Chapter 9, Havana Life
Katey was interrogated by the police for an hour before being put in the tiny jail's one cell. She was curled up on the bench of the cell, pondering her predicament when a policemen opened the door. She jumped up, sure she was going to be let out until he shoved another man into the dim cell and slammed the door.
"We saw him going into the graveyard and followed him. We had no idea that you were there until he pointed you out. Say hello to your new best friend," he sneered. The man sat onto the bench next to Katey and looked at her.
"Hello." Javier said.
"We'll just keep you here until we figure out how much to fine you. Since you're a--" he muttered an awful insult at her. He sneered at her and walked over to a cluster of policemen. They started talking and laughing, and would occasionally look over at Katey.
"Fancy meeting you here." Javier said to her. She just looked at him. Her dress was ripped, her shoes and purse were missing, and Susie must be worried sick. And now, thanks to Javier, she had men leering at her. Oh, and she had been arrested.
"Not all Cubans are like that, you know. I'm sorry for what he called you."
"Don't worry about it. It was nothing." Katey just wanted this night to end. And having Javier around was sending her mind into new dimensions.
"Not to me." he looked at her sincerely.
"Then why are you apologizing?" Javier stared at her with a raised eyebrow. Was she deliberately mocking him? Then the policeman that had been talking to them earlier.
"You're free to go. Both of you. But you have to pay the fine within two months or you're in front of a judge. Buenos noches."
Katey and Javier were handed slips of paper and then walked out into the warm night air. Katey put the slip of paper into her purse without looking at it and Javier put his in his pocket.
"Katey I--"Javier began, but he was already out of earshot.
Katey somehow made it back to the hotel and explained everything to Susie before falling into bed.
Javier slipped into his house without waking anyone and sat on his bed, watching the moonlight on the thick stone walls of his bedroom. He opened the slip of paper and looked at the minimum fine. $ 1,000. How was he supposed to pay that? All for walking into a graveyard. But that was Cuba now. Not even much different from before the revolution.
They had had so much faith, but it was all for nothing. Everything they thought would come true was all an illusion, like a bubble that rests on your finger. Then the wind comes and pops it.
The next morning he was at work when his work friend Jose came up to him.
"Some girl's downstairs and says she needs to see you. Says it's important." he said.
Puzzled, he let Jose take over for him and went downstairs. The only person he could think of that would visit him at work was his mother, and he started to dream something awful happened until he remembered that Jose knew his mother and would tell him if it was her.
But it was Yolanda who was waiting for him. Tension mounted in the pit of his stomach. Yolanda, a friend of his from when he worked at the hotel so many years ago, watched Chabe and Rafael for him, when they got out of school to when his mother got home from work hours later. In lue of payment Javier's mother would make her dinner, which she would take home and eat with her husband David, a somewhat crazy Canadian man whom she had met at the hotel. But it wasn't Rafael or Chabe, it was--
"I talked to Katey," Yolanda said when they were sitting in the bright sun on the steps of the theatre. "She came to see me when she first got here and I talked to her this morning. She told me what happened. And she got fined two thousand American dollars." Javier opened and closed his mouth. "She has a problem. She said that normally she would just take the money from her bank account, but she can't do that here because of the new laws on American contact. And she can't get her parents to wire her the money either. So she has to come up with two thousand dollars in three weeks. Because she can't stay any longer, since she has to go back to work."
"So where do I come in?" Javier asked, confused. He watched the cars pass by as he waited for Yolanda's response. He let his mind wander to hoe Katey was. How mad she had looked the night before. He felt so bad, because he knew how much it hurt to be insulted because of you nationality. And distrust of American's had grown since the revolution, mostly in the from of government propaganda.
"That's what I'm not sure of," Yolanda said. " I know how she helped you years ago, and I was wondering if you could do the same for her." she looked at her watch. "I must go. But I'll be seeing you, okay?" she ran off.
"But what do I do? Yolanda!" but she was too quick. On his way back inside for work, he spotted a stack of fliers on a table next to the door. He inspected it carefully. But would it work?
Katey was wiping down tables when Javier came in. she had taken a job at a bar to try to earn money to pay her fine. She knew it wouldn't be enough, but it was her only try.
"Katey, there's someone here for you." Georgiana, her new co-worker said. She looked up to see Javier standing in front of the bar. She looked her him sharply before turning to Georgiana.
"What's he doing here?" she asked? Georgiana shook her head. It was after hours and most people didn't come into the bar during hours, so God only knew how he found her.
"Can I talk to you?" he asked, pulling at her elbow. A shudder went through her as he touched her and she yanked her arm back and hustled him away from the peering eyes of Georgiana.
"Is this your new job?" he asked, looking around. She could do so much better, and plus, she had a college education, which almost nobody around here does.
"Yup. What do you want, Javier? I have a lot of work to do."
"I'm sorry you got arrested." he said, still not being able to get over her in an apron.
"don't apologize. It's my fault. I should have known, I guess." she started putting chairs up on the tiny round tables.
"Look, I know you're probably not too…." he looked around for the English word. "Jovial to see me right now, but I have an idea on how you can make some money." she stopped and looked at him. He held out the flier to her and she studied it. It was written in hand script, not on a typewriter.
"Dance with you? I would help. I might be able to get the rest of the money." Katey said, rubbing her lip with her index finger. He nodded. She thought about it. He could see the doubt growing in her eyes.
"Katey, what about the hope you had? I trusted you when we won the contest, why can't you trust me?" he asked, set off by her uncharacteristic lack of faith in him.
"The thing is Javier that we didn't win the contest. We lost the contest. And I have a lot of work to do. So please excuse me." and she went back to wiping tables. Javier bit his lip, his mind spinning with who she had become I his absence.
"Okay." he mumbled to himself, and left the flier on the only table in the bar that Katey hadn't yet wiped down, and exited quietly, with a small wave to Georgiana.
The nest morning he was just getting up when he heard a knock on the gate into the apartment. The sun hadn't even graced the streets yet; it was early. He wondered who could be knocking this early. He pulled a shirt on over his bare chest and slid out the front door to see….Katey. He smiled. He walked to the gate and opened the gate. He leaned on the wall.
"Hi." he said.
"Hi." she was embarrassed. She kept fiddling with the skirt of her blue halter dress.
"I don't have any money. So if the contest costs money…."
"No. No money. Just us working. And I have work, so we'd have to do it afterwards or on the weekends."
"Okay. But…"
"No buts. We will win. I promise." he dipped his head to look into her face. Her long sheath of flaxen locks were obscuring her face. He reached out a tanned hand and brushed her hair out of her face. She looked up at him.
"Please Javier. Don't….promise me anything."
"But I--"
"Am just a friend. That's all you can be. I'm going back to America. You're staying here. Cuba is your home. You wanted to stay."
Suddenly defensive, Javier tightened his grip on the iron bars of the gate. He had wanted to stay. He had wondered for so long if he had made the right choice by not going with Katey. He had thought he had, that maybe love for his home country and language and heritage was enough, but then things got bad. And then worse. And then they changed completely. Now that Cubans had hindsight, they were wondering if Castro had been the right choice, but what choice did they have now? Life was pretty much the same.
But then Javier thought of the only thing that he really knew about the revolution. It had been the best night of his life. He had made the mistake of telling his friends about it afterwards, sparing no detail. Now whenever the subject of Katey came up between Javier and his friends, (rarely) Daniel would snigger and say that Javier had finally committed the "physical act of love". Javier would blush and change the subject. It was hard to think about. He wondered if Katey felt the same way about him that he did about her then. And now. Did she still love him as he did her? Did she know that he didn't want to dance with her, that all he wanted to do was look into her eyes and tell her how he really felt?
God, he hoped not. That would only complicate things. And Katey had changed. he still knew he loved her through and through, but she wasn't the same.
After Katey left and he was riding his newly purchased mo-ped to the theatre, all he could think about was the choice he had made. The choice to stay with his life and not go and start a new one in America with Katey. After his father died, he had had to make choices. Mama was swamped with life, and Carlos was always in some bar somewhere, drinking and talking about politics. And then he had a baby to deal with, and Javier dropped out of school. Had he told Katey that? Probably not. He always felt inferior to her about intelligence. She was whip-smart and was bound for an amazing college, and there he was, running an entire house at seventeen; a high-school drop-out.
He watched the scenery go by; brightly colored buildings smiled out at him from the edges of the streets. As the light poured into the cobblestone streets of Havana, Javier inhaled deeply, taking in the smells and sounds that only his country could have. The rich aroma of Cuban food, spicy and exotic; the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars weaving in and out of the laughs and shouts of people dancing in the streets; children's excited giggles as they planned what to do on the weekend; the smells of the hibiscus on a bush he passed and the roses trailing from a woman's window boxes.
How could he ever leave this? He'd never even been to America. Everything he knew was here. His family, friends, job, dance. It was all here. Except that it wasn't all here. Katey was there. Or at least she has been, until she had returned without warning and throw his life out of wack. He was thinking so hard that he missed the turn onto Rosado St., which was where the theatre was. He doubled back and almost toppled the bike trying to get off, afraid he would be late for work.
"Where you been Suarez? Early show starts in ten." Jose said once Javier ran up the three flights of stairs to the catwalk.
"Yeah--I know." he panted. He leaned his hands on his knees and stared at his shoes until he stopped panting and the burning in his kneecaps subsided. The early show was over at lunchtime, and then he and Jose were free until three o'clock, when they had to get ready for that night. He had Katey had arranged to meet at La Rose Negra for an hour to try to choreograph their dance until she had to get back to work.
She was waiting there for him when he got there, still in her work clothes. She hadn't even taken off her apron, but her hair was swept back in a ponytail. Francisco, the young bartender was sneaking her glances over the bar.
"Where've you been?" she asked. He shrugged and blamed it on the traffic. They got to work. Katey had forgotten how good it felt to dance with him. Like being in the ocean, floating just under the surface, where her feet could touch soft sand if she needed reassurance, and it was just her, along in her soft and silent world. Only better, because she wasn't alone, he was there.
And they got to work. And it wasn't hard. They fell right into the place they had been five years before. First they tried to remember their routine from the dance finals. It came back to Katey like the alphabet. But for Javier, it was harder. He hadn't been doing this kind of dancing. She had been practicing, he could tell. It just came to her. But all he had been doing was what he did in La Rosa Negra, nothing fancy or special. And he hadn't been dancing with others that much, not since Katey left, so he was a little out of practice. But she just went with it and never said anything; the old Katey was coming back.