Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

A smell that said home.

I step out of the bath, dry off, and grab what I think is my underwear, but there is a surprise new set of lingerie on the hook. It’s a ribbed white tank and tightie-whitie briefs. Men’s. Puzzled, I stick my head out the door.

“Wear it!” barks Jaap from somewhere in the darkened room. I’m nervous now. Being a jineterato grateful tourists—men who wouldn’t necessarily have access to young flesh or exalted passion back home—affords a certain inviolability. I may not have the material upper hand, but I have the emotional one.

Until now.

Jaap is Dutch, and in the days we’ve been together he’s been seemingly harmless. Now he throws me to the bed, his aggression unusual, and as I’m regaining my wits, he flops next to me. He flicks on a light, grabs for me, strong, and pulls me on top, his muscled legs wrapping around my back. I look down, stunned, at a black bra fastened around his chest, its empty cups flapping sadly, and then he whispers, “Take me, you bad, bad boy,” before deftly pulling his erectness from a corner of lace panties and plunging inside me, through the slit in my briefs, ordering me now to move missionary-style, my legs straight back, while I pump up and down, awkwardly, painfully in my apprehension, my unreadiness; and yet with teenage enthusiasm he howls and squeezes his nipples, and releases himself, clutching greedy handfuls of my ass, groaning with pleasure, making a man out of me. I roll off, feeling dizzy. His breath slows, and he reaches for me, asking me if I liked it like that. I figure if he wants me to act like a man, there’s no need hanging around and cuddling.

While he watches, I find his wallet. Facing him, I deliberately count seven hundred Euros and stuff the bills in my new briefs. I pull on a pair of his khaki shorts and cinch the belt.

“Go ahead and keep my bikini,” I say, walking out. “It’ll look better on you anyway.”

CAMILA COMES OUT of the operating room in scrubs, in triumph because of another successful heart bypass. The doctors and nurses are the best in the hemisphere, yet from the outside the hospital looks squalid, like a Harlem crack house. Inside, Camila signals, and goes to change.

A few blocks from the hospital, we perch on the Malecón, smoking cigarettes and basking in the sun’s final rays. Across the street, the light reflects on the U.S. Interests Section, and I briefly wonder which office was John’s.

I imagine my stepfather, obsessively working through sunsets, ignoring my mother, leaving scope and space in her heart for a man like the Cuban who fathered me. I wonder about José Antonio—wonder what he would look like, his laugh, his face, the sonrisathat touched my mother.

“You’re thinking about him again!” accuses Camila, breaking the silence. “Any news?”

None, I say.

“You’ll find him, don’t worry! Have faith in Radio Bemba,” she says. “If your father’s alive, you’ll meet him. And when you do, promise you won’t be wearing that nutty men’s outfit.”

I sigh and tell her about my afternoon.

“It’s dominance, silly!” she exclaims. “Don’t you understand? Who has it and who doesn’t is crucial in matters of sexual play. Eighty percent of men are dissatisfied with their current lover. They’re embarrassed to ask for what they want, too worried about what their wives or girlfriends will think. To be a good lover, you have to let the men believe that you’re talking them into what they, themselves, really want to do. Give them what they want, and don’t make them feel like a patoor a sissy for it.”

Next to Camila, I feel like a miserable fraud of a Cuban girl, my romantic instincts unrefined and my sexual tastes sophomoric.

“Suggest that your bra or your high heels might look really good on him,” she says. “Or that he needs a spanking. Take your clues from his reaction.”

“What, you let a guy wear your panties and he’ll be faithful?”

“He’ll never stray.”

“Camila, why didn’t you become a psychologist instead of a heart surgeon?”

She thinks a moment, then replies, “They’re both the same thing, mi vida.You open up the heart and poke around.”

W hat’s the news?”I whisper.

Victor and I are hiding in darkened shadows and heavy drapes to the right of the stage at García Lorca Theater. Built in 1837, the theater was once considered the world’s most astonishing. Now it’s held together with netting and wire.

It’s opening night for the National Ballet’s rendition of Don Quixote,and all two thousand seats under the dome and grand chandelier are filled to capacity. In attendance are janitors and dignitaries and government jefes.Tickets, for locals, sell at a proletarian ten pesos, about forty cents.

In Cuba, ballet is serious business. Under the revolution, the National Ballet has become world-renowned, its only dark cloud the consistent defection of its dancers on world tours. Don Quixote,as are most of the prominent ballets, was choreographed by Alicia Alonso, the legendary and nearly blind octogenarian dance great. She’s melded Cuban moves—a collision of African and Spanish dance rhythms—with classical training perfected by the French and Russians.

Despite the dancers’ undisputed brilliance, this close to the stage I make out snags and runs in ballerinas’ tights, their pink shoes stained dark from wear.

“It’s the crackdown,” says Victor, shaking his head. “It’s becoming too dangerous to access your files.”

Because of the crowd, and his coworkers who comprise it, I’m surprised Victor has chosen this venue to meet. But he assures me the razzle-dazzle of an Alicia Alonso effort is perfect cover.

“How dangerous,” I inquire, “is retrieving those files?” I’m wondering if Victor’s recalcitrance is a way to procure future graft, or whether the secrets of a U.S. State Department family from two decades before are truly under heavy guard.

As Don Quixote slays dragons onstage, Victor answers rapidly. “Everyone is suspicious of everyone. Divisions are reorganizing, department heads changing. I’m having trouble not arousing attention.”

“Is it money?”

He nods, and I sigh. It’s always money, and while the dancers pirouette in my peripheral vision, I lament that my own knight-errantry is becoming so costly. I hand Victor half the Euros from yesterday’s caustic encounter with the cross-dressing Dutchman.

“This will open more doors,” Victors says, folding the bills into his jacket. “When I phone you next time, don’t call me back. Just know a message from me means we’ll meet the next day at four P.M. in the courtyard of the university, on the bench by the tank. I will have your address.”

“I’m so frustrated, Victor, I can’t imagine why this takes so long.”

“At four P.M., by the tank.”

“How do people live like this, all this waiting?”

“The tank at the square. Remember that, compañera.You must promise you will not try to contact me,” says Victor, wiping his brow.

I nod, but he makes me swear, saying his livelihood is on the line.

“Two weeks, mi vida.Just give me two weeks, and we’ll know where José Antonio lived,” he says, gently kissing my hand. He quickly exits, and I see him a few minutes later, in the balcony, taking a seat next to his wife and daughters.

For a few moments, I watch the ballerinas and their rendition of Don Quixote,and after a while my mind wonders to Walrus, who is undoubtedly waiting outside, and then I start to wonder if I, too, am tilting at windmills.

M y mother stoodnaked in front of the three-quarter-length mirror. Her reflection was partially obscured, as most Cuban mirrors are faded from age, the coppery matter underneath peeping through instead. She turned to view her body’s blooming profile and stare at a new roundness.