She adds a cup of ground papaya stones, folds in the petals of a dozen yellow roses. Seventy-two royal-blue bottles crowd her Formica counters. Each is affixed with a label featuring a cameo of her mother’s face (now her own) beneath the ornate logo Cuerpo de Cuba. Constancia inserts rosewood sto...
He was thrown together with slaves from Africa, given a flat, straight blade to cut the sugarcane. The stalks were hard, like wood, but fibrous and tougher to chop. Clumps of dust shook loose in his face. Blisters sprouted like toadstools on his palms. Nets of iridescent flies settled on his skin...
It was hidden behind the courtyard of a curios shop that sold gold and coral jewelry. She’d gotten the name of the place from Yasmine, who’d gotten it from an actress friend who performed with an underground theater company. The salon was simple, with fake flowers and worn furniture, but it was w...
The camouflage helmet feels like a metal ring around her head, and the rifle, slung over her left shoulder, keeps bumping up against it, making the space behind her eyes reverberate with pain. The cheap Russian boots pinch her feet as she trudges, the last of a single file of would-be guerrillas,...
Almost Dead Havana El Comandante woke up with a start, his legs tangled in the top sheet. Damn these catnaps. Nothing was worse for courting ghosts. He’d had another dream about that hunger striker, Orlando Martínez, his head cowled in a yellow hood. With his bulging eyes and bony hands, that hij...