Naked in Havana Read Free Page A

cloth twisting between his fingers.
    I leaned on the bonnet. “You know where I was this afternoon, don’t you, Luis?”
    He nodded.
    “This is our secret.”
    “I know what a secret is.”
    “And you know I know yours.”
    Another nod.
    “Good,” I said. “We understand each other.”
    As I walked away he came around the car and rubbed at the coachwork where the rich bitch had left her sweaty handprint.
     

     
    I went back inside, dreading the ritual of dinner. I loved spending time with Papi, but tonight I didn’t know what to do with myself. Acting as if everything was all right was torture. Three years Angel had chased me, watching me through the window when I was at dance school, always pushing his way to the front whenever our drama class put on a play. Sometimes he would park his car in the street outside my window and play his radio too loud and stare up at the window.
    Papi never let him near me, Angel had a reputation, and even if he didn’t, Papi wasn’t going to let me go out with a boy without a duenna . But I always knew I was going to be his one day, and it was fun making him wait. I was beautiful, I knew it from the looks I got in the street, but he was my perfect fit, the one I had chosen as the handsome prince for the lonely princess.
    So how could he choose some other girl? How could he?
    I had been a virgin before him, I had given him the prize every other man in Havana would have died for. He had thrown it back in my face.
    This was not how it was meant to be.
    Was it love or was it just pride? All I knew was there was only one man in my life, and I wasn’t going to let some skinny American puta get in the way of what was rightfully mine.
     
     
     

Chapter 3

     
     
    Angel was undressing another girl, and she was beautiful, with blonde American hair and pink American nipples and big American breasts. He was kissing her and telling her how lovely she was and how much he loved her. He had her dress off, his hands were all over her, and she was unbuttoning his pants and I was standing over the bed screaming at her: “Take your hands off that, it’s mine.”
    I opened my eyes. I glanced at my papi sitting next to me in the back seat of our Chevy Bel Air and smiled.
     

     
    I stared out of the window. Whores in short pink skirts lounged in doorways, a mulatto in a straw trilby carried a sheet of lottery tickets, newsboys hawked newspapers, there was a fruit vendor selling melons with a huge cigar stuck in his mouth.
    As always, there was too much traffic on the Paseo; trucks piled with pineapples and bananas and sugar cane bumping their way through the potholes, big American Fords and Chryslers honking their horns, goats and pigs wandering across the road. They never got above ten miles an hour.
    I hated this crush; I just wanted to get there. I was nervous. I had spent all day getting ready, trying on dresses, putting on makeup. I stole a glance at myself in the rearview mirror. How could he say no to me?
    Papi must have read my mind. “You look beautiful,” he said and smiled. “All the boys will be after you.”
    “I don’t care for boys.”
    Luis looked at me in the mirror. His eyes were hard.
    “One day someone will come along and sweep you off your feet,” Papi said.
    One already had. But how could I tell him that?
    Papi was anxious and bad tempered whenever we went out. Men always stared and he didn’t like it. If they stared too hard he would walk right up to them and put his finger in their faces and warn them off. But today the ones staring would all be friends, or sons of his friends, and I had decided I would give them something to stare at. I would smile back at all of them and make Angel burn with jealousy.
    I had dressed in white, bare shoulders but no cleavage, my black hair in a French braid, and my red tango shoes.
    A woman could dress like a virgin, but you always knew her soul by her shoes.
    I could see now what had happened. Angel’s father was a big pushy