The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (16 page)

“If I want to say hello, I'll say hello. And if I want to do more than say hello, that is entirely my business and Jorge's. You have a problem with that?” I asked the moment his face appeared between door and doorframe.

“Ooooh-kay,” he said, one brow raised.

“But I need you to give me his cell phone number,” I said in my most dignified tone.

“I said okay. But if this is what I think it is, I want matchmaking credit for anything that develops.”

“Stop being silly and give me his number.”

“I could do that. Or maybe, we could let him make the first move.”

“There's no move. No one's making any moves here.”

“I already told him you wanted to say hello. Now, if he calls you after all the warnings I gave him, then whatever you do to him will be his own fault.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I'm saying I'll feel better. It won't be my fault. Seriously, Mariela, if you'd seen his face when I told him you wanted to see him, you'd leave him alone. He's not like me, you know, with this advantage I have over the regular folk.”

“Oh, yeah, and what would that be?”

“I've told you: I have a knack for knowing what people are thinking,” he said, scrolling through what were apparently thousands of phone numbers on his cell phone, looking for Jorge's.

“Yes, you're a real connoisseur of human nature, Gustavo.”

“It's my sculptor's hands,” he said, halting his scrolling to hold his right one up. “They're like X-ray machines for seeing into other people's hearts, knowing what they want, you know what I mean? Now, when it comes to me, I'm screwed, but like you're always saying, what you gonna do, right?”

Welcome to the club,
I thought, swatting a fly that had been greedily slurping away at my calf.

“Let me go get my other cell phone 'cause I can't find it in this one,” he said, leaving me to hold the door open while he did a deep squat to search under the cushions of his olive-green thrift store sofa.

“Gustavo?”

“Yeah?”

“Any news about . . . Abril?” I asked, hoping it was the reason for his seemingly improved mood.

“Nope,” he said from somewhere on the other side of the sofa without a second's hesitation.

“Well, then
ella se lo pierde,
” I said, believing it really was Abril's loss.

He straightened up, second cell phone in hand, and shrugged his shoulders, but his expression reminded me of a cartoon character's, face unexpectedly and resoundingly flattened by a foe's heavy frying pan.

“Times change, my friend. I've lost my touch,” he said, before reading out the number for me to punch into my own cell phone. “You know, speaking of change, Mariela, Jorge sure has changed a lot. He's not the same man you knew when I used to hang out with him.”

I doubted that it was as bad as Gustavo's no-joke face was making it seem. I mean, how much more pot and partying could a human being take? But I was not going to ask.

“Relax, I don't want to date him, I just want to ask him about . . . a friend of his I met once and haven't seen in a while.”

Gustavo's face relaxed.

“Look at me, being nosy again.”

“Very. Now go eat something. You're losing your butt from not eating.”

Normally, he'd have been ready with a wisecrack. Instead, he stood there for a moment, looking at the floor.

“She won't even talk to me, Mariela.”

My God, that woman! Gustavo had done nothing but love and support Abril and Henry from the day he met them. If you won't be nice to a guy for your own twisted reasons, at least you could break up with him decently because he was nice to your son.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Gustavo.

“What did I ever do that she won't talk to me?”

“It's probably best that way. She may be protecting you,” I said to console him.

“Protecting me? Oh, you mean, like so I don't get my hopes up?” he asked as if the concept were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard of.

“Exactly,” I said, not believing a word of it. “You men should try it sometime.”

The sound of steps on the other side of the entry door interrupted us.

“Well, this is probably a bad time, but would you believe I was in the neighborhood?”

It was Jorge.

“Speak of the devil. Was just giving Mariela your number, bro. Whassup, man?”

He looked older in a good way, with his longish, shaggy hair cut short, his loose, whitewashed jeans and leather sandals, a navy blue letterpressed T-shirt, and a thick, hammered gold wedding band.

“Mariela,” he said, stepping into the foyer to take my hands in his and give me a kiss on the cheek, before turning to Gustavo and doing that slap, slap, half a hug, slight push, bring the cheeks close, finish-with-a-grin thing men do instead of kissing.

I stood there looking at their little greeting ritual and thinking about how one minute, I hadn't seen him in months and thought seeing him again couldn't be any bigger of a deal than Hector's death, and the next, I wanted to hug him.

“Mariela?” It was Gustavo bringing me to, a puzzled look on his face.

“Oh, sorry. It's been so long. How've you been, Jorge?”

“I'm good. Everything's good. Lots of changes, but all of them good.”

“Still a chef ?” I asked, wanting to know if he was still happily married. (As you've seen, Gustavo evaded all my digs for information, when I wouldn't come right out and ask openly for the pleasure of his male ego.)

“Always.”

“And your boys?”

“Great. They're great. Eliezer got married, and we're doing a lot of things together.”

Yes, I bet I had a good idea of what he and all his party-addicted chef friends were doing together, I thought, remembering just how much he'd been enjoying his life in the states when I met him, more than a decade after his arrival. The Jorge I knew equated liberty with the freedom to party until you forgot which country you were in, if not the one you'd come from.

“Jorge has become an organic chef,” said Gustavo.

(What is it with us Cubans? We always sound as if we're selling something, making anything and everything so exuberantly appealing. Can we ever say something in the boring, regular, tedious way it really is? Nothing wrong with, “This is Jorge. He's just a man who cooks. Nothing special to see here, folks. Just Jorge.”)

“Actually, I still let some pesticides into my cooking once in a while,” he said, patting his stomach lightly. “But I
have
become very interested in cooking good, wholesome food and, my God, so sorry. Here I haven't seen you in ages, and I'm off talking about myself.”

“It's all right,” I said, comforted by his presence, by his obvious affection for Gustavo, and by their banter.

“It's not. How are
you?
” he asked, taking me in.

I sighed.

“I'm good, good as can be, you know? And it's good to see you.”

“I've been wanting to call you, but—”

“I'm glad you're here now,” I interrupted, not wanting him to make excuses when his distance was nobody's fault but mine. Still, I wouldn't have minded a heads-up and time to comb my hair and put on some decent clothes. (I was wearing the same ratty tank top and jeans I'd worn to see Olivia.)

“Gustavo said you needed to see me? What can I help with?”

I looked at Gustavo, confused. (How did he know?)

“About the tenant, Mariela. I told Jorge you wanted to say hello, but mostly to see if he knew of anyone who might be looking,” he said, smiling at me conspiratorially.

Was he protecting me, keeping me from looking desperate? Or was he protecting Jorge from getting his hopes up?

“Oh, of course,” said this new, more formal, more adult Jorge. “I read what happened. Must be tough.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Not the same apartment. Gustavo is talking about another vacancy I had this week.”

“Oh, okay, well, sure, I'll tell my guys in case they know of someone.”

“No, it's okay. It needs a lot of work first anyway.”

“If I can help—”

“It's nothing really. Don't worry about it. It's not that much,” I said, forgetting I'd just said that it was. “But that's not what I called you about.”

“I see.” He nodded, looking into my eyes as if he did.

And then it was like old times and we both turned our faces toward Gustavo.

“Hey, don't look at me. It seems to me
you're
the ones blocking my doorstep,” he said. “This is Gustavo in
his
house, minding his own business,
que conste
.”

“Yes, Gustavo, who speaks of himself in the third person,” said Jorge, smiling at me, falling into his old habit of teasing Gustavo for my benefit.

“
Oye, qué te pasa a ti,
brother?” said Gustavo, protesting our ganging up on him. “You're the lame one with your,
‘Would you believe I was in the neighborhood?'
Dude, really?”

I smiled, wanting to talk to Jorge in private, but also wanting to put off having to say what I needed out loud.

“So, how's the wife?” asked Jorge, changing the subject.

“The wife?” I asked, thinking I should be the one asking him that.

“Your tenant's wife?”

“Oh. Oh my God. She's okay, I guess. I mean, we're . . . not exactly friends or anything,” I said, immediately getting the strange but strong feeling that this was no longer true.

“You know, if I can help,” he said again.

“It's
so
nice to see you again, Jorge,” I said, surprised at how nice it really felt.

And then the vision came so quickly I didn't have time to be surprised. Jorge was kneeling on a sopping wet grass carpet, howling an extended howl that went on forever and made the tree behind him contract slightly. It was horrible . . . like “aaaah-huuuuh-aaaaaggggg-hu-hu-haaaaaaaaaaaaaah-gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! ! ! !” or something like that, impossible to describe except by actually making the sound. He'd lost someone. I wondered if it had happened recently or if Hector's death had made me hypersensitive, able to see things I never did before.

“So how did he die?” Gustavo asked, gesturing toward the stairwell to mean Hector, while I asked the same thing mentally, but about the vision I'd just received.

I was still a little shaken, but managed to muster:

“They don't know.”

“Was it the wife? What do you call her?” asked Gustavo.

“I used to call her Morticia. I am sorry I did that, and her name is Olivia from now on.”

“I bet she did it,” he whispered to Jorge, who looked at me searchingly.

I wondered if his eyes were asking what I was thinking: Had I ever done as his godmother had directed me to? Had I overcome my fear of clairvoyance? Was I a new Mariela?

“So, Mariela, I have to get back,” said Jorge. “I left a small army wreaking havoc at the restaurant and it's close to dinnertime. But I'll come by to check on you soon, and whatever you need . . .”

I hesitated for so long that Jorge looked pointedly at Gustavo, who put up his hands as if giving up and said, “I'll talk to you two later,” before waving good night and closing his door.

As he looked at me, patiently but questioningly, I hesitated because as much as I needed a friend right now, he happened to be a friend I'd been in love with. A friend I might not be able to deny “benefits” to after he'd respected my wishes and stayed away, and I'd been the one who'd called him back onto my troubled road of a life.

Then again, he could be the bridge to getting my sight back, and with it, possibly the letter I hadn't recovered, the only other proof that Hector and I had been lovers.

“I have to see your godmother. I want to do what she says now.”

He looked surprised, then shook his head.

“She died last year.”

“Oh, no! I mean, I'm sorry. Was she sick?”

“Not at all. Died in her sleep. No pain.”

“I'm glad,” I said honestly, despite feeling let down.

“Exactly what kind of trouble are you in?” he asked.

“Ay, Jorge, I wish I knew. It's why I was hoping to be able to talk to your
madrina.
I don't know any other true psychics whose sight I can trust.”

“Okay. Understood,” he said, nodding.

“You know what? Don't worry about it. I'm really sorry about her death.”

“Mariela, saying there was no love lost between you and my godmother would be putting it mildly; so I may not know what's going on with you, but when you say you were
hoping
to see her, I know it's serious.”

I sighed and shook my head, words failing me.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I can't take you to see
madrina,
but let me make a couple of calls. I may be able to take you to see the next best option. And you can tell me all about it on the way there. Deal?”

Chapter 19

T
he next day, I opened my eyes to a song made of the sounds of the neighborhood's weekday routines taking place all around my building. There was honking, and bus whistles, and people rushing by on cell phones, and kids screeching when they meant to laugh, as if someone were stealing their book bags. It was Tuesday, and these were Tuesday sounds but, somehow, they sounded different. Everything was different. Things had changed inside and around me, just like the song had predicted.

For one thing, I was finally able to really cry for Hector. It was a slow cry that took a long time, like a river trickling down a mountain from someplace within my soul's eternal earth.
He hadn't deserved to die,
I thought as I cried my strained cry. Hector was many things, and he would have been those things well into his old age, but he was also life, a mixed bag of wonders and lesser treasures each with its own purpose. Who had taken him? Who'd taken him when I wasn't looking, leaving me no choice but to cry, my tears the transport system for the toxins of impotence threatening to make me explode. Hector was like the tree in your neighbor's yard that you never notice, but whose shade you miss when the misanthrope chops it down to build a stupid terrace in its place. That's how Hector's death felt to me: stupid and unnecessary and heartbreaking, and all my tears didn't make it right, but I still cried them.

On the positive side of these changes, thank God, was a strength that had swooped in to save me from some part of me I hadn't known existed. It had warned me of Hector's death. It had pushed me to keep reading my great-great-grandmother's journal after decades of ignoring it, not resting until I'd found the words that would liberate me from the jail of sorts I'd locked myself in since my mother's illness. And it had made me want to see Jorge again, to put the fear of my own heart aside, and to seek help so I could once again see all I'd been meant to see.

And then there was Jorge himself. One day, we'd managed to stay away from each other for almost a year. He had a wife; I had a lover, and we were safe.

The next day, I'd come face-to-face with the truth of my sight and, within minutes, as if the two were connected, he'd been in front of me and it was clear that whatever used to be there, still was.

Before he left the night before, Jorge had explained that though his godmother had died just a few months earlier, there was someone else who'd never failed him, and who'd be able to help me, he was sure. He promised to pick me up tomorrow, which was today, and I hadn't stopped being nervous since.

At two on the dot, he knocked on my door,
rat-a-tat-tat,
wearing a navy blue cotton shirt, gray slacks, and the thick wedding band he'd had the day before, but never worn when we were together. He had a plain canvas tote in each hand, and several plastic bags and bundles of string and wax paper peeking out of each one.

“Okay if we eat something first?” he asked, and I said, “Of course,” taking a step back and waving him in, aware of the same sensation of time stopping, with a jolt, that I'd had the night before and attributed to his showing up without notice and to my shock over Hector's death.

Thing is I recognized that jolt. It was want. And confusion over seeing him again, now more mature, clearly more comfortable with himself, looking like the man I'd wanted him to be, on unexpected loan from another life. The jolt was that craving I thought I'd suffocated, and recognizing it put me on edge, as if I were somehow cheating on Hector just by following Jorge into the kitchen.

“Trust me, you wouldn't have enjoyed seeing
madrina
again,” he was saying now, switching on lights, raising the wooden blinds to let more light in through the kitchen window, while I stood at the entrance to the kitchen, watching him. “Toward the end, her predictions were off and she was grumpy, biting people's heads off, that kind of thing,” he added, quickly laying out what looked like spices, some pieces of fish, and some cooked brown rice on my table before confidently opening the second upper cabinet to the right of the sink to find the cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil in the beautiful Italian tin can that he had given me, promising it would last me for years if I always remembered to cap it tightly.

He snuck a quick glance at me to see whether it had all landed. That he remembered where everything was. That he remembered us.

“You say she was grouchy? Strange. She used to be so cheerful,” I teased, waiting while he rinsed his hands to hand him a dishcloth and an apron, since it was clear that he intended to cook a meal.

“Very funny,” he said, and when he tousled my bangs playfully before turning back to his ingredients, a whiff of his perfume flew from his hands and into my mind through my nose and I felt desperate to retreat to the safety of the distance I'd allowed him to breach.

I busied myself picking a knife from the ones suspended on the magnetic metal strip on the tile above my sink, intending to offer my help as an impromptu sous chef.

“You hungry?” Jorge asked.

“No. Well, not really. But it depends on what we're making here,” I said, and began peeling and slicing the piece of fresh ginger he put in front of me.

“Really? Then why are you looking at my food as if you could lick it with your eyeballs?” he said, grinning as he sliced scallions and tossed some cooked brown rice in a bowl to loosen it up.

“I'm doing no such thing.”

He stopped tossing and smiling and fixed his eyes on mine until I asked, “What?”

“Need a large skillet.”

“Uh, of course,” I said, heading to the cabinet behind him, next to the stove. But I hadn't bent down to look for it when he grabbed my hand and spun me around to face him, wrapping his arms around my waist so forcefully and suddenly that I lost my balance.

Not that it mattered. He had me in more ways than one, and I clung to the bony outline of his shoulders, feeling the muscles of his chest through his shirt, his forearms circling me, his hands rubbing the fabric of my T-shirt up and down against the small of my back.

“What are we doing?” I asked a minute later.

But he just shook his head, not letting me go.

Finally, he leaned me against the sink.

“Why did you break up with me?” he asked, looking me in the eye.

“You know exactly why I broke up with you.”

“Why did you
really
break up with me?”

“For the same reason you stayed away after I broke up with you.”

“That's not fair. I called you many times. I gave up because I thought it was what you wanted. I thought you were Miss Independent, that you'd be scared if I'd told you I wanted to be with you, but needed to honor my commitment to bring Yuleidys, to at least get her out of Cuba. That I was just bringing her over to help her.”

“I know you didn't tell her that,” I guffawed.

“Well, I couldn't tell her immediately. She wouldn't have accepted, I don't think. But I would have told her once she was here and settled and able to help her family. You would've had to trust me.”

“It's been almost a year, Jorge. You know where I live. You could have said something.”

But I knew he couldn't really. I would've bolted even further had he come wanting to be with me, to really be with me. I'd ordered him to forget about me, and then I'd gone and replaced him in my bed within a couple of months.

“You shut me out. I knew you didn't think I'd get it together and that you were scared of being with me, but—” He looked around the kitchen, as if he couldn't find a spot to rest his eyes on.

“That's not true,” I said.

But I knew it was.

“Mariela, I made mistakes. I wasn't clear with you or with myself, but—”

“But nothing. You have a new life. I have . . . a life. Let's be friends.”

But he kept looking at me, his eyes going from my eyes, to my cheeks, to my lips, then to the floor.

“Let's just go, okay? Let's just leave things alone and forget about the food, and just take me to whomever we were going to go see, okay? Okay?”

“Mariela, I'm freaking out here. You're next to me for five damn seconds and—”

“Jorge—”

“One kiss,” he said.

“Jorge, come on.”

“One kiss, Mariela.”

I sighed.

“One kiss?”

“Yes. One kiss. Let's say good-bye right. And then, we'll be friends. I'll know where I stand. I'll know you're happy with whatever is going on in your life, though Gustavo says you're not—”

“Gustavo doesn't know my life.”

But then he's kissing me and I'm melting and I realize how stupid I was to think I could turn a tenant into a substitute for this. His lips feel warm on mine, and my mouth recognizes them instantly, every one of my ribs, too, is welcoming the way his body is pressing against them, and I don't want him to stop, but he does.

“Okay,” he says, as if that's settled. “Now, I'm going to make you my soon-to-be-famous
arroz con sushi
.”

I'm confused, and I look at him knowing my face is a question, and he hugs me.

“Not like this,” he says into my hair. “Not when you need me and we have to figure out what's going on with you first.”

I want to understand what he's saying. I rally, try to save face, recover.

“What's this
arroz con sushi
? I'm pretty sure it's just called sushi and that rice is already a part of it.”

“No, no, no, no, no. This is completely different. Here, let me teach you how to make it and let's get a move on or we'll be late.”

And so, even though there was nothing I wanted to do less than to learn a recipe I was never going to make on my own, I smiled and let him teach me to make what he insisted I call Chef Jorge's
arroz con sushi
: You'll need three ounces of fish, cubed and seasoned, as if for sushi (salmon, tuna, or yellowtail work well); one cup of brown rice, precooked; two tablespoons of fresh ginger, sliced; two tablespoons of fresh garlic, minced; and two scallion stalks, chopped. Also, olive oil and sea salt to taste, and half of a large avocado.

Heat some of the olive oil in a skillet and place the strips of ginger and the minced garlic in it until they are lightly browned and crispy. Remove the ginger and garlic from the heat and set aside. Remove any excess oil from the frying pan and place the cooked rice in it, along with the scallions, until hot. Place the rice in single-serving bowls. Make some hollow spots on the mound of rice with your spoon and place your fish in. Top with the crispy ginger and garlic and garnish each side of the bowl with a sliver of the avocado. Sprinkle sea salt to taste and add a dollop of spicy mayo atop the fish, if desired.

Drink with a cup of chilled white wine.

Serves two.