As they drove around the city, John Deal got more and more depressed. I didn’t need this much reality, he thought. It was like driving through South Miami after Hurricane Andrew. Buildings, some of the most beautiful he had ever seen, were in ruins. Everyone seemed dazed, like zombies.
The bus stopped in Havana Viejo. Deal trailed the walking tour, looking into the almost empty stores. An emaciated old black woman said out of the corner of her mouth, “If you’re a reporter, tell them we’re starving,” and kept walking. Prostitutes in spandex with badly bleached hair called out to him. Some of them looked so young, like little girls masquerading as whores for Halloween. Hustlers harassed him, asking him what he needed. Cocaine? Putas? Muchachos? He answered, “Nada, nada, nada.”
Deal couldn’t deal with it anymore. He craved a drink or two or three, as he stumbled on La Bodequita del Medio. The bar of the cavelike restaurant was covered with graffiti and pictures of Hemingway. He wondered if there was any bar in the world where Hemingway hadn’t drunk. He read a sign that said “Home of the Mojito,” so he ordered one, as a tough-looking young man dressed like Dick Tracy walked over and sat next to him at the bar. “I’m Mike Weston from Miami,” he said, holding out his hand. John shook it.
“You here for the babes,” Mike said, “right?” John just looked at him. “Havana is the best place for putas in the world. In Miami,” Mike went on, “chicks think they’re too good for you even if they’re dogs. In Cuba, for five dollars you can get Claudia Schiffer. And they’re pure. They don’t got AIDS. Any fifteen-year-old chick can be yours for five dollars. Some only want soap.”
Deal tried to imagine being desperate enough to have sex with someone who only wanted to get clean, wondered how long the embargo would last if the Miami Cubans knew what it was doing to their own people.
“Got to go now,” Mike said, leaving to join a group of men who had just entered the bar. They sat at a table in the back surrounded by Cuban soldiers.
Deal rubbed his eyes. One of the guys looked like Juan Carlos Reyes, that deluded rich guy who thought he was president of Cuba in exile. He was sure the pudgy bald guy at the head of the table was Big Joey G. One other guy at the table looked familiar.
Deal tried to place him as he tossed back another mojito, and then it hit him. It was that Cuban guy, Hector, in Miami. The guy who’d forced him off the road into the bay, then followed him around when he had the head. Hector didn’t look too thrilled about being with this particular group. And there was a pasty-faced Anglo-looking guy beside him who looked just as unhappy.
Deal faced dead ahead now, shaking his head, sipping his drink. He was gonna sit there till they left. He didn’t want to be recognized. Time went by in slow motion. Then Deal felt a tap on his shoulder. His heart stopped. He turned around. It was Mike Weston. “Hey, man, you want to come with me and score some Schiffers?” he asked.
Lilia Sands sat in her house in Overtown, on her plastic-covered velvet settee, the one that no one was allowed to sit on. She was dressed in her favorite nightgown, the one with the silk and feathers and lace, the one she called her wedding dress, the one she wanted to be buried in. Light from the huge moon over Miami flowed through the window. There was something in the hot air. Lilia could feel it, could taste it. It was the tropics; it was her youth; it was Cuba. She was sure the air she was breathing had blown up from her beloved Cuba. Her fingers stroked her guitar.
Lilia drifted back, flowed with the air back to Cuba, back to the day her parents had given her to the nuns because they had no food to feed her because of Batista, back to the day the nuns had shaved her head, and taken her one dress, the one made from the train of her mother’s wedding gown. She’d sat naked in front of the convent window, tears streaming down her face as she touched the luxurious pile of black hair on the floor that would soon be made into a wig, unable to make herself put on the coarse black habit. She remembered caressing her long swanlike neck, her perfect soft breasts, her hand following the flow of sweat down, caressing her belly, touching the only hair she had left. But before she could escape into herself, a cold, hard hand had clapped over her mouth. She’d tried to scream but nothing came out.