Echoes of Clay

The night I met him, I was supposed to be picking pockets.

Mama said the tourists on the Paseo del Prado were fat with wallets and light with rum. Easy marks. She said it like a prayer, like a recipe. Take the wallet, leave the man his dignity. We needed the money for Abuela’s medicine, and the medicine was the only thing keeping Abuela’s ghost from taking her lungs. So I went.

Havana was sweating that night. Not the wet, clinging sweat of afternoon rain, but the slow, patient sweat of a city that had been simmering all day and hadn't cooled off yet. The air smelled like salt and diesel and the sickly sweet perfume of the jasmine vines that climbed the crumbling balconies. Music bled from every doorway, a dozen different songs fighting for space in the street. A trumpet here, a guitar there, a man singing about a woman who left him for a fisherman.

I moved through the crowd like a fish through coral. Small, quick, invisible. The tourists were easy to spot. They walked with their heads tilted back, mouths open, eyes wide. They bought mojitos from carts and took pictures of peeling paint. They thought the decay was charming. They didn't have to live in it.

I spotted my mark near the fountain. A man in linen pants and a shirt so white it hurt to look at. He was alone, which was good. He was watching the old women selling flowers, which was better. His wallet was a fat bulge in his back pocket, a perfect target. I could have it in my hand before he felt the breeze.

I bumped into him. Soft, apologetic. My hand slid down, fingertips grazing the leather.

Then his hand caught my wrist.

Not hard. Not angry. Just there. A firm, warm clamp that stopped my fingers an inch from the prize. He turned and looked down at me. His eyes were the color of the sea before a storm, gray and green and full of something I couldn't name.

“That’s a bad habit,” he said. His Spanish was good, but the accent was wrong. American. Rich.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I tried to pull my hand free. He didn’t let go.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said. “Your pulse is jumping in your throat. I can see it.”

I wanted to spit at him. I wanted to knee him in the groin and run. But I didn’t. I looked at his face, and I saw that he wasn't angry. He was curious. That was worse. Curiosity was a luxury. People with nothing to lose don't have time for curiosity.

“Let me go,” I said. “Or I’ll scream.”

“And tell them what? That you tried to steal my wallet?”

He had me. I knew it. He knew it. The grin that spread across his face was infuriating. Not smug. Almost impressed.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough. I’m Daniel.”

“I don’t care.”

He laughed. A real laugh, not a polite one. It made the old women selling flowers turn and look. I felt my face go hot.

“You’re fast,” he said. “I’ll give you that. If I hadn’t been watching you for the last ten minutes, I wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

That stopped me. “You were watching me?”

“You’re hard to miss. Small girl, fast hands, eyes that don’t trust anything. You stand out.”

I didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult. I still don’t.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He let go of my wrist. I didn't run. I should have run. But I didn't.

“I want to buy you a drink,” he said.

“I’m seventeen.”

“I’m twenty-two. I meant a Coke.”

The old women were still watching. One of them, the one with the missing tooth and the flower tucked behind her ear, clicked her tongue at me. A warning. I knew what she meant. *Don’t trust the foreigner. Don’t trust anyone.*

But Abuela’s medicine cost sixty pesos a bottle. And I had just failed to steal the money for it.

“Fine,” I said. “One Coke.”

We went to a bar on a side street where the lights were dim and the ceiling fan was more for show than function. He ordered two Cokes and a plate of fried plantains. I ate them like I hadn't eaten in a week. I hadn't. Not really.

He watched me. Not in a creepy way. In a way that made me feel like I was the only person in the room. That was dangerous. That was the kind of attention that made girls like me do stupid things.

“Why are you here?” I asked, my mouth half full. “Tourists don’t come to this part of town.”

“I’m not a tourist.”

“Then what are you?”

He hesitated. I saw something flicker in his eyes. A door closing. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“My father. He left when I was a kid. I heard he was here.”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. “You came to Havana to find your father? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Probably,” he said. He didn't look offended. “But I had to try.”

“Why?”

He looked at me. That gray-green gaze again. “Because I don’t want to spend my whole life wondering.”

The words hit me in the chest. I thought of Abuela. I thought of the way she looked at the door sometimes, like she was waiting for someone who was never coming back. I thought of my own father, a face I barely remembered, a voice I heard only in dreams.

I didn't want to wonder. But I didn't know how to stop.

“His name is Arturo,” Daniel said. “Arturo Reyes. He used to play guitar in a band. Do you know him?”

I shook my head. But the name sat in my stomach like a stone. Arturo Reyes. I knew that name. Everyone in Vedado knew that name. He was a legend. A ghost. A man who had disappeared fifteen years ago and left a trail of broken promises and unpaid debts behind him.

I didn't tell Daniel that.

“I can’t help you,” I said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

He paid for the food. He left a tip that was more than I made in a week. I watched him walk out into the street, his white shirt glowing in the dark.

I should have let him go. I should have gone home, counted my losses, figured out another way to get Abuela’s medicine.

But I didn't.

I followed him.

Because I wanted to know if he was stupid enough to keep looking. And because somewhere, buried deep under the fear and the hunger and the years of learning not to care, I wanted him to find what he was looking for.

I wanted to see if a person could actually get what they wanted in this city. In this life.

He turned a corner. I followed.

The night was just getting started.