She remembered curling next to her mother on their twin bed, ear to her chest. To hear her heart. Each labored breath. To will each one. Please please please.

Money in the floorboard. Would chemo buy her more time? She could have taken it but she didn’t. She could have taken it because years later Nancy caught Roberto with his mistress, and she raged, she threw her ring down the sink, she left Mexico overnight, she said she was never coming back to that godforsaken place, it’d been her worst mistake, she left without the money, she didn’t even remember the money, she was so angry. But how could Ana know? Ana would never know. All she thought at the time was, If she took the money, and if Doña Nancy found out, then where would they go?

8

THEY LIKE THE GRIMY

Maydelis

La Habana, 2015

It isn’t cheating if the marriage is on life support. The only reason we haven’t pulled the plug is inconvenience: scarce housing. (How many couples who hate each other still live under the same roof here, eating silent meals with the TV turned up to fill the space?)

That’s what I tell myself as the man who is not my husband, El Alemán, helps me into the passenger seat, hands me my overnight bag. Jeanette eyes us from the back seat with a knowing smile. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” she whispers as El Alemán walks around to the driver’s side door.

I flash a smile I hope says: Nothing. Everything.

El Alemán squeezes in and pulls the lever at his side. “Goddamn Russian goddamn piece-of-shit cars!” he yells in English as the seat springs back and Jeanette pulls her knees in. “Who’s supposed to fit in this thing?”

“Huh, there’s a cup holder,” Jeanette says pulling down the center partition that does, indeed, hide a cup holder.

“I thought all you guys were supposed to drive those neat 1950s Chevrolets,” El Alemán says. “Why didn’t they give me one of those?”

Jeanette sighs.

“I would have brought my cafecito if I knew there was a cup holder.” She rests an elbow on the center partition.

“Of course there’s a cup holder. What do you think this is? Mars? We’re not that backward.”

Picture it: me and two foreigners. The patience required. Though I’m more amenable to dishing it out for my cousin than for this sunburned, blustering German on holiday. Outside, the valet porters watch us silently. They’re trying to guess the situation, this I know. Two Cuban prostitutes, one tourist? Two tourist relatives and one lucky Cuban family member? A married couple and their hustling tour guide? Porters, I’m trying to figure out the situation.