Fifty Grand

“You are high,” I say.

“So? You’re not my mother. Been working hard. I earned two hundred dollars this week already. I’ll make three hundred next week. Pretty soon I’ll be foreman of one of the work gangs. And when it gets too cold in January and all these Mexes fuck off to L.A., they’ll be begging me to stay.”

He grins again, wolfishly. He’s acting the big man but he can’t hold it for long. Finally the lines crack and a wave of unhappiness spills across his face. He crosses the room, sits on my bed, takes my hand, and kisses it.

“María,” he says.

“No, Paco,” I say, pulling the hand away.

“No, I’ll tell you what your problem is: you’re a virgin, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re a virgin or a fucking lesbian.”

“Get off my bed and get the fuck away from me.”

“Fuck you,” he says, and clicks his fingers in front of my face. He walks back to his side of the room with a satisfied look on his face, but again it doesn’t last long. I’m in no mood for this game. I tell him so.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, María, I’m not high. I tried a little, but I’m not high. I’m, I, I don’t know. I’m tired.”

He sits down heavily on his bed and closes his eyes. I know he’s young and he’s emotional, but there’s something about his behavior that smacks of… what? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“You have every right to be tired. You’ve worked hard all week,” I say conciliatingly.

“Not that kind of tired.”

He rubs his hands through his hair, thinking about something. Suddenly he sits up straight, places his hands carefully in his lap, and looks at me. He takes a deep breath and begins: “Listen, María, I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but I know you’re not what you say you are. I know you’re not from Mexico and that accent, that’s not Yucatán. I had a cousin who played baseball, professionally, for four years in the Cuban league. His wife talks just like you. I don’t know who you’re running from or what you did, but I know you’re not some fucking peasant girl from Valladolíd. You picked a pretty bad disguise. You don’t talk like no Indian, you don’t look like no Indian. You’re a liar and not a good one, either.”

He stares at me, trying to radiate trust through those dark green eyes.

For some reason it works.

We’ve been through the mill, Paco, you and me.

“I was never going to say I was from Yucatán,” I begin. “I was going to say I was from Mexico City. I’d picked out a neighborhood and everything-Coyoacán-I walked the streets, memorized a few names, but I got spooked on the bus when you said you’d lived there for a while.”

“So what are you?” he wonders.

“Cubana.”

After a few beats he finds his voice. “That makes no sense. I mean, what game are you playing? Cubans are guaranteed a green card. You don’t have to put up with this shit. You could be legal.”

“I know.”

“So what are you doing here?”

What am I doing here? Perhaps explaining it to him will explain it to me.

And now it’s me who crosses the room. Me who sits on his bed.

“I need to know that I can trust you, Paco.”

“You can trust me. And look, María, before you explain, I was only kidding about those American girls. I don’t care about them. I was trying to make you feel… I was… You see, over the last few days, I’ve become, I’ve…”

His voice fades.

Even in the half-light I can see that his face is crimson with embarrassment.

“Don’t say any more,” I tell him. “Please.”

“No, I want to. I know it’s a weird situation. All this. Maybe because we’re sharing the same room or because of what happened in New Mexico. I should have protected you there. I felt bad. Terrible. And now this, me and you, you know, I didn’t want this to happen, it wasn’t part of my big master plan for America, it’s just that, well, you know. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

I shake my head.

He looks at the floor. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“Besides, I’m older than you,” I tell him.

“I’m older than you think,” he mutters.

I put my arm around him and kiss him on the cheek. “Paco, I’m sorry. There are lots of reasons. You’re too young for me. I’m not-You’re not my type.”

He looks at me. “You are gay,” he says, hurt, angry.

“No.”

He smacks his hand into his fist. “It’s the fucking Americans, isn’t it? All those gringo cocksuckers. They’re all fags. They fake it for the movies, but it’s a well-known fact that they’re all sucking each other’s dicks.”

He’s humiliated. He put it all out there on the line and I’ve shot him down.

“No, it’s not them.”

He mutters something I don’t get and stands and looks at me, like an actor in a play who has forgotten his lines.

He shakes his head, walks to the window, and peers through the blinds.

Silence creeps into the room and lingers there like a louche relation.

“Cuba,” he says at last.

“Yes.”

“I can keep a secret,” he says.

My lips part, my diaphragm contracts, I breathe in. Oh shit, I’m going to tell him. “I can’t tell you,” I reply, and then in a deluge of words I unburden myself of the whole thing…

Francisco, it turns out, has many shades.