Neal Pollack

The woman—Virginia was her name—didn'’t say much during the conversation. Dago was never sure if she ever believed that he was, in fact, one of Cuba’s most popular drag attractions, as he described himself. He talked nonstop for ten minutes. Then a man walked in, utterly dashing, maybe thirty years old, about 5‘9”, cinnamon-colored and princely, bearing a boyish grin. He wore denim pants with a huge buckle in the shape of what looked like Cuba if somebody had tried to take the hump out of it. Later, Dago would learn it was Sinaloa, a Mexican province notorious for its drug runners. The man whispered in Virginia’s ear. He looked at Dago only once, and only long enough to wink in his direction before disappearing again.

*

Dago had drinks on the house that night and watched the show, a parade of queens trying their best on Third World budgets to create First World fantasies. The next day at noon sharp, he was given a tour by Virginia of the storage closet that served as the queens’ dressing room (they shared the bathroom with the customers, male and female), and offered a look at the DJ’s collection to pick out his debut song. There was no La Mora. There was no Celeste Mendoza or Juana Bacallao, though plenty of Lola Beltran and Veronica Castro. Dago sent the resourceful Quique off with twenty dollars and a list of possibilities. He came back with Olga Guillot’s greatest hits in pristine condition.

That night, Dago was introduced to the overflow Saturday night crowd as La Mora, covered in a simple blue chiffon dress with black pumps, his naps under a towering black hive of a wig, his jewelry accidentally tasteful by virtue of its simplicity. After hours of rancheras and accordion-laced banda music, La Mora came out defiantly, her supple lips shaping the words to Guillot’s “La Mentira,” a slow-burning torch song that entrusts the lying lover to God’s judgement.

Dago faltered only once, and it was only for a split second: To her astonishment, there was Father Mariano, sitting expressionless next to the man with the Sinaloa buckle from the night before. By now Dago knew the man was Beto Chavez, Virginia’s straight, married, drug-dealing son, a rascal who flirted with every queen at La Caverna but had never been caught with his pants down except with natural born women. Quique didn'’t know anyone but he certainly knew everything. Beto Chavez winked again and lifted a can of Tecate in Dago’s direction.

When a shaken La Mora finished, her eyes downcast, chest heaving, there was a silent pause, then Dago heard the applause like a rolling wave gathering force as it neared the shore, finally crashing in shouts of “bravo!” and “viva la mulata!” and general whistling. As she exited the floor, La Mora turned for an instant. Beto Chavez was clapping, but slowly, looking after her with a distant melancholia.

“Did you love Beto Chavez?” Zoe Pino asked, her leonine hair straying into her line of vision as she positioned her pen on a blank page of her reporter’s notebook. She shook her hair back with a shrug. They were two hours into dinner, well into a second bottle of wine, and had long put all of Zoe’s questions about Cuba-this and Cuba-that to rest.

“Did I

did I love Beto Chavez?” Destiny repeated, aghast. “What gives you the idea I

I mean, what are you getting at?”

“C’mon, Destiny

I know.”

“You know what?”

“About you and Beto.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Destiny began to gather her lighter and the pack of Romeo y Julietas she’d dropped on the table.

“Look, I'’ll close my notebook.” Zoe flipped it shut. “Off the record, I swear. I'’ll never use it. I certainly have no need to for these Mariel profiles. But please, I’'ve heard so many rumors about you and Beto

”

“And you listen to rumors?”

“I’m a reporter, yeah

”

“they'’re just rumors, that’s all.”

There was silence. Zoe reached across the table to Destiny’s hand. “It’s a great love story. One of the greatest, if it’s true.”

Destiny shook her head and turned away. There was no need for Zoe Pino to see her tears.

It was Beto Chavez who’d created the opportunity for her at La Caverna, immediately realizing the young queen talking to his mother had to be the same one he’d heard about earlier from Mariano. It was also Beto Chavez who named her Destiny. “It was fate,” he said to her after her first show. “Destiny, pure destiny.”

After the performance, Mariano and Dago stared, dumbfounded by the other’s appearance in this most unlikely of places. Mariano would learn Dago’s trajectory to La Caverna that very night but it would take Dago a bit longer, more than a year, to understand that Mariano was actually a defrocked priest, a pre–Vatican II follower, who offered Latin masses in a former Lutheran church, now converted and supported by Beto Chavez and an entire community of narco-traffickers.