Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“You don’t see her as much as I do,” Ricky says with a smile to show that he’s not criticizing.

“Those bitches really got their hooks into her with this shit. I’ll tell them to leave her fucking ration book alone,” I say angrily.

“I bring her food, she’s ok,” Ricky says.

“Quite the little saint,” I say with a grin but also an edge.

Silence. Seconds turning into minutes. Claustrophobia. Get up. Walk around. I note again that Dad’s ashes are gone from the mantel. I don’t even want to think what she did with them.

More time. More suffocating seconds. God, I hate this place.

“I’m sorry, I can’t stay here,” I say.

Ricky nods. “At least tell Mom you’re leaving the country.”

She’s dozing now. I kneel in front of her and take her hands and kiss them. She looks up, a little sparkle in those yellow eyes.

“My darling,” she says.

“Mom, I’m going now. I’m going away for a while.”

She nods and then, as if the veil has lifted for a moment, she says: “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Ricky walks me to the landing. “Don’t forget your letter,” he says, and hands me the forms from the Interior Ministry. Of course it requires a fee, but once paid, I’ll have that rarest of rare things-permission to leave Cuba. An exit visa. A key to the prison door.

I hold it to the light and then I kiss it.

“How did I get this? You pulled some strings, didn’t you?”

He shakes his head. “Even if I was fucking the minister’s private secretary I wouldn’t ask him for something like this. We’d all be headed for the plantations.”

“Then how?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It’s a mystery.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The Last Act.

The wee hours.

After all the tails have gone to bed.

Bang at my apartment door.

Who the fuck?

Open it.

“So you went above my head?” Hector says bitterly.

Rum breath. Bleary eyes.

“I swear I didn’t.”

“Ricky then?”

“I didn’t ask him to.”

“Own initiative, eh?”

“He says he didn’t do anything.”

He pushes past me, sits on my bed. “Can’t stay, told Anna I was getting some air. Have a drink,” he says and passes me the flask.

“No, thank you.”

“Fuck Ricky and fuck you, Mercado. If you don’t come back from the United States I’m finished. My family. Your family. All of us.”

“I’ll come back.”

He shakes his head like a wet dog. “I could still tell them, you know. I could still tell the DGI or the ministry that you’re going to La Yuma. I could tell them you’ve talked to me about defecting,” Hector snarls.

“You wouldn’t do that, Hector.”

“No?” he says.

“No,” I insist.

He balls his right fist angrily and thumps it on the bed. For a second I see him tossing the joint. Neighbors in the hall, phone calls, Hector pulling rank. But the fight’s been ground out of him. He sighs. “No, I won’t turn chivato, not now,” he says.

He takes another drink, gets heavily to his feet.

“Can’t stay,” he says.

In the doorway he grabs my wrist, tugs me close. “Forget about it, Mercado.”

I break free using first-week police aikido.

“Damn it,” he says and stares at me, mentally wounded.

“Listen to me, Hector, I’m not dumb, I’m going to go to you-know-where, but I promise I will be back,” I tell him. “Now, you should go home, Anna will be worried.”

He looks at the floor and doesn’t move.

“You’re a poet, Mercado,” he says.

“I don’t know how that rumor got started.”

“Ever read Pindar?”

“No.”

“Homer’s contemporary, except he really existed. He says, ‘The gods give us for every good thing two evil ones. Men who are children take this badly but the manly ones bear it, turning the brightness outward.’ ”

“I don’t see-”

“You can’t fix everything. You have to let things go. Don’t go to America. I’m begging you, Mercado, please don’t go.”

I don’t reply.

I don’t need to.

He nods, turns, and walks along the corridor. I hear him shuffle down the stairs, and from my window I check him for tails until O’Reilly becomes Misiones and he’s finally swallowed up by the boozy Havana night.

T oo late, Hector. Too late now, my friend, to heed your words. I’m here and I’ve killed human beings and that chance to turn your brightness outward is in the distant past .

I suppose I must have been awake, but it was only on the third or fourth iteration that I became vaguely aware of the voice.

“María… María… vamonos .”

What?

“María, vamonos .”

María? Who is María?

“María, vamonos .”

Oh, yeah, I’m María.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Six. I’m leaving for the day. How did you sleep?”

“Good. I slept good. The first full night’s sleep…”

I didn’t finish the sentence. The first full night’s sleep I’d had in one hundred and eighty days. Six months since the day after my birthday in Laguna. Six months since Ricky’s phone call. Six months since I’d begun this plan.

“Look at me,” Paco said.

I rubbed the blear out of my eyes. Paco was wearing jeans, work boots, a heavy black sweater, a bright yellow hard hat. He seemed excited.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Construction site, downtown, do you like the hat? I look like a real Yankee, don’t I? A real American,” he said, and then in a gravelly voice he added, “Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?”-an impersonation that completely escaped me.

“You look like a regular American,” I agreed.

His grin grew even wider before a look of concern darkened his visage. “You better get up too, Esteban’s already here to take the girls up the mountain. He’s in a mood and he’s dressed like a pimp.”

“Screw him,” I muttered and closed my eyes again. In Havana I didn’t get up until I could smell the coffee brewing in the ice cream parlor on O’Reilly.

“Shit, María, they’re calling me, I have to go,” Paco said.

“Go then,” I said, and then, remembering basic civility for someone who has slept literally under one’s own roof, I added, “Have a good day, Paco, look after yourself.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

I nodded and drifted for a minute or two. I didn’t hear him leave the room, I didn’t hear the Toyota pickup full of Mexicans drive away, I did feel the poke of Esteban’s snakeskin boot nudge my ankle.

I sat up with a jolt. “Who the fuck-” I began furiously and then remembered where I was.

“I’m running a business here, you got two minutes to make yourself look presentable,” Esteban said.

“Sorry, I-” I began but Esteban cut me off.

“These are important people. You’re a smart girl, you can see that our whole operation is on a knife edge. We gotta project a feeling of competence and calm. The feds didn’t touch us. Everything’s running smoothly. Get me? So no fuckups. This is your first day, I’d hop to it if I were you. I don’t care how bad things get, I’ll fucking can you and everybody else if I want to. Put this uniform on and meet me outside in the parking lot in two minutes,” Esteban said.

He was wearing a charcoal gray suit. His hair was combed, his face washed, his beard trimmed. He had a large diamond ring on his little finger but apart from that he looked good. Few straight men can resist a compliment from a younger woman, so I gave him both barrels at point-blank. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Esteban, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. Can I just add I think you’re bearing up very well under all this pressure? You look very together today.”