Olga Dies Dreaming(21)
“Hi,” she said, finding herself a bit shy.
“Hey, hey!” he said, jumping up and breaking the rainbow right in the middle. “Caballeros, you’ll excuse me, but, frankly, something better has come my way.”
The viejitos surveyed her quickly.
“Bendición,” one of them said to her.
She winked at him in response and he laughed. It had been a while since she’d been blessed by a man, of any age, in the streets, this pleasurable spark of Brooklyn life largely extinguished by gentrification. It delighted her and made her homesick for Sunset Park all at once. How could one be homesick for a place just a few miles away? She made a mental note to go back to the neighborhood and see her niece that weekend.
Olga realized now that they were outside a bar, of sorts, though she’d only discovered that by looking inside the door, which was propped open with a Bustelo coffee can filled with pennies and screws. The interior was dark, the space paneled with wood that absorbed what little light came through the small windows on either side of the door. The bar itself was clearly handmade, the top nothing more than a Formica kitchen counter, the stools a shiny gold glitter vinyl, the back bar festooned with blinking Christmas lights despite it being August. There was a pool table in the back and a disco ball over the center of the room, card tables and folding chairs scattered around the edges of the place. Faded covers from the Post and the Daily News sports pages featuring Bobby Bonilla and Jorge Posada were taped onto the walls, flanking both sides of an oil painting of Roberto Clemente, done, it seemed to Olga, by the same artist as the mural outside. She spotted the jukebox—the old-fashioned kind, no debit cards welcome here—tucked in the corner. Cheo Feliciano played in the background. The only thing up-to-date in the whole place was a small flat-screen TV mounted on a wall, which Olga instinctively knew was for baseball and baseball only. She was surprised it wasn’t on now.
“What is this place?” she asked, slightly incredulous.
“Sylvia’s Social Club. The last of the Puerto Rican social clubs. There used to be a ton of them, but you know rules, regulations, that kind of thing, most of them closed. I got the sense that you were into a good dive bar, so I thought you might dig this spot.”
“I mean,” she said, beaming, “this is real-deal Brooklyn. I can’t believe no one has torn it down and erected a high-rise. Is this place even legal?”
Matteo chuckled. “Why? You too upright a citizen to patronize an unpermitted establishment?”
She laughed, too, as they sat on a couple of the barstools. A woman came out of the restroom, uttering apologies in Spanish, rushing to her place behind the bar and immediately pouring out a rum, neat, for Matteo and a small foam bowl of peanuts for them to share.
“To answer your first question, believe me, they have been trying for years to get Sylvia to sell, and she won’t budge. Isn’t that right, Sylvia?”
Sylvia winked at him. “Oye, Matteo, it isn’t mine to sell. This place is for the community, isn’t that what you always say?” She turned to Olga. “And what can I get you, mami?”
“Same for me is good.”
She poured her a glass, and Olga took a sip.
“Wow!” she said. The rum was smooth and rich with spice.
“Sí, ?verdad?” Sylvia’s raised her eyebrows. “This is the good stuff. They don’t even sell this here; you can only get it on the island. I always keep a bottle here, just for him.” She patted Matteo’s hand.
“To answer your second question,” Matteo continued, “Sylvia’s all aboveboard, aren’t you, se?ora? It was too risky with all those developers lurking around.”
“Ay, Matteo.” Sylvia swatted her dish towel at him playfully. “You’re making an honest woman out of me! I’ll be in the back, but holler if you need me, honey.”
She was in her late sixties, Olga figured. The skin around her ample décolletage—the same golden brown as the rum they sipped—had begun to crepe and was adorned with several gold necklaces and religious medallions. She wore shorts a bit too short for her age and wedge sandals that elongated her very shapely legs. Her hair, a shade of dark blond that matched her jewelry, was pulled up into a soft bouffant, large gold hoops showing off her long neck. She was, Olga thought, beautiful.
“Is she flirting with you?” Olga whispered when she was sure Sylvia had sauntered away.
“Is that jealousy in your voice?”
“Jealous? Please! Not every Latina is the jealous type, you know.”
“And certainly not you, ye with the New England ice in her veins.”
She laughed. “What do you have against New England? If I’m not mistaken, you went to school there, too.”
“Exactly, and that’s why I know of what I speak. They have a very specific way of letting you know what they think, without exactly saying it, if you know what I mean.”
“Well that’s definitely true, but how is that not just tact?” Olga asked.
“Because tact is, by definition, meant to spare people’s feelings and New England is designed to make you feel like an outsider. I mean, didn’t you?”
“Feel like an outsider? Hmm. There’s this myth that white Americans don’t have a culture, but they absolutely do, and New England is the cradle of it. So, I felt a bit like an anthropologist.”