* * *
NOW, HE WAS here before her, again. In the Hamptons of all places. He was older, broader. His face dark and smooth, with an impeccably groomed salt-and-pepper beard. The hip-hop mogul attire of the aughts replaced by a summer linen suit and a button-down.
“Hi,” Olga said as she kissed him on the cheek.
“Hey!” He smiled. “You look fantastic. As usual. You don’t age.”
She laughed. “Please! I’ve got more La Mer happening on this face than J.Lo uses on her whole body!”
“I dated her once, you know.”
“Oh my God.” She rolled her eyes. “Always the same with you! The bragging! You think I don’t know that date happened when I was in junior high and J.Lo was still a Fly Girl?”
“Pssh! You don’t even know what you’re talking about, girl. I took her out during the Out of Sight era, thank you very much.”
They both laughed.
“So, it’s good to see you, but … what are you doing here? Besides picking a fight with my brother.”
“Your brother’s wack, Olga, and I’ve always said that.”
“So, because you’re consistent, that makes your opinion true?”
“It’s a dereliction of duty. He is one of the few people able to call attention to the disaster happening on our island!”
“Ay, Reggie, you and my brother are hilarious. The only island you should be claiming is City Island. Your home is the Bronx. When was the last time you were even in Puerto Rico?”
“Actually, Olga, I have a big-ass house there now, so…”
They both laughed. Each could always take what the other had to dish out.
“No, but seriously,” he continued. “I came today because I want to make sure your brother knows we’re watching.”
“And who is we?”
“Just some like-minded individuals who care that our people—United States citizens—are being systemically eradicated by colonialism and neo-liberal policies, that’s all.”
“Ah. Okay. Just that.” She sipped her champagne. “Listen, when did you get so political about all this shit?”
“Well, if you want to know, you woke something up in me—”
“Me?” Olga pointed to herself.
“Ya! When we used to hang out, I couldn’t believe how much you just knew about our culture. I was embarrassed by my own ignorance. And I used to make salsa records! Anyway, I started to read, more and more. Then, when me and Grace had Carlos and he was in school, I realized he was very pro-Black, but didn’t think of himself as Puerto Rican at all. I had done all this work to get all of this money and my kid was being raised a total alien to the culture I had known. Nothing was the same about us. Not the kind of house, not the beaches he’d visit, not the languages he would speak, not the way he thought of himself. And I figured some of this is just life, but some of this is on me, right?”
“Right.” She paused. They stared at her brother working the remaining attendees, the sand dunes in the background. “So, now with all that knowledge and wisdom, you basically spent ten grand just to come and tell Prieto off?”
“Basically,” he said. “Seeing you was a secondary goal. I would have dropped another ten G’s on that.”
Olga smiled, faintly. “I should get my brother. We have another engagement.”
“What? You going to that Blumenthal party?”
“We are. And you?”
“Too many creeps under one tent for me, thanks.”
She leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek. He whispered in her ear: “Olga, I know you love him, but watch your brother.”
She pulled away. “Thanks Reggie, but we’re all good,” she said as she walked away, his parting words trailing behind her.
DICK’S NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY
Dick sighed in the back of his chauffeured SUV as he headed home. Alone. He found himself considering how wildly dissimilar the day’s activities had been from the fantasy that he had developed about it. In his fantasy, he strolled into the normally bland Blumenthal party with Olga on his arm, turning the white-haired heads of his colleagues and competitors and then floating her around from couple to couple while she wooed them with her wit and exotic beauty. Instead, he was dropped at the entrance of the party and, right as his driver pulled away, realized that, when on political principle, he’d refused to attend her brother’s fundraiser, he had in turn robbed himself of the moment he’d been visualizing in his mind for these past few weeks. How could having convictions result in such punishment? Unwilling to compromise the moment, he decided to wait it out, but, having dismissed his driver, was left with no place to hide. So he occupied himself by calling his senior staff to discuss pressing business that, until now, he’d planned to deal with on Monday. In between his manufactured frenzy, he’d also been texting and calling Olga, with, he would have to admit, a bit of insistence, just to see how quickly she could wrap things up and come and rescue him. For about thirty minutes, he paced back and forth, speaking loudly into his phone and nodding tacitly to partygoers passing him en route to revelry. He’d paused for a moment to catch his breath when, who should appear but Olga’s assistant, hand in hand with a brawny young man, both smiling ear to ear.