“Moncho is very beautiful when he is angry. His words are beautiful.”
“And you are more beautiful than ever,” Holtz said.
“Are you still in love with me?”
“No. I’ve known you too long and you live in Havana. Also you are too beautiful to love.”
“I’m traveling with an American who loves me.”
“I know. In spite of that we will bring him along.”
“Why are those soldiers surrounding the women?”
“The women are very important today. They have a message for the ambassador.”
“Am I in trouble for being with the women?”
“It’s possible. The military has big eyes. They trust no one. But at least you’re no longer a blonde.”
A woman screamed and as Renata turned she saw a soldier striking the screaming woman with the butt of his rifle. Other women broke through the ranks of soldiers and yelled things Renata could not understand as they ran toward the men coming out of City Hall. Firemen opened their hoses and the force of the water knocked down many of the women, drove them against buildings. Still they came running, and soldiers clubbed a few. Two women, both drenched, reached the limousine and were yelling to the man Renata took to be the ambassador, and they shook their flyers at him. The man took one flyer and waved his hands to the troops to stop the water cannons. He spoke inaudibly. Soldiers were dragging and pushing most of the women into vans. Renata counted two dozen arrested and saw the lieutenant colonel approaching the ambassador.
She and Holtz were now past her hotel and out of sight of the women and soldiers.
“Those brave women,” she said.
“They are ready to die for their anger. We have to get you away from Santiago and out to my house,” Holtz said. “We don’t want you dead.”
“I must go to the hotel.”
“Not now. They have chivatos spying on people like you, and they monitor the phones. One of them may have seen you at the protest. You’re out, so stay out.”
“I have no clothes.”
“You can wear Natalia’s. You’re the same size. Later we’ll find a way to get your clothes.”
“I have a gun in my suitcase.”
“What kind of gun?”
“A Colt.38. A Cobra.”
“What do you want with a gun?”
“I want to give it to Fidel.”
“Then we must get it. Give me your key. They’re not looking for me yet.”
“Bring my chartreuse blouse and black skirt. The pistol is wrapped in my underwear. Bring my underwear. And the bottle of Gardenia perfume. And my Changó and Oshun beads. You know the Changó and Oshun beads, don’t you? Of course you do.”
“I will carry what I can hide on my body. I can’t come out bulging in unusual places.”
“Then just the blouse, the gun, and the underwear. You can wear the beads. I do.”
“Don’t tell me how to behave, Renata. You are insane and insane people do not give good counsel. Go sit in that café and have a coffee. I’ll come by on the other side of the street and then you follow me at a distance.”
“Where will we meet Quinn?”
“Moncho will contact him at the hotel or he’ll find where he is from Max. Don’t worry about Quinn.”
“I do worry. I met him two days ago and he wants to marry me.”
“Smart americano. I’m glad to see you, Renata.”
“I am very happy to be rescued by you, Felipe. You are a dear man.”
“I’m trying to get over that. We also rescued your guns from the apartment on Sixteenth Street, your friend Alfie and I.”
“You got them? Maravilloso. Where are they?”
“On the way to Fidel.”
“How did you do it?”
“Alfie was superb, I’ll tell you all about it. He’s quite clever, and fearless.”
“He seems to be a first-class criminal.”
“It’s nice to meet one who isn’t in politics.”
The army flew the press back to Santiago airport from El Macho’s landing field, and Quinn took a taxi to the Casa Granda to call in his story. It was mid-afternoon when he got to the room and he found Renata gone. His phone message that he’d be here in an hour had been delivered but lay unopened on the floor. Her purse and all her clothes were here, no note. He called Max with his story and told him Hemingway wasn’t interested in the duel, so it was back to Cooney — go public if that’s what you want.
“If he does go public Hemingway will have to come up with some sort of reply.”
“No, he won’t. He’s Hemingway.”
“He’ll look like he’s afraid.”
“He’s in mourning for his dog. And his writing isn’t going well. He said if he wanted to die he’d do it himself.”
“Is that his statement?”
“Not really. But he said it, and a lot more. But no.”
“I’ll tell Cooney.”
Quinn dictated his army story to the desk man he had seen on his first visits to the Post, a black Americano named Julian Stewart, a New York actor and aspiring playwright with a Cuban wife, who edited copy and did layout. He laughed at Quinn’s paragraph on the fluctuating army death tolls in the battle with Fidel and he told Quinn, “You should go to Fidel and get the real total.” Quinn agreed that was a good idea. “Tell him I said hello,” Julian said, “and I’m available if he needs help.”
Quinn flopped on the bed, nothing to do till Renata connected to the Holtzes. He raised his memory of her at their first meeting in El Floridita with Hemingway. Amazing, stunning, incomparable. Quinn now decided he would marry her before they left Oriente province. He was absolutely firm on this, but he also decided he would not tell her. He would make his plan public only when necessary; yet it was real in his imagination and now he needed only to actualize it. The ceremony would require no priest to sanctify it, no judge to make it legal. A babalawo would do, even if the union was legitimate only in Yoruba; for Renata saw the babalawo as a comfort figure. Quinn believed she was not yet aware how ready she was to marry him. The intensity of what he felt for her was without precedent, and her reaction to him certainly seemed strong. Her grief at losing Diego was enormous, but in its freshest hours she slept alongside Quinn in his bed; and in the wake of the Quesada murder she took revenge on the caprice that killed her love and gave herself to Quinn, transforming them both. She is a creature of perpetual intensity and mystical need, a nymph who could betray you in a blink with a stranger, if that act lit the flame that lights her days. You have an aberration wrapped into your life, Quinn, a walking, loving astonishment. Marry her quickly. She will understand your perception and will accept. Twice in the brief time you’ve known her she has admitted the possibility of marrying you someday, and she will accept now because of your persuasively absurd insistence. She is love insatiable but she has never accepted long life with her other lovers, who have all had the life expectancy of mayflies, products of her youthful misjudgment, her proclivity for fractured dreams, and her co-conspiracy in creating wrenching separations. You are a gift from an Orisha that arrived during her craving for something beyond the sexual fadeaways of her commonplace book of love, and your impromptu marriage scheme looms as a gesture any Orisha would respect, bespeaking your fluency in the language of the soul.
But be aware, Quinn — Renata does not yet know she knows these things, and you certainly should not push her to premature awareness, for she may make a hasty mess and bend everything to her adorational needs of the moment. Let her discovery arrive during your next eureka moment together, which should be soon. Do not tell her that she wants to marry you above all her other lovers past or present. Do not spoil her surprise.