“There’s more to life than sex, Mano. A man needs to make a good couple. I want someone to take care of my house and clean my clothes. I want sons. And what’s more, this woman and I fuck really well. It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid she might make me faithful.”
“Well, what can I say, Yorki? I wish you a happy marriage. Really.”
Yorki averts his sunglasses to face the Florida Straits. “Mano, it’s Carlota.”
I put my hand on the arm of his sofa and sit. All I can think to say is hijo de puta, but I don’t let the phrase escape my mouth because I know it’s meant for me.
16 August 1992
By Sunday afternoon there’s still no sign of Julia, so I walk the alleys to Paseo and climb the hill to the terminal. “¿Último?” The last in line lifts a hand. I make la cola and catch the last bus to the beach.
I am pressed against an old woman, between us a live chicken she has hypnotized by the way she holds its feet. “Y tu: ¿adónde vas?”
“Para Guanabo.”
“It’s too late to take a swim. By the time we get there, the sun will be going down and you’ll have to turn back.”
I walk around the beach at sunset watching turistas pair up with jineteras and jineteros. After dark I hang around one of the hotels until the girls and boys begin emerging from the rooms. Some of the kids congregate at the cabanas, curling up together to keep warm against the breeze. Nobody has seen Julia, but one girl remembers her. “Julia la rubia? She hasn’t worked this beach for more than a year. The bitch owes me money.”
I pass a sleepless night curled up beneath a palapa and take the first bus of the day back to Havana. I walk straight to the pediátrico and the black Toyota is there, parked outside admitting.
It is a full day of consultations. The nurse preps each patient with vitals and a brief interview. Near the end of my shift she says, “Next one complains of eczema on her chest, but when I asked to see she says she will only show the doctor. She’s probably a little old for the pediátrico. Should I send her to Hermanos Almejeiras?”
“No. I’ll see what I can do for her. You can go ahead and get ready for the shift change.”
I shut the curtain behind me, but I can hear the next patient sniffling just a few feet away. Privacy is impossible, even at a whisper. “Lift the front of your shirt, please.” I take out my diagnostic pad and write: Police out front, Toyota.
Julia shakes her head. She has dyed her hair jet-black. She takes the pad and pen: I came in back, ambulance dock.
I write: Did you do it?
Julia scribbles furiously: No! How could I?
I write: 3 Monos, 10 minutos. Julia nods. “You can put your shirt back on. Apply this cream twice a day after cleaning with mild soap and rinsing with clean water. Come back if it doesn’t clear up.”
Julia goes out through the back. I ask the incoming nurse to cover for me and leave the hospital by the ambulance station.
We meet at a nearby hotel that caters to tourists and jineteras. In the lobby she stands to meet me, and we are walking purposefully across the marble floor toward each other when a third person interposes himself. It’s the head waiter, having crept out of the hotel restaurant for his requisite intervention, a gambit at protracting the presumed foreigner’s fleecing: “¿Quisieran comer?” The entrance opens onto a bright, empty dining room full of gleaming china, sparkling crystal, and glowing linen napkins.
I cast an eye to the opposite wall and spy a sign beside a dark door. “¿Por qué no pasamos al bar?” I say to Julia without acknowledging the meddlesome waiter. “Seguro,” says the camarero, his arm around her shoulder, already ushering her to the door to Los Tres Monos. Entering the cave from the full flare of the glass-walled lobby makes it feel even darker than it is. Holding my hand, Julia leads me to the corner booth. She waves the bartender off and runs her hand through my hair, her fingers trembling.
“While you were at the pediátrico on Thursday,” she whispers in my ear, “one of the girls saw me on your balcony and called up that Alejandro was dead.”
I want to light a cigarette but my hands are shaking. I press my lips to her ear. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Julia whispers, “Tito and Jochi, the black brothers, are trying to blame it on me.”
“I went to the house of the girl I operated on the night we met, the one you told me was your cousin.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth from the start, Mano, but I needed a reason to ask you about the HIV test. I come from out in the provinces. I don’t have anyone in Havana. Nobody but you.”
“I’ll talk to the PNR. The homicide chief, Perez, might be able to help.”
“Perez—that’s the one Alejandro worked for! Ese tipo es muy malo! He takes bribes from all the chulos.”
“Carajo, this country is going to shit. He broke into my clinic the other day.”
“Don’t you see, Mano? They’re setting me up for this. I make a perfect scapegoat because I was trying to get out of prostitution. I need help. I need to leave Cuba. I’ll take a raft if I have to.”
“That would be suicide. The straits are too dangerous. You would need to get on a real boat with an experienced pilot.”
“That costs hundreds—American hundreds.”
“I might know someone who can help out. Where are you hiding?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t want you to have trouble later. But I better not go out again in day-light.” She tilts a look toward the bartender, who is polishing wine glasses. “And we can’t meet here. Go to the place we visited your mother on your birthday. Come before dawn, between 4 and 5 in the morning. If there’s any trouble I’ll fold a message in the cracks of the cement. Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Take these.” I hand her a half-pack of Populares. Julia gives me a quick kiss on the mouth, stands up, and walks briskly out of the bar.
I head back to the hospital to call Pinar del Rio, my heart pounding and the phone trembling in my hand. Emilio answers and I say, “Hola, primo, you remember that fresh crab we talked about?”
“Sure, Mano. How about tonight? I’ll see you at the dinosaur—the hour Abuelo was born minus one.”
“Good. Paco’s going to need a drink.”
“I’ll bring some Tropicola. Hasta luego.”
I leave the hospital through admitting and walk back to the house in Vedado, not bothering to look over my shoulder to spot the black Toyota. Up in the attic I shut the curtains on the French doors and grab a blanket. I go down the service stairs to the alley and pop the trunk of the Lada. Then I wrap Hernán in the blanket and carry him back up the service stairs. In the attic I put a sweatshirt on him, pull the hood over his skull, and place him in the rocking chair. Crouching to the floor, I inch the chair closer to the French doors until Hernán’s shadow is silhouetted against the closed curtains. I hold a rung and gently rock the chair, keeping this up for five minutes. Then I take a fresh pack of Populares and some matches from the kitchen and head back down to the Lada. When I drive across Calle 12 at 25th, I can see the black Toyota parked across from my house two blocks away, cigarette smoke curling from the cracked passenger window.
On the outskirts of Marianao I barter my father’s lighter for four liters of gas. Crosses stand vigil wherever cars skidded fatally off the pavement and into the ditches on the highway to Pinar del Rio. Cool air blows through the window gaps, but my hands keep sweating for the entire ride.
At 11 o’clock there is nobody on the streets of Pinar. The teenage metalheads are all crowded into the courtyard of the Joven Club, and everyone else has gone home to fall asleep in front of the novelas. When I walk behind the Natural History Museum to the small park in back, Emilio’s voice comes out of nowhere. “Aquí en el techo.”
I step around the brontosaurus and climb the ladder to the museum roof.
Emilio pulls a paper package and a plastic sack out of an air duct. We crouch out of sight of the street. “It’s vacuum-wrapped beneath
the paper, so there’s virtually no odor. When you get to Miramar, park near the mouth of the Almendares tunnel and walk straight to the northern loop of Quinta Avenida. Don’t try to drive up to the drop, or you’ll have a hard time getting around the cement barriers. You’ll see a silver pickup truck with tinted windows and two inflated inner tubes in back, the kind fishermen float in. One tube will have a decoy package that looks just like this one resting in the center. Move purposefully as if you are about to walk past the pickup, then stop abruptly to tie your shoelace, wedging this package snugly in the center of the empty inner tube. When you rise be sure to pick up the decoy package. It will be much lighter than this one. Keep walking. Walk all the way to the beach without looking back. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t look at anybody. Throw the empty package into the sea. Here, this is for Paco.” Emilio gives me the plastic sack: four two-liter cola bottles filled with gasoline. “And this is for you.” He hands me the money, a fat roll of American twenties I put down the front of my pants.
“Oye, primo, what’s the possibility you could help me and a friend leave?”
“Leave? Leave where?”
“Leave the island. Leave Cuba,” I tell him.
“What are you talking about? You’ve never even left that depressing attic in Vedado. Now you want to go to el otro lado?”
“A doctor can always find work.”
“Not without an American license. Do you know what your father does up there? Old gusanos pay him fifteen dollars for a half-hour visit. He has to listen to their egotistic bullshit and dole out prescriptions to a black-market pharmacy run by some Marielito.”
“It’s complicated, Emilio. There’s a girl who got set up.”
“Coño, Mano, whenever you take on a woman it’s like you’re marching to your doom.”
“Is it possible or not?”
“Where is she now?”
“In Havana.”
“We’d never make it out of there. It’s a whole different fleet, not friendlies.”
“What if I brought her here, to the coast?”
“Carajo, hombre, call me tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t fuck this one up, all right?” He puts the paper package in my hands. “You won’t have any trouble in Havana. They know you’re my cousin. But don’t get stopped on the drive. Stay under the speed limit.”
I climb down from the roof of the museum, put the package in the trunk, and empty the cola bottles full of gasoline into my tank. It’s almost midnight by the time I get back on the Carretera Central to Havana.
The Lada is running on fumes when I park it near the end of Quinta Avenida and begin walking up the middle of the boulevard with my package. There, near the mouth of the tunnel, is the pickup truck, inner tubes and the decoy package in back. I put the package Emilio gave me in the center of the empty tube, heart pounding and hands trembling while I pretend to tie my shoe. Then I stand up and walk away with the other package—it is lighter, probably empty. Home free! But when I am half a block away on C Street, someone behind me calls, “¡Señor!” A man’s voice. I walk faster without turning to look. “¡Oye, señor!” The slapping of shoes on pavement: He is running after me. Anticipating that awful sound, someone calling a militant command: ¡Carné! A random questioning and personal search. Don’t look back. Walk straight to the sea.
He catches up with me, grabbing my elbow. “Amigo … ¿No buscas una chica?”
“¡Pendejo!” I tear my arm away from the chulo, a skinny mulatto, and fumble with the decoy package. “¡Quítate!”
“¡Coño! Sorry, compañero. I thought you were a tourist.”
I move briskly to the sea, drop the decoy package, and turn back toward Quinta Avenida. From the walkway above the tunnel mouth, I see that the silver pickup is gone. I am tired, thirsty, and as hungry as always, but I have to make it across Vedado before dawn, so I walk through the tunnel and along the east bank of the pestilent river. I climb the chain-link fence, cross the small boatyard, and climb out the other side a few blocks from Calle Zapata, crossing far down the hill from the front gates of the necropolis. When I reach the low part in the concrete wall, I choose a shadowy place and boost myself over the wrought-iron fence of Cemeterio Colón.
I walk to the corner of H y 8. “Julia?” No answer. I run my fingers over the cement and feel a wadded slip of paper wedged tightly in a crack. I unfold it and hold it up to the light of a full moon. Julia’s handwriting: Medianoche, puerto. The meeting place is at the Port of Havana. Midnight means we’ll lose an entire day. I hope she’s okay. No way I can go home now. I’ll have to lay low all night, get to a cabina before sunrise, and call in sick at the pediátrico. I slip the note in my pocket with the money and lie down beside my mother’s tomb to rest.
12 August 1979
Ten candles on a cake, right in front of my face. Chocolate: my favorite. The cake was small but special. It was not from the panadería or the lady down the street, who made the same cake for all the boys and girls. Mamá had made this one herself. She was strangely cheerful, singing, and Machado was dancing on his back legs. Spinning the cake, Mamá lit each candle with a straw she held in a trembling hand. While the cake went around I counted to ten, but I couldn’t remember if I had counted the first candle already. Singing “Las Mañanitas,” Mamá kept turning the plate, and I counted the candles on their second rotation: eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … If I kept counting, could I continue time traveling? Could I keep flying through the years from birthday to birthday? I blew out the flames, making a wish for Mamá to get better for good.
My mother cut the cake right in half and we ate off the same plate. We didn’t even use forks. “It’s your birthday, so we get to eat with our hands.” Under the chocolate there was a sour flavor that made my tongue curl up. “Isn’t it good?” she asked. It wasn’t very good. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I said yes and put a little more in my mouth. While Mamá shoveled the crumbs from the plate, I spit out most of my piece and let Machado quietly gulp the half-chewed offering.
Two hours later, my mother and I were lying side-by-side on stretchers. Terrible pain shot through my abdomen. Mamá was unconscious, and the doctor was trying to get me to speak. “¿Qué fue, niño? ¿Qué tomaron? ¿O fue algo que te dieron de comer?”
“Un pastelito.” Saying the words plunged knives into my gut.
“¿De qué era el pastelito?”
“Chocolate.”
“¿Quién lo preparó?”
“Mi Mamá.”
The doctor turned back on my mother and began pounding her chest. A nurse said, “The police told me that their dog was poisoned too.”
The doctor told the nurse to get an orderly to open Machado up and find out what was in the cake. He took a long tube like a yellow water snake and forced it into the back of my throat. I gagged and my esophagus began convulsing, emptying my stomach of Aurora’s peanuts. My mother never woke up. She had crushed a full bottle of her chemotherapy pills and mixed them into the cake. My own mild overdose caused a severe hemorrhage beneath the right eye: Havana Lunar.
18 August 1992
“Doctor.” A voice, a man’s, awakens me with a start. Eyes open on Tito, the younger of the two black brothers who worked for Alejandro. “Where is she hiding, feo?”
“No sé.”
“Liar.”
I dart a look around. We are in a narrow pocket between three tombs. Tito has me penned in.
“This is going to go a lot easier for you if you tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know.”
Tito shows me what he’s going to hit me with: an unvarnished nightstick. He steps forward and says, “Sueña con los angelitos, doctor.”
I cover my head and roll, but he catches the base of my skull. A rocket bursts and goes dark, then there goes the darkness: one blackout wrapped in another.
* * *
Awaken to blackness, pain pulsing from temple, pinned beneath a leathery sack. Paralyzed. Air humid, thick wit
h noxious gas. Stench. Shallow breath. Salivating. No light. Blink. No light at all for eyes.
“¿Hola?” Echo high and hollow. Cold stone. Alone. Push. Sack shifts. One arm, another. Roll ragged thing to stone. Bones. Keep calm. Rise. Feel around, find a wall.
A blind, squatting back-and-forth across the stone floor, kicking and batting after something. A wrought-iron gate secured with a clunky Russian padlock. Find something metal to strike against it. Only dry leaves, brittle bones—quadriceps, femur, thigh bone—and mummified remains. I don’t need the dim light that seeps down to the chamber during the day to know: the smell tells me, and so does the slab in the center of the chamber. This is the crypt where Alejandro initiated his jineteras.
“Julia?” Echo and no more. Touch top of head: a substantial swelling, pain. Lie down again. Search pocket. Money and Julia’s note still there. Tito never checked.
The stairs take on a violet glow in daytime, reflecting light from the glass-walled antechamber to the top of the landing. I needed water before I came here, but now my mouth is dry like cotton. I rattle the bars, stop to listen, cry, “¡Socorro!” I hear bus brakes and airplanes above, sometimes a distant shout echoing off the stones, but my cries provoke no response. Planning to meet here was stupid. Medianoche, puerto. I have to get out before midnight. Have to get someone’s attention. Dry leaves scattered on the floor. I’d give all the money in my pocket to have my father’s lighter back.
Try to sleep but the slab is very cold. Want a blanket but there are only bones. Spend the dark day at the edge of hallucination. Line up thoughts. Piece it back together. Find a way out. Out of this hell.
* * *
I am shocked awake by the flick of a lighter, the sudden appearance of Tito at the bottom of the stone stairway. I sit up with a start and shield my eyes from the bright flame. “You don’t have to tire yourself out with shouting. There’s a glass wall at the top of the stairs. Nobody will even hear a scream.” Tito lets the lighter go out and stands smoking a cigarette on the other side of the gate. “Where is she hiding?”
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