A Miracle in Paradise by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera

Author:Carolina Garcia-Aguilera [Garcia-Aguilera, Carolina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-625674-37-1
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

I looked at my watch. It was almost seven. I was going to have to hurry to be on time for my date with Tommy, who was due to pick me up at the house in an hour. It wasn’t a major problem, though. Tommy was accustomed to Cuban time, and I knew Osvaldo and Aida would take good care of him, serve him mojitos and conch fritters out on the terrace. I suspected that Tommy was so punctual with me because he liked spending time with the old couple, joking around while eating and drinking. This was fine with me. I certainly wanted my attorney friend to be in a pliable state of mind for our dinner conversation.

I learned from Osvaldo that Tommy had consumed three mojitos before I arrived at the house. Unfortunately the drinks seemed to have had little effect on him. Maybe the two platters of conch fritters he had also inhaled had countered the effect of the alcohol in his system, but I doubted it. Tommy never seemed to suffer any adverse effects from drinking. Maybe it was his Irish ancestry. When I first met him I tried to keep up drink for drink, but I quickly had to give in to his physical and genetic advantages. I was about five feet tall, if the wind was blowing the right way, and a hundred pounds soaking wet. Tommy was a little more than six feet tall, slouching, and two hundred pounds naked.

It was enough to make me jealous at times. Tommy could drink a river and eat an elephant without putting on an ounce. As far as I could tell, his only exercise was sexual activity with me. But I really shouldn’t have complained. I was able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted. I put chocolate mousse cake on top of the food pyramid. I thought that ground coffee beans satisfied protein requirements in the same way as lentils and chickpeas—this was why I never, ever drank instant coffee, for nutritional reasons. When I worried that I hadn’t eaten any fruit lately I uncorked a bottle of wine. As with everything else, I figured rules should fit a lifestyle and not the other way around.

A few years ago Leonardo had given me a particularly viscous bombardment about my unhealthy diet, and I had actually toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. One meal at Versailles—the landmark Cuban restaurant on Eighth Street in the heart of Little Havana—took care of that. I must have reread the menu a dozen times, looking for anything that might serve as a vegetarian dish. All I could find was a side dish of avocado and onions, so I settled on two fried eggs served atop a bed of white rice—Cuban comfort food. There was no way I could be a vegetarian and still eat at Cuban restaurants—not unless I wanted to carry around little plastic containers of hummus and tofu in my purse. Any self-respecting Cuban place would have thrown me out for that kind of behavior.

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