The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (10 page)

With my mother gone, I inherited the properties that were left after paying all of the hospital bills and quickly sold the house I grew up in, also in Little Havana, even hiring a contractor to turn the much smaller than I'd thought “forbidden side” into a sunlit Florida room with a bathroom and a terrace.

Besides real estate, my only other inheritance was the journal and the desperate need to be a normal person and lead a normal life the direct opposite of my mother's. No powerful men, no clairvoyance, no gifts from anyone, imagined or concrete. Just love with one man who'd go decades thinking I was the most beautiful woman in the world, the one he could not live without. One normal, kind man to love me and share my imperfect life. One love I could remember in the hours before leaving this world, and call my own.

Chapter 11

T
he next thing I remember was running out of the
botánica
and hurrying home in the rain, clothes sticking to me, mascara running, blisters forming with every rushed sprint and step. I hated myself for going in there, for exposing myself to the memory of stories capable of squeezing my chest for every last bit of oxygen, for falling back into my old ways of wanting to know what was beyond my eyesight, instead of taking care of things boldly, on this plane. I'd been running away from clairvoyance for over twenty years! Why had it decided to catch up with me now? Getting over the end of something as inconsequential as an affair didn't warrant a summons from otherworldly realms, did it? Had Hector gotten under my skin, or was it my own life, with all its troubles, making me think the answer was in the gift I'd had and given up?

I was soaked by the time I walked into my apartment to find my landline ringing.

“I need to see you.”

Hector had remembered my birthday tomorrow! I looked at the microwave clock display. It was close to six and finally hearing his voice spelled the words “instant gratification” in my head.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At the bookstore. Can I see you now?”

“Where? I just came in and need a bath and some food. I'm famished,” I said, hinting.

“I'll see you there.”

“Here?” I asked, thinking that was very odd. We never “saw” each other in the building.

“I promise I'll be careful.”

“What about—”

“It's okay. You're my landlord, Mariela. We can talk.”

Any other day, I'd have asked, “Are you crazy?” But.

“All right. Come through the kitchen door,” I said, too surprised and curious to protest or ask more questions.

“It won't take long. I'll see you soon.”

“Bye,
amor,
” I said, but he'd already hung up, while I could feel my nerves fluttering around inside my body like Miami blue butterflies. I knew the feeling, of course: It was disappointment.

Shit. I was positive the news was not going to be good, and for a minute, the imminence of the end of all the fun and excitement he'd brought into my life over the months of our affair made that time seem longer, more important. I had to make him want me back the minute he'd broken up with me. With my makeup-plastered face, maybe I could pull off the lie that I was suddenly sophisticated, blasé, understanding, and even a little excited about going on with my life, free as a firefly with a new lightbulb on her ass. Call it the Modern Mistress's Self-Preservation Protocol but, suddenly, I was all about managing my exit.

I cleaned up and got my unfinished breakup letter out of the drawer where I'd put it after I'd begun composing it the night I ran into him before his date with Olivia and tried to finish it.

But what I'd written that night was far from reflecting the sexy, playful relationship we'd had. Instead, it was a long, sarcastic, disconnected from reality, petty tirade inspired by an obscure literary figure. Definitely not the best breakup letter for my present purpose, so I crumpled it and started a fresh sheet, willing myself to recapture the feelings of the beginning in my head.

He'd seemed elegant to me in the way of people who put a premium on education over money. Hector took pride in being an intellectual, and for eight months, I'd wanted to expand like a sponge to absorb the essence of him, wanting to be cultured, well read, and ladylike, instead of being the bigmouthed
cubana
he'd at least been curious about. I thought about him, about us, until a feeling came into my head. Then I wrote:

I smiled at that last bit, remembering how he consoled me by telling me I looked sexy after I tripped on the backyard stoop, chipping my left upper front tooth, and was unable to get it fixed for almost a month.

I considered that line, then erased the word
the
and substituted it for the word
your
so it read:

I wrote this because it was obvious that neither did he, but also because it was true. I was suffering. Affairs with married men that you enter into consciously (knowing they are married) aren't supposed to make you suffer, surprising you with the suddenness of their endings. I wasn't ready to say I'd fallen in love with Hector, but I was absolutely sure that I had fallen into some similar rabbit hole. And I didn't want this panic of “not having anyone,” of being “left” that I'd been under for the past few days.

Perhaps I really didn't want to be the other woman anymore or maybe being his “other,” as opposed to his “one,” had begun to bother some part of me more than I realized.

The rain was coming down quick and thick now, and Hector would be here any minute, soaking wet if, as usual, he'd decided to walk the fifteen or so blocks from the bookstore, his precious Saab reserved only for unwalkable distances.

I kept writing.

I considered that, then decided the letter was melodramatic enough as it was, and erased those two words, signing only:

Those are my initials and the way I had been signing my notes to him lately, wanting to state my existence in his life if only through “Mission Impossible” notes destined to “self-destruct” (be thrown away) as soon as they were read.

My phone rang again. It was Iris.

“What's wrong, neighbor?” she asked when I answered as if she'd interrupted a state dinner.

“Nothing. What's up?”

“Just making sure you don't want to go to Hoy Como Ayer later. Last chance to go while you're still in your thirties.”

“You know, Iris, I'm really not feeling all that well.”

“Want me to go over, make you a little tea with some ginger, lemon, and honey, and some—”

“That's okay, Iris. I think I'm just going to rest up.”

“You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say the Little Havana Community Committee has put a hex on Coffee Park.”

The committee was her only enemy in the world. In her mind, they were a threat to the liberal way of living, almost as bad as that other type of person she had to share the earth with: conservatives.

“Nooo, I'm just tired from all that hauling of Ellie's trash we did yesterday.”

“Well, I think something's definitely going on.”

Shit.

“What do you mean?” I asked, making myself sound sleepy and wishing she were capable of taking a hint.

“Well, I caught Abril sniffling on the back stoop last night after she came back from her downtown meetings or errands or whatever. So I go over to Pedro's to get her extra-strength echinacea, and
he
looked worst than Abril.”

“Was he sick too?” I asked.

“You could say that. Sarah left him. Went back to Madison this morning, home to her family. He's devastated.”

“I'm sure,” I said, remembering how he'd told her to go just a couple of days ago, but not sharing it with Iris to avoid being on the phone any longer.

“Anyway, no echinacea, not that Abril would've taken it. But it serves her right because today, of course, she came home from work sick. Been in bed with the bug since. And now you're the one who doesn't feel well, and you sound depressed. I tell you it's those damn Little Havana people putting the evil eye on us.”

“Oh, Iris! You know, with the change in the weather and all the rain, I bet you that's probably what it is. We're both coming down with something. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow,” I said, somehow knowing that Abril had not been sniffling, but crying.

“You'd better. It's not every day one turns forty, my dear.”

“I know. Have fun, okay? I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay, bye.”

“Bye then.”

(You ever notice how Latinos take forever to say good-bye, as if hanging up after just one good-bye were impolite?)

I hung up and went back to the letter. I read it over, knowing I was making too much of this. It had only been eight months. Still, I couldn't help being sad. Sad and tired. I was so, so tired of endings. Even turning forty felt like another ending instead of a beginning, and I wished I could put off just a little longer this latest farewell walking toward my house at that very moment.

As if in answer to my wish, a war-of-the-worlds-like thunderbolt brought me back to the present, the sound once again affecting me like a hypnotist's second snap of the fingers.

Wait a minute,
I thought.
What if I was wrong? I was always wrong!
It was the eve of my birthday. Hector was exquisite in his love of detail. Surely, he had not planned to break up with me on the eve of my birthday. Maybe there was something else he really needed to tell me. Since when was I so sure of anything?

I'd leave my options open, I decided, giving in to fear, tucking the letter I'd just written inside the journal along with the crumpled one, throwing it all inside my night table drawer, and going to put a couple of wineglasses and a bottle of locally made guava wine on the kitchen table, willing myself not to believe my own mind, as I'd gotten quite good at doing over the years. Why did I have to jump the gun? If he didn't bring up breaking up, neither would I. It was as if my mind knew it had made me suffer enough and was giving me permission to grant myself a reprieve from the messy business of send-offs. A few seconds later, I heard the low rap on my back door.

“Ey,
flaca,
” he said, slipping inside and locking my kitchen door in one move.

“You're soaking,” I said, kissing him and putting my arms around his neck, not caring that I'd get wet too.

“I know. I don't have a lot of time,” he said in his clipped, but perfectly sexy accent, as he untangled himself from me and grabbed some paper towels from above the sink.

I sat down at the kitchen table, stomach overcome again with that nervous flutter of loss.

“Okay then. I think it's safe to say my birthday tomorrow is not among the reasons for your urgency, so . . .”

He closed his eyes and tightened his lips in the impatient way he'd allowed me to see more of lately. Finally, he took off his scarf, as if resigned.

“Mariela,
por favor
.”

I didn't answer, wondering if that thing rising inside me was anger. What was with the attitude? If anyone had a right to an attitude, it was me.

“You know what I'm going to say, right?” he said with a “life-is-tough-what-are-you-going-to-do?” expression.

And then I was angry for sure and decided not to make it easy for him.

“No idea.”

He sighed. “This is crazy.”

“What is?”

“This.”

“And what is ‘this,' to you?”

“This is two people whose, eh, paths happened to cross . . .”

I couldn't help it. I had to laugh.

“
Somesing
funny?” he asked.

“You!” I said. “Your clichés and your arrogance, and your gall, frankly, to come to my apartment to break up with me as if this were a fast-food breakup window. I just . . . find it funny.”

“You're just upset. Plus,” he said, pronouncing the words
just
and
plus
as you'd pronounce the
cous
in
couscous
. “Plus, the same to do fast as to do slow, no? You'll be upset no matter what.”

“Sure, I'm upset. I'm upset I put off breaking up with
you,
the way you've been acting lately. So, tell me—new lover?” I asked, barely refraining from asking who the “skanky ho” was, as my client Silvia would have, and conveniently forgetting that I'd been, until that very moment, in the very position of that skanky ho, whoever she happened to be.

How was I so sure there was someone else? Because when there isn't, a man will invariably break up with you in a soft, muddled, undefined way. He'll be nice about it. So nice you won't be sure he actually broke up with you. The reason for that is that he thinks he may still want, or need, to have sex with you and doesn't want to completely piss you off. But, when a man breaks up with you in a way that leaves no doubt that's what he's doing, trust me, he has no fear of a single lonely or boring night. He's got a strong substitute.

“I asked you a question: new lover?” I persisted.