A Shoe on One Foot
At the beginning of the play, Santiago quickly loses all his money while gambling at the cockfights, so he convinces Cheché to lend him some money for additional bets. Cheché agrees to give Santiago money, but this only happens after Santiago carves a promissory note or "contract" on Cheché's shoe (16). After Santiago writes this note out, Cheché then walks barefoot, afraid he will tarnish the writing and spoil their deal. Later, in Scene 2, when Cheché enters the room the next day, he is still holding the shoe in his hand (23). This image of Cheché walking with only one shoe is significant because it shows just how important money is to Cheché, as well as the lack of trust he places in Santiago to pay him back without some kind of assurance. The tension between the two brothers is thus laid expertly and early with this image.
Tampa, Infinite City
The story takes place in Ybor City, Tampa, a place that Juan Julian identifies as a "city in the making" (22). At the same time that he believes Tampa to be less built up than the cities he left behind in Cuba, however, Juan Julian also says that he thinks Tampa to be a kind of infinite city. Without any hills and any mountains around it, the city seems to stretch in all directions and have the largest clouds Juan Julian has ever seen. On one level, this description is important because it shows that for many, Tampa was the place where anything could happen and anybody could become an upstart in the cigar industry. At the same time, however, it is also important because Juan Julian says that the expansiveness of the city seems to leave few places to hide or keep secrets. This foreshadows the interpersonal tensions that will explosively come to define the later parts of the play—Conchita's affair, Marela's love for Juan Julian, and Palomo and Cheché's anger with Juan Julian.
In the Mouth of the Crocodile
In Act 1, Scene 5, Juan Julian reveals that he feels threatened by the city environment. He says that he feels suffocated by the buildings, which seem to steal away all of his oxygen, and—what's more—he compares these buildings to the teeth inside of a crocodile's mouth. He then more clearly lays out, within this conceit, his mapping of "the teeth of culture," as well as "the mouth and tongue of civilization" (41). This image is important not only because it brings the play's conflict between modernity and tradition to the fore, as well as the tension between Northern and Southern life, but also because it shows us another side of the infinite city. Where one is forced to keep moving amidst urban congestion, they lose track of nature and the slow, romantic pace of the more rustic life they lived before.
A Tailless Lizard
In Act 2, Scene 1, Cheché explains to Santiago how bereft he has been left by the elopement of his ex-wife, Mildred, with a lector. He says that he feels like the tail that has been separated from the lizard it was once attached to—"mov[ing] on its own, like a nerve that still has life and [is] looking for the rest of the body that's been slashed away" (57). This image is important because it reveals not only the animalistic or instinctual qualities to love and jealousy that are touched on throughout the play, but also the depth of the wound felt by Cheché that drives him to commit all of the heinous deeds that he does in the drama.
