José Latour

ISBN: 1–888451-07–6

1999

Chap­ter One

Elliot Steil sat on a back­less bench in the shady pub­lic park, rested his left ankle over his right knee, slipped off a well-worn tas­seled loafer, and began mas­sag­ing his foot. A cou­ple of min­utes later, he gave the same treat­ment to his right foot, then finally placed both heels on the cement walk­way and wig­gled his toes as he held the mar­ble slab on which he sat.

Try­ing day, Steil reflected. His cof­fee and sugar reserves had simul­taneously given out two days before, and break­fast had con­sisted of forty grams of stale white bread washed down with a glass of cold water. A few min­utes later he found his bike’s rear tire punc­tured. He spent seventy-five min­utes wait­ing for a bus, and at 10:02 AM punched his card at the Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute where he taught Eng­lish, two hours and two min­utes late.

Lunch was a mea­ger, poorly sea­soned mix­ture of rice and insuf­fi­ciently cooked red beans escorted by over­ripe toma­toes. The teacher had left the build­ing at 5:00 PM pon­der­ing if he should walk home or waste some more of his free time on the almost nonex­is­tent Havana pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem. The sched­uled 8:00 to 11:00 PM black­out and pend­ing house­hold chores led him to cover the eight kilo­me­ters on foot.

When rid­ing the bus or his bicy­cle, Steil fre­quently for­got about the prob­lem­atic metatarsal bones he had inher­ited from some unknown ances­tor. The ortho­pe­dic cor­rec­tions made for the reg­u­lar shoes he bought at stores became inef­fec­tual after a forty– or fifty-minute walk.

Steil sighed and lifted his gaze from the walk­way. Two approach­ing teenagers cut short their exchange of buzz­words to glance at him, then looked at each other, smil­ing broadly. The lanky, blond boy in dirty high-top sneak­ers and over­sized shorts, car­ry­ing a bas­ket­ball under his arm, sud­denly raised his head and pressed his nos­trils closed with his fingers.

“Whad­daya know? Shoulda brought my gas mask,” quipped the taller, light-skinned black kid as they passed Steil.

Both young­sters bent over in a series of hic­cups and moans, meant to be laugh­ter. Six or seven steps fur­ther on, their mer­ri­ment sub­sided, and they slapped each other’s palms—first at shoul­der, then thigh level—before return­ing to their conversation.

Steil didn’t resent the com­ment; in fact, he smiled in amuse­ment, cer­tain that his feet were odor­less. After twenty years of high school teach­ing, he had grown used to teenagers’ ways. What trou­bled him was the regres­sive Span­ish that kids were speak­ing. How could they effec­tively learn a sec­ond lan­guage when they mis­pro­nounced and clipped their mother tongue? Every school year the num­ber of stu­dents who spoke an appro­pri­ate Span­ish dwin­dled; the ones who did were almost exclu­sively girls. Boys with above-average writ­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills swept every­thing under the mat to avoid being ridiculed unmer­ci­fully by their male peers.

The lanky, blond boy drib­bled the ball pro­fi­ciently with his left hand, talk­ing to his com­pan­ion as they saun­tered away. Steil put his loafers back on and resumed his long walk.

One hour later, just after round­ing the cor­ner of his block, Steil was spot­ted and sur­rounded by kids excit­edly bab­bling some­thing about a gleam­ing new car and a tourist. Know­ing that pain and exhaus­tion made him lose his tem­per, he patiently tried to extri­cate him­self from the gang. But the chil­dren kept block­ing his way, jump­ing and yelling that the amer­i­cano had given them chew­ing gum. Steil stopped dead in his tracks and glared at them angrily, impos­ing silence.

“Okay, Lemar. What’s the matter?”

“An amer­i­cano is look­ing for you. He came in that car,” the boy said, point­ing straight ahead. “He gave us chew­ing gum.”

For a moment Steil was too sur­prised to react and kept his gaze fixed on the nine-year-old undis­puted group leader. “Fine, thanks a lot. Now get back to what­ever you were doing.”

Steil turned and peered at the pearl-gray Toy­ota Corolla parked at the curb, right in front his apart­ment build­ing. It had tourist plates, and behind the steer­ing wheel sat a dim fig­ure. Mov­ing tiredly, the teacher approached the driver’s seat, placed his left hand on top of the car, and stooped over. A man in his late 60s looked up, his bushy eye­brows ris­ing for an instant and his lips part­ing in surprise.

“Look­ing for some­one?” Steil asked.

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