Lisa Wixon - Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban

One who has been to Moscow, but never on his tour.

“Now, only a chajnikwears Versace. Only a chajnikgoes to St. Moritz and drives a BMW. Me, I go to Klosters. Drive a Mercedes S600. I drive Mercedes, yes, but soon I order Rolls-Royce Phantom. What do you think, black or silver? Silver I think.” Sasha takes a long drag of his cigar and shoots a coded glance to his aide-de-camp, a bulky Russian who’s guarding a walnut-paneled door that leads to the entrance.

Sasha is a boyish thirty-seven, with light hair and long, slender limbs. Dark circles underscore his steel eyes but don’t detract from a natural handsomeness. The arcs are likely caused by his inability to relax fully, even in sleep. Lately that’s been in my arms.

As I’ve fallen under the spell of his vampiric schedule—rise at dusk and sleep after toast and eggs at sunrise—I’ve come to know the intimacies of a Havana night. It’s been a blessing to avoid the daytime bustle of long lines, lung-clogging pollution, and the depressing vision of a tattered city. But in the luscious nights, the appearance of stars—sharp and lustrous over an unlit city—is the only confirmation that we Cubans are not alone in the universe. That we’re connected, indeed, to the outside world. The night says this. The day, however, speaks of loneliness and a longing for a lifting of the curtains on the world stage. When the embargo does end, when Havana is electrified like Seoul and rebuilt like Berlin and demonized like Miami, the day will be filled with a spirit of commercial purpose. Nostalgia, my island’s only product now in copious supply, will dissipate under the stage lights.

“You,” Sasha says, his fingers dancing up my inner thigh. “Me. We make arrangement.”

Twirling my light hair around a finger, I ask what he could mean.

“I come back for you. We make arrangement. You need money, to help your family, yes. I can help. Kroshka”—little one, his amorous name for me—“what do you say I send you money. Perhaps each month. I come back to visit, I know you’re waiting for just me.”

Lest the help of a yumaseem altruistic, I’ve come to know retainers as a tool of control and power over the recipient. But still I’m shocked he’s suggested a deal this early in our tryst.

Sasha and I have been together a week, ever since he saw me on the Malecón and ordered his driver to pull over. Although he believes our meeting to have been the intersection of fates, in reality I’d been waiting by the road and, upon seeing the Mercedes approach, one likely carrying a wealthy foreigner, I stepped in its path, working on gut instinct. I dropped my handbag and pulled back to the curb, tumbling on the sidewalk, as if by accident. The driver came to a screeching stop and jumped from the car to see if I was okay, and I brushed it off, apologizing for my absentmindedness and blotting the blood from yet another skinned knee. When I saw Sasha fetch my handbag, it was a coup de foudre,or so I told him, flashing him my amateur version of The Look.

It’s my longest and most successful jinetestint yet.

“We set up a bank account then?”

“What do I have to do for it?” I say, calling up Sophia Loren but delivering the line with all the sultriness of Shirley Temple.

“Kroshka,”he says. “Promise to never lie. Women who lie—” Sasha hits a sour note. “Okay?” I shrug coyly and look away. Camila would tell me to take two beats. Sasha rakes my hand with his and, after a slow, tense moment, I kiss his lips and say it’s a deal. He is mine and I am his.

“I’ve always wanted Cuban girlfriend,” he says in his broken English.

And I’ve always wanted to find my father. But that bit I say silently. I also say silently how much I miss Rafael, and how it’s his face I imagine each morning at the hotel when the night’s opiates have run their course through Sasha’s veins. I pounce on top of him, hellcat, returning his heart rate to its former speed, grinding on my beast, jockeying, concentrating on his delectation, pronouncing mine to be genuine, and proclaiming this fucking to be the best ever. In my mind’s eye, Rafael’s etched face is plastered on Sasha’s like a Halloween mask. It’s the only way.

Sasha is on again about the suits, and I allow myself to glow in triumph. Finally, I think, I’ve secured a winning yuma,one who will send remittances so I may stop jineteandofor the two months I have left in Cuba. And in just a week, if all goes as planned, Victor will hand me the coveted address of my family. It’s a victory, and I’m savoring my accomplishments. As I should.

Sasha takes my hand and places it on his jacket.

“Take a look at this suit. Helmut Lang. Elastic wool. These shoes: Gucci loafers. No socks. Even winter in Moscow, I do not wear socks. They say, Sasha, you are crazy, but I am fashion. Nowhere on my body is purple and pink and yellow like wagtail. Those babushka-killers in Moscow buy clown suits with big money to impress the shop clerk one second. But not me, I think about fashion. High fashion. I tell my girl, don’t wear fishnet stockings every night. Every night with the fishnet. So boring, Madonna Like a Virgin.It was good, you know, back then, but in Moscow, they don’t want to move on in fashion. They are stuck when 1989 happened.” He pauses and takes me in, as if for the first time. “You would not know, of course, you are Cuban girl.” Then his voice lowers and he pulls me toward him on the buttery leather couch. “Beautiful, beautiful Cuban girl.”

Although I’ve not corrected Sasha’s belief that I’m clueless as to the outside world, I’ve demurred in revealing the truth about my life. I imagine the look on his face if I tell him about my past, the countries traveled, the country clubs and diplomats’ parties, all that expensive education. With my foreign boyfriends, I briefly wonder at their reaction if I could only tell them of my true history. But I never do, knowing there’d be anger and outrage for my nefarious deception.

Part of a cubana’s allure is her perceived—and real—lack of worldliness. Foreign men relish the role of bon vivant, and also the notion that a cubanais forever ingenuous, an empty vessel to be filled with his own inarguable viewpoints.

So I let Sasha believe I’ve lived in Havana my whole life. I’m certain, in Moscow, or New York, or Munich, I’d have no chance of attracting him. Sasha’s interest in me stems from the idea of my being Cuban and of having a romance with an affectionate, easily jealous, fuss-making latinastuck in a time warp. I’m a wall piece in the museum of innocence. Easily bought and traded for trinkets.

SASHA AND HIS buddies are in Havana for several weeks. Lying low, or so he says. Sasha cryptically suggests they’re sitting out a storm of retaliation from rivals in Moscow. Havana is the perfect hideout: remote, racy, distractive. And with nary a gun to be had.

That a crush of wealthy, dissolute Russians are on the prowl has not gone unnoticed among the jinete.The imagination of Havana’s most enterprising women has been excited by the novi ruskiswho love to exercise their capitalistic jurisdiction, who check the time on Cartier tank watches, and who shop conspicuously for antique Bakalowicz crystal.

Even a crackdown won’t upend this kind of good time.

At dinner, Sasha and his fellow playboys cock their pinky fingers and bow before plates of cocaine. Afterward, alone or in groups, we prowl through dark streets in rented Mercedeses, scouring the city for its few hot spots, the ones alighted by tourist dollars, in discos and restaurants and cabarets only the very rich can afford, as the best of Cuba is available exclusively to foreigners and those rare few with freewheeling currency.

Most jineterosbelieve that in the rest of the world, if they can just find someone to marry them and take them out into it, their lives will be a permanent holiday. That tourists party every night and relax beachside in the daytime convinces most that this lifestyle is the norm for those from afuera.Tell a Cuban how hard people work in the Western world, and they don’t understand.