Another Face

2001, September (approximate date). Havana. Night (approximate time).

Time passes and nothing happens. Boys in neckerchiefs run past, groups that seem to be coming from some school activity, couples, families, people sitting on the Malecón wall waiting for the night to decide for them. He is beginning to think his friend exaggerated when he said you can pick someone up here just by staying still. Then a skinny man appears who has something Mexican about him although he is Cuban: a little cowboy hat, an open shirt, a brazen way of talking he warms to before he warms to the man himself.

—What are you looking for?

He asks without beating around the bush.

—What?

—A guy or a girl.

They are already sharing confidences.

—A guy.

He sits down beside him.

His name is Yuniel. Or Yuneil. For years he writes it both ways and no longer knows which it was. He is not the least bit attracted to him. That reassures him because he can talk to him without making up any story for himself. He is a negotiator; he always has been. He tells him he surely knows someone he would like. He asks him what kind.

He does not know how to describe him.

—I don’t know. A quiet guy. Someone who seems decent.

—Good-looking?

—That helps.

—White?

—Not necessarily.

—Strong?

—No.

He looks at him.

—Then what?

He thinks.

—Someone you feel tender toward.

Yuniel laughs.

He does not yet know that this is perhaps the most dangerous answer he could give him. Tenderness is his undoing. Someone can be very beautiful and do nothing for him; a certain unguarded gesture, on the other hand, a slightly awkward smile, that way of not knowing what to do with their hands, is enough, and he is lost.

Yuniel gets up.

—Let’s go to the Bim-Bom.

The word sounds like a password, and it works precisely because it is so ridiculous. Bim-Bom. For years he will remember that night thinking that important doors never have important names.

Now he knows they closed it later. Or so he was told. There was a fuss, reports, images circulating outside Cuba showing young gay men enjoying themselves there as if that enjoyment were evidence of an entire nation’s utter decadence. He does not know how much of that story he learned afterward and how much he knew then. This is another problem with writing memory: the future contaminates the young man still walking toward 23 and Malecón convinced only that he is going to have a beer.

They arrive too early.

It must be seven.

The Bim-Bom is almost empty.

—There’s nobody here.

—Just wait.

Yuniel knows the night better than he does.

They order beer. People start coming in. Slowly at first and then in groups. Young men. Young women. Some dressed up. Others in clothes that look improvised and turn out more elegant than anything carefully chosen. They greet each other, jostle each other, kiss each other on the cheek. The music grows louder. Nothing extraordinary exists yet. That is the impression that remains: young people enjoying themselves.

Yuniel touches his arm.

—Look.

He sees him.

—That one.

He does not need to ask what he means.

He has features that those racial forms in New York would call Caucasian, although his skin is browned by a sun that plainly knows nothing of sunscreen. Green eyes. Large teeth, white, imperfect in a way that makes them beautiful. He wears a Tommy Hilfiger cap so obviously fake that it seems proud of being so.

Smitten.

That he remembers without any doubt.

—What’s his name?

—Maikel.

—Introduce me.

Yuniel smiles like someone who has just done exactly what he was hired to do, although he has not paid Yuniel anything.

Maikel comes over.

They talk.

He does not remember the first sentences. They were probably bad. Where are you from, how long have you been here, what do you do. He asks if he wants a beer. He says yes.

Then he notices something.

He looks young.

Not necessarily a teenager, but young enough that he has no wish to find out later he has done something stupid.

—Hey.

—What.

—Are you of legal age?

He looks at him as though he had just asked whether he knew how to swim.

—Of course.

—Are you sure?

He laughs and takes out his ID card.

A bluish laminated card. He looks at it. Not because he is virtuous. Nor should one invent virtues in retrospect. He is cautious. He is in Cuba, a country whose police system he barely knows, and he has no intention of getting into trouble with people in uniform here or anywhere else. The date confirms what he needs to know.

An adult.

Good.

He gives back the card.

—Sorry.

—You really are suspicious.

—Very.

They keep drinking.

One beer.

Another.

The place begins to fill up. He meets Reinaldo and then someone whose name has been completely lost. Yuniel disappears and comes back. Everyone seems to know him. But he is barely listening. He is interested in Maikel.

They talk about nothing important.

That matters too.

No terrible childhood.

No politics.

No confession.

They drink and look at each other.

At a certain point he says:

—I want to kiss you.

He does not finish the sentence.

He is already kissing him.

It tastes of beer.

And of him.

For years he tries to describe that second taste and always fails. Something salty, perhaps the sea clinging to his skin, cigarettes, although he does not know whether he smoked, the Havana night coming in through a door that keeps opening and closing. All he knows is that the kiss makes him think something stupid:

He likes this country.

They kiss again.

And again.

And then all the horrible stories he has heard about Cuba seem like propaganda. That was how intelligent he was. A beautiful young man kisses him in a place on 23 and Malecón and he concludes that half a century of History must be wrong.

That deserves to be written down too.

They leave.

He wants to go to the Malecón because he has been overcome by a fit of sentimentality. He wants to see the moon, feel the sea, sit Maikel beside him and look at that curve of the city that at night seems infinitely richer than it is. They walk a few meters. They sit down. They still talk about small things. They kiss two or three times.

They have negotiated nothing.

He has asked him for nothing.

Neither has he.

Then he hears a whistle.

To the right.

Another to the left.

Maikel gets up.

He runs.

—Maikel!

A policeman stops him a few meters away.

Another whistles at him and gestures.

He walks over.

Here the night changes its nature with extraordinary ease. Ten seconds ago he was kissing someone beside the sea. Now there are uniforms.

—What’s happening, officer?

—Go inside.

—Look, I…

—Go inside.

He does not shout.

That unsettles him more.

They go back toward the Bim-Bom. He tries to speak.

—Officer, we can work something out…

He has dollars.

He does not finish.

Neither of the two answers.

He does not know whether they understood what he was implying, whether they simply ignored him or whether his money had absolutely nothing to do with what was happening.

Inside he looks for Maikel.

He is not there.

He asks.

Nobody knows.

Or nobody wants to know.

Yuniel does not appear either.

This, he thinks, is the moment when the night begins to show another face.

Not a terrible face yet.

Just a different one.