Chapter 27
She sleepwalked out of JFK and toward the ground transportation. No luggage. Nothing to declare. Nothing to claim.
She stood there for a moment, totally disoriented. It took a moment for Dulce to realize that the women standing next to her in line for a cab were talking about her. Not about her exactly, but about Celia M. Reyes.
“Isn’t it every woman’s nightmare,” one said. “To have the guy you gave that blow job to twenty years ago pop up in the wrong place.”
“No wonder she only wanted to talk to another woman who’d been a hooker or a stripper or whatever,” the other woman said. “Someone who wouldn’t judge.”
“Some of these women need to be taken down a peg, though,” the first woman said. “Not Delia, but some of these women get married and act like they were never out here in these streets. Calling other girls all kinds of sluts. Wait til you run into that guy whose dick you sucked in the bathroom at the club.”
“And a motherfucker shoulda been grateful and kept his mouth shut, but no,” the other woman said.
The two of them laughed.
Dulce walked past the two women to where she could get the bus to the subway. From JFK she barely had the money to take the train. Under other circumstances, she’d flirt with the token booth agent to get through or ask a man on the way to Manhattan if she could share a ride with him. But she had on an oversized airport shirt over a dirty tank top and flip flops. Her shorts had been pissed on and washed out with rainwater, then washed again in the dark. She was sweaty and there was a light film of dirt on her legs below the loose shorts. She hadn’t showered since sex with Zavier, which was worse, because she could still feel, still smell him on her skin.
Dulce caught the inbound train, and found a copy of the Times on one of the seats. And there it was. Her article. Her article with Zavier. It looked good. The edits didn’t compromise the message at all, like Zavier had feared. But she couldn’t feel elated. Not since copies of the same newspaper had swooped through the air in the Miami airport.
The muffled voice of the subway train operator announced Fulton Street. She was in Manhattan now, but wasn’t sure where she was going. She couldn’t go home to that apartment she’d grown up in. Not yet.
Today, she needed what no one in her family had given in a decade: comfort. She needed someone to gather her up in their arms and let her sob. Sob for the man she’d lost. And for the thirty-five dead bodies, and the raging mother, and the santera who buried the dead. For the family of five who died in the car. For the wife of Pedro, whose name she had never learned, whom Pedro could successfully stalk in the chaos, and maybe would find again. For the mother and baby who died right beside her in the shelter while she was sleeping, or knocked out, or whatever. And for all the ruined houses, and people who were still dying beneath the two thirds of the planet’s surface that had declared war on that island.
She went to the only place she knew for—what had she called it? Had Jerry called it? A place for broke down whores to go. She went to the Vega clinic.
In the lobby, she felt out of place among the hot girls with fly clothes, tight weaves and flawless makeup. She slunk into the lobby, all her own curves hidden under the giant shirt.
On the walls around them were schedules for the clinic’s mobile health van, which served Lower Manhattan. These were interspersed with images of attractive, confident young women from the clinic’s demographics that encouraged them to:
Use condoms . . . every time.
Watch your drink.
Recognize the signs of an abusive relationship.
The wall above the reception desk had a framed movie poster for Live Nude Girls Unite! featuring three comic book hero styled women, half-naked, with a “Strippers Union” picket sign and fists in the air. There were also posters for the clinic’s Sexy Girl’s Guide to Staying Safe and Healthy in NYC. Dulce had kept it under her bed like a secret holy book when she was with Jerry.
For a few years, she had strode through that lobby, and all the regulars knew her name.
“Excuse me?” Dulce asked the receptionist. “Is Eva Feldman here?”
The receptionist said that her former therapist was on vacation. The girl didn’t even recognize Dulce today. Not with her oversized top, kinky brown hair, baggy shorts, and unpainted lips. Even the blue and glittery polish on her toenails was chipped and trashed.
“Want to leave a message?” the receptionist asked. “Dr. Feldman will be back next week.”
Dulce shook her head and let herself fade into the background of the lobby. And when the receptionist buzzed the girls into the stairwell, Dulce blended into the crowd. As everyone else went into the multipurpose room, Dulce headed up the stairs, past the administrative offices and therapy rooms.
She was nearly at the top floor when she arrived at a door that had no one going in and out. She knew that this led to Marisol Rivera’s private apartment, a studio that opened onto the roof. Or at least it had a while back. And Marisol owned it. No one was moving out of Manhattan unless they got pushed out. Dulce gambled that Marisol would still be there.
She knew it wasn’t appropriate to drop by the former director’s home. In fact, Dulce’s former therapist had told Marisol it was even inappropriate to take clients to her apartment when the clinic’s shelter was in overflow. But Marisol had taken her in anyway, and bathed her and put her to bed. She knew she could fall apart in those arms.
Dulce pulled her passport out of her water wallet. She used the thick, laminated edge of the booklet to slip the lock on the hallway door, and went up to the studio apartment.
Dulce took a deep breath and knocked.
The woman that came to the door looked a little like Marisol with curlier hair. They had similar features. But whereas Marisol’s body was an extreme hourglass, this woman had square hips and broader shoulders.
Dulce didn’t even contemplate English. She immediately began to speak Spanish.
“Is Marisol home?” she asked.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “I’m her cousin. She’s staying at her boyfriend’s. You know Raul?”
Dulce had met him in passing when he was a security guard at the clinic. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll catch her there.”
As Dulce was preparing to leave, a baby began to cry inside the apartment.
“Zara!” the woman yelled into the hallway.
There was no answer.
The woman propped the door open and walked across the hallway.
“Zara!” she yelled up the stairs that led to the roof. “The baby’s awake. You need to come down to feed him!”
“Ya vengo,” came a younger woman’s voice from upstairs.
The woman turned back to Dulce. “When I see Marisol, should I give her a message?”
“No message,” Dulce said. “Sorry to bother you.” Then she turned and headed down toward the lobby.
On her way down the second flight of stairs, she nearly ran into a woman with a familiar face.
“Dulce, is that you?”
Dulce looked up to see a thirtyish African American woman and a younger white woman with a slender frame.
“It’s Tyesha,” the black woman said. “What? You don’t recognize me in this suit?”
The two of them hugged, but Dulce couldn’t find her words.
Tyesha turned to the other woman. “Dulce and I traveled to Cuba together,” Tyesha explained, then turned back to make the introduction. “Dulce, this is Serena.”
Dulce extended her arm on autopilot and shook hands with Serena. She recognized the clinic’s office manager, but she’d never met her officially. The trip to Cuba seemed like a lifetime ago. But it was only a year and change since she left New York with Marisol, Tyesha, Kim, and Jody.
“Were you looking for Marisol?” Tyesha asked. “I’m director of the clinic now.”
“And I came to tell you your next appointment is here,” Serena said.
“Great to see you Dulce,” Tyesha said as she crossed to Marisol’s old office.
“I heard a lot about that trip to Cuba,” Serena said. “But I must have gotten it wrong. I thought you stayed there.”
Before Dulce could even think about it, the tears started to fall.
“Oh honey,” Serena said. “Are you okay?”
Dulce shook her head. Why hadn’t she stayed? In Cuba, she could have had a whole new life with Josefina. She had a family that had loved her and fed her and taken care of her. She had a good life there, but she just got bored. Like she got bored with Zavier and had to go fuck Gerard. Then she was too much of a punk to own up to it.
She managed to fuck up every good thing that came into her life.
Dulce’s knees gave out, and she collapsed onto the stairs and wailed. Serena pressed in close beside her and wrapped her arms around Dulce. Serena was much slighter than her, but her arms held Dulce with surprising strength.
When the fiercest part of the storm had passed, Dulce wiped her face and attempted to pull herself together. “I can’t believe I’m falling apart in the arms of a virtual stranger.”
“Honey, we’re not strangers,” Serena said. “We’re from the same tribe of women. I don’t just work at the clinic. I was a client . . . back in the day.”
Dulce nodded and more tears came, but quietly. She relaxed back into Serena’s arms and just let herself unclench for the first time since she’d run into Gerard in the Miami airport.
* * *
When she finally wiped her eyes and stood up, Serena stood, too. Serena patted her shoulder awkwardly in the narrow hallway.
“Marisol isn’t up there, but I can give her your number, if you like,” Serena said, guiding her down to the reception desk.
“That would be great,” Dulce said. “I came straight here from the airport.”
“You’re kidding me,” Serena said. “If you just came from Cuba, then you probably don’t know what’s been going on here.”
Dulce opened her mouth to explain that she hadn’t been in Cuba, but Serena was going on excitedly. “One of our own just blew up in the New York Times.” She pulled up a paper from the desk. “Have you seen this? ‘Celia M. Reyes.’ She got the exclusive with Delia Borbón.”
“It’s me,” Dulce said. “I wrote that.” And she began to cry again.