Free The Domino Diaries by Brin-Jonathan Butler Page A

for the suicide. La Bodeguita del Medio for the mojitos is five minutes, but every Cuban knows he never drank mojitos there and the owners just made it up. There are no better capitalists than communists. And the Ambos Mundos hotel where he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls is near the bottom of Obispo. Fidel carried that book with him in the mountains to help learn guerrilla warfare. At Obispo there is much shopping, too, if you have tourist dollars to spend. The high-end jineteras work Obispo for the lonely tourists who wish to pretend they can seduce all the pretty Cuban girls.”
    Jes ú s laughed. “Should we arrange a girl for him tonight?”
    â€œHe doesn’t need a pimp.” Manolo smiled. “I’m sure you can find the right girl on your own. You come back and tell us everything or we’ll report you to Cucho.”
    As soon as we left our block, Lesvanne informed me he needed a couple glasses of guarapo for energy and led us zigzagging down a few streets to find some. “A girlfriend from Texas leaves tomorrow so I must have energy for her so she is faithful back home. I’m so madly in love with this woman. If you heard her accent calling my name! And she’s big as a Texas woman should be. I love that. She’s forty. So beautiful.”
    He pointed out the direction of some peso fruit markets and another supermarket for American dollars that had a security guard out front. “The tourist apartheid is everywhere. I can’t walk with you into a hotel or a nice bar. It used to be illegal for us to carry even one American dollar.” Lesvanne shook his head. “During the awful Special Period, one market existed that had actual supplies and good food while everything else had nothing. People were starving. We called this market with everything ‘God’s Market’ at that time. Things are better now since that period, but still very difficult.” Finally we arrived at an open garage that was surrounded by sweaty construction workers huddled in the shade wiping the foam from their lips and patiently holding out glass cups waiting for refills.
    â€œThis is a guarapoter í a . Guarapo was what the African slaves who first came to Cuba drank. Good for energy to work or to fuck really good if you meet the right girl. We love it. It’s very good and fresh. You can find them all over Havana and have a glass for only a Cuban peso. There are twenty Cuban pesos to each converted peso for tourists. These two currencies are very important to be aware of because you will be cheated if you are not careful. So be careful to get your change and to keep it when you first use the converted peso. Until you write a bestseller or win the heavyweight championship, Cuban pesos are good to have to use for transportation or food that tourists are not allowed to use. I’ll show you how our taxis work soon.”
    I watched as a dwarf woman jammed huge stalks of sugar cane into a massive metal grinder that she worked over with a crank when the stalks were inserted deeply enough. She had the sneer of a male porn star as she worked. The dwarf’s coworker was a woman who looked like she was born a hundred years before when the Platt Amendment was signed. She collected the juice from a pail and dumped it into carafes full of ice. Once the carafe was full with the milky-yellow juice she refilled the cups of the eager construction workers on their break. We waited our turn for a glass and I watched Lesvanne wipe the chilled foam off his lips before my glass arrived.
    â€œYou just came back from Miami?” I asked.
    â€œYes.” He grinned shyly. “My first time.”
    â€œYour first time?”
    â€œThe first time I have traveled anywhere in my life outside of this … place . Miami is paradise. For a nonbeliever, it is the closest thing I have ever seen to heaven on earth.”
    â€œWe’re going to have a strange day together, aren’t