Loverboys by Ana Castillo

Author:Ana Castillo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

A TRUE STORY

I had been watching her for a time. Not a young woman, as young women go, but a Creole woman’s beauty manages to emanate exuberance as the years go on, like the bougainvillea in perennial bloom that, before you know it, has taken over the whole darn place. Her hair cascaded down to the narrow of her back, the blackness of it interrupted only occasionally by a silver strand here and there. She had the same yellowish-red hue to her skin as I do, which meant that mixed in with our slave ancestry, we had Indian blood in common. Or as some people would like to see it, mixed in with our French and Spanish ancestry there was a little Indian and African, too.

She kept her gaze fixed down on the latest edition of the Picayune, sipped her coffee with a certain finesse, picked up her beignet but never brought it up to her mouth, and along with other such almost imperceptible, nervous gestures I observed her to be somewhat lost—a quality which I have never been able to resist in a woman. Although she didn’t ask, I brought her another glass of water. “It certainly is a humid day!” I said, being more gentleman than any kind of a waiter, I am sure.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”

I stood at attention, although she didn’t notice. Hearing that voice, more melodic than a church choir, something like the river on a June night, my knees unlocked. It was the only time in my life that that actually happened to me.

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