the Hialeah Cuban life had been many and open… and loud anytime she could shove them in her mother’s face. Yet there was still enough Catholic upbringing in her to want to keep up appearances. Suppose some old friend or relative… or her mother or father, although they wouldn’t dare… happened to use some outrageous sob story to prevail upon Amélia to let her into the apartment. She wanted it to look like she actually lived there. At Norman’s she mainly kept her white I’m-a-nurse dresses and some weekend-type clothes, jeans, matelot shirts, bikinis, tank tops, shorts, sundresses, cotton cardigan sweaters, and the like.

It so happened that on Friday she was inside her bedroom closet—inside her closet in the moral apartment—trying to get dressed in a furiously great hurry, clad so far in nothing but a thong, thrashing, thrashing, thrashing, panic-driven, among two closet rods’ worth of hanging garments, muttering louder and louder… “Oh, my God… I don’t believe this… it was hanging right next to that.” Thrash thrash thrash “Oh, shit… not even one… Chez Toi… What’s my—”

“Dios mío, qué pasa, Magdalena?” And there was Amélia in the doorway, in her T-shirt and jeans. Magdalena didn’t even look up. Neither of them was shy about seeing the other stark naked or as near to it as Magdalena was now.

“I can’t find anything to wear. Lo es qué pasa.”

Amélia chuckled. “Who can? Where you going?”

Amélia was a pretty girl from Peru, although not as pretty as she was… she had a round face with big dark eyes and miles of glistening dark hair. She was about Magdalena’s size but ever so slightly thick in the ankles. One thing about her Magdalena truly envied, however: Amélia was sophisticated, at least compared to any other nurse she knew. Amélia was twenty-six. She had graduated with a BA from EGU before even thinking about nursing school. Somehow she just knew things… she caught on to references… She was a real adult, at least in Magdalena’s eyes… a real adult a real adult a real adult—and Magdalena responded: “Some place called Chez Toi.”

“Some place called Chez Toi,” said Amélia. “You don’t fool around when it comes to some place, do you!”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Me? I wouldn’t even try. It’s impossible to get a reservation, and the prices are insane. Who’s taking you? Let me guess… your friend Dr. Lewis.”

“Yep.” Magdalena felt strangely glum about the admission and didn’t know exactly why. For whatever reason, she was becoming weary and embarrassed by this sexual bond with her employer. “You got it… but help me anyway, will you? I can’t find anything that’s gonna look right at a place like that. I just don’t own any fancy dresses.”

Amélia went into the closet herself while Magdalena stood outside with her arms folded beneath her breasts. She began pulling back hangers rapidly, one after the other, at a machine-like pace clack… clack… clack… clack. Then she stopped and looked at Magdalena from deep in the closet.

“You know what?” she said. “You’re right. You don’t have anything. If I were you, I’d go in another direction.”

“What other direction?” said Magdalena. “Norman’s going to be here any minute.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Amélia. She emerged from the closet with a hanger bearing a short black skirt.

“That? That’s just a plain cotton skirt. I got it at Forever 21. Only comes down to here.” She placed the edge of her hand barely halfway down her thigh.

“Wait a sec, and I’ll show you. You’re gonna look amazing!” She laughed in a slightly mischievous way. “You’re gonna love it!” She practically ran to her room, yelling over her shoulder, “And forget putting on a bra!”

In no time she was back with a big smile on, holding what looked to Magdalena like a corset, but a corset made of black silk with two black silk cups at the top. Beneath each cup three rows of what looked like zippers ran to the bottom of the thing.

“What is that?” said Magdalena. “It looks like a corset.”

“It is like a corset, when you get right down to it,” said Amélia. “It’s a bustier.”

“A bus-te-ay? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of bustiers, but I guess I never saw anybody wear one.”

“You just put that on with your black skirt—and you’ll look hot as shit!”

“Are you serious?” Magdalena stared at the thing. “I don’t know, Amélia. They’ll think I’m a hooker.”

“Bustiers are in right now. I could show you a dozen magazines.”

“What do I wear over it?”

“Nothing! That’s the whole point! At first it looks like some kind of lingerie. See all these little lines of fake zippers? But then you see it’s made of silk, and it covers you from the waist up just as well as a ball gown—more, if you’ve noticed what all the models are wearing these days.”

Magdalena looked highly dubious. “I don’t know…”

“Look, Magdalena, what do you want to look like, some cubana wannabe americana wearing a proper dress from the tag sale at the discount mall?”

That brought Magdalena up short. She was speechless… running all the possibilities through her mind like a number cruncher. “I don’t know… I just don’t know…” She turned her hands into tight little frustrated fists. “And Norman’s gonna be here any second, and this Chez Toi is such a big deal.”

“You gotta be the best you,” Amélia went on, “and that’s a la moda cubana! Just a couple more things. You got a gold necklace? You know, nothing showy.”

“I’ve got one.”

Magdalena turned and opened a bureau drawer. She produced a necklace with a small gold cross hanging from it.

“A cross!” said Amélia. “That’s perfect! In fact, you don’t know how perfect that is. This won’t take a second,” said Amélia. “Just get into the skirt and get into the bustier, and you’re ready! I’ll zip it up in back.”

Magdalena let loose with a big sigh of despair but did it anyway, and Amélia zipped up the back, which was cut so low it left her bare down to about six inches above the waist.

“Now put on the necklace.” Magdalena put on the necklace.

“Perfect!” said Amélia. “Now come look at yourself in the mirror.”

Magdalena was shocked by what she saw. The bustier had pushed her breasts up so high, it created a very visible cleavage and rounded them slightly on top.

“Oh, my God,” said Magdalena. “They look so big.”

“ ‘Big’ is what we’re after,” said Amélia. “You look great. And that little cross? Didn’t I tell you? Perfection.”

The cross lay upon her bosom right where the cleavage began.

“You’re like a virgin on a hill overlooking the Devil’s playground, Magdalena! Just have the confidence. Tonight is all yours, Magdalena, yours! Smile a lot. Smile at empty spaces on the walls, if you have to. All of Chez Toi will be coming to you, not you to Chez Toi. You know what your secret will be? You’ll make your entrance a la moda cubana. You won’t have to act… like anything! You’ll be the most comfortable, most confident person in the house!”

The whistler began whistling atop Magdalena’s bureau, and Amélia practically jumped out of her skin… Magdalena’s cell phone ring, it was… Nestor had rigged it up for her—the sound of a man whistling a tune, but nobody knew what tune. He loved playing around with things like that. His own phone rang with some hip-hop song. What was it, now? Oh, yes. “¡Caliente! Caliente baby… Got plenty fuego in yo’ caja china”—but that gave Magdalena no twinge of nostalgia at all. It merely made her think about what babies they had been… furtively doing the in and out, in and out, in and out always looking for some friend’s empty bed nobody would stumble upon… She couldn’t believe what children they had both been… living for the in and out, in and out, in and out—“Hello?”

“Magdalena, I thought you were going to be waiting downstairs!” Norman, of course. “There’s no place to park.” Norman, resentful and cross.

“Be right down!” Magdalena wheeled about to study herself in the mirror again. She started shaking her head. “I just don’t know about this, Amélia…”

“I do know!” said Amélia. “Chez Toi needs you. They need a little sex, and it’ll be arriving looking very sweet! There’s a cross between your boobs!”

Magdalena was still staring at the creature in the mirror, still transfixed by herself. “Oh, Dios mío, Amélia!” There was a little tremor in her voice. “You better be right! There’s no time to change, anyway. Norman will kill me!”

“You’re a vision, Magdalena, a vision. Just remember two things. You’ve been revirginated. You’re a virgin with a cross over your heart! You’re younger, prettier, and purer than any other woman at Chez Toi. Remember that—and be confident. You’re better than they are… the snobs…”

By the time she came down the elevator and went out to Norman’s car, her spirits, which had been lifted by no more than a thread in the first place, had collapsed. What was she doing? Some virgin… yeah, some virgin trying her best to look like a slut… in a bustier. What a fool she was!

But as soon as she opened the door of Norman’s Audi, he broke into a big lascivious smile and said, “Heyyyy, look at you! The hell with Chez Toi! Let’s go straight to my place!”

Magdalena slid into the passenger seat. “You sure this isn’t too much?”

“You’re too much, Magdalena!” He kept leering at her. Norman wasn’t the best judge in the world. ::::::He is half crazed when it comes to sex, my eminent porn-addiction psychiatrist.:::::: Still, it was encouraging. At least her getup wasn’t a total obvious disaster. ::::::Be confident! Well, not yet. But maybe I have a fighting chance.::::::

As they drove down Lincoln Road, Norman said, “Have you seen this thing on YouTube?”

“What thing?”

“You’ve got to see it! There’s a video of these two Miami cops on top of a black guy—they’re white—they’ve got this black prisoner lying on the floor with his hands tied behind his back, and they’re on top of him, giving him elbows to the head and calling him everything short of you nigger you can imagine! You’ve got to see it.”

Got to see something? In fact, Magdalena was barely paying attention to what he was saying. The only question was, what will he think of it. Will he think I look like a little tramp… or did Norman have a believable reaction? She looked down at her bosom. Nothing had changed. You could see… everything.

They arrived at Chez Toi and turned the Audi over to the valet. Magdalena said, “This is it? A hedge?”

“This is it,” said Norman. “It’s behind the hedge.” They were just a few steps from a privet hedge that must have been ten or eleven feet high. An enormous privet hedge. The thing had been trimmed meticulously, absolutely evenly, on top. A portal had been cut through it… a rectangle well over seven feet high and four feet wide and at least a yard deep… a rectangle perfect down to the last trimmed tiny privet leaf. Darkness was closing in rapidly, and in the twilight one could easily mistake the hedge for a battlement, a forbidding wall of solid masonry.

“I don’t even see a sign.”

“There aren’t any signs,” said Norman in the tone of somebody who knows these things.

Magdalena’s heart began racing. All over again she thought of something more basic. All over again she was plunged into despair. What if she were completely deceiving herself! What had Sergei said to her last week? Nothing!—not one personal word! Merely the polite, meaningless things proper people are supposed to say when they’re introduced to you. She had built this whole thing up out of looks and smiles and gestures that might or might not have revealed any feeling at all on his part. He had poured his long, searching, insinuating looks into her eyes… three times. But suppose they weren’t searching for anything, and they weren’t insinuating anything? Suppose they were merely long by her clock? Too late to figure it out now! Here she was, and there he was, presumably, somewhere on the other side of that hedge… and she was still aboard an insane flight, diving, soaring, diving, soaring soaring soaring until the next little what-if sends her into a fatal dive and the next faint hope pulls her out of it… and this had been going on every waking moment for seven days—

“But how does anybody know it’s there?” said Magdalena.

“Anybodies don’t know,” said Norman. “It’s open to the public, but it’s like a private club. Unless they know you or someone has put in a word for you, it’s very hard to make a reservation. Having no signs is… you know… part of the aura of the place.”

Magdalena had no idea what an aura was… but this wasn’t the time to ask for definitions. They were right at the improbable portal, a rectangle cut through a three-foot-thick privet hedge with a precision that would cause a mere stonemason to swoon with envy. Two couples were honking away in English with their amusement turned up to the max. Then she and Norman walked through this precisely, prissily clipped formal hedgeway and—there was Chez Toi, Your House, right in front of them. Magdalena knew the restaurant was literally in a house, but her imagination had built a mansion. This was no mansion. That much was obvious even as the darkness closed in. By Miami standards, it was an old, old house, one of the few remaining examples of a style that had been fashionable a hundred years ago, Mediterranean Revival. Almost the entire front yard was now a terrace and a vista of soft candle lights on the tables of people dining outside. There was more candlelight above, in the old-fashioned lamps that hung from the branches of spreading blackthorn trees. The candlelight did wonders for the white faces of the Anglos… who were everywhere… They seemed to occupy every last seat out here. Their voices created a buzz and a babble… none of it raucous.

It was lovely out here, but ¡Dios mío! it was ¡hot!

They found themselves in the entry gallery of what looked like somebody’s old house, comfortable but by no means luxurious… near, but not on, the ocean… and certainly not what Magdalena expected to see in the most eminent of all restaurants in Miami. Straight ahead was a set of stairs, but with no grand curving sweep of banisters and balustrades. On either side was an arched doorway… arched, but with arches no one would remember ten seconds later… and yet out from under one of them was pouring the noisy buzz and burble, the shrieks and bassos profundissimos of laughter, the irrational rapture of mortals who know they have arrived where things are happening. Anyone who had heard it before, the way Magdalena had at Art Basel, would recognize that sound forever after.

Over to one side, at a console, a maître d’ was conferring with six customers, four men and two women. The servitor, i.e., the maître d’, was instantly recognizable. He was the one dressed like a gentleman. That was the way it seemed to be these days. He wore a cream-colored tropical worsted suit and a necktie of darkest aubergine. The other four males, being the customers, wore no jackets. In the contemporary fashion, even among older men like them, they wore shirts with open necks, the better to reveal the way the deep lines beside their noses descended into their wattles, their jowls, and that overture to old age, a pair of harp-string-size tendons on either side of the Adam’s apple. The maître d’ showed them all to the terrace, then hurried over to Norman and Magdalena with a pleasant smile and “Bonsoir, monsieur, madame.” That was it for French, unless you counted the restaurant’s name. “Welcome to Chez Toi.” He had a pleasant smile—and didn’t have what a little girl from Hialeah instinctively feared in a fancy place like this, namely, an attitude of maître de votre destin, your destiny. Norman mentioned Korolyov and his party, and the maître d’ said they were having drinks in the library, as he called it. He led them to the arched doorway of the rapturous noise.

Mr. Korolyov… Magdalena put her hands together and could actually feel them trembling. Now she and Norman were inside the rapturous room. Men and women were gesticulating this way and that for emphasis and rolling their eyes as if I had never heard of such a thing or else My God, how could such a thing be?… and, above all, laughing so much, the world could tell that each and every one of them was an integral part of this exalted convening of the demigods. Magdalena had walked into Chez Toi swearing to Venus, Goddess of Seduction, that she would remain cool, even aloof, as if she could take the men in this room or leave them. Instead, she found herself caught up in the overwhelming status delirium of the place. Her eyes were darting about darting about darting about… looking for… him. The library, as the maître d’ had referred to it, had shelves of books, real books, on the wall, giving the restaurant still more of the chez-toi, your-house, mental atmosphere, but seemed to be used mainly as a small dining room. The tables had been pulled back toward the walls to allow Mr. Korolyov and his party more room to mingle, linger, tingle, blingle over drinks at this, the cocktail hour… but where is he? Suppose he’s not here, and this whole—

—all at once Norman was leaving her side and heading into the madding crowd.

“Norman!”

Norman stopped for an instant and turned about with a guilty smile on his face and held up his forefinger in the pantomime that says, “Don’t worry, I’ll only be a second.”

Magdalena was shocked… and then she panicked… What was she supposed to do, a twenty-four-year-old girl standing here among all these old people—they’re all so old!—and so white!—and she is a little Cuban girl, a nurse named Magdalena Otero, corseted into a bustier shoving her all-but-bare breasts into their faces like two big servings of flan!

And then she was furious. When Norman lifted his forefinger, he wasn’t saying I’ll be back in a moment… oh, no… consciously or not, he was saying I’m Number One and I’ve spotted somebody immensely more important than you and, sorry, but I must lay my Famous Dr. Porn charm on him while I have him in my sights!

What was she supposed to do now? Stand here like a tart on call? Already people were cutting glances at her… or was it just at the bustier and her breasts? ::::::Goddamn you, Norman!:::::: She remembered what Amélia had said. Always look confident… if you have no one to talk to, put on a confident smile. She put on a confident smile… but somehow standing here alone with a confident smile was no vast improvement upon standing here alone with a long face… Ahh! She spotted a painting on the wall nearest her, a big one… must have been four feet by three feet… She’d go look busy studying it… She stood before it… two half-round shapes, one a simple black and the other one a simple white, painted on a beigey-gray background. The two shapes were separated from each other and cocked at cockeyed angles… ::::::Ayúdame, Jesús… You’d have to be a cretin to stand here actually studying this mierda… Not even the old fools who pay millions for this idiotic nonsense at Miami Basel are so retarded that they actually look at it.:::::: She gave up and turned about to face once again this room where things were happening. Frantic laughter still reigned… shriek! shriek! shriek! shriek! went the women haw! haw! haw! haw! haw! went the men… but just then, from across the room, came a laugh that toppled them all “aahaaAAAHock hock hock hock”… and Magdalena stared that way, lasering through all the rapture laughter until she spotted Norman’s big head bobbing up and down for the benefit of a woman, a very striking woman—thirty?—but who knew any longer?—fair skin, oh, so fair… thick dark hair parted down the middle and swept back dramatically from her forehead… high cheekbones, lean square jaws, lips as red as rubies, eyes as brilliant and hypnotically blue as the bluest diamondsssuhhhhHAGGHH-HOCKhock hock hock hock… She had made up the rubies and diamonds just to feel sorrier for herself and angrier at Norman, but the laughhhfoghhhHHHock hock hock hock was real, all too real, you heartless insensitive sonofabitch! Back in a second—sure, you’ll be back in a second, as soon as you make your first move on some americana with hair as dark as midnight and skin as white as snow! We don’t have snow, we Cubans, as you, in your wisdom, perhaps know—

“Miss Otero!”

It was a voice from behind, a voice with an accent. She turned about, and it was him—the him… as handsome and Prince-charming and a lot of other things she had been dreaming of for a solid week. In a blip of unbelievable speed Sergei’s eyes turned down, inspected her breasts, which were threatening to pop out of the bustier—and blipped back up.

Magdalena caught that… and liked that… and in that instant Norman and the anger he had engendered in her vanished. Just like that. ¡Mirabile visa! as one of the nuns, Sister Clota, used to say. ¡A miracle to see! ¡Sublimity itself! But in the next instant, wide awake in the dreamless real world, the love bombardier from Hialeah and her sublime self plummeted and crashed and burned, as they had all week from obsessing over the figure before her. Why had he approached her at this moment?… when all there was to see was a poor thing, a social misfit, all alone and trying to cover it up by “studying” an extremely stupid painting on a wall. Oh, it was obvious. He ever so kindly wanted to rescue her from social failure. What a horrid form of rendezvous this was! Who was she in his eyes?… Some silly simpleton who needed his pity! It was humiliating—humiliating!—so humiliating, it vaporized every role she might have chosen to morph into… flirt, vamp, disciple of Aesculapius, the god of medicine, merciful mother to the heavy-laden crushed by lust, groupie of great oligarchic Russian philanthropic art collectors. So without meaning to, she reacted with complete honesty… her jaws went slack, causing her mouth to fall open and her lips to part…

Sergei proceeded to pour his charm all over her, as if that were going to help. “I’m so happy to see you here, Magdalena!”

Already another guest was at his shoulder, smile cocked to bag his attention the moment his lips stopped moving.

Sergei leaned in closer to Magdalena and said in a low voice, “I barely had a chance to talk to you at Miami Basel.” Once more he blipped the quickest, slickest of eye-flicks at her bustier bosom.

By now, from sheer nerves, Magdalena was nibbling the fingernail of her little finger. The intimate way he lowered his voice brought red blood and its bodyguard, guile, back into her system. She could literally feel it. Slowly she removed the little fingernail from her nervous nibblers and let the hand drop down upon the cloven center of her bustiered bust and got her lips to smile in a certain, ever-so-amused way… and said ever so softly and smokily, “Oh, I remember…”

Now three people were huddled about Sergei, their glittering eyes anxious to lock onto his. One of them, a little weasel of a man with one side of his shirt collar collapsed upon his neck because it was designed to go with a necktie, was so gauche as to tap him on the shoulder. Sergei did a hopeless roll of his eyes for Magdalena’s benefit and said out loud, “To be continued—” and let his courtiers go ahead and swamp him. His eyes awarded themselves one last little hurried high-speed helping of her bosom.

Magdalena was alone again, but this time she didn’t care. It didn’t bother her at all. There was only one other person in all of Chez Toi, and now she knew he was interested…

By and by Norman returned from across the room. When she saw him, he did that tight-lipped, head-stuttering thing men do before they say, “I swear, honey, I did the best I could.”

“Listen, I’m sorry. I saw somebody I’d been trying to get hold of and I wasn’t sure I’d have another chance to talk to him, and I never thought—” His voice slowed down when he saw that Magdalena was giving him a pleasant, friendly smile.

“So you caught up with him?”

“Uhhh, yes.”

She just smiled at this little white gender lie. What earthly difference did it make? She said, “I’m so glad, darling.”

He looked at her in a funny way, as if his radar detected irony. The “darling” probably did it. Somehow Norman wasn’t the kind who drew pet names up from Magdalena’s heart. He studied her face. If he was a good student, he saw that she was genuinely happy. Under the circumstances, that might have confused him, too.

Presently, the maître d’ in the cream-colored tropical suit appeared in the library doorway and said in a loud and eminently cheery voice, “Dinner is served!”

Sergei was in the doorway, too, right next to him. He smiled at his flock and swung his chin up in a great arc that seemed to say, Follow me! That they did, and the buzz and the burble and the shrieks and hawhaws increased, if anything. They trooped across the foyer toward… the other room.

Norman was tremendously impressed. He leaned toward Magdalena and said, “You know what? He’s taken over this whole floor, and there are only two floors!”

“I think you’re right,” said Magdalena, who was too happy to think much of anything about anything anybody else had to say at this point.

She looked down at her own glorious bosom. And to think she had feared what the bustier was going to do to her place in Society and the world!

Now the flock squeezed through the doorway in an energized mass, eager for every drop of social anointment that awaited in the other room. She had never seen a dining room like this. In keeping with the Chez Toi motif, there was nothing grand about it. But it was spectacular… in its own casual way. The wall opposite the entrance wasn’t a wall at all. It was a counter almost the length of the room, and beyond the counter you found yourself looking straight into the fabled Chez Toi kitchen. It was huge. Twenty feet of gleaming—gleaming—brass… pots, pans, kitchen utensils of every sort, hung in a row from hooks in the kitchen but came down low enough to dazzle the diners. The cooks and the sous-cooks and the rest of an army in white with toques blanches on their heads marched about the kitchen taking care of this and inspecting that… and pushing buttons, Magdalena noticed. Pushing buttons? Oh, yes. Computers ran the roasting ovens, the baking ovens, the grills… even the open skillets, the refrigerators, the shelf rotation in the stock cabinets… Not very Old House–like, but everybody appeared willing to avert his eyes from this intrusion of twenty-first-century American digitalization into the old wood-burning analogical skillet stove top. The brass art show and the march of the toques blanches served as backdrop enough.

A table made of a solid, simple slab of chestnut wood dominated the room. No, it filled the room. It was about twenty feet long and four feet wide and ran all the way from here… to there. It was the kind of behemoth that was good to have on a farm during the threshing season when all the workmen came inside in their bib overalls hungry for all the pancakes with maple syrup they could eat and all the coffee and not-yet-fermented apple cider they could drink before they headed out again. The surface of this table didn’t recall any scene like that. It was a stage for a company, a congeries, a prodigious, heavenly constellation of glass stemware great and small arranged in clusters, fairy platoons, clouds, sparkling see-through bubbles, before every place at the table, glasses so fine, so transparent, beaming and gleaming with reflections of light, swelling out with such sublime attainments of the glass-blowing arts that even to a twenty-four-year-old girl lately of Hialeah it seemed that if you tapped one with the tiniest tine of a fork, it would sing out “Crystal!” in a very high note, E-sharp above high C. Flanking each angelic array of glasses were parades of silverware, such stupendous regiments of utensils that Magdalena couldn’t imagine what they were all used for. At every place was a place card obviously done by hand by a professional calligrapher. Now ensued an interlude in which the guests hopped about and bent way down, still chirping away, in search of their appointed seats… much milling about… Sergei introducing as many people to one another as fast as he can… taking care to smile at Magdalena in a special way when he introduces her to people… all old people, or old in her eyes. The whole thing is bewildering… the names become nothing but syllables whistling in through one ear and out the other. When it was all over, Magdalena found herself placed four seats from Sergei, who was at the head of the table. To his immediate right was an Anglo woman, probably in her forties, who struck Magdalena as very pretty but affected. To Sergei’s left was—Oh, Dios mío!—a famous Cuban singer—famous among Cubans anyway—Carmen Carranza. She sat with a regal posture, but she was no longer young. Nor was she an apt model for the dress she had on. It plunged all the way down to the sternum, arousing not the satyrs but the health nuts. Where had all the collagen gone—the collagen in the inner curves of her barely there breasts? Why had she put body makeup on the bony terrain between the breasts—an early incursion of little age spots? Between the superannuated songbird and Magdalena sat a scarce-haired old man, Anglo, with cheeks and jowls that appeared inflated—perfectly. Scarcely a line in his face; and a pink perfect as rouge decorated it at cheekbone level. The old boy was wearing a suit and tie; and not just any suit, either. It was made of pink-striped seersucker—with a vest. Magdalena couldn’t remember seeing a man actually wearing one. And the tie—it looked like a sky full of fountainhead fireworks exploding in every direction, in every color imaginable. He intimidated her from the moment she laid eyes on him. He was so old and august and formal, and yet sooner or later she would have to talk to him… But he turned out to be nothing if not amistoso y amable. He didn’t look at her as if she were some wayward girl who had inexplicably wound up for dinner at Chez Toi.

In fact, the old man, Ulrich Strauss, turns out to be friendly, funny, very smart, and not at all condescending. The dinner begins with Sergei giving a toast of welcome and recognition of the guests of honor, the new director of the Korolyov Museum of Art, Otis Blakemore, from Stanford, sitting two seats to Sergei’s right, and Blakemore’s wife—Mickey they call her—who sits next to Sergei on his left. ::::::Dios mío, she’s the pretty woman with the upswept hair Norman was hitting on in the library just now… and she’s not an americana but a cubana.:::::: The waiters begin serving wine, and Magdalena, who is no drinker, is happy enough this time to have some to calm her nerves.

The table is so long—twenty-two people are seated—and comparatively narrow, and there is so much excited conversation, it’s close to impossible to hear what other people are saying from more than three or four seats away or across the table. Magdalena gets into an amusing conversation with Mr. Strauss about Art Basel. Mr. Strauss is a passionate collector of antique furniture and small-scale seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century representational sculpture, he says. He asks Magdalena how she happened to meet Sergei… as a side door entrance to find out who this sexy little girl wearing a corset is—i.e., what is her status? She says only that she met Sergei last week at Art Basel.

So you’re interested in contemporary art.

Not really, she was just there with “some people.”

What did you think of it?

Not much, to tell the truth. I thought it was ugly—on purpose! And it was so pornographic! She describes some of it in a general, decorous way. Wine at work.

Strauss tells her Tom Stoppard’s mot about how “Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” Then he goes on to say contemporary art would be considered a ludicrous practical joke if otherwise bright people hadn’t elevated it to a higher plane… upon which a lot of money changes hands.

Another glass of wine and Magdalena tells about what she saw: so-called art advisers leading rich old men around by the nose and telling them, Don’t argue with us about it. Do you want to have up-to-the-minute taste or don’t you? Magdalena is at least sober enough not to mention Fleischmann or his adviser by name.

Strauss says he knows Sergei feels exactly the same way and goes to Art Basel just to enjoy the circus. The new director of the Korolyov Museum of Art has quite conservative taste and a scholarly approach. The Chagalls that Sergei donated are about as far into modern art as he feels comfortable going.

A series of general conversations occur at her and Sergei’s end of the table. They talk about the beating and racist abusing of a black defendant by two white officers on YouTube. “White,” not “Cuban,” because nobody wants to offend the songbird or the other important Cubans at the table, so there is no reason for Magdalena to wonder if Nestor might have been involved.

They talk about the dispute between the mayor and the police chief.

They talk about the ongoing problems in Haiti.

They talk about the real estate market coming back.

Magdalena is not only too shy to join in, she has no idea what they’re talking about. So she knocks back some more wine.

Then they get on the subject of Art Basel. Mr. Strauss tells of rumors of dealers and art advisers colluding to milk hedge fund bigs and others out of tens of millions.

Mr. Strauss says, “My friend Miss Otero can tell you how it works. She was there.”

He turns to her, assuming that she will repeat, for the benefit of all, what she was telling him. Suddenly all these adults at this end of the table have shut up, and they’re all focused on Miss Otero… upon her chest, too, but they’re also dying to know what she has to say—this young thing who looks naked with her clothes on.

Magdalena feels pressure from every side. She knows she should decline, but here’s Sergei, as well as Mr. Strauss and the others, looking straight at her and expecting something… or is she just a stray girl without a brain cell to her name? At the same time, her only real evidence comes from Fleischmann’s experience… and she sure doesn’t want Maurice—and Norman—to find out what she has to say on that subject. They won’t hear her from way down at their end of the table… but suppose they get wind of it after dinner or something? But she can’t just sit here and be a frightened child!… Not in front of Sergei like this!

So she starts off… in an appropriately modest voice… but all eleven people up at this end start leaning forward to hear her… this little dish!… they have been wondering what’s on her mind, if anything, as she stares out from above the breastworks. She raises her voice a bit, and she feels like she’s listening to somebody else talking. But her three glasses of wine have helped, and she begins to speak halfway fluently.

She touches quickly, lightly, upon all the pornography that has been injected into Miami Basel’s bloodstream…

::::::I’ve already said too much! But all these people are staring at me! How can I just stop and turn into a dummy?! More and more of them have stopped talking to each other—so they can listen to me! So how can I all of a sudden… shut up? This is my moment to emerge. To command their respect!::::::

She doesn’t realize just how many people “more and more” amounts to.

—When she gets to the part about a certain collector being led about by his art adviser ::::::I must stop right now! This is a private room, and nobody is making a sound… just me. Maurice is right there at the other end of the table! Norman is right there! But this is my moment! I can’t… sacrifice it:::::: she plunges on, headlong ::::::can’t help myself:::::: she makes the art advisers sound like pimps demanding a stiff price for… ecstasy—ecstasy!—the consummate thrill of being known as a player, a playa, in this magical market, which seems to have been concocted out of thin air. What on earth is all that so-called art they ask a fortune for at Art Basel? Imagination without skill gives us modern art. Then she turns modestly, demurely, toward her seatmate and says, “Who did you say said that?” She has the horrible realization that the entire table has gone silent. She hasn’t mentioned Maurice by name nor the artist whose work he bought… nor Miss Carr, his adviser, but Maurice and Norman aren’t stupid.

She cuts a glance at them. Both look stunned, like they’ve been punched in the nose for no reason. Yet she can’t just… stop, can she… not in front of Sergei and her new friend, Mr. Strauss. All she can think of doing is dropping the subject of art advisers—and switching to the insane scramble of the rich on the opening day at Art Basel to get to the booths of the artists they’ve been advised to like. Throughout this little gossipy disquisition she keeps interjecting temporizing comments, such as, “I don’t mean every collector” and “but some art advisers are completely honest—I know that,” but it’s too late. Fleischmann can’t help but know this juicy stuff is about him. Norman does, too. And he’ll be furious. Maurice’s are the coattails Norman thinks he’s going to ride to social eminence—and here is his own nurse… doing her best to ruin it all!

Sergei is beaming. He loves every point she’s made! That was sensational! She’s sensational!

She has to endure the rest of the dinner sitting there scalding in guilt and shame over what she has just said about Maurice, even though she never mentioned his name. Sister Clota’s girls never commit such treachery. She feels so guilty, she can’t enjoy the attention everybody at her end of the table is now eager to lavish upon her. One question after another! What an interesting young woman! And… to think of what we thought when we first saw her!

The attention only makes Magdalena feel worse. Guilt! Guilt! Guilt! Guilt! How could she have done this to Maurice? Norman will be enraged… justifiably!

As soon as the dinner is over, she stands up and goes directly to Sergei, smiling and extending her hand as if she’s expressing her thanks… and look at her: the very picture of a polite, properly grateful guest.

Sergei is the very picture of a gracious host. He takes her proffered hand in both of his… and with a perfectly proper smile and a perfectly polite expression on his face, he says to her as if it were protocol straight out of the book:

“How can I reach you?”