Naked in LA Read Online Free PDF Page B

from Havana. Do you remember her? Anyway, her father, he works in construction now, he said he’d hire me, it’s on the job training.”
    I could tell by the way he looked at me that he didn’t believe a word of it. He was debating with himself whether to call me on the lie, or whether maybe, in this situation, it was better not to know.
    I held my breath--and gracias a Dios --he let it slide.
    “I remember Consuela,” he said, “her father was in the army, wasn’t he? I didn’t know he made it out of Cuba. Why don’t you ask them over?”
    “Oh, Papi, how are we going to do that?”
    “Is it this place you’re ashamed of, or is it me?”
    “Papi, don’t say that.”
    “Anyway, it’s good you don’t have to work at the diner anymore.”
    “We’re going to have a special dinner tonight to celebrate. I’m making chickpea soup and peccadillo with white rice. Now let’s get you out of this bed and into the sunshine, your colour doesn’t look too good.”
    It took me a while to get him out of the bed and into his wheelchair. He got out of breath now after even the smallest exertion, and he had to keep stopping to rest or he’d have another coughing fit. Soon, I’d need help to take care of him, I wouldn’t be able to leave him alone to go to work. What was I going to do?
    I decided I would spend part of my new lavish wage on someone who would sit with him during the day. I wouldn’t let him go into a nursing home.
    I’d ask Lena. She’d probably do it for free if I asked her, all she did these days was watch television, same as Papi. But she’d be happy for the extra money, she only had her pension and the tiny rent we’d paid her until now.
    So Angel was right. I did need him.
    I wheeled Papi outside onto the patio. He lifted his face to the sun. “That’s good,” he said. He looked at the two ratty palm trees at the end of our yard as if they were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. “Nice.”
    I pulled up the old director’s chair and sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm. I knew he couldn’t go on like this too much longer, and I wondered what I was going to do without him. I would be free to make my own decisions soon. I’d be a boat losing its anchor and its compass at the same time; I could finally head out of port but I wouldn’t know true north.
    Had he really been my moral compass, though? Perhaps the truth was I had always sailed blind; I lied to him about sleeping with Angel when we were in Havana, and now here I was covering it up again. I told myself it was for his sake this time.
    I saw him wince. “Are you okay, Papi?”
    “Get my pills, will you, cariña? The pink ones.”
    I fetched them from next to the bed and he slipped one under his tongue. After a while he seemed to relax.
    I rested my cheek on his arm. “It’s going to be all right, Papi,” I said.
    He put his hand on my head. “Of course it will,” he murmured.
     

     
    The son-in-law of the man who ran Miami kept an office on the sixth floor of an anonymous office block near Flagler and Biscayne. The sign in the lobby said Resorts International. Angel had an enormous corner office turned out in blond Danish pine with views over the bay. His desk was the size of a small boat and was immaculate; there was a green blotter and a white telephone and that was it. Behind it there was a swivel chair in soft black leather you could have crowned heads of state in.
    It looked like no one had ever sat in it.
    “You left the price tag on,” I said to Angel. Maybe he never had sat on it, because he actually looked underneath the seat until he figured out I was messing with him.
    I had a smaller office just outside. There was a Remington typewriter, a telephone with a lot of buttons and a filing cabinet. It was like something I had seen in magazines: no mess, no clutter.
    “Okay, I have a meeting,” he said. “I’ll pick you up for lunch.”
    “Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do? You want me to type