Matanzas

by Garry Ryan

  Lane raised his glass and sipped.

  “When I went to see my mother and told her I was coming here get married, she said it wouldn’t be sanctified by God unless it happened in the temple. She said Indiana had to be baptized in the temple or he would be barred from heaven. She said I was a criminal for not following God’s rules. Now I’m being told my son is not dressed well enough to suit Lola. And it’s implied I’m no good for Dan.”

  “I want to ask a question.” Daniel held Indiana with one hand while the baby drank from a bottle of formula.

  “Lola told me I should be breast-feeding him. That it was bad for his immune system that I decided to switch to formula.” Christine wiped at the condensation on her water glass.

  “I would like to change my last name to Lane.” Daniel spotted a ring of calamari on his plate, picked it up and popped it in his mouth.

  Lane turned to Daniel, realized he’d left his mouth open and closed it.

  “What are you talking about?” Christine stared at her fiancé.

  Dan picked up anther morsel of calamari and pointed it at Christine and Lane. “I’m asking you two if you would mind if I legally changed my last name to yours.” The ring of calamari disappeared into his mouth.

  Christine turned to look at Lane. She’s as surprised as I am.

  “It makes perfect sense.” Dan pointed with another white circle, popped it in his mouth and chewed. “You want Indiana’s last name to stay the way it is on the birth certificate. I’m his father and we’re a family.” He made a circle with his free hand and grabbed another morsel of calamari. “I want to have the same name as my family.”

  “What will your mom and dad say?” Christine asked.

  “I’m not asking them. I’m asking you. That outsider comment really pissed me off.”

  Indiana used two hands to lift his bottle over his head and spike it onto the floor. It shattered, leaving a swipe of milk embedded with glass.

  In a moment their table was surrounded by staff sweeping up bits of glass, mopping up the mess and smiling. The man with the mop looked at Indy and said, “Baseball!”

  Lane and Arthur went back to their room. They followed a winding pathway lined by coconut trees. A pair of planets hung in the night sky. Arthur asked, “Do you think Christine and Dan will be okay?”

  Lane thought, Why do Christine and Dan have to have such self-absorbed parents?

  “Well?” Arthur tapped Lane on the shoulder.

  “I was thinking that neither of them have much luck with their parents. Alison is mentally ill and Lola thinks she has to be in control. She gives them money for the wedding, says no strings attached, then pulls the strings. I don’t think she’s able to stop herself.” He waited while Arthur opened the door to their ground-floor room.

  Arthur went inside where the air conditioner took the edge off the heat and humidity. “What do we do?”

  “First off, I’m glad we paid our own way here. She’s not going to pull our strings. Anyway, Lola isn’t going to listen to either of us even though you told her what the problem is. The only person — and this will sound crazy — who is really able to influence her is Indiana.”

  Arthur took off his shirt and hung it up. His back was furry with black hair that appeared to have migrated from the top of his head. “This holiday could turn out to be a disaster.”

  “Too soon to tell, really. Besides, it’s a holiday. What’s to stop us from having a good time?”

  Lane slept in his childhood bed. The window was open and the curtains billowed into the room, then were sucked back against the window screen. He could feel the house breathing.

  The neighbours’ back-door hinges complained when the screen door opened. It rattled when it slapped back against its frame.

  He flipped back the covers and put his feet on the hardwood floor. In one part of his mind he wondered why he had an adult body and why he’d woken in a room he hadn’t visited for more than thirty years. In this new reality it all seemed completely natural. He went to the window where the curtains billowed. His fingertips separated the drapes. The light over the neighbours’ back door reflected off Gloria’s white cotton shirt and pants. She held a shovel in her right hand. She went to the nearest corner of the yard. Lane saw her stab the shovel into the earth and push the blade deeper with her right foot. He heard the metal carve into the earth. Gloria inhaled then exhaled. A shovelful of soil was dumped on grass. The process repeated itself again and again.

  A different sound. High pitched. Crying. It was joined by Gloria’s weeping. He saw her lift a baby from the hole. She moved to the side of the house. He heard the rush of running water from a garden hose. A sharp intake of breath; the infant cried louder. Gloria took off her white cotton blouse and wiped the baby clean and dry, then wrapped the child, holding it close and making soothing sounds.

  Then a shock, the slap of the back of a hand across Lane’s neck. He felt the cry stuck in his throat, that familiar childhood fear of being under dark attack from his mother.

  “What do think you are doing?” His mother’s voice was shrill. Then the sting of a belt across his back. Lane turned to grab the leather as it slashed his palm. He yanked it from her hands. The look of anger, then fear, in her eyes as he raised the belt in his fist and moved closer.

  Lane sensed a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it away. A pillow slapped his face. He opened his eyes.

  Lights were on in the room. Arthur stood between the queen-sized beds. He was naked, holding a pillow over his right shoulder, ready to strike from a distance.

  Lane looked down at his heaving, glistening chest.

  Arthur said, “First you screamed, then you roared. I couldn’t understand the words. Was it Dr. Pierce again or Cori or both of them?” Arthur dropped the pillow on the bed and began a search for his shorts.

  Lane shook his head. “It was a dream from my childhood. That woman from the pool, she was in it.”

  “Gloria?”

  Lane took a long heaving breath. “It was her. She lived next door. I remember her now.” He got up to get a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “Tell me.”

  MONDAY, JUNE 17

  chapter 3

  Lane and Arthur sat next to each other on the air-conditioned charter bus. Both looked out the window at the stone walls of the fort standing guard over the Havana Harbour.

  Angella was their tour guide and stood next to the driver while speaking into a microphone. “We will soon be arriving at Old Havana, where you will be able to get out, stretch your legs and see a statue of Mother Teresa.” Angella wore a red golf shirt, jeans and a white ball cap. Her skin was the colour of the cream atop a solo café (what the waitress had called black coffee earlier that morning at the resort restaurant). She kept her long black hair tied in a ponytail, tucked out the back of a Blue Jays ball cap. Lane often had to listen carefully to understand Angella’s exotic Cuban English pronunciations.

  The stone walls of a church rose up on the right side. The driver slowed, pulled to the right and stopped. People began to stand and stretch after the two-hour ride.

  A camera flashed. A woman lined up behind Lane said, “Jamey! Just wait. There will be lots of time for pictures when we get off.”

  “I wonder how much it costs to go to the bathroom here?” A woman with a clip at the back of her chestnut hair stood up front of them.

  “We’ll meet in the square in front of the church.” Angella waved and stepped off the bus.

  Lane and Arthur gathered with the other passengers around the tour guide. Arthur said, “Everywhere she goes, a crowd of people with cameras follows.”

  Lane smiled as he looked up at the towering grey wall. Arthur nudged Lane’s right arm with the water bottle. Lane took the blue glass bottle and raised it to his lips.

  “Don’t drink too much. It’ll cost you later in the bathroom. They charge extra for toilet paper!” The woman with the chestnut hair rubbed her thumb and two adjoining fingers together.
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br />   She’s quite attractive. Every time she opens her mouth she becomes a little less so. Lane shook his head, sighed and took a long pull on the bottle, then looked away.

  Arthur nudged him in the ribs. “Be nice.”

  Lane rolled his eyes. Jamey stepped in front of Lane. The boy appeared to be ten or eleven, had thick black hair, weighed perhaps eighty pounds and darted in and out with his SLR camera and its black telephoto lens.

  “Behave yourself. We have to spend the rest of the day with these people,” Arthur said, then turned and followed as they headed for the statue of Mother Teresa. They found her in an alcove in front of a chained-off doorway to a church under renovation. To the left was a lush garden; behind their backs, a steady stream of traffic. Angella tried to make herself heard over the noise. Instead she inhaled some diesel soot and began to cough. She led them back around the church and down a cobbled street. They passed a hotel with a statue of a monk out front; inside were men dressed in tan robes. A minute later they found themselves in a plaza where pigeons surrounded a toddler who was about to cry. His father kept his hands at the boy’s back, encouraging him to feed the birds.

  Since she was tall enough to be seen over the heads of those gathered around, Angella began to speak. “We will walk down Agaur and then stop at a bar where Hemingway did some of his writing. The bar makes the best mojitos in the city.”

  “Yes, but does it have a bathroom?” Chestnut Hair adjusted her hair clip until the lines in the corners of her eyes disappeared. “And how much will it cost?” She looked around for support. “Anyone else from Calgary?”

  Sometimes it’s embarrassing to be Canadian, Lane thought.

  The tour guide either did not hear or chose to ignore Chestnut Hair and walked toward a cobblestone street. It ran in between three- and four-storey buildings with metre-wide sidewalks. A black Buick sat at the corner of an intersection. Across the street a pair of female police officers wore grey uniform shirts and black slacks, along with batons and riot sticks on one hip and handguns on the other.

  As the group neared another square, music and song echoed along the street from a courtyard. Malabaristas in red, white and black costumes balanced on stilts as they danced and sang. They appeared to walk on the heads of the crowd blocking the street.

  Jamey held his camera high, dodging ahead of the tour guide and squeezing between two of the taller people in the crowd. He disappeared as he worked his way to the front where he could get some pictures.

  Angella angled to the left side of the crowd and slipped into the open front doors of a bar. Lane followed Arthur as he eased around the crowd and followed Chestnut Hair. She trailed her black-ball-capped husband into the bar where large framed photos of Hemingway hung on the walls and an enlarged copy of his signature hung beneath the collection of black-and-white images.

  Arthur asked, “Do you want a mojito?”

  Lane nodded and went to inspect the photographs while the bartender lined up ten glasses along his edge of the bar and began by adding mint to the mojitos.

  Black Cap came out of the washroom. “Man, that water was cold!”

  His friend with the thick dark hair laughed. “Don’t let it hang so low, man!”

  Chestnut Hair laughed and punched Dark Hair in the shoulder.

  Arthur handed Lane a mojito. He sipped the mixture of mint, rum and lime. It was a potent combination on the tongue and in the nose. For a moment he was frozen by the sensation.

  After they finished their drinks, they went outside to watch the malabaristas finish performing. A cop dressed in blue with a beret, a goatee and a pistol on his hip made a revolutionary salute, then stood with his hands on his hips. Black Cap took a picture. The cop held up one finger, “Peso.”

  Black Cap looked at the pistol on the cop/street performer’s hip and handed over a peso.

  Chestnut Hair pointed at her husband. “Pussy!”

  Black Cap turned on her. Lane saw rage behind his eyes. Watch that one!

  Arthur grabbed Lane’s arm and pointed. Three small dogs sat in a cart. They wore vests and revolutionary berets. Dark Hair took a picture and the bald man who owned the dogs said, “Peso.” Dark Hair glanced at Chestnut Hair, then said, “No!”

  Chestnut Hair threw back her head, winked and laughed.

  The man with the dogs frowned, then turned and posed for the next customer.

  Arthur took Lane’s arm and they followed Angella down another street where she stopped in front of a sculpted face set in a yellow wall of squares. BVZON was written above the stone face, its open mouth set in a pout. The tour guide said, “This is where people deposited letters.”

  “Did it cost a peso?” Chestnut Hair asked.

  Dark Hair smiled at her, then said, “They ripped off the tourists even back in the day.”

  An unmuffled engine powered an orange bucket set atop four wheels. The driver sat at the back next to the engine. It puffed black sooty smoke. The street filled with the pounding clatter. The tourists moved to the sidewalks on either side of the street to allow the machine to pass. A tall woman in a white dress walked against the foot traffic. She was twenty-five and willowy, moved like a dancer and looked like she modelled for Vogue. Every head, including that of the driver of the miniature dump truck, turned to watch as she passed. Jamey stopped in front of Lane, turned and raised his camera. Lane heard the click, click, click of multiple exposures. A cloud of exhaust remained. The stink of burned and unburned gasoline made Lane cough. The machine turned left at an intersection; then Angella led them back to the bus.

  Lane and Arthur climbed on board. Angella did a head count, frowned and counted again. She went up front and looked at her list, then counted again. “We’re missing someone.” Lane looked at the empty seat in front of him. Chestnut Hair wasn’t sitting next to Black Cap.

  Where did she get to? Lane waited for Black Cap to say something, but the man remained silent as he watched the women standing outside with their sleeping infants. The women used their eyes and a free hand to plead for spare change. Arthur elbowed Lane and handed him five pesos. Lane got up, walked to the front of the bus and handed the pesos to one of the women. All at once, two boys, two women and an old man with one good eye surrounded him. He moved back to the door as one of the boys clutched at his shirt and asked, “What about us?” The driver shut the door when Lane made it back inside.

  The driver shook his head and pointed at the boys, who had moved on to another tourist who had given a coin to the old man. The driver said, “I know those boys. Their parents live in one of the city’s most beautiful houses.”

  They arrived at the returning tour’s first stop at seven that evening. Two women in grey long-sleeved shirts and black pants were waiting with their arms crossed, their long hair gathered on top of their heads. Each wore a pistol on one hip and a riot stick on the other. A pair of Russian-built trucks in military green pulled up behind the tour bus. Another approached the wrong way up the road and parked out front of the bus.

  Angella stepped off the bus and began to talk with the officers. Then the tour guide climbed back on the bus. “The police say that all of us are to follow them to the resort’s meeting room. Please have your identification ready.”

  A woman at the back of the bus said, “I was told I didn’t need my ID.”

  “The police say we must come with them and identify ourselves,” Angella said.

  Lane stood up. “The faster we answer the questions, the sooner we’ll get back to our own hotels.” He made his way to the front of the bus and stepped down out onto the paved driveway. Arthur followed him, and then other passengers reluctantly got off the bus as well.

  The police officers studied Lane as he walked toward them. One had her hands on her hips. The other crossed her arms under her breasts. She leaned her head to the right toward an officer who stood in the empty foyer of the resort. He was flanked by flowerpots filled with birds of paradise. He motioned Lane forward. Gradually, the other passengers gathered in
a room with tables surrounded by upholstered chairs. Lane sat near the far wall and turned to Arthur, who sat next to him. “Let’s just watch.”

  Arthur shook his head. “Don’t you dare enjoy this.”

  “The missing woman must be dead or badly injured for them to make this much of a fuss.” Lane took a slow breath and waited.

  It was Arthur’s turn to be interviewed an hour later.

  Lane watched his partner disappear into an adjoining room. The massive wooden doors closed. The words Night Club were written in wrought iron above the doors. He turned to watch the people who remained. Black Cap sat sipping a piña colada and avoiding eye contact with any of the others. Dark Hair looked about nervously as he leaned against the wall opposite the husband of the missing woman. He used a paper napkin to wipe away the sweat from his face. The front of his pale-blue shirt was stained darker by a sweaty patch.

  Jamey looked at the back of his digital camera and scrolled through the images.

  Angella watched the comings and goings as individuals were escorted to and from the bathroom. A woman arrived with a tray of sandwiches. Two servers manoeuvred their way around the tables as they took and delivered drink orders. Angella talked to the bald-headed driver, who shook his head and shrugged in the universal expression of an individual’s loss of control over a situation.

  The massive wooden doors opened, the larger policewoman appeared and said in accented English, “Paul Lane!”

  Lane stood, stepped into the nightclub and saw a single table in the middle of the room. One female officer sat there and watched his arrival. Her eyes were black, her skin was tan and her black hair shone under the lights. He estimated she might be thirty. She said, “Sit down. Por favor.”

  He did as instructed, sat across the table from her and decided the solidly built officer across from him was nobody’s fool. The other officer sat down, took a pen in her hand, flipped over a fresh piece of paper on her notepad and waited. Her name tag identified her as Adelsie Romirez.