North of Havana

Randy Wayne White
1

Tomlinson telephoned at three minutes before ten Friday evening, December 20, to tell me that he was stranded in Havana, broke, frustrated, sailboat impounded, seriously discommoded, wholly bummed out and if I wasn't too busy, if I wasn't right in the middle of boxing a shipment of sea anemones or if my manatee research project could be conveniently interrupted, maybe, just maybe, I could get my butt to a neutral country and catch a plane to Cuba.

I thought: Cuba? Nope; no way. I will not go back to Cuba.

Tomlinson was talking: "You heard of a person being held against his will? I'm being held against my bill, man. Like they're holding No Mas hostage until I can float the nut, plus charging me storage to boot! As in muchos si-moleons, comprende?"

"The government?"

"These guys dressed in baby shit brown. Like storm troopers-"

"Who confiscated your boat, I mean." I was beginning to get a sick feeling in my stomach.

"Aren't you listening? Yes. The cubano-damn government. Man, it pains me to admit it, but socialism has gone to hell since I left the loop. I just thank the good Lord that Chairman Mao isn't alive to see it. Talk about a reality check! These pud duckers give me any more crap, I'm going to contact my old comrades from the SDS, Boston cell, and raise a serious stink. Who do they think came down here and cut their goddamn sugarcane in nineteen seventy-one? Wouldn't you think they had my name on file? Jesus Christ, we ate nothing but beans. We slept in barns. They had donkeys that bit like dogs! A machete scar meant something in those days."

Tomlinson was ranting-conduct out of character. Lately, though, he had been doing many things out of character. As his neurosurgeon, Maria Corales, had told me, "You can expect some odd behavior. He's been out of the hospital only what? A year? The beating he took, his brain was so traumatized that it could be another year-or more-before he's back to normal. So be kind to him. Be understanding."

So I listened kindly. And I tried to understand. But I kept thinking: Jesus, Cuba…

Tomlinson was calling, he said, from the Hotel Nacional, the old Meyer Lansky casino and brothel in downtown Havana, built during prohibition to service America's thirsty leisure class. It was his fifth night in the hotel, but he was thinking of switching to the Havana Libre up the street. At a rack rate of two hundred bucks a night, neither he nor his female companion could afford the Nacional much longer, and it had taken him that long to figure out a way to contact me.

"The phone system here," he said, "is not unlike whacking off. It's a hell of a mess and leaves something to be desired."

Not long ago, an American communications conglomerate received a lot of press about opening direct-dial phone service to Cuba. It was one of those hands-across-the-water events that implied a new relationship with our island foe of the old Cold War years. It also implied that Cubans had the freedom-never mind the financial means-to reciprocate. Not so, according to Tomlinson. You couldn't just pick up a Havana pay phone and dial your friendly AT amp;T operator. So what he'd finally done was find a guy who helped him work out a phone patch through the Vancouver British Columbia Marine Operator, a bit of satellite pinball that now had our digitized voices ricocheting through the ionosphere, then back and forth across the continent Person-to-person. Collect.

"Did I mention bring money?" Tomlinson asked. I could hear the muted equipment clatter and conduit roar of the Third World communication system; Tomlinson's voice sounded as if he were yelling to me from the bottom of a stone well. "Lots and lots of money, cash American," he said. "Ten thousand, minimum."

I told him, "You keep me on the phone much longer I won't have any money left to bring," not because I meant it, but because saying it seemed a necessary courtesy to the woman who waited a few feet away, lying on my bed. With the phone against my ear, I looked at her, smiled, then I made a great show of being patient to illustrate my impatience with Tomlinson… an act that a perceptive, tough-talking woman such as Dewey Nye wasn't likely to buy.

She didn't. Dewey rolled gray-blue eyes heavenward, used a lopsided, cynical smile to accuse me of stalling, kicked off the covers, stood, and released a lanyard of butterscotch hair that fell heavily across her bare shoulders before she froze me with those sled dog eyes and mouthed the word "Coward!" Then she began to survey the room, searching for her shirt and jogging bra, which I had folded neatly over the Celestron telescope by the north window of my little house that stands in water, Dinkin's Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida.

A peculiarity of the intimate male-female relationship is that each small gesture is a specific communication which, in sequence, creates a discourse so constant and telling that words do little more than outline what is expected or reaffirm what has already occurred. When one partner says, "We don't talk enough," it is usually much, much too late for talking. So I watched Dewey to see what she had to say. Watched her glide to the telescope, ropy thigh and calf muscles contracting like cables with each stride; a tall, big boned, slim-hipped woman who, naked except for bikini panties, moved with the lazy immodesty of the shower room jock. Noted that she turned her back to me before toweling off the body oil I had been using on her neck and shoulders-less a gesture of modesty than of rebuke. But just when I was beginning to read that she was genuinely peeved, she did a casual quarter-turn so that she was illuminated by the reading lamp: face, pale sweep and weight of breasts, the muscle-patched symmetry of abdomen as she wiggled into the jogging bra and latched it tight, a performance designed to be shared. When she caught me staring, she used long fingers to comb hair from her eyes and mouthed another word: "Asshole!"

Through the phone, I heard Tomlinson say, "Look'a that- cockroach the size of a damn chipmunk just tried to hump my shoe. Dirty little bastard! Hang on… Hah! Killed it!"

I thought: Killed it? Tomlinson?

Then he was barking at me: "Yoo-hoo! I know you're there 'cause I can hear you breathing like a bear… or maybe it's… hey, wait a minute. How could I be so stupid!" Inexplicably, his tone became guarded, his enunciation careful, as he said, "Mother of God, it just dawned on me! The ucking-fay ommie-cays got the phone bugged, right? We're being ape-taed? The proletariat scum!"

"Pig Latin? For Christ's sake, Tomlinson."

"Don't make it easy on them. Let the pink bastards wrestle with the code books. What gall! I was fighting for the collapse of capitalism when these twerps were abusing themselves with bootlegged Sears catalogues. Who do they think organized the Berkeley Expeditionary when Che Guevara was nabbed in sixty-eight? Was it my fault the Bolivian pigs shot him anyway? Is that what this's all about! Okay! Okay! Boycotting alpaca sweaters didn't carry the political juice I'd hoped. Turned out the whole firing squad owned llamas. But who knew with those Bolivians? Their sphincters are so tight, it'll be another ten generations before they can actually walk upright. Even howler monkeys consider Bolivians a bad risk as breeding stock! AM I GOING SLOW ENOUGH FOR YOU, COMRADE?"

I raised my voice: "Tomlinson! Take a deep breath and calm down." Paranoiac tangents were, in Tomlinson, a symptom of heavy stress… or of long-gone drug binges… or it could be the residue of the beating he had received at the hands of goons on an island called Sulfur Wells a year earlier. With him, the borders were always clouded. Nothing could be assumed. Even though I knew the conversation was probably being monitored, I said, "Nobody's listening. We're not being bugged. Relax. Okay?"

"You sure?"

"Why would they bother? Look, you sailed too close to Cuba and had your boat confiscated. It happens all the time. Take a deep breath and tell me about it, then I'll see what I can do."

"You just sounded, you know, for sure distracted. And then I thought… hey!" His tone became hopeful. "Maybe my call interrupted something, huh? Holiday romance? A game of lock-'n-load?"

Close, but not quite. I looked at Dewey, who was now standing at the mirror. It had been more than a year since I'd last seen her. In that time, she had abandoned the mannish pageboy cut and let her hair grow, perhaps in an attempt to appear more feminine. It seemed unnecessary… and a little sad, too. Why is it that we find the small failed gestures of others so endearing? Dewey has one of those California unisex beach girl faces: pale-lipped, high-cheeked, smile bright, but without the delicate, vacuous leer. There is nothing vacuous-or delicate-about Dewey. She has a square chin, a nose broken by a grade school hockey stick, luminous deep-set gray eyes with a webbing of smile lines at the corners, a right forearm that is nearly as thick as my own, and the sort of knobby wrists and knees more commonly seen on gawky fourteen-year-olds. But Dewey is a dozen years past fourteen, and she is neither gawky nor adolescent. She was once rated among the world's best tennis players; she is now working her way onto the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour. She is a superb athlete with all the endurance and grace that that implies. Perhaps it is because she also happens to be one of my best friends that I find it less easy to note that her body is unmistakably female, though she herself often jokes about it. "With my pelvis, I could foal a pony, no trouble." Even though she is lean-butted and muscular. "I hate this! I get cold, anyone standing chest high should wear safety glasses." That, at least, is true.

Sitting there watching her-she was now combing her hair-I allowed the slow swell of physical wanting to recede, holding emotion at bay with perverse logic: because she was my friend, we couldn't be lovers.

Besides, Dewey already had a lover-a fading star on the professional tennis circuit named Walda Bzantovski, known to her close friends as Bets. A Romanian woman.

Over the phone, Tomlinson was pressing the issue. "That's it, isn't it? Romance. Jesus Christ, Doc, it's not like I called about the weather. So my timing's off. I interrupted."

"Not at all," I told him. He was more like the cavalry. Just in the nick of time.

Dewey had arrived that afternoon, Friday afternoon; flew in from New York on the cirrus fringe of December's first cold front. West Florida's cold fronts are something you won't read about in the travel brochures. They begin with a musky southeast wind that blows warm out of the Bahamas until the air congeals into an oily calm. For Christmas newcomers, it must be strange to see storefront holly wreaths and plastic snowmen baking in the winter heat, yet it's ideal tourist weather. Ideal weather for shelling and sunbathing and snook fishing and drinking margaritas on restaurant patios where snow-dazed midwesterners can lounge around in summer clothes and congratulate themselves on their balmy vacation choice.

But then it all changes and it changes quickly. Palm trees begin to clack and clatter in a nervous breeze. The breeze grows and builds, and then, as if guided by the boom of a sail, it swings compass-hard out of the northwest, hunkering there while a high-pressure system slips into the void. Then the wind blows Minnesota cold, roiling the green Gulf of Mexico until it's the color and texture of jagged marl, leaching the heat out of an ineffectual sun, sending the tourists scrambling and skittering back to their heated condos and expensive motel rooms to brood about money and their rotten luck.

Dewey had arrived unexpectedly with the first freight-train swing of wind. I'd been working on my thousand-gallon fish tank out on the deck of my stilthouse, fitting a new Styrofoam cover to insulate it from the predicted cold snap. Nearly a year before, my place had been all but destroyed by an explosion and I was still putting on finishing touches, rebuilding this, fixing that, trying to get things back to normal. No easy job. The problem with the Styrofoam cover was that I had sufficiently changed my new tank's PVC piping configuration-the raw water intake, exhaust, and overflow systems-so that the old cover could no longer serve even as a template. So I had spent the whole morning building a cover from scratch, measuring and fitting, cutting Styrofoam to size, then bracing the thing with marine plywood stripping. Every so often, someone from the marina would wander over to inspect, then comment on my handiwork, usually as prelude to some new bit of marina gossip or an invitation to a party on the mainland or up on Captiva-this was the holiday season, remember?-and they would generally finish by observing that I was being way too fastidious. The cold front wouldn't last for more than a week, so why didn't I just throw a tarp over the damn tank? It would save a helluva lot of time.

I listened to them. I smiled. I went right on working. One of the great frauds promoted by New Age mystics and other mind-control profiteers is that we are exactly what we envision ourselves to be. Imagine success, they tell us, and success will beat down our doors. Visualize big goals and big money; don't sweat the small stuff. But I think it is far more likely that we are directed less by our dreams than we are steered by our fears. We don't run to success- whatever success is-we flee in its general direction until success hits us in the face. The best executives, best salespeople, best tradesmen, builders, promoters, and professionals all have, at the bedrock core, a healthy fear of not living up to their obligations. The obligations vary-each craft and discipline creates its own-and they range from the great and grand to tiny little nit-picking details that demand long hours, short weekends, and a full ration of stubbornness. The duties of obligation are not flogged on the late-night infomercials because there is nothing flashy about commitment. Hard work without shortcuts or excuses just doesn't sell on cassette, disc, or video.

I wasn't about to throw a tarp over my fish tank because I am one of those people who sweats the small stuff. "Anal retentive" is the current euphemism. I am compulsive about details. I am a neatener and a straightener. Whenever I try to cut corners by slopping together some makeshift remedy, I suffer a nagging anxiety at belly-button level. The solution? I don't cut corners or slop together makeshift remedies. There are "What if?" people who are nostalgia junkies. I am a "What if?" person who is driven by fear of the future. What if I covered the fish tank with Pliofilm and the temperature dropped below freezing? My tank contains immature snook, tarpon, and sea trout, all carefully collected and painstakingly maintained. Most of them would die. What if the nor'wester blew a gale? The Pliofilm would be ripped away in strips and the wind would damage sea squirts, tunicates, anemones, and the shrimps and squid that live among them. Odds were that it wouldn't freeze and it wouldn't blow a gale… but what if it did? Sanibel Biological Supply, purveyor of marine research specimens, is a small company but it's my company, my obligation, so I sweat the details. As Jeth Nichols, one of the local fishing guides, has told me more than once: "You big dumb shit, what with all the tah-tah time you spend looking through a microscope and cutting open fish, no wonder you live alone. What woman's gu-gonna put up with that?"

Jeth's stutter doesn't affect his powers of observation; he's probably right on all counts.

So I was squatting over the cover, barefooted and dirt-streaked, when I felt the earthquake-tremble of footsteps on the dock that connects my house to the mangrove beach. Looked up expecting to see one of the marina regulars, but there stood Dewey instead. Her hands were shoved into the pockets of her Day-Glo red warm-ups, her blue visor cap was tilted back. She gave me a long look of appraisal, then shook her head solemnly. "Jesus Christ, I've been gone only, what? A year? That fast, you've gotten fat and let your personal hygiene go to hell."

Meet a friend out of place in terms of space and time and it takes the brain a few beats to reshape the unexpected into the familiar. "Dewey?"

She made a face. "How many six-foot blondes you know? Now your memory's turned to mush. Just fucking sad!" She came striding up the dock, over the water, where I met her in a back-slapping bear hug. Picked her up, swung her around, gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead. Stepped back to look into those good eyes, then hugged her again. Into my ear Dewey said, "Playtime's over, fat boy. Strap on your shoes. Coach Nye is back for the holidays. First we run, then we lift, then it's swim time."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"We can talk while we run. Get your Nikes on."

"Can't. Not till I'm done working."

"Don't start with that stuff. You're always working."

"Give me an hour."

"Whine, whine, whine. Act your age!" She held my face between her hands and grinned at me. "Damn, it's good to see you, Ford!"

"And you, Dewey."

"The world just keeps getting crazier and faster and meaner, but you don't change. You and this rickety old fish palace of yours."

"You should have called. I could have picked you up at the airport."

"And ruin the surprise? Besides, I did call. Never got an answer, so I finally called the marina. Mack said you and

Tomlinson were off sailing someplace. That was what? October?"

"We sailed to Key West. I helped him get his boat in cruising shape. Tomlinson wanted to stick around for Fantasy Fest. That's a freak party; Halloween in Key Wasted. I caught a ride on a sports fisherman. A couple of buddies and I fished our way home."

"And left Tomlinson."

"Sure. His doctor said he was ready. He's getting better, I think. Slowly. Still a little weird. That lightning strike did more than just burn a scar into his temple. I expected him back last month. But the next day or two for sure."

"The scar I haven't seen. But Tomlinson's always weird."

"True… but not like this."

"And you still don't have an answering machine."

Nope, I didn't have an answering machine. No fax, no cellular phone, no beeper, no E-mail either. At the root of all technology is the human drive to triumph over isolation. Most people have a horror of being marooned. Sometimes I believe that I am not among them-a mild deception that has simplified my lifestyle. But lately, more and more of my clients were hinting that I was a little too isolated; that it was a little too hard to place orders, so the day would probably come when I would have one or two or all of the above.

Dewey was still talking: "… I wasn't absolutely certain that my Captiva house was going to be open in December, so by that time I-"

"By that time, you decided to ignore the messages I left."

"I know, I know. Dependable, punctual Ford."

There was something wrong with that? If I was in the country, near a phone, I tried to call Dewey every Sunday night.

Dewey said, "That's not the point. What I was telling you was, Bets did exhibition matches in Madrid and Lisbon, and I went along at the last minute. By then I figured, why not surprise him?"

"Ah," I said, picturing Dewey and Bets together. "Oh."

Dewey gave me an affectionate shake. "We're wasting time. I've got three whole weeks to do nothing but work out and lie in the sun. Then I'm off to Phoenix for the Amateur Classic." She was pulling me up the steps, toward the house; let me stop just long enough to fit the Styrofoam cover onto the tank. Said, "So the fun starts as of now. We run five, lift light, then we come back here and swim out to the island and back."

I said, "In the bay?" My house is built over the water on stilts. The lower level is all dock. The upper level is wooden platform. Two small cottages sit at the center under one tin roof. The platform extends out on all sides, creating a broad porch. Standing on the porch by the screen door, I could feel the first gusting chill of the coming nor'wester. I said, "An hour from now, the bay might be a little cold for swimming."

"Are you kidding? It's got to be, what? Eighty? Eighty-five degrees? Get your ass in gear, champ. Quit stalling. You're the one who told me whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

She followed me into the cottage and futzed around with the stereo and shortwave radio while I changed. She chatted about her flight down. Told me a little bit about the crummy golf courses outside Lisbon. When I asked how Bets was doing, Dewey said, "Fine, fine. She's one busy lady," in a vague, evasive way that suggested that Bets wasn't fine and Dewey didn't want to discuss it. There was something on her mind; something she needed to talk about, and I wondered how long it would take for her to finally get around to it. There are false extroverts who use bluster to hide their shyness and sensitivity. Dewey is one of them. At the core, Dewey is an outsider: the gifted kid who never quite meshed with the crowd. She was different, was always different, and so the shy child within was never eroded away by conformity. The child hides in there, way down deep, and when you are a friend of the child-which is the only way you can be Dewey's friend-you can say any dumb thing you want, any egoless inanity, and the child never challenges or criticizes. But the acceptance must be reciprocal. And maybe that kind of acceptance is the core of all true friendship. When Dewey does let the screen drop, she is still funny. Still irreverent. But she is also without guile, and delicate, delicate. Now, for a moment, she let the screen drop. It was in her tone. "Doc?"

"Yeah?"

"It crossed my mind that it might be a tad awkward… hell, a lot awkward, if I breezed in here and you had a… you know, a houseguest. For Christmas. Someone staying with you."

"You mean a woman?"

"Sure, what else? Maybe it wouldn't have been such a good surprise."

"I don't know why not."

"I just thought that they, the woman, I mean, might get ticked off. You know, jealous."

I finished tying my running shoes and stepped out from behind the bed screen. "Why would a woman be jealous of you?" The words were out of my mouth before I realized what a stupid and cruel thing it was to say.

Some insist that the human eye cannot register emotion. Those who believe it have not met Dewey Nye. She was staring at me, a wry expression fixed in place to hide the wound. "Thanks, partner. You do wonders for my ego."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"Bullshit. That's exactly what you meant."

No way out of it, so I said, "Besides, I don't have any women. Nothing sexual, anyway. Just a couple of friends around the island."

Dewey said, "No kidding?," still pinning me with her gaze. She knew it wasn't true. In our frequent phone conversations, I didn't leave much out.

I said, "Well, sometimes it's sexual. Sure. But nothing permanent. Occasionally I meet a tourist lady who seems interesting, who likes to talk about more than which brand of tanning oil is best. But they never stay for more than a day or two."

"But you'd like them to stay. That's the kind of house-guest I meant. The kind you'd like to stay longer?"

Even to Tomlinson I would have probably hedged, but Dewey's intuition is too good. You hedge, you lie, and her screens lock instantly into place. I braced myself against the west wall and began to stretch hamstrings and calves as I said, "Nope, I haven't met one yet who I wanted to stay longer. Not in a while, anyway."

Actually, it had been just short of a year.

Dewey's laughter was only slightly mocking. "Jesus Christ, I can see you're undecided."

"I like women-as people. As roommates, it's another story. Same with men."

"And you get so many offers. I noticed the line outside, all those girls with suitcases, waiting patiently."

"Go ahead and joke, but I'm trying to explain something. The way it is with women these days. They begin by saying they don't want a serious relationship. They always do. They say they're not interested in marriage. They always are. They say they have no desire to impose on my solitude or my work. Inevitably, they impose on both. They leave hair in the sink. They wear my T-shirts. They get pissy when I do the cooking. And they always, always end up asking to borrow my boat-if I'll just take a few minutes and teach them how to run it. Nope, two days is plenty. Three, tops." I finished stretching and looked at her. "I sound cynical?"

"You sound like a prissy old jerk."

"Yeah, well… this place is too small for two people. On a full-time basis, I mean. Besides, I like my routine. My work keeps me busy enough. It may be contrary to all acceptable social behavior, but I like living alone."

She still wore the bemused smile. "So let me summarize: No woman wants you, no woman will have you. You're lonely as hell, horny as a goat, and as full of shit as ever."

I grabbed her and wrestled her around until we stood face-to-face. "If you're asking to borrow my boat, the answer's no."

Dewey held me with her eyes, still amused, but then the intensity and focus seemed to change. Suddenly she hugged me hard, then pushed me toward the door. "You men," she said, nudging me along, "you bastards. It's always the same: First you steal our hearts, then you destroy our dreams."