Gloria walked into La Media Noche bodega tired and hungry. She’d worked a double shift at the hotel because that woman Cindy, the one with the stringy red hair, called in saying her boy was sick. Gloria was grateful to pick up extra hours and the extra pay that came with them. But she’d spent fourteen hours changing sheets and squirting disinfectant on toilets. All she wanted now was a shower and some hot food. She could’ve picked up something quick at the Burger King or McDonald’s but she wanted comfort food—something easy, something that reminded her of home.
Gloria bought a bag of yellow cornmeal, a head of garlic, some onions, and a couple of beers. She paid with a twenty tucked in her uniform pocket and walked out the bodega door, its little bell clanging above her head, when a man’s voice called out behind her.
“Señorita, you dropped this,” he said, extending a five-dollar bill and using the formal Usted.
Gloria checked her pocket and, de verdad, the five that Chucho, the bodega owner, had just handed her was missing. “Mil gracias,” she said, and took the bill from the man’s dirty hand. He wasn’t unkempt-dirty; he was work-dirty. A chalky white film of dust from hanging drywall covered his body.
“Making harina?” He tipped his chin toward her grocery bag. “With lots of garlic and a good cold beer, nothing is better.”
That night when Gloria poured the onions and garlic she’d sautéed in olive oil over her bowl of creamy, yellow grits, she envisioned the man’s hands freshly washed.
She ran into him again at La Media Noche the following week. They were checking out at the same time, and Chucho asked Gloria if she’d met Hector. He came from Pinar del Río, her province. Did she know that? Gloria said no; and Hector said the pleasure was his; and they traded names of long unseen places.
The first time Gloria invited Hector to her modest apartment for dinner she made ajiaco. She started the stew early in the morning, simmering the meats—beef, pork, chicken—and dense root vegetables. She waited, as she’d learned back home, until an hour before he arrived to add fleshy orange chunks of calabaza and pieces of plantains to the simmering pot so they wouldn’t get mushy. Hector agreed that was how ajiaco was best. He saved the corn for last, sucking the stew juices from the chunks of cob. Gloria ate heartily too, with an appetite and satisfaction that came from not eating alone. Hector looked at her with food-sleepy eyes and said he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been that content.
After dinner, Hector insisted on helping with the kitchen even though Gloria protested. He put on the black apron with Domestic Goddess spelled out in red rhinestones that she’d bought for only three dollars at Ross’s, on sale since some of the stones were missing. While she divided the leftover ajiaco into two plastic containers, so he could take half home with him, Hector placed rinsed plates into the dishwasher. When the stew pot was empty, he scrubbed it while she put on the cafetera for coffee. Making small talk as they worked, Gloria complained that the kitchen smelled of old food no matter how hard she scrubbed. Hector used a table knife to unscrew the mesh filter underneath the stove fan. Gloria didn’t know the filter was removable. He soaked it in detergent and promised her it would lose its grease smell.
Four months later, after many shared dinners, after Gloria knew how good Hector’s clean hands felt on her body and how strong his thighs were when he pressed down on her, he moved in.
Gloria had been hesitant. At forty-eight, she’d had several men in her life, but she’d only lived with two: the young husband she’d married back in Cuba when she was twenty only to lose him at twenty-three when his motorcycle was hit by a truck with faulty brakes, and the boyfriend she lived with for years but never married. She’d followed him to the United States. That one expected to be waited on hand and foot in the not-untypical Cuban way even though they both worked long days. He expected Gloria to serve him, clean up after him, and get up from the table to refill his water glass while they ate. She was used to that. But when he started openly keeping company with a long-legged Venezuelan and expecting her to look the other way, she put his clothes outside the front door and changed the locks.
When Gloria asked Hector about the women in his life, he said nobody special. He was stretched out on her couch with his head on her lap. At forty-nine, a mere year older than she, his thick black hair was streaked by the occasional gray. Gloria ran her fingers through it. Hector arched his head back for an upside-down kiss, and said, “Mami, I think I was waiting for you.”
“No me digas,” Gloria told him, letting him know it wasn’t her first time around the block. Yet, Hector was different from most men she’d known. Hardworking, sure most of them had been, but Hector was helpful and tidy. He vacuumed without being asked, and more than once after a double shift, she’d arrived home to find him in her black apron, cooking. He picked up after himself, and sometimes even after her. Three Saturdays ago, when Gloria couldn’t find the flowy, gold-sequined top she liked to wear with black leggings for their occasional evenings out dancing at Luna’s, Hector told her exactly where to find it: bottom left back corner of the bedroom closet hanging neatly.
One night in August, he sat on their bed, fresh from his evening shower. Gloria took out the dirty laundry from the bedroom hamper. She took his work shirt and sniffed it. It smelled earthy and sweaty. Then, she reached down for a towel at the bottom of the hamper.
Gloria looked at the towel and looked at Hector.
He smiled, scooted onto the bed, and turned on the TV. His leg muscles flexed as he adjusted pillows and eased back. Above Hector’s head were the shelves he’d built when he moved in. He worked in the short driveway cutting and sanding, running his palm up and down the wood until the smoothness met his satisfaction. He’d mounted them above the headboard. The shelves held black and white pictures of her long-dead parents, more recent color photographs of her sister and nieces still in Cuba, and a framed post-card of a bright green field dotted with patches of rich rust-brown earth leading to a ridge of rounded hills—the mogotes of the Viñales Valley in the province of Pinar del Río—the one place back home they both equally loved and missed.
Gloria sat at the bed’s edge. “Are you cheating on me?”
“Ay, Mami, no. Why do you ask such a thing?”
He ran his finger from the curve of her shoulder to the tip of her chin and told her he loved her.
“Then, you tell me, whose lipstick is on this towel?”
Hector muted the television.
Gloria shook the beige hand towel at Hector.
Hector looked down at the remote in his hands. “Mine,” he whispered, and a flush pricked his face.
“What?”
“I put makeup on sometimes. And other things.”
“Cómo? Pero, qué tú dices? That you dress up like a woman?”
When Hector looked up, she knew he wasn’t lying. His face had the same look that night when he explained softly over the phone to his mother that he couldn’t get the arrangements made fast enough to go see her one last time, and Gloria knew he couldn’t fake that.
“Do you like men?”
“No, I like women. And I love you.”
“Do you want to be a woman?”
Hector shook his head.
“Then, why?” Gloria said.
“I like the way it makes me feel.”
As television scenes changed behind her so did the light in the room. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t explain.”
“Try, Hector. How does it make you feel?”
Hector took her hands in his and whispered, “It’s like—it’s like ajiaco, Gloria. It soothes me and leaves me content.”
Gloria didn’t let go of Hector’s hands; she held them tightly. But she didn’t know if she wished he’d just said yes. When she asked if he was cheating, she didn’t know if she wished he’d just said yes.
The next day, as Gloria cleaned one hotel room after another, she couldn’t stop thinking about Hector. Restless, she’d gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and typed “men who dress like women” in Spanish on her phone.
Travesti. She knew the word.
Gloria scrolled past various pictures of men dressed as women, to information. An article, written by someone in Argentina, explained some heterosexual men found satisfaction wearing women’s clothing. Gloria read the article slowly a second time to make sure she understood.
In another article, Gloria read about a woman whose husband dressed up as a man during the workweek, and as a woman at home during weekends. On vacations, she helped him with his makeup, and they went out together. Gloria tried to picture Hector dressed as a woman but couldn’t. The image that came to mind was of him, covered in fine drywall dust, as he’d been the first time she met him, but with lips painted in her deep red. Anxiety took hold of Gloria for the rest of the night, leaving her sleepless.
When Gloria entered their apartment after work, it was quiet.
“Hector?”
“En el cuarto,” he said.
She followed his voice to their bedroom. Hector was in cargo shorts and tee shirt, with his hair wet from a shower. The dresser drawers were open, and he was placing neat stacks of clothes on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Hector didn’t look at her. “Packing, Gloria. Leaving.”
“Why?”
“I know it’s what people expect when they find out.”
“What people?”
“First,” Hector shrugged, “mi padre. He found me dressed up one day when I was seventeen. He came at me with fists and a belt. When he was finished, he kicked me out. He said if I ever let anybody find out, especially my mother, he’d kill me himself.”
Because Hector didn’t look at her as he spoke, Gloria walked around to the far side of the bed, in direct view of the stacks of clothing.
“Then, some guy I roomed with found me. He called me un maricón, and said if I didn’t leave right then, he and his boys would break my legs.”
“Ay, por Dios, that’s just horrible.”
Hector went to the dresser and returned with a handful of socks. “Besides them, only two other people have ever known. Alina, la cubanita I lived with for a while in West Tampa. She didn’t even ask me to leave when she found out. She moved to her sister’s place that same day. And now, you.”
Gloria sat on their bed.
“You’re a good woman, Gloria. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable? I don’t know that I am. I’ve never seen you, I mean, the other you.”
“There’s only one me.”
“Then, let me see you.”
Gloria gave Hector privacy in their bedroom. She emptied the dishwasher, then sat and thumbed through the latest issue of People en Español. She turned the pages without really looking at them, licked her index finger systematically, started again from the cover, gave up and flung the magazine to the far end of the couch. She picked up her phone and considered calling her sister in Cuba, but it wasn’t Sunday, her scheduled day to call, and she didn’t want to pretend everything was alright. She turned on the TV, remote in hand, changing channels. Gloria didn’t want to think.
It was some time before Hector finally called. Gloria opened the door. A ray from the late summer sun beamed in through the bedroom window. Dust particles floated in the air. Hector stood away in the shadows of the far corner, head bowed, hands at his sides. He wore a red velvet V-necked sheath dress and sheer stockings with matching red heels.
“I . . . I keep some shoes and clothes in that locked box in the closet.”
He’d said the box was personal. She’d thought he meant papers and photos.
He wasn’t wearing a wig nor was he wearing a padded bra like she’d seen in some of the pictures she’d scrolled through last night. The velvet draped smoothly down his chest. The V-neck exposed some of his curly black chest hair. Gloria liked to draw circles around them when he was shirtless next to her. At first look, it was like seeing him dressed up for Halloween or a costume party. Gloria walked toward him.
“Look up at me, Hector.”
As she’d imagined, he wore red lipstick. Foundation slightly covered the ever-present shadow of a beard on his freshly shaved face, and his eyes were rimmed in black. His makeup was applied flawlessly. This wasn’t playacting. It wasn’t the work of an amateur, and the realization startled her. Gloria looked up and down at Hector, saying nothing. She took another step closer, and in his face, she saw the same kind eyes and shy vulnerability she’d seen that first night at La Media Noche.
Gloria whispered, “You look, you look—nice.”
Hector blushed.
“Y ahora qué? I mean, do you go out?”
He shook his head. “I’m very private,” Hector whispered back. “I just want to be in my home.”
“What do you do, tú sabes, when you dress and I’m not here?”
Hector took a step into the light. “I don’t have many chances to be—alone. I watch TV. Just sit. Sometimes, I cook.”
“Do you want to cook something for me?”
“I could make harina. The way you like it with onions and garlic. Do you think you can eat?”
“I don’t know, Hector,” Gloria said. “But I know I can try.”
