by Karen Harper
“Yes, okay,” Nick threw over his shoulder. He, Jace and Claire had decided that they would go with her tourists-to-the-hotel plan. But first they were going into the heart of the city to the university area.
“Next stop,” she said. “Here, we get out here.” She shouted “Chofe!” to the bus driver over the noise and got up to lead them to the exit. Nick hefted Lexi, and they straggled out into an area where ficus trees lined the avenues and some lovely old buildings cast sharp shadows.
“This way,” Gina said, starting out with Heck at her side. Nick reminded himself he had to tell him not to answer every question Gina asked, despite her charms. They’d been talking about life in the US most of the way here.
His legs were stiff after sitting tense for so long. Gina turned away from the vista ahead with large homes and the huge main university building beyond, leading them toward a run-down-looking place that must have once been beautiful.
Heck turned back to tell them, “Gina says she can take me later to see the small hotel and hacienda my grandfather owned. She said not to get my hopes up that they look like my family said.”
Which, Nick saw, was the name of the game in this area where Gina lived, in what he would call student housing—cheap student housing. Her building must have once been grand but it was falling apart. The broken back gate they went in took them past a long-empty swimming pool with a broken diving board. They had to duck around tropical plants, no doubt once tended, now run rampant like a jungle. They walked in on the ground floor and followed her up three flights of dusty, partly crumbling stairs.
Jace carried Lexi now. She was always clinging to one of them, and Nick could see why. If he was nerved up and Claire looked it too, what must this child be thinking?
“This the old servants’ stairs,” Gina told them. “Wider ones in front, but we not need to see people if they not on canvas.”
“Campus,” Heck corrected her. “You said to tell you if you use a wrong word.”
“Campus, campus,” Gina recited. “I was even thinking for one momentito it might be circus.”
Claire said, “But your English is quite good.”
“I learn most of it from my Russian professor of anatomy couple years ago. English from a Russian, a good joke, yes?”
Nick saw Claire nod. He knew she was relieved to hear the explanation for the girl’s unusual accent. Like him, Claire’s brain had been running wild with suspicions about Russian spies and Cubans following them. That was ridiculous, of course, at least so far, but she had good instincts and she’d whispered to him more than once on the bus that the back of her neck was prickling with her woman’s intuition that they were being watched. He’d just forced a smile and shook his head at her. Of course they were being watched, but just because they stood out on the rural bus.
“No one should be here in my apartment, so no worry,” Gina assured them again as she had when she’d laid out her plan last night at her parents’ house. “My two girlfriends busy with their—their admirers, and Eduardo, he is away until late tomorrow, so you be gone by then, be taken care of.”
Claire’s stare collided with Nick’s. There were two ways to interpret what Gina had just said. But, right now, they had no choice but to trust her.
* * *
Claire nearly collapsed onto the sunken settee in the main room of the apartment Gina shared with two other women and one man. The antique piece was covered with faded and worn red velvet, probably a survivor of the good old days. A few other dark wood furniture pieces looked patched together from somewhere grand, a ball-footed table and five mismatched chairs, a cubbyhole desk that boasted a laptop. Heck hovered over that as if it was a magnet.
“Berto,” Gina said, “I tell you, it only go to university sites unless Eduardo connects to the wires we have to string outside, along rooftops. Under that pillowcase, our telemundo.” She pointed. “But unless he left the packet for the week here, sorry, but little Meggie can’t watch old TV shows today.”
“The packet?” Heck said.
“We pool some money, he take our hard drive to a secret location and get it loaded with mostly American TV. We see game shows, watch things like Homeland, about spies and secret agents, so don’t think we don’t know American things. I told you, I love America.
“Okay, now,” she went on, shrugging off her backpack and disappearing into one of the three doors that must lead to sleeping quarters—and, hopefully, a bathroom. “Here some suitcases you can use, look like you flew into Havana.”
She dragged out three, two of which looked presentable, despite their scuffed surface and small size. “You have to pretend they are heavy—tourists always come and go with heavy ones—but you won’t have much in them. How about I take Lorena and Berto, and we try buy a change of clothes for all of you, then you try look like European or Canadian or something.”
“Or something is right,” Bronco spoke up, though he hadn’t been saying much.
“Berto,” Nick said with a stare at Heck, “we’ll all go out later to see your family’s places, so keep to business now, okay?”
“Oh, sure, boss. I waited my whole life to see those places, wishing I could get them back, so I can stand it a little longer.”
Nick gave Heck two fifty-dollar bills he’d taken out from his plastic money belt this morning and had stuck in the front pocket of his pants. Gina’s eyes widened when she saw them. “Oh, I hope they have money give us back. Maybe we best go into a real shop, not somewhere on the street. We’ll bring back food too, not be gone long. You want nap, is okay to use my friends’ beds. Jenna looking like she can sleep right there,” she said with a nod at Claire. “So—you not answer the door. This plan, it will work. If it does, you think your friends who come get you in a boat will mind one more person? It would kill my parents if I go, but I got to look ahead—just kidding, I think. All of us got to keep our eyes ahead, even if it is a dark road at times.”
* * *
Jace thought things were looking up when their Spanish-speaking trio were back in an hour with a change of clothes for everyone and hot tamales. Gina hauled out cans of a soft drink called TuKola from a tiny refrigerator in the corner. The girl had a good eye for clothing sizes. His jeans fit pretty well, though they were beige. Ironically, they’d got Nick the same outfit, which made them look more like the brothers they were pretending to be. Lexi liked her yellow-and-white-striped dress and kept saying Lily would like it, so she must be remembering some friend of hers from home he hadn’t met. Claire’s outfit was white tennis shoes with a turquoise three-piece slacks outfit, though the blue kind of clashed with her red hair.
With Bronco bringing up the rear and Gina leading, they set out in separate groups, walking a few yards apart to see Heck’s Cuban family’s past property. All wore sunglasses Gina had bought from the man on the bus. Nick carried a map of this area called El Vedado that Heck had bought. “El Vedado, that means ‘the forbidden,’” Heck whispered to Jace, “but don’t know why.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t find out and don’t like the answer,” Jace told him.
* * *
As tired and wary as she was, Claire thought the Vedado was lovely. Some of the mansions dated back to the 1860s, but most were from the 1920s. Many were still kept up, though some were in total disrepair. It was hilly and windy up here, a lovely day that partly lifted her spirits.
Heck, though, she noted, was a mess. He was finally so close to his heritage, one he shared with the now-deceased grandfather he still cherished. Gina was as good as a tour guide—that was, until she led them to a break in an iron fence behind a bougainvillea bush and said, “We cut through here. Good shortcut and beautiful inside. We never stop to pay at the gate—too much.”
Heck said, “But it’s a cemetery. What if we get caught without a ticket? We don’t need to be reported.”
“Is
okay,” Gina said with a quick downward slice of her hand. “We cut through here all the time, to university. Berto, it closer to your family house too. The guards at the gate know my friend Francesca, ignore us even if they see us. Come on, everyone through.”
Maybe it was her narcolepsy meds speaking, but once inside, Claire felt she had actually stepped into a city of the dead. She was stunned to see so many life-size stone statues of long-gone people. Several had their arms outspread as if to welcome them. Again, she felt that strange, shivery sense that they were being watched or followed, but it was surely just the marble eyes on them and the blank darkness peering through the grates of elaborate crypts. Even in the warm afternoon sun, she shuddered again. Shadows seemed to reach out, trying to touch them or snag their steps. She took Lexi’s hand and ignored what the child was whispering about someone named Lily.
“Famous Cubans, big monuments here,” Gina told them, pointing this way and that. “Over that way, old-time independence leader General Gomez and Eduardo Chibas’s tomb back there. To protest the cruel government, he killed himself during a radio broadcast before the revolution, so bold and brave!”
Claire saw Nick’s head snap around. Any mention of suicide shook him up.
“When he was buried here,” Gina went on, “a young university student, Fidel Castro, did jump on his grave and make a big speech, started the revolt against the old ways. But we going by the one I want you to see, ’specially you, Jenna, since you have little Meggie,” she said, turning to look closely at Claire.
And maybe not only little Meggie, Claire thought. She was still obsessing over her missed period but tried to tell herself that all this upheaval could have made her body skip it. She still hadn’t told Nick, since he didn’t need another distraction right now.
“Was it someone famous who had a daughter?” Claire asked as they skirted around the site Gina must be referring to. Again, the raised tombs were crowded so close together it felt oppressive, as if all that stonework was leaning in. They seemed to be pretty much in the center of the massive cemetery. Ahead of them loomed the marble figure of a woman clinging to a tall cross with one arm and a baby in her other. Claire gasped. But for a slightly rounder face, the statue looked like her. Nick and Jace both gaped at it, then her.
“Look, Mommy,” Lexi said, tugging on her arm. “It’s you! But you don’t have a baby. And the statue of the little girl with her head bowed standing over by the flowers—that could be me!”
“That’s really somethin’!” Bronco said when the others seemed suddenly voiceless. Nita kept crossing herself. The flowers strewed or carefully placed around the statue reminded Claire of the photos of the floral excess when Princess Diana died. It was almost as if this woman had just died yesterday.
Jace cleared his throat and put in, “They say there are doubles for everyone somewhere. But this lady lived and died a long time ago. Look, Jenna, she was your age now.”
Gina pointed out the woman’s burial vault nearby, one with four huge iron rings.
“This my favorite place in all this Necropolis Cristobal Colon,” Gina said, her voice so solemn. They all stopped, gathered around her. “This the tomb of Senora Amelia Goryi, called La Milagrosa, the miraculous one. She died giving a birth in 1901. Her husband so sad, he devious.”
“Devastated?” Nick prompted, his deep voice shaky.
“That’s it. He have a broken heart and visit the grave many times a day. Always, he knocked with one of those iron rings to wake her up and backing away to keep her grave and statue in sight longest he can. But here’s the thing,” she added, turning to Claire. “When her body exhumed years later, it not one bit decayed. And the dead baby which was buried at her feet was in her arms! So she was holy, not a saint yet, but a special help, a miracle. Many people come here, knock on the tomb and back away, like her husband did, praying she solve their problems.”
Nick put his arm around Claire’s shoulders as if he had to protect her, and Jace stepped closer. She couldn’t help it but still stared into the stone face of the statue. The slant of sun made it look as if her lips were moving. One of Claire’s professors had always made his students memorize that being a forensic psychologist meant “The dead still talk if you know how to listen.”
Claire prayed this statue would not haunt her, not talk to her in dreams. She’d had narcoleptic nightmares in which the dead clutched at her in the night. Her doctor had said that was typical of the disease—and maybe her chosen career—and she’d managed to deal with it. But now, with all this...
Nick’s voice cut through her agonizing. “So, Gina, are you thinking we could rely on this long-dead woman’s favor to get us safely out of here?”
“I hope and pray so. If not, we, the living, we must find the way.”
5
Nick had never seen Heck cry. The guy was usually all business, rational and unemotional, his no-nonsense tech adviser, and for five years he’d relied on him for that. But seeing the small, once-elegant hotel his grandfather had owned and that had been taken away from him in the Cuban revolution moved Nick’s friend to tears. Luckily, it was still named La Rosa, so that and the street name had been enough for Gina to locate it without giving out his family’s real last name.
“It’s a mess,” Heck choked out, glaring across the avenue at the splotchy exterior of the building where blue paint had peeled away like huge scabbed sores. The intricate metal balconies overhanging the Quinta Avenida were rusted and looked dangerous, although laundry hung from some like mismatched flags, and a few had people leaning on the railing and smoking, just watching life go by—and watching them.
Gina put her arm around his waist, and Heck leaned into her. “Many once-grand places like this now,” she told him, her voice soothing. “Lots of families live there, so that helps that they have shelter, yes? Place like this, so many of them, called ciudadelas, like a little city to many people. Best we not go in, yes, Berto?”
“Right, right,” he said as Nick put his hand on Heck’s shoulder. “But to be so close and yet so far.”
“Also,” Gina said, “we not want to stand here staring. Most neighborhoods still have what we call CDRs, you know, a kind of neighborhood watch to report strangers or bad talk. We should move on now.”
“Right,” he repeated. “I dread seeing what’s left of the family home, but I’d still like to walk down to the old hacienda.”
They started off again. Nick hoped Gina didn’t pick up on the fact that Heck was going by the last name Ochoa, and he hoped he hadn’t told her it was his maternal grandfather who once owned these buildings, not his father’s father, in case she checked on that.
Nick was trying to keep an eye on Claire, who had obviously been shaken by the statue in the cemetery, and he kept glancing back to be sure they weren’t being followed. He could tell Jace was really on edge too, but this was the least they could do for Heck. Best he see all this, then put it behind him. If they hadn’t come with him, Nick was afraid he might have gone off with Gina alone, and he didn’t want anyone to be out of his sight here. They had to escape soon. The entire place oppressed him, especially because the odds were good Ames was here somewhere, lurking.
They trekked down what was turning into a lovely avenue, one with fewer cracks and potholes, and little traffic. Suddenly, Lexi said, “I’m tired of walking and Lily is too,” and yanked her hand from Claire’s.
Nick’s gaze slammed into Claire’s. She said, “I guess all this has given our Meggie an imaginary friend.”
“She’s not ’maginary,” Lexi insisted, her voice sassy, “just because you can’t see her, because I can. She has her own talk only I know. Not Spanish. Ours.”
Lexi—holding no one’s hand but pretending to—turned and skipped back to walk with Jace, who was bringing up the rear.
“I can understand her being distraught,” Nick whispered. �
�She ever do this before?”
“Never. But she’s missing her best friend and cousin Jilly.”
“Jilly, not Lily?”
“Yes. Maybe she’s put that together with her own name, I don’t know. And with all this fear and upheaval, I hope we can keep her under control—keep her being Meggie.”
“Yeah. We could all use an imaginary friend, but as soon as we check into that big hotel, I’m going to try to get us a real friend, namely Rob Patterson. Let’s let Le—Meggie have this friend but try to comfort her and keep her grounded.”
“But grounded in reality?” Claire challenged. “Reality is pretty awful right now. I’m so shaky. I just hope I can help her, calm her.”
“You’re taking your meds?”
“Thank God, I brought extra. Nick, if I run out, I—”
Gina called back from ahead of them, “There it is! And, look, Berto, it looks fine, maybe like the old days, yes?”
Nick saw his friend wipe his eyes again. Ahead of them where Gina pointed, Nick recognized the big hacienda from a photo Heck used to have as a screen saver on his laptop. This large, two-story white building could have stepped intact from the past. Its wood-and-glass windows were thrown wide open on the top floor. The well-kept place sported a filigree of black iron balconies, an orange tiled roof, white curtains fluttering at an upper window, an ornate, gated entry with painted tiles and the musical sound and spray of a fountain within all framed by blooming pink-and-white bougainvillea.
They all stood and stared. Finally, Heck spoke. “Just like it was before my family had it taken away with the hotel and our country house—had our lives taken away. Look, some sort of sign by the gate, there on the wall.”
