Free Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa Page A

Dad seemed to share Nixon’s view: all Commies are bad.
    But maybe not all of them believed in the government. Probably only some did, and the rest just had to pretend. I bet that’s hard.
    The unstable horizontal hold on the video chopped Nixon’s fuzzy outline into a dozen pieces. “Can you believe how crappy TV reception was back then?” Janell whispered.
    I nodded soberly, as though I’d been tracking it since. “I don’t think cable would’ve saved him, though.”
    Afterward, Ms. Joyner launched into a soliloquy about the power of persuasive speech that was quite convincing in itself. She persuaded me that maybe I could somehow persuade Señora Wong to let me take the vocabulary test over again. I might invite her to the domino party this weekend, let her win a few dimes. Let her take Chucho home, like some Cuban “Checkers” bribe.
    But there were pitfalls to persuasion. “Look what happened to Socrates,” Ms. Joyner pointed out. Socrates was forced to drink a cup of poison hemlock when his speeches threatened to put his fellow philosophers out of business.
    Hmmm. Perhaps I would leave Señora Wong alone and my Spanish grade up to fate.

    Later that day, after classes, I headed for the speech office in C building to keep my appointment with Mr. Soloman. I felt sorry for kids who had lockers in this wing; they were always having to run to class. They hung around leisurely now after the last bell, savoring the moment, chattering and shouting and slamming metal doors. My eyes brushed over them like a minesweeper, searching for The Ax so he couldn’t sneak up on me. But neither he nor Mr. Soloman was at large in the halls or the speech office, which was empty, the door invitingly ajar.
    I walked in. The only chair-desks had been pushed down the corridor, so I sat at Mr. Axelrod’s desk and let my pack slide to the floor at my feet. I also let my guard down a hair.
    The Ax kept a tidy desk, everything arranged carefully on one of those big square blotter things for writing. He could’ve made it through the express lane at the supermarket with eight items or less: one half-empty plastic bottle of springwater, capped; stack of permission slips for some speech-related trip, signed; felt pen, capped; magnetic paper-clip holder, full; stapler, probably ditto; calendar set made of plastic cubes you had to turn to the right date, today showing; and a five-by-seven photograph of a dark-haired, alabaster-skinned woman, laughing, in a simple, chrome-plate frame: the mysterious Mrs. Ax, killed, so they say, in a car accident the night after their wedding.
    She looked so alive in the photo.
    The bottom desk drawer was open a crack, so I pushed it closed, then, curious, opened it again. A stack of yellowed
Variety
newspapers. A beat-up
Our Town
script. I pushed these aside and spied an envelope marked LETTERS in a strong, gruff hand.
    Letters? From his wife?
    Then a strong, gruff voice shook me. “Ms. Paz!”
    I froze in horror—The Ax himself loomed over me, dressed for a funeral.
    He gazed from my stunned face to the open drawer, dark eyes full of thunder and lightning. “How dare you go through my personal things! Do I need to call security?”
    I shook my head mutely.
    He frowned, hands on hips. “I don’t want to see you in this office alone again.” When I didn’t respond, he whispered with finality, “Go on! Get out of my sight!”
    I slunk to the floor, grabbed my pack, and oozed out the door, the lowest slime on the face of the earth.
    “Violet!” Mr. Soloman hurried down the hall, recognizing me despite my ectoplasmic state. “Sorry I’m late. Musical classrooms. Let’s see if Room 206 is free.”
    My life—from tragedy to comedy, like the Janus masks. Was there nothing in between?

    There was. Mr. Soloman showed me a videotape of some very unfunny original comedy, several losing routines from a few years back.
    “The performers shall remain nameless,” he announced with tact, settling into the