Read The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook) for Free Online Page B

awakens, frightened, and curls himself up in a corner.
    “Listen, you son of a bitch!” I say to him. “Don’t snore anymore!”
    At the sight of his fear, my anger abates. I sit down on the bed again. I smell bad. So much so that I grab the towel and soap and head out toward the bathroom. On the way, I see old one-eyed Reyes, who is covertly urinating in a corner. I look around. I don’t see anyone. I go over to Reyes and grab him tightly by the neck. I give him a kick in the testicles. I bang his head against the wall.
    “Sorry, sorry … ,” Reyes says.
    I look at him, disgusted. His forehead is bleeding. Upon seeing this, I feel a strange pleasure. I grab the towel, twist it, and whip his frail chest.
    “Have mercy … ,” Reyes implores.
    “Stop pissing everywhere!” I say furiously.
    As I turn back down the hall, I see Arsenio there, leaning against the wall. He saw it all. He smiles. He leaves the can of beer in a corner and asks to borrow my towel. I give it to him. He twists it tightly. He makes a perfect whip of it and using all his strength brings it down on Reyes’ back. One, two, three times, until the old man falls in a corner, bathed in urine, blood and sweat. Arsenio gives me the towel back. He smiles at me again. He grabs his can of beer and sits down again at his desk. Mr. Curbelo has left. Arsenio is now the head of the halfway house again.
    I continue toward the bathroom. I go inside, lock the door and start to undress. My clothes stink, but my socks reek even more. I grab them, inhale their deeply embedded muddy smell, and throw them in the waste basket. They were the only socks I had. Now I’ll walk around the city sockless.
    I go in the shower, turn it on and stand under the hot water. As the water runs over my head and body, I smile, thinking of old Reyes. I’m amused by the face he made when he was beaten, by the way his frail body shuddered, by his sorrowful pleas. Then he fell on top of his own urine and asked for mercy from there. “Mercy!” Remembering that, my body shudders with pleasure again. I soap myself up thoroughly, using my underwear as a washcloth. Then I rinse myself off and turn off the shower. I dry off. I put on the same clothes. I go out. In the living room, the nuts are still watching TV. The set is broken and you can only see colored lights, but still they sit, watching the screen, paying the lack of images no mind. I go to my room and leave the towel and the soap. I go out, combing my hair, toward the living room. The nuts are still there, frozen in place as they watch the broken TV. I kneel before the set and fix it. I sit in the tattered armchair and prop my feet up on an empty chair. The announcer says something about ten guerrillas dead in El Salvador. Then Eddy, the nut who is well-versed in international politics, comes down to earth.
    “That’s it!” he yells. “Ten dead communists! There should be one hundred! One thousand! A million dead communists! Someone with some balls needs to wipe them out! First Mexico. Then Panama. Then Venezuela and Nicaragua. And then clean up the United States, which is infested with communists. They took everything from me! Everything!”
    “Me, too.” says Ida, the grande dame come to ruin. “Six houses, a pharmacy and an apartment building.”
    Then, Ida turns to Pino, the silent nut, and asks, “How about you, Pino, what did they take from you?”
    But Pino doesn’t answer. He looks out at the street and remains still, unblinking.
    Just then, in comes old Castaño, the centenarian who leans on the walls when he walks. Like one-eyed Reyes and that decrepit hag Hilda, urine permeates his clothes.
    “I want to die!” Castaño yells. “I want to die!”
    René, the youngest of the two mental retards, grabs him by the neck, shakes him forcefully, and takes him back to his room by kicking his behind.
    “I want to die!” We hear old Castaño’s voice again until René slams shut the door to his room, burying his