The Cat King of Havana

by Tom Crosshill

  I tripped. My arms wheeled.

  Ana and I stared at each other, both of us falling back to the basic step. My face burned.

  I’d tripped. On TV.

  Ana’s lips cracked open. She smiled. It was no fake dancer’s smile this time, but a grin wide across her face.

  For a moment, I was surprised, affronted, mortified. Then a laugh burst from me. With that laugh, relief flooded me.

  The contest was over. We’d never stood a chance, not against people who’d danced casino since they were five—but now we were truly done. There was nothing left except to enjoy ourselves.

  Ana and I came together and circled each other in a simple turn. I let go of her and we did an improvised pilón—stomping the ground in a relaxed cadence, our arms pounding imaginary sugarcane. Then I went to Ana and spun her under my arm, drew her close and rocked side to side with her.

  Simple stuff, nothing flashy, and yet it felt nice, satisfying. Like our time in Cuba, all the work we’d done, it had taught us something.

  Eventually the music faded. Applause rolled over us, and cheers. We came to a halt, stood side by side, my arm around Ana’s waist. Across the platform dancers smiled at each other, wiped sweat from their faces, whispered comments to their partners.

  “That was fun,” Ana said.

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t dare look in the crowd for Pablo’s reaction.

  After a while Rodrigo clambered onto the stage. Ana tensed. So did I.

  I told you I thought the contest was over. I did believe that, really. But it was also a bit of a lie. I believed two things at the same time. One that the contest was over, so I could stop worrying and get on with dancing. The other that maybe, maybe, just maybe . . .

  Rodrigo brought the mic to his lips. It was the moment of truth.

  “I remember when I first learned to dance casino, on a rainy day back in the summer of 1982 . . .”

  Okay, so maybe it was like the ten minutes of truth.

  “The jury has selected ten couples for the second round,” Rodrigo announced a while later. “Couple three, couple six, couples seven, eight and nine, couple thirteen, couple fifteen, couple sixteen, couples nineteen and twenty.”

  “Sixteen,” Ana said. “He did say sixteen, right?” She turned me around to check the sign on my back.

  I pumped my fist, smiled at Ana. She smiled back.

  At the same time, I wondered how bad the other couples must have been.

  I didn’t care. I felt like I could dance now. I could rock this.

  “Dancers, positions,” Rodrigo announced.

  Moments later music sounded again. “Báilalo Hasta Afuera” by Pupy—a fast, energetic piece, with a difficult, heavily syncopated rhythm. I thanked Pablo silently for playing the song during practice. Ana in my arms, I snapped into motion.

  We did well, this second round. Hit a lot of accents in the music. Did some complicated patterns, flashy and fast. So maybe I was a bit tense, a bit caught up in my head thinking what move to do next—but we did well.

  Except well couldn’t possibly be enough. In a calmer moment, when Ana and I danced in a close hold with my elbows hooked over hers, I took in the rest of the stage. Wherever I looked, I saw dancers killing it. Smooth body motion, perfect accents for every break in the music. That girl Celia and her partner had footwork to do a tap dancer proud. All of them looked like professionals, and I knew we didn’t.

  When the song ended, the audience clapped long and hard. Long enough for Ana and me to compare notes.

  “We stick out like ketchup on a white T-shirt,” she said.

  “I wonder why they let us through to this round,” I said.

  At that point the applause quieted and Rodrigo got on stage again. But not to announce the results.

  “Today at the Casinero Mundial contest we have a great honor,” he pronounced. “A visit by someone of very special significance to us all here.”

  I became aware of movement in the audience. People everywhere turning to one side, craning their necks to see.

  The object of their attention—perhaps a dozen men entering the square, a few in green uniforms, others in sweatpants and T-shirts. And between them two figures.

  One, a burly guy in an Adidas running shirt, supported the other. A tall man but frail, in a checkered gray button-down shirt, bent forward over a cane.

  Lanky frame. White beard. And that face, intent, as if listening to something he couldn’t quite make out . . .

  I shivered.

  “Compañeros y compañeras,” Rodrigo said. “Here to watch the final round of Casinero Mundial is the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz.”

  chapter twenty-six

  SALSA FOR FIDEL

  Cheers thundered.

  “No way,” Ana said, in English.

  I could only stare. Fidel made his slow way to a string of empty chairs not far from our corner of the stage, followed by every eye in the square. Every eye—but none of the cameras. Maybe they’d been told not to film the tired way Fidel walked or the way his security detail surrounded him. Only when he sank into his seat did the cameras swing around to focus on him. Then he raised his arm and gave a little wave, smiling with grandfatherly affection.

  The crowd went wild.

  Now it all made sense. The soldiers guarding the road. The well-behaved audience—probably handpicked for the event. The way Valdes had acted.

  I felt trapped in a dream. Me within a hundred yards of Fidel. The bogeyman of my childhood. A man who’d seemed like a mythic figure to me—technically speaking real, but no more part of my everyday world than Darth Vader.

  “I thought Fidel doesn’t even like dance,” Ana said.

  “It’s a photo op.” I understood this much. “They roll him out for the cameras to prove he’s not dead.”

  “Huh. Then I guess we know what happens next,” Ana said.

  I stared at her.

  “We go to the next round,” Ana said.

  “And so with our very special guest in attendance, I announce the participants of the final.” Rodrigo stuttered over the words a bit, and spoke quickly. Perhaps Fidel’s gaze sped him along. “Dancing for the title of best casinero in the world will be couples three, seven, nineteen, and twenty.” He paused for a breath. “And of course our friends from New York, couple sixteen.”

  Amidst applause, the cameras swiveled toward us.

  Ana squeezed my hand. My teeth clicked shut on my tongue. I tasted blood, coppery and hot, and winced. Imagined what I would look like on TV sets across Cuba. And maybe on a screen somewhere in a dark room in Langley, Virginia. Some analyst studying the faces of two Americans appearing on TV with Fidel Castro.

  We were the photo op. Kids from New York dancing for Fidel.

  A vision of Mom’s face flashed before my eyes, disgusted, cold . . .

  I brought a hand to my mouth as if to cough, spoke under it. “We can’t dance, not for that guy.”

  “I know.” Ana’s mouth barely moved. “But how do we get away?”

  My eyes had acquired a life of their own, searching the audience for someone, anyone who could save us. Strangers everywhere, smiling, laughing, nodding. Rodrigo clambering off the stage. The other finalist couples, looking excited, except for one pair, who seemed to be arguing over something heatedly.

  Maybe we weren’t the only ones who minded.

  Pablo didn’t mind. He stood off to one side of the stage, looking thrilled, waiting for us to dance.

  Rodrigo was preparing a surprise, he’d told us. How excited he’d sounded.

  I’m sorry, I wanted to tell him. We can’t do this. Not this.

  And then I saw Valdes. Not far from where Fidel reclined in his chair. Standing with his hands in his pockets. Watching me.

  Our gazes met. He smiled, the faintest curve of his lips.

  I looked away.

  The speakers buzzed. Electric guitars riffed a forceful intro—it was Pupy’s “Me Están Llaman
do,” an intense, complex piece with intricate Afro-Cuban percussion and lyrics full of Santería references.

  I turned to Ana, took hold of her unmoving form. Swayed my torso in rhythm to the music.

  “We have to dance,” I said.

  About us, the other dancers spun into life, all of them—even the couple that had been arguing. Because of course they had no choice.

  I rolled my shoulders, pretending this was part of the plan, just our groove, chill and relaxed.

  “We could bomb,” Ana said. “Dance bad, make a point.”

  “No, we can’t.” I pushed Ana forward, into the basic step, back and forth, back and forth. “Dance, Ana. For Pablo. For Juanita and Yolanda.” I nodded off to the side, toward Valdes—a small, curt gesture. “For my family.”

  I saw her understand. A transformation in her eyes, so swift and subtle no one else could have possibly seen it. Understanding, acceptance, determination.

  In that moment, I crushed on her so hard it hurt. But there was no time for that. Ana relaxed in my arms and smiled—a machine-gun, drive-your-enemies-before-you grin, ear to ear. And we danced.

  Of course we danced. Because we understood why Valdes had laughed, outside at the checkpoint. As soon as we told him we were here for the contest, he’d realized this moment would come. And he was here to make sure we went through with it.

  If it was just us, we might have made a different choice, maybe, if we’d dared. But we had no right to screw up my family’s life because we wanted to make a point. A point that would achieve exactly nothing, in the big scheme of things.

  So we danced like there was nothing else in the world. We danced like two kids living the high point of their salsa vacation, clueless about the dour old man sitting in the audience. We danced like we didn’t care that we’d lost Valdes’s game—like we didn’t realize we’d lost—like we didn’t even know we’d been playing.

  The cowbell pulsed in my chest, fierce and hot. The congas possessed my feet, swift and intense and relentlessly, furiously precise. The horns drove me on with their insistent mambos, motifs repeated again and again until they got inside me and I lived them.

  Ana was right there in the music with me. Moving to the same beat, possessed by the same spirit, ready for every signal, always there when I reached for her. Her body undulated in symmetry to mine, whipped forward in an accent when mine did, flowed through the air in such harmony that at one point I was no longer sure if I led the dance or if she did—and it didn’t matter.

  We mixed in rumba when the music fit, and mambo, and mozambique. For once the movements came to me naturally, in harmony with the exalted cries of the chorus. We danced like we never had before, and I knew that I’d happily spend years looking for this feeling again.

  When the music ended and applause rolled, Ana and I hugged. It was hot in that embrace and uncomfortable, our clothes soaked through with sweat, and yet I couldn’t let her go. Her arms too clung fiercely around my back. We were like the heroes of some disaster film as the credits rolled, the survivors of a shipwreck maybe, clutching at each other, not ready to face the world again.

  “What a spectacular demonstration of casino that was!”

  Rodrigo’s amplified voice pushed in between us, levered us apart like a crowbar. He’d taken the middle of the stage again, and waved for all the dancers to gather around him. We walked over to form a semicircle behind Rodrigo with the others. Ana pulled at my hand, led me to the far end of the semicircle, away from Celia and her partner.

  I glanced over at Fidel. In that instant, I was certain I’d find him staring at me, pinning me down with sharp, merciless eyes—but he wasn’t looking at the stage at all. He’d leaned to the side to talk with some gray-haired man.

  “It is a wonderful day here in Havana,” Rodrigo sermonized. “To see such fine young men and women from across our island as well as the city of New York, all here to share dance in the spirit of goodwill and friendship. But unfortunately in each contest there must be a winner, and today is no exception.” Rodrigo drew an envelope from his pocket dramatically, opened it with his thick fingers. “And so. In third place today, couple seven, Juan and Lily.”

  Cheers and applause. I dug my fingernails into my palm.

  “In second place, couple three, Yunier and Celia.”

  Ana groaned, swore something under her breath.

  My heart beat faster. Could it be?

  No way, I told myself.

  “And in first place, the winners of this year’s Casinero Mundial . . .” Rodrigo drew out a dramatic pause. “Couple nineteen, Yasser and Anita.”

  I flushed. We hadn’t even placed in the top three. Hadn’t even come close to winning.

  Then a chuckle escaped me, unexpected.

  The winning couple came forth to be congratulated by Rodrigo and answer some questions. The rest of us stood about in the back, looking awkward.

  Ana smiled at me. “We did well.”

  And she was right. We had danced well. So well that, if the Rick of six months ago had seen it, he would never have believed it possible. But honestly, not well enough to win. Not against this crowd.

  I was no Salsa King after all.

  Ana squeezed my hand. I realized Rodrigo was heading our way, the cameras tracking him. He came up to us with this big toothpaste-ad grin. “And now some special congratulations for Rick and Ana, our guests from New York. What an accomplishment, to make it to the final round of this exacting competition! How do you two feel?” He stabbed the microphone at us.

  “Umm,” I said.

  “We feel great,” Ana said. “It’s an honor to be here with so many excellent dancers.”

  “And a double honor with our very special guest in the audience today,” Rodrigo said.

  I glanced toward Fidel again. The old man was still engaged in conversation. If he’d heard Rodrigo’s words, he showed no sign of it.

  I opened my mouth to say something bland and inoffensive but nothing came out. At that moment, I couldn’t summon a single word. Couldn’t think of a single way to answer that wouldn’t endorse Fidel on national television, or cause Valdes to come after us.

  “It is a special opportunity to be here today.” Ana smiled, all sugar and cream. “I feel a bit like the pianist Van Cliburn when he went to Moscow in the middle of the Cold War to compete in the Tchaikovsky Competition.”

  Rodrigo opened his mouth, then shut it again. I could tell his reaction was the same as mine—Van Who in the What Competition?

  “It is important for artists to rise above the disagreements of politicians,” Ana said. “Bring nations together in friendship, things like that.”

  “Bring nations together in friendship.” Rodrigo seemed relieved at a line that he recognized. “Yes, yes, that’s good. Thank you, Rick and Ana.”

  Once he was gone and the cameras with him, I nodded at Ana appreciatively. “Quick thinking. You made it sound like we’re generally friendly without supporting Fidel or anyone else.”

  Even if some CIA goon reviewed this footage, this wouldn’t get us marked as enemies of the state.

  “I feel like I’ve eaten something rotten,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Now that the winners had been announced, the event wound up within minutes. The cameras shut off. The audience got up and streamed toward the exit in a mass. By the time I looked around, Fidel and his clique were already gone, as was Valdes.

  The dancers milled about the stage and congratulated the winners and clapped each other on the back. Then, couple by couple, people drifted off into the crowd.

  Pablo met us offstage. He bounced from foot to foot like he’d won the Powerball. I thought back to the day we first met—to the big, serious man who’d resented having to teach us. If someone had told me he could look this thrilled for us, I wouldn’t have believed it.

  “How’d you like your surprise?” he asked. “Empingao, no?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Empingao.”

  Pablo di
dn’t seem to notice my lack of enthusiasm. “You guys killed it. I can’t wait for my daughter to see you on TV. Never seen yumas dance like that.”

  “Thanks,” I said, without much feeling.

  “We couldn’t have done it without you,” Ana said, a flat, rote response.

  Pablo grinned. “I hope you kids had as much fun as I did.”

  I realized he expected a response. He wanted us to share in his enthusiasm.

  I felt tired and sore and cold. I felt used and defeated. More than that, I felt a coward.

  Yet I knew we’d made the right choice, there on the stage. And I wasn’t about to let that choice go to waste, not any part of it.

  I pictured Pablo working at Rodrigo’s new dance school. I imagined him reconciled with Liliana, together with his grandson Lalo once again. And I didn’t need to force a smile—it came to my lips on its own.

  “You’re a great teacher,” I said.

  “He’s right,” Ana said. “Don’t give up on it, all right? We yumas need someone like you to show us the way.”

  Then we found a cab and went to the old city. We treated Pablo to ice cream at El Naranjal and drank coffee and talked and laughed. I would rather have hidden from the world in my room, and I was sure Ana felt the same. But this day wasn’t about us.

  When we got back to the apartment, Yolanda met us at the door, frantic, excited. She waved us in, slammed the door shut, put her back against it. “She’s free! They let her go.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked.

  Ana said, “Oh, Miranda?”

  Yolanda nodded. “I heard from Lisyani. Miranda’s home.”

  “Great.” I felt a little lighter; at least some good news today.

  “Is she okay?” Ana asked. “Can we go see her?”

  Yolanda shook her head. “She’s shaken up, wants to lie low for a while. But she’s all right. She says the food was horrible and they didn’t let her sleep much, but they didn’t hurt her.” Yolanda leaned forward, lowered her voice. “Apparently they kept asking her about the video. About how it made it out. About the BBC News segment.”