Ruins by Achy Obejas

Author:Achy Obejas [Obejas, Achy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, General Fiction
ISBN: 9781933354699
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2009-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Daewoo was cramped. “If you can’t drive, how’d you get it here?” he asked Diosdado as he struggled to fit into the driver’s seat. He couldn’t believe he’d agreed to drive a foreigner around—as if it were thirty-five years before, as if the Revolution had never taken place! What was happening to him? He’d closed the bodega down without even bothering to call someone to sub for him. I’m just helping out a friend, he told himself over and over, trying to be convincing.

“There’s a little lever down there, under the seat, I think, which will move the seat,” Diosdado said, leaning down from the passenger’s side to the floor, tilting his head to better see through the lower half of his bifocals. He looked like a scientist, or an inspector.

“How’d you get it here?” Usnavy asked again, fingering the lever. He pulled on it and the seat suddenly plunged back, leaving his feet dangling off the pedals. Usnavy’s stomach sloshed about. The sewed-up sole of his shoe snagged for an instant on the brake pedal edge but it didn’t quite come loose.

“Ah, that’s it … but you’ve got to bring it up a little.” Diosdado ignored his friend’s question yet again.

“Maybe if you get in the backseat and push me, I can get it to stay put a little closer to the pedals.”

Diosdado popped his head up and glared at Usnavy. “Don’t be such an underdeveloped moron, for god’s sake,” he said. “This is a First World vehicle. Do you really think someone has to climb in the back to push you in order to adjust the seat?”

“It’s Korean or something,” Usnavy snapped. “It’s Third World, just like us.”

“You know what I mean,” Diosdado said. “Just pull the lever and bring yourself up. It can’t be that hard!”

Usnavy tugged on the lever and scooted, letting the seat click into place. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean—which is that anything that’s Cuban is difficult—anything that isn’t Cuban is wonderful,” he said, annoyed that Diosdado’s instructions had worked.

“What are you talking about? Are you going to try and turn this into another Cuba-against-the-world argument—because I’m not ready for that, okay? Not now,” Diosdado shot back, frustrated, as he quickly adjusted the passenger’s seat. “Cubans don’t make cars and have never made cars so there’s not even a point of comparison, all right?”

“You know why we don’t make cars?” Usnavy asked, his two feet desperately trying to remember how to handle the clutch and the accelerator and the brake all at once. If Lidia were here, he thought, she’d be giggling at his clumsiness. “Because we have allowed the world to think we can’t make cars. I mean, why not? Why wouldn’t we be able to make cars? Other small nations make cars—Japan, see, Korea and Italy, even the Yugoslavians. We could make cars if given the chance.”

Diosdado rolled his eyes.

Usnavy turned the ignition only to have the engine grind so loud—it was like a drill, nails on a blackboard,

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