Adios Muchachos Read Online Free PDF Page B

the motorcycle and the fridge?”
    “Don’t give me any money now, I don’t even have time to count it. Come around later this afternoon or tomorrow morning. That’s it, tomorrow morning. Now hurry on out the back way, and don’t make any noise.”
    The two men departed and Margarita closed the patio door. She ran the curtains, took off her gloves and apron. Then, straightening herself up, she shook her hair, threw her arms in the air just once, lifted her chin, and with the demeanor of a grand lady, moved to open the door. Passing by the mirror in the living room, she took a quick look, was satisfied with the reflection, and continued toward the door.
    Margarita opened the door to welcome Alicia just as Victor was taking the bicycle out of the trunk. Alicia took the bike by the handlebars and walked over toward her mother with the guilty pedal in her hand. As she entered the small garden next to the front door, her mother launched into the customary reproaches: “I told you that thing was going to leave you stranded. You should throw that thing away and ask your father to buy you a scooter.”
    “Mother, this is Victor … Victor, my mother.”
    “Wow, Mel Gibson,” Margarita interjected without really paying him too much attention. “You’re just too hardheaded; I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you …”
    “Please, Mother, that’s enough,” Alicia protested.
    “I beg you to excuse my lapse of manners, sir, please come in.” And turning again to Alicia, “But you really have to ask your father …”
    “Mother, will you shut the hell up … please!” And turning to Victor, “She has this thing with getting my father to buy me a scooter, as if it were that easy!”
    When her clients were around, Alicia made a point of using strategic bits of profanity. Two elegant women who knew how to employ timely profanities gave the impression of being above it all, emancipated, liberal, chic. No decent woman of humble origins would ever curse in the presence of someone she was trying to impress. And these foreigners, accustomed as they were to the subjugation of prostitutes in the Third World, found the offhand use of obscenity by these two Cuban women surprising and, ultimately, captivating.
    “You’re not Cuban, are you?”
    “No, señora, Canadian.”
    “But your Spanish is perfect. I would have guessed that you were Mexican.”
    They moved into the living room.
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ve lived a long time in Mexico. I consider it my second home.”
    “How I envy you! Let me see now, my husband once …”
    “Please, Mother, you can tell him your life story some other time? Now, why don’t you offer our guest a drink? Me, I need a beer. My throat is so dry it hurts.”
    With this, Alicia disappeared into the kitchen.
    “Please, make yourself comfortable,” Margarita said, indicating the great easy chair facing the table with the nude photograph. “What would you like to drink? Something soft? Something hard?”
    Victor was undecided.
    Margarita looked toward the bar shelf, saying, as if it were the most natural thing on earth, “Rum, cognac, whiskey, vodka, gin, beer?”
    She didn’t know if their guest was aware of the fact that there were very few homes in Cuba with young ladies who ride Chinese bicycles and such a broad selection of spirits.
    “Well, I’ll have a beer, too. Thank you, ma’am.”
    While the two women were in the kitchen, Victor took in the details of the living room: period furniture, original oils by fine Cuban painters, elegant curtains, ornaments in good taste.
    Alicia returned with a tray carrying two bottles of beer and an equal number of glasses.
    At that moment, Victor noticed the photograph he was predestined to discover; he wrinkled his brow for a moment and then smiled. “Well, damned if it isn’t you.” Holding the picture at arm’s length, he studied it more closely.
    “Yes. It was done from a painting,” Alicia laughed, twisting the caps