Chapter 17
“We keep running into each other.”
I turned around. It was Reyes, elegant as always, his boxer’s face and white tuxedo lending him a certain charm, I supposed. He gave me a mocking smile as if the whole world and all the women in it were there just for his own amusement.
“Well at least this time you have clothes on.”
“Are you disappointed?”
The vanity of the man! “Just relieved. Where’s your girlfriend? “
“She went to flirt with an American senator.”
I looked over at Salvatore’s table. The snake-hipped puta was pawing the handsome yankee shamelessly.
“Who are those people?”
“With Salvatore? The one everyone is looking at is a senator from Massachusetts. His name’s Kennedy. The guy next to him is an actor called Lawford, and then there’s Salvatore and the one who looks like a car salesman, his name’s Ruby. He’s a gun runner. The rest are big shots from Miami. I can’t imagine what they’re discussing at that table. If I did I’d spend the next year in front of a congressional hearing.”
“So it’s true. Salvatore’s a mobster?”
He held up his hands in mock horror. “Hear no evil, see no evil. Now what’s a beautiful girl like you doing sitting here all on your own. Don’t you want to dance?”
“I don’t like dancing.”
“But you’re Cuban. You have to like dancing.”
“My father owns this club, I don’t have to do anything.”
“I guess you’ve just never danced with someone who knows how.”
“You perhaps?”
“I didn’t say “perhaps.””
He took a cheroot out of his silver case and tapped it twice on the lid. He lit it. The orchestra started to play the “Taxi Libre.”
“May I ask you something?” he said.
“I can’t stop you.”
“Have you ever danced the tango?”
“I don’t know how.”
“If you dance with the right man you don’t have to know. But maybe you’re right, you probably couldn’t do it.”
“I can do anything!”
“I knew you’d say that. But then, talk is cheap.” He leaned close. “It’s like the piano. You can know every step, every note, but that still won’t make you a great dancer.”
“Papi would kill me.”
“Afraid?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.” It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. He just stood there smiling at me, challenging me with his eyes.
He held out his hand. He had trapped me. What could I do, if I didn’t want to look a complete fool?
He led me onto the dance floor. I felt everyone’s eyes on us; Papi would be watching, too.
“Ready?” Reyes asked.
“Of course.”
“All you have to do is let me lead. I’ll tell you what to do.”
“How?”
“You’ll feel it.”
He took my hand, the other slid around my waist. I felt the pressure, but barely, a mere brush of his wrist. He was close but our bodies did not touch in any way, except through the palms of our hands, yet I felt the heat of him everywhere. It felt more intimate than I had ever been with any man, even Angel.
“Now listen to the music,” he whispered, and somehow I knew when he would take his first paso and I slid back.
Somehow he guided me the first few steps. “It’s not about knowing the steps,” he murmured, “it’s about knowing the soul.”
He stopped, and there was a moment of stillness, and I arched back, as I had seen the real tango dancers do, for two beats of the heart.
“You see? I am not pushing, you are not leaning. No matter what you do or how long you take to do it, I will wait for you. I know your secrets now.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know how you move, that’s all I need to know.”
Just a line, I thought. But I looked in his eyes and it seemed to me that he meant it.
“Since the first time I saw you, I knew you’d make love with me like this, one day.”
“We’re just dancing.”
“No, we’re not.”
I could feel everyone in the club watching us. I supposed we did not look like the most expert couple on the dance floor, he just took me through slow, simple steps, but though the dancers around us were more practised, we seemed to draw the most attention.
One face in particular: Inocencia stood at the bar, and I knew she had not taken her eyes off us from the moment we stepped onto the dance floor. I saw my father whisper something in her ear. It was too much. I sensed the danger, and stopped. “That’s enough of a lesson for now,” I said.
Reyes glanced around. “Dios mio. If looks could kill, I’d be ashes on the floor.”
“You’re used to scandal, I’m not.”
He took my hand and led me back across the floor. I thanked him for the dance and he bowed like a gentleman.
“Papi, this is Señor Reyes Garcia,” I said.
He turned to Papi. “You have a wonderful club here,” Reyes said. “This is my favourite place in Havana.”
“You’re welcome anytime,” Papi said, but he didn’t smile.
Reyes turned back to me, took my hand and kissed it. “Thank you again for the dance.”
He walked away. My heart was pounding. I realised that some time in the last five minutes I had fallen in love with him.
Papi’s eyes were black. “I thought I told you not to go near him!”
“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.”
I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. “Just get better, Papi.”
“They told me Inocencia got hurt bad.”
“Just get some rest. Worry about all that when you’re better.”
“Are you okay?” he said, stirring, like he’d just thought of it.
“I’m fine, Papi. Not a scratch.”
“That’s good then.”
“Yes, that’s good.”
He started to doze then jerked awake again. “Go and see how Inocencia is doing, okay?”
“The doctor
s are with her, Papi. You just rest.”
“I can’t believe they did this to my club.”
He drifted off to sleep. After a while I got up to leave, kissed his hand and murmured. “We have to get out of Cuba.”
But he wasn’t asleep. He opened one puffy eye. “Why would we leave Cuba, cariña?”
“How can we stay here now?”
“They’re not driving me out of my own country. Maricóns!”
It was the first time he had sworn in front of me and not even apologized. The concussion, I supposed.
“But if we did go...we could survive, couldn’t we? We could start another club in Miami. There’s a lot of Cubans in Miami.”
“My business is here, our home is here, the music is here. There’s nothing for us in America. I’d rather die than go there.” He patted my hand. “Don’t worry, cariña. We’ll fix up the club, it’ll be like nothing ever happened. Don’t worry.”
“They bombed us, Papi. That’s something to worry about.”
“I can’t leave Havana,” he said. “I’ll die.”
He didn’t even realize what he’d said. But he was getting agitated and I didn’t want to distress him anymore. “Just rest,” I said, and he gave me a kind of a half smile and closed his eyes, and this time I decided to wait until I was sure he was asleep before I left.
I looked out of the window and watched a dirty lemon dawn creep up the sky over the roofs of Havana. This was the place I was born, but I didn’t feel like I belonged here anymore. If our own people did this to us, they weren’t our people anymore.
For the first time I pictured a world without my father; I had glimpsed it, just for a moment in the broiling smoke in the nightclub when there was nothing else to see. I was terrified to face a world where he wasn’t always right about everything, and where Havana wasn’t necessarily the best place for us to be.
I didn’t know who had put the bomb in our club, but we could no longer pretend that if we played our music and pretended not to be interested in politics that the world would pass us by. Even Reyes Garcia couldn’t keep the war form touching him and those he loved - or half loved.
Naked In Havana (Naked Series Book 1) Page 7
