The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(91)

I pull back slightly, wiping at my face. “I’m sorry to lose control like that. The battle today affected me more than I thought it would.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“The other journalists handled it better.”

As one of the few women in the newsroom, I am held to a higher standard to prove that I belong here, that I can do the same reporting as a man.

“You don’t know what they’re doing in their private moments. Sometimes it’s easier to put on a brave face than admit you are shaken,” Rafael replies. “And you forget, they’ve been down here covering the skirmishes between the revolutionaries and the Spanish. This is the first time you’ve been near the battlefield. I imagine it’ll get easier the more wars you cover. Or maybe not. I don’t know that watching people die ever gets easier.”

Weariness creeps into his voice, and I turn to study him.

The sight of him sitting so close to me is a shock to my system, as is the utter exhaustion etched across his face. The sharp edges to his personality have been sanded down, and he looks more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.

“When I thought about you in my absence, I envisioned you safe in New York,” he says. “Not here. Why did you decide to come down to Cuba?”

“Because it was an opportunity to see what it was like. I’ve been reading the dispatches from all of Hearst’s war correspondents for years now. I wanted to be in on the action—I thought—I don’t know, that I could make a difference or something. That my reporting might mean something. You must think me a fool.”

“Never a fool. Look at Will and the others. Everyone is down here chasing a story. Isn’t that the job?”

“It is. What was it like today?” I ask him, wanting to bring him a measure of comfort as he has given me.

“It isn’t what I expected. I was terrified the whole damned time. I didn’t expect that.”

“Why did you come to Cuba?” I ask, turning his earlier question around on him. “That day at the Journal offices, I was so caught off guard by you saying you were leaving, I didn’t even ask why you decided to fight. There were things I wanted to say—to ask you—but we were surrounded by others, and I, well, I have to be careful in the newsroom.”

He sighs. “I don’t know why I came. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“I thought you were conflicted about the American role in the conflict?”

“I was. I am. But it seemed time to stop talking about it and to do something. Now I’m worried I’m going to end up on the wrong side of this. You saw how much they enjoyed the battle today. They relished in victory. Are they just going to pack up and go home after all this is over? What if they want a stake in Cuba? What if we’re just trading the Spanish for the Americans?”

“Is it hard for you—fighting for the country you were born in while also worrying about your people here?”

“It is. I’m American. I was born there; my father was born there. It’s the country that welcomed my mother when she had to leave her home. But I am also Cuban. And I believe in their independence.”

I reach out and take his hand, linking our fingers. “You’re a good man,” I say, trying to offer him some of the comfort he’s given me. “Whatever fears you may have, however this ends up, it’s clear that you love your country. Both of them. That’s something to be proud of.”

“Grace.”

“I’ve been worried about you. I can’t—” I take a deep breath. “I can’t imagine what I would do if something happened to you.”

His heart pounds against me, but he doesn’t respond.

“Why did you kiss me on New Year’s? Was it just the moment, or . . . ?”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time,” he replies. “I think I’ve wanted to kiss you since you marched into Will’s office and demanded a job.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t realize. Not until New Year’s.”

“So now you know.” He’s silent for a beat. “You have to decide, Grace.”

His voice is so low against the noises in the background—the Wilson sisters’ laughter, the pop of another champagne cork, the sound of the waves against the boat—that I have to strain to hear it.

Ordinarily, I would bristle at his words, at the command there. But it’s the plea in his voice, the knowledge that I’ve humbled him that holds me still.

“I’ve told you what I want,” he says. “If you want me, you know where to find me.”



* * *



—

My fingers tremble as I ball them in a fist, as I raise my hand to the heavy wood door to Rafael’s cabin. The hallway is empty; the evening’s revels are still ongoing.

He left me sitting on the bow, and after a few minutes I looked for him on deck, but he wasn’t guzzling champagne with Hearst and his friends, or anywhere else.

It feels as though a miasma has settled over the Sylvia, as though the madness of the day’s events, our proximity to death and the way it gripped so many others, has infected all of us. Everyone is laughing louder than normal, the alcohol flowing more freely, a manic air that suggests this feeling inside me, this desire to jump out of my own skin and don another, has seeped into everyone else on board. The revelry has taken on an edge.