The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria Read Online Free PDF Page B

soul inside of him?”
    Angela switches the phone to her other ear to buy some time. “I don’t know. I could tell, is all. I could feel it.”
    “What, exactly? What could you feel?”
    Angela shuts her eyes. “When we were in bed and I lay my head on his chest, I could feel the life there. Okay? I could feel his life shooting up my ear canal.” She laughs at herself. “I know that sounds crazy.”
    “It doesn’t. Keep going.”
    A smile rises from the depths of her body up to her face. “Sometimes when he came home from work I’d be in the kitchen prepping dinner, and he’d sneak up behind me and wrap his arms around my waist and scare the crap out of me. I scare really easy, so it worked every time. And when he would do that, I could feel his soul. I could feel the … mischief inside him. And then it would jump from his body into mine, like electricity, and his mischievous mood would become my mood, so instead of getting mad I’d just start laughing. We stand like that and laugh together, and then I would call him a sonofabitch and tell him to go get cleaned up for dinner. His soul used to make mine laugh, Bonnie. That’s how I knew.”
    “And now when you touch him, you don’t feel his soul?”
    Angela opens her eyes. Then her mouth falls open. Then she says, “To tell the truth, I don’t really know.”
    “You don’t know, Sweetie? Either you can feel his soul inside himor you can’t, right?”
    Angela puts the receiver in her lap for a moment. She raises and drops it two, three times. Finally she presses it to her ear and mouth and, in the smallest voice she has, says: “Bonnie, we don’t really touch anymore.” And instead of sobbing she adds quickly, “I don’t want to touch him.”
    The line goes quiet. The kitchen crowds her from all sides. Then Bonnie says, “Angela, hang up the phone. Go hold your husband.”

    When Angela gets back to her bedroom she sees Lucy asleep on Greg’s chest. Greg smiles at Angela through the darkness and mouths, “Nightmares.”
    “Bullshit,” Angela mouths back. She is smiling patiently.
    Greg mouths a sentence too complex to decode without sound. Angela holds up her hands and says, “Wait.” She walks over to his side of the bed and kneels. In her ear Greg whispers: “Do you want me to go put her in her bed?”
    Angela shakes her head. This is getting to be a habit with Lucy—they will have to have a talk with her in the morning—but no need to cause a scene now, disturb the whole house. In Greg’s ear, she whispers, “But can you make a little room for me?”
    Greg looks at her. Every other time Lucy has come to their room claiming nightmares, she slept between Angela and Greg. Angela liked her there; she found that, with their daughter separating them,she slept better.
    So Greg is surprised she wants to be next to him. “Really?” he whispers.
    Angela nods. Greg gently scoops up Lucy and moves her to Angela’s side of the bed, then cautiously scoots himself over. Lucy licks her lips but does not wake; her head finds its way back to Greg’s chest and settles in. Angela snuggles up next to Greg; she must lie on her side to keep from falling off the bed.
    Angela places her head on Greg’s belly. She is looking at Lucy. Her daughter looks so much like her. Lucy’s mouth is slack; her arm is thrown over Greg’s stomach; she could not be more asleep.
    Angela listens to Greg’s chest. She hears blood and breath and even a little digestion. And, from a little higher up, she feels the high-pitched thrum of the eneural. It is an alien presence in Greg’s body. But it is just that, a presence—one voice in the choir of his homeostasis.
    Angela takes Greg’s hand and places it on the back of her neck. She can feel the caution in his palm—he is excited, eager, but plays it cool so that she doesn’t get spooked. So like him: caring and boyish and endearing and gentle.
It’s good,
she thinks, her forehead just touching her daughter’s. Sleep is