was quite beautiful. And it was just dinner. He met her eyes. There was something tender in them. His stomach quivered. He stepped aside and allowed her into the taxi.
“El Ajillo?” the driver asked.
“Yes. I’ve heard it’s pretty good, no?”
“Señor,” the driver said with authority, “es el mejor. The best in the world. I can promise you, never in your life have you tasted such food.”
Frank leaned back on the seat as the taxi left Prado behind and traveled down the Malecón, Havana’s seaside boulevard. Marisol sat with her face pressed against the window. She seemed sad, absorbed in her own problems, a dark world of lost nights. But he knew nothing of her life.
“So.” He swallowed his fear. “Have you ever been there?”
“Qué va, chico, and how would I pay for it?”
Maybe it had been a mistake. He had misread her eyes. He had to be careful. She could be anybody.
“But tell me,” she said, “how is it in Miami?”
“I live in New York.”
“I would love to go to Miami. They say it’s just like another Habana.”
“Yeah.” Frank laughed. “You could say that.”
She adjusted the thin dress strap that had slipped down her arm and turned back to the road. Frank watched her for a moment. Suddenly she seemed shy, distant. Perhaps it was all a game. Or business. Not all jineteras were professional prostitutes. Something about Marisol seemed tough and innocent at once. He wanted to pull her close, hear her story. But instead he turned away and watched the buildings race past on his left. Dim lights spilled out of open windows, all amber and green. Along the Malecón there were no billboards, no neon, no signs, no crowds, no drive-thrus. Havana was everything New York City was not: the traffic was light, the streets were dark, peaceful. People strolled without hurry. He rolled down the window and breathed in the salty ocean air spiced with refinery fumes and a thousand perfumes of flowers and women and cooking stoves and the life that was Havana. When he exhaled, he released all of New York City, all of Maduros and Pepe and Justo and Filomeno. The tropical night swallowed it whole without so much as a gasp.
“Caballero,” the driver said, “I have the air conditioning for your comfort.”
Frank caught his eyes through the rearview mirror. He could be an informant. A spy. He’d often heard taxi drivers were the eyes and ears of the Castro government.
El Ajillo was a rustic open-air restaurant in the style of a bohío. It had a thatched roof and long wooden tables set under the canopy of a pair of thick almond trees strung with Christmas-style lights. The place was packed.
A conjunto played Chan Chan over the buzz of dinner conversations. Waiters moved between the tables delivering large family-style platters of chicken along with rice and beans, plantains and yucca served from huge clay casseroles. The aroma of the food floated over the restaurant like something sacred. It was a smell without definition, like a fresh rain—a storm—but so much more: exotic and ethereal, yet vaguely familiar.
The maitre’d informed them it would be at least an hour before they could be seated. They nudged their way through the crowd and found a place to stand at the end of the bar.
Marisol sipped her Tropicola and looked casually around the restaurant as if she were trying to recognize someone. “So what do you do in New York?”
It sounded like she was turning on her program. “My brother and I have a restaurant.”
“¿De verdad? What kind, McDonald?”
“No. A real restaurant. Cuban food.” But that was a lie. Justo’s culinary inventions—appetizers of garlic octopus, chorizo and grilled shrimp in sugarcane skewers, entrees of roast quail with a ginger and sherry reduction, lamb steamed in banana leaf with a tart and spicy guava sauce—had nothing to do with Cuba.
“I’d like to go to the McDonald one day and eat a Whopper.”
Frank laughed and took a long sip of his mojito. He loved the simplicity of her wish. But it also made him sad—simple, innocent dreams like those of a child. It was something he saw in himself at times.
Marisol peeked into her glass. “So, in your country, are you very rich?”
His eyes traced the smooth line of her arm. “I wish.”
“I wish,” Marisol said seriously, “that one day I’ll meet someone who will take me away from this place.”
He stirred his drink with the small plastic straw. “Is that what Cuban girls dream of?”
She didn’t look up. She just sipped her drink and made a small gesture with her hand. “That’s the only dream a Cuban girl can have.”
“Does it happen a lot?”
“What?” She threw her head to the side and stared into his eyes. “That they find a foreigner who marries them and takes them away like in a fucking fairy tale? Yes, it happens.” Then she lowered her head and whispered, “To the lucky ones.”
Frank thought she was playing him like a game, but there was something delicate in her manner, like her emotions were made of glass. “Has it happened to someone you know?”
She stared at the ice floating in her Tropicola, the reflections sparkling like tiny stars. “To some friends. And to my sister.” Then, she tossed her head to the side and called the bartender, “Oye, dame un ron con Coca Cola.”
“Where did she go?”
“Who?”
“Your sister.”
“Too far.”
She was dropping this on him like a line. Perhaps that was all it was. Maybe sympathy was her weapon. He reminded himself to be careful. After all, she was a prostitute. Reality was upside down here. This was a place where doctors drove taxis, waiters were rich and a girl’s best chance for a future was to offer herself to a foreigner. Or she could be a government agent. Anything was possible.
“She went to Spain.”
“What part?”
“What part of Spain? Chico, how would I know?” She threw her arms in the air and her lip trembled. “Spain, that’s all I know. She hasn’t written or called since she left almost a year ago. She promised she would arrange for me to come, even if it was just for a visit. But I’ve heard nothing. Nada. ¡Coño!”
“I’m sorry.” She had pulled him in. He wanted to hold her in his arms and have her tell him more, but all he said was, “Do you want to talk about something else? What do you do? I mean when, tú sabes…”
“When I’m not jineteando?” she said with a hint of humor. “I’m waiting to get into the tourism school. I want to get a job in a hotel or a restaurant, somewhere where I can make some real fula. I was studying literature at the University but, chico, you don’t know how useless that career is now. I could just as well study Marxist theory.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine the fools that spent six years studying that mierda? What will they do now? Nada, chico, they’re lost!”
“You don’t have to be so angry.”
She was trembling.
“At least not with me.”
“¿Sabes qué? I don’t have to be here. I don’t have to be with you. I don’t have to have sex with you.”
“Who said anything about sex? You were the one who asked me to take you to dinner, and now you’re arguing with me like I was the cause of all your problems.”
Their eyes met and the corners of her lips turned upwards in the slightest hint of a smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m new at this. And sometimes I’m