“Don’t think about it.”
“I was starting to change. I could feel it changing in me, and he was dragging me back down.”
I don’t contradict her. She’s just a child. She’s going to have to live with this a long time.
“Time’s up,” says the guard.
“I love you, Mano. I know you don’t believe me.”
Walking out of PNR headquarters onto Havana’s flood-ravaged streets, maybe I do believe her. Alejandro wouldn’t let her go. She was trapped in the world of the jinetera. So she clawed to get out, thrust the scalpel into him to break the lock.
Back in Vedado, Habaneros are drying rugs, towels, and papers on their patios. At least now, in the water’s retreat, there’s salt. In the flooded neighborhoods, they’re scraping it off the walls. If it hadn’t been for the storm, I might have remained the monster, the derelict, but now I’m becoming the doctor again. I return home to pick through the debris in my own attic. Beneath a pile of my scattered books I uncover the tattered poster of El Ché. That’s where I find the photos Elena loaned her palero, hiding behind El Ché, taped to his back. The lunar is on my right cheek in the print, on my left in the reversepositive, white like a crescent moon. I walk them down to the Malecón. In Vedado, across from where the baseball fields used to be, that’s where I take El Ché and the conflicted young man with the stain on his face. I cast them off to the Florida Straits and they float face-up on the surface of the water. The evening is bright and clear—a perfect night to walk along the Malecón.
Also available from Akashic Books
FAST EDDIE, KING OF THE BEES
a novel by Robert Arellano
236 pages, trade paperback original, $13.95
“A tight close-up, mile-a-minute monkey-cam with more word plays than Eminem.”
—Arthur Nersesian, author of
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx
“A Dickensian journey on speed … bizarrely picaresque and wittily ribald … deliriously funny.”
—Providence Journal
DON DIMAIO OF LA PLATA
a novel by Robert Arellano
200 pages, trade paperback original, $13.95
“A former student of Robert Coover, Arellano has created a brilliant novel of political satire based on an actual mayoral stint in Providence, RI … Recommended for all fiction collections.” —Library Journal
“A raucously funny satire of machine politics wrapped up in a parody of Don Quixote.”—Chicago Reader
SOUTH BY SOUTH BRONX
a novel by Abraham Rodriguez
292 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
“A street poet like Bob Dylan, Rodriguez has woven a lyrically inventive and sophisticated noir … Full of unforgettable one liners, South by South Bronx manages to film a neighborhood filled with beauty, danger, and magic. One fearless, hell of a literary mystery novel.”
—Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams
RUINS a novel by Achy Obejas
300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
“Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas’s Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously … one of Cuba’s most important writers.”
—Junot Díaz, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
HAVANA NOIR edited by Achy Obejas
360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand new stories by: Leonardo Padura, Pablo Medina, Carolina García-Aguilera, Ena Lucía Portela, and others.
“A remarkable collection … Throughout these 18 stories, current and former residents of Havana deliver gritty tales of depravation, depravity, heroic perseverance, revolution, and longing in a city mythical and widely misunderstood.” —Miami Herald
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of Shamus, Anthony, Robert L. Fish Memorial awards
Brand new stories by: Pete Hamill, Maggie Estep, Ken Bruen, Sidney Offit, Nelson George, and others.
“A stunningly perfect combination … story after story is a revelation [and] the writing is flat-out superb.”
—Laura Lippman, winner of Edgar and Shamus awards
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, [email protected]
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $8 to each book ordered.)
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