The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook) by Guillermo Rosales Read Free Book Online Page A

interested.”
    “Fine.” he says. “Friends?”
    “Friends.” I say.
    He shakes my hand.
    “I am the way I am,” he says. “I smoke marijuana, I drink beer, I do blow, I do it all! But I’m a man.”
    “I get you,” I say.
    “I see you give the old one-eyed man a beating and I could give a shit. Now, I expect the same of you. Everything you see me do around us stays between us men. Got it?”
    “Got it,” I say.
    “Mafia?”
    “Mafia,” I reply.
    “Great.” He smiles.
    I get up. I go to my room. I lie down on the bed. I don’t like what just happened. I regret having beaten the old one-eyed man. But it’s too late. I’ve gone from being a witness to being complicit in what happens in the halfway house.
    I fell asleep. I dreamt that I was running naked along a wide avenue and that I was going into a house surrounded by a beautiful garden. It was Mr. Curbelo’s house. I knocked at the door and his wife answered. She was a dish. She let me hug and kiss her. She said “I’ll give you whatever you want. My name is Necessity.”
    “I’ll call you Necess,” I said. And I yelled loudly, “Necess!”
    Then Curbelo pulled up in his gray car. I tried to escape through the garden, but he grabbed me by the arm. My body was covered in white scales.
    “Here!” screamed Curbelo, and a police car showed up in the garden. That’s when I woke up.
    It was about twelve at night. The crazy guy who works in the pizza place snores like a pig. I head out, shirtless, toward the living room. There I find Arsenio and Ida, the grande dame come to ruin. Arsenio has his hand on her knee. He sticks his tongue in her ear. Ida resists. She sees me and resists even more. I pass by them and sit in the tattered armchair.
    “Arsenio,” Ida says angrily, “tomorrow I’m going to tell Mr. Curbelo everything.”
    Arsenio starts laughing. He touches one of her flaccid breasts. He presses himself against it.
    “For God’s sake!” Ida says. “Don’t you realize I’m an old woman?”
    “It’s like cod,” Arsenio says. “The older, the better.”
    Then he looks at me. He knows I’m looking at him and says to me, with all familiarity, “Mafia!”
    “Mafia,” I say. I light a cigarette and lean back in the armchair.
    “Let me go, Arsenio,” Ida begs. But Arsenio laughs. He tries to stick his hand under the old lady’s dress. He kisses her on the mouth. “Please … ,” says Ida.
    “Let her go.” I say. “Let her go already.”
    “Mafia?” Arsenio asks.
    “Yeah, I’m part of your mafia, but leave the poor old lady alone already.”
    Arsenio laughs. He lets her go unexpectedly.
    Ida quickly leaves and shuts herself in her room. I hear her lock it from the inside.
    “I am a beast, just like you,” I then say, looking at the ceiling. “I’m a beast.”
    Arsenio gets up. He goes to his room. He throws himself onto the bed.
    “Mafia!” he says from there. “Life is just one big mafia! No more.”
    I’m left all alone. I smoke my cigarette. Tato, the homosexual boxer, shows up. He sits in a chair in front of me. A ray of light bathes his pockmarked face.
    “Listen to this,” he says to me. “Listen to this story. Which is my story. The story of the avenger of a painful tragedy. The tragedy of a final melodrama without any prospects. The fatal coincidence of an endless tragedy. Listen to this, my story. The story of someone imperfect who thought he was perfect. And death’s tragic end, which is life. What do you think?”
    “Great,” I say.
    “That’s enough!” he says, and leaves.
    I fall asleep.
    I dreamt about Fidel Castro. He was taking refuge in a white house. I was shooting at the house with a cannon. Fidel was in briefs and an undershirt. He was missing a few teeth. He was yelling insults at me out the windows. He was saying, “
Cabrón!
You’ll never get me out of here!” I was frantic. The house was already in ruins but Fidel was still inside, moving around as agile as a mountain lion.