Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Both of these dudes Beli played hard. Visited them at their digs and at the dealership and dished them their daily recommended allowance of noplay. A date couldn’t pass without the Fiat dealer begging her for a single grope. Just let me touch them with the back of my hand, he mewled, but nearly every time she picked him off in a fielder’s choice. Arquimedes, when rebuffed, at least showed some class. He didn’t pout or mutter, What the hell am I wasting my money for? He preferred to stay philosophical. The Revolution is not made in a day, he’d say ruefully and then kick back and entertain her with stories about dodging the secret police.

Even to a chooch like Jack Pujols she was true , yes, but eventually she did get over him. A romantic she was, but not a pendeja.

When she finally came to, however, things had turned dicey, to say the least. The country was in an uproar; after the failed invasion of 1959 an underground conspiracy of youth had been uncovered and everywhere young people were being arrested and tortured and killed. Politics, Juan spat, staring at all the empty tables, politics . José didn’t offer comment; he simply cleaned his Smith & Wesson in the privacy of his upstairs room. I don’t know I’ll make it out of this one, Arquimedes said in a barefaced attempt to cadge a pity fuck. You’ll be fine, Beli snorted, pushing off his embrace. She was right in the end, but he was one of the few who made it through with his balls unfried. (Archie survives into the present, and when I drive through the capital with my man Pedro, I occasionally spot his grill on campaign posters for one of the radical splinter parties whose sole platform is to bring electricity back to the Dominican Republic. Pedro snorts: Ese ladrón no va’ pa’ ningún la’ o.)

In February, Lillian had to quit the job and return to her campo to care for her ailing mother, a señora who, Lillian claimed, had never given a damn for her well-being. But it is the fate of women everywhere to be miserable always, Lillian declared, and then she was gone and only the cheap freebie calendar she liked marking off remained. A week later the Brothers Then hired a replacement. A new girl. Constantina. In her twenties, sunny and amiable, whose cuerpo was all pipa and no culo, a ‘mujer alegre’ (in the parlance of the period). More than once Constantina arrived to lunch straight from a night of partying, smelling of whiskey and stale cigarettes. Muchacha, you wouldn’t believe el lío en que me metí anoche. She was disarmingly chill and could curse the black off a crow, and, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit alone in the world, took an immediate liking to our girl. My hermanita, she called Beli. The most beautiful girl. You’re proof that God is Dominican. Constantina was the person who finally pried the Sad Ballad of Jack Pujols out of her.

Her advice? Forget that hijo de la porra, that comehuevo. Every desgraciado who walks in here is in love with you. You could have the whole maldito world if you wanted.

The world! It was what she desired with her entire heart, but how could she achieve it? She watched the flow of traffic past the parque and did not know.

One day in a burbuja of girlish impulse they finished work early and, taking their earnings to the Spaniards down the street, bought a pair of matching dresses.

Now you look candela, Constantina said approvingly.

So what you going to do now? Beli asked.

A crooked-tooth smile. Me, I’m going to the Hollywood for a dance. I have un buen amigo working in the door and from what I hear there’ll be a whole assembly line of rich men with nothing to do but adore me, ay sí. She shivered her hands down the slopes of her hips. Then she stopped the show. Why, does the private-school princess actually want to come along?

Beli thought about it a moment. Thought about La Inca waiting for her at home. Thought about the heartbreak that was beginning to fade in her.

Yes. I want to go.

There it was, the Decision That Changed Everything. Or as she broke it down to Lola in her Last Days: All I wanted was to dance. What I got instead was esto , she said, opening her arms to encompass the hospital, her children, her cancer, America.

El Hollywood was Beli’s first real club.↓

≡ A favorite hangout of Trujillo’s, my mother tells me when the manuscript is almost complete.

Imaginate: in those days El Hollywood was the It place to be in Baní, it was Alexander, Café Atlántico, and Jet Set rolled into one. The lights, the opulent decor, the guapos in the fine threads, the women striking their best bird-of-paradise poses, the band upon the stage like a visitation from a world of rhythm, the dancers so caught up in the planting of heel you would have thought they were bidding farewell to death itself—it was all here. Beli might have been out of her league, couldn’t order drinks or sit in the high chairs without losing her cheap shoes, but once the music started, well, it didn’t matter. A corpulent accountant put his hand out and for the next two hours Beli forgot her awkwardness, her wonderment, her trepidation, and danced . Dios mío did she dance! Dancing café out of the sky and exhausting partner after partner. Even the bandleader, a salt-and-pepper veterano from a dozen campaigns throughout Latin America and Miami shouted her out: La negra está encendida! La negra esta encendida indeed! Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won’t see it often. Everybody mistook her for a bailarina cubana from one of the shows and couldn’t believe that she was dominicana like them. It can’t be, no lo pareces, etc., etc.

And it was in this whirligig of pasos, guapos, and aftershave that he appeared. She was at the bar, waiting for Tina to return from ‘a cigarette break’. Her dress: wrecked; her perm: kicking; her arches: like they’d been given a starter course in foot binding. He, on the other hand, was the essence of relaxed cool. Here he is, future generation of de Leóns and Cabrals: the man who stole your Founding Mother’s heart, who catapulted her and hers into Diaspora. Dressed in a Rat Pack ensemble of black smoking jacket and white pants and not a dot of sweat on him, like he’d been keeping himself in refrigeration. Handsome in that louche potbellied mid-forties Hollywood producer sort of way, with pouched gray eyes that had seen (and didn’t miss) much. Eyes that had been scoping Beli for the better part of an hour, and it wasn’t like Beli hadn’t noticed. The nigger was some kind of baller, everybody in the club was paying tribute to him, and he rocked enough gold to have ransomed Atahualpa.

Let’s just say their first contact was not promising. How about I buy you a drink? he said, and when she turned away como una ruda, he grabbed her arm, hard, and said, Where are you going, morena? And that was all it took: a Beli le salío el lobo. First, she didn’t like to be touched. Not at all, not ever. Second, she was not a morena (even the car dealer knew better, called her india). And, third, there was that temper of hers. When baller twisted her arm, she went from zero to violence in under.2 seconds. Shrieked: No. Me. Toques . Threw her drink, her glass, and then her purse at him—if there had been a baby nearby she would have thrown that too. Then let him have it with a stack of cocktail napkins and almost a hundred plastic olive rapiers, and when those were done dancing on the tile she unleashed one of the great Street Fighter chain attacks of all time. During this unprecedented fusillade of blows the Gangster hunkered down and didn’t move except to deflect the stray chop away from his face. When she finished he lifted his head as though out of a foxhole and put a finger to his lips. You missed a spot, he said solemnly.