Naked in Havana (9 page)

Angel was waiting for me on the terrace of
La Mina
, a cafe on a side street leading from the
Plaza de Armas
. He smiled when he saw me, but he didn’t looked surprised. It was like he knew I would come even though I had said I wouldn’t.

Ever since that night in the Left Bank I had been wondering why he wanted to see me, and I had rehearsed this meeting over and over in my head a hundred times. It had to be that he had changed his mind about marrying Esmeralda and he was going to stand up to his father at last.

He would sit down with Señor Macheda and tell him he didn’t love Salvatore’s daughter, and from now on he was going to make his own decisions about his life. He would tell him how much we loved each other and that nothing would stand in our way.

Then I would talk to my papi. I knew I could make him see sense, show him that he had misjudged Angel. When he broke off the engagement to Esmeralda Salvatore it would prove it to everyone, and he would see how we would only ever be happy with each other.

La Mina
looked out over the old central square where the colonists had kept their palaces in the days when the island belonged to the Spanish Imperial Crown. Tourists in loud shirts still flocked there with their Brownies and Hasselblads to take photographs and pretend to absorb the culture while they waited for the casinos and the nightclubs to open after dark. Beggars and ragged children harried them for a few coins.

The man at the table next to us was reading a local newspaper, the
Diario de la Marina
. There were photographs of dead bodies on the front page, both of them students. Batista’s secret police, the SIM, had been at work.

We sat in the shade of a weeping fig tree with our
cortados
. The air was hot and heavy again. There would be a downpour this afternoon.

Despite the heat, Angel looked cool and confident; he wore a crisp white shirt, and there was not a hair out of place.

We talked about everything, but nothing that mattered; Inocencia's performance at the club, the weather, Batista’s new offensive against the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. Finally: “Does your father know you’re here?”

I shook my head. “He thinks I’m at acting class.”

A smirk. Angel was like my father, he never took my acting classes seriously. It was just something for me to do, in his eyes, keep me out of the house while he found me a good husband. He was an old school Latino in that way. He might criticize Angel’s father for arranging his son’s marriage to a mafia princess, but in his own way he wanted to dictate my life just the same way.

But I had my own dreams. One day I was going to be a famous actress. Why not? Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Natalie Wood, they all had to come from somewhere. Marilyn Monroe hadn’t even had a proper family, she had been raised by her aunt - or was it her grandmother? - I had read it in
Life
magazine.

And anyway, wasn’t I already a great actress? I acted the part of a virginal daughter, and that wasn’t easy to do in Havana. I wondered how many other girls - how many other women - felt like me, trying to be good daughters and mothers and wives but underneath feeling something very different.

One day I would have to fight about what I was going to do with Papi, but that day wasn’t today. I didn’t know how I would make it all happen, but I believed that if you held a dream long enough, somehow it would come true.

Angel looked across the square, where Luis was leaning against the Bel Air, watching us. “How can you trust him?”

“I caught him stealing some of my mama’s jewelery. One of her brooches had already gone missing. If Papi ever found out, he could lose his job. Papi could even report him to the police, and he knows what that means. So we have an understanding.”

He looked at me with new respect in his eyes. I may not have known much about politics, but I knew how the world worked.

“So where’s your princess?” I asked him.

“She’s in Miami. I may not see her again until the wedding.”

I held my breath. “You’re really going through with this?”

“I told you, I have no choice.”

“You have a date?”

“October.”

October. I had just a few months to stop this from happening. I looked away so he wouldn’t see the pain in my eyes.

“You know we’re moving to America?”

“Papi told me.”

“Señor Salvatore wants me to take over his real estate company.”

“Why is your father running away?” I asked him. It made no sense to me. There were seven generations of Machedas in the cemetery at Colon, they had their own crypt, guarded by a huge stone angel. The house at Marianao had been in their family for over a century.

He just shrugged his shoulders.

“Men like Lansky and Salvatore wouldn’t be buying hotels here if they thought the government was going to lose the war against the rebels.”

“I guess they think they can do business with the beards the same as they do with Batista.”

“But I was reading the
Diario de la Marina
this morning,” I said, feeling very sophisticated for knowing something about the news. “The army just killed forty rebels yesterday and only lost five of their own soldiers. So how can they be losing?”

“The
Diario
! You can’t believe that crap! They get all their news from the army. The rebels are well organized and well armed, they’ll win eventually.”

“How can they be so well armed? Isn’t there an embargo?”

He gave her a patronising smile, more like the old Angel. “You don’t know anything, do you? Men like Garcia. Did you meet him? He was at the party.”

“Reyes?”

“He’s CIA. Couldn’t you smell it on him?”

“But the Americans don’t want the rebels to win.”

“Of course they don’t, but they’re hedging their bets in case they do. Just like my new father-in-law.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“If you want to know how the world is really run, baby, you should have dinner at our house, when my father and Salvatore have finished eating and light up their cigars. Then you wouldn’t look so wide-eyed. Salvatore thinks that whoever is in power, they’ll need the tourist dollars he brings in. He also thinks he can use Fidel to leverage Lansky out of Havana and run the whole show himself. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I stared at him. I couldn’t tell if he was being sardonic or if he truly admired his new relative.

“So Papi was right. You’re marrying a criminal.”

“Who told you that? He’s a legitimate businessman,” he said, and looked sulky about what I’d said.

“I don’t care about politics, Angel. I care about us.”

“So do I, baby. You know I love you, don’t you?”

“But you’re marrying another girl. You’re going to another country.”

“But you’re all I care about.”

“Then do something about it!”

“What can I do?” He took my hand, held it so tight it hurt. “We could get away on our own for a little while. Go to the beach out of town, I know a little place.”

“And do what?”

An awkward smile. “You know.”

I did know. He just wanted to screw me, have a bit of fun before he got married. Was this why he had brought me here, was this what he needed to talk to me about so badly?

I stood up. “I have to go.”

He caught my wrist. “Please, baby. I can’t sleep thinking about you.”

I leaned down, my lips brushing his ear. “Take a sleeping pill.”

I stamped back across the square to the car. I wasn’t surprised that he had asked me to go to the beach with him a few weeks before he married another girl, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that I had been so tempted to say yes.

Chapter 14

Luis drove down La Rampa, toward the harbour. I stared out of the window but I didn’t see the shoeshine boys or the prostitutes on the street corners, the cobblestone streets where boys kicked soccer balls between the traffic. I didn’t even look around to watch the little kid run from the shop with a loaf of bread, the fat baker in his white vest yelling and puffing down the street after him.

Because my world consisted of Angel and me. This was all that mattered.

A few minutes later we pulled up outside Inocencia's apartment. I could feel the heat from the pavement as I got out of the car. It felt like it was going to melt my shoes.

As I climbed the stairs I thought about her performance at the club. It was hard to reconcile that torchy, tortured singer with the restrained and elegant Miss Velasquez, my piano teacher. But then I supposed we all keep a part of ourselves hidden from the world. If my father knew about Angel and me, the things I had done - about the things I had imagined and not yet done - he would have died.

But Inocencia's private self sang in public six nights a week; that was the secret of being a
bolerista
. My own bolero belonged in a diary I kept in a locked drawer in my bedroom.

I heard music playing on a scratchy Victrola. Edith Piaf, “La Vie en Rose.” The door was unlocked and I pushed it open. I stopped halfway into the room.

The bedroom door was ajar. How long was it before Inocencia realised I was there? Long enough. She was too busy enjoying herself, or it certainly looked that way. Her fingers were clawing at the sheets and her eyes were rolled back in her head.

Then suddenly she sat up and stared at me. She gasped.

They had both been making so much noise they hadn’t heard me come in. Inocencia's glasses were on the bedside table, her hair was loose and tangled; she was a
bolerista
even without her clothes, down to the beads of sweat between her breasts and the look of anguish and ecstasy on her face. Her lover hadn’t even got around to taking her blouse off. He, however, was naked - no, not completely, he still had on an expensive wrist watch.

It’s not the notes, Magdalena, it’s the music
.

She jumped to her feet and slammed the door.

“It’s all right, I’ll start practising my étude,” I said to the closed door.

I put my music books on top of the piano, sat down and opened the lid, then I stretched my back and cracked my knuckles. I heard them dressing in the bedroom.

I closed my eyes. Bach’s prelude in C major.
You have to live it, you have to feel it
. I started playing, hardly thinking about the notes. I thought about what I had just seen. I didn’t know that a man might do that to a woman. Inocencia clearly loved every moment of it.

I thought that I would love it, too.

I had only ever seen one man naked, and that was Angel and Inocencia's lover was nothing like Angel. Angel was smooth and lean, he didn’t have such thick muscles and dark hair on his chest and his belly. And the rest of him...well he was not as...intimidating.

I wasn’t sure something like that would ever fit inside me. Not that I would ever be in a position to find out, of course.

What did I feel? Disgusted? Shocked? Or was I just jealous? I had never moaned or tossed about like that with Angel. Perhaps I was missing something, and perhaps, no matter what Angel might say, it wasn’t all my fault.

Inocencia came out of the bedroom, her face still flushed. Her hair had been hurriedly tied back in a bun, but a few strands were still loose. She smoothed down her skirt.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said. Her hands were shaking.”

“I couldn’t say the same for you.”

“Your lesson isn’t until tomorrow.”

“It’s Wednesday today.”

“No, it’s Tuesday.”

I stared at her. She was right, I’d made a mistake.

She looked at the piano. “I’ve never heard you play so well.”