Havana Noir by Achy Obejas Read Free Book Online Page A

harboring a fugitive, or complicity, or instigation, or God knows what craziness. Those were hellish days, nights of furious anxiety. But no. False alarm. The son of a bitch didn’t turn me in. Hmm. How weird. Even today, I can’t explain it. Well, the truth is that there are a lot of things about this nefarious situation which I can’t explain.
    Sometimes I have no choice but to be out during the day—as much as I hate that. I’ll need to go to the bank to get money, since everything here has to be paid in cash, or to sign for the wire transfers sent from Europe. I also need to pay the electric bill, the phone, the water, buy groceries for the week (never forgetting the pharmaceuticals nor the whiskey), return the videos, rent new videos, take a little stroll by my dentist’s office, go to the hairdresser at the Cohíba or the boutique at La Maison, or deal with the process of taking a trip abroad, which involves a head-on crash with the world’s most grotesque bureaucracy, among other needs. I hate to walk in the sun around other people. It’s true that my neighborhood is pretty safe compared to the disaster of Centro Habana, for example, or Alamar, or El Hueco in Marianao, where tourists don’t go even by accident. But Vedado also has its black holes, of course, tucked away behind the pleasant façades. Perhaps it’s my own problem, but I frequently think the streets stink. They stink of misery, of desperation, of violence. Basically, the streets are bad. If it were up to me, I’d never go out.
    I can’t stop thinking about the guy, about the incredible surprise I got the first time I saw him. It was at the Provincial Court, during the trial. Until that moment, I’d only heard his voice on the phone. A low voice, beautiful, boyish, although it had something metallic about it, and sometimes even squeaky, especially when he had fits of hysteria or threatened me by describing how pretty I’d look once he’d gutted me— swish! swish! —with his lethal blade (that’s actually how the fool expressed himself), or when he screamed about how females, those degenerates, those shitty whores, weren’t worth a hill of beans, and I—the most disgusting of all!—was guilty of who knows what.
    At those times, I’d hold the phone away from my ear, lean back in my chair, and light a cigarette. Sometimes I’d get up. I’d leave him there, talking to himself, without hanging up or letting him know. I’d go to the kitchen, pour myself a whiskey on the rocks, and return to the bedroom at my leisure. When I got back on the phone, he’d be going at it at the top of his lungs, threatening to strangle me with my own intestines, but not before tearing out my liver and eating it, among other lovely things. In the midst of his fits, he never noticed my absences. Or who knows—maybe he just didn’t want to let on. He was egocentrism itself. I’d happily get comfortable again in my chair, or on the bed among the big pillows, with my whiskey on the rocks and my cigarettes. I’d listen to plans for my future murder, which would be quite atrocious, while contemplating the Havana night. Then he’d finally calm his nerves, or surrender to exhaustion, or ejaculate. He was always the one who would say goodbye, until the next one, hope you have horrifying nightmares, etc. He’d hang up indignant, absolutely furious, telling me that I was a piece of shit, a goddamn cactus, a frigid neurotic, an insensitive bitch, a monster! And he just couldn’t talk to me anymore. Those farewells were never avatars of anything even vaguely healthy. Generally, the next day, or a few days after that, the mangled cadaver of some girl would be found in some tenement slum, or in a ditch, or in the bathroom at the bus terminal, or in a dumpster, or floating down the Almendares River. Not much time would pass before he’d call again, to brag about his latest prank.
    Even as he gave the impression of being an inveterate narcissist, the fact is he never