I swallow hard and look at the orange outline of dirt on my white sandals. Something has ruptured on the car ride here. Maybe something ruptured long before that. Fuck it, I think, picturing El Alemán receding in the background, picturing my husband. Wondering if I’d have to send Ronny money from Miami. How else would he agree to a divorce? And knowing the truth though I won’t let myself near it: I’m probably never leaving—not the country, not Ronny. But I need the fantasy. I need the made-up plans. Auf Wiedersehen, Germany. Adiós.

“What about Santa María del Mar for a few hours and then Abuela Dolores’s house?” I say.

She smiles and takes my hand. “A beach is a beach, no?”

I feel shivers of exhilaration, an exhilaration I’d felt the night before, convulsing man beneath me, shouting my name like he worshipped at my feet. The rest is easy.

Jeanette offers Reinaldo more money than he’ll see in months, fifty or sixty US dollars. We offer to fill his tank too. I don’t know the address of the beach house, but Reinaldo knows how to get to Santa María del Mar and I’m familiar with the area. I’m nervous, but I tell El Alemán the rental agency has someone on the way. It’s not a lie, and that makes me feel better. I tell him Jeanette and I are going in search of a bathroom and need our bags to freshen up. He tells us we’re asking for trouble, and I wonder if he means murder or rape or something else entirely. I don’t wait long enough to find out.

Reinaldo, Jeanette, and I turn the corner past the cafetería, and I glance back at the rental car, stout and red, in the middle of a barren field like a miniature barn house in all those US movies. I see El Alemán shading his eyes and looking small. We run. We run in the direction of Reinaldo’s house two blocks away and hop into his car. Then the wind is whipping at my face again and all the island feels like a blur.

9

PEOPLE LIKE THAT

Jeanette

Camagüey, 2015