Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin

Author:Lucia Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

EVENING IN PARADISE

Sometimes years later you look back and say that was the beginning of … or we were so happy then … before … after … Or you think I’ll be happy when … once I get … if we … Hernán knew he was happy now. The Oceano hotel was full, his three waiters were working at top speed.

He wasn’t the kind of man who worried about the future or dwelt on the past. He shooed the chicle-selling kids out of his bar with no thought of his own orphaned childhood on the streets. Raking the beach, shining shoes.

When he was twelve they had started construction on the Oceano. Hernán ran errands for the owner. He idolized Señor Morales, who wore a white suit and a panama hat. Jowls that matched the bags under his eyes. After Hernán’s mother died Señor Morales was the only person to call him by his name. Hernán. Not hey kid, ándale hijo, vete callejero. Buenos días, Hernán. As the building progressed Señor Morales had given him a steady job cleaning up after the workers. When the hotel was finished he hired him to work in the kitchen. A room on the roof to live in.

Other men would have hired experienced employees from other hotels. The chefs and desk clerk at the new Oceano were from Acapulco but all of the other workers were illiterate street urchins like Hernán. They were all proud to have a room, their own real room on the roof. Showers and toilets for the men and women workers. Thirty years later every one of the men still worked at the hotel. The laundresses and maids had all come from mountain towns like Chacala or El Tuito. The women stayed until they married or until they got too homesick. New ones were always fresh young girls from the hills.

Socorro was from Chacala. The first day Hernán had seen her she was standing in her doorway in a white dress, her braids plaited with pink satin ribbon. She hadn’t put down her rope-tied bundle of belongings. She was turning the light on and off. He was amazed by her sweetness. They smiled at each other. They were both fifteen and they both fell in love that very moment.

The next day Señor Morales saw Hernán watching Socorro in the kitchen.

“She’s a little beauty, no?”

“Yes,” Hernán said. “I’m going to marry her.”

He worked double shifts for two years until they could marry and move into a little house near the hotel. By the time their first daughter, Claudia, was born he was an apprentice bartender. After Amalia was born he was a regular bartender and Socorro stopped working. Their second daughter, Amalia, was having her quinceañera party in two weeks. Señor Morales was godfather to both girls and was giving the party in the hotel. A bachelor, he seemed to love Socorro and the girls almost as much as Hernán, never tired of describing them to people.

“They are so fine, so beautiful. Delicate and pure and proud and…”

“Smart, strong, hardworking,” Hernán would add.

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