Havana Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

later.”
    â€œEnjoy, my brother.”
    â€œI’ll pass on the message to my old dear, brother,” said Skinny and hung up, and Mario thought life is shit.
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    Skinny Carlos is skinny no more, weighs over two hundred pounds, reeks of the sour smell of the obese, and fate had it in for him. When I first met him he was so skinny he looked as if he would snap in two at any moment. He sat down in front of me, next to Rabbit, not knowing that we’d occupy those three desks next to the window for the duration at high school. He had the sharpest of knives to sharpen pencil-points, and I said: “Skinny, old pal, lend me the blade you got there”
and from then on I called him Skinny, although I could never have imagined he would be my best friend and that one day he’d no longer be skinny.
    Tamara sat two rows in front of Rabbit, and nobody knew why they’d put her twin sister in another group, given they came from the same school, were the same age and shared the same surnames and prettiest of faces. But we felt happy enough because Aymara and Tamara were so alike we’d probably never have told one from the other. When Skinny and I fell in love with Tamara we almost stopped being friends, but along came Rafael to put us straight: she was to be neither Skinny’s nor mine. Rafael declared his love to Tamara, and they were an item within two months of the start of term, the kind that stick together like limpets at break and chat for twenty minutes, holding hands, looking deep into each other’s eyes and so far from the madding crowd that they’d snog shamelessly. I could have killed them.
    But Skinny and I are still friends, are still in love with her and shared our frustration by wishing all manner of evil upon Rafael: from a broken leg upwards. And when we felt really down, we’d imagine we’d become the boyfriends of Tamara and Aymara – it didn’t matter then who got who, although we both always loved Tamara, for some reason or other, as they were both very beautiful – and we’d marry and live in houses as alike as the twin sisters: everything identical, one next to the other. And as we got flustered, we’d sometimes get the wrong house and sister, and Aymara’s husband would be with Tamara and vice versa, and thus we consoled ourselves and had a great time, and we’d have boy twins, born on the same day – four at a time – and the doctors, who were also flustered and so on, would get the mothers and children mixed up and say: two to
that bed and two to the other and as they grew up together they sucked on the teat of whichever mother was nearby and then always got the wrong house. We spent hours talking about such shit, until the kids grew up and married a quadruplet of girls who were equally identical and it was a big fucking hoot, until Josefina got home from work and turned down the radio, I don’t see how you can stand that racket all day, she’d protest, hell, you’ll go deaf, but she’d make us milkshakes – sometimes mango, sometimes strawberry, if not chocolate.
    Skinny was still skinny the last time we played at marrying the twins. We were in the third year at high school. He was Dulcita’s boyfriend and Cuqui had already fallen out with me when Tamara announced to the class that she and Rafael were getting married and that they were inviting us all to the party at her place – and although they had fantastic parties there, we swore we wouldn’t go. That night we had our first memorable binge: at the time a quart of rum could be too much for us, and Josefina had to wash us down, give us a spoonful of belladonna to cope with our sickness and sore heads and even wrap a bag of ice round our balls.
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    Sergeant Manuel Palacios put the car in reverse, stepped on the accelerator, and the tyres screeched painfully as the car swung backwards in order to leave the parking lot. He seemed