Bodega Dreams

On the day of Vera’s arrival in New York, Nazario walks Chino to work at the market. Along the way, tenants from the apartment building greet Nazario “as if he was manna from heaven sent by the Most High” (97). He recalls what Sapo told him, that Bodega met Nazario when he was selling heroin, and Nazario provided him with legal advice that spared him up to seventeen years in jail. Chino reflects on how Bodega takes pride in the neighborhood, asking people only for their loyalty in return.

Once he arranges the meeting between Bodega and Vera, Chino plans to walk away from the situation, which has grown increasingly complicated since he learned about Salazar. Although he knows that Sapo must have been involved, Chino admits to himself that he would never turn in his friend.

Chino tells Nazario that he plans to take Blanca, Negra and Vera to dinner that night and arrange for Bodega to meet them at the restaurant. However, Nazario informs him that other arrangements have been made—Bodega needs Chino to accompany him to the ceremony at the school, where they will meet Vera. Chino protests that he can’t miss work, but worries that “something else was happening. Something big” (99).

Chino arrives at work and punches in, only to be told a few minutes later by his boss that he should go home. Nazario had called in a favor of his own. On the way back to his apartment, they visit a salsa museum, a place Chino didn’t even know existed. A museum employee embraces Nazario, telling him that his daughter was accepted into med school. Chino realizes this is what he was meant to see—the plan Bodega and Nazario have for improving the neighborhood, one education at a time, to build “a professional class, slated to become his movers and shakers of the future” (106).

Back at his apartment, Chino changes clothes and listens to more of Nazario’s talk, which centers around the idea that in order to help the neighborhood, some people will get hurt along the way. Nazario calls this “the law of averages” (103).Chino realizes that Bodega and Nazario have bigger dreams than he had imagined, that if “Spanish Harlem moved up, we would all move up with it” (106). Behind all of this is Nazario, who is in charge of the paperwork. Chino realizes that Nazario’s legal knowledge will help him escape risk that others, like Bodega and Sapo, might face. 

Bodega picks up Chino at his apartment and they walk to P.S. 72 to see Vera. Unlike Chino’s earlier walk with Nazario, no one greets Bodega. Chino observes that walking with Bodega was “like walking with a ghost that only I could see” (110). Bodega explains this by saying, “‘if you see God he won’t seem that powerful anymore’” (111). As they approach the school, Bodega is clearly nervous about seeing Vera, and Chino has to convince him to go inside.

Chino immediately spots Vera on stage in the school auditorium, “a tall woman in a blue dress who could easily have been Blanca twenty years older” (112). Bodega can’t take his eyes off her.

Then Nazario enters, takes a seat among the guests, and Chino realizes he has been set up. It was no coincidence that Vera just happened to be coming to New York; she hadn’t even donated money to her old school. It had been Bodega’s idea, with Nazario handling the paperwork. Chino was there “for one reason and one reason only, so Bodega could have one of Vera’s relatives there next to him” (113). His association with Chino made Bodega, by extension, family. Fed up, Chino leaves the auditorium and Bodega chases after him.

During the rest of the ceremony, Bodega and Chino wait on the playground. Chino asks about Salazar and is told that Salazar was dirty, working for one of Bodega’s rivals, Aaron Fischman, also known as the Fish of Loisaida. Fischman had paid Salazar to expose Bodega in his article.

Bodega also tells him that even powerful men turn to “garbage, basura” (116) when they fall in love—history is full of such examples, like Napoleon and Josephine. Chino just wants reassurance that Bodega will take care of Sapo, rather than letting him hang for the Salazar business. At the end of the chapter, Bodega asks Chino to introduce himself to Vera and bring her over to the limousine, where he will be waiting.

Vera doesn’t look anything like a girl from Spanish Harlem. She’s “semiblond” with “light skin” and “pale seagull blue eyes” (118) and has the social graces of someone born to money. Nazario introduces her to Chino and then Bodega appears, looking miserable, nervous and sweaty. During their ride in the limo, Bodega shows Vera his apartment buildings, insisting he built his empire all for her. They stop at a brownstone that has an art gallery on the ground floor, with artists living on the second, third and fourth floors, and Bodega explains to Vera that he is a patron of the arts.

Chino leaves them at the gallery and walks to his apartment, where he promptly falls into a deep sleep. Later, he wakes to Bodega and Vera knocking on his door, Dom Pérignon in hand, celebrating their reunion. Bodega and Vera are disheveled—his tie loose and shirt wrinkled, her mascara smeared. Vera begins speaking in Spanish “as natural as her English. Like she was two people” (125). They are behaving like teenagers, wanting to revisit the places of their youth, like Central Park and the Palladium, which Chino reminds them was torn down. Vera tells Bodega she wants to do all the things he never had a chance to teach her, like smoke a joint and learn to fire a gun. She takes off her ring—“a big beautiful rock that you needed to wear shades to look at” (126)—and gives it to Chino. Bodega promises to replace it with an ever bigger one, a “diamond as big as the Palladium” (127).