Next Year in Havana(12)

He doesn’t smile.

I sip the rum, watching him, attempting to guess his age. Most of the party appears to be a little older than me—in their early twenties, perhaps—and while there’s a severity about him, he doesn’t look that much older.

His lips move rapidly when he talks, his hands in constant motion.

My foot taps in time with the music, mimicking the beat of my heart as I watch him, willing him to look at me, to notice me.

And miraculously, he does. Maybe the dress is a little magic.

He turns, mid-conversation, his hands lingering in the air like a conductor instructing a symphony, surveying the crowd, the same hardness in his eyes that’s stamped all over his face. There’s a hunger there, though, beneath that hardness—a hunger I’ve seen before—the kind that looks at the world and isn’t afraid to say it isn’t good enough, that there must be more, to demand change. He looks like a man who believes in things, which is truly terrifying these days.

My breath hitches.

His eyes widen slightly, as though he can hear my breath over the sound of Benny Moré, the laughter and sin spilling all over the party.

He doesn’t appear callous, merely as though life has tested him and roughed his edges. His gaze rests on me, and those lips pause for a moment. He doesn’t do the polite thing and glance away, or pretend he was looking at something else and just happened to catch me in his path. No, he settles in and looks me over, and slowly, so slowly, a smile spreads across his face, and suddenly, surprisingly, he’s handsome.

I freeze, my mother’s voice in my ear—don’t fidget, smile—not too much—put your shoulders back—until her voice disappears, floating above this party she would never approve of, and in the space of a heartbeat he’s standing in front of me, a little taller, a little more broad shouldered than he appeared to be across the room.

I swallow, tilting my head up, staring into solemn brown eyes.

“Hello,” he says, offering a perfectly ordinary greeting in a voice that is anything but.

“Hello,” I echo, traversing one thousand guesses surrounding who he is, what he does, why he crossed the room to speak to me, in the time between those hellos.

His lips curve, those eyes softening a bit. “I’m Pablo.”

I turn his name over and over in my head, testing out the sound of it to my ears alone before giving him my own.

“Elisa.”

An elbow brushes past me, jostling me. I lurch forward, the rum in my glass tipping precariously, entirely too close to Pablo’s black suit. He reaches out, steadying me, his hand connecting with my arm.

I blink again in an attempt to right myself. My drink isn’t the only thing that’s tilted on its axis.

“I’ve never seen you at one of Guillermo’s parties before,” he says.

Guillermo must be our host, the friend of a friend of a friend, or something or other, of Isabel’s boyfriend.

“I’ve never been to one before.”

He nods, that same solemn expression on his face, and I revise my guess about his age. He is older, late twenties or early thirties perhaps.

Another person nudges my back, and Pablo shifts, putting his body between me and the rest of the crowd, his hand exerting the faintest pressure on my elbow to steady me.

The song changes, the tempo increasing, guests dancing to the spirited beat as we remain pressed up against the wall, his hand on my elbow. His fingers are long and lean; they tell the story of a man who works with his hands, slightly incongruous with the dark, well-worn suit and the party’s solidly Havana crowd.

Pablo’s hand falls to his side. I look up.

His mouth is parted slightly, his gaze narrowed as though he doesn’t know what to make of what he sees.

Another body bumps into us. The rum lists in my glass.

Pablo leans into me, his voice rising to be heard over the loud music, the laughter. My heartbeat thrums, equal parts nerves and anticipation running through my veins.

“Do you want to step outside?” he asks. “It’s quieter out there.”

It seems the most natural thing in the world to give him my hand and follow him out of the party.





chapter four


Pablo leads me through the house, his steps guided by purpose and familiarity. We weave through the crowd, and I search for Beatriz and Isabel as we walk, but I can’t find them in the throng. Every so often Pablo turns around and glances at me, his fingers laced with mine. We step out into the night, the backyard nearly empty as we walk toward a palm tree to the side of the house. The backyard abuts another, the lots small and crammed together.

He’s right—it is quieter outside, the roar of music and partygoers now a low hum.

I look up at the sky, the stars shining down on us, taking the opportunity to compose myself. When I glance back at him, he’s not looking at me, but up at the stars as well, his gaze hooded.

I jump at the sound of a boom off in the distance, then another, and another. The explosion is far away, relegated to another part of the city, but these days it could signal anything—gunfire, fireworks, bombs.

I glance at Pablo, his attention no longer on the sky, but focused on me; his expression is unreadable, as though he has grown immune to the sounds of violence and armed revolt.

“Those probably aren’t fireworks,” I comment, my heart pounding.