I lit a cigarette while she went to the bathroom down the hall, the overhead water tank of the toilet clanging like a fire bell when she yanked the chain. She came back into the kitchen, put the coffee in the boiling pot, and was soon serving me the inky sweet concoction Cubans call a cafecito. She sat at the table, knees together like a schoolgirl, unsure of my reaction. I said nothing and simply stared. I was waiting for her request and it didn’t take long in arriving. No free lunch in this world, my daddy always said.
Raquel looked toward the coach house where David was still passed out on the bed. “He sleeps a lot when he takes the drugs,” she said in Spanish. “He’s always trying to run away from himself.”
“Y tú?” I asked her. “What about you? What are you running away from?”
She gazed back at me, weighing her response, then took a cigarette out of my pack without asking. I would have slapped her hand but sometimes you have to be tolerant to get where you want to go. I even lit the cigarette for her.
“Me, I am running away from Camagüey. From my old man’s hut, the son of a bitch, from this fucking crazy country.”
“Is that why you’re with the kid?”
She cracked a hard smile. “A little American boy comes in looking for easy love and revolution? Sure. You understand. You know what they call us? Las putas del Chino.” She stopped to make sure I understood. The Chinaman’s whores. I nodded.
“I hate fucking Chinamen. They smell of rotten fish. But that’s what I had to do, until David came around.”
All of a sudden she dropped her cigarette, grabbed her stomach, put her hand to her mouth. “Ay Dios mío!” she said, rushing to the bathroom, barely making it in time to upchuck something green and brown and vile. I blew concentric rings of smoke watching her from the door as she flushed, rinsed her beautiful mouth, straightened out her flimsy clothes. She saw my reflection in the mirror and she knew her game was up.
“What month?” I asked her.
She stared back, put on some ruby red lipstick. “Cuatro.”
“It hardly shows,” I said.
“It’s a good thing, otherwise I...” She turned to me, her doe eyes pleading with a mixture of fear and pride. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
I shook my head. “No. But I’m curious: What would you do if I wasn’t here?”
“I don’t know. But eventually, I guess I would have told him.”
“Do you love him?”
She shrugged, came up to me, kissed me lightly on the lips. “What is to love?”
I saw my own reflection in a mirror above the stove — my crooked nose, the scar on my forehead, the wide-set blue eyes that were the only thing my father left me.
“Sí,” I repeated, “what is to love?”
We didn’t say much after that. There wasn’t much to be said. We understood each other. She wanted out and so did I. The boy in his opium-induced dream in the bed was our ticket and we had to baby him. She did it her way, I did it mine.
Raquel returned to lie with David for a while as I waited for the sun to come up. I went out to the terrace and sat on an ornate iron bench, staring out at the sky, at the lights revolving madly above the fence and thick fortress of trees. The noise was far away now and dew was alighting, a low gray mist that seemed like a sponge wanting to wipe the whole town clean of the past, of the wrongs that had been done, of the hearts that had been broken. Or maybe it was just wiping it clean for the next round, I pondered, as I thought I heard a cry for help followed by a yelp of pain followed by the echo of a shot or two followed by silence.
The sky was a riot of mauve, purple, and red, the sun rising like an orange ball over Marina Barlovento when I walked down to the docks. The streets were eerily empty, but Siboney — in spite of its concentration of diplomats and foreigners — had woken up as fiercely revolutionary as before it had been cravenly Batistiano. The banners of Castro’s 26 of July Movement hung from windows, while above doors a few sycophants had already put up signs announcing, Fidel, esta es tu casa. Fidel, this house is yours.
The prospect of a five-hundred-dollar payout had been enough to rouse the old black capitán from his house in nearby Jaimanitas, enough to make him venture out, load the supplies, and chug-chug his creaking boat out to the pier.
“Viva Fidel!” I said as I stepped on the Buena Vista, a trawler that had last seen a varnish job when it was a rumrunner’s boat docking in the rushes of Cedar Key. It had absolutely nothing in common with the sleek yachts parked at Barlovento.
“Sssh! You want to get shot at?” said Anselmo in his low, slurring speech. “There’s a lot of Batistianos here desperate to get out. No se habla de la soga en casa del ahorcado.” Don’t mention rope in the home of the hanged. “Look, there goes Ventura’s boat!”
He pointed at a gleaming Chris-Craft churning its way through the gray waters, carrying on board the once feared head of Batista’s secret police.
“Sic transit,” I muttered.
“Qué?”
“May lightning strike him... You will be ready for us?”
“Sure, chico. Just make certain to return within the hour. Fidel’s people and the boys from the Directorio are already taking over City Hall. I’m sure they will be here soon and who knows how long before they let people out again. They are out for blood today, compadre.”
I turned the shower on in the coach house, dousing the still sleeping David. The water came out brown at first, but by the time it had cleared David was up and on his knees, gasping for air. I turned off the faucet, threw him a towel.
“Let’s go, sleeping beauty. Time’s a wasting.”
Looking like a wet retriever, David took a few bumbling steps out of the tub, then heaved into the toilet.
I stepped outside and waited until he came out and drank the coffee Raquel had brought in for him from the main house. He looked around, taking stock of the place, obviously not remembering how he had gotten there. He smiled at me, still silent, then nodded in greeting. I nodded back and was lighting a cigarette when he dove for the window. I managed to grab him by the waistband.
“What the fuck is wrong with you anyhow?” I said, heaving him back inside and slapping him around a couple of times. He sat on the floor, Raquel hugging him.
“I told you, I’m not going back to San Francisco,” he replied, rubbing his face where I’d landed my punch.
“Are you crazy? You want to stay here and do what? Do you know what just happened last night?”
“What?”
“Listen up, you idiot. Batista just left.”
I turned on the old shortwave radio by the window. The plummy voice of the BBC announcer cut through the moist air: “Here is the news. The President of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, has fled the country, his government in ruins, in the face of a relentless advance by the rebel army led by a thirty-two-year-old lawyer, Fidel Castro. Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in celebration this morning as word spread of Batista’s departure for the Dominican Republic in the early hours of this day. There are reports of looting in Havana. Hundreds of slot machines from casinos have been dragged into the street and smashed. One casino has been looted. President Batista handed over power to a military junta before he left. They ordered a cease-fire and appealed to the rebel forces of Dr. Castro for cooperation. Dr. Castro, however, announced this morning on rebel radio that operations would continue. ‘The triumph of the Revolution must be complete,’ he said.”