Not that it could be my life: the fantasy would end. My skin is light, hair stringy straight. In Cuba, a white jinetera selling sex goes hungry. It’s the very young, very dark-skinned women these men are after. Everyone knows this. There are jokes even: they didn’t come here to see themselves.
No, I wouldn’t last as a jinetera. What I need is to leave, earn some money, and come back. Buy stuff to sell here. I don’t know.
The German, the anomaly, is in the driver’s seat waiting when we get back.
“I was about to go looking for you two with a machete,” he quips.
We finish our sandwiches while he drives. We sit silently, the three of us, and watch the rural townships go by. And when we reach a small town just miles from Cárdenas, El Alemán announces that he wants to buy liquor “before the expensive tourist places.”
The three of us are a spectacle in this town of maybe two hundred. We walk the broken sidewalks and whole families rush to the windows of their homes to look us over. At the corner cafetería, the shelves are bare. This isn’t La Habana with plenty of food and imports. The people here eye us carefully, and I can see them wondering what we have to offer. I’d be doing the same.
“Pinga, qué mierda,” a man in a grubby undershirt says from a stool before the open-air counter. He’s huddled over a small antenna television tuned to baseball in black and white, slamming its side.
“I haven’t seen one of those in decades!” El Alemán says, turning to me with elation. I smile politely.
On the dirt road that traverses the main street of the town, a group of little girls stops jumping rope to look at us.
“He a Yuma?” one girl asks me. She can pick out the Cuban by sight. She’s tiny but imposing, with a husky voice.
“Shut up, Adalisa,” an older girl cautions. She holds the long telephone cord they’ve been using as a jump rope in one hand and places the other on her hip full of attitude.
“Where’s the nearest store?” I ask the one called Adalisa.
“For what?” she responds, looking Jeanette up and down. A man passes on a bicycle and splatters my leg with mud.
“Rum.”
She points toward the end of the block.
“I’ll take you for a dollar,” says her friend. We ignore them and keep going. Jeanette glances back at the children with such a sad smile that I look away in embarrassment.
The corner store is a wooden shack big enough for two people standing side by side. A description of goods and prices are hand-painted onto the side of the shack. The man on the other side of the iron bars watches us cautiously.
“Tell him I want three bottles of the best rum he’s got. Havana Club,” El Alemán says to me. “And no funny business. Tell him I can see the prices with my own eyes.” I don’t say so obviously. I just tell the man we want three bottles of Siete Años. He smiles. “Yuma knows his rum.”
“Alemán,” I correct him.
“Same shit,” he responds.
When we get back to the car, it won’t start. El Alemán turns and turns the key, and the engine just sputters.
“Are you kidding me?” he shouts. “What the fuck did these people do to the car?”
“What people?” I say, rolling down the window.
“Obviously one of the townspeople did something to my car.”
“Why would they do that?” Jeanette says.
El Alemán turns the key again but the car just shakes.
“Of course they didn’t do anything,” I say.
“Don’t you see? They’re trying to rob us.”
“Oh my God.” Jeanette brings a hand to her mouth. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“That’s absurd. Do you know how quickly the cops respond to tourist complaints?”
“Maydelis, it makes sense.” Jeanette leans over from the back seat and places a hand on my arm. “But never mind, what do we do?”
I get out of the car and slam the door. I can hear Jeanette as I march through the dirt in my chancletas toward the cafetería, a long platform painted in peeling blue and surrounded by patches of grass. I hear Jeanette say, “Where is she going?”
The four men watching the baseball game gather around to hear my story. I’m the excitement for the day.
“Coño,” a dark, thick man in rubber boots says. “Let me see if señora Lilia is around. She’s the one with a phone. She lives ten minutes from here.” He gets up from his stool.
“Wait,” I say. “Let me get the German man. He’s the one who should talk to the rental agency.”
“Why, linda? You can talk to them in Spanish.”
“No, no, he speaks English,” I say. “The rental agency will speak English.”
I feel the men watch me walk away. Certain towns like this feel frozen, like time functions differently, drips through an IV. I tap the driver’s-side window, because El Alemán has locked himself into the car. He and Jeanette swelter, their faces shiny. El Alemán rolls down the window just a sliver.
“There’s one phone in the town,” I say. “Ten minutes from here in some lady’s house. One of the townspeople will take us.”
“Are you crazy, woman?” El Alemán shouts.
At this, Jeanette’s eyes widen. I see her perk up. Her bracelets jangle as she crosses her arms.
“There is no way in hell I am going anywhere with one of those people,” El Alemán says. “That’s the setup, you see? They did something to the car and now they’ll lead us over to this ‘phone,’ and that’s where they’ll rob us.” He glares in the direction of the cafetería. “Get in the fucking car,” he says.
“No.” A knot blooms in my chest.
“You don’t have to talk to her like—” Now
