King of Cuba (5 page)

Anyway, these tree huggers (they’d been living in the canopies of redwoods in California) got shitfaced one night
on the island’s fine rum and had the bright idea of smashing up their hosts’ impeccably preserved 1950s television set and everything else they thought smacked of bourgeois decadence. The comemierdas left the place in ruins, stole the last of their hosts’ toilet paper, and took off without offering to pay for a thing. So much for people-to-people diplomacy.

—Eusebio López, arborist

1.
Aviso:
The only manufactured product worth consuming in Cuba is ice cream, preferably mango.

Goyo settled into his ergonomic chair and turned on his desktop computer. He put on the aviator bifocals that his wife had said made him look like a grasshopper. How bitterly she’d protested over the time he spent online, interspersing her moaning with ancient complaints about his long-dead mother. What Luisa had wanted, had needed more than oxygen, was Goyo’s undivided attention—the one thing he couldn’t give her. He was still shocked that she’d died before him. Her health had been far better than his, and Luisa looked many years younger besides, due to her penchant for plastic surgery. She’d begun with a discreet tummy tuck in her forties, progressing to successive and complex lifts to her face, breasts, and buttocks (all performed by Brazilian plastic surgeons at half the Miami price) and complemented by multiple liposuctions. Luisa had been cut, snipped, tucked, nipped, and sucked so
often that her body looked stitched together from disparate parts. Coupled with an eating disorder that had her weight fluctuating a hundred pounds, the surgeries had left her prone to such unpredictable shiftings of flesh that nothing but a neck-to-ankle, extra-strength, beige body girdle could tame the unruly bulges.

At eighty-two, Luisa’s face had been her crowning glory—radiant, lineless, frequently immobilized by Botox injections and plumped up with collagen. She’d spent the better part of every morning plastering her face with lavish creams made from the glandes of unborn lambs and meticulously applying her makeup. So obsessed had Luisa become with her appearance that she finally convinced Goyo to have a little work done himself during their last trip to Rio. The procedures—an eye lift, fat injections into his hollowing cheeks—had hurt like hell, and Goyo, stir-crazy and unbearably itchy, had ignored the plastic surgeon’s instructions on sun avoidance and postoperative rest.

When Alina saw him shortly after his return from Brazil, she took one look and blurted out, “What the hell happened to you?” Never one for tact, she added: “Jesus, Dad, you look like a flounder.” It was true. Goyo wasn’t sure how or why it’d happened, but his eyes had somehow drifted closer together, then migrated, slightly, toward the right side of his face.

At a recent anniversary party for old friends, Goyo had been astonished at how youthful everyone looked until it dawned on him that nearly every octogenarian there was semibionic—artificial hips and knees, shoulder replacements, hair plugs, heart transplants, and a panoply of other age-defying enhancements. With the lights dimmed and the salsa “band” (in actuality, a liver-spotted singer with a synthesizer who did a passable imitation of Beny Moré) in full swing, the guests took to the floor and danced the night away, believing—if only for the two minutes and fifteen seconds
of Pérez Prado’s “Mambo No. 5”—that the Revolution had never happened.

Goyo’s in-box was congested with the usual array of right-wing junk mail, penile enhancement ads, and phishing scams. His brother weighed in several times a day, too, ever hopeful about El Comandante’s declining health:
WE’LL OUTLIVE HIM YET, HERMANO
! Rufino claimed that his wife, Trini, a founding member of a bookkeepers’ prayer circle that promised to work miracles with the IRS, had persuaded its members to devote the month’s orations to ensuring the tyrant’s untimely death. Goyo thought it ridiculous how religious fanatics believed they could sway the Almighty to do their bidding, as if they were divinely anointed lobbyists. God had been ignoring the Cubans’ pleas since before the Wars of Independence. Why should He bother listening to them now?

Although not a victim of optimism, Goyo rarely succumbed to despair. If he was anything it was a Catholic pragmatist, which wasn’t as contradictory as it sounded. Void, or paradise? Who really knew? Goyo continued to believe because the terror of not believing was worse. Above all, he tried not to let religion interfere with his common sense and took pride in analyzing events in as clear-eyed and dispassionate a manner as possible. Cuba’s difficulties, in his opinion, had been exponentially compounded by its longtime status as a de facto colony of the United States. Goyo had seen the writing on the wall long before those barbudos took to the Sierra Maestra and
waited
for Batista to fall. A country can take only so much abuse before it implodes. The solution, sadly, turned out to be much worse than the original problem.

Goyo removed his bifocals and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He pulled a microfiber cloth from his desk drawer, polished his lenses, then turned back to the computer screen. A message bleeped in from his mistress, writing to him from the bank where she worked:
HOLA, MI TIGRE. HOW ABOUT A DATE THIS AFTERNOON? BESITOS Y MUCHO MÁS, VILMA
. This was followed by a winking smiley face and a series of strange punctuation marks that eluded his comprehension. Goyo enjoyed Vilma’s company—her love was a bright, enameled thing—but their ardent frolicking often exhausted him so completely that he was incapacitated for days afterward.
MAYBE
, he typed back.
I’LL CALL YOU
.

Another message, the third of the morning, flashed in from Goyito:
SEND $50. DOWN TO MY LAST BAG OF CHIPS
. Goyo logged on to his banking account and transferred twenty dollars to his son. He supported his namesake but only with the smallest increments of cash possible. Too much money overwhelmed Goyito and made him do foolish things. Nine years ago, when he’d finally won his disability suit against the state of Florida, the government sent him a check for $22,000 in previously denied benefits. Goyito ripped through that money in one blowout weekend of cocaine, steamed lobsters, and whores.

During his brief stretches of sobriety, Goyito had held various jobs and even managed to graduate from a fly-by-night college in Brooklyn with a degree in finance. Not a pot to piss in, but the boy had a degree in finance. After college Goyito had worked as a Wall Street runner, operating on a high-octane combination of donuts and amphetamines. Once Goyo had caught a glimpse of his son on television wearing a garish yellow jacket and pumping his arm at the day’s closing bell. What Goyito had wanted, more than anything, was a fast-track fortune. If he hadn’t become a drug addict, he might’ve become a multimillionaire.

Thinking about his son upset Goyo, and he had no time to be upset today, not with so many crises to resolve. In a locked compartment of his file cabinet, he kept a box of contraband chocolates and his Chief’s Special .38, one of two weapons he owned. The other handgun, a Glock, he kept secured in the glove compartment
of his Cadillac. Goyo opened the gilded box of truffles and considered its contents—rich Belgian chocolates filled with ground nuts and flavored elixirs. Goyo popped a hazelnut truffle into his mouth, closing his eyes and savoring the silky gianduja on his tongue. His ringing cell phone disrupted his reverie.

“The whole thing’s coming down like a house of cards,” Johnny Esposito growled without preamble.

“How much time do we have?” Goyo imagined bricks of his cash sprouting wings in the vaults of Flagler Federal Bank and flying north to his contractor’s pockets.

“A month, maybe two. You get some newbie buildings inspector coming anywhere near the place and they’ll have it torn down.”

Goyo swallowed hard. The brownstone had put his children through college (for all the good it’d done them), enabled him to live a comfortable retirement. “What now?”

“Reinforced beams. Concrete pillars from the basement to the roof. The building’s gotta hang on those fucking supports.”

“Can we do this without arousing suspicion?”

“Leave that to me,” Esposito sniffed.

Goyo knew better than to inquire further. Esposito’s contacts could magically make things happen overnight, or just as easily disappear. Inspectors, tax problems, collapsing buildings. Everything could be arranged for a price.

“What’s it going to cost me?” Goyo fondled a truffle bursting with raspberry liqueur. If he didn’t control himself, he might slip into a diabetic coma and Alina would be left to handle this mess. He put back the truffle.

Esposito laughed femininely, a soprano’s laugh. “You don’t wanna know.”

“When can we start?”

“Pronto, comandante. I’ll get my men working on this right away.”

Goyo winced at the word
comandante
. Nearly every building in Havana was crumbling, but the tyrant had no tenant lawsuits to worry about, no inspectors cruising for kickbacks, no extortionist contractors draining off what remained of his retirement savings. El Comandante had even convinced UNESCO to restore the oldest part of the city as a World Heritage Site. Goyo had seen the photographs. It looked like it had in the fifties, when Havana had been on a par with New York or Paris, boasting world-class symphonies, theaters, ballet companies, an unmatched nightlife.

To remember all this was a heart-searing misery, but sometimes remembering was all Goyo could do. The litany rarely varied. The Revolution’s early agrarian reforms had reduced his family’s estates to seven percent of their former size. Seven percent. There was no future in seven percent. When his father’s shipping line was also expropriated, the Herreras fled to New York. Goyo tried to make a go of it as an insurance salesman, but he couldn’t earn enough money to pay the rent. Two years into his exile, he leased a dilapidated five-and-dime on First Avenue and introduced tropical milk shakes and Cuban sandwiches to mid-Manhattan. Eventually, Goyo bought the place and converted it into a diner, mixing in burgers and fries with his wildly popular island specialties. He also catered office parties for the United Nations delegates, delivering the food himself and making friends. He called it Minimax Café, after the Latin aphorism Minima maxima sunt. The smallest things are most important.

Goyo had done all right for himself financially. But everything else—the things people said money couldn’t buy—bueno, with those he hadn’t done so well.

It was barely eight o’clock and his stomach felt queasy. Goyo reached for a pink antacid pill. Most mornings he woke up at 4:00, convinced that he was having another heart attack. He consoled himself with statistics; if he made it to sunrise, the odds of
surviving the day were good. Outliving the tyrant wasn’t Goyo’s sole reason for staying alive, but it damn near the topped the list. Besides, he didn’t want to miss the pachanga in Miami when word spread of the tyrant’s death. Other cities had disaster relief plans, backup generators, designated emergency shelters. Miami had a victory parade prepared to march down Calle Ocho on an hour’s notice. The oldest exiles, now barely distinguishable from the dead, would miraculously spring back to life for one last fiesta with the news. When that hijo de puta finally kicked the bucket, everyone would be partying like it was 1959.

This is a very difficult country. Very stressful. No quieren reconocer que esto es un fracaso. An utter disaster. I waited years for an apartment in Havana until I couldn’t wait any longer. I built my own place in between these two old mansions in Vedado. It’s gloomy and narrow, but I shift a spotlight around to where I’m painting y me resuelvo.
¹
At first the authorities considered me a squatter, then they tried to tax me out of existence. But I parked myself here and refused to move. I live with my kitty and a baby Galápagos turtle that a friend of mine smuggled out of Ecuador. Sometimes I take Piquito to the park so he can sun himself. They tell me my turtle will live three hundred years and grow to the size of a Volkswagen. But what’s the use of worrying? Nobody knows what tomorrow
will bring. If you chuck Piquito under the chin—like this, see?—he bobs his head. Ay, he loves that!

My paintings? Naturally, they have a sinister air. They’re my hallucinations, my nightmares. Right now I’m working on a series called Buscando Carne en La Habana (Looking for Meat in Havana); meat, of course, in all respects. It’s these disgraces that I’m driven to paint with my medieval palette. One disgrace after another. There are never any shortages of those.

—Zaida del Pino, artist