House Arrest (3 page)

We drive by shantytowns, tin-roofed shacks held together with plywood and cardboard. Small children race to the roadside, dirty faces staring at us. Shabby dogs and one-eyed cats stagger across the road. The sunlight is so intense that I have to shade my eyes. Major Lorenzo puts down the window and a blast of hot air blows into the backseat. Warmth seeps into my bones. “Perhaps that is too much wind?” he asks, but I tell him no, it feels good.

He drapes his arm across the seat where his driver sits. His nails are manicured, buffed. He wears a gold watch—a
Rolex—that shows the time to be just after noon. He and his driver, who is hidden behind reflector shades, exchange glances. Both men wear short sleeves that reveal sturdy, tanned forearms. “Are you hungry?” Major Lorenzo asks me. “Have you had something to eat?”

“I had breakfast,” I answer, thinking of the hard roll and black coffee I’d been given at the airport. He nods, satisfied with my reply. Major Lorenzo—a small, compact man with a thin mustache and wire-rimmed glasses—has taken charge of my case. He seems somewhat embarrassed, sorry to put me through this. When he met me at the airport, he shook my hand.

He is a go-between, and someone else has given him his orders. In fact, it seems as if he is as ignorant of the details of my case as I am. Or else he is good at pretending. When I asked him if he could explain what the difficulty was, he said, “I am sorry, but I have not been informed. I am just taking care of … how do you say it, the red tape.” He grinned when he found this expression. We both laughed, a hearty laugh that friends might share over a beer.

We drive swiftly now past the crumbling arches of colonial houses, some held up by ancient scaffolding. Others have no roofs. The frames of windows stand empty, open to the sky. They are taking me to the hotel where I will stay until I can be returned to where I came from. That is what I have been told. We turn right on to the Miramar, the wide road that follows the sea.

Along the sea there is a wall. Spray rises from it. I gasp as a young man dives off for his afternoon swim. On the Miramar, houses once owned by the rich stand with their fading crimson, sun-drenched yellow, cobalt blue facades in need of
paint. In these houses ten families now live. We come to a red light but do not stop.

We turn, then zigzag down side streets, until we arrive at the main square. Major Lorenzo’s aide opens my door, offering me a hand. His fingers on my arm are warm and sticky, and for the first time I notice that unlike Major Lorenzo he is wearing a gun. When he steps away, I pause in the bright sunlight, which burns hot on my face.

Tipping my head back, I gaze at the Hotel España. It is an old Spanish—style building with an arching portico, thick columns. Scarlet and yellow bougainvillea dangle from its balcony. A vine, the color of mangoes, climbs up the columns. Across the street in the main square people linger on benches, and I want to stroll down its crisscross paths, beneath the shade of its royal palms, but Major Lorenzo takes me gently by the arm, ushering me inside.

Everything in the lobby is wicker—white wicker—and the walls are painted white. There are creamy sofas and overstuffed armchairs. Light pours in through the huge windows, which are open, as ceiling fans whirl, turning warm air. A woman sits in a fluffy chair, staring into space, probably waiting for someone who is late. Two Jamaican men in linen suits and red ties sit hunched over a pad of paper, smoking cigarettes.

Though I stayed here the last time, I hardly recognize the place now because it has been refurbished to meet the new demand in the tourist trade. Its dark, stuffy lobby has been replaced with all this wicker and light. It is a modest but decent hotel, one our guidebook only gives a brief mention to, short shrift really, but at a glance I think it is much better than the full-service ones we advise for tourists. This hotel
lacks in modern conveniences (no air-conditioning or room service), but its floor and ceiling are now brightly decorated in mosaics in the old Spanish style. I will expand our entry on it during my stay.

Major Lorenzo asks if I want a view of the plaza. He tells me that from this room if I stand on my balcony I can see the sea. I think this is a very nice suggestion. The last time I was here I was given a room with a curtain across one wall. When I flung the curtain back, it revealed a brick wall.

It takes a long time for them to prepare my room. While I am waiting, I have a cup of coffee in the bar. I sit at a table and order a
café con leche
and toast, since it has been hours since I last ate. After the waiter takes my order, he doesn’t leave. Instead he stands there, looking at me oddly. “You have been here before,” he says, beaming. He is a tall man with wavy brown hair, and I recognize him as Enrique, the waiter who was grateful two years ago when I tipped him with toothpaste and cans of sardines, which is what people who visit
la isla
do. “So you have come back to see us once more,” he says as we shake hands, introducing ourselves again.

“I couldn’t stay away,” I tell him, surprised at how this is true. Enrique was the one who told me to be careful when he saw me with Isabel. He tried to whisper something in my ear, but I don’t like whispering. I never have and I didn’t listen to what he said then and I suppose I would not listen again now. As he asks me how I have been, I wonder if he knows what has happened to me, but I don’t mention it.

In the corner of the bar there is a pool table, where a group of blond men and two dark women are shooting. The sound of breaking balls shatters the quiet of the bar. I do not recall seeing a pool table when I was here the last time. A few
moments later the coffee arrives. It is watery and the milk swirls in the cup. The toast is served dry. “There’s no sugar,” Enrique informs me, his face full of chagrin.

From the bar where I sip my coffee, I observe Major Lorenzo in the lobby, briefing a small group of staff. Waiters and desk clerks keep glancing my way. The hotel is run by the state, so all the staff are government workers, and they are being informed of my plight. I guess there will be no guard posted at my door; they won’t need one. After a few moments Major Lorenzo comes to join me. Though I offer him a seat, he remains standing. “I will be back later,” he says, “when I have some news. In the meantime you should make yourself as comfortable as possible.”

“I was wondering,” I ask him, “if I couldn’t just sit out front in the plaza where there are trees.”

“No,” he says firmly, “that will not be possible.” Then he pauses, gazing down at me. “But the hotel is at your disposal,” he says. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“Good, it is important that we understand each other.” Then he smiles and heads for the door. “So I will see you this afternoon. Hopefully I’ll have some news.”

As he is leaving, I think I have forgotten something in his car, but as I run to the door to call him, several hotel attendants stand in my way.

Returning to my table at the bar, I look around. I had expected interrogations, cinder-block rooms, not the mosaic-trimmed lobby of this hotel, not doormen in white suits blocking my way. Perhaps they do not know about Isabel. Perhaps they know nothing about what happened between us, and they are detaining me just because I worked as a
journalist on a tourist’s visa, something
la isla
cannot abide. It has nothing to do with Isabel after all.

Still I cannot sit here and not imagine her rushing through this lobby in her pale flowing skirt, her body that seemed to be swimming through air, her dark hair tied back in a bun, the white silk blouse under which she wore no bra. I can see all the heads turning, hear the whispers. Everyone knew who she was. And of course that was part of it. She wanted them to.

At the table across from me two Finnish men, one of whom is a dwarf, and an elderly German in green polyester pants are buying drinks for three local women. A pretty young woman in a red dress gets up, tugging on her dress, but the dwarf pulls her down into his lap. He has pudgy, gnarled hands and he runs them up and down her arms. He stuffs money into her bodice and she laughs, pushing him away. The elderly man is fondling another woman, who has a sour look on her face. She ogles a tall blond man, probably from Scandinavia, who just arrived, sporting a large backpack.

One of the women has a child with her—a toddler with golden Afro curls who eats candy bar after candy bar. A few moments after I sit down, this woman gets up. She leaves the hotel on the arm of the elderly German, the child chasing after her.

They have given me a room that overlooks the square. It has a small balcony from which I really can see the sea, twin beds, and a television that gets the Caribbean equivalent of MTV. The first thing I do when I get to the room is open the French doors to let in the light and air. Noise from the street rises to my window. I can hear the voices of schoolchildren at play.

Jessica would be having lunch now. A bologna sandwich on white bread, an orange, animal crackers. The same thing every day. Todd probably let her wear whatever she wanted to school—the Aladdin sweatshirt, the dinosaur skirt, lace stockings. When I am away, Todd has many weak moments when it comes to Jessica. He buys her Barbie dolls; he doesn’t say no to candy as a snack. I am the strict one, the one who lays down the rules.

My daughter is five and I’ve left her at home. She prefers it there, with her dog, her yard, her friends. She has a night-light with a rainbow that she cannot sleep without. Todd and I have this understanding: I can go on these junkets three or four times a year and in this way get my taste of freedom. My fix, he calls it. It’s enough to keep me going. And this didn’t seem such a bad idea, to come here in January during the worst part of the winter. Even Todd thought it was a good idea.

I’ve always needed a secret life. Diaries with locks, hiding places under the stairs. When I was a teenager, I snuck out to meet boys my father forbade me to see on darkened street corners, just blocks from my house. I slid down the drainpipe. Getting back in was harder, but the boys hoisted me onto the roof. When I make love to Todd, I think of things I shouldn’t think of. Other men, women. I imagine myself in different places. Distant lands are foreign bodies to me, perfect for clandestine affairs. I require these small absences. Time away. Todd accepts this, though he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to know. If I start to tell him, he walks out of the room.

When I go on these junkets, I do pretty much what I want. That is, whatever happens, happens, and we don’t talk about it. Not that so much has ever happened. I’ve had a few
late-night rumbas, a groping hand or two. Moonlight infatuations at tourist resorts when I grow weary of my checklist; scenic walks can grow tedious alone. But what I really like is to rent a car and drive around a place where I’ve never been. Outside of Prague I went from castle to castle. The last time I was here, I rolled down the windows and drove across the country and back. I only stopped for gas and to drink orange juice at roadside stands.

It’s not that Todd can’t get away; it’s that he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like to be away from what he knows. I don’t really fault him for this, though I wish it wasn’t so. But Todd is content, playing suicide—a game whose name confounds me and rules defy me—with Jessica in the backyard, or skating in the park. For a hobby he repairs the gas streetlamps on our block, but mainly he is an architect and a good one at that, and despite the recession he has work in the office, jobs he says he can’t afford to lose.

It’s not that I blame Todd for what has happened. It is just that if he had come with me—if he wanted to come when I travel for my updates—then I wouldn’t have met Manuel. If I hadn’t met Manuel, I would never have met Isabel. Or rather, I might have seen Isabel, but I would not have known who she was. And then I wouldn’t be here.

I met Manuel a few days into my first visit to the island, at the bar of the Hotel Miramar. I had come to sample the malted milks, which I was told were the best on
la isla
, and to visit the old casinos, untouched since the days of Meyer Lansky, who had built a few here. Once renowned for its posh backroom gambling and spectacular vistas, for its high-stakes poker and call girls with blue-black hair, the Miramar is now known for its malted milks and its peeling murals of almond-eyed girls bent back in the arms of swarthy men.

Manuel was sitting at the table across from mine. In front of him an ashtray was heaped with butts of Marlboros, one of them still burning. He nursed a glass with a faint brown liquid in it and tapped his foot to the tune of “Sueño Tropical,” an old Pico Rodríguez hit from the fifties. Everything about him seemed to be moving. His fingers, his feet. He beat his hands on the table as if playing the bongos, though the rhythm he tapped out had nothing to do with the music.

After watching me for a few moments, Manuel picked up his drink and walked over to my table. He was a small man with a compact frame, and long white fingers, which I noticed as he pulled back the chair with a single movement, inquired if he could sit down, and seated himself. “Do you have anything to sell?” he asked—jeans, watches, toothpaste, nail polish, canned food, soap.

As he leaned forward, his open shirt revealed a chest of coarse hair. His smile made all his features turn upward as he asked if I wanted to change money. I replied no and told him I had only come here to update a travel guide, and he said, “That’s too bad.” He had come to the Miramar, as many people do, to look out to sea. He told me, joking over a rum collins, that he was waiting for his ship to come in—the one that would literally take him away. He said, if I wanted, he’d show me around.

I unpack. It is important to get organized, to put things in their places. To know where everything is. The few dresses I’ve brought are wrinkled, but they’ll straighten out in the closet or freshen up with my steamer. I check my case of adaptor plugs, tuck blouses and T-shirts into a drawer.

Then I take a shower, spending a long time, letting the warm water course across my body. I’m in the shower so
long that I find myself staring at the shower curtain. It is an old plastic curtain with herds of antelope bounding across it, heading for pine groves.