Telex From Cuba by Rachel Kushner

Author:Rachel Kushner [Kushner, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 1416561048
Google: COsxjcxxLOAC
Amazon: 1416561048
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

Mr. Gonzalez’s house was dark and orderly and quiet. They turned on no lights and left the curtains closed. His butler and housekeeper, he explained, both had the afternoon off.

It was an afternoon of time outside of time, although it couldn’t have lasted more than forty-five minutes. When she arrived home, the kitchen clock showed 3:00 P.M. Phillip was nowhere to be found. She’d walked from Mr. Gonzalez’s, understanding that of course he couldn’t drive her home, but feeling slightly rebuffed that they separated with so little chivalry on his part. He’d simply said good-bye, turned, and gone inside, as she set off in the rain on foot. Still, she was elated.

As the days became weeks, the elation started to fade. She grew anxious that the chance of another visit to his home was growing more remote. When she saw him around Nicaro, he behaved as he had before that afternoon, polite and formal. Once, they were alone together outside the plant’s executive offices. She had just dropped Hubert off, and was on her way to send telexes to boarding schools, to inquire about enrolling Phillip. They chatted briefly, but Mr. Gonzalez was distant. It was an opportunity, a moment when they were finally alone together. He didn’t seize it. He asked if he’d be seeing her and her husband at the club, for the Saturday dance. Her and her husband. Was he speaking to her in code? Letting her know that if it weren’t for Hubert, they could have more afternoons like the one when he’d rescued her from the closed bakery? At the club that Saturday, she scanned the entrance all evening, waiting for Mr. Gonzalez to appear. He never did.

Twice she went to the bakery just after 2:00 P.M., knowing it would be closed. She stood in front, thinking if only rain were falling in a fine veil, as it had that day, his white car would appear. He would come down the road and invite her to get in it, and take her to his home, where they would turn on no lights and leave the curtains shut.

She understood that Mr. Gonzalez was not what many women would dream about. People said chemical, about attraction, and she supposed it was that. It had been immediate when she’d spoken to him during the party at his hunting lodge. Since their first conversation, she’d been waiting to speak with him again. He never came to the others’ parties, never to their club. She knew her attraction to him was real because there was no need to tell herself that other women would approve, which is what she’d told herself before she married Hubert—that many other women would have married him. No one would approve of Lito Gonzalez, and she didn’t care. He was up to no good, they declared, a greasy Cuban so-called millionaire, a word they uttered with invisible quotes around it, as if no one could reasonably believe he was any kind of millionaire. He was overweight.

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