Loving Che Read Online Free Page B

soaked. The alleys were the dim backsides of so much industry. Paint peeled away with abandon and mold darkened the empty places. Where the cement had cracked, small purple flowers blossomed, as if every house held a garden prisoner within its walls. I ran through the alleys, wild for the disorder that, young as I was, shone exotic and beautiful in the light that slanted through the buildings.
    I am walking in the old part of town after a storm, the cobblestones slick and shiny. I am beginning to like narrow streets, dark places. The city is my first love. I delight in the simple things: a curved cornice that catches the sun on an angle, the yellow of a billboard showing through the top windows of someone’s home.
    The rain runs through the grooves in the stones and the slide of tires echoes down the alleys. Laughter seeps from little rooms like sweet medicine.
    At a corner, I stop to let a car pass, a black Chevrolet sequined with the reflection of street lamps. A light goes out in a room above me; a sliver of lacy curtain pulls away. The car stops and men’s voices sound low and angry. I stand, pressing myself against the damp old walls. The driver opens the door and pulls a man out from the back. His face is turned and in the dark I imagine a shroud covers his head. He stands in the headlights. Another man gets out of the car. He is dressed all in white in that muddy alley, white shoes and pale straw hat collecting water on the rim, falling in tiny droplets like a veil about his face. The man goes to the shrouded figure and bends over him, speaking quietly. He walks back to the car. The laughter from small rooms. And then the pistolshot. And the man’s life passes before me as if I had been the one to die: I remember breakfast that morning, looking out over the street, buttering bread, slowly stirring coffee, watching sugar dissolve. I remember his loves as my own and lean against the stone and cry for all the things I haven’t finished.
    The tires slick on the road, and then the rain rushing through cobblestone again.
    Against the wishes of my mother, I go to the hotel to hear the old mulato play Lecuona because he always makes me cry. I pull my hair back, low on my head, and curl the ends around my neck. I wear red lipstick and the old mulato player bends his head when I lay my arm across the piano.
    Every Friday, I give him a peseta and after, when the people have gone, he kisses my hand in the dark.
    From certain angles, El Prado seems to run straight to the sea, as if it were a ship with a deck of flowers. The benches lie sunbathing under black iron lamps. I am almost fifteen, too old for toys and sweets, but on a bench I eat the chocolate I buy from Señor Juan, letting it soften on my tongue, begging it to last. I think of the other children still locked inside their classrooms, my sisters of the golden hair, the Almeida girls, the boys who come in the evening to call. And I with the afternoon melting around me, a patch of sky all my own through the clouds.
    It is winter and the women wear brown and navy, defying the green, the flowering plants, the sky so blue the eyes hurt. It is winter, warm and bright, and the women wear hats as they walk down El Prado on the arms of their men. Broken conversations, the rustle of fabrics, women’s laughter. They bend their heads so the rims of their hats cover just their eyes, highlight white rows of happy teeth.
    A tall, thin man in a red hat stops in front of me and asks why I’m not in school, a pretty little thing like me in clean clothes who must have a mother and a father at home. I eat my chocolate slowly. I tell him I am orphaned. It’s too late now to take it back. And I smile because I haveno fears. The man stares, one eye drooping. He is thin, but his hair falls thick and shiny beneath his hat. When he turns to go, I stand and follow him. He looks back once and then rushes to the top of El Prado as if I were chasing him. The women nod at