Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

Strangely, it’s under these harsh fluorescents that Modesta’s riveting features become softer, less superhuman. Until my arrival in Havana, I wouldn’t have been able to put myself in her skin, but now I understand all too well her fugitive’s tale. I find a strange fascination—and perhaps a comfort—in knowing that a great beauty, such as hers, is no insurance against acts of God.

Modesta goes to light a third cigarette, but changes her mind. I’m hoping a nurse will smell smoke and boot her diamond-cut ass.

“I’m with Sasha now,” she says casually, rubbing wayward ash off her thigh. Her eyes lift to check my reaction.

Lightly, I touch my wound. “May I suggest you stick with beer. In cans.”

Modesta laughs. Then a long pause. Eternity. “What happened last night was unforgivable. I don’t feel good about myself.”

My head nods slightly. So this is why she’s come to see me. Probably the most apologizing Modesta’s ever done.

She goes ahead with the third cigarette, lights it, and allows her lids to shut briefly and accept the comforting breeze. Another long silence in a night filled with them.

“I never knew my father, either. I would do anything for him, if he were alive.”

My eyes start to close and I feel myself adrift.

“The other thing Rafael told me last night,” she says and then backtracks. “He—we, we put it together after what happened. What I knew and what he knew, about your father. And everything. Rafael’s not angry.”

“Liar.”

She flashes her yuma-winning smile and flips her long hair. “ Claro,but I know what he thinks, mi corazón.He doesn’t keep a grudge. Don’t think anyone’s ever—and I mean ever—said no to him before the way you have.” She leans in, excited now. “ Dios mío,he nearly killedSasha after…” Modesta taps her head.

“Oh my God!” I bolt up, but the pain comes now and knocks me back down. “Oh my God. He fought the Russian? Is he okay?”

“They roughed him up a bit and threw him in the alley.”

Closing my eyes, I feel my heart racing and then a warm hand presses gently on my chest, calming its speed. My mother. The heat climbs from my chest to my neck and my face, to my tender wound. “I sure know how to pick ’em, right, Mom?” I want to say this aloud, so my mother can hear. So we can laugh together at how weird the journey has been since it began twenty-four years ago in this very hospital.

But it’s Modesta who speaks. “Rafael and I have a history, you know. We won’t work, but I don’t like him to have anyone else.”

“You Cuban drama queens are the most jealous people I’ve ever met. You’d be jealous of a cucarachain a tutu. My God.” Now my head hurts bad.

She smirks and lights yet another cigarette off the glowing end of her third. The silence we share is torture.

“Sasha’s a fucking drag, no? His pinga, coño!” She makes a small space between her thumb and forefinger. “El palo de gallo.”Penis of the rooster. “It’s so chiquitito.How’d you even know when the thing was in, anyway?”

“And the suits.”

“ Por favor.It’s one thing to wearthem, but does he have to talkabout them too? What, he’s critiquing for Russian Vogue?”

After a few more Marlboros, Modesta leaves the safety of her perch and nears my bed. Hesitantly, she allows her fingertips to graze my forearm. I don’t want her near me—she’s seen me naked, she’s seen me botch a blow job. I’ve seen her curl her thighs around a cock wet with my saliva.

“I don’t like you,” I say.

“A street that has two lanes, mi corazón.”

She looks at my bandage, hand hovering to touch, then retreating, as if she feels my mother’s protective presence. She makes for the door. At it, she turns around.

“I get off work when? Sunrise?”

“Sunrise, eggs, toast, sex, clock out,” I say, ticking them off.

“I’ll be back with aspirin and a car at nine. We need to get you home.”

It’s then I recall the Santería priest’s words and his long-ago warning to be aware of those who would do me harm. Long before Modesta may return, with my hand carrying the weight of my head, I sneak out of the hospital and hail a taxi home. The driver agrees to take my shoes instead of the fare I don’t have.

Y ou can takethe girl out of Morón, but you can’t take the Morón out of the girl.”

Richard laughs uproariously at his own wit. He’s calling from London. After a spectacular breakup, he said he and Daya have reconciled and he’ll be flying back to Havana in a few days.

Daya hails from Morón, a dusty way-station in central Cuba. She’s reunited with Richard under the condition that he meet her family there and announce his intentions.

I’m groaning at the thought of elegant Richard in backwater Morón. He asks, “You will come with us, won’t you?”

Grateful for a break from sex work, my market-worth down to zilch with a swollen noggin and stitches, I agree to the overnight trip. With Camila gone and Victor’s meeting still a few days away, I’m climbing the walls.

“You’ve got yourself a translator,” I say, sensing I’ll regret this. “Anything Daya needs to do, before you arrive?”

“Tell her to slide down the banister and warm up my dinner.”

TURNS OUT CAMILA left a cryptic note for her mother, saying she was leaving, but failed to mention for where, or when, or if she’s to return. The neighbors huddle in the family’s salon during afternoons, comforting Camila’s family. Her jefephones regularly, his voice full of concern for his beloved director. Everyone is baffled at this unprecedented disappearance. I ask if the crackdown could be responsible, but neighbors assure me in low whispers that Camila is indeed untouchable. This gives me small comfort, and so I go to Rafael’s house to determine if he knows where she might have gone.

I figure it’s a decent enough excuse to show up at his apartment, and a pretext to apologize in person. He’s been refusing my calls since the night with the Russians last week.

“He’s asleep,” says Rafael’s mother, shrugging. She takes in my bandage. Her face softens, and she slips out onto the porch and closes the door. I think about her losing her husband to the sea and madness, and I smile sadly.

“Mi cariña,”she says, inspecting the bandage plastered on my head. “Qué pena.”What a pity.

“Tell him I’m sorry,” I plead. She nods, and promises to deliver the message and my gift to Rafael, a bottle of Havana Club rum. After I leave, I realize it’s the same brand Sasha employed across my skull.

I can’t seem to do anything right.

At the Internet café, Susie’s expected update is conspicuously absent this week. Reading about her life and work in Ghana—a playing-out of my own life, I imagine, had other choices been made—has been one of the main bright spots in my life. I know she’s busy and adjusting to her new role in Africa, but I feel lonely nonetheless.

Leaving the Internet café, I hail a peso taxi home, and the 1958 Rambler American blows a head gasket. In the corkscrew stilts that have become part of my cubanidad,I waggle the four miles home.

At Camila’s house, worry has taken up residence, and the concerned faces of neighbors and friends rotate through the rooms. At the porch, the spotted mutt is waiting, and I feed him my own dinner of beans and rice from the kitchen of Camila’s mother. The kids in the neighborhood have named him Tito, after a famous Latino musician, and Tito seems to believe I belong to him.

He’s irresistibly cute, and I hold him up near my face. “Promise you won’t love me and leave me,” I instruct Tito while he licks my nose. Missing Camila, and uncertain if Rafael will ever forgive me, I’m feeling very alone.