They soon met the first mariconga attendees. The scene reminded Juan of the gay pride events he had seen in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but with Cuban flavor, a Caribbean touch of rum, conga and unabashed fun. Three transwomen in matching red halter tops and Lycra miniskirts proudly exhibited their hairy armpits. Two young men with close-shaven heads walked hand in hand, and a girl in military boots and khaki pants with a rose painted on her left cheek was carrying a white miniature poodle around. Two older men with conga drums around their necks twirled their drumsticks. One carried a bottle of Havana Club. A small crowd waving rainbow flags followed them and cheered when another musician barged in with a Chinese trumpet.
“Is she here yet?” the girl with the poodle asked.
“She’s coming!” a man answered. “She’ll be here in half an hour.”
The drummers started to play louder.
“They’re waiting for Mariela,” Victoria explained.
“Is she Fidel’s daughter?” Juan asked. “I thought he only had the one, Alina, who lives in Miami now.”
“No, she is Raúl’s daughter.”
“Ah.” Fidel’s niece then.
Victoria chortled, but her laugh had bitter undertones.
“All in the family,” she said. “But it’s a good thing. An outsider couldn’t have accomplished this much. Mariela has a heart of gold. If it weren’t for her, we would still be invisible, hiding.”
Two young, clean-shaven men in guayaberas were giving away Cuban flags.
“Those are segurosos,” Victoria whispered. “People who work for the secret police, in case you’ve forgotten what that means. They want to make sure this doesn’t look like a counterrevolutionary march, one of those human rights things.”
Juan, who didn’t even know how there were “human rights things” in Cuba nowadays, realized how disconnected he was from his country. When he’d lived in Miami, the island was at the center of every conversation: exiles breathed in Cuba, ate Cuban food and talked Cuban politics at the restaurant Versailles. All the papers had columns about Cuba. The island was an omnipresent absence in Calle Ocho. But Albuquerque was different. The Cubans there were younger and didn’t care about politics. They preferred to call themselves emigrants, not exiles.
By this point, more people had joined the parade. A dozen teenagers in their high school uniforms came and picked up Cuban flags. Most then ran off right away. Only two girls with short hair and serious expressions stayed.
“They’re coming down Malecón Avenue!” shouted a diva of a redhead in front, over six feet in her mountainous heels. “Let’s go meet them!”
The crowd followed her. They took a lateral street that ended at the seawall avenue. Victoria and Juan joined them.
“This looks cool,” Juan said as they passed by a cafeteria with signs that advertised hot dogs, ham sandwiches, ice cream and beer, all sold in CUC. The place was packed. “If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t this a dingy store where they only sold Soviet clothing and Hungarian ceramics before? It was always empty.”
“All that is gone. Everything in this area is prime real estate now. It’s full of offices belonging to foreign companies.” Victoria pointed to a building nearby. “Elsa’s is over there.”
Juan stopped hearing the trumpet and drums. He kept walking, but felt his feet moving to the pulsing beat of his own heart.
“The company her husband owns?” he asked, committing the address to memory. It was a two-story Art Deco building with massive double doors.
“Don’t kid yourself. She co-owns it,” Victoria clarified. “The woman has power. She finally got ‘it.’”
Despite his best efforts to put up a mask of indifference, Juan knew he was failing at it. His hands began to sweat.
“What do you mean?”
“The Spanish geezer’s too old to take care of the business anymore. Last time I saw him he looked like a raisin, all wrinkled and shrimpy. He must be close to eighty now. Elsa’s the boss. She just opened another branch in Villa Clara.”
Juan glanced again at the building, which reminded him of an oversized wedding cake. “What kind of business is it?”
“Something related to computers.”
A few bystanders stopped and looked at the marchers, seeming more curious than hostile. Victoria elbowed Juan.
“See?” she said. “People are getting used to us. It may take a while, but it’s happening. Thanks to Mariela!”
She blew a kiss to a man who was watching them intently. The man smiled and waved. She elbowed Juan again, but his mind was somewhere else.
“What could Elsa know about computers?” he asked. “She sucked at math.”
“She manages the business. Nothing to do with the technical stuff. That’s done in Spain. She just brings computers here and sells them to the state.”
A seguroso came over and offered Juan a Cuban flag. He accepted it and thanked him, trying to sound as Cuban as he had twenty years before. His clothes had likely attracted the man’s attention, marking Juan as a foreigner. Victoria, who was left flagless, smirked.
“Cuba, always catering to the foreigner,” she hissed. “It’s CUBALSE all over again.”
“How old was the Spaniard when they got married?” Juan asked, barely registering Victoria’s comment.
“I guess sixty, maybe fiftysomething—not a bad-looking guy then. But twenty years is something, no matter what the song says. Remember? Veinte años no es nada.” Victoria took a tango dancer’s stance. “Volver, con la frente marchita, las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien.”
Juan couldn’t help but laugh at the performance.
“Do you agree?” Victoria asked with a smile. “You came back after twenty years too.”
“Come on. It’s not like I’ve returned with my forehead all wrinkled or my temples turned silver,” he told her. “Have they been together all these years, Elsa and the old fart?”
“Oh yes. A perfect couple! But he stays in Spain now because of health issues. Had a heart attack two years ago. Elsa divides her time between Havana and Seville, with a few trips to Cambridge in between. Their son is studying there.”
“Their son?”
The crowd erupted in loud cheers.
“Hurry up!” Victoria said. “The mariconga’s about to start. I’ll tell you more about Elsa later. Man, you sure weren’t interested in her!”
More live music came from Malecón Avenue. People were shouting, “Mariela, Mariela!” as they ran to the main avenue.
“Wait, did you say Cambridge? In England or the United States?” said Juan, chasing after Victoria.
“La Yuma. The kid’s at one of their big-ass universities in Massachusetts. Ah, there she is!”
Juan caught a glimpse of Mariela Castro, a middle-aged woman in a straw hat who was marching in the middle of the crowd. People waved Cuban and rainbow flags. On a stage, a band played the national anthem.
“Homophobia no, socialism yes!” people shouted.
Victoria shouted with them, jumping up and down. She grabbed the flag from Juan’s hand and joined the crowd, leaving him behind.
7
The Executive at Home
Elsa Dieguez was looking for Emilio’s ring when she found the gun.
She had just finished putting together a care package for her son, who, when she had visited him in Cambridge three days earlier, had requested five cans of Cafe Cubita. Cafe Cubita, of all things! When he could buy Bustelo or La Llave or one of the many kinds of espresso available in the United States! But no. It had to be Cuban. The American brands didn’t taste as good, Emilito claimed. What was he, spoiled? He had also asked for a white guayabera, a framed picture of his favorite baseball team, Industriales, to hang in his dorm room and his father’s old brass ring, which he thought was “cool.” The package was on the dresser, ready to be sent. Elsa planned to ask a friend who
worked at the Spanish embassy to mail it when he left for Madrid in a week. She didn’t trust the Cuban postal service.
While looking for her husband’s ring, Elsa had come across the gun that Emilio had bought in Spain, back when he was still living most of each year in Havana. The weapon was small and sleek—a Kahr CW9, with a silencer and everything. He had insisted on buying it for “security reasons,” while Elsa had privately laughed at him. He didn’t even know how to load a gun, much less shoot one. But she did.
She remembered her father coming home drunk and firing shots into the ceiling, threatening his wife. He could really be a violent bastard at times. A veteran of the Angolan war, he’d taught Elsa how to handle not just a gun but a military-grade Russian AKM. “Don’t let anyone mess with you, mijita,” he’d told her. “Make them respect you, or else.” Respect was important to him. He was also fond of repeating one of Fidel’s most famous phrases, which had appeared for many years on the country’s murals and billboards: “Every Cuban should know how to shoot, and shoot well.” Elsa thought that in that sense at least, El Comandante would have been proud of her. Her father certainly was, at least now.
Despite his outbursts, she had been closer to him than to her mother, Silvana, a subdued housewife unable to control her rebellious daughter or stand up to her husband. When Elsa saw him hit her mother, she vowed to never let a man do the same to her. On occasion, Elsa’s father would try to hit her too, but unlike her mother, she fought back every time. He seemed impressed by this and stopped when she defended herself. It was all part of teaching her how to earn his respect, she later understood.
She had resolved early on that if a single beating happened when she got married, she wouldn’t be the one on the receiving end. She identified with her father, the one in charge, not that sad weakling that was her mother. But she still resented domineering men. She had been drawn to Juan because he was an artist, a gentle musician who spoke in soothing tones. Her father had preferred she dated military types like himself, or at least committed revolutionaries. In the end, she had married a man who, for his age and temperament, wasn’t too different from el pincho. Fortunately, she had already known how to handle him.
And her father had accepted Savarria. The Spaniard was a necessary evil, like the swanky hotels for foreigners, the casas particulares and the CUC shops. Like him and his wife settling in the United States, the hated the “cradle of imperialism,” because life in Cuba didn’t show signs of improvement. Emilio had helped set them up there, but the former pincho hadn’t severed ties with his country. He had become the president of an Amistad con Cuba group in Los Angeles and avoided Miami like the plague.
Elsa smiled at the memories. She would have to visit her parents next time she traveled to the United States. Then she returned her attention to the gun. She didn’t want the woman who cleaned the house every week to see it. She took it to the half bathroom off the master bedroom and hid it in the linen closet, under the fancy lacy lingerie she hadn’t worn in years.
Her cell phone rang. Elsa saw Victoria’s number but didn’t answer. After a message announced itself with a ding, Elsa called her voice mail and listened, putting on a bored expression.
“Mi santa, I haven’t heard from you in such a long time. Are you still gallivanting? If not, would you give me a call, please? It’s in your best interest—a ghost from your past has returned.”
She paused. If Victoria’s intention had been to intrigue her, it had worked. But Elsa didn’t call back right away. She placed the Samsung back on her dresser and sat in front of the vanity, inspecting herself with a critical eye.
She had no reason to be too critical, though. Elsa didn’t look older than thirty, though she had just turned forty. She was svelte but not skinny, with curves in the right places. Her hair, still a rich brown shade, was short for the first time in five years. A few weeks before, a stylist in Seville had convinced her that a bob would flatter her small oval face, but she still felt ambivalent about it. Curly bobs didn’t flatter anyone’s face, she mused now. Well, it would grow out quickly. If only everything in life were as easy to solve as bad hair days.
She was in excellent physical shape and proud of it. She had always been athletic, but after thirty-five, when her body had started feeling the effects of gravity, being fit had become an obsession. In Seville she had a personal trainer, Javier Mondragón, a tattooed guy with a crooked grin who had once coached Penélope Cruz. When she was there, Elsa met with him four times a week for weight-lifting sessions and resistance training. On weekends, she ran four miles in Parque Amate, a park that also had a sports center and a swimming pool.
It was harder to keep up her workout routine in Havana. The city’s only safe running option was El Malecón, but the waterfront was always full of people sitting on the wall or walking around, kids on bicycles and obnoxious vendors. Though there were a few private CUC-charging gyms, Elsa didn’t like them. They were too noisy and pedestrian for her taste. But she could take it easy for a couple weeks at least. Before flying to Cambridge, she had walked El Camino de Santiago and was stronger than ever. Elsa wasn’t Catholic or even a believer but regarded the journey as a vacation from the company, the house and, above all, Savarria. She had walked the five hundred miles in a month and a half. Her legs felt like steel pistons. If it hadn’t been raining and a bit cold, she would have shown them off in a short skirt.
That morning, she had chosen a beige suit from El Corte Inglés and an Hermès scarf she had bought on an impulse at the Houston international airport. Not many people in Cuba were able to appreciate the scarf’s true value, but wearing it had an uplifting effect on her. The average Cuban’s monthly salary was fifteen dollars. Knowing she could spend three hundred on a luxury item made her feel powerful. In control. And as the vice president and co-owner of Savarria and Co. and the only Cuban-born member of the Association of Spanish Entrepreneurs in Havana, Elsa had a persona to maintain. She would have put on high heels, but the few yards she had to walk from her parking space to the office would be slippery. She chose a pair of Michael Kors midheel pumps that clacked nicely as she walked.
She had just finished a leisurely breakfast. Early mornings were her private time before the pressures of work, meetings and assorted jodiendas of daily life started. She liked getting ready for work and dressed with the same care and attention to detail each day as if she were attending a reception. A successful executive should always look like one, she had learned in a “Project a Positive Image” seminar she had taken in San Diego two years before when she’d traveled with her son for a tour of UCSD. She had loved the city and hoped Emilito might settle in La Jolla for his college years. But then he was accepted at MIT, his first choice.
She sprayed Youth-Dew, her favorite perfume, around her wrists and neck and corrected her penciled eyebrows. She needed a touch-up of Botox. Her secretary had told her they were doing it in Cuba and even offered to recommend a good nurse, but Elsa had demurred. What if they botched the job? She didn’t trust her fellow citizens.
She put on a light gray coat in case it got chilly—it had just started to rain. Now she was ready to go. In the garage waited her Lexus. It was only twenty to eight, and driving to her office would take her less than ten minutes. She went to the living room, sat down on the dark brown leather sofa that, like most of the house furniture and the car, had been brought over from Seville, replayed Victoria’s message and pressed the call back button.
“Mi santa!” Victoria’s voice was full of melody and drama. “Thank God you called back. I was thinking of you all day yesterday.”
“I just got back from America,” Elsa said. She wouldn’t call it La Yuma; that sounded too Cuban, too folksy and unsophisticated. “What’s up, Vic?”
“How are you? And your husband? And your handsome son?”
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Everybody’s fine. Savarria’s feeling better these days, almost recovered.” She always
referred to her husband by his last name. “I just visited Emilito. He’s getting used to the cold.”
“I’ve missed you, girl. We haven’t talked in what, a year?”
Elsa found the remote and turned on the TV, careful to immediately mute it. One of the three Cuban channels showed scenes from the LGBT march that had taken place the day before. “A few months,” she replied. “You called when you wanted an invitation to a fashion show at La Maison.” She paused and then added, “You only call me when you need something, Vic.”
Vic was her nickname for Victoria. Elsa couldn’t get used to her new name but didn’t want to offend her by using the old one. Vic was neutral and chic. They both liked it.
“My darling, this time it may be you who needs something from me,” Victoria said.
“Vic, whatever it is, just say it. I’ve got to go to work.”
“Oh, please, you’re the boss. You can get there whenever the hell your ass pleases.”
Elsa giggled. “Shut your big mouth!”
“Anyway, Miss Super Executive, do you know who’s in Cuba right now?”
Elsa turned off the TV. Her eyes wandered around the room until they landed on a series of framed pictures of her son displayed on the entertainment center. Emilito skiing in Vail, rooting for Real Madrid at a game, swimming in Varadero . . . There was also a picture of Raúl Castro shaking hands with Emilio while Elsa stood by her husband’s side.
“To my knowledge,” Elsa replied, “there are over ten million people in Cuba at the moment.”
“And one of them is your Juan.”
“No me jodas.”
She’d spoken the words reflexively. No me jodas, “don’t fuck with me,” was a vulgar expression she had completely banned from her vocabulary, along with expletives like coño and carajo. But sometimes they came back.
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