The Black Path of Fear

1

Somehow we’d gotten into Zulueta Street. Maybe the driver figured we’d wind up there eventually anyhow. Everyone seems to. We dawdled up to Sloppy Joe’s, all open to the street, and looking better before you go in than it does inside.

The horse seemed to stop of its own accord. I guess it had been here so many times before it knew the place. The coachman turned his head around and looked at us inquiringly.

“What’s this?” I said.

“Esloppy’s,” he said, “Big atracción.”

I felt like saying, “What are you, their steerer or something?” I didn’t bother.

I turned and looked at her. “You want to?”

She didn’t want to go in at first. “Do you think it’s safe for us to show ourselves around like this, Scott?”

“Sure it’s safe. This is Havana, not the States any more. He hasn’t got that long a reach.”

She smiled at me. One of those smiles of hers that — oh, brother, you feel like the soft end of the sealing wax going onto an envelope flap. “Hasn’t he?” she said. “We should have gone to a hotel and locked ourselves in.”

I thought to myself: You bet we should, and thrown the key away. But not on his account.

I said: “But he sent you a radiogram wishing you luck.”

“That’s why I’m worried,” she said. “He didn’t say which kind of luck.”

“I’m with you,” I said.

She smiled again. I felt like used-up chewing gum, only not so sturdy. “And I’m with you,” she said. “And we can only die once.”

I handed her down. She stood there for a minute and she lighted the whole street up, like a torch. I was surprised there weren’t reflections on the dim walls around us. She was all in white, to fit the climate and the night; satin, I think it was, and I think, too, it must have been sprayed on and then allowed to dry, to be that even all over. She had on everything he’d ever given her, and there were rippling flashes at her ears and throat and wrists and fingers every time she moved.

I wondered why she’d put it all on and brought it ashore with her like this, especially after the way she’d told me she felt about it only the other night. “They talk to me sometimes at night, Scotty. I lie awake in the dark and I can hear them. Piece by piece, from the dresser top, in funny squeaky little voices, each one in turn. ‘Remember when you got me? Remember that?’ And ‘Remember what I cost you? Surely you remember that?’ Until I can’t stand it any more. Until I stop up my ears and think I’ll go mad.”

I’d asked her about it in the launch coming ashore just now. “I know we’re going to do the town, but don’t you think you’re a little heavy-hung with the rock candy?”

She said, “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave it around the stateroom while we’re standing in the harbor.”

“Why didn’t you turn it over to the purser?”

She started to unfasten the catch of one of the pieces at her wrist. “I’ll drop it in if you say so. All of it. Right now. Every last piece.” She wasn’t kidding, either. I had to pull her hand back from over the gunwale of the launch.

I don’t think she knew herself why she’d put it on. Some sort of defiance, maybe, was at the bottom of it. His jewelry to please another man’s eyes.

I paid the coachman and we went in. It was jammed to the sidewalk line, nearly, and the musicians were pounding away up on a screwy little balcony it had tacked up on the wall over everyone’s heads. You couldn’t see the bar; you could see only an open ditch up front past all their heads that showed where it was.

I went in first and dug a tunnel through for her and then drew her in after me with a hand at her wrist. We got through to the second layer of customers, then the density held us off for a while. It was like being in a football scrimmage. Then we got a break; I managed to get a grip on the edge of the bar with one hand when someone backed out, and I pulled the two of us into the empty hole there that had only taken one before, and there we were, crushed up tight against one another and not minding at all. I said, “Two dikes.”

I didn’t even have to hitch my head to kiss her, just change my mouth around a little. Which I did.

I said, “Are you all right?”

She smiled that smile again. She said, “Your arm around me, your shoulder just behind me — oh, let it come, Scotty, let it come.”

“Don’t keep saying that,” I answered, low. I’m funny that way; when I was a kid I used to think that when you said a thing over too many times you brought it on. I guess a little of that is still left over in me.

Her looks were creating a continual swirling ripple round us, sucking all sorts of vendors and steerers through the crowd. They kept buzzing around like bottle flies, all trying to sell something at once, from imported Paris perfume — imported by way of Brooklyn — to a good address with no questions asked and the sort of post cards that you don’t send home. We didn’t even hear them; we were in a world of our own.

She downed half her drink without taking a breath and smiled that smile again at me. “Let’s hope it has time to go to my head.”

Someone touched my shoulder, which was as good as touching hers too. Everything you had in that crowd belonged to three or four others as well. We both turned our heads.

A Cuban had struggled through with an old-fashioned tripod. “The señor and lady would like a peek-ture for to show their friends back in Estates?”

“Christ,” I said to her deprecatingly.

She picked the idea up. It seemed to appeal to her. Same principle as the diamonds, most likely. “I know someone would love to get one. Why not? Go ahead. Take us like this, photographer. Look, like this.” She wound her arm around my neck and closed it like a nutcracker. She pressed her cheek to mine, pasted our two faces together like that. We stayed like that. “Like this,” she said bitterly. “With love!”

“Sh-h,” I said gently. I hadn’t realized she hated him so until now. I should have, but I hadn’t. It made me feel good. It made me feel lucky. It made me feel humble.

I don’t know how he got them back, but he got them back a little. I guess they didn’t want to get singed. He got a little floor space cleared, about the size of a silver dollar, and poked the three legs of the tripod down into that. Then he covered his head, and those of two other fellows as well, with a black cloth. The other two fellows worked theirs clear again, but he left his underneath. Then he held up his hand straight overhead with a little trowel thing in it. One of the side lines of the place is these flashlight photos they keep banging off all the time all around the bar.

We held it. The flashlight powder fizzed blue and lit up the whole place. I could feel her give a little jolt against me. I gave a little jolt myself, for that matter.

The regular yellow kind of light came right back again. The smell drifted past and then went away.

I hadn’t known she weighed that much. I said, “He’s taken us now.”

She just clung on.

“Ah, come on,” I remonstrated gently. “Everybody’s looking at us.” I could hear them laughing around us. They thought we were lit, I guess, the way she was draped there.

She said faintly, close to my ear: “Don’t rush me, Scotty. Give me time.” And tried to find my lips with hers.

I joined them up with hers, quick. I said, “What is it? Why’re you so limp?”

“I knew we wouldn’t make it,” she whispered. “What do we care? Part of a night’s better than none at all.”

I must have opened my grip a little without knowing it. Suddenly she cascaded down the front of me like rippling water and lay in a tumbled heap at my feet. For a second there were just strangers’ faces left behind up there, where she had been, staring back at me. Then I dropped down by her to see what was the matter; we were together again. I hadn’t gotten it yet. I hadn’t caught up. All there were were motionless legs around us, like a knobby picket fence walling us in together. Up in the gallery the five-piece band was giving “Siboney” a loud going-over just then. That’s the tune they play everywhere down there, “Siboney.” That’s the tune that had been following us through the night. It makes a good dirge. It breaks your heart for you.

She even looked pretty down there. The shadow of the overhanging bar cast a soft, peaceful twilight over her. I tried to pick her up in my arms, and she made an indifferent little pass with her hand, as if to tell me there wasn’t time.

“Just stay with me a minute. It won’t take long.”

I got down close and kneaded her to me; I didn’t know what other way to try to keep her with me. I didn’t know; I didn’t know.

“I’ve got to go out alone in the dark,” she sighed, “and I’ve always hated the dark.” Her lips tried to find mine, then they gave up. “Scotty,” she breathed, “finish my drink for me. It’s still standing up there. And bust the glass. That’s the way I want to go. And, Scotty — let me know how that picture you and I took turns out.”

Her chin gave a dejected little dip, and I was by myself without her; she’d gone somewhere else.

Hands were reaching down, and I slashed them away. What was left there was mine; they couldn’t have it.

I picked her up in my arms, and I staggered to my feet and looked around. I didn’t know where to go or what to go there for.

Somebody pointed, and I looked down at the floor under her. Small dark red drops were falling one by one, very sluggish, very slow. You couldn’t see them drop; you could only see them after they hit. They made intricate little patterns, like burgundy snowflakes or midget garnet starfish on a beach. There was something sticking out of her side, like an ornamental brooch or clasp to her dress. But it thrust out a little too far; it couldn’t have been meant to jack out like that. It was jade, and it was vibrating slightly as I held her. Not with her own breath — there wasn’t any more of that — but with the shaking of my own trembling hold upon her.

It looked vaguely familiar. It was carved in the shape of a small, squatting monkey holding paws to his eyes. I couldn’t think for a minute where I’d seen it before. I only knew it had no business to be where it was. I tightened my hand around it and pulled at it, and it grew bigger. At my pulling there was more of it and more of it and more of it, like in some horrid nightmare. It was like pulling her apart with my bare hand; pulling her flesh apart, pulling her insides out — I don’t know how to say it. The steel part showed up below the monkey and kept coming, kept coming, by eighths of inches. And my sweat kept coming out on my forehead, as though this obstruction were coming out of me. It came slowly free, the rest of it, the stinger, the tail part; steely, straight, graceful and thin and deadly. It was like looking at death to look at it. It was death. Suddenly it had finished coming; there wasn’t any more. It had ended. And there was just a hole there, where it had been. With blood down inside it, but too lazy to come out any more. Or already too old.

My palm stretched out, under and beyond her body, as if it were asking alms. And in it the monkey. And out beyond that, the long steel thing with her blood upon it. Making a sort of moiré surface.

I opened my fingers spasmodically, and it dropped to the floor with a clash.

I finally got it. Don’t laugh; I was slow. When you’re in love you’re slow like that.

I saw their faces there before me and I wanted help, anywhere I could get it.

“She’s dead!” I shouted at them. “She doesn’t move! She’s been knifed right in my arms!”

My pain was in English. Their fright was in Spanish. There are no different languages for things like that. They’re all the same.

I heard the word go up from a dozen different throats at once, and I knew it, though I’d never heard it before.

There was a sudden stampede that nearly burst the flimsy seams of the place. Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. This wasn’t for them; this was mine, and I could have her. They went stumbling and floundering all over each other in their hurry to get out into the street and avoid being snagged as witnesses. I suppose that was it mainly. And the chance to skip without paying for their drinks was too good to be missed; that must have been partly it too. And the rest was just sheer panic, catching from one to the other. Panic, which is fear without any real reason to be afraid.

I even saw one of the hindmost miss his footing and go down on hands and knees. Then he picked himself up and went scampering outside after the rest.

I was left alone in there with my dead. Just me and her and a long, long row of abandoned drinks lined up along the bar, all sizes, shapes, and colors. And the men behind the bar who’d had to stay there because they couldn’t get out fast enough.

I guess I stood there. I don’t think I moved. Dimly I realized there wasn’t any use going any other place with her, because she’d be dead in that other place, too, just as dead as here.

It didn’t take long. Havana’s a fast town for anything: love, and life, and death too.

Then the screech of police cars came careening into the narrow reaches of Zulueta Street, from way up at the far end, and whistled down it and stopped outside. And the uniforms of cops and duck and pongee suits of plain-clothes men came spilling in between the supporting posts that along most of its street front is all Sloppy’s has for outside walls. And the brave ones ganged up again now and came in once more, but behind the police and not in front of them. Which makes a good deal of difference when it comes to the detention of witnesses.

They took her from me and stretched her out on three chairs slung together in a row; that was the best the place could provide in the way of a bier. Her skirt had hitched up a little too high on one side, and I gently freed it and paid it down to where it belonged. Gee, that hurt; I don’t know why. I turned my back and stepped across to the bar.

While they were milling around her, and their police medical examiner — I suppose he was that — was busy with her, I picked up the daiquiri she’d left standing on the bar. I saluted her with it, not where she was but up a little just over my eyes, and drained it to the bottom. And that hurt too; what a bitter drink. Then I snapped the stem of the glass off short. Good-by. It wasn’t much of a funeral service. It was all there was time for just then.

They closed in around me and my afterlife had begun. The new, lonely stretch without her. All by myself in a strange town. Two of them had revolvers out, I noticed vaguely. I wondered why. There wasn’t anyone in there that could hurt them or threaten them. I was the only one in there, in the middle of all of them. The rest of the crowd had been pushed back outside again.

They tried saying a couple of things that I couldn’t understand. Then when they saw that they called for someone by name. “Acosta,” they kept saying and turning their heads. I guess it was a name, anyway. Some new guy stepped through their ranks and took over.

He was in plain clothes: an alpaca suit. He had horn-rimmed glasses and he looked studious. I guess he was one of their ace detectives; there was a sort of overtone of deference all around. He had a good working knowledge of English, the kind that you don’t get from books but that gets rubbed into your elbows from knocking around. It was spiced with accent, but his word patterns came out like ours do. He must have been educated up in the States or gone to one of our police schools up there.

He came up close to me and looked me over.

“This woman is dead.”

I didn’t say anything; my heart was punchy from knowing it.

“You were the man with her?”

“I was the man with her.”

“Your name?”

“Scott. Bill Scott.” He had a notebook going. “Make it William as long as it’s for the blotter.”

“Her name?”

That was going to hurt. I shifted my jaw into low. “How do you want it — formal, or the way it really was, or — the way it was going to be?”

You didn’t horse around with him. “I want her name. That’s a plain enough question. Or isn’t it?”

“Eve,” I said softly. “Mrs. Eddie Roman on the books. It was going to be—”

That hurt too much; it took half the lining of my throat with it.

“It was going to be?”

“Mrs. Bill Scott,” I whispered. “Somebody didn’t give us a chance.”

“And where is Mr. Roman?” “Not,” I said, “where I’d like him to be. Which is frying in hell.”

“Your address in La Habana?”

“Down here where my shoes are standing.”

“Hers?”

“Neither of us have any. We got in on the Ward liner that docked at three this afternoon. So if you’ve got to have an address, put us down for staterooms B-21 and B-23, just across the passage from one another. My razor blades and our toothbrushes are still in there, so I guess that makes it an address.”

“Just across the passage from one another.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “Once was enough on that.”

He put the notebook away. I thought that ended it I was wrong; that only began it. “Now,” he said.

“Now what?”

“You had a quarrel with her here in this bar?”

“I had a quarrel with her like hell here in this bar.”

He just looked at me. I got it. I was a half lap behind again, like when I’d picked her up from the floor.

“Wait a minute. What was that for, just then? Which way are you heading?”

“Toward facts. Toward the truth.”

“Well, you’re going the wrong way, then.” I kept my voice steady. My throat swelled a little, pressed out against my collar; that was all. “I didn’t do it.”

Somebody in the official group around set off a string of little Spanish firecrackers: pop, pop, pop, pop. He switched the sound off with a cut of his hand. As if to say, “I know that as well as you, but he’s entitled to a hearing.” I liked that even less than the original protest.

“Is this your knife?” They’d picked it up long ago.

That jade handle, carved into the shape of a monkey holding its eyes covered, had looked damn familiar from the beginning. I’d placed it by now. I knew I’d better tell them; they were going to find out for themselves in another minute anyway. There was nothing to hide about it after all.

“No,” I said. “But it’s a very close match. I did buy one just like it this afternoon in a curiosity shop. Wait a minute, I’ll show you. I’ve got it in my pocket right—”

They caught the half start my hand made toward the inside pocket of my coat, grabbed me in about three different places: my shoulder, my elbow, and my wrist. Also on the opposite arm, in about three more.

“Wait a minute, don’t get so excited,” I said in cold reproof. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

“We don’t know,” he told me. “But whatever it is, we’ll do it for you.”

“What’re you trying to do — make a suspect out of me, searching me like this?”

He gave me a lesson in grammar. “You don’t make something out of a thing when it’s that already.”

I made a sandwich of that between two lumps and swallowed it.

They went over me thoroughly. I kept waiting for them to get to it, to bring it out, so they could see it wasn’t the same one. When they had finished the knife didn’t come out, just the receipt for it.

I squirmed around in their clutches while they were scanning it. “Wait a minute, there’s a knife in there that goes with that!” I kept writhing, trying to get up and into that particular pocket myself. There was too much dead weight anchoring my arms.

Finally one of them pulled the lining up to show me. It came up empty.

“But there was a knife in there!”

Acosta tapped it palmwise a couple of times. “There was a knife in there. And this is it!”

I kept my voice steady, low. This would be straightened out in a minute. No use getting excited; that would only hinder my being able to make them understand.

“Now look, just listen to me a minute. That couldn’t be the one. I didn’t take mine out. It was still wrapped, the way he gave it to me. I’ll tell you just how too. In... in green oiled paper, held down with two rubber bands, one at each end.”

He jerked his thumb at the two holding onto me, and they swiveled me aside out of the way. The way you roll something standing on a truncated base. He crouched down into that twilight she’d died in at the foot of the bar. He pawed three times, here, there, over in the next place, came up with a crumpled ball of green oiled paper and two rubber bands in his palm.

“Very accurate.” He nodded.

I pitched my chin upward at him. “Are you trying to tell me I stood there in the middle of that crowd, deliberately took that knife out of my pocket, stripped the paper and the rubber bands off it, and drove it into her — without being seen?”

“Are you trying to tell us somebody else did that, without your feeling, seeing, or hearing him? Listen how this stuff crackles.” He gave the paper wad a crunch, and it sputtered and hissed in the middle of his hand like something alive.

He waited a minute for that to sink in. Then he gave me an unwarm smile. It didn’t mean “Let’s be buddies.”

“Do you still deny this is your knife?”

I kept staring at the damn thing, half scared of it now myself. It was bewitched or something. How could it get out of there, where I’d had it, and into her?

He took the receipt from the man holding it, translated it aloud for my benefit, word for word. It wasn’t one of those shorthand things you get up North. It was written out in great detail; it was a young book. It was in flowery Spanish. When I’d seen him composing it back there where I’d bought it, I’d thought that was the custom down there, to write out a complete description of each purchase, practically give its life history.

“ ‘The Curiosity and Novelty Shop of Tio Chin,’ ” Acosta read off, “ ‘42, Pasaje Angosta. For the sale of one ornamental knife, imported oriental, jade grip, to the Mister Scott—’ ”

Maybe his reading it out like that brought the scene back. A light suddenly dawned on me. I saw what it was that had been bothering me all along. It was going to be all right now. The worst was over. “Wait,” I interrupted him breathlessly. “Let me see that knife; let me see it closer. Just hold the handle up so I can get a good look at it. It’s a pretty small carving.”

He held it up sort of ironically, pinched between two fingers at the neck.

“It’s holding its eyes covered, the little monkey. Right?”

“We see that too,” he said dryly.

“Well, that isn’t the one I bought.”

I waited triumphantly for that to sink it. If it did, you couldn’t tell.

“He had a set of three there — eyes, ears, and mouth. You know, illustrating the old proverb or whatever it is, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’ I didn’t want all three. I asked her which I should pick, and she suggested the one holding its ears. And that’s the one I took. This is a mate to it, but it’s not the same knife. This is somebody else’s knife. He’ll tell you, the old guy where I bought it. Let’s go back there; I can prove it by him.”

They didn’t stir.

Acosta changed back to the receipt again. “Do you deny that this bill of sale was made out to you?”

That was dumb. They’d taken it right out of my own pocket, hadn’t they? “No, of course not. That’s my receipt, all right.”

“Then suppose you let me finish reading it to you. You didn’t give me time.” He went on: “ ‘Description — with handle carving of the monkey that sees no evil. Received payment, twenty pesos.’ ”

My jaw hung slack while that sank in. “No. He got it wrong on the receipt, that’s all!”

It was no good. “You have admitted you bought a knife. You have admitted this is the receipt for the knife you bought. There is the knife she was killed with in front of you. You admit that is the one, since it was projecting from her; you yourself withdrew it? All that is necessary, then, is for the three things to fit one another. Here is the receipt, from your own pocket, with your own name on it, that fits the knife she was killed with — ‘the monkey that sees no evil.’ The receipt fits the knife; the knife fits the wound. Therefore, the wound fits the receipt, and the receipt is made out to you.” He gave a shrug. “It’s simple. A complete circle without any opening.”

If it was, I went hopping around on the inside of it, trying to get out. “But I tell you I bought the knife of the monkey that hears no evil! This is somebody else’s knife! This knife fits the wound, and the receipt fits this knife, all right. But the receipt doesn’t fit the knife I bought. That’s a different knife! Can’t you get that through your heads?”

“Anglo-Saxon indirection,” he told me patronizingly. “You people always take the longest way around between two points. Just like you tangle up centimeters into fractions of inches.” He was going to convince me. He not only liked to arrest people; he liked to convert them to a sense of their guilt as well. He was going to show me what a tough spot I was in. I didn’t know. I was just passing time chinning with them in a bar because I didn’t have anything better to do.

“Suppose for the sake of argument we say it is somebody else’s knife — although it isn’t.” He spread his hands. “Then there is still one missing. Where is the one you say you bought? Where is the one you even told us how it was wrapped for you — in green paper, rubber bands? Where is the one you say you had in your pocket, that you stood there so surprised we didn’t take it out? Well? Where? You say there are two. It isn’t we who say there are two. We say there is one. We show you the one. You say there are two. But you can’t show us the two. Well, who is wrong — you or we?”

I was going slowly nuts. “It might have fallen out of my pocket in the carriage, in the place we ate, anywhere. We dined at Sans Souci and even got up a couple of times to rumba. It might have been then. How do I know? The pocket wasn’t deep enough to hold it — it overhung the lining — I saw that when I first stuffed it in.”

This brought on a burst of laughter when he had translated it for the benefit of the rest. One of them pinched the end of his nose tight, which means the same thing in any language.

Acosta addressed himself to me again. “It unwrapped itself first and then fell out. Skinned itself like a snake does, leaving the green paper and rubber bands behind in your pocket until you got here! Then they fell out by themselves. And meanwhile, of course, the receipt was for a different knife the whole time. That’s what storekeepers give out receipts for, to show which article you didn’t buy, and not which article you did buy.”

I tried to stop him, but he went right ahead. No Marquess of Queensberry rules in this kind of clinch.

“So the receipt was for a different knife. Then this different knife mysteriously shows up right here, out of all La Habana, at your feet in Sloppy Joe’s barroom, to catch up with its own receipt. It followed you around like a filing to a magnet, maybe, eh? You take the receipt out of the store first, and then the knife it belongs to gets up and floats out after you, drops here, ping! to the floor at your feet, after first sticking itself into the lady.” He made a windmill sweep of his arms. “Is this the kind of story you expect us to swallow? You think because you are in Cuba you can talk to us like a bunch of six-year-old kids? What kind of police you think we are down here, anyway?”

I said limply: “I’m all tangled up now. But here’s what I’m trying to get at. If I was going to kill her, why would I come into a crowded place like this to do it? We were alone in a carriage, driving along the sea wall in the dark, just before we came in here. One time we even stopped and sat there, looking at the harbor, and the driver got down and strolled off to stretch his legs. Why didn’t I do it there? Why didn’t I do it then?”

He had one for that too. And quick, without a hitch. “Because a crowd gives you more cover. The bigger the crowd, the bigger the cover-up. If you did it while you were alone with her, there could be no mistaking who did it. You and nobody else. Here, with people thick around you, you had a better chance to pass it off as somebody else’s doing. Like you are trying to.”

“But it was somebody else’s doing!” I clawed at my collar to get it out of the way, but my hand couldn’t make it, it still had too much tonnage fastened to it.

“I will show you why it couldn’t be.” He hadn’t had so much fun since his last promotion, I bet. “You will prove it for me out of your own mouth by answering three questions.” He matched three fingers to them. “How long had this woman been in La Habana?”

I’d already told them once. What was the good of going back on that now? “She got off the boat with me a little before six this evening.”

One finger went down. “Four hours ago!” He crowded in on me closer. “Had she ever been here before?”

I had to tell him the truth on that too; it would have been easy enough to find out later. “Neither of us ever had.”

The second finger went down. He had my kidneys pinned against the bar by now. “Did she know anyone here? Anyone at all, even at second hand, even by letter of introduction?”

The truth seemed to keep working against me. “No,” I admitted in an undertone. “Not a soul. No one at all.” That was why we’d come here.

The third finger went down. He was supposed to have me inside the fist that was left. Maybe he did, at that. “There’s your answer. Do you still want to claim somebody else but you killed her, in a place where she had just arrived, in a place where she knew no one, in a place where she had never been in her life before? Above all, with your own knife, taken out of your pocket and unwrapped before being used!”

There comes that knife again, I thought dismally.

They were ready to take her out now. I saw them taking off her rings and bracelets and things. I don’t know why they were doing it here instead of at the morgue or wherever it was they were taking her. Maybe they figured there’s too many a slip, even on your last ride, and she just might show up there without them.

All the shine, all the glitter waned and went out at her throat and ears and wrists and fingers. She was going to send them all back to him anyway, I thought. She didn’t want them. They’d cost her too much. More than he’d ever paid over any jewelry counter for them. They used to speak to her at nights from the top of the dresser and keep her awake, she told me. And even when she crammed them into a box and stuffed them away, to shut them up, she could still hear their faint whispers coming through. That was after she’d met me, when what she’d done with herself first counted. She hadn’t wanted them; she was going to get rid of them. But now they were here. And she wasn’t any more. Just that deflated white dress over there on those three chairs, so flat, so straight, so still.

Even her perfume was still here. But she wasn’t. Everything had lasted longer than she had. Even my poor, clumsy love.

They dumped them all together into a large handkerchief and tied the four corners up and tossed it across the room to Acosta, like a beanbag, for safekeeping.

Then they picked her up and started her on that long last trip she had to take alone. I tried to go with her at least as far as the morgue truck they had backed up outside, but they wouldn’t let me; they held me fast there. She’d never liked the dark; I remember her telling me that many times. She’d never liked to be alone in it, either. And now she had to go there, where that was all there was, just those two things. I stood there, very still and very straight, with my eyes on her to the last.

So she went out that way, into the black Havana night, without diamonds, without love, without dreams.

I don’t know how many minutes went by after that. They seemed like a lot, but maybe they were few; they hit me so slow and empty. Then somebody said something to me; I didn’t hear what it was.

“Let me alone, will you?” I answered dully. “I don’t know whether I’m coming or I’m going.”

“You’re coming,” Acosta answered. “You’re coming with us.” A hand that weighed a ton clamped itself onto my shoulder. “jAdelante!” Meaning, start moving. “You are under arrest for murder.”