“So what does the artist have to say?” Niurka asked in a happy voice. “Whatever’s left of him, you mean,” Argenis responded. “Surprise! I bought you the ticket!” his aunt shouted. “Praise be,” he said. “Did you go to Cuba to be born again?” she asked over the raucous honking of conchos and minivans. “The revolution works miracles, and so does Papi, the son of a bitch,” Argenis said, chuckling a bit. Niurka knew the call was expensive, so to move things along she told him, “I have the confirmation number – do you have something to write with?”

Argenis stuck his head up over the cubicle and made the universal sign for writing, joining his thumb and index finger to draw a letter in the air. A German in Coke-bottle glasses passed him a black Sharpie and with it Argenis wrote the airline ticket confirmation number on his forearm. After hanging up, he left the hotel quickly so he wouldn’t have to return the marker. Painted in darkness, Havana recovered something of its former glory, like an old whore when the lights are off. He would use these last hours to walk through it like a tourist. He’d admire the baroque architecture, the centuries-old ceiba trees, the wide European sidewalks, without any trick questions about anyone’s lack of anything, nor about the imminent collapse of infinite ruins deposited like leftovers on a Titan’s plate.

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They were screams that pushed outward, bulging into the present like blood into a welt. He too had screamed like that before. In 2001, during an artistic residency on the coast, he had started to have visions of mutilated cows and headless buccaneers. His own screams had woken him in the night. He’d been kicked off his scholarship-funded stay because of those screams, screams like these ones, empty of fear or indignation – shrieks that asked for, begged for, mercy.

He got up from his new bed, Niurka’s living room sofa, and walked along the hallway to his aunt’s room, navigating like a bat by the sound of her screams in the darkness. He opened the door and found her lying rigid, faceup, with her fists and eyelids closed with a force that had nothing to do with rest. A bit of frothy saliva could be seen at the corner of her mouth. The full moon cast stripes from the window’s security bars onto the sheets. Down the street, a motorist was dragging cans tied onto his concho to celebrate the inauguration of the Dominican Liberation Party, his father’s party. It was the same technique baseball fans used to celebrate their champions.

With a forced delicacy that did not come naturally to him, he shook his aunt by the shoulder. “Aunt Niurka,” he said, “it’s just a nightmare.” She opened her eyes and let out one last scream, much softer now. She got up, slowly and quietly. “You were screaming,” Argenis told her. “Are you OK?” “I’m great,” she said, using her feet to search for her slippers without turning on the lamp. She threw the sheet over herself, flattening down her rounded shrub of frizzy hair, and walked to the kitchen with Argenis following behind. She took a bottle of Barceló Imperial rum from the cabinet like it was a gallon of milk for breakfast, turned on the kitchen’s light bulb, and poured two glasses. Argenis emptied his without waiting for her, and then she did the same, looking him in the eye for the first time.