90 Miles to Havana (18 page)

“I'm the same way, Angelita. I like to plan, get used to the idea. But there was no time for that. I had to decide on the spot; he made me jump.” Tomás smiles. “I think my father knows me too well.”

“Tomás, that took a lot more nerve than what I did. I had time to plan and decide,” I say.

Tomás shrugs. “Well, now that you're here, you're welcome to stay as long as I'm here.” Then he nods at the little stove. “Give those beans a turn will you?”

As I stood by the stove I saw the Pirate Angel's calendar hanging on the cabinet; the eleventh day of the next month was circled in red.

“Are you leaving on the eleventh?” I ask.

Tomás takes the wooden spoon out of my hand. “If you don't stir the beans, they'll burn.”

This morning I find the forward cabin empty, the deck crowded with clucking seagulls, but no Angelita or Tomás.

Down in the galley, a cup of
café con leche
sits on the stove with a plate on top to keep it warm. The note sticking out from underneath the plate reads, “
Amigo, I'm off to the fields, El Toma-Tron calls me. Lazy Armando at the Fontainebleau Hotel always needs help. Catch the number 11 bus, just past the bridge. It will take you right to the hotel. Tell him Tomás sent you.”
Below that, in a loopy, feminine script there's more:
Julian, you already know why I can't stay with you, but I had to make sure you got here
safely. I'll stay in touch through Tomás. You're in good hands. Angelita.

I knew that she had to go back, but still I was hoping.

“Shoo!” I yell and wave my arms as the flock of seagulls lifts off squawking and complaining. I'm alone on the bank of a strange river and I'm starting to get that scared, lonely feeling again.

I better get moving, do something, so that I won't think about Angelita or my brothers and my parents. Those thoughts only make me feel bad. I'm going to put on a clean T-shirt and get out of here.

When I open my suitcase, I see the blue lining and I think about my mother running her fingers along it. I'm trying to picture the little gold bird sleeping in there, and trying not to think about my mother's face.

Everything in the suitcase is wet, so I take out my shirts and pants and hang them around the cabin so they'll dry. I put on a clean shirt, wet and wrinkled, but clean, and head up the hill to the bus stop.

Sitting on the bus, I feel better. I have to pay attention; I don't want to miss the hotel. I wonder if Angelita got back to the camp. I miss her already.

When the bus driver announces, “Fontainebleau Hotel,” I run out through the hissing door into a blue cloud of bus exhaust that's now drifting over the lush gardens of the hotel. As I walk past the tall metal gate, I notice that there is a guy guarding the front doors. The top hat and the circus general's uniform he's wearing makes him look
important. He crosses his arms, steps in front of the door, and watches me walk around the fountain in the middle of the circular driveway.

Then he points at the gate, and yells, “Shoo!”

I stop in the middle of the driveway. “Shoo who?” I look behind me. “Shoo me?”

He points at me. “You, out!” he says in a tone of voice that a stray dog would understand. I plant my feet in the asphalt and cross my arms, too. Who does he think he is talking to me like that? My father used to take us to bigger and better hotels than this, and in Cuba the doormen didn't have to dress up like circus performers.

He starts walking in my direction and getting bigger with every step so I turn around and head for the gate.

As I walk out I look at my wet wrinkled shirt and grubby shorts. I guess I don't look like I belong here.

Just then, a yellow cab flies in through the gate and screeches around the other side of the fountain. I duck into the bushes as the doorman rushes over to open the door of the cab. He opens the trunk and sticks his head inside. As he struggles to pull out an enormous suitcase, I slip in through a smaller side door.

I make a beeline for the two brilliant stripes of blue sky and creamy, white sand glaring into the back of the dark lobby. I'm staring up at a chandelier the size of a car when someone grabs my shoulder.

“Excuse me, may I help you?” A little man wearing a red jacket and a Turkish hat with a gold tassel hanging in
front of his stubby nose is standing behind me. He looks like an organ grinder's monkey. I wiggle free from the hairy paw gripping my shoulder.

“Are you a guest here?” the monkey man asks.

“Armando, I come to see Armando,” I say.

“The guy with the umbrellas?” he asks.

“
Sí
, Armando.”

He looks at me and curls his nostril as if I smell bad. “Follow me.”

We cut across the lobby away from the beach, then into a big room full of black ladies in blue uniforms folding and then stacking sheets. The next room is full of men washing dishes; they're all speaking Spanish.

The monkey man grabs my arm and hustles me out of a side door. We rush past the garbage cans and then down a dirt path behind the swimming pool. The smell of suntan lotion and the sparkling blue water is making me homesick. We walk around the pool to the edge of the sand and then he stops, wipes off his shiny little boots, and points at a striped tent down on the beach. I feel like asking him why we didn't just walk straight here, but I know the answer. He didn't want the guests to see me. I take my sneakers off and start walking across the hot sand to the tent.

When a sea breeze blows the tent flap open, I see a large man sitting back on a chaise lounge with what looks like a flock of yellow butterflies fluttering above his head. He's scribbling something into a yellow notebook.

“Armando?” I ask.

“Jes, un momento pliss,” he says, not bothering to look up.

He tears out a yellow note, waves it at me, then hands me a safety pin.

“
Arriba.
” He points over his head and to the right. As I pin up the piece of paper and say in Spanish, “I'm Julian, a friend of Tomás, the inventor of the Toma-Tron.”

“Only English,
por favor
,” he answers. “Speak English, I learn,” he says and then points at the butterfly notes. “Facts are very important, Thomas Edison
invento el teléfono
by
accident.”

Then he sits up and extends his hand in my direction. “
Un amigo de Tomás
,
el
Edison
Cubano,
is a friend of mine.” Before we can shake, he waves his hand over his head with a flourish and then bows. “Armando in your service.”

“Tomás said that you give me work.” Armando motions for me to come closer; he reaches up and squeezes my arm. While holding my arm with one hand he opens his dictionary with the other, and leafs to the right page. “Let's see,
fuerte, muy fuerte
,
sí,
estrong, very estrong,” he says. His voice sounds very familiar to me.

Just then a woman, with dark glasses the size of saucers and shiny gold hair, pokes her head into the tent. “Armando dear, you promised to have our umbrella up before we came out.” She walks right past me to Armando's side and puts her hand on his shoulder.

Armando stands up. “Mrs. Wilson,
mi amor,
I do not
forgotten.” His voice is syrupy sweet as he ushers her out the door, “Ah jes, here it is”—he stops to read one of his notes—“In the shake of your lamb's tail, it will be did.”

Mrs. Wilson giggles. “Oh, Armando!”

Armando gestures in my direction. “
Mi assistante
will bring to you.”

“Hurry, Armando, my little Billy will be positively singed if we don't have an umbrella.” Then she pushes the flap open. “
Pronto
, boy,
pronto
!” she says without even looking at me. Then she flashes Armando a red lipstick smile, and walks out into the sun.

“Julian! This first customer, Mrs. Wilson, is a good tipper! Sink it in deep, Julian—the wind is . . .” I wait as he looks up a word. “
Sí
, capricious. The wind is capricious today.
Capricious
—fickle, changeable.”

I search in the pile for an umbrella, as Armando leafs madly through his dictionary. He's rolling a new word slowly in his mouth. I hear him read slowly, “
Singe
: to expose the carcass of a bird or animal to a flame in order to remove unwanted feathers, bristles, or hair!” Then he calls, “Julian, for Billy's sake, hurry!”

Billy's mother doesn't notice that the umbrella is much bigger than I am. She points the straw of her drink at her Billy. He looks up from his Tarzan comic as I try to push the umbrella into the sand. I want to tell him that I have the same comic book; it's back home under my bed, but he gives me a funny look and then rolls away. I don't like
the way he looked at me. I get the feeling that he thinks he's better than me.

I manage to stand the umbrella up and pull it open just in time for a gust of wind to grab it. The umbrella leans dangerously in Billy's direction. The sand is flying as I wrestle the red monster upright. When I get it under control, I look at them and smile—both are wearing a layer of white sand stuck on the greasy suntan lotion. They're not happy.

Mrs. Wilson clutches her son and yells, “Ar-man-do!”

Armando stomps out and pushes the red umbrella deeper into the sand. He croons an apology and then bows to Mrs. Wilson and her itchy son. Suddenly I realize where I've heard that voice. “You're ‘
Amando Armando!
' Loving Armando. My mother listens to you every night.” I stop and stare at him. He's a real famous person!

He pulls me back to the tent, gesturing theatrically. “My best tipper, and you almost kill her child!” he says, reverting to Spanish.

“Your mother
used
to listen me,” he corrects, and bows his head. Then he straightens up and strikes a pose. “But mark my words, Armando will rise again!” Then he waves his dictionary at me. “First, I learn the English,” he says as if he's narrating a movie about himself and his heroic quest. “In the meantime,” he says in a normal tone of voice, “I'll set the umbrellas up in the morning, and you can take them down in the evening.”

Armando disappears into the tent, and I'm left outside,
not sure what to do next. I'm still watching the tent flap waving in the breeze, when he pokes his head out.

“You are still here? How can I study with you standing there? Shoo, you're free; go explore, but come back by five.”

I wander down the beach among Americans in the sand, reading, sleeping, and eating lunch in the shade. At first they don't seem too different from Cubans in the sand. But then I notice that there is no music playing and no one is dancing. This beach is quieter. Even on the beach everything looks very organized. Each family has their blankets, chairs, and coolers just the right distance from their neighbor. It looks to me like they went to a lot of trouble to relax. I wonder if I'm the only person that notices these things. Even the way the kids are playing looks different to me.

Up ahead, at the edge of the waves, a little boy and a girl are frantically shoveling, trying to save the castle that they built too close to the waves. I walk up and smile at them as I pick up an extra bucket. I fill it with sand, turn it over, and stack the sand to cover a hole in the castle walls. They do the same, and soon the wall is high enough to keep back the rippling waves. They're chattering away really fast in English. I can't understand everything they are saying but it doesn't matter because we're building a castle in the sand together.

We have just started raising the towers at each corner, when the mother sweeps down and pulls her children out of the castle. I look up at her. The sun is blazing a halo around her head, but still, I can tell she's scowling at me. As
they walk away she's wagging her finger at her kids. I can't hear what she's saying, either, but I recognize the don't-play-with-strangers wag; it's the same in every language. I don't blame her; my mother would do the same thing.

I take my wrinkled shirt off and try to lie down inside the castle, but I'm too big, so I poke my legs through the walls. This is the first time I've ever felt too big to do anything. It's usually the other way around. I guess now, without my brothers trying so hard to make me feel small, I get to be as big as I want. Sometimes I miss them, but at the same time I think I like being with Angelita and Tomás better. They let me do older things, things that my brothers would say I was too young to do.

The waves are washing the castle away and my skin is starting to turn red so I run into the ocean and let the tide carry me out to the edge of the deep water. My mother or my brothers would never let me go out this far, where you can't see the bottom.

Deep down in the blue water a long shadow glides by below me just above the point where the slender shafts of light fade into blue. My brain starts scrolling through every shark story I've ever heard. At first I swim slowly so I won't splash too much, but by the time I get close to the beach, I'm sprinting.

I stumble out of the water and then throw myself down on the sand where the waves can still reach me. I make believe I'm the lone survivor of a shipwreck. After I catch my breath, I get up to explore my deserted island.

There is a strange being walking down the beach toward me. I think it's a girl but she seems to have something growing—no balanced—on top of her head. When she reaches up and adjusts the stack of palm frond hats balanced on her head, I jump up and run behind her.

“¿Hola, tu eres Cubana?”
I say, but she doesn't stop or respond. “I see first American shark today!” I say to her in English. But she just keeps walking.

“I make hats, too—you Cuban?” I say. She stops and looks at me with a tired expression on her face. “What makes you think I'm Cuban?” she answers in Spanish.