EL HOLLYWOOD

El Hollywood was Beli’s first real club.↓

≡ A favorite hangout of Trujillo’s, my mother tells me when the manuscript is almost complete.

Imaginate: in those days El Hollywood was the It place to be in Baní, it was Alexander, Café Atlántico, and Jet Set rolled into one. The lights, the opulent decor, the guapos in the fine threads, the women striking their best bird-of-paradise poses, the band upon the stage like a visitation from a world of rhythm, the dancers so caught up in the planting of heel you would have thought they were bidding farewell to death itself — it was all here. Beli might have been out of her league, couldn’t order drinks or sit in the high chairs without losing her cheap shoes, but once the music started, well, it didn’t matter. A corpulent accountant put his hand out and for the next two hours Beli forgot her awkwardness, her wonderment, her trepidation, and danced. Dios mío did she dance! Dancing cafe out of the sky and exhausting partner after partner. Even the bandleader, a salt-and-pepper veterano from a dozen campaigns throughout Latin America and Miami shouted her out: La negra está encendida! La negra esta encendida indeed! Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won’t see it often. Everybody mistook her for a bailarina cubana from one of the shows and couldn’t believe that she was dominicana like them. It can’t be, no lo pareces, etc., etc.

And it was in this whirligig of pasos, guapos, and aftershave that he appeared. She was at the bar, waiting for Tina to return from ‘a cigarette break’. Her dress: wrecked; her perm: kicking; her arches: like they’d been given a starter course in foot binding. He, on the other hand, was the essence of relaxed cool. Here he is, future generation of de Leóns and Cabrals: the man who stole your Founding Mother’s heart, who catapulted her and hers into Diaspora. Dressed in a Rat Pack ensemble of black smoking jacket and white pants and not a dot of sweat on him, like he’d been keeping himself in refrigeration. Handsome in that louche potbellied mid-forties Hollywood producer sort of way, with pouched gray eyes that had seen (and didn’t miss) much. Eyes that had been scoping Beli for the better part of an hour, and it wasn’t like Beli hadn’t noticed. The nigger was some kind of baller, everybody in the club was paying tribute to him, and he rocked enough gold to have ransomed Atahualpa.

Let’s just say their first contact was not promising. How about I buy you a drink? he said, and when she turned away como una ruda, he grabbed her arm, hard, and said, Where are you going, morena? And that was all it took: a Beli le salío el lobo. First, she didn’t like to be touched. Not at all, not ever. Second, she was not a morena (even the car dealer knew better, called her india). And, third, there was that temper of hers. When baller twisted her arm, she went from zero to violence in under.2 seconds. Shrieked: No. Me. Toques. Threw her drink, her glass, and then her purse at him — if there had been a baby nearby she would have thrown that too. Then let him have it with a stack of cocktail napkins and almost a hundred plastic olive rapiers, and when those were done dancing on the tile she unleashed one of the great Street Fighter chain attacks of all time. During this unprecedented fusillade of blows the Gangster hunkered down and didn’t move except to deflect the stray chop away from his face. When she finished he lifted his head as though out of a foxhole and put a finger to his lips. You missed a spot, he said solemnly.

Well.

It was nothing but a simple encounter. The fight she had with La Inca upon her return was far more significant — La Inca waiting up for her with a belt in her hand — and when Beli stepped into the house, worn out from dancing, La Inca, lit by the kerosene lamp, lifted the belt in the air and Beli’s diamond eyes locked on to her. The primal scene between daughter and mother played out in every country of the world. Go ahead, Madre, Beli said, but La Inca could not do it, her strength leaving her. Hija, if you ever come home late again you’ll have to leave this house, and Beli saying, Don’t worry, I’ll be leaving soon enough. That night La Inca refused to get into bed with her, sleeping in her rocking chair, not speaking to her the next day either, going off to work by herself: her disappointment looming above her like a mushroom cloud. No question: it was her madre she should have been worried about, but for the rest of that week Beli found herself instead brooding on the stupidity of that gordo azaroso who (in her words) had ruined her whole night. Almost every day she found herself recounting the details of the confrontation to both the car dealer and Arquimedes, but with each telling she added further outrages which were not exactly true but seemed accurate in spirit. Un bruto, she called him. Un animal. How dare he try to touch me! As though he were someone, ese poco hombre, ese mamahuevo!

So he hit you? The car dealer was trying to pin her hand down to his leg but failing. Maybe that’s what I need to do.

And you’d get exactly what he got, she said.

Arquimedes, who had taken to standing in a closet while she visited him (just in case the secret police burst in), pronounced the Gangster a typical bourgeois type, his voice reaching her through all that fabric that the car dealer had bought her (and which Beli stored at his place). (Is this a mink fur? he asked her. Rabbit, she said morosely.)

I should have stabbed him, she said to Constantina.

Muchacha, I think he should have stabbed you.

What the hell do you mean?

I’m just saying, you talk about him a whole lot.

No, she said hotly. It’s not like that at all.

Then stop talking about him. Tina glanced down at a pretend watch. Five seconds. It must be a record.

She tried to keep him out of her mouth but it was hopeless. Her forearm ached at the oddest of moments and she could feel his hangdog eyes on her everywhere.

The next Friday was a big day at the restaurant; the local chapter of the Dominican Party was having an event and the staff busted their ass from early to late. Beli, who loved the bustle, showed some of her magis for hard work, and even José had to come out of the office to help cook. José awarded the head of the chapter with a bottle of what he claimed was ‘Chinese rum’ but which in fact was Johnnie Walker with the label scraped off. The higher echelons enjoyed their chow fun immensely but their campo underlings poked at the noodles miserably and asked over and over if there was any arroz con habichuelas, of which of course there was none. All in all the event was a success, you never would have guessed there was a dirty war going on, but when the last of the drunks was shuffled onto his feet and ushered into a cab, Beli, feeling not the least bit tired, asked Tina: Can we go back?

Where?

To El Hollywood.

But we have to change—

Don’t worry, I brought everything.

And before you know it she was standing over his table.

One of his dinner companions said: Hey, Dionisio, isn’t that the girl que te dío una pela last week? The bailer nodded glumly. His buddy looked her up and down. I hope for your sake she’s not back for a rematch. I don’t think you’ll survive.

What are you waiting for, the bailer asked. The bell?

Dance with me. Now it was her turn to grab him and drag him onto the pista.

He might have been a dense slab of tuxedo and thew, but he moved like an enchantment. You came looking for me, didn’t you?

Yes, she said, and only then did she know.

I’m glad you didn’t lie. I don’t like liars. He put his finger under her chin. What’s your name? She tore her head away. My name is Hypatia Belicia Cabral. No, he said with the gravity of an old-school pimp. Your name is Beautiful.