Rachel Kushner - Telex From Cuba

“I press your husband’s suit, just like you ask,” Lenore said, sweat rolling down her neck. She stared at Mrs. Mackey with her googly and bloodshot eyes. “You got to wet the linen, or it don’t press.”

Mrs. Mackey turned around and walked back to the house, trying to shut out the staccato bark of Mrs. Billings’s young poodle on the other side of the fence, the sound like a knife to the temple over and over again, driving Mrs. Mackey to fantasize ugly thoughts about stabbing a puppy, thoughts she wouldn’t have shared even with a doctor, but she shared little with doctors. She sat in their offices trying to divine what it was a normal person might say and then said it, took the pills they gave her, and now she had shaky hands.

Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Was it normal that she wanted to knife a puppy? Or that the laundress was spraying saliva-flecked water all over her husband’s clothes? It was difficult to know what was normal. When she’d been pregnant with Phillip, Hubert had caught her eating chalk. He called the doctor, sure that his nut-job wife would finally have to be committed. But the doctor said it was normal, the behavioral symptom of a relatively common nutrient deficiency, and that all she needed was a multivitamin.

“Just think, our very own Edward G. Robinson,” Mrs. Billings whispered to her husband, glancing over at Lito Gonzalez. Mr. Billings was in charge of nickel mine security, and though his job didn’t entail keeping tabs on the other mine managers, he didn’t need to, because his wife had this so zealously covered. Throughout the evening, Mrs. Billings tried out her code name of “Edward G. Robinson” on the other Americans, referring to Mr. Gonzalez, assuming he would have no idea who the famous Hollywood actor was, or that he happened to not only look just like him, that carplike face, but also exuded the same unseemly qualities. “Five foot five — with lifts in his shoes,” she said to one person. And to someone else, “Five foot three, with lifts in his shoes.” Earlier that week Mrs. Billings had seen Gonzalez pull up to the plant’s executive offices in a brand-new Cadillac. She’d watched him leave the offices, as she narrated to the other women, get into that car, shiny and white like a gigantic bar of soap, and drive half a block to the company mailboxes. “And then, ” she said, “he got back into that enormous showy car — I mean, go ahead and buy the tackiest thing Detroit has to offer — and he drove the half a block back to his office at the plant.”

A waiter came around with a tray of drinks, shallow bowls of some sort of rum drink with thin slices of lime floating on the surface like discs of green stained glass, undissolved sugar and crushed ice crusted around the rim of each little bowl. “I’ll take one of those delicious-looking things,” Blythe Carrington said, scooping one up into her hand. She took a sip from the edge of the bowl. “Positively deleterious, ” she said, sugar crystals gleaming on her upper lip.

“Did you read the bit about him in The New York Times piece on Nicaro?” Mrs. Lederer asked. “I found the whole thing confusing. Gonzalez is new to the company, but they said he operated ‘concessions’ when the mine first opened, during World War II. What kind of ‘concessions’ was he running?” The term made Mrs. Lederer think of hot dog and popcorn stands at baseball games.

“A shack with a red light over the door,” Mrs. Carrington replied.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“A whore house, Mrs. Lederer,” Mrs. Carrington said, enunciating like she was talking to a child. “Apparently he did quite a business before the Americans went and shut him down. Hypocrites,” Mrs. Carrington snorted. “Now you can expect them to go over to Levisa—”

“‘Them’?” Mrs. Lederer asked.

“The men, Mrs. Lederer. They don’t want one in Nicaro, so they’ll go to Levisa, is what I’m saying.”

“Does Gonzalez have a family?” someone asked.

“I hear he’s a widower,” another said.

“What I hear is what I could’ve told you by common sense alone,” Mrs. Billings said, and then lowered her voice, “only homosexuals drive Cadillacs.”

Mrs. Lederer was making her way back from the bathroom when she saw Charmaine Mackey standing in the hallway by herself, looking glamorous despite her ill-fitting and plain black dress, accented with only a wan strand of what Mrs. Lederer assumed were cultured pearls. Mrs. Mackey was one of those naturally good-looking and trim-figured women who didn’t have to compensate with distracting patterns and bright makeup, or adjust garments to disguise bulges and deficiencies. She had no style and nevertheless managed to look perfect. And moreover, to make style and effort seem gaudy and in poor taste. Mrs. Lederer suddenly felt ungainly in her size-fourteen persimmon-orange dress. Her size-eleven persimmon-orange pumps.

“Good evening, Mrs. Mackey. How positively smart you look.”

Mrs. Mackey smiled shyly.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Mrs. Lederer said, “are you on the wives’ committee, by chance?”

Mrs. Mackey shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“We’re meeting to discuss getting a better commissary in Nicaro, so we don’t have to take the boat over to Preston just to pick up a loaf of bread. You should come to the meeting, if you’re interested. We’re also going to discuss the construction of the pool. Mr. Carrington has agreed to present the plans.”

“A swimming pool. Right.”

Mrs. Mackey sensed that any other boss’s wife might know about construction projects. Perhaps Phillip had mentioned the pool. She couldn’t recall. Hubert had not mentioned it. There were lots of things Hubert didn’t mention, but this was her own fault. She sometimes pretended to care about these kinds of things, but she could never remember the details, which proved to everyone, even Phillip, that she didn’t care, and that there was no point in anyone telling her anything. At the dinner table these days, Hubert spoke expressly to Phillip and not to her. Still, she nodded and pretended to listen as he went on about nickel processing and the pilot plant, Cuban politics and labor laws, and this and that about the problems between Gonzalez and the Government Services Administration, which oversaw the Nicaro Nickel Company.

“Did you read the piece in this morning’s paper about Mr. Neutra?” Mrs. Lederer asked her. “It’s very exciting that he’s been commissioned for a project in Havana — it’s going to be a stunning example of tropical modern.”

“Is he with the mining concern?” Mrs. Mackey distractedly removed a compact from her handbag and opened it to check her lipstick.

“Richard Neutra? Oh, heavens, no, dear. He’s a famous Austrian architect — the most famous.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Lederer.” It was the woman from French Guiana, whose name Mrs. Lederer could not quite recall and didn’t dare mispronounce.

Mrs. Mackey excused herself somewhat abruptly, but Mrs. Lederer didn’t mind and was even slightly relieved. The woman from French Guiana would know who Neutra was. She had a sober, European air, and from the moment Mrs. Lederer had seen her at the bakery a few days earlier, she’d imagined they might become friends, talk about modern art and articles they’d both read in The New Yorker .

The woman held up her drink and gestured around the room. “This place is fantastic, isn’t it?”

“It’s certainly unique,” Mrs. Lederer ventured, locking eyes with her and assuming they could collectively agree that it was not fantastic, that it was a complete horror.

“Oh, I don’t know if it is unique, Mrs. Lederer. It strikes me as very traditional. This is a real Cuban hunting lodge. Did you see the cast-iron boot scraper by the door? It must be a hundred and fifty years old. I have to remember to ask Lito about that remarkable piece.”