Free The Domino Diaries by Brin-Jonathan Butler

cheek. Cucho had worked at the Hotel Nacional in the 1940s, when it was run by gangsters like Lucky Luciano, and moved over to the Havana Hilton at the end of the ’50s, right up until Fidel Castro rolled in and set up his government headquarters in the top two floors at the newly named Habana Libre. Cucho was also the neighborhood CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution), a neighborhood watch program that escalated in darker times into spy operations that reported to the government on fellow citizens.
    Cucho’s neighbor was a frail young doctor with a failing heart named Jorge, married to a Penelope Cruz–sumptuous wife named Nancy. Ernesto lived in the next home, 250 pounds of seething bitterness as he stared down a government-required year’s wait to join his wife, Blanquita, who had just left to join some of her family in Spain. Cuba’s answer to Doogie Howser, Manolo, a surgeon in his forties who looked like a teenager, lived by himself after a divorce. As we had another cafecito with Manolo, there were three separate deliveries of produce, freshly butchered chickens, and cement brought over in a little dragged wagon. “Have you heard the word palanca before?” he asked in perfect English.
    I shook my head.
    â€œ Palanca is slang for offering a helping hand. Since you literally cannot survive in this country without breaking the law, corruption is institutional. The black market economy is larger than the traditional economy. We all offer something to someone in exchange for something. So don’t be surprised to see deliveries at all hours of the day of things that may seem very strange to you.”
    There was a knock at Manolo’s door and Jes ú s got up to answer it. He returned to the dining room with a linebacker-sized dark-skinned Cuban, not much older than me, dressed in matching canary-yellow dress shirt and pants. He stared at me with such warm anticipation I felt like I was meeting a pen pal I’d been corresponding with for years.
    â€œHello, my friend! I’m Lesvanne.” I was quickly discovering that every Cuban deserved his own eponymous sitcom. “You must be the writer boxer I have heard so much about. Obviously Hemingway helped bring you here, I take it? Of course he did. Montalvo and Alfonso asked me to show you around and help you with finding your way in our city. Today I take you to Rafael Trejo gym to find a trainer, too, no?”
    â€œI would love that,” I said.
    â€œAlso transportation.” Jes ú s grabbed my shoulder. “Walk around until he has more of a tan and then show him our taxis and get him some Cuban pesos.”
    â€œOf course.” Lesvanne smiled.
    â€œWhere did you get these clothes?” Manolo teased him, pinching a sleeve. “These are not from Calle Obispo.”
    â€œWhat’s Obispo?” I asked.
    â€œObispo is a street for tourists,” Lesvanne explained casually. “I was just in Miami and brought back some clothes. Only three weeks in Miami visiting some family.”
    For both Jes ú s and Manolo this was a bombshell they endured in silent shock. I was fairly confused by how matter-of-fact Lesvanne was about a journey such a high percentage of his countrymen had died trying to make. His tone suggested that of a man taking a whirl on the Staten Island ferry. Who exactly was this person that Alfonso had lined up as my guide? Who exactly was Alfonso?
    Suddenly Lesvanne’s face twisted in agony. “ ¡MariC Ó N! I gave my ass a paper cut this morning. Cuba neo . The first luxury I miss from Miami and Gringolandia is the availability of toilet paper. A page from Jos é Mart í ’s poetry slit me open this morning and I am still bleeding.”
    Lesvanne put his hand on my shoulder and turned his wide, conspiratorial smile toward me. “Obispo is the Hemingway tourist street. The El Floridita bar where Hemingway would have drank himself to death, if not