Naked in LA by Colin Falconer Page A

you been doing since you were so cruelly abandoned?”
    I couldn’t tell him. It would probably make no difference to whatever it was he thought about me but I couldn’t bear him to know. “I just concentrate on looking after my father these days.”
    “There must be guys queuing up to take you out. Anyone special?”
    “Good men are hard to find.”
    He smiled, the way I remembered, the corner of his mouth twisting slightly. “What is it about you, I wonder, that makes a man lose his senses? You know, I was crazy about you in Havana. It can’t just be the way you look, though I’d say you were about the most beautiful woman in Cuba. But a guy would have to be out of his mind to lose his head over a woman like you.”
    “Are you trying to sweet talk me again?”
    “Face it, princess, some girls only want men they can’t have, or who are no good for them.”
    “Maybe you’re right. Papi said you were no good for me.”
    For a moment he lost that look, like the whole world was some sort of cruel joke. “He isn’t right about everything. I would have been good for you.”
    “You think so? How long have you been out of Cuba, Reyes?”
    “I stayed on about a year. Spent some of that time in prison, along with Santo and the rest of the boys.”
    “So why didn’t you ever look for me when you got back here?”
    “I figured that you were never going to stop thinking about Angel, and it was time I got you out of my head. But damn, it was hard and when I saw you just then, you just about took my breath away all over again.”
    I leaned in, touched his arm. “Did you ever think to ask me if perhaps I felt the same way?”
    I saw him hesitate. Perhaps I might have convinced him that he had made a mistake about me, but just then I looked over his shoulder and saw Angel walk in. When he saw me with Reyes he went white.
    “What the fuck is this?” he said.
    It was the first time I ever saw Reyes lost for words. He looked at Angel and then back at me and I watched him putting two and two together and coming up with a million and five. I wanted to shout at him, “This isn’t what it looks like,” but then I’d have to tell him what it really was, and that was a whole lot worse.
    Reyes recovered fast. “Hi, Angel,” he said. “Señorita Fuentes and I were just catching up on old times. Why don’t you come and join us?”
    “I don’t have time. I’m busy.” Angel turned to me. “Finish your drink, we have a reservation in the restaurant for lunch.”
    Another woman might have told him to get lost; another woman might have said, you don’t talk to me like that, start treating me with some respect or I’m out of here. But another woman didn’t have a bedridden father and a mountain of medical bills every month and no qualifications to get a job anywhere else.
    So I got up and followed Angel out of the bar. I looked back once and saw Reyes shaking his head. If he thought I was a basket case before, now he was certain of it.
     

     
    Angel didn’t talk at all over lunch and he didn’t say anything in the elevator. But as soon as we got to our suite he grabbed me and threw me across the room and shouted: “What the fuck were you doing down there?”
    I got up, grabbed the bottle of Veuve Cliquot from the ice bucket and threw it at him. My aim was off and it exploded against the wall. Angel backed off. I had had enough of him throwing his weight around.
    “You don’t own me, Angel! And you touch me again, I swear to God I will cut your balls off.”
    “Take it easy, baby.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me he was here in Miami?”
    “I didn’t know he was anything special to you. Did you sleep with him?”
    “Screw you, Angel.”
    “Did you?”
    “You are the only man I’ve ever slept with, and you know it.”
    That seemed to mollify him. “I don’t want you talking to him.”
    “I’ll talk to him if I want to. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He was there for me when other guys ran off