All that shaving business in the windowless bathroom had made him sweat, and he decided to shower. The water was cold and he counted to three and closed his eyes before taking the first step. The memory of his grandmother Consuelo came to him, sitting on the bench in the kitchen where she was cleaning rice in a punch bowl, teaching him how to remove the stones, husks, and rotten grains with his fingers. Argenis opened the suitcase full of clothes – he still hadn’t managed to put his things into drawers – pulled out a pair of khaki Dockers and opened a package of Fruit of the Loom undershirts. The new clothes looked good on him and smelled like they came from far away. The smell of American merchandise was a common one in Santo Domingo, but in Cuba the embargo and limited mobility had transformed that smell into a magical essence.

He went to the room he’d been imagining as his studio and placed Susana there, too, sitting on a wooden bench, her legs crossed the way he’d seen her sit. She shared a cigarette with him and he dared to get closer, to speak tenderly to her, to kiss her. This must be how Cubans dream up mental banquets, he thought, meals with appetizers, main courses, and desserts, on abundant tables made of desire. The difference was that they did it out of necessity, and Argenis did it out of cowardice. He was afraid to paint in the real world, to fail again, to go out, to be judged, to accept that he had felt something for Susana, and afraid to do anything about it.

He opened the door with his heart going a mile a minute, and went down the stairs – toward the outside, the street – in threes, at the risky speed with which children run downhill, knowing that if they fall they’ll break their teeth. The night had swallowed all ugliness, and what the scarce light from isolated lampposts revealed instead was instances of sublime beauty: architectural fragments, snippets of style arranged like a collage on black cardboard.

He headed north on Campanario Street, letting himself be guided by the little neighborhood map Bengoa had made for him. Neither his simple clothes nor his sandals nor the dark skin inherited from his father gave away the still-apprehensive foreign tourist wandering the streets of Havana that night. The restaurants were to the right, but he didn’t want to spend the little money he had, so he kept going. He didn’t know how many blocks separated him from the sea, but he shared with Cubans the certainty that, after a certain number of steps in any direction, you will always find a shore.

His throat quickly filled with the particles of salt that traveled on the wind. When he came to Virtudes Street he thought he could hear the slap of the waves against the cliffs, but it was only the rumbling of a black Buick hidden in the shadows. Its owner was trying to get it to start, holding a flashlight between his teeth. There were no children, nor any businesses in sight. Leaning against the frames, a few shirtless men peered from darkened doorways while the laughter of old folks, Latin pop music, and a vague smell of cooking oil emanated from other doorways lit up by electric light and conversation.