Guillermo Rosales - The Halfway House

Tato, the ex-boxer, comes out of the shadows wearing only a small pair of briefs. He sits in a chair in front of me and asks for a cigarette. I give it to him. He lights it with a cheap lighter.

“Listen to this story, Willy,” he says to me as he exhales a cloud of smoke. “Listen to this story, you’re gonna like it. Back there, in Havana, in the age of Jack Dempsey, there was a man who wanted to be the avenger of mankind. They called him ‘The God of the Starry Skies,’ ‘The King of the Underworld,’ ‘The Terrible Man.’”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, then he reveals: “That man was me.”

He lets out an incoherent peal of laughter and repeats,

“Do you like my story, Willy?”

"Yes."

“It’s the story of complete revenge. Of all mankind. Of a man’s pain. Do you get it?”

“Yes.”

“Great,” he says, getting up. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you the next chapter.”

He takes a long drag of his cigarette and disappears in the dark again.

It’s hot. I take off my shirt and put my feet on a beaten-up chair. I close my eyes, sink my chin into my chest and remain that way for many seconds, immersed in the wide emptiness of my existence.

I point an imaginary gun at my temple. I shoot.

“Fuck you up your ass!” Louie yells at his ghosts. “Fuck your ass!”

I get up. I return slowly to my room. In the half-light I see two cockroaches, as big as dates, fornicating on my pillow. I grab my towel, twist it and bring it down heavily on them. They escape. I fall on the bed, splaying my legs. I touch myself. It has been one long year since I’ve been inside a woman. The last one was a Colombian loca I met in a hospital. I think of the Colombian. I remember the surprising way she took her bra off in front of me, in her room, and showed me her tits. Then I remember the shameless way she pulled down the sheet covering her, and showed me her sex, and how she then opened her legs slowly and said to me, “Come here.”

I was afraid since the hospital nurses went in and out of the rooms constantly. But the pull of sex was stronger. I fell on her. I entered her slowly, sweetly. She had a beautiful whore’s mouth.

I wake up. It’s daytime already. The heat is suffocating, but the crazy guy who works at the pizza place sleeps under a thick blanket that reeks like a dead animal. I look at him with hate. I entertain myself imagining for a few seconds wielding a sharp axe over his square head. When the hate starts gnawing at me, I stand up, look for my filthy towel and a sliver of soap and go to the bathroom. The bathroom is flooded. Somebody put a leather jacket in the toilet. The floor is covered in feces, paper and other filth. I head for the second bathroom in the other hallway of the halfway house. Everyone is waiting in front of it: René, Pepe, Hilda, Ida, Pedro and Eddy. Louie, the American, has been inside the bathroom for an hour and doesn’t want to come out. Eddy beats on the door loudly. But Louie won’t open.

“Fuck you! Go fuck yourself!” He yells from inside.

Then Pepe, the older of the two mental retards, lets out a terrifying scream, lowers his pants, and defecates right there, in the hallway, in plain view of everyone.

Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in international politics, kicks on the bathroom door again.

“Leave me alone, you fucking chicken!” Louie screams from inside.

I leave. I go to the garden and urinate behind an areca palm. Then I wash my hands and my face in a gush of water coming out of a spigot. I go back in the halfway house and hear the ruckus in front of the bathroom still going on. I go over there and arrive just as Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in politics, throws his entire body against the bathroom door and busts the lock. Louie, the American, is sitting on the toilet, wiping his behind with a raincoat.

“It’s him!” Eddy yells. “He’s the one who sticks clothes and cardboard in the toilets!”

Louie howls like a trapped animal. He puts on his pants quickly and hurls himself at Eddy, punching him in the mouth. Eddy falls to the floor with bloody lips. Louie shoves his way through the locos and leaves the crowd for the living room. He howls like a mad wolf.

“Go eat your chicken feed, chickens!” he shouts from the living room. He opens the front door forcefully, yells more curses and goes outside slamming the door so hard that three or four glass panes fall to the floor in pieces.

“Son of a bitch!” Eddy screams, his mouth bloody. “Now they’ll finally kick you out!”

Ida, the grande dame come to ruin, comes over to me with an angry expression and takes on a confidential tone of voice:

“Curbelo won’t kick him out. Don’t you see that Louie receives a check for six-hundred dollars every month? He’s the best customer here. He could be a crazy murderer and he’d never get kicked out.”

Arsenio goes over to the bathroom. The nuts’ screams have woken him up. His eyes are glassy, and his long, wiry hair is standing straight up and looks like a huge metal helmet. He looks at the blood on the floor, at Pepe’s huge pile of shit, at Eddy’s broken mouth, at the rain coat stuffed in the toilet, all with indifference. It’s nothing new. It’s all part of everyday life at the halfway house. He scratches his robust chest. He spits on the floor. He burps. He shrugs his shoulders and declares,

“You really are animals!”

He turns around and walks slowly to the living room.

“Breakfast!” he screams from there at the top of his lungs and the nuts fall over each other to follow him to the dining room. I don’t feel like drinking cold milk. I need coffee. I search my pockets. All I have is a dime. I go to my room and stop in front of the bed belonging to the crazy guy who works at the pizza place. I take his shirt from the top of the wardrobe and search the pockets. Then I grab his pants and do the same. I find a quarter and half a pack of cigarettes. I put it all in my pocket and go out to the corner coffee shop. On the way, I run into Louie, the American, who is avidly going through a garbage can. A little further on, Hilda, the decrepit old hag, lifts up her dress right in the middle of the street and urinates next to a bus stop. On the bus stop’s bench, a young vagrant is sleeping with his head propped up on a dirty backpack. Two huge dogs cross the road toward Flagler Street. Cars race by toward downtown. I get to the coffee shop and ask for coffee. They give it to me cold since they know I live in the halfway house and I won’t complain. I could protest, but I don’t. I drink the coffee in one gulp. I pay and return to the boarding home. It’s time to listen to my preacher, so I turn on the TV and slump into the tattered armchair. The preacher comes on the screen. He’s talking about a rock ‘n’ roll star who threw his guitar down in the middle of a concert and proclaimed, “Save me, Lord!”

“He’s a well-known star,” the preacher says. “I don’t have to name names. But that guy … still young, sick of acting, up to here with living a lie, threw his guitar to the ground and proclaimed ‘Save me!’ And I said, ‘Satan, squalor of darkness … you can’t fool a man who has called for Him. Hallelujah!’”

The preacher is crying. His audience is also crying.

“There’s still time,” the preacher says. “There’s still time to come to the Lord.”

Just then, a strong whiff of cologne water reaches me. I turn around and see Frances, the new little loca , sitting in a chair behind me. She has made up her face carefully and is wearing a thin blue dress that makes her look younger. Her hair is all done up. And her skin looks clean and fresh. I look at her legs. They’re still pretty. I get up from my seat and go over to her. I take her hands and examine them carefully. They’re clean and elegant, although her nails are too long and unkempt. Then, I open her mouth with my fingers. She’s just missing a few molars. I look around and don’t see anyone. I kneel on the floor and lift her skirt. I sink my head in between her legs. She smells good. I sit her back in the chair again. I take off her shoes and examine her feet. They’re small and pink and also smell clean. Then I stand. I hug her. I kiss her neck, her ears, her mouth.