Havana! I loved the capital, bitterly and deeply, an unrequited love made possible only by distance and loss. The luminous blue-gray hurricane light. The storm spray that left cars, people, and decaying mansions coated with a white dust of salt. The oily harbor, fuming and ringed with Spanish forts. The blue stream of the Gulf Stream itself, visible from the rooftops every day, a world just beyond. It was “the city where the whole world went to be lied to,” Virginia Piñera said. I found Havana dangerous to body and soul, a high-low environment where you could get arrested for nothing but everyone got away with everything.
—The Boys From Dolores
