Havana Lunar
Page 12
“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.
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