Pushcart Prize winner Ana Menendez landed firmly in the literary landscape last year with the hardcover publication of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd. Reviewers overwhelmingly agree that she is an important new voice in American fiction: hers is "a bright debut that points to even brighter accomplishments to come" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times), a tour de force that is "poignant and varied, emotionally vivid and hauntingly melancholy" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "a Cuban odyssey that conjures up Eugene O'Neill-like drama" (Kirkus Reviews). In these linked tales about the Cuban-American experience and the immigrant experience in general, Ana Menendez has instantly established herself as a natural storyteller who "probes with steady humor and astute political insight the dreams versus the realities of her characters" (Elle). From the prizewinning title story -- a masterpiece of humor and heartbreak -- unfolds a series of family snapshots that illuminate the landscape of an exiled community rich in heritage, memory, and longing for the past. In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd is at once "tender and sharp-fanged" (L.A. Weekly) as Ana Menendez charts the territory from Havana to Coral Gables with unforgettable passion and explores whether any of us are capable, or even truly desirous, of outrunning our origins. "Achingly wise." -- Richard Eder, the New York Times Book Review "Menendez taps into [a] wellspring of broken promises and unfulfilled desires and gives us a ... peek at ... the Cuban-American experience." -- Ariel Gonzalez, The Miami Herald "Menendez offers a lilting narrative that sways soulfully between past and present, longing and regret, joy and tragedy." -- Donna Rifkind, The Baltimore Sun "Superb ... The community that emerges in these pages is one of humor, acute grief, and gifted storytelling." -- Fionn Meade, The Seattle Times "The first work of a young writer with a bright future." -- Jay Goldin, Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram "A tender and occasionally sharp-fanged portrait of Miami's Cuban-exile community ... Brave and funny and true." -- Ben Ehrenreich, L.A. Weekly "A raucous, heartfelt debut...Deft, talented and hilarious...." -- Junot Diaz

In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd

By Ana Menendez

Grove Press

Copyright ©2001 Ana Menendez
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780802138873

Chapter One

The park where the four men gathered was small. Before thecity put it on its tourist maps, it was just a fenced rectangle ofspace that people missed on the way to their office jobs. Themen came each morning to sit under the shifting shade of abanyan tree, and sometimes the way the wind moved throughthe leaves reminded them of home.

    One man carried a box of plastic dominos. His name wasMáximo, and because he was a small man his grandiose namehad inspired much amusement all his life. He liked to say thatover the years he'd learned a thing or two about the physics oflaughter and his friends took that to mean good humor couldmake a big man out of anyone. Now Máximo waited for theothers to sit before turning the dominos out on the table. Judgingthe men to be in good spirits, he cleared his throat and beganto tell the joke he had prepared for the day.

    "So Bill Clinton dies in office and they freeze his body."

    Antonio leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh. "Herewe go."

    Máximo caught a roll of the eyes and almost grew annoyed.But he smiled. "It gets better."

    He scraped the dominos in two wide circles across thetable, then continued.

    "Okay, so they freeze his body and when we get the technologyto unfreeze him, he wakes up in the year 2105."

    "Two thousand one hundred and five, eh?"

    "Very good," Máximo said. "Anyway, he's curious aboutwhat's happened to the world all this time, so he goes up to aJewish fellow and he says, `So, how are things in the MiddleEast?' The guy replies, `Oh wonderful, wonderful, everythingis like heaven. Everybody gets along now.' This makes Clintonsmile, right?"

    The men stopped shuffling and dragged their pieces acrossthe table and waited for Máximo to finish.

    "Next he goes up to an Irishman and he says, `So howare things over there in Northern Ireland now?' The guy says,`Northern? It's one Ireland now and we all live in peace.'Clinton is extremely pleased at this point, right? So he doesthat biting thing with his lip."

    Máximo stopped to demonstrate and Raúl and Carlosslapped their hands on the domino table and laughed. Máximopaused. Even Antonio had to smile. Máximo loved this momentwhen the men were warming to the joke and he still keptthe punch line close to himself like a secret.

    "So, okay," Máximo continued, "Clinton goes up to aCuban fellow and says, `Compadre, how are things in Cubathese days?' The guy looks at Clinton and he says to the president,`Let me tell you, my friend, I can feel it in my bones.Any day now Castro's gonna fall.'"

    Máximo tucked his head into his neck and smiled. Carlosslapped him on the back and laughed.

    "That's a good one, sure is," he said. "I like that one."

    "Funny," Antonio said, nodding as he set up his pieces.

    "Yes, funny," Raúl said. After chuckling for anothermoment, he added, "But old."

    "What do you mean old?" Antonio said, then he turnedto Carlos. "What are you looking at?"

    Carlos stopped laughing.

    "It's not old," Máximo said. "I just made it up."

    "I'm telling you, professor, it's an old one," Raúl said. "Iheard it when Reagan was president."

    Máximo looked at Raúl, but didn't say anything. Hepulled the double nine from his row and laid it in the middleof the table, but the thud he intended was lost in the horns andcurses of morning traffic on Eighth Street.

* * *

Raúl and Máximo had lived on the same El Vedado street inHavana for fifteen years before the revolution. Raúl had beena government accountant and Máximo a professor at the University,two blocks from his home on L Street. They weren'tclose friends, but friendly still in that way of people who comefrom the same place and think they already know the importantthings about one another.

    Máximo was one of the first to leave L Street, boarding aplane for Miami on the eve of the first of January 1961, exactlytwo years after Batista had done the same. For reasons he toldhimself he could no longer remember, he said good-bye to noone. He was thirty-six years old then, already balding, with a wifeand two young daughters whose names he tended to confuse.He left behind the row house of long shiny windows, the piano,the mahogany furniture, and the pension he thought he'd returnto in two years' time. Three if things were as serious as they said.

In Miami, Máximo tried driving a taxi, but the streets were aweb of foreign names and winding curves that could one daylead to glitter and another to the hollow end of a pistol. HisSpanish and his University of Havana credentials meant nothinghere. And he was too old to cut sugarcane with the youngermen who began arriving in the spring of 1961. But the mengave Máximo an idea, and after teary nights of promises, heconvinced his wife?she of stately homes and multiple cooks?tomake lunch to sell to those sugar men who waited, squattingon their heels in the dark, for the bus to Belle Glade everymorning. They worked side by side, Máximo and Rosa. Andat the end of every day, their hands stained orange from thelard and the cheap meat, their knuckles red and tender wherethe hot water and the knife blade had worked their business,Máximo and Rosa would sit down to whatever remained ofthe day's cooking and they would chew slowly, the day unraveling,their hunger ebbing away with the light.

    They worked together for years like that, and when theCubans began disappearing from the bus line, Máximo and Rosamoved their lunch packets indoors and opened their little restaurantright on Eighth Street. There, a generation of formerprofessors served black beans and rice to the nostalgic. WhenRaúl showed up in Miami one summer looking for work,Máximo added one more waiter's spot for his old acquaintancefrom L Street. Each night, after the customers had gone,Máximo and Rosa and Raúl and Havana's old lawyers andbankers and dreamers would sit around the biggest table andeat and talk and sometimes, late in the night after several glassesof wine, someone would start the stories that began with "InCuba I remember." They were stories of old lovers, beautifuland round-hipped. Of skies that stretched on clear and blue tothe Cuban hills. Of green landscapes that clung to the red clayof Güines, roots dug in like fingernails in a good-bye. In Cuba,the stories always began, life was good and pure. But somethingalways happened to them in the end, something withering,malignant. Máximo never understood it. The stories thatopened in sun, always narrowed into a dark place. And afterthose nights, his head throbbing, Máximo would turn and turnin his sleep and awake unable to remember his dreams.

Even now, five years after selling the place, Máximo couldn'twalk by it in the early morning when it was still clean andempty. He'd tried it once. He'd stood and stared into therestaurant and had become lost and dizzy in his own reflectionin the glass, the neat row of chairs, the tombstone lunchboard behind them.

* * *

"Okay. A bunch of rafters are on the beach getting ready tosail off to Miami."

    "Where are they?"

    "Who cares? Wherever. Cuba's got a thousand miles ofcoastline. Use your imagination."

    "Let the professor tell his thing, for God's sake."

    "Thank you." Máximo cleared his throat and shuffled thedominos. "So anyway, a bunch of rafters are gathered there onthe sand. And they're all crying and hugging their wives andall the rafts are bobbing on the water and suddenly someone inthe group yells, `Hey! Look who goes there!' And it's Fidel inswimming trunks, carrying a raft on his back."

    Carlos interrupted to let out a yelping laugh. "I like that,I like it, sure do."

    "You like it, eh?" said Antonio. "Why don't you let theCuban finish it."

    Máximo slid the pieces to himself in twos and continued."So one of the guys on the sand says to Fidel, `Compatriota, whatare you doing here? What's with the raft?' And Fidel sits on hisraft and pushes off the shore and says, `I'm sick of this place too.I'm going to Miami.' So the other guys look at each other andsay, `Coño, compadre, if you're leaving, then there's no reasonfor us to go. Here, take my raft too, and get the fuck out of here.'"

    Raúl let a shaking laugh rise from his belly and salutedMáximo with a domino piece.

    "A good one, my friend."

    Carlos laughed long and loud. Antonio laughed too, buthe was careful not to laugh too hard and he gave his friend asharp look over the racket he was causing. He and Carlos wereDominican, not Cuban, and they ate their same foods and playedtheir same games, but Antonio knew they still didn't understandall the layers of hurt in the Cubans' jokes.

* * *

It had been Raúl's idea to go down to Domino Park that firsttime. Máximo protested. He had seen the rows of touristspressed up against the fence, gawking at the colorful old guysplaying dominos.

    "I'm not going to be the sad spectacle in someone's vacationslide show," he'd said.

    But Raúl was already dressed up in a pale blue guayabera,saying how it was a beautiful day and smell the air.

    "Let them take pictures," Raúl said. "What the hell. Makeus immortal."

    "Immortal," Máximo said like a sneer. And then to himself,The gods' punishment.

It was that year after Rosa died and Máximo didn't want to tellhow he'd begun to see her at the kitchen table as she'd been attwenty-five. Watched one thick strand of her dark hair stuckto her morning face. He saw her at thirty, bending down towipe the chocolate off the cheeks of their two small daughters.And his eyes moved from Rosa to his small daughters. He hadsomething he needed to tell them. He saw them grown up, atthe funeral, crying together. He watched Rosa rise and do thesign of the cross. He knew he was caught inside a nightmare,but he couldn't stop. He would emerge slowly, creaking outof the shower and there she'd be, Rosa, like before, her breastsround and pink from the hot water, calling back through theyears. Some mornings he would awake and smell peanuts roastingand hear the faint call of the manicero pleading for someoneto relieve his burden of white paper cones. Or it would bethundering, the long hard thunder of Miami that was so muchlike the thunder of home that each rumble shattered the morningof his other life. He would awake, caught fast in the dampsheets, and feel himself falling backwards.

    He took the number eight bus to Eighth Street and 15thAvenue. At Domino Park, he sat with Raúl and they playedalone that first day, Máximo noticing his own speckled hands,the spots of light through the banyan leaves, a round red beetlethat crawled slowly across the table, then hopped the next breezeand floated away.

* * *

Antonio and Carlos were not Cuban, but they knew when todump their heavy pieces and when to hold back the eights forthe final shocking stroke. Waiting for a table, Raúl and Máximowould linger beside them and watch them lay their traps, asuccession of threes that broke their opponents, an incrediblerun of fives. Even the unthinkable: passing when they had thepiece to play.

    Other twosomes began to refuse to play with the Dominicans,said that tipo Carlos gave them the creeps with his gigglingand monosyllables. Besides, any team that won so often must becheating, went the charge, especially a team one-half imbecile.But really it was that no one plays to lose. You begin to lose againand again and it reminds you of other things in your life, thedespair of it all begins to bleed through and that is not what gamesare for. Who wants to live their whole life alongside the lucky?But Máximo and Raúl liked these blessed Dominicans, appreciatedthe well-oiled moves of two old pros. And if the two Dominicans,afraid to be alone again, let them win now and then,who would know, who could ever admit to such a thing?

    For many months they didn't know much about eachother, these four men. Even the smallest boy knew not to talkwhen the pieces were in play. But soon came Máximo's jokesduring the shuffling, something new and bright coming intohis eyes like daydreams as he spoke. Carlos' full loud laughter,like that of children. And the four men learned to linger longenough between sets to color an old memory while the whitepieces scraped along the table.

    One day as they sat at their table closest to the sidewalk,a pretty girl walked by. She swung her long brown hair aroundand looked in at the men with her green eyes.

    "What the hell is she looking at," said Antonio, who alwayssat with his back to the wall, looking out at the street.But the others saw how he returned the stare too.

    Carlos let out a giggle and immediately put a hand to hismouth.

    "In Santo Domingo, a man once looked at?" But Carlosdidn't get to finish.

    "Shut up, you old idiot," said Antonio, putting his handson the table like he was about to get up and leave.

    "Please," Máximo said.

    The girl stared another moment, then turned and left.Raúl rose slowly, flattening down his oiled hair with his righthand.

    "Ay, mi niña."

    "Sit down, hombre," Antonio said. "You're an old fool,just like this one."

    "You're the fool," Raúl called back. "A woman like that..." He watched the girl cross the street. When she was out ofsight, he grabbed the back of the chair behind him and easedhis body down, his eyes still on the street. The other three menlooked at one another.

    "I knew a woman like that once," Raúl said after a longmoment.

    "That's right, he did," Antonio said, "in his moist boydreams?what was it? A century ago?"

    "No me jodas," Raúl said. "You are a vulgar man. I hada life all three of you would have paid millions for. Women."

    Máximo watched him, then lowered his face, shuffled thedominos.

    "I had women," Raúl said.

    "We all had women," Carlos said, and he looked like hewas about to laugh again, but instead just sat there, smiling likehe was remembering one of Máximo's jokes.

    "There was one I remember. More beautiful than therising moon," Raúl said.

    "Oh Jesus," Antonio said. "You people."

    Máximo looked up, watching Raúl.

    "Ay, a woman like that," Raúl said and shook his head."The women of Cuba were radiant, magnificent, wouldn't yousay, professor?"

    Máximo looked away.

    "I don't know," Antonio said. "I think that Americanathere looked better than anything you remember."

    And that brought a long laugh from Carlos.

Máximo sat all night at the pine table in his new efficiency,thinking about the green-eyed girl and wondering why he wasthinking about her. The table and a narrow bed had come withthe apartment, which he'd moved into after selling their housein Shenandoah. The table had come with two chairs, sturdyand polished?not in the least institutional?but he had movedthe other chair by the bed.

    The landlady, a woman in her forties, had helped Máximohaul up three potted palms. Later, he bought a green pot ofmarigolds he saw in the supermarket and brought its butterleaves back to life under the window's eastern light. Máximooften sat at the table through the night, sometimes readingMartí, sometimes listening to the rain on the tin hull of theair conditioner.

    When you are older, he'd read somewhere, you don'tneed as much sleep. And wasn't that funny because his daysfelt more like sleep than ever. Dinner kept him occupied forhours, remembering the story of each dish. Sometimes, at thetable, he greeted old friends and awakened with a start whenthey reached out to touch him. When dawn rose and slunk intothe room sideways through the blinds, Máximo walked as in adream across the thin patterns of light on the terrazzo. The chair,why did he keep the other chair? Even the marigolds remindedhim. An image returned again and again. Was it the green-eyedgirl?

    And then he remembered that Rosa wore carnations in herhair and hated her name. And that it saddened him because heliked to roll it off his tongue like a slow train to the country.

    "Rosa," he said, taking her hand the night they met at LaConcha while an old danzón played.

    "Clavel," she said, tossing her head back in a cracklinglaugh. "Call me Clavel."

    She pulled her hand away and laughed again. "Don't younotice the flower in a girl's hair?"

    He led her around the dance floor, lined with chaperones,and when they turned he whispered that he wanted to followher laughter to the moon. She laughed again, the notes roundand heavy as summer raindrops, and Máximo felt his fingers gocold where they touched hers. The danzón played and theyturned and turned and the faces of the chaperones and the moistwarm air?and Máximo with his cold fingers worried that shehad laughed at him. He was twenty-four and could not imaginea more sorrowful thing in all the world.

    Sometimes, years later, he would catch a premonitionof Rosa in the face of his eldest daughter. She would turntoward a window or do something with her eyes. And thenshe would smile and tilt her head back and her laughter connectedhim again to that night, made him believe for a momentthat life was a string you could gather up in your handsall at once.

    He sat at the table and tried to remember the last time hesaw Marisa. In California now. An important lawyer. A year?Two? Anabel, gone to New York? Two years? They calledmore often than most children, Máximo knew. They calledoften and he was lucky that way.

* * *

"Fidel decides he needs to get in touch with young people."

    "Ay, ay, ay."

    "So his handlers arrange for him to go to a school inHavana. He gets all dressed up in his olive uniform, you know,puts conditioner on his beard and brushes it one hundred times,all that."

    Raúl breathed out, letting each breath come out like apuff of laughter. "Where do you get these things?"

    "No interrupting the artist anymore, okay?" Máximocontinued. "So after he's beautiful enough, he goes to theschool. He sits in on a few classes, walks around the halls. Finally,it's time for Fidel to leave and he realizes he hasn't talkedto anyone. He rushes over to the assembly that is seeing himoff with shouts of `Comandante!' and he pulls a little boy outof a row. `Tell me,' Fidel says, `what is your name?' `Pepito,'the little boy answers. `Pepito?what a nice name,' Fidel says.`And tell me, Pepito, what do you think of the revolution?'`Comandante,' Pepito says, `the revolution is the reason we areall here.' `Ah, very good, Pepito. And tell me, what is yourfavorite subject?' Pepito answers, `Comandante, my favoritesubject is mathematics.' Fidel pats the little boy on the head.`And tell me, Pepito, what would you like to be when you growup?' Pepito smiles and says, `Comandante, I would like to be atourist.'"

    Máximo looked around the table, a shadow of a smile onhis thin white lips as he waited for the laughter.

    "Ay," Raúl said. "That is so funny it breaks my heart."

* * *

Máximo grew to like dominos, the way each piece became partof the next. After the last piece was laid down and they weretallying up the score, Máximo liked to look over the table asan artist might. He liked the way the row of black dots snakedaround the table with such free-flowing abandon it was almostas if, thrilled to be let out of the box, the pieces choreographeda fresh dance of gratitude every night. He liked the straightforwardcontrast of black on white. The clean, fresh scrape of thepieces across the table before each new round. The audacity ofthe double nines. The plain smooth face of the blank, like anewborn unetched by the world to come.

    "Professor," Raúl began. "Let's speed up the shuffling abit, sí?"

    "I was thinking," Máximo said.

    "Well, that shouldn't take long," Antonio said.

    "Who invented dominos, anyway?" Máximo said.

    "I'd say it was probably the Chinese," Antonio said.

    "No jodas," Raúl said. "Who else could have inventedthis game of skill and intelligence but a Cuban?"

    "Coño," said Antonio without a smile. "Here we goagain."

    "Ah, bueno," Raúl said with a smile stuck between jokingand condescending. "You don't have to believe it if it hurts."

    Carlos let out a long laugh.

    "You people are unbelievable," said Antonio. But therewas something hard and tired behind the way he smiled.

* * *

It was the first day of December, but summer still hung aboutin the brightest patches of sunlight. The four men sat underthe shade of the banyan tree. It wasn't cold, not even in theshade, but three of the men wore cardigans. If asked, they wouldsay they were expecting a chilly north wind and doesn't anybodylisten to the weather forecasts anymore. Only Antonio,his round body enough to keep him warm, clung to the shortsleeves of summer.

    Kids from the local Catholic high school had volunteeredto decorate the park for Christmas and they dashed about withtinsel in their hair, bumping one another and laughing loudly.Lucinda, the woman who issued the dominos and kept backthe gambling, asked them to quiet down, pointing at the men.A wind stirred the top branches of the banyan tree and movedon without touching the ground. One leaf fell to the table.

    Antonio waited for Máximo to fetch Lucinda's box ofplastic pieces. Antonio held his brown paper bag to his chestand looked at the Cubans, his customary sourness replaced fora moment by what in a man like him could pass for levity.Máximo sat down and began to dump the plastic pieces on thetable as he always did. But this time, Antonio held out his hand.

    "One moment," he said and shook his brown paper bag.

    "¿Qué pasa, chico?" Máximo said.

    Antonio reached into the paper bag as the men watched.He let the paper fall away. In his hand he held an oblong blackleather box.

    "Coñooo," Raúl said.

    Antonio set the box on the table, like a magician drawingout his trick. He looked around to the men and finallyopened the box with a flourish to reveal a neat row of big heavypieces, gone yellow and smooth like old teeth. They bent incloser to look. Antonio tilted the box gently and the pieces fellout in one long line, their black dots facing up now like tightdark pupils in the sunlight.

    "Ivory," Antonio said. "And ebony. It's an antique.You're not allowed to make them anymore."

    "Beautiful," Carlos said and clasped his hands.

    "My daughter found them for me in New Orleans,"Antonio continued, ignoring Carlos.

    He looked around the table and lingered on Máximo, whohad lowered the box of plastic dominos to the ground.

    "She said she's been searching for them for two years.Couldn't wait two more weeks to give them to me," he said.

    "Coñooo," Raúl said.

    A moment passed.

    "Well," Antonio said, "what do you think, Máximo?"

    Máximo looked at him. Then he bent across the table totouch one of the pieces. He gave a jerk with his head and listenedfor the traffic. "Very nice," he said.

    "Very nice?" Antonio said. "Very nice?" He laughed inhis thin way. "My daughter walked all over New Orleans to findthis and the Cuban thinks it's `very nice'?" He paused, watchingMáximo. "Did you know my daughter is coming to visit me forChristmas, Máximo? Maybe you can tell her that her gift wasvery nice, but not as nice as some you remember, eh?"

    Máximo looked up, his eyes settling on Carlos, wholooked at Antonio and then looked away.

    "Calm down, hombre," Carlos said, opening his armswide, a nervous giggle beginning in his throat. "What's gotteninto you?"

    Antonio waved his hand and sat down. A diesel truckrattled down Eighth Street, headed for downtown.

    "My daughter is a district attorney in Los Angeles,"Máximo said after the noise of the truck died. "December isone of the busiest months."

    He felt a heat behind his eyes he had not felt in many years.

    "Feel one in your hand," Antonio said. "Feel how heavythat is."

* * *

When the children were small, Máximo and Rosa used to spendNochebuena with his cousins in Cárdenas. It was a five-hourdrive from Havana in the cars of those days. They would riseearly on the twenty-third and arrive by mid-afternoon soMáximo could help the men kill the pig for the feast the followingnight. Máximo and the other men held the squealing,squirming animal down, its wiry brown coat cutting into theirgloveless hands. But God, they were intelligent creatures. Nosooner did it spot the knife than the animal bolted out of theirarms, screaming like Armageddon. It had become the subtextto the Nochebuena tradition, this chasing of the terrified pigthrough the yard, dodging orange trees and rotting fruit underneath.The children were never allowed to watch, Rosamade sure. They sat indoors with the women and stirred theblack beans. With loud laughter, they shut out the shouts ofthe men and the hysterical pleadings of the animal as it wasdragged back to its slaughter.

* * *

"Juanito the little dog gets off the boat from Cuba and decidesto take a little stroll down Brickell Avenue."

    "Let me make sure I understand the joke. Juanito is a dog.Bowwow."

    "That's pretty good."

    "Yes, Juanito is a dog, goddamn it."

    Raúl looked up, startled.

    Máximo shuffled the pieces hard and swallowed. Heswung his arms across the table in wide, violent arcs. One ofthe pieces flew off the table.

    "Hey, hey, watch it with that, what's wrong with you?"

    Máximo stopped. He felt his heart beating. "I'm sorry,"he said. He bent over the edge of the table to see where thepiece had landed. "Wait a minute." He held the table with onehand and tried to stretch to pick up the piece.

    "What are you doing?"

    "Just wait a minute." When he couldn't reach, he stood,pulled the piece toward him with his foot, sat back down,and reached for it again, this time grasping it between hisfingers and his palm. He put it facedown on the table withthe others and shuffled, slowly, his mind barely registering thetraffic.

    "Where was I?Juanito the little dog, right, bowwow."Máximo took a deep breath. "He's just off the boat from Cubaand is strolling down Brickell Avenue. He's looking up at allthe tall and shiny buildings. `Coñoo,' he says, dazzled by all themirrors. `There's nothing like this in Cuba.'"

    "Hey, hey, professor. We had tall buildings."

    "Jesus Christ!" Máximo said. He pressed his thumb andforefinger into the corners of his eyes. "This is after Castro, then.Let me just get it out for Christ's sake."

    He stopped shuffling. Raúl looked away.

    "Ready now? Juanito the little dog is looking up at allthe tall buildings and he's so happy to finally be in Americabecause all his cousins have been telling him what a great countryit is, right? You know, they were sending back photos of theirnew cars and girlfriends."

    "A joke about dogs who drive cars?I've heard it all."

    "Hey, they're Cuban super-dogs."

    "All right, they're sending back photos of their new ownersor the biggest bones any dog has ever seen. Anything youlike. Use your imaginations." Máximo stopped shuffling. "Wherewas I?"

    "You were at the part where Juanito buys a Rolls-Royce."

    The men laughed.

    "Okay, Antonio, why don't you three fools continue thejoke." Máximo got up from the table. "You've made me forgetthe rest of it."

    "Aw, come on, chico, sit down, don't be so sensitive."

Continues...

Excerpted from In Cuba I Was a German Shepherdby Ana Menendez Copyright ©2001 by Ana Menendez. Excerpted by permission.
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