Havana 6

“The defense then tried to get into the record some reference to Partin’s friendliness with Fidel Castro. It sought to introduce a letter from a Cuban general thanking Partin for help in training Castro’s militia. It tried to show that Partin had been trying to lease freighters to run arms into Cuba. But, needless to say, Prosecutor Neal’s objections blocked every effort.

Jimmy Hoffa in “Hoffa: The Real Story,” 1970

I walked into a bar and stood beside a stool to avoid becoming a statistic. The bartender was busy. He didn’t see me yet, so I peered under the bar to see if there were a hook to hang my backpack.

I saw a dual purse hook: two upwardly curved rods emanating from an oblong brass disc held in place by two phillips screws that looked like two crossed-out eyes. The rods ended in oversized spheres to prevent tearing jackets. Combined, it looked like a drunk fighting octopus holding up two boxing gloves, blindly challenging anyone who dared approach. At least it did to me, probably because I was hungry and had noticed the daily special scribbled in chalk above the bar said pulpo a la parilla: grilled octopus.

I handed the octopus my backpack and removed my LSU baseball cap and rested it on the bar to mark my spot. I walked to the bathroom and splashed copious amounts of water on my face before looking at myself in the mirror. It had been a long day, and I suspected that I’d look like shit. I was right. Under my eyes was darker than usual and puffy, and a web of tiny red rivers radiated from my dark brown pupils and flowed across the whites of my eyes.

I twisted my head as far as I could, as if trying to see the back of my head. I knew I couldn’t, but I had been rotating my head to see the big backwards letter C peeking through my hair since I was 5 years old. I knew my rotation better than an army of physicians ever could. I tried joke to myself and say that I was 21.8% stiffer than usual, and that’s why I felt as badly as I looked, but the joke fell on deaf ears. The strain of looking tightened the skin across my scalene, and I watched it twitch and spasm like an agitated neck artery pulsing at around 80Hertz.

I looked back straight into the mirror and leaned slightly forward, resting my right hand on the sink for balance. It was slightly numb from radiculopathy, and I tried to ignore the long-term consequences of the feeling that’s exactly as of I had fallen asleep on the arm, and it tingling without me able to discern if I was actually touching the sink. I felt my weight shift to my arm, then I reached back with my left hand and ran a finger along the scar, an old habit that grounds me like a talisman.

There’s only one scar like it on Earth, and I knew its shape and texture no matter how fatigued I felt, how anxious I was, or how lost in thought I was. It’s a finger width apart, curving from top to right to bottom, slick and waxy compared to the rest of my scalp. Before my hair thinned, I could feel a forest of folicles rising at the junction of a horseshoe lake. Now, I felt a few scraggly weeds poking up in the barren ground beside a drying C-shaped waxy mud puddle.

I pulled my finger away from the mud puddle and bowed my chin to touch my chest. I stretched my eyeballs upward, but I couldn’t see my bald spot yet. It would happen soon. “Hair today, gone tomorrow,” my mostly bald Uncle Bob had said when I asked to grow my hair longer and hide the scar. Last year, Cristi saw the emerging bald spot and quipped that my backwards C had become a semicolon; I grabbed a hand held mirror and saw that she was right. Coincidentally, an internet meme had just gone viral that showed a young lady with a semicolon tattoo on her finger as a tribute to her father, who had taken his own life; it gave rise to ProjectSemicolon; a semicolon means an author could end a sentence, but chose to continue with a better alternative. That year, there was an uproar about the 19,000 murders in America using a combination of guns, knives, baseball bats, tire irons, pipe wrenches, rocks, and beer bottles; yet there was barely a murmur about the 38,000 people who ended their last sentence with a period. I quipped back to Cristi that, with my growing bald spot, I could finally become a spokesperson for something worthwhile, at least until my bald spot grew to match Uncle Bob’s or the San Diego Friar’s.

I splashed more water on my face and tried to change gears and stop thinking. I attempted to dry my face with a simple electric hand dryer mounted on the wall. I don’t recall the brand, but I guarantee it wasn’t a Dyson Airblade. I walked back to the bar wiping each face cheek on a shirt sleeve and patting damp hands on faded blue jeans.

The bartender walked over with a pleasant grin that hadn’t changed since I first walked in. He was about 28 to 30 years old, skin the color of cafe au lait, shorter than I am by a normal sized hand, and fit. His thick wavy hair was meticulously yet unostentatiously groomed, and probably required only a few extra minutes of effort each morning. (My dad’s mother, Mama Jean Partin, was a hair stylist and gave me the first haircut I remember, meticulously hiding my scar, and ever since then I noticed details in hair grooming that I would have otherwise overlooked.) He had a confident demeanor that was more like an absence of worry than anything he tried to project. He was young and happy, and I bet he had never heard of Hoffa. If anything, he may have had a vague idea about Hoffa from movies or memes, the way I had an idea of El Che from The Motorcycle Diaries and ubiquitous and ironic t-shirts with El Che’s profile sold in kiosks all over the world, usually next to shirts with Bob Marley, Nelson Mandella, and Bart Simpson.

He asked what I’d like. On a whim, I changed from ordering a Hemmingway Dacquiri and began dusting off my Spanish, as if I were stretching muscles on safe ground before committing to a steep climb. I said that I had never tasted Cuban rum, but I was hoping to learn how to make a mojito. But, I said, I’d like one not with the most expensive rum, but the rum he felt was… I paused, looking for a phrase that matched ‘bang for your buck,’ but I couldn’t conjure up one. Instead, I said I’d like a good value rum, one he’d keep at home for when someone who appreciated rum was coming over for dinner. Not a boss, but someone like a grandfather or a date. His smile broadened and he tapped the bar top and said something I didn’t understand. He turned and took down a bottle and went to work crushing fresh mint. It was like watching an artist immerse himself in painting, or sculpting something he could see as beautiful but wasn’t fully formed in his mind yet.

The band began playing something that sounded like the Buena Vista Social Club but wasn’t. All band members were 20-something men who seemed fit and had darker skin than the bartender, probably due to creole descent. They knew how to play above the din of patrons chatting but without drowning out conversations. The bar was a good choice. I was glad Tim would join me there. I tapped my fingers to the beat and smiled and sipped my mojito.

The mojito was everything I hoped for. I ordered the daily special, and it came with a side of mojo sauce. I wished I had a sharp knife to cut my slices more thinly than possible with the dull generic restaurant knife. I lamented life after 9/11 selfishly, how it used to be unremarkable to fly with a Leatherman tool strapped to my hip and a Benchmade clipped in my front pocket. Either blade would have cut the squid thinly enough to melt in your mouth. I tried to jot think about it, but I was still upset at myself for feeling upset when the young uniformed TSA agent confiscated the Leatherman in my personal bag. Of course I knew it wasn’t allowed; I had simply forgotten to remove it from the sunglasses pocket after tucking it in there on a quick drive to surf in Ensenada the week before. I had lost probably a dozen similar knives since 9/11, and just as many small Victorionox keychains, the ones with a puny blade and finger nail file and scissors that would barely cut an article out of an airline seat magazine. I lamented the loss of reason among humanity, and saw myself feeling old and cranky. I sipped again.

Confiscating my Leatherman was a ridiculous safety measure. The double edged razor blade in my German safety razor passed through three security checkpoints with fancy imaging software, and it could have been removed and taped to a plastic spoon with duct tape in my carryon backpack, or in a slot premade into a rigid toothbrush or the metal “safety” razor handle itself. All methods were common in prisons when I was a kid and learning these things; it was easier back then, when prisoners or people on airplanes could use a lighter or matches to melt the razor into a toothbrush, but I could affix one rididly enough with a bit of foresight.

With the modified knife, I could have used any slit the throat of the air marshal seated casually near the exit door. It would have been simple to seize what was likely a Glock 19 in appendix carry and pressed against his lazy belly before anyone else reacted. I knew how to use a Glock. At home, I had modified with sites to work with my aging eyes, because it fit my big hands better than the 19, which had become standard issue to Rangers and police officers, and, almost by default, many air marshals. I assumed his wouldn’t have a round chambered, which would be a risk to firefighters should the plane crash, but that was easy to rectify and would only cost a bullet if I were mistaken. (I don’t keep rounds chambered – in case of a fire, I don’t want it to go off and hurt anyone – so I have a habit of chambering rounds when I pick up a Glock. It has no safety, so there’s no need to check that before squeezing off a couple of rounds.) All of that could have been avoided by letting me keep my Leatherman; or, at the very least, the tiny red Victorionox keychain with a negligible blade and a very useful fingernail file.

Of course, it was all probably just my agitated mind and hyperbolic imagination passing time on the flight, lost in thought while nibbling a surprising tasty salad using disposable plastic utensils, but it felt real.

The bartender approached and thankfully interrupted my thoughts. He asked if I wanted another mojito. I flashed the whites of my teeth through my beard and cheerfully exclaimed, “Claro qui si!” He tapped the table and went to work, and set his masterpiece in front of me. I thanked him and pretended to read a book while I sipped. The bartender interrupted and asked how the drink was. I wanted to push my Spanish, so I made a joke about why I don’t give opinions because opinions stifle creativity, and that The Buddha said unhappiness stemmed from liking or disliking; but it fell flat. I reacted to his blank stare by saying the Margarita was invented in Ensenada after a customer asked a bartender to have fun and create something unique, and that the Pina Colada was invented similarly in Puerto Rico. I paused just a moment and added the Cuba Libre was invented Cuba, though I didn’t know the history. In all cases, I said, the inventor was working for art, not appeasement.

“Innovation takes iteration!” I said. He laughed as if he understood, and asked if I’d like another mojito. I said, “Claro qui si!” again, but added to have fun and experiment. I said that he could do no wrong. I said I was on vacation, and the last thing I wanted to do on vacation was think too much. He laughed and said he understood.

Just before he tapped the counter and turned away, I added that I was expecting an old friend, and asked if he would put all of our orders on one tab and hand me the bill no matter what my friend said, and to please keep a glass of tap water with no ice filled for both of us. I said we’d be catching up, and if drinks kept magically appearing he could do no wrong. He thought about that for a moment, nodded affirmatively, tapped the counter, and spent a few moments inspecting his shelf before choosing a different bottle than before. He glanced around the shelf again, pulled down a second bottle, and went to work combining the two: one was white, one was light brown. When he finished, he brought it over with water. When he walked by the next time, he didn’t ask if I liked the mojito, and as he turned away his gaze swept across my water glass.

I sipped and grooved to the band. The alcohol began to soften my thoughts. I glanced at my watch in the bottom of my vision, and in my periphery I saw Tim walk in and stand in the door. He was a few minutes early. He quickly saw me – I was the only other caucasian there – and walked towards me with the same cheerful smile pushing up chubby cheeks that hadn’t changed thirty years. He was wearing the same battery powered Rolex Submariner with a gaudy metal band that caught a hint of light and stood out like a beacon; it was a poor choice for his line of work, but old habits are hard to break.

“J.P.!” he said, opening his arms.

“Timmy!” I said, stepping in.

We patted each other’s backs with Hemmingway-esque manliness, then we stood still for a few moments.

“It’s good to see you,” I said towards his back.

“It’s been too long,” he said towards mine.

We stepped apart and glanced up and down at each other.

“Dude,” he said, “You’ve aged.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Seriously,” he said. “That beard makes you look old.”

“Fuck you,” I repeated, though he was right. I scratched it and heard the crinkle over the band. “I’ll shave it before diving.” I grinned and said that I thought it was appropriate to land in Havana looking like Papa Hemmingway.

I stood at the bar and Tim plopped onto a high stool next to me, with his hips angled so much that he was practically standing, like I would have done had I not been sitting all day. The bartender saw us and walked over wearing his confident smile and carrying a glass of water with no ice. It was going to be a good night. We let it begin.

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