CHAPTER 23

Serguey woke with a warm sensation on his torso, right beneath the ribs: his skin had been exposed to sunlight breaking in through the window. He shuffled to the opposite end of the bed, cloaking his body in the much cooler shade. As he tried dozing off, he heard Victor’s voice somewhere outside the bedroom. He extricated himself from slumber, arching his neck and concentrating on the words his brother was speaking. Someone replied, but he couldn’t tell who it was. He scurried off the bed, rushing to put on his pants.

Victor burst into the room. “Serguey, wake up . . .”

Serguey stared at him, one pant leg in. His eyes were still brittle, his vision hazy. Morning drool stuck like filament to his mouth. Victor was shirtless, wearing only briefs.

“Who the hell’s out there?” Serguey asked.

“It’s Mario.”

“Mario’s here?”

“No, at Toya’s. She came to get us.”

Serguey wiped his lips and eyes. His limp ankle and foot, pinioned inside the pant leg, required a full transition into alertness to be wriggled free. “Is he alone?”

Victor was already slipping out the door. “Come on, just get ready.”

As he washed his face and brushed his teeth, Serguey considered whether it was his text message that had done the trick. Or had Kiko found a way to reach the dramaturge? He tried to focus on what he should ask Mario. When a wanted man shows up at your door, his motives are what you most covet to know. Serguey could ask leading questions, then some “yes or no” ones, maybe catch him in a lie, force him to reveal something he hadn’t planned. When caught lying, people went one of two ways: they poured out their hearts in search of relief or fumbled to cover it up, burying themselves in the type of hole where an attorney could sink them deeper.

The brothers walked simultaneously into the living room. Toya was sitting on the sofa, her head shrouded in a white cloth that corresponded with her dress. She stood and kissed Serguey.

“Am I glad you’re here,” she said. She slapped the bony palm of her right hand against Victor’s robust pectorals. “I don’t want any trouble at my house, you understand?”

“Serguey will do the talking.”

She went for the front door ahead of them. The meeting would be on her terms. “Last week the shells told me I’d get an unexpected visitor,” she said. “I thought it was going to be my cousin Estrella, the one with the goiter. She hasn’t come by in two years. Then this lanky gay man shows up this morning. Good thing I’m an early riser.”

“I thought you knew Mario,” Victor said.

“I do. That doesn’t mean I’m happy to see him.”

Serguey remained vigilant on the way to Toya’s, surveying the streets and porches and nooks between houses. He saw no one out of the ordinary, no strange cars. They entered the hallway to Toya’s home, and he felt a bolt of fretfulness, like sudden nausea, at what Mario would have to say. He made sure to walk in front of Victor, to keep him at bay in case he snapped.

Toya stepped in and motioned the brothers to do the same. “He’s in the consultation room.”

Mario was standing at the far end. He was wearing gray shorts and a light blue polo shirt. His neck and forehead were sunbaked, as were his forearms. His moustache had vanished. He looked nothing like the white-suited man Serguey had met after the play. Maybe that was the point.

“So, where have you been hiding?” Victor said.

“Everybody take a seat,” Toya said. She paced to the back corner of the musty room and hauled two barstools for the brothers. Serguey leaned his body on his. Victor sat with his feet braced together on the foot holder, his knees spread. His arms clamped the small space of stool in front of his crotch. His chest was heaving silently as he stared with his head sloped toward Mario. He looked like an ape creeping toward the verge of an attack—right at that instant when the animal stiffens, its gaze giving the impression of cognition, of consciously deciding when and how to strike.

Mario sank slowly into a wooden chair. The tall, stylish man Serguey had met at Mella Theater now bore the appearance and demeanor of a repentant recluse.

“The sun is the only thing that’s kept me sane these past few weeks,” he said, bobbing his head almost imperceptibly.

“How much sun do you think my father’s getting?” Victor said.

“All right,” Serguey said. “Let him speak.”

Victor straightened up. “Okay. Talk.”

Mario looked at them like a man beholding his executioners. “I’m the reason your father’s in prison.”

Victor’s legs quivered. “Oh, man.” He glanced at Serguey, his throat vibrating with anger.

“If it’s going to be like this,” Toya said, “go outside and let your brother handle it.” She addressed Mario. “When I was a child, my mother had to hide the knives in the house whenever her brother came over. He was a violent drunk and took it out on whoever was around. This one here,” she touched Victor’s nape, “has a bigger heart but the same type of blood.”

“He loves his father,” Mario said. “I deserve his hatred.”

“Did you rat him out?” Serguey asked.

Mario exhaled as if expulsing cigarette smoke. “I didn’t. The only reason I’m not in prison with Felipe is that I wasn’t home when they came for me. They’d been working my partner for a while, asking about my whereabouts and schedule. He pretended to help them, but he always tipped me off and gave them misleading information. I had no idea they were looking into Felipe too.”

“That’s a lie,” Victor said.

Toya shushed him, then said a prayer in Yoruba. Victor bit his lip. He was more a rabid dog than an ape now.

“You’re right,” Mario said, crossing his wrists over a raised knee. He was regaining his spruced mannerism, his confidence. “Maybe deep inside I suspected something. But I always thought his name would keep him out of trouble. Plus, Felipe was never involved in anything against the government. He was mostly in it for his plays.”

Serguey mounted his stool. “Start at the beginning and tell us what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry.” Mario scraped his hands like block planes on his thighs. “You’d think a writer could be more articulate.” He laughed awkwardly. “It hasn’t been easy, you know. Felipe’s my best friend.”

“Were you two involved with Liberty Now?” Serguey asked. He was tilling the field for a specific conversation, rid of tangents or delays.

Mario sighed again. “Yes, I’m—was—one of their main contacts here. They’ve been funding some of Felipe’s projects in exchange for information. It was actually a division of Liberty Now, a small group of exiled artists.”

“What kind of information?”

“Other contacts. People in the arts with an influential position who aren’t happy with the status quo.”

“Like who?”

“Film directors, actors, musicians.” The dramaturge relaxed his shoulders. “The idea was to have them leak out evidence of oppression and lack of financial support in the arts. You know, about the bureaucracy, the politics of it. They’d already gotten a few people to write up accounts of their experiences using pseudonyms.” A studious stare embellished Mario’s vision. “I believe their real goal was to write up a kind of manifesto for Cuban artists.”

To Serguey, it sounded too intellectually motivated, even for Felipe. “So my dad was involved purely for the money?”

“Do you want the long or short explanation?”

“I just want to know the truth.”

Mario flattened the hair on his arm and picked at an invisible sleeve. “Felipe wrote an essay about the separation of government and the arts when he was younger.”

“I’m aware.”

He stopped fiddling. He had heard the answer he was looking for. “A lot of people respect your father because, back then, he pointed out what others were afraid to do: that communism tries to control everything.” Mario seemed to get briefly lost in reverie. “With his expressive personality, there’s a certain mystique that people are attracted to. I certainly was.” He cleared his throat and added, “Felipe knows a lot of artists. He’s been around long enough to also know who hates the system and who’s a brown-nose, and he’s very good at motivating people.”

Serguey nodded, indicating he followed.

Mario allowed for a moment of silence to fall over the room. “In truth,” he said, and here Serguey prepared to dissect the dramaturge’s words in real time, “the bigger goal was to attract international attention to the arts, hopefully get the government to accept more collaboration with foreign institutions.”

It was no state secret that after the Special Period, the emphasis on punitive censorship had been gradually supplanted by economic strife of historic proportions. Ideology took a back seat to practical needs, and artists—Serguey was aware through the occasional complaint from his father—were no exception. Since the government saw the island as a pressure cooker for which they must always find ways to let off steam, Serguey speculated that perhaps Liberty Now wished to take advantage by increasing the pressure on the artistic front, getting the government to loosen up the valve.

“You wanted more resources,” he said.

“The financial support we get is a joke,” Mario said. “Your dad was a direct victim of this. How else could we change that? The government won’t do anything unless they have an urgent reason.”

Victor said, “Or they can just lock you up.”

“You know . . .” Mario dallied the complete cycle of a breath, looking at the saints in Toya’s altar. A soggy cigar stub had been left in the center of a boat-shaped ashtray, encircled by several candles. Wax had collected at their bases like hardened lava. Black shot glasses decorated by stenciled white skeletons lay at the saints’ feet. “What’s happened to Felipe could be a good thing in the long run.”

Victor skewed his body forward enough for the hind legs of his stool to momentarily levitate. “Are you serious?”

Mario squirmed in his chair. “A letter was published recently, asking for his release. Do you know who wrote it?”

“We do,” Serguey said.

“Activists and artists are speaking up. If he’s not released soon, there will be protests, especially with all the interest in his situation.”

“And yet you ran at the first sign of trouble,” Victor said. “Last time I checked, you haven’t accomplished shit. Fidel and Raul are still doing whatever the fuck they please.”

Mario bowed and shook his head. He was consigning himself to his potholed logic. “You’re missing the point, Victor. Liberty Now’s not a full-on political organization. No one’s calling for Fidel’s or Raul’s head.”

The sun had progressed toward an angle that caused rectangular shafts to shine on Mario’s right cheek and side of his forehead, like an oddly arranged spotlight. The granular shadows that engulfed the rest of his figure made Serguey think of German Expressionist films.

“People like Felipe and me,” Mario continued, the quiet music in his voice like a confession, his breath propelling minute grains of dust, discernable in the sunlight, into squally swirls, “we’re the backbone of the cultural image that Cuba sells to the world. We’re enabling this regime, and for what? For a title? For the opportunity to present at bigger venues?” He elevated his jaw, as if experiencing a surge of wounded pride. “We go home and count our pennies. We swamp our noses in mediocrity and are supposed to smile when we get a certificate or a short trip abroad. There are plenty of Cuban artists and writers with big ideas, with the talent to do special things, who don’t have the means. But then they have to sit in an interview and tiptoe around the challenges they face, ignore the leaking roof in their house or the watery plate of chicharos they eat four times a week, and bloviate about how much creative freedom Cuba’s regime gives them. And it’s not just artists; it’s journalists too. I’m friends with plenty of them who get paid shit for their articles, which have to meet a certain criteria, and then those articles get sold to magazines and newspapers around the world, and who do you think keeps all the revenue? Why do you think there are so many independent journalists now?”

Serguey wondered if the autonomy that Claudia had achieved paralleled that which his father and Mario had been after. Claudia could afford to loiter at a hotel lobby, paying their high internet-access rates with a foreigner’s account, the one-dollar Twitter posts, proliferating news that contradicted the Cuban government’s propaganda. Someone had to subsidize her work; chances were it wasn’t someone inside the country. That kind of internal influence would not go unchecked. How the money got into her hands without being intercepted, how she was allowed to roam the streets of Havana and Felipe wasn’t, remained a question for another day.

“The work you do still has an impact,” Serguey said. He was looking, through flattery, to wrest details out of Mario. “I’m sure my dad believes that.” Then he provoked: “How many people did you expect to support you, anyway?”

Mario smiled knowingly, his whole countenance now suffused in sunlight. “More than you’d imagine.”

“Bullshit,” Victor said with a patronizing scowl.

Mario glanced at him, then aimed his eyes again at Serguey. “And you’re right, your father does believe in his work. That’s why he initially didn’t commit to participate in what Liberty Now wanted to do. He simply gave them advice and pointed them in the right direction. He only met with the members I brought to him, the ones who could offer funds. Since the government shut down places like the Spanish Cultural Department, we’ve really struggled to finance our plays. Liberty Now was part of the solution.”

“You said initially,” Serguey pointed out. “What did he do differently afterward?”

“He offered to write some things himself. He wanted to get more involved, so he went to see some members who’d already been tagged by the government. Maybe they were being shadowed, I’m not sure.” Mario went on to note that it was best to avoid specific names. A few members were still inside the country, afraid to show up at the airport. Plans had already been put in motion for them to leave the country another way. These members, he said, had not only agreed to lend Mario a hand but had been keeping him informed of Felipe’s status as news trickled in from abroad.

“What’s the word on him?” Serguey said.

Sweat had begun to bubble on the stubbled shadow of Mario’s missing mustache. “Last I heard, the government is dealing with Spain to get him out. I don’t know if it’s just a rumor, but it sounds probable. I’m sure they’re asking for something in exchange; they always do. If Felipe’s released, they’ll treat him as a dissident, so he might not be able to come back, at least not for a few years.”

Victor scratched his neck, inclining his chin in Serguey’s direction. “I don’t get why Dad would get involved with these people. If he needed money, he could’ve come to me.”

“It’s not that simple,” Serguey said.

“You might not remember it, Victor,” the dramaturge said, “but your father was very politically opinionated early in his career. And then there’s your grandfather, the internment camp. Felipe doesn’t talk about it, but you don’t just forget that.”

“What are you implying,” Victor replied, “that he turned into a coward?”

“Not at all.” Mario retreated in his chair, a block of sunlight descending onto his lap. “But it’s almost impossible to be open about your political views and do what we do for a living. There has to be a perception that your beliefs align with the government’s. Your father had to make a choice, and given his talent, I think he made the right one.”

“You’re saying he sold out.”

“He compromised. I did too.”

Serguey didn’t feel equipped to speak. He’d done as much compromising as anyone in Cuba.

“Do you know Felipe’s two biggest regrets?” Mario paused, gauging whether it was safe to proceed. He was delving into personal territory. Serguey looked at him expectantly. “Not being a more attentive father, and sacrificing his ideology in public.”

Victor said, “You don’t know my father better than I do.”

Though Serguey disagreed, he decided not to contradict his brother. It was clear that Victor felt vulnerable and still on the brink of violence.

“Can these people from Liberty Now do anything to help?” Serguey asked Mario. “Can they deny that my dad had anything to do with them?”

“They won’t,” Toya said. Her sudden interpolation bore the cachet and ascendancy of a judge. “That’s why he’s here, looking to absolve himself.”

“I wouldn’t dare ask for absolution,” Mario said.

She smiled with half her mouth. “Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?” She pointed at the saints. “They know otherwise.”

Mario spoke to Serguey as if he were the sole ally left in the room. “Your father has a great chance of getting out. The government has released political prisoners in the past in exchange for concessions.”

“We’ve been speaking with someone who’s engaged in those things,” Serguey said.

Mario narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

“Don’t you dare tell him,” Victor said.

“Of course not.”

“You should be careful who you speak to,” Mario said. “You never know who works for the state.”

“Do you work for the state?” Victor said.

“No.” He looked at the barred window. “If they got their hands on me, I wouldn’t last a week.”

“But my dad will be just fine, right?”

Serguey said, “They’ve been harassing everybody involved with Electra Garrigó. Even the actors.”

Mario took a long breath. “God.” He scuffed his sweat-patched face, as if trying to wake himself from a bad dream. “Those poor kids.”

“Were any of them in this whole Liberty Now project?”

“No. Your father cares about them. We both do. We love them.”

“Just not enough to think of the consequences.”

Mario nodded, not in agreement, but in defiance. “Nothing worth doing’s completely safe. Felipe was aware of the dangers. It’s unfortunate that others have to pay.”

“Like my dad paying for what you did,” Victor said.

“I accept that.” Mario’s eyes misted with tears. He drilled his teeth into his lips, a congruent mixture of remorse and rage. “Whatever Felipe has had to go through, I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. I’m not proud of how everything turned out. I’m not proud of hiding.” He tapped his knees together and breathed into his hands, recouping his composure.

Serguey pitied him. It was ludicrous to make him solely responsible for Felipe’s misfortune. His father was a methodical, intelligent person. Not easy to fool, to set up. “Do you know if anyone else has been arrested?”

“As far as I’ve been told, only Felipe. I’m guessing he’s been questioned about other people.”

“I bet you he has,” Victor said. “Beaten too.”

“Don’t speculate,” Toya said. “You start fantasizing about the wrong things, and there’s no stopping you.”

“He’s not speculating,” Serguey said.

“Have you heard of Colonel Montalvo?” Victor asked Mario.

He hadn’t.

“My brother and I got a good licking from his guys.”

The tears dropped from Mario’s eyes. He gazed at the saints again, slowly gasping, fighting to contain any sound that might attempt to flee him. Serguey was struck by the notion that his father would never display such blunt contrition.

“Are you buying this?” Victor turned to Serguey.

“He’s being sincere,” Toya said gently.

Serguey replied, in an augmented whisper, “Mario,” and waited for the dramaturge to regard him. “Why exactly did you want to see us?”

“I . . .” His voice was hoarse and choppy. He swallowed hard.

“I’ll make you some coffee,” Toya said. She tugged at the sleeves of her white dress and left the room.

“Mostly, I came to apologize,” Mario said. “I’m hoping I’ll get to do the same with Felipe in person.”

Victor said, “He’s allowed visitors this Sunday.”

“Are you leaving the country?” Serguey asked. There was something in Mario’s confessional act that reeked of finality, of oncoming change.

“Yes. On a boat.”

“When?”

“Ten days’ time. That’s the other reason I came. I asked the people who are behind it to give me extra spots. They said they could only do two, for you and your brother.”

Victor laughed brusquely. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”

“You should think about it. I have faith that Felipe will be sent abroad.”

“You think I’m going anywhere without my wife?” Serguey said.

Mario’s eyelids fell. “I can’t guarantee space for your family because of the cost.”

The whoosh of a gas burner just switched on travelled from the kitchen to the consultation room. There was a clatter, like marbles smacking together, and a metallic sliding sound. Then the subtle scent of ground coffee. Somewhere in the building’s corridor, closer to the street, a bucket of water had been dumped, a stubborn door had been forced shut. The neighbors were starting to wake. Mario was indifferent, his face showing an air of liberation, of unwarranted good fortune, like someone who’s come out unscathed from a spiraling car.

“The offer will be standing until the minute the boat leaves. It’s the only thing I can do to atone.” Mario dug into one of his pockets and produced a folded piece of paper. “This is a phone number where you can reach me. I’ve been staying at my cousin’s house outside Batabanó. He has a big backyard with no street view. I’ve been holed up there, losing my mind.”

Serguey accepted the paper. “Victor, would you give us a moment alone?”

“You said we’d do this together.”

“I’m asking for a moment. Go help Toya with the coffee.”

Victor hopped off his stool and brought his index finger near Serguey’s nose. “Don’t get soft on me now.” Begrudgingly, he headed to the kitchen.

Serguey stood and locked his eyes with Mario’s. “So my father’s in prison because he took funds for his plays?”

“That’s how the authorities will broadcast it. They’ll say it was illegal. He was getting money from the wrong people.”

“Why didn’t he ask my brother?”

“What father wants their child to bankroll them, especially someone as proud as Felipe? Do you know the cost for props, building a set, costumes? I don’t know what business Victor is involved in, but I doubt he could afford all of it. And like I told you, Felipe wanted to get more politically involved. I feel responsible. I was the one who introduced him to them.”

“You should feel responsible. Why the hell did you get him mixed up in all this?”

“I got caught up in the idea of bringing about some change, whatever that might be. I can’t stand this regime, Serguey. I really can’t. Part of me is glad I get to leave. I’d like to think that some part of your father feels that way too.”

Serguey scoffed. “That seems to be a lot of people’s solution.”

Mario rose from his chair, mooring himself on the armrests, which creaked and groaned like stretched or twisted leather. “The youth in this country could care less about change. In a way, your father and I didn’t for many years.”

Serguey stepped away, allowing the dramaturge to claim his own space. He stared at Lam’s painting, at the slim, elongated figures resembling sugar cane stocks. The contours of his own face seemed imprinted as a ghostly image behind Lam’s vibrant colors.

Mario paced toward the middle of the room. “But if not us, then who?” he said. “The washed-up guys with piles of accolades and cushy positions? The young ones who go to New York and Amsterdam and Quito and come back brimming with pride, who believe that worshipping Severo Sarduy is a form of rebellion or autonomy?”

Sarduy, an openly homosexual author who emigrated to France and despised Castro’s regime, had been condemned and censured for years in Cuba. Serguey knew his name but hadn’t read any of his work.

Mario carried on: “The starving artist life isn’t for everyone, especially when you have to compromise how you express your views. There are so many artists in exile who would’ve loved to build and finish their careers here. There are people in prison for having the wrong books in their house, and we carry on like it’s normal, like it didn’t happen.”

“I sympathize,” Serguey said, “but I—”

“You took a different road. Your father always respected that.”

Mario’s head, darker in the spectrum of the painting, overlapped Serguey’s, a breach of space that unsettled him. He removed himself from the image, walking past the stools to the door. “Did he?”

“He’s really proud, of both you and Victor, even if you don’t have much in common with him. He says that’s his failure. He shut you out. I can’t imagine what it’d be like for me to have children . . .” Mario adopted a pensive expression. “The damage I could do to them.”

Serguey saw Toya and Victor walking down the hall, his brother carrying a tray with small coffee cups.

“This is the best coffee you all have had in a while,” Toya said.

Serguey grabbed two cups and extended one to Mario. Victor laid the tray on his stool.

“Five minutes,” Toya said.

Serguey blew on his coffee and dipped his top lip into it, unsure of her meaning.

“Thank you,” Mario said. “My ride’s almost here.”

“Your cousin?” Serguey said.

“You should seriously consider leaving with me. You’ll have a better chance of reuniting with your father.” As soon as he emptied his cup, Mario said to Toya, “This is some good coffee.”

Serguey watched him for a moment. “Did you get my text?”

“I tried calling you back, but no one answered. I called the other number that’d been trying to reach me, and your friend responded. I knew it was risky,” here he looked at the brothers, “but I had to see you both.”

“Don’t call that number again,” Serguey said. “State Security has it.”

Mario nodded. Toya took the cup from him, and he was gone, his lanky, elegant gait momentarily reappearing through the window, his shadow gliding across the room.

Victor glowered at it and said, “Can you believe him?”

Serguey flailed the piece of paper with Mario’s number. “You should really think about this.”

“You’re out of your mind. Is that what you were discussing? I think we should turn him in, trade him for Dad’s release.”

“We can’t do that. There’s no guarantee they’ll let Dad go. And that’s his best friend.”

“You think he’s a friend?”

Serguey placed his cup on the tray. “Let’s go wake Kiko.”

“Yes, go bother your friend,” Toya said. She ambled to the front door, which Mario had left ajar, and opened it wide. A rush of light dyed the nondescript walls. She fetched a broom, shuffled her feet back toward the consultation room, and started sweeping. “And tell these people you’re dealing with that this isn’t a meetinghouse. I don’t want them bringing their negative energy here.”

Kiko was already up. His uncombed hair was littered with tangles, but he was alert and spry and in a suspiciously good mood. As the brothers strode into his living room, they noticed the orange light of a lamp in the far corner, casting a cozy glow on the otherwise dim space. The windows were closed, the air imbued with the scent of lilac. The bouncing, mutating balls in Kiko’s computer screen saver seemed like a pair of cat eyes hopping back and forth in the dark. An elusive guitar melody echoed above them.

Victor asked him if he had a girl over.

“No, no,” Kiko said.

“What’s with the romantic atmosphere?”

“Residuals from last night. That’s Amaury Gutierrez playing. His last album’s wonderful.”

Victor walked to the fridge. “No beer!” he bellowed, his head blocked by the open door.

“Your brother’s an alcoholic,” Kiko said to Serguey.

Serguey sat on the couch, Kiko across from him on the armchair. Just like Toya’s home, Kiko’s shuttered room was murky, submersed in the specter of collusion, of ill-fated intimacy. Victor was still fumbling around in the refrigerator, foraging for an escape, a distraction. The meeting with Mario had drained a lot from him.

“Thanks for getting us Mario,” Serguey said.

Kiko perked up his eyes. “He came to see you?”

“We met at Toya’s.”

“Good! I wasn’t sure he’d do it. I told him we had ways of finding out where he was, just to scare him a little.”

“It worked.”

Kiko seemed proud that he’d made a difference. He swung his thumb over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “How did this one behave?”

“How often do you talk to Claudia?” Serguey said. He wasn’t interested in banter, not today.

His friend was rattled by the question. He plucked outer strands of his hair and stammered, “It, uh, it depends.”

“What I mean is, does she usually initiate contact, or do you?”

“We both do.”

Serguey detected in Kiko, in the absence of confusion in his eyes, that he could drill straight to the core of the matter. “I’d just like to be clear about my dad’s status. I feel like I’m relying on assumptions, not on facts.”

“It’s difficult.” Kiko draped the entirety of his body like a discarded piece of clothing on his seat. “Concrete information is hard to come by. Nothing’s really official unless they announce it, and even then . . .” He gyrated his fingers into the air, parodying the embroidered narrative the government usually dispensed.

“I understand, but Claudia’s the only person who has more immediate access to that kind of information. The uncertainty’s starting to get to me.”

“Do you want me to open the shades?” Kiko asked, as if the orange dimness were smothering Serguey.

“I’m fine.”

Kiko jerked his body into an upright stance. “Listen, the information that reaches Claudia is definitely solid. I can press her a bit, but I’m not sure it’ll yield what you want.”

“Victor and I are going to see my old man this Sunday. I want to have an idea what to tell him and what to ask him.”

Kiko nodded, his silhouette half-aglow and half-shadowed. “I’ll get you something by then.”

Serguey was done tactfully dancing around his request. “Can you get me on a computer with an internet connection to see for myself?”

Kiko bent forward and slapped the inside of Serguey’s knee. “You should’ve opened with that. It might cost some money, though.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Victor said, returning to the living room empty-handed.

“Okay. I can find you something.”

“You need to open the windows,” Victor said. “People are going to get the wrong idea. Or are you getting paranoid about State Security?”

Kiko inhaled and caressed his inflated belly. “They have nothing on me.”

Victor sat on the arm of his friend’s chair. “And I did behave with Mario. I mean, it wasn’t easy.” He went on to share—in his own mocking tenor and with carefully selected emphases—what the dramaturge had said. He accentuated how cowardly Mario had acted, how laughable Liberty Now’s plans were, how outrageous it was for Mario to offer him and Serguey a spot on the boat. He said nothing of Felipe.

“Mario believes that my dad’s going to be released,” Serguey said. “Because of the international attention.”

“Well,” Kiko said, “about a year ago, a couple of journalists who’d spent decades in Cienfuegos were put on house arrest. The government sold it as an act of compassion, but it was really because pictures of these guys in putrid cells showed up on international news channels. I don’t think with Felipe it has to get to that point. The government can’t get away with abuse as much as it used to.” He stopped and turned to Victor. “And what Mario offered is not a bad idea.”

“You mean leaving with him?”

“We’re always messing around, Victor, but you’re a mistake away from being locked up. And now that State Security’s involved, you’re holding on by a thread. As your friend, I’m telling you that you should consider it. You have to be pragmatic.”

Serguey said, “We should have a serious talk after we see Dad.”

Victor chuckled, squelching his anger. “What the fuck is it with you guys?”

Kiko shoved him off the armchair and got up. “Be smart and listen to your brother.” He stood on his toes, arms strained toward the ceiling, and shook like an animal shedding the last of its old skin. “Now, let’s find you some internet in this dead zone of a country.”