Naked in Havana (12 page)

“It was just a dance.”

“You never dance.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said, and then blushed, realizing how he might interpret that.

“He’s a predator, cariña. If he lays a hand on you, I’ll kill him.”

He went back to the bar. I looked around. Reyes had disappeared. I dared a quick glance at the other tables. Salvatore was watching, and the American senator beside him smiled and raised his glass in salute.

This would be all over Havana by morning. Well, I was not going to rush blushing from the room. I sat down and picked up my glass. My Coca Cola was warm. I caught the waiter’s eye and had him fetch me more ice.

I tried to look calm, but I could make no sense of what had just happened. It was something in the way he had touched me, though we had barely touched; the way he had looked at me, though I had not allowed myself to look too deeply.

This was quite unexpected.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw a monogrammed handkerchief, a large silver ring with a moonstone. I caught my breath and prepared myself for a scolding.

But all Inocencia said was: “Be careful.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal him away from you. It was just a dance.”

“He’s not mine to steal, cariña. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“But I thought he loved you.”

She shook her head. “That man! He loves me halfway, and I swear, that’s the worst of it. If he didn’t love me at all, I could live with that. And if he loved me all the way, I’d be the happiest damn girl in the world. But halfway is the hell of everything, halfway keeps you up all night. Part of you wants to hold on, the other part of you wants to let go, but because it’s only halfway you only ever half make up your mind. Remember that, Magdalena. It’s not no love that kills you, it’s the love that’s only halfway there. That’s what does you in.”

She walked off towards the stage to prepare for her first set. I reached for her hand to pull her back, ask her what to do, but her fingers slipped through mine. I wish I had insisted. But life is like that, full of brief moments when destiny can slip either way, the breadth of a fingertip decides it.

Chapter 18

I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock, time for the cannon from the fort, and time the
rebelde
would let off their bombs around the city.

There was a moment of clarity, or perhaps I just remember it that way now, because I’ve relived it in my head so many times. Perhaps someone even shouted a warning. I remember looking around the club, seeing where everyone was. Salvatore and his party had left, if they’d stayed for a last drink perhaps the future of America would have been a lot different and Nixon would have won in 1960.

Who knows?

I saw Papi standing by the bar, nursing a drink. Reyes was arguing with his girlfriend who turned her back and headed for the door. I don’t remember the explosion; there was just a hot gush of wind that sent me hurtling across the dance floor. All the lights went out. It was black for a moment and there was a deathly hush.

Then the screaming started. Flames shot out of the foyer and at last there was some light and I could see shadows moving about.

The bomb had been left near the bar. I felt for my legs, I couldn’t believe I wasn’t hurt. I had trouble getting to my feet because my whole body was shaking from the shock of the blast. My shoes were gone, and I could feel broken glass under my feet.

I slipped on something, perhaps it was blood, there were puddles of it everywhere. I screamed for Papi.

An army colonel lay on the floor right next to me. I thought he was dead. But then he jumped straight up and started to run, went headlong into a full-length mirror and bounced back onto the floor again. Some other time it might have looked funny, but there was nothing funny about the bodies everywhere.

I heard Reyes” voice, and then he was there next to me. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear him. My ears were still ringing from the blast.

I was choking on the smoke. Reyes swept me up in his arms and headed for the door.

Then I saw my papi and squirmed out of his arms. He was lying on his back, struggling to get up. There was blood all over his face. He was mumbling something but I couldn’t make out the words, I wasn’t even sure that he could see me.

Reyes still held one of my arms, with his other hand he helped my father get to his feet, then hooked his arm over his shoulder and half carried him out of there, still dragging me by my wrist. People milled about outside in the street, some of them had crawled out and collapsed again onto the footpath. Smoke billowed out of the doors, people were coughing and shouting and screaming, it was chaos.

I didn’t care about anyone else except my papi. Reyes laid him down on the footpath, took off his jacket and put it under his head.

Papi put an arm around me. “It’s all right,” he mumbled. “I’m all right.” There was blood everywhere.

The war was something that happened to other people. I never thought it would happen to us.

These days I might have been more composed. That night I just lay there, sobbing. Afterwards people told me that Reyes went back in to help more people get out, that he was the one who found Inocencia. I don’t remember any of it, it was a blur until we got to the hospital, and that wasn’t until hours later.

Chapter 19

Reyes stood slumped in the hospital corridor, both hands resting on the wall. I had never seen him looking anything other than cocksure, and to see him so broken shook me. He puffed out his cheeks and stood up straight as I walked towards him.

“How is she?” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders, and I thought for a moment that there were tears in his eyes. “Not so good.”

“Will she make it?

“They operated on her last night. She’s lost half a leg, most of the other. How do you sing
bolero
in a wheelchair?”

There was nothing I could think of to say.

“How’s your father doing?” he said.

“It’s just a concussion. They put some stitches in his scalp, but he’s going to be all right.”

“You?”

I shrugged. There were no words for how I felt.

I stepped inside the room. Inocencia lay in the bed, her face grey, still as death. I knew it was her because Reyes said it was her, otherwise I would not have known. She didn’t look like the matron who taught me classical piano, or the siren who had men staring open mouthed in the Left Bank.

She was keeping death at arm’s length with a few shallow gasps, the rest of her body cocooned in a tent of bed sheets, surrounded by bottles and tubes.

I sat at the edge of the bed, feeling helpless.

Her eyes flickered open. She tried to smile. “
Hola,
guapa
,” she whispered.

“Señora Velasquez.”

“Inocencia...at times like this.” She licked her lips. They were cracked and dry. I got a glass of water from the table beside the bed, lifted her head, and moistened her lips with it.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”

“Don’t you be sorry...nothing for you...to be sorry for.” Her eyes flickered as she tried to focus. “He still out there?”

“Yes.”

“Crazy man.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

I held her hand. It felt so cold, like she was already downstairs on a slab. Such a fine line between singing boleros in Havana on a sexy, sweaty Saturday night and being nowhere at all.

“You know he loves you...don’t you?”

I looked up at her, startled. Her eyes were closed again, and I decided I had only imagined that she said it.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said like a fool.

“No, it’s not,” she murmured, and I knew she was right.

She fell asleep, lulled by the morphine. When I came back out Reyes was asleep, too, settled across three chairs, his bloodstained jacket under his head for a pillow. I resisted an urge to touch his face. I wanted to wake him up, have him talk to me through this. I didn’t.

I looked at my watch; there was blood smeared across the face. It had stopped at nine o’clock. I had to check the clock on the wall for the time: almost five o’clock in the morning.

When you’re eighteen years old there is everything ahead of you, and the world is solid under your feet. Then one day you look at your watch to check the time and when you look back everything is different and you didn’t even see it coming. A man asks you to dance and makes you feel alive for the first time in your life; meanwhile another man leaves a package in the foyer and introduces you to death.

I grew up that night. I suppose it was about time I did.

Chapter 19

Papi was in a bed just down the corridor. He had twenty-two stitches in a gash in his scalp. He was lucky. He had been just twenty paces from the bomb, others, standing further away, had lost limbs, but he had been protected from the full force of the blast by a marble pillar.

We will keep him in for observation overnight, the doctors said to me. He must have complete rest for a few days. Because of his heart. His general health is not that good.

He was awake when I got back to his room. His head was swathed in bandages and both eyes were black. He stirred when I came in and beckoned me closer.

“Want you to do something for me,” he said, his voice no more than a croak.

“What is it, Papi?”

“Tomorrow. I have a meeting with Meyer Lansky, eleven o’clock. You’ll have to call him, put it off.”

“I’m sure he’ll know,” I said. “Everyone in Havana knows what happened by now.”

“Call him anyway.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” I said and squeezed his hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want to kill the sons of bitches who did this to my club.”