“Go see your brother,” she requested, and authoritatively stuck the little paper into his shirt pocket.

‌

“Why did you come? To ask Dad for money? To worry Mom? You were in bad shape over there, doing your junkie thing. Like always. Embarrassing us. Dad stopped sending money because the Cuban intelligence agency called to tell him that Bengoa was giving you drugs. So you’re an idiot, then? Fucking stupid. Retarded. You think Dad has no friends? Dad has friends everywhere, you imbecile. Why is it so hard for you to do what’s right? Does nothing matter to you? ‘Fuck Dad, let him lose his position in the party, let Mom die of worry. Just let them die.’ Right? That’s what you want – for them to rot. Two heroes who went through all kinds of horror for this country of ingrates, just so you can come back and make things hard for them. Piece of shit.”

Ernesto never stopped. Dressed in a mustard-colored Prada suit that was too small for him, he was cleaning his nails with the tip of a letter opener as he spoke. He said the words without anger, with a feigned delicacy, as if he were talking to a little girl, his feet up on a desk covered in folders and papers.

Argenis didn’t know how his brother paid for this office full of Le Corbusier furniture, with picture windows looking out on Naco and Piantini. On its walls hung minimalist drawings by some current Dominican artist, some ex-schoolmate of his from Fine Arts, some lucky asshole with much less talent than he had. How much had Ernesto paid for each drawing, he wondered, dropping himself onto the metal skeleton of one of the armchairs.

Ernesto broke off his attack to take a call and Argenis moved on from the drawings to look at his older brother’s shoes, which were black and pointy with a supernatural shine. They were there on the table for Argenis to kiss, for Argenis to caress the creased surface of their soles with his extended tongue, just as his brother had made him do when they were kids and Argenis had lost some bet. Because Ernesto always won their contests. He was the first to reach the top of the pine tree on the corner, and his green gobs of spit made it onto the neighbor’s patio while Argenis’s just hung there on their own blinds.

Ernesto was better at sports, better in school, better at everything. He knew how to say the things that made their father happy, something Argenis could never manage, no matter how hard he tried. Their father had taught Ernesto card tricks, had shown him old maps in the encyclopaedia and told him war stories that he never shared with Argenis. Their father also praised Ernesto in front of people: for his successes as a catcher in the baseball league, for his outstanding grades, for his even teeth, for the way he would sing Silvio Rodríguez’s “Playa Girón” with tears in his eyes.