Read Online Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano - Free Book Online

girl, “Do you really not want to come back?”
    â€œI don’t. I hate it.”
    â€œDo you want more money?”
    â€œÂ¡Vete al carajo, bestia! ¡Vete de aquí!”
    He crossed to the door and said to me, “She makes fun of you, you know.”
    The younger black brother hit me on the side of the head with a fist like a club. I went down on the braided rug and the brothers followed Alejandro out the door. He called from the landing, “Even the ones who pay for her have to give her back when they’re finished.”
    The girl locked the door and got a wet towel for my head. “I’m so sorry, doctor.”
    â€œNo te preocupes.” After I got over being stunned, my head didn’t hurt too much. I crawled over to the sofa. The sun went down and there was another blackout. The girl dug around in the cabinets by the light of the stove burners. She took out the old tins and pried off the lids to find a hardened block of sugar and enough stale flour to make bread with the bananas I had bought that morning. We pulled the sofa cushions to the floor and turned it into a candlelight picnic.
    â€œJulia, doctor—that’s my name,” she told me. “It was my cursed luck he was at Coppelia that day. ‘Do you want some ice cream?’ Of course I did. He was so sweet that first week. If I had asked around, I might have found out I’d taken up with the most sadistic chulo en la Habana. But in the beginning the other jineteras were like sisters, and the work was kind of fun.”
    â€œSo you would pick up men along Quinta Avenida after midnight for fun?”
    â€œFor fun, yes, and sometimes money. But I wasn’t a prostitute. I was a jinetera. There’s a difference. I didn’t sleep with anyone I didn’t want to, and I didn’t set a price. That kind of business is a barbarity of capitalism.”
    â€œJinetera socialista y revolucionaria. Interesantísimo.”
    â€œI appreciate your bedside manner, doctor … He started me out on the beach in Guanabo, and the first two times it wasn’t bad—timid guys: a Spaniard, then a Swede. The Swede was funny because he couldn’t speak any Spanish, but I understood what he wanted all right. After the Swede there was a cruel, tattooed Colombiano. Alejandro never weeds out the abusives. I only did it a few weeks, but some of the rougher chulos threaten the girls if they try to quit before paying back the investment. The police protect them, you know. They take Alejandro’s bribes. He works for one of the higher-ups …”
    When the migraine came and I wasn’t able to keep my eyes open any longer, I found a sheet and a bundle of old scrubs for a pillow and fell asleep on the braided rug.

5 August 1992
    O n Wednesday I woke up with a post-concussion headache on top of the migraine. I left Julia asleep on the sofa and walked to the pediátrico. In the afternoon I got home from my shift and was on my way up to the attic when Beatrice handed me the phone. It was Cousin Emilio calling from Pinar del Rio.
    â€œHola, primo. How’s the house? Is that embittered solterona on the second floor still crowing for your cock?” Emilio thought this was doubly funny because Beatrice, who had just handed me the phone, was probably eavesdropping at that very moment.
    â€œEvery night. But I prefer masturbating along to my Celia Cruz records.”
    â€œAre you coming out to the rancho this weekend?”
    â€œSí, primo.”
    â€œOye, Mano, if everything works out, we’ll have ourselves a little boating excursion on Saturday. I’m scheduled for a solo patrol.”
    â€œI’m supposed to look forward to that? I get seasick on the Regla ferry!”
    â€œI’ll see you this weekend.”
    In the attic Julia made tea with leaves that she had found in the cupboard from Abuelo’s garden in Pinar del Rio. We sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and