At sunset, he sat in the bar of La Terraza and enjoyed Cuban baseball on a TV with an antenna made of aluminum foil. It was the end of a busy day that wasn’t done yet. After giving so much baseball gear away, everyone recognized him on sight—not good. He’d felt uneasy paddling the canoe back to No Más. Next, it was down the steps for a visit with Raúl Corrales, who invited him to stay for dinner, but he had refused, thinking, If things go wrong tonight, they’ll think he knows about the letters. Tomlinson liked Raúl a lot. So here he was, sitting alone with two old friends—cold beer and baseball—watching a TV from the days of Barney Fife and the Beav. That was fitting. Nostalgia dulled his anxiety. Yeah . . . sort of like time-traveling back to Mayberry. No traffic in the streets through the open doors, and dark out there in a country that rationed electricity. With cash and his new visa, there was no need for a passport, but he would have felt fidgety traveling without the thing—by car or in a cab.
