The girl was sitting at a corner table next to a window, gently knocking ash from her cigarette into an empty cup. The café was crowded due to the rain; nobody wanted to leave until it stopped or at least let up a bit. Customers were standing, holding cups and saucers and plates in their hands, ready to pounce if a table became free. She didn’t want to give up hers, even though she had finished her coffee.
Roy was with his mother having a quick lunch before her appointment at the dermatologist’s. After both of them had ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and coconut milkshakes, Roy’s mother told him that she had to make a phone call. He had noticed the girl in the corner as soon as they’d sat down and now could hardly take his eyes off of her. She was about seventeen or eighteen, Roy guessed. Her thick black hair fell over one eye but he thought she looked a lot like Elizabeth Taylor in the movie Suddenly, Last Summer, which he’d seen the day before with his mother. Roy was twelve years old and a sign at the theater had said No Minors Allowed but his mother had bought two tickets anyway and nobody tried to stop him from going in with her. After they’d taken their seats, Roy whispered to his mother that children weren’t supposed to see the movie.
“It’s a matinee, Roy,” she whispered back to him. The theater’s not even half full. They’re just glad to sell tickets.”
When the girl at the corner table leaned back in her chair and brushed the hair off of her face, Roy felt a little flutter in his stomach. She had almost the identical expression as Elizabeth Taylor had when she was telling the story of how the desperately poor and starving kids on the beach had devoured Montgomery Clift.
The grilled cheese sandwiches and coconut milkshakes arrived before Roy’s mother returned but Roy ignored the food and continued to stare at the girl. The café was in Little Havana, on Southwest 8th Street, close to the dermatologist’s office. Roy had been there twice before and he and his mother always ordered the same thing. Everyone in the café, which was named La Cafetería Fabuloso, was speaking Spanish, so Roy assumed the beautiful girl was Cuban, like most of the people in this part of Miami. He wondered why she was alone and imagined she worked in a shop somewhere in the barrio.
His mother came back and said, “Oh, good, I’m starved. Aren’t you, Roy? I couldn’t get Margie to stop complaining about Ronaldo. I told her to just tell him to go back to his wife.”
Roy took a sip of his milkshake through the straw in the glass and thought about those wild boys biting into Monty Clift’s flesh. Elizabeth Taylor told the psychiatrist, or Katherine Hepburn, who played Montgomery Clift’s mother, Roy couldn’t remember who, how there had been nothing she could do to stop them.
“Come on, Roy, we don’t have much time.”
The girl stood up. She was taller than Roy expected her to be, and slender, not short and buxom like Elizabeth Taylor. She still had a terrified expression on her face, as if she expected something bad to happen to her as soon as she left the café.
“I’m glad it’s raining today,” said Roy’s mother. “Too much sun makes me want to wriggle out of my skin like a snake.”
Roy watched the girl walk out. She was wearing a pink cotton dress and did not carry an umbrella. Roy wanted to get up and follow her.
“We’re late, Roy. If you’re not hungry now, wrap up your sandwich in a napkin and we’ll take it with us. You can eat it at the dermatologist’s.”