Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

Speaking of mothers.

Limón whispers to me in English, as he’s determined to master my native tongue. “ Mira,your momma lived in Miramar.”

I raise my eyebrows. Limón hasn’t delivered much, but what he has told me proves he’s correctly informed.

“Limón, that ink ain’t fresh. All American diplomats live in Miramar.”

“Mira,I’ll bet you don’t know the exact street in Miramar.” He precociously waves a scrap of paper near his face. I snatch it. On it is written an address, the same one Victor procured.

“Impressive. But I already have it,” I said. “I just can’t go there.”

Limón taps two fingers on his collarbone, and I nod. Walrus. Although I can merely speculate as to why the G-2 man follows me, my instincts say it’s best to derail him from the track of my investigation.

“I’ll go over there as soon as I can,” promises Limón. “Ask around, see if anyone remembers who worked in the house.” I hug him in sheer happiness.

Then Limón’s expression goes dark. “Word is you’ve been out nightclubbing. That ain’t true, is it?” He gingerly knuckles my collarbone. “Nice yanquigirl like you…” He takes note as I study my nails. Then he whispers, “Careful. There’s a crackdown coming.”

“Crackdown?”

“Crackdown. Us on the street, guys with tourist girls, girls with their yumas.It started last week in Santiago, they’ve been arresting. Keep an eye out. You don’t want to be eating rice and beans for three years.”

I shake the cloud of dark news, furious that there’s only one real way to make money in Cuba, and now they’re putting people in jail for it. I step over piles of dog crap, as quickly as my flamboyant heels allow, and march home.

For there I’ve got a sexually active fifteen-year-old country girl with a world-class boyfriend, and I must teach her how to insert a tampon so that she may please him, and her family may eat.

I ’m an expensivetoy. An A-list plaything. A Ferrari 360 Modena Spider F1 with heel-toe downshift and four hundred horses. My engines are revved.

I’m sitting on the lap of an Armani-clad Italian TV executive from Rome with a wallet full of family pictures. I stick out my lower lip and pout until he agrees to call up a dressmaker. I playfully tap his nose and quickly calculate the outfit’s worth on the black market. With it, I can make November’s rent.

Camila’s words are on repeat loop in my ear. You’re a luxurious trinket, a petulant muse, a status symbol to the man attached to the trappings of his class.

“Be interesting and intelligent and very, very demanding,” she lectured.

“Intelligent,” I said. “Men hate that.”

Camila flashed a knowing smile. “Wrong. What real men want,” she elucidated in a whisper, as if her words contained the location of the next Rosetta stone, “are clever, witty, and charming women.” She paused. “Who absolutely need to be rescued. Hero fantasy. Trust me.”

I figure Camila’s the expert, and so when I ask Aldo for a match in the lobby of the Hotel Meliá Cohiba, one match leads to another leads to a Cuba libre and now, a week later, I’m his spoiled princess. Helpless. In need of rescue. A Rapunzel locked in a tropical tower.

I tickle Aldo’s chin and lure him out of his chair, and we tumble into the king-size bed in the middle of the hotel’s finest suite. All jineterasknow the Meliá Cohiba is the prime place for a romp, as the island’s few upscale shops are in the downstairs lobby and across the street.

Maintain an intrinsic connection between the bedroom and the bureau.Thus far I’ve collected four pairs of Brazilian high heels—cheapo and overpriced, but the very best of the island’s offerings—three necklaces, a purse, panties and bras, and a pair of white hot pants so tight they aren’t so much worn as applied, and never after breakfast.

A $100 handbag will fetch $30 in the street; a gold chain twice that. I’m raking it in.

The Italian is under the sheets, his Cohiba filling the room with pricey pollution. He’s watching the fastidious tailor sketch a gauzy dress that will expose more flesh than a bikini. I feign delight. Aldo suggests lace.

Then we are alone. Aldo drops his wallet on the night table, reclines, and pulls me to him, to finish business. Show no inhibition in any matter.I start at his neck and, with an awkward stride, work my way across the terrain of his chest and over the softly covered hipbones and down further still, until he groans in pleasure. I’m remembering Camila’s instructions, that wild enthusiasm makes up for flaws in technique. Out of my surprised mouth come “hmmms” and “oooohs,” but despite my acceleration the only thing on fire in this room is the stub of his Cohiba.

Ferrari engine stalled. Sixty to zero in 4.2 seconds.

Aldo—frustrated and more than a little embarrassed—gestures for me to leave. As I quickly dress, I see his wallet splayed on the nightstand next to him, the faces of his wife and children peering out accusingly.

T hat the conciergebelieves me to be Cuban and not a foreigner would normally thrill, but I need to use the phone, and so I whip out my U.S. passport, useless though it has become in the four months I’ve lived here. From the lobby phone, I tell Camila about my pathetic performance.

“Can’t get it up?” Camila says. “ Muchacha,either you’re worse in bed than I thought or he has major family guilt. Thing about Cuba is that it’s the safest place in the world for a married man to have an affair. They control the entire situation. We girls can’t afford to contact them, much less fly out for a surprise visit to the wife.”

“No boiling bunnies,” I quip, but the island’s pop-culture barrier makes much of what I say fly over a Cuban’s head.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you foreign girls,” says Camila. “I’m surprised any of you ever manage to procreate, much less marry. What kind of mierdado they teach you about men?”

“You wouldn’t believe,” I say.

“How many have you slept with?”

“Four. No, five.”

“And before you came to Cuba?”

“That’s including. Before and after.”

Camila can’t believe her ears. “Impossible! And this is normal? For a norteamericanayour age?”

“I guess, I don’t know.”

But she’s not listening. “ Qué represión!No wonder you’re all so insecure. Cubanasare good at sex because they likesex. The power is in the enjoyment of it, not in the withholding or distribution of it.”

The clerk motions for me to return the phone. “What should I do? I’m terminally mierda.”

“Come over Monday, I’ve got an idea for some lessons.”

I’m not sure what she means, but as I’m oh-for-three with the foreign men; I figure I need all the help I can get.

Who doesn’t need any help is Modesta.

With supply greater than demand, it’s typical for a crush of lovely jineterasto jockey for a lone, scruffy tourist. But Modesta traverses the lobby with a yumaon each arm, uncommitted, as if she hasn’t yet decided which one will be lucky enough to pay for the night’s affections.

When her gaze finds me, she hesitates, and then I’m placed in her recall. Irritated, she maneuvers her entourage in my direction, but I quickly exit the lobby, knowing I couldn’t stand another humiliation in this hotel.

As I pass the jammed Habana Café outside the hotel, a jineteraworking the line of single guys discreetly tells me my face is smeared in lipstick. A graciasis barely out of my mouth when I turn and practically smack into Rafael. He’s more gorgeous than I remember, and a quick scan of the crowd tells me he garners appreciative glances from both men and women. The one holding his hand—a Canadian yumain her midfifties with a frizzy perm—fumbles for a tissue in her purse, and dabs away my lipstick.