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more.
    “Okay, William. That will be all.”
    I stand up and go back to the porch. There’s a surprise for me there.
El Negro
has come to see me all the way from Miami Beach. He has a book in his hand and he holds it out to me as a greeting. It’s
Time of the Assassins
by Henry Miller.
    “I’m afraid it will ruin you,” he says.
    “Stop fucking with me!” I reply.
    I take him by the arm and lead him to a broken-down car that sits in the garage of the halfway house. It’s a car from 1950 that belongs to Mr. Curbelo. One day it just stopped forever and Mr. Curbelo left it there, at the halfway house, so it would go on deteriorating, slowly, along with the nuts. We get in the car and sit in the back seat, between oxidized springs and pieces of dirty padding.
    “What’s new?” I anxiously ask
El Negro
. He’s my link to society. He goes to meetings with Cuban intellectuals, talks about politics, reads the papers, watches television, and then, every week or two, he comes to see me to share the gist of his travels through the world.
    “Everything’s the same.”
El Negro
says. “Everything’s the same … ,” he says. Then, all of a sudden: “Well! Truman Capote died.”
    “I know.”
    “That’s it,”
El Negro
says. He takes a newspaper out of his pocket and gives it to me. It’s the Mariel newspaper, edited by young Cubans in exile.
    “There’s a poem of mine in there,”
El Negro
says. “On page six.”
    I look for page six. There’s a poem called “There’s Always Light in the Devil’s Eyes.” It reminds me of Saint-John Perse. I tell him. He’s flattered.
    “It reminds me of
Rains
,” I say.
    “Me, too,”
El Negro
says.
    Then he looks at me. He takes in my clothes, my shoes, my dirty, tangled hair. He shakes his head disapprovingly.
    “Hey, Willy,” he then says, “you should take better care of yourself.”
    “Oh, am I that run down?”
    “Not yet,” he says. “But try not to get any worse.” “I’ll take care of myself,” I say.
    El Negro
pats my knee. I realize that he’s about to leave. He takes out a half-empty pack of Marlboros and gives it to me. Then he takes out a dollar and gives that to me, too.
    “It’s all I have,” he says.
    “I know.”
    We get out of the car. A nut comes up to us to ask for a cigarette.
El Negro
gives him one.
    “Adios, Doctor Zhivago,” he says, smiling. He turns around and leaves.
    I go back to the porch. As I am about to go in, somebody calls to me from the dining room. It’s Arsenio, the halfway house second-in-command. He’s shirtless and hiding a can of beer under the table since it’s not right for the psychiatrist who’s visiting the residence today to see him drinking.
    “Come here,” he says to me and points to a chair.
    I go inside. Besides him and me, there’s no one else in the dining room. He looks at the books I have in my hand and starts laughing.
    “Listen … ,” he says, drinking from the can. “I’ve been watching you closely.”
    “Yeah? And what do you make of me?”
    “That you’re not crazy,” he says, still smiling.
    “And what school of psychiatry did you go to?” I ask, irritated.
    “None,” he replies. “I just have street psychology. And I’ll tell you again that you, you’re not crazy! Let’s see,” he then says, “take this cigarette and burn your tongue.”
    I’m disgusted by his idiocy. His malt beer-colored body, the huge scar that goes from his chest down to his navel.
    “You see?” he says, taking a swig of beer. “See how you’re not crazy?”
    And then he smiles with his mouth full of rotten teeth. I leave. The cleaning is done and we can go back inside. The nuts are watching TV. I cross the living room and finally enter my room. I slam the door shut. I’m indignant and I don’t know why. The crazy guy who works at the pizza place is snoring in his bed like a saw cutting a piece of wood. I become more indignant. I go over to him and give him a kick in the behind. He