Free Scarface by Paul Monette

themselves. Every now and then a fight would break out between two of them. A knife would flash, a stab in the arm or a slice across the face, but nothing serious. It was too hot. They were too drunk to care.
    As Manolo and Tony drifted through, nodding here and there but not stopping at any one group, a pock-faced punk named Chi-Chi sidled across their path. “Hey, Manny,” he said with a lazy smile. He was ripped to the tits.
    “Hey, Chi-Chi. What’s goin’ down?”
    “Usual shit, man. You want some peanuts?” He thrust a hand in his pocket and drew out a fistful of pills, yellows and reds and big fat whites.
    Manolo shook his head. “No thanks, pal. I got so wasted the other night, I thought I died. I just come up for air.”
    All this while, Tony stood patiently by, not even appearing to listen. He watched the banjo player across the way, as if he cared very much how the song turned out. Chi-Chi seemed to know better than to offer the pills in his direction.
    “How ’bout a little snatch?” Chi-Chi asked Manolo. “Pussycat name Yolanda just roll in.”
    “Oh yeah?” said Manolo. “What she look like?”
    “She look like you, ’cept she got a snatch.”
    “Sorry, Chi-Chi,” Manolo laughed. “I think I’ll pull it myself tonight.”
    “If you get stoned enough,” said Chi-Chi, carefully plucking a yellow pill from the pharmacopoeia in his hand, “you don’t even notice who you’re doin’ it with.” He popped the pill into his mouth and hiccuped as he swallowed it.
    Tony had had enough. As the two men continued to talk, he wandered away down the street. A hundred yards farther on was the center of what they called “the boulevard.” In the alleys beside the mess hall was the thriving heart of the black market, where the portable stalls on Saturday nights sold toiletries, clothing, cigarettes, booze. Here the traffic in transvestites was conducted by a gang of professional pimps, whose patter and swagger were broad as Miami. The “girls” were dressed to the teeth. As Tony ambled by, one of the marketeers called out hello, but he didn’t stop.
    On the steps in front of the mess, a couple of young guys still in their teens were tossing a frisbee. Across the glass doors of the mess someone had spray-painted “Viva Carter!” In the gravel yard beside the steps was a row of telephone booths, each with its door removed. Here stood a patient line of about a dozen refugees, each with a pocket full of dimes. They would stand at the phone for hours, these types, poring through the well-thumbed pages of a Miami telephone book, trying to make a connection with somebody on the outside. Now and then one of them would strike gold, hooking up with an uncle or a cousin. With a sponsor, chances were fifty-fifty that a man could be released from the army base. The hope of it kept the refugees in the phone line feeding in dimes and quarters day after day, as if they were playing a slot machine.
    As Tony passed by, a handsome young man with a bushy head of hair screamed into one of the phones and slammed it down. He turned away in disgust, only to find Tony grinning at him sarcastically. “What’s so funny?” asked Angel Fernandez in broken English. “You know how many goddam Fernandezes they got in Miami?”
    “Hey Angel,” Tony said gently, “maybe after twelve years you got the wrong number or somethin’. People like to move around, ya know.”
    “Lousy country,” Angel said disgustedly, shaking his head as he moved off toward the alley to buy a pint of rum.
    Tony knew Angel would be back in the booth tomorrow. More than any of the rest of them, Angel longed to reunite with those in his family who’d fled Cuba during the early days of the revolution. Angel was as innocent as his name. His two years in prison had somehow not hardened him like the others, and Tony felt very protective toward him. Even angry like he was now, Angel was a sweet-tempered kid. There wasn’t a lethal bone in his body.