Bit by Bit

by Eduardo Santiago

We had what I considered a regular marriage. In my profession as a bailbondsman, you worked day or night, any time the phone rang. I worked from home, and my wife, Dolores, knew to stay out of my way. But sometimes, when she didn’t, things could get crazy. I might smack her around a little, and she’d run off to the bedroom and cry herself to sleep. On a good day. On a bad day, she’d make an ugly scene out of packing a suitcase and standing outside on the sidewalk, pretending that someone was going to come and get her. As if there was something better waiting for her out there. But no one ever came. She would just come back inside after a few hours and unpack while I slept.

It was, you see, a regular marriage, which meant, to me, at the time, that we were stuck with each other. No one would ever come. No one was going to take her away, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

We had no children and no in-laws. Both our families had decided to stay behind in Cuba. We were no longer young when we came to Miami in 1960. We ended up in a little house in Hialeah. We liked our house; it had a nice garden and a fence to keep neighbors out. That’s the way we liked it. Actually, the truth is, that’s the way I liked it.

I had been in the same business practically all my life. First in Santa Clara, the town in Cuba where both Dolores and I were born. I knew that the people who ended up needing my services were not always career criminals, or even bad people. They were just individuals who didn’t understand that, when the sun goes down, you need to go home and stay home. To veer from that rule is to ask for trouble. What’s more pathetic than to have a grown man throw himself on top of you crying through his eyes and nose, repentant, getting your suit smeared with stuff that should be kept inside. I’d seen it all. The guy on his way home from a holiday celebration who accidentally drives his car into someone’s living room and winds up with a Christmas tree in the passenger seat. The guy who sneaks into a neighbor’s house in the middle of the night, quiet as a shadow, gets caught tiptoeing out with a color TV set, and insists that he was sleepwalking. Or the girls who believe they will only give an occasional blowjob for pocket money and wind up getting caught in the revolving door of hell until they get so dizzy they don’t know if they like it better in jail or on the streets. It’s their stupidity that annoys me. I don’t care what you do, just be good at it. And don’t get caught.

Yeah, I’ve been at this game a long time and I’ve handled the delinquencies of some of the dumbest idiots you’d ever want to meet. And I’ve dealt with almost each and every one of them more than once.

Luckily, I let my guard down only once, but it cost me an eye. I know that’s an expression people use, but in my case it’s true. I was on my way to Santa Clara City Hall the first time I saw her. Behind City Hall was where all types of lowlife tended to gather. It wasn’t a typical red-light district, because there were no brothels and no red lights, but there were plenty of bars that served cheap booze, and plenty of hotels where the management couldn’t care less what you did inside their bedrooms, as long as you paid up front. It was a dark maze of narrow, sticky alleyways, always crowded with people who didn’t move very fast and liked to slide past you so close that you automatically reached to protect your wallet and your privates.

I can size people up at a glance and, when I first saw her, I knew there was something special about her. Her hair seemed especially clean. Her eyes were clear. This told me that she hadn’t been too long in the life. The life always starts to show in a woman’s hair and in her eyes. And, of course, she had that Coke-bottle figure. But they all did back there, back then. Why I decided that I wanted to talk to this one in particular, to ask her name, to get to know her, I still don’t know. I guess you could say that first I lost my head, and then I lost an eye.

I would be lying if I told you I’ve recovered from it all, that I no longer think about losing that eye. I haven’t, and I don’t think I ever will, even if the woman did become my wife. Even if she was worth fighting for, she still wasn’t worth an eye. But I try not to hold it against her. I hardly even mention it to her anymore, except maybe when we fight. A man has only two eyes and two testicles, and when one of either of those is gone, it can’t be replaced and he ends up feeling diminished.

Before the Revolution, I managed to make a good living. There were always plenty of people who needed someone to post bail for them. The casinos were in full swing; the gambling boats came and went like clockwork. There were Haitians, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans by the ton. And, of course, the Americanos. Americanos at every corner. It was like the cowboy movies, when the tall-in-the-saddle types would wipe out all the Indians just to get the gold. These modern prospectors saw dollar signs flashing in bright neon across Cuba, and they also saw it as their God-given right to take what they wanted. They pushed us natives out of their way whenever necessary. The problem was that, unlike the Indians, Cubans like to push back. And then fists would fly, shots would ring out, and the services of people like me would be required....

Eduardo Santiago lives in Los Angeles. This is his first time in print. E-mail: santiagogo@aol.com