Havana Noir Read Online Free PDF

around the studio, and the end of the story made me cry.
    “This is the guy who brought the ball gown,” Lucecita’s mother said as she introduced me. I held the box with the dress out to her, she smiled at me and happily went to try it on. I waited in limbo, just staring at the cameras that captured dreams.
    “Doesn’t she look lovely!” Reinita Príncipe exclaimed when her daughter returned. The dwarves fawned over her, petting the tulle. The entire studio admired her.
    “Let’s go home,” her mother urged.
    Right now, I don’t know, I couldn’t honestly say if Lucecita was pushed on me or if I fell for her all on my own. We were at the entrance to their apartment—that first day they didn’t invite me in—around the corner from Masón and San Miguel, right next door to the Napoleonic Museum facing the university, when Reinita Príncipe, with her best servant’s voice from the telenovelas, told me she only had half the money. She told me TV was a living hell, that they weren’t making any real shows, and that beauty was dying. Given the situation, I certainly wasn’t going to let her down. I was a businessman, I had no way of knowing if everything that went on in Havana was just the dwarves’ doings. Logic indicated that if they’d gotten as far as TV, they could be anywhere. Nonetheless, this woman inspired me to trust her. That’s why I said what I said.
    “I can extend credit, but only for a few days.”
    “So I can keep it!” Lucecita rejoiced.
    From that moment on—and that’s why I believe life can change with a single word from a woman—I became Lucecita’s biggest admirer. There wasn’t an afternoon I couldn’t be found in the studio. I managed to get myself a special pass so that I could always sit in the very first row to watch the shows.
    “Is it love?” she asked me.
    But it really hurt when they didn’t invite me to her birthday party. That night I wandered around the university walls and gazed up at the festive goings-on at Lucecita’s; I couldn’t work up the nerve to go in. I remember that I headed to the Napoleonic Museum instead and paused in front of the bed that once belonged to the Great Corsican. I became enchanted with Josephine’s portrait, and I had a strong urge to steal it, so that I’d finally have a lover. Yet imagination is one thing and real life is another.
    “Put the squeeze on the mother,” Rosendo Gil, who’d now become my confidante, advised me. “Either she pays or she gives you her daughter.” Then he laughed salaciously.
    So that’s how I approached Reinita Príncipe. I told her my bosses were demanding payment and if I didn’t come up with it, they’d retaliate. She got very serious and talked about some money she was owed and that she’d been cast in a starring role. I turned a deaf ear to her and told her about a terrible tribe of thieves who would lie in wait at night. She promised to pay the debt that same week. Later, after a complete transformation, she scolded me for not attending the birthday party. I looked at her with such disdain that she changed the subject and invited me to have coffee at her house.
    “That way you’ll meet my husband,” she said.
    Theirs was a typical Havana apartment that had seen better days: furniture that needed upholstering, crumbling walls, broken windows. Reinita tiptoed in and said, “Nicanor José…” But we only heard a loud cough.
    Reinita told me to follow her and we went into an office, a room where we found a sixty-something man smoking a cigar. Behind him, there was a wall covered with photographs, posters, certificates, and a map of Havana. The biggest photo had a caption in German and featured a crane placing a concrete block in the middle of a street. The man was barefoot and wore a sweater which fell over his wool pants. He saw that I was interested in the photo and told me that it was the unyielding Berlin Wall.
    “It was the wall that saved us,” he said. Then he showed me his