Like the restaurant itself, the waitress working when I was there was easy to overlook. She wore her generic black and white server’s attire as if camouflage. Bespectacled and with practical black hair that obscured her features, she moved quickly, whether she was approaching a task or finishing one. She avoided eye contact and wore make-up in the fashion of somebody who wasn’t accustomed to wearing make-up, as if it, too, were part of the disguise she had to wear for work. Perfunctory and with her head down, she was a delivery system who offered up no clues as to what her life exterior to the restaurant might be like.
The place wasn’t very busy and she was getting off early. She cashed out quickly, without hanging around to have a glass of wine or something to eat the way that restaurant staff often does. In her friendless manner she hurried out the door, stopping when a homeless woman sitting on a milk crate said something to her. They spoke for a moment or two and then the waitress took out her purse, gave the woman some money and then hugged her right there on the sidewalk. For nearly a minute they must have embraced, and then after having wiped away a tear the waitress left, moving into the rest of her unseen life.
]]>The airport felt like a miniature, a Fisher-Price toy but with real adults walking around inside. Everything had a quirky, taped-together quality to it, as if created by precocious children for a school project rather than sober-minded adults focused on industry. Women in short-skirted uniforms projected an aggressive, practically florid boredom and mangy dogs with character wandered about the parking lot.
I wondered what their names might be.
El Capatain.
One-Eye.
Fanta.
Rachelle and I were in the city of Matanzas until morning. It was a Friday night and locals, girls with big asses jammed into hot pants and Jersey Shore boys bleeding cologne, streamed by. Scavenging dogs rooted through garbage and cats flicked into the darkness of parks from which idling men hissed at Rachelle as we walked down the street. Occasionally, a person would stare from their front steps– hands on hips as if in challenge– and then suddenly, the moment broken by a parrot speaking language from the unseen foliage above.
We passed by a pizza place and an older man called to us from the patio.
“It is no accident!” he shouted. “No, the Lord makes no mistakes and for sure has placed us in one another’s paths!”
We couldn’t have been more curious and sat down with this man. He was 70 and had been educated as a boy in Virginia. He’d spent his life an inveterate gambler, alcoholic and adulterer, but he had been rescued by Jesus and believing that Rachelle and I were missionaries– so out of place, innocent and happy did we look—that he wanted to share his story and faith.
We ate pizza and drank wine while behind us the indifferent, possibly angry waitress watched music videos from the 1980s on the TV.
Blondie.
Phil Collins.
Lionel Richie.
Big Audio Dynamite.
“What did you gamble on?” I wanted to know.
“All of it, cock fighting, dice, poker. The devil had me in his grip.”
“Were you good at poker?”
With a little bit of pride the man leaned back, “Yes, I think that I was.”
“I am not. Tell me how to improve my game, even if it includes cheating. Especially if it includes cheating.”
“No, gambling is wrong and I can see you are not a cheater. This beautiful woman beside you is your watchtower.”
“She’s my lighthouse.”
“You are a lucky man, God has smiled upon you. He who loves with a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king for his friend. Proverbs 22:11.”
And then he reached out and held my hands.
“The Lord brought you here to me so that I might caution you of Havana. It is a sinful place. Many are desperate and you will appear as a walking dollar sign to them. Alone without language you are vulnerable to their tricks. Be careful and trust in the Lord, trust in the salvation of all, for even I was saved.”
