Naked in Havana Read Online Free PDF Page A

go off this afternoon.”
    They all fell silent.
    “They felt it in Galiano street,” he went on. “Although three Cuban cleaners in the Bacardi offices won’t be feeling anything any more, and half a dozen more walking past in the street won’t walk past anything ever again.”
    “Anyone can plant a bomb. It doesn’t mean they’ll take over Havana. The Americans won’t ever let that happen.”
    “Won”t they?” Reyes smiled. There was some uneasy shuffling of feet. “If you believe America can really order the world around to its liking, then I fear you may be a little misguided.”
    “But Eisenhower has billions invested here.”
    “Well you know what they say about investments, gentlemen: If it’s high return, there’s high risk. And it seems to me that Havana is about the riskiest place to make a dollar right now.”
    “There have been rebels fighting the government for as long as anyone can remember,” one of the men said. “It’s part of our culture. As you would know if you lived here, Señor Reyes.”
    “What is it exactly that you do here anyway?” another man asked him.
    “Whatever turns a profit. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t care for politics and I don’t much care for wars, but there’s money to be made in both. The only side I’m on is mine.
    “You must believe in something.”
    “I’m the only cause I’m dedicated to, and that’s true of all men, I believe, if they’d only be honest about it.”
    “Is it true you were arrested in Miami on a murder charge?” another man asked, and there was a deadly silence.
    Reyes fixed the man with a blank stare. “Everything you hear about me is true, even the lies. But it’s too fine an afternoon to be talking about politics.” He put his sunglasses back on. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get myself another drink. I find the service here is rather slow.”
    After he’d left, the men smoked their cigars and turned to each other with sour looks on their faces, all their previous bonhomie evaporated. A few of them muttered about him under their breath. She heard what they said, and none of it was kind; half of them called him a communist, the others said he was a spy, and all of them said he was an opportunist who’d sell his own grandmother to make a profit.
    “If it wouldn’t spoil your party, I’d lay him flat,” one of them said.
    “Well, Julio, you should think twice about that. From what I hear about that murder charge, three men attacked him in a bar, and he was the only one who walked out. And they had knives and he didn’t. You still want to call him out?”
     
     
     
     

Chapter 6

     
     
    I went back into the garden, but I couldn’t find Papi. Instead, I saw Angel walking hand in hand with Esmeralda. I felt nauseous seeing them together. But through some morbid sense of fascination - or mischief - I followed them into a secluded courtyard at the side of the house where they must have thought they were away from prying eyes.
    And I suppose they were, except for mine.
    Look at the little bitch; pale as milk and flat as a boy. And all those freckles and wild red hair! How could he even stand to look at her?
    He led her to a marble bench in the shade of an avocado tree. I slipped into an arbour overgrown with vines and climbing yellow roses, where they couldn’t see me but I could hear every word they said.
    Be cold to her, Angel, give me some hope.
    “Do you love me?” she heard this Esmeralda say.
    “I’ve never loved anyone like I love you, baby. Nobody.”
    “Because there’s all these girls here…I see the way they look at you and they’re all so much prettier than me.”
    “I don’t care about any of them. No one does the things you do.”
    What did he mean by that? Startled, I dared a glimpse around the pillar. He had his hand on her knee and he was nuzzling her neck, just like he did when he was with me, when he used to say, “Oh baby, you drive me crazy.”
    “Oh baby, you drive me