When we returned to La Habana, a leak had ripped a chunk of plaster from the ceiling and it took us months to find the money and materials to fix it. Meanwhile there were buckets to catch water each time it rained and we stopped speaking of the nonessential. We wrote for money from Jeanette’s mom in Miami to fix the hole in the ceiling. Then the sky was gone, and the house was dark again.

We get to the house with the phone. It’s a squat, corrugated-roof hut surrounded by identical ones. There is a concrete porch, where an old woman with dark sunspots sits on a rocking chair, fanning herself. Bougainvillea vines snake around the house and blossom out into the sun.

“Señora Lilia,” Reinaldo says.

The woman smiles and smooths her white hair. She introduces herself when I hand over a few coins for the phone call.

Jeanette offers to pay but she’s carrying only divisa, not moneda nacional. Constantly she complains about the unfairness of the double-currency system, about how mad she feels paying a commission to exchange dollars into CUCs. There seem so many other easy injustices to point to; I’m frequently amused by what catches her fancy.

In Lilia’s stuffy living room, packed to the brim with trinkets and religious figures, I dial the number on the rental car contract while Jeanette sits on the porch, smoking a cigarette with Reinaldo and pretending she doesn’t notice him creeping in, flirtatious, going for the foreign kill. I watch them through the wooden slats filtering dusty light into Lilia’s tiny living room. The whirr of a refrigerator reaches all the way to me, and I can’t hear what Reinaldo and Jeanette are saying outside. The sheets hanging in place of doors inside the house rustle with a sudden breeze.

The rental agency, unsurprisingly, is less than helpful. It will take them hours, maybe four or five, says the high-pitched woman on the other end of the line. They don’t have anyone, she explains, anywhere near us. She shouts questions at other people in the office, whom I can hear only through muffled replies. Yes, four to five hours, she confirms. I give them an approximate address, and the woman laughs. “En casa del carajo,” she says.

Outside, Lilia has joined Reinaldo and Jeanette. They are doubled in laughter, some joke I’ve missed.

“It’s going to take all day,” I announce, puncturing the group’s joy with bad news.

Jeanette looks troubled, Reinaldo unsurprised. Lilia is bored again, fanning herself.