“Beer’s fine. Thanks. Con este calor.”
“You’re right. It will be good with this heat.” He turned back to Guajira. “Get some beer, de la Cristal, and whatever you need for lunch.” And to Frank, “You’re staying for lunch right?”
“Sure, thanks.”
“Okay, get whatever you need for lunch,” he said. “If you want ham, Montecristi stopped by yesterday and said Lázaro’s brother butchered a pig. You can stop by his house and see what he has.”
“Sí, mi amor.”
“Marisol,” Eusebio added, “why don’t you go with Guajira so Frank and I can have a little man to man, no?”
Frank followed Eusebio to the parrot’s cage. On the roof, the dog barked after Guajira and Marisol walking down the street.
“Listen, Eusebio,” Frank stepped away from the cage. “Justo, Pepe and I…we have a restaurant in New York.”
“Of course. Maduros, no?”
“That’s right.” He sighed and stared at the ground. “We’re in trouble. We’re being pressured by the bank. We might have to close the restaurant.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Eusebio, the reason I’m here is to ask for your help.”
“Coño, my help? But I am only a poor waiter. I don’t have any money.” He tore a leaf off a bamboo plant and held it between the bars of the cage.
Frank watched the bird. He thought of the restaurant, of Justo’s blood flowing down his arm, of his mother looking around the empty dining room, too embarrassed to say anything, of the mountain of unpaid bills on his desk, his constant arguing with suppliers and vendors, begging them for time and credit. Maduros was all they had. It kept them together.
“It’s not money,” he said, and his eyes took a dance around the yard, skipping from the cage to a green lizard crawling on a wall to the empty little blue cups on the table.
“Coño, Frank, what is it then?”
Frank focused on Eusebio’s eyes, but he couldn’t hold the stare. “The recipe for the chicken.”
Eusebio stared at him for a moment. Then he laughed. “What, of El Ajillo?”
Frank lowered his head and glanced at his shoes. A torrent of shame came over him like a child caught in a terrible lie.
“Coño, you’re crazy. Why don’t you just ask me to murder El Caballo.” Eusebio waved his hands in the air. “Frank, my friend, you’re asking for something that is absolutely impossible.”
“What about Quesada?”
“Quesada who?”
“The owner.”
“The State owns the restaurant.”
“But Nestor Quesada was the original owner. He knows the recipe. Maybe—”
“I don’t know any Nestor Quesada.”
“He’s my father’s uncle.”
“Frank—”
“It’s his recipe.”
“There is no Quesada at El Ajillo, Frank. No. This is impossible.”
“But Justo said you could get it for us.”
“Justo doesn’t know shit. It’s stealing. It’s illegal. And you’re not talking of just any recipe.”
“But it belongs to my family—”
“No.” Eusebio waved violently. “You sound like the capitalists with the Foundation in Miami, living the good life while they wait for things to change here, like fucking vultures. What the exiles left behind, they abandoned. I’m not going there with you, Frank.”
“But Eusebio—”
“If this man Quesada left, he gave it up.”
“He didn’t leave,” Frank said. “He stayed. He trusted Fidel. But he was tortured.”
Eusebio stared at Frank, his dark eyes wide, angry. “You know that for a fact?”
“No.” Frank said quickly. “No, but my mother implied it. How else would the State get his recipe and reopen the restaurant?”
“Exile propaganda.” Eusebio waved.
“But what about Maduros?”
“What about it?”
“We need the recipe—”
“No, Frank. It’s impossible.”
“Por favor.” Frank pressed the palms of his hands together as if he were praying. “We’re going to lose it. We’ll be left with nothing.”
“We should not even be talking about this.” Eusebio looked nervously around the garden and in the direction of his neighbor’s house.
“It’s our only chance.”
“No.” Eusebio placed a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “That recipe is so well guarded, they say only one person knows the full recipe. And he’s with the State.”
“We can pay.”
Eusebio laughed. “Believe me. There’s not enough money in your Fort Knox. I had to pay almost two thousand dollars just to get a job there. It’s the busiest restaurant in La Habana. I bring home sixty, sometimes eighty dollars a week. Coño, Frank, in Cuba, that is a rich man’s salary. I don’t want to jeopardize my job. And believe me, neither will anyone else at El Ajillo. Besides, they would also risk going to prison and ending up like your uncle.”
“There has to be a way.”
“No, no. Absolutely not.”
Deep down he had known it would be like this. And in a strange way he felt relieved. His desperation dissipated into the pale sky. Maduros would close and he would be condemned to live a life like his father’s.
“There’s Huracán baking now. Las mujeres must be back with the beer and perhaps a nice ham steak.” Eusebio slapped him on the back and rubbed the palms of his hands together.
But Frank was compelled to push it one last time. “Just tell me you’ll look into it.”
They could hear the women in the kitchen, opening the beer and talking of summers in Pinar Del Río.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Eusebio said with finality. Then he turned to meet Guajira and Marisol who were coming out on the patio with a beer in each hand. “Por fín, something to cool us off.”
They raised their beers in a toast.
“¡A la familia!”
6
“Yes, Pepe loved rice and beans. I am not sure I know of anyone who doesn’t like them with a little diced onion and a dash of vinegar.”
—Carmen Z. de Martí
widow of José Martí during an interview with the Mexican newspaper, El Imparcial, 1903
The taxi sped along the Malecón. After they passed the Hotel Nacional, Marisol leaned forward and pointed out her building for the driver. “It’s the blue one at the curve, before the Deauville.”
Frank glanced out the window. “Your apartment overlooks the ocean?”
“Please. It’s not as glamorous as you think.”
“You can’t imagine what that would cost