CURSE OF THE CARIBBEAN

For twenty-seven days he did two things: he researched — wrote and he chased her. Sat in front of her house, called her on her beeper, went to the World Famous Riverside, where she worked, walked to the supermarket whenever he saw her truck pull out, just in case she was on her way there. Nine times out of ten she was not. The neighbors, when they saw him on the curb, shook their heads and said, Look at that loco.

At first it was pure terror for her. She didn’t want nothing to do with him; she wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t acknowledge him, and the first time she saw him at the club she was so frightened her legs buckled under her. He knew he was scaring her shitless, but he couldn’t help it. By day ten, though, even terror was too much effort and when he followed her down an aisle or smiled at her at work she would hiss, Please go home, Oscar.

She was miserable when she saw him, and miserable, she would tell him later, when she didn’t, convinced that he’d gotten killed. He slipped long passionate letters under her gate, written in English, and the only response he got was when the capitán and his friends called and threatened to chop him to pieces. After each threat he recorded the time and then phoned the embassy and told them that Officer had threatened to kill him, could you please help?

He had hope, because if she really wanted him gone she could have lured him out in the open and let the capitán destroy him. Because if she wanted to she could have had him banned from the Riverside. But she didn’t.

Boy, you can dance good, he wrote in a letter. In another he laid out the plans he had to marry her and take her back to the States.

She started scribbling back notes and passed them to him at the club, or had them mailed to his house. Please, Oscar, I haven’t slept in a week. I don’t want you to end up hurt or dead. Go home.

But beautiful girl, above all beautiful girls, he wrote back. This is my home.

Your real home, mi amor.

A person can’t have two?

Night nineteen, Ybón rang at the gate, and he put down his pen, knew it was her. She leaned over and unlocked the truck door and when he got in he tried to kiss her but she said, Please, stop it. They drove out toward La Romana, where the capitán didn’t have friends supposedly. Nothing new was discussed but he said, I like your new haircut, and she started laughing and crying and said, Really? You don’t think it makes me look cheap?

You and cheap do not compute, Ybón.

What could we do? Lola flew down to see him, begged him to come home, told him that he was only going to get Ybón and himself killed; he listened and then said quietly that she didn’t understand what was at stake. I understand perfectly, she yelled. No, he said sadly, you don’t. His abuela tried to exert her power, tried to use the Voice, but he was no longer the boy she’d known. Something had changed about him. He had gotten some power of his own.

Two weeks into his Final Voyage his mother arrived, and she came loaded for bear. You’re coming home, right now. He shook his head. I can’t, Mami. She grabbed him and tried to pull, but he was like Unus the Untouchable. Mami, he said softly. You’ll hurt yourself.

And you’ll kill yourself.

That’s not what I’m trying to do.

Did I fly down? Of course I did. With Lola. Nothing brings a couple together quite like catastrophe.

Et tu, Yunior? he said when he saw me.

Nothing worked.