Naked in LA Read Online Free PDF

for his dinner. Perhaps I should have brought home the stone crabs. I remembered the money in my purse. Tomorrow I would make him one of his favourite dishes, like Maria used to make back home, like garbanzo or caldo Gallego . I’d tell him I won the money on the lottery.
    But first I’d pay those hospital bills.
    One afternoon with Angel and I’d earned more than I made in a whole month at the diner. I hoped he thought it was worth it.
     

     
    It was three o’clock in the morning, I lay there listening to the click of the fan, slick with sweat. I finally threw back the sheet and sat up. It was impossible to sleep.
    I got out of bed, moving softly so as not to wake Papi. I slipped outside onto the concrete patio. There was a canvas director’s chair left behind by some previous tenant and I sat down, put my face in my hands and started to cry. All the shame and fear and grief poured out.
    I didn’t want to live like this anymore.
    This wasn’t the way it was meant to be. I never thought about it when we were in Havana; I thought the nice house, the servants, the chauffeur-driven Bel Air, all of it would last forever. But I’d learned very quickly that nothing is forever, life can change in an instant. Now I was twenty-one years old, working in a diner and living in a single room with a sick father. By now I was supposed to be married to Angel Macheda and living in a big house in Marianao.
    But had I ever thought past the wedding reception and opening the presents? That wasn’t a life, it wasn’t even a bit of one. My future had never extended further than my moment of triumph in the cathedral in San Cristobal, the white dress, the tear in Papi’s eye as he gave me away.
    I didn’t even get that--it was part of Esmeralda Salvatore’s memories now. And look at the future she had earned! Six months gone with Angel’s baby while he’s screwing a new mistress in one of her father’s hotels.
    Whatever my future was supposed to be, it wasn’t this.
    There were a few times I caught myself thinking, What if Papi... I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the thought, ashamed that it had ever occurred to me. And yet this was no life, not for him or for me.
    I couldn’t stop crying. I’d held on to so much for so many years, ever since I sat in the waiting room of the hospital that night we arrived from Havana with only the clothes I had on my back. I had held myself together for month after month, year after year, thinking: I’ll cry tomorrow.
    Well tomorrow had arrived. I couldn’t do this anymore. I was coming undone.
    I started to whisper a prayer, very softly so as not to wake him.
    I had prayed before, decorously in the cathedral in Havana, in public view, lighting candles and slipping coins into the tin box. This was different. This time I grovelled before God, my face was wet with snot and tears, and my prayer was just the same words repeated over and over.
    “Please help me get out of this. Show me a better life than this.”
     
     
     
     

Chapter 8 

     
     
    “What are you doing home this time of the day?” Papi asked.
    It was lunchtime, I’d only left for work a couple of hours ago. “Papi, I have some good news.”
    He forced a smile. He was not having a good day, he was coughing a lot and there were dark rings under his eyes.
    “I quit my job at the diner. I’ve got work somewhere else, somewhere better.”
    “A new job?”
    “In an office. I’m a secretary now. I don’t have to wait tables anymore.”
    “That’s wonderful, cariña . Where is this?”
    “Not far, just in Dade County. It’s a construction company, and it pays a lot more money.” Angel was actually putting me on his payroll at four hundred dollars a week, crazy money for a secretary.
    But he’d probably break even for a mistress.
    Papi was smiling but I could see the look in his eyes, he was calculating. “How did you get this job? You can’t type.”
    “I ran into Consuela Caballero. She was a friend of mine