resentments. In his mind not only his parents but his neighbors—he could see Mr. Ruiz snapping his fingers as if he had forgotten something and slipping back into his house so he wouldn’t have to pass by El Traidor Nestor Camacho on the street—all of Hialeah had treated him like an embarrassment, or maybe a plain rat, after he rescued ::::::yes, I saved the man! I never even thought of arresting the man on the mast!… The only ones who gave me an even break were Cristy and Nicky at Ricky’s::::::… and with that, the free-floating lust he had always had for Cristy blipped through his loins and gave him a mild lift.
Now he was on the sidewalk of that mean little row of rickety shops he’d have to pass on the way to Ricky’s. Oh, yeah… there it all was… the stupid Santería shop where Magdalena’s mother went to get all that voodoo rigmarole… Wouldn’t you know it! Right there in the window was a three-foot-high ceramic Saint Lazarus, in the sickly, sallow shade of yellow that brought out the sickly brown-black leprosy lesions that covered his body…. Magdalena’s mami… my own mami… Why does that woebegone leper make me think of my mami?… a woebegone soul living on the sufferance of others… She has to believe her caudillo, of course… but she must keep her son the traitor’s love… and offers him, despite his transgressions, a nice soft pallet of pity… “I forgive you, my prodigal son, I forgive you”… Disgusting was what it was!
But now he gets his first whiff of the pastelitos, meaning Ricky’s is just ahead. Ambrosia! He’s at the door… he can feel his teeth cutting through the filo dough, he can see the filo dough shedding flakes as beautiful as tiny flowers, he can taste the ground beef and minced ham his teeth are delivering onto his very tongue upon a bed of filo petals. Now he goes inside… It seems like an eternity since he stood in this doorway, but nothing has changed. There’s the big glass counter with its bulb-lit shelves of baked bread, muffins, cakes, and other sweet things. The little round tables and their old-fashioned bentwood chairs are still there—unoccupied, here at 6:15 in the morning. Okay, he’ll sit there with Magdalena when she arrives… Above all, the rich aroma of the pastelitos! That’s what Heaven will be like. Four men are at the counter waiting for their orders—construction workers, if Nestor has to guess. Two of them have on hard hats, and all four are wearing T-shirts, jeans, and work boots. Waiting… there’s no sign of Cristy or Nicky—
—at that moment a coloratura cry from somewhere behind the counter: “Nestor!”
He can’t see her yet, the counter is so high, but there’s no mistaking that voice, soaring through some high-flying register. Mygod!—the way it fills Nestor with joy! He doesn’t completely understand why at first. She stuck by him throughout all this, treating him as him and not some counter in a political game. True, true, but don’t try to fool yourself, Nestor! You want her, don’t you! So cute, so lively, so nicely put together in her small way, such a gringa among gringas with her spinning gringa hair, such a sweet, promising socket, my heavenly gringa socket, my Cristy!
“Cristy!” he sings out, “mía gringa enamorada!”
He’s aroused by the very thought! He goes straight to the counter, pushes past the four construction workers as if they’re air, sings out a happy greeting, a loud one—at the same time making sure it can be interpreted as a jocular voice: “Cristy, the one and only! You got any idea how much I miss you all the time?!”
Now he can see the very top of her gringa locks and her joking eyes—she knows how to play the game, too—“Mío querido pobrecito,” she says in a teasing voice, “you missed me? Awwww, just didn’t know how to find me, did you? I’m only here every morning from five-thirty on.”
She has stopped two steps from the counter—and her waiting construction worker customers—holding up a tray with two orders of pastelitos and coffee with her left hand and giving him a look of—if not love, something close to it. Nestor leans into the counter until his body is practically draped over it, so he can reach out near her with his right hand. She slides the tray up onto the counter without so much as a glance at the construction workers in order to