VOGUE, VERSAILLES, VENEZUELA
A moment in the life of a small-town resident: two cod croquettes, an orange juice, a coffee with milk, several copies of Vogue and GQ magazines in Spanish—the latter with George Clooney and Brad Pitt on the cover, both in their sixties, dressed in white, wearing dark glasses, standing in the water in Venice—; a woman talking on the phone, almost shouting; a plane flying overhead (there’s always a plane flying overhead in Miami); a pigeon pecking at the remains of a guava cake; a silly song playing on the speakers; Olga and Juan’s bakery, two successful Cubans: “their story… an example that the American Dream is still achievable.”
A Colombian man asks me if he can sit at my table.
He’s about seventy years old. We’re sitting outside. After a while, he starts talking: “This bakery is wonderful, but my favorite is Versailles, the restaurant. Those meat pies are the tastiest in the world. I worked for years at La Carreta in Kendall. I’m not going to tell you I was the boss, because that would be a lie. I was just a bus boy. But I ate so well.
The cooks would even make me steak for breakfast because I brought them drinks from the bar and became their friend. I’m very grateful to this country. I’ve had my share of jobs, I’ve had ups and downs like everyone else, but I’ve never had to sleep on the street or pick up food off the floor to eat. Some people talk shit about this country, but not me.
At that moment, a tall, gray-haired woman in her sixties approaches us. She asks for copies of GQ and Vogue. She speaks Spanish with an accent I can’t quite place; it’s definitely not her native language. I tell her that they appear to be free and were left there to promote the magazines.
“But they’re in Spanish,” I warn her.
“I read Spanish,” she replies. “I’m Romanian, but I lived in Venezuela for several years. I arrived there during the Rafael Caldera administration, and when Hugo Chávez won in 1999, I left because I had already had my fill of socialism in Romania. Communism is very nice, but from a distance. Let others enjoy it, not me.”
She asks me where I’m from.
“Cuban.”
“Cuban, for a change,” she says with a laugh.
The Colombian gets up and boards the bus that has just arrived. I say goodbye to the Romanian woman. The breeze smells of coffee and guava cake.
MESSI JUICE
It’s a cold morning in Miami. I wrap up warm before setting off on my hybrid bike (I still don’t know what a hybrid bike is, but it sounds cool).
On a corner of Calle Ocho, I notice a strange gathering: three chickens, three shopping carts, three Jehovah’s Witnesses in dark suits and plaid shirts.
Further ahead, in front of the Tower, a suicidal rooster tries to cross the street. He makes it and approaches me as I try to photograph him. I notice that he is missing a leg and feel sorry for him. But no. He’s not missing a leg. He just had one tucked under him. Maybe it’s a trick to scam tourists.
Outside Domino Park, players wait for the place to open. They chat animatedly. One says that a couple of minutes ago the police took away a tourist who was walking around completely naked. They put a nylon cape on her and put her in the patrol car.
“What a great ass,” he concludes.
Another says he shaved his beard because he was starting to look like Fidel Castro.
“No one looks like that bastard,” his friend replies.
Outside the Presidente supermarket, a man in a wheelchair begs for money under a sign that reads: “Among the greats.”
At the Los Pinareños market, I see a handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard advertising Messi juice. Intrigued, I ask what it’s made of.
“Banana and mint,” they reply.
Back home, I write this chronicle and start reading a book titled “The Joy of Small Things.”
POLICE OFFICER AND SURGEON
I see him enter the gas station on Calle Ocho and 17th Avenue. He seems to be buying something, although from where I’m standing, next to the flower stand, I can’t clearly make out what he’s doing. He is mulatto, relatively tall, gray-haired, with honey-colored eyes. He wears a gray jacket that is quite loose-fitting. He lives on the street.
I recently saw him sleeping peacefully outside Matanzas Discount, right at rush hour on that part of Eighth Street, when everything is at its busiest. He greets me and asks if I’m Cuban.
“Habanero,” I reply. “From Marianao.”
“I’m from Centro Habana.”
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Lázaro, but they called me El Pirry in San Isidro and San Ignacio, where I grew up. I worked at the Miguel Enríquez Hospital as a police officer and surgeon.”
He looks at me intently and repeats, as if to convince himself:
“Police officer and surgeon.”
Then he says goodbye and continues on his way east along Calle Ocho.
CONCRETE
“Did you see that they just put the last piece of the triumphal arch they’re building across the street?” he asks me from his makeshift bed covered with flamboyant flowers, under which he has made his shelter near I-95 in downtown Miami.
The new cocaine in Miami is concrete. It has everyone high. In every sense. Look at the concrete mixers. There are more than Teslas—and that’s saying a lot. They’re everywhere, on every corner. The drums spin endlessly, and many have red and white stripes like giant candy canes. Candy for developers. Sugar, as Celia No Estefan, may she rest in peace, used to say. It seems to me that people gather at construction sites to get high on the smell of concrete. You might think I’m just being a jerk, but it’s true.
THE MAN IN THE RED SHIRT
Palenque Pizzeria is located inside a Marathon gas station, right across from Miami High, on Flagler Street and 25th Avenue.
It’s an interesting place because it’s like a park in a small town in Cuba: all kinds of peculiar characters gather there. It’s not that they go there to get gas or buy pizza. They go there to sit, talk, or watch the hours go by. What do I know?
The thing is, when I go to enter the gas station, a woman in her sixties—long hair, thin, and dressed in a man’s shirt that’s too big for her—opens the door for me and says, very mysteriously:
“Be careful of the man in the red shirt, he’s a liar.”
So I go into the gas station and look around for the man in the red shirt, but I don’t see him. I pick up the pizzas and, when I leave, I say to the woman:
“Hey, I didn’t see the man in the red shirt.”
And she immediately replies:
“Just because you didn’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there. But when you see him, don’t even look at him, he’s a liar.”
