We pass a young gringo, long hair pulled into a bun. Flip-flops, a seashell necklace, tank top. European. Or La Yuma. Doesn’t matter. That type: he wants to hear about the romance, about how inspiring it is to live here. But here, I have to be a little careful. I have to feel it out. Some just want to hear some Buena Vista Social Club, want to hear about how my grandma met Fidel Castro when he rolled through the city in a victory parade. But some of them, they’re real political the other way. They ask me all these complicated questions, they want to know what’s the real deal in Cuba, like there’s a secret truth. Education (is it really free?), medicine (is it really free?). And they want to hear about santería, so I pretend to practice. They want to hear about how we turn peeling apartments with sinking roofs into salsa dance clubs. I tell them I can take them someplace no tourists ever go. I have to remember, they like the grimy stuff. They don’t want the nice and clean. It’s weird. They buy the Che Guevara prints, the vintage revolution pins. Or they just give me money because they assume I need it—even better. They call me friend.

We turn on Quinta Avenida and line up for the highway. A dozen people stand by the side of the road, waiting on a truck to pick them up. Jeanette sighs dramatically.

And I’m thinking: a jinetera is not a prostitute. Another thing foreigners don’t understand. They think the words are interchangeable. Prostitution would be easy. Prostitution would be in-and-out, collect the cash, efficient transaction.

El Alemán rumbles into traffic, passes a mule hauling a cart, a guajiro. “On the fucking highway,” he says. “The highway.”

A jinetera studies, calculates. And, yes, offers sex sometimes, oftentimes. But so much more to give and parse and offer. And not just a listening ear or a compliment, these, too, the territory of prostitutes. One might, for instance, end up in a car with a US cousin and a German tourist because he wants to take us to a resort on Varadero Beach. One might put up with platitudes feigned as insight.

A lane switch and the landscape gets more rural. More sugarcane, less rubble. Billboards: THE REVOLUTION STARTS WITH YOU. ALWAYS WITH YOU, COMANDANTE. More palm, more sky, more valley. More bodies in truck beds, hair whipping in the wind.

“Ah, this is life,” says El Alemán.

“The poverty. The poverty is heartbreaking,” says Jeanette.