Strange cohabitation.

Cluster …uck.

The second week into this project Sanita had left with Willy for Florida. The job was so problem plagued I had little time to think about them. I only drove back to Rincon one weekend in the next eight, expecting a phone call that never came. I figured when it was done I’d reconnect with them. Most Saturdays we worked a half day.

Our household in Caguas also kept them out of mind. It was wildly entertaining. I had all the headaches from work. My roommates just had fun, except perhaps Kim, who saw and commiserated to some degree with my trials. Addison had picked up a coke whore the first week there, a Caguas girl, and she moved in with him, permanently. Tom and Paola were in their own world and didn’t socialize with us for more than a few hours on a Sunday. Paola sort of kept the house tidy while we worked. We gave her money and told her what groceries were needed, what beer, so she supplied the fridge, but she never cooked. R.S. did that some nights and Frank on others. They both enjoyed cooking.

R.S. had been living in P.R. for over fifteen years, all for the surfing. In his youth he was a surfing star, won many contests and was paid to go on exhibition tours, flown from one contest to the next, just like in the movie ‘Endless Summer’. He did this into his early twenties, married and had a daughter in Florida, took up the trade of carpet and tile flooring, divorced and settled in Rincon as a cheap place to live. Jaime employed him for all our first stores and then Victor, seeing his talent and professional, American standards. He was ten years older than me and loved nothing better than to work six months a year and kick back in Rincon and surf or laze around the other six.

I’d had many fine midnight conversations at his kitchen table over lines and rum, usually with two or three other guests, once with Tom and Paola there. A few of these talks brought out the best of my oratorical skills, reminiscent of my warehouse days. I remember the time with Tom and Paola, as I was waxing away on some historical subject, he and R.S. kept telling Paola to shut up and just listen, as she kept trying to break in with comments of little relevance. So we respected each other a great deal. Some Friday nights he played guitar in a band on the Tamboo deck, cover tunes, nothing special, but in Rincon a rare treat.

Paola, in her brief appearances, in her almost see-through robes, would come out and complain to the lot of us sitting at the dinner table that the whole house needed to be re-arranged. Sometimes it was the backyard, where none of us ever went or even cared to look at, sometimes a re-arrangement of the furniture. She had exact details in mind, all of which required work on our part just as we came home from work.

Trying to reason.

Frank couldn’t get over this, trying to reason with her and explain to her she was only a temporary renter. They would keep switching from English to Spanish as the argument heated up, every other sentence, quite a sight for the rest of us as we watched and snickered. Their duels were amazing. Tom would pull Frank aside after Paola stormed away, near tears, telling him he was talking to and hitting his head against a brick wall. Then Tom had the task, (perhaps more a pleasure than a chore, as she was so beautiful) of following her into the den and console her with hugs and kisses. We’d see no more of them that evening.

But the scene would repeat itself every few nights, like a fine dessert after dinner for most of us, Frank standing up from the table and telling her again there was no redecoration happening, waiving his arms, as she poured out her latest ideas, things that would make the house so much brighter, like new curtains which she would sew if we just gave her the money for the cloth, ideas that had occurred to her just that day as she wandered around for eight hours while we were at work. Frank was equally as stubborn, (or knuckle-headed) as she was, the two Puerto Ricans in our midst, both repelling and attracting each other to another fight, every few nights. She had dreams of living in such a fine house with Tom one day and altering this one would make it seem like hers.

All of us had our nightly routines. Mine was getting drunk on rum and Coca Cola. I’d drive home with Kim and stop at a liquor store a block away from the house. She might have one or two drinks but that was it. She’d retire to her bedroom from my T.V. room by ten.

We all repaired there after dinner, except Addison and his girl, and Tom and Paola to theirs even before dinner was over, and Frank who stayed downstairs, flopped himself on his couch in a huff, face up, his arms crossed upon his chest, mulling over his latest argument with Paola, wondering why she couldn’t see his point, fascinated by her too, I suspect.

R.S. and Gomez, Kim and I, would sit in my large bedroom and chat and watch T.V., the news and whatever shows came on afterwards, always more interested in the chat than the screen. R.S. and Gomez would light up the crack bowl on the far side of my bed. Kim sat on the side near me, I at a chair and desk, pouring myself drink after drink. When the talk died down she’d slip out. I’d drink a few more glasses and then ask R.S. and Gomez to leave, usually between eleven and midnight, and pass out within a minute on my pillow. I don’t know how much they did but they were always ready for work the next morning at seven.

The other Puerto Rican there was Addison’s girlfriend. But she kept to his room, only coming downstairs each evening as we arrived home to hug and greet him. She couldn’t speak any English, yet she’d sit beside Addison at the table, or help in the kitchen, till they ate and went upstairs together for the night.

We all had a habit of coming in and pouring ourselves a drink first thing, discussing work, while Frank or R.S. would start dinner. She wasn’t pretty, she was skinny and bony from years of malnutrition, with long, black hair, a narrow face and crooked nose, about thirty, and obviously a drug addict from her teenage years. She was timid, speaking only a few words to Addison or Frank in Spanish, scared to offend. I doubt she had any interactions with Paola in the daytime. I never saw Paola say a word to her. Mouse and lioness don’t interact.

Yet she was Addison’s girl and no one commented on her, except once. I asked Addison one night, as she sat beside him at dinner: “where did you find such a waif?” He looked at me, displeased, and said: “in the projects”. I figured she couldn’t understand any English but apparently she did.

The next morning at work he told me I really hurt her feelings and made her cry later on and that I should apologize to her in front of everyone as soon as we got home, which I did. I came up to her and said honestly I was sorry and that I was wrong to insult her. Everyone has dignity. She smiled broadly. So she did understand English, but like many Puerto Ricans never let on to it. The matter was over. But each night they went up to their room, closed and locked the door and smoked crack into the wee hours. Every morning he drove in with one of us and repaired immediately to a large, refrigerator sixed, box in the back of the K.B. toy store and slept there till noon. Then he’d crawl out to direct his crew.

His habit was so bad back then that he’d cash his check and hand me all his pay each Friday, four hundred plus. I’d put it in my bank account in the square and give him a daily allowance, sixty dollars, all through the week. The bank was right across the street from the mall. We’d do this each lunchtime and grab a beer together, his breakfast. But it was a restaurant too and I’d have a meal.

Each evening he’d ride home with R.S. and Gomez, as they all had the same thing in mind, the same stop, the projects. They’d drop ten or twenty, but he’d hand R.S. enough for a six-pack and his food contribution, five dollars, and all the rest on vials of crack. These were so cheap that six or eight would get him and his girl ripped all night, smoking continuously, between bouts of sex. We could hear her many moans through the thin wall between my bedroom and there’s, starting around nine, and wondered aloud at there frequency, the four of us, even Kim, sitting right next to that wall, as they interrupted our conversations. Most times we’d just turn up the T.V. to tune them out.

The very few times I tried crack in P.R. one vial was all I could handle and it kept me up all night, miserably so, unable to sleep and with a headache by morning. The thrill vanished within fifteen minutes of each puff and after ten or so wasn’t a thrill anymore, just a mindless, mind-fogging repetition until it was all gone. I hated it. So did Kim. Gomez or R.S. must have offered us a toke, (out of politeness, from the other side of the bed) every night and we always declined. I suspect they bought a vial or two each. It never affected their work performance.

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