The Cat King of Havana

by Tom Crosshill

  I tensed in the dark. It had been so easy to tell?

  “That’s good,” she whispered. “Your first time should be a special thing.”

  I lay there and said not a thing.

  It’s supposed to be this life-changing event, losing your virginity. And I guess in a way it was.

  Not because the act itself was earth-shattering, though. I mean, sex is great, but it’s still just neurons firing, chemicals releasing, muscles spasming—it’s this physical thing; you do it and you’re still the same person living the same life.

  The biggest thing about losing my virginity was this: I no longer had to worry about losing it. Years of plans, hopes, fantasies, and expectations collapsed to the reality of that sweaty fumbling act. I no longer had to wonder—I knew.

  It was the lifting of a weight I hadn’t known I carried. And yet, freed of this weight, I felt no elation or triumph.

  I only felt tired. And wondered if it could have been different.

  I woke to find Tania pulling on her clothes. It was early morning and gray light filtered through the curtains. The whole world seemed gray to me at that moment.

  “I better get back to my room before Dad’s up,” Tania told me, and smiled.

  Her smile was sweet and simple. Nothing hinted that the Tania I’d seen last night at Las Cuevas—the Tania who’d gripped me hard as she kissed me—was this same girl. It seemed a curious thing to me, that one person could be both.

  I sat up against the headboard. “I’m going back to Havana today.”

  Tania’s smile faded slowly. “I know.”

  “I can’t change the ticket.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “We’ve got a dance competition to prepare for.”

  Tania pulled her shirt over her head, tucked it in, then stilled herself. She looked me in the eyes for a long time, her face calm and serious.

  I got the sense she was gathering her courage. That scared me.

  At last she spoke. “Yesterday I decided I wouldn’t regret sleeping with you. You’re only my second guy, you know, and you seemed different . . . and today you . . . but I decided I wouldn’t regret it.”

  I said nothing.

  “Do you think we’ll meet again, Rick Gutiérrez?”

  I flinched. Opened my mouth to invent something. To spout one of Yosvany’s lines. All that came out was, “Uh . . .”

  Tania nodded, a slow motion. She didn’t look surprised. That was the thing—she didn’t look surprised at all.

  For a moment longer she studied me. Then she turned for the door.

  I thought I saw something glisten in the corner of her eye.

  “If you ever come to New York—” I began.

  But Tania left and closed the door behind her.

  chapter twenty-one

  REGRETS

  It sucks waking up one day to realize you’re a dick.

  Most people do dickish things from time to time. Usually you find a way to dodge the blame. He started it, she had it coming, or I had a tough day, I didn’t mean it, that’s not really me. But sometimes you do something and look at it, and there’s no way around it: you’re a dick.

  I had led Tania on so she would sleep with me.

  I should have told her last night that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. That I was leaving and not coming back. But I’d wanted to see what it was like, sleeping with a girl—wanted it too much to tell her the truth. So I’d stayed silent and allowed her to believe . . . allowed her to hope.

  I wondered if Yosvany ever felt like this.

  In the hours that remained before my bus to Havana I stayed in my room so I wouldn’t have to face Tania again. When I finally came out with my suitcase, she was nowhere to be seen. Eduardo took my money and asked about my stay and said good-bye at the door with a pleasant smile and a firm handshake. I couldn’t get out of his sight quickly enough.

  It was an overcast day, relatively cool. I sweated profusely as I dragged my suitcase down the cobbled streets to the bus station. I half feared, half hoped Tania might appear at any corner. She never did.

  Someone else came, though. I’ve no idea how he’d found out I was leaving, but there he stood outside the bus station. Baggy yellow T-shirt, worn, paint-flecked jeans. Ricardo Eugenio Echeverría López in all his glory. He squinted so hard in the morning sun that his eyes almost disappeared in his fleshy face. There was a familiar cookie tin in his hands.

  He didn’t move toward me when he saw me. Only looked at me, as if hoping. I almost passed him by. I didn’t feel like talking to my mother’s old lover this morning. But this could be the last time I saw him.

  I pulled my suitcase to rest against the wall. “You came.”

  Ricardo studied his shoes for a while. The sneakers had once been white.

  “I had forgotten what it’s like, to believe you can make a difference,” he said.

  I blinked.

  “I was once like you,” he said. “Passionate. Sure of myself. I wanted to do the right thing.”

  Ah, yes. That was me all right.

  “Here.” Ricardo thrust the cookie tin at me. “Publish my poems. Let people read them. Tell everyone I wrote them. I, Ricardo Eugenio Echeverría López.”

  I stared at the metal tin. You’ve got the wrong guy, I wanted to say. I’m only here to have fun. To have fun, whatever it takes.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said. “You’ll get in trouble.”

  At this Ricardo’s eyes focused on me, as if he was only now fully seeing me there—and his voice came hard and sure. “I know the danger better than anyone.”

  “We can’t risk—”

  “No te atrevas!” Ricardo stabbed one thick finger at my chest, so hard I stumbled back. “You came to me. You made your offer. Don’t you dare say no, now that I’ve made my decision. . . .” His words trailed off toward the end. He looked down at the tin in his hands. “It’s my choice to make.”

  I took the poems.

  Maybe it was a stupid thing to do. A dumb risk to take. A decision that wouldn’t really help anyone. But Ricardo was right—the time to think about that had been before I made the offer.

  Ricardo watched me secrete the tin away in my backpack. He straightened a little when I shut the zipper, and sighed.

  “When you publish them, say the poems are for María,” he said. “For María from Ricardo, with regrets.”

  Ana and Yosvany met me at the bus stop in Habana Vieja. They wore matching outfits—cutoff jeans, a white tee for him, a blouse for her, bright in the afternoon sun. Yosvany had one arm around Ana’s shoulders, waved at me with the other. “Hey, primo, welcome back.”

  “Hey, Rick.” Ana smiled, watching for my reaction.

  “Hey, good to see you guys.” It wasn’t a big lie. Ever since Tania walked out of my room in Trinidad, I’d felt numb. The sight of Ana and Yosvany together barely registered. “What’s new in Havana?”

  “Pablo’s furious you ran off to Trinidad,” Yosvany said. “You don’t want to hear the words he used.”

  “That’s scary, coming from you,” I said.

  “He wants us at his place early tomorrow morning.” Ana grinned. “We’re on TV in two weeks.”

  My suitcase had lost one of its wheels somewhere in the bus’s cargo hold. Half a block toward home, my arm ached like I’d been dragging a sack of potatoes across rocky ground. Maybe it was a good thing, because it distracted me from the spectacle of Ana with Yosvany’s arm about her waist. He nuzzled her neck periodically, leaving the impression of a leech suckling on its victim. Judging from the possessive glances she tossed him, Ana didn’t see it that way.

  “Yosvany had a great idea,” she told me. “I can use the TV show as the climax of my film. Rodrigo will get me some official footage to use.”

  “Yosvany has all the best ideas,” I said.

  “These past couple of days we’ve been going around Havana filming the competitors,” Ana said. “Doing interviews, shooting their rehearsals. We�
�re up against some amazing dancers.”

  “It should be fun,” I said.

  “Should be funny, at least,” Yosvany said.

  Ana gave him a dig in the ribs. They laughed, then kissed.

  That was the general spirit of the walk home. When we got to our building, Yosvany finally released his hold on Ana. “I’ve got band practice,” he explained. “We’re planning to make a reggaeton CD. It will be huge. I’ll see you guys later.”

  Which made me wonder if he’d only come to meet me to demonstrate his claim on Ana.

  In the confines of the elevator, Ana and I managed to not look at each other. “Did you have a good time?” she asked eventually.

  “I guess.” A heat flared inside me, and I added, “Yeah, it was awesome.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I met this girl.” The words came out fast, before I could consider them.

  “Really?”

  “No need to sound so surprised,” I said.

  “No, I’m glad. What’s she like?”

  I paused, unsure how much I felt comfortable saying about Tania.

  The elevator groaned to a halt. I dragged the suitcase into the hallway and to the iron bars that enclosed Juanita’s door.

  Ana pressed the doorbell. “So?”

  “Well . . . she’s nice . . . ,” I began.

  The door opened. Yolanda stood on the threshold. Her whole body tense. Her face drawn tight. Not a hint of a smile on her lips.

  “Hi, guys,” she said loudly, then leaned forward. “Don’t tell him anything,” she whispered, a low, fierce sound.

  A shiver rushed through me. Ana swore under her breath, one of Yosvany’s favorite crudities. Neither of us was dumb enough to ask questions.

  We went inside. There was no one in the living room. The smell of coffee came strong from the kitchen.

  “Come,” Yolanda said loudly, “you have to meet someone.”

  I left the suitcase by the door and we followed her to the kitchen. There, at the head of the dining table, sat a thin balding white man, perhaps forty-five. He wore pressed tan slacks and a white striped polo shirt and a small silver watch on his wrist, stylish and certainly not cheap. He sipped coffee from Juanita’s best china with a vaguely pleasant expression that seemed alert and attentive.

  “This is my cousin Rick from New York and his friend Ana,” Yolanda said. “Kids, this is Maykel Valdes, from the government.”

  Valdes raised one hand as if to ward off Yolanda’s words. “I’m just a man working to preserve the Revolution, like your mother.” His eyes fixed on Yolanda. “And like you, of course.”

  Yolanda said nothing. Valdes nodded, as if she’d agreed. He turned his gaze to us.

  Cold fingers squeezed my spine. This guy must know something about the video.

  Now I recognized Valdes’s look. It was the look a cat gave a mouse it played with—relaxed because it was in control; alert because it wasn’t about to let lunch get away.

  Another thought came to me: Yolanda had cut her hair for nothing.

  “How do you like Cuba?” Valdes asked.

  Ana and I exchanged a glance. She spoke first. “We’ve had a wonderful time.”

  “We came to dance,” I explained. “Casino, you know?”

  Valdes’s eyebrows rose a little. “Are you good?”

  I shrugged, then realized this was not the right time for modesty. “We’re pretty decent.”

  “They can show you,” Yolanda said.

  “That’s not necessary.” Valdes hadn’t taken his eyes off us. “You’re Americans.”

  “My mother was Cuban,” I said. “I wanted to see her home.”

  “I heard so much about the Revolution growing up,” Ana said. “My father was in the Workers’ Party in Puerto Rico.”

  Huh. She’d never mentioned it before.

  “And how does the Revolution measure up to your father’s stories?” Valdes asked.

  Ana tilted her head. My fingernails dug hard into my palm.

  “Some things are like he told me,” she said. “Free medicine and schools and housing, that’s wonderful. Other things, well, maybe my father was a bit optimistic.”

  I stared at her.

  But Valdes only nodded. “So tell me, how do you keep in touch with home? By phone? Text? Email?”

  I hoped Valdes couldn’t see the cold sweat on my face. He knew about Lettuce. Or if he didn’t, he suspected.

  “We call and email occasionally,” I said. “But really, we’re too busy most of the time.”

  Valdes eyed me thoughtfully. “You’ve been on a trip?”

  I realized I still had my backpack on. Then I realized something else.

  Ricardo’s poems were in that backpack. If Valdes asked to see . . . if he read them . . .

  Visions of the Isle of Pines floated before my eyes. Rolling forests on a seacoast, and the scent of orange blossoms in the air, and me staring at it all from behind thick iron bars.

  “I spent a few days in Trinidad,” I said. “My mother was born there.”

  “I know,” Valdes said.

  The implication of his words came barreling down at me.

  Valdes brought his coffee to his lips, downed it in three long gulps, and rose from the table. “Thank you for your help, Yolanda. Please say hi to your mom from me. She’s been such a good leader for this neighborhood, an example for everybody.”

  Yolanda nodded.

  “I can only hope that you will continue this tradition,” Valdes said.

  “Of course.” Yolanda’s voice shook only a little, but I heard it. I was sure Valdes did too.

  He didn’t show it, though. “Nice to meet you, kids. Enjoy the rest of your time in our country.”

  We saw him to the door. We watched him get into the elevator and listened to the motor work as it brought him downstairs.

  Yolanda seemed rooted to the floor, unable to move even when he was long gone.

  “Come.” Ana took her hand. “Let’s go inside.”

  We sat down in the living room. Ana brought Yolanda a cup of water. It took her a while to compose herself enough to speak.

  “Someone recognized me with Miranda that day,” she told us at last. “Now there was the article, and—”

  “What article?” I asked.

  “The Guardian, that British paper, did a piece about the video,” Ana said. “They called Miranda Galvez a blogger kidnapped by unknown representatives of the Castro regime.”

  An article in the Guardian. A flash of triumph broke through my fear. “Lettuce did it.”

  “But they haven’t let Miranda go,” Yolanda said. “Valdes said it was criminals who took her, and whoever made that video and accused the government is a criminal too.”

  “They don’t know it was you.” Ana sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Or they wouldn’t be just talking.”

  “I suppose,” Yolanda said.

  Disorganized thoughts raced through my head. Maybe we should run. Get on the first flight to Mexico.

  Ana seemed to read my mind. “We have to act like nothing’s the matter. If we run, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

  There was a pause as we both considered this. Two and a half more weeks in Cuba. Seventeen days watching over our shoulders, worrying if we’d make it home. Seventeen sleepless nights waiting for a knock on the door.

  “Please don’t tell my mother. Maybe she won’t hear about this . . .” Yolanda didn’t sound like she believed it.

  “You were trying to help your friend,” Ana said.

  “Think what this will do to her,” Yolanda said. “She’s been the head of our CDR for ten years. That’s her life. If I get in trouble . . . I mean, she has known Miranda all her life, she’ll understand. But it will break her.”

  I wondered how it had happened that Juanita had gotten so involved with the same government that had locked up her sister’s boyfriend for twenty years—the same government that Mom escaped into exile. It was strange, t
o see a family split apart like this.

  “The worst part is, we haven’t achieved a thing,” Yolanda said. “Miranda’s still locked up, and God knows what they’re doing to her.”

  Ana took her hand, squeezed it. “You did all you could. You had to, for your friend.”

  But I wondered. Would Ricardo agree?

  Then again, maybe Ricardo would indeed have agreed with Ana.

  I reflected on this as I sat in Yosvany’s room working through Ricardo’s poems. There were perhaps two hundred pieces of paper in the cookie tin. Pages torn from a notebook, napkins, and tissues, a few sheets of printer paper, bits of newsprint, even the copyright page of a Dan Brown novel—I wondered how he’d come across that one.

  Ricardo’s handwriting covered every blank surface, some places flowing and elaborate with flourishes, others cramped and spidery. Some pages contained several poems, while other poems seemed to span more than one page, except there was no indication which excerpt connected up with which. I leafed through them with a mixed sense of trepidation and excitement. This would make for an interesting challenge.

  Not a challenge I was about to engage in Yosvany’s bedroom, though. Not when Valdes might return at any moment.

  I took Ricardo’s papers one by one and lay them down on the stone floor and photographed them carefully. Every ten sheets or so, I downloaded the pictures to my laptop and checked everything was legible. Then I encrypted the pictures and overwrote the data in the camera with zeroes. I wouldn’t risk emailing the encrypted files—better to wait till I got back to New York.

  As for the original papers, I tore them into shreds and stuffed them in a plastic bag. Technically speaking someone dedicated could piece the shreds back together, but I planned to dispose of that bag somewhere out of the way, when I was sure no one was following.

  That’s who I was now. Rick Gutiérrez, cunning spy and man of intrigue. Come to think of it, cat video entrepreneur was a pretty good cover identity.

  I was still photographing the poems when Yosvany walked in the door.

  I froze with my camera in my hand, some half dozen poems spread out on the floor.

  He looked at me, at the poems, raised his eyebrows, shrugged. He walked past me and sat down on his bed, stretched his arms with a dramatic sigh. “So. Ana says you met a girl.”