Free Havana Best Friends by Jose Latour

hopes and aspirations and problems. I cooked for myself, he cooked for himself. As you can see, he kept his room locked. My TV set is the old black-and-white in the living room, I don’t own a VCR. Pablo never showed me those videos. For many years we agreed on one thing only: swapping this apartment for two smaller units, so each of us could live alone. But we never foundthe right swap; either he didn’t like the apartment he’d move to or I disliked mine. So, I’m probably the least informed person about my brother.”
    Trujillo lifted his eyes to the witnesses. Kuan remained impassive, but Zoila gave him a slight nod. The captain put the cassette back in the carton, then pulled out another one. Its label read thirty-four.
    “Sorry to hear that, Comrade Elena. It slows down the investigation. Let’s see what’s here. Probably a movie.”
    Elena shrugged and returned to the doorway. Trujillo found the remote control under a shirt on top of the writing table. He inserted the cassette and pressed Play.
    Blue. White clouds on a clear sky, the camera gliding slowly down to the horizon, the sea, then panning gradually to a sandy beach. Two young women holding hands approach the camera, laughing and jumping over little waves that break and die under their feet. Both wear straw hats, dark glasses, and minimal two-piece bathing suits. Fade out. Same girls under a shower, naked, playfully splashing water on each other. The game loses momentum, with a lecherous stare the brunette gently caresses the blonde, they embrace and kiss hungrily …
    Trujillo stopped the VCR and ejected the cassette. “I will take all these tapes with me to the department,” he said.
    Elena tore off another layer of forgetfulness. At what age had sex become the driving force in her brother’s life? She didn’t know. It had been early on, though. She recalled the disgusted looks of her high-school girlfriends whenever a drooling Pablo ogled them. One afternoon she’d caught him masturbating in the hall as an unsuspecting schoolmate, sitting on the living room’s chesterfield in faded denim short shorts, legs tucked under her,studied for an upcoming exam. How old was he? Thirteen? Perhaps only twelve.
    Elena clicked her tongue. This made Zoila steal a glance at her that went unnoticed.
    Had her brother been bisexual? Judging by appearances, among his visitors there were as many gay men and lesbians as heterosexuals. She suspected that Pablo, despite his promiscuity, had never been in love. He was the kind of man who wants only the delicious early stage of an affair and must always find someone new to fantasize about.
    It seemed as though he was one of the increasing number of people who could experience infatuation, lust, sex, perhaps even romance, but not love. Men and women who try to conceal, under a veneer of sophistication or cynicism, their inability to involve themselves beyond a certain point, who believe that the absence of commitment is the greatest expression of individual freedom. Unmarried, generally childless people who profess to love their relatives and friends, those human bonds that hardly ever demand forgiveness and understanding and self-sacrifice.
    Kuan gasped; Zoila covered her mouth with her hand; Elena returned to reality. Trujillo had found a thick manila envelope under the mattress and had taken from it a wad of hundred- and fifty-dollar bills an inch thick.
    “Comrade Kuan, Comrade Zoila, would you please count this money?” Trujillo said.
    The witnesses stared as if they had been asked to fly to the moon.
    “You have a problem with that, comrades?”
    Kuan shook his head; Zoila said no. They took the cash and started counting it by the writing desk.
    The search brought no further surprises. Trujillo sat down and wrote in duplicate on DTI letterhead the seizure of forty-three video cassettes and 2,900 U.S. dollars found in the bedroom of Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés. The serial numbers of fifty-four bills followed. All