September, 1954.

Tony de la Torre was standing in line to the confessional at the dark, pigeon-stained Polish Catholic church in downtown Wallingford. He was worried. The only thought that cheered him was that the line was long.

He had plenty of things to worry about. The impending confession for one. The priest was not going to be too pleased with his confession. He was also worried about surviving his first year at Choate, and did not exactly understand why he was attending school in Wallingford, Connecticut, 1500 miles away from Havana. Wallingford was a horrible little town, as far as he could see. The Choate campus, though, was attractive, in the better part of town, nestled high up on the Wallingford hills, and Tony knew that Choate was a famous school, the alma mater of more than one US president. He also knew that he was there because Choate was where the men in his family went—part of the Pasquaney-Choate-Yale tradition his de la Torre grandfather had started. Still, he was not very happy. He wished he was back in Havana. He missed his home. He missed living within walking distance of the Caribbean.

But here he was at Choate, and he worried that he would not live up to the standards set by his father and uncles, especially when it came to sports. He was reminded about his relatives athletic accomplishments every time he went to the gym, and looked at the varsity team pictures displayed on the brick walls. His uncle Miguel had been captain of the baseball team from 1933 to 1936. Tony's father, Victor de la Torre, had been captain of crew, and his two other uncles had been captains of basketball and football. He could recognize the confident smiles of his relatives at the front center of the team, holding the football, the basketball or the baseball. He noticed with amusement that his relatives seemed to have very large ears. Tony was certain he was not going to succeed in Pee Wee football.

He was 5'-2" and so thin that his mother took him regularly to doctors. Everyone on his Pee Wee team seemed bigger, stronger, and faster, and they knew how to play the game, a game he had never seen prior to coming to Choate. The coach had suggested he play defensive back, but every time he tried to tackle the runner, the runner would run, effortlessly, over him or around him. It was embarrassing. His studies weren't going much better. He seemed incapable of understanding algebra. The side of the brain that dealt with Algebra seemed paralyzed. He was having problems with his other classes. His command of English was not great. His pronunciation had plenty of room for improvement. He told a group of classmates that he was attending Choate because his father had gone to "jail." Seeing that they didn't seem too impressed by that fact, he added: "All my uncles also went to jail." Noticing that his audience still didn't seem impressed by his family's fine educational heritage, he concluded with: "Even my grandfather went to jail." His new classmates didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It took him a while to learn to pronounce Yale correctly.

He felt shy with his new American classmates, even though the ways of American boys felt somewhat familiar to him, having spent two summers at Pasquaney, the camp in New Hampshire his grandfather had first attended. The boys at Choate seemed particularly upbeat and confident, perfectly attired in Brooks Brothers preppy garb, and many appeared to be extremely wealthy, with names even he had heard of, like Carnegie and Mellon. But he did feel superior to his American classmates in one area; most had not even kissed a girl, and he had done that and more. Cuban boys were more advanced girl-wise. Certainly, they were more perverse. The only good thing that was happening was that he had become very good friends with Emilio Eloy, another Cuban boy at Choate, even though, on the surface, Emilio felt like his opposite. For starters, Emilio was an excellent athlete. He had made the junior varsity in soccer as an eighth grader, a rare feat. He was more outgoing than Tony and made friends more easily. On the other hand, he also was making enemies, due to Emilio's penchant for decking his new classmates with a quick right to the chin. It happened first with a bigger boy, a southerner named Kittredge, who had playfully snapped a towel at Emilio's behind in the locker room. Emilio turned around, went up to Kittredge, who was good-naturedly smiling at him, and suddenly clocked him with his lethal right. Kittredge was out for three minutes. Word spread out fast that Emilio was dangerous. Tony knew that Emilio was dangerous but he was more than happy to be his friend.

They were spending their free time together, listening to Cuban records in Emilio's room, talking endlessly about Choate, girls, Cuba, and their future. They had a good feeling about their future—that it would be special. Why not? Everyone knew and respected their families in Cuba; they were going to one of the best American prep schools. They had a leg up on life. But they were also starting to understand that the present would not be as promising, where it really counted; that for the next four years they could be living the life of a monk. Choate had a clearly defined philosophy of education, and central to it was the idea that the sight or thought of girls would be detrimental to the proper pursuit of studies, sports, religion, and citizenship. Weeks and months could pass without them even seeing a girl. The only members of the female race Choate boys were allowed to come into contact with were the dining room maids, who wouldn't be hired unless they were over sixty, or the master's wives, who were old or unattractive. There was one exception: Mrs. Patterson. She had been a model in New York before she met and married Mr. Patterson, and she still looked great. She knew it and dressed provocatively. Saturday night dinners at Choate were formal affairs; the boys wore suits and the Master's wives dressed up. There was always a lot of traffic around Mrs. Patterson's table.

Going to confession had been Emilio's idea. Catholics were the only students allowed out of the Choate grounds, so they could attend confession on Saturdays and Mass on Sundays, and Emilio observed, downtown Wallingford was crawling with girls. It was also crawling with hoods, Tony had reminded Emilio. Choate had advised its Catholic students to walk downtown in groups, take care of religious business, and quickly walk back. Apparently, the local boys, the townies, had one aspiration in lifeÑto beat up a Choatie. But Emilio was unconcerned. Tough guys didn't scare him. He also claimed he was an atheist, so he would sit in a rear pew and wait for Tony to finish with his confession. After confession Emilio was convinced they would solve the girl problem at the lunch counter at WoolworthÑthe local hangout for Wallingford teenagers. Tony was a terrible Catholic, but still felt compelled to go to church on Sundays, out of habit, or lethargy. Whatever beliefs the Jesuits had instilled in him were rapidly fading, but he enjoyed the peace and quiet of the one hour Sunday mass.

For some reason, mass was his favorite place to daydream, mostly about girls. He liked the solitude he could only experience in church and the time to let his mind wonder without interruptions. The dark interior of the church, the quiet, the smell of incense, all seemed to trigger elaborate daydreams. Confession, though, was not his favorite part of the churchgoing experience. A very old Polish looking lady stood in front of him. He wondered: what sins could this eighty-year-old great grandmother have committed? He, on the other hand, had committed plenty of sins. His last confession was at BelŽn, Havana's largest Jesuit school, just before the summer vacation had started. He was worried because he had piled up a large list of sins since then, and he suspected American priests would not understand a Cuban boy's confession. The Polish lady's turn came; she slowly shuffled forward and painfully knelt down on the padded stool. As soon as she fell to her knees she started on an anxious, rapid, loudly whispered confession. Whatever she had done, she felt awful about it.

The priest inside the confessional made Tony nervous. His previous Sunday sermon had made an impression: "Imagine a piece of red-hot coal pressed onto the palm of your hand," he had suggested. "It would be painful, wouldn't it? Now imagine hundreds of red-hot coals pressed onto every square inch of your body. Think about it. Now, this would be extremely painful, wouldn't it? EXTREMELY PAINFUL! Now imagine this horrible pain lasting not one second, not ten seconds, but an eternity. AN ETERNITY!" Not even in Hitler's Germany did they do that to prisoners, Tony thought. It was clear that this priest relished the thought of torment and torture. He hated sinners and wanted them burned. He had a tendency to yell from the pulpit, in a booming, disagreeable, European-accented voice. He was old, and overweight, and bald. He looked evil. Tony knew this priest would want his god, a particularly vindictive and ruthless god, to apply the coals to him and roast him like a marshmallow.

The old lady ended her confession, struggled up to her feet, then taking tiny steps, walked back to her pew. Tony took a deep breath, moved over to the confessional, and knelt down.

"Yes, when was the last time you had confession?" The priest asked.

"Five months ago, Father."

"Yes, my son, and what would you like to confess?"

"Father, I said bad words, I lied, I had bad thoughts."

"Is that it, my son?" "No Father. I masturbated, I got drunk, I saw dirty movies, I French kissed, I did it with whores."

"WHAT WAS THAT?" The priest boomed, so loudly that everyone in the church must have heard him.

"What was what, Father?"

"THE LAST ITEM, YOUNG MAN."

"I did it with whores."

The priest's head suddenly darted out from the curtained confessional and stared disgustedly at Tony for a few seconds. Tony was shocked, convinced that they weren't supposed to do that. The priest's head disappeared back into the confessional.

"My son, how old are you?"

"I'm fourteen, Father."

"FOURTEEN!"

"Yes, Father."

"THIS IS DISGRACEFUL!" He yelled again.

"Yes Father."

"DON'T YOU 'YES FATHER' ME! What do you mean whores? Did you do it more than once?"

"Yes Father. Sorry Father."

"My son, how many times did you commit this terrible sin?"

Tony had to think about that one.

"My son, I asked you a question."

"I'm trying to count, Father.

"YOU'RE TRYING TO COUNT!"

"Father, three times, at the beginning of summer vacation.

"My son, is this your idea of how fourteen-year-old Catholic boys should celebrate summer recess?"

"No Father."

"My son, you have some explaining to do."

"Father, you see, I'm from Cuba and in Cuba this kind of confession is normal."

"NORMAL! THIS IS NOT NORMAL!"

Tony looked around. The priest's outbursts had not gone unnoticed. All the parishioners sitting nearby were staring at him, including the old Polish lady, who probably had poisoned her husband.

"Father," Tony said, in a very low voice, hoping he'd get the hint, "what I mean is, all my friends were doing it too. My father and all his friends did it at the same age. It's a tradition for the boys in our culture. I did it at the Mambo Club, a very elegant place. It has an orchestra."

The priest experienced a rare moment of wordlessness. "My son, this is pitiful, pitiful," he finally said. He sounded defeated by a hopeless world. But then he perked up and yelled: "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA! This is what I want to know. Are you aware of the enormity of your sins? Are you aware of just how pathetic this confession is?"

"Yes, Father."

"But are you repentant?" From the tone of his voice, Tony could tell the priest knew the answer.

Was he repentant? Truthfully, no. Masturbation was, well, necessary, and his brothel experiences had been mostly comical, and had not harmed anyone. French kissing an American girl had been spectacular, and that experience had even encouraged him to come to Choate. A thousand American girls lived within walking distance of Choate.

"Yes, Father."

The priest ignored his answer and launched into his favorite description of hell, replete with the burning coals, with the unimaginable eternal pain, and told Tony it was clear that Hell was going to be his well deserved eternal address. The penance was a long one. Tony had never heard of a such a long penance: two hundred Our Fathers and two hundred Hail MaryÕs. He went back to his pew and knelt down. He was not very happy. The penance, if he went ahead with it, was going to ruin the afternoon.

 

2

2 May, 1954.

The most popular song playing in Havana radios that spring was El Reloj, The Clock, by Lucho Gatica. The yearning, sorrowful mood of the song had a strong effect on Tony de la Torre, who felt like crying every time he listened to the lyrics:

 

Clock, don't mark the hours because I'm going to go mad.

She will leave for ever when the sun rises again.

All that is left is this night to consume our love and your tic-tac reminds me that the end draws near.

Clock, stop, I beg you and make this night last forever so she will never leave me so the morning will never come.

Stop the time of your hands because she's the star that lights my soul.

Without her love I am nothing.

 

He was surprised by the feelings of empathy and loss that the song evoked, as if the singer's story mirrored his story, but that was not possible; Tony was thirteen, going on fourteen, and had no history with girls or love. He was ready, though. Every time he listened to El Reloj he could sense how desperate he was to start his romantic history. And something new was happening: he felt lust towards every member of the female race who crossed his path. He couldn't control himself. He was embarrassed by the fact that whenever he saw an attractive female walking down the street he couldn't help but become conscious of her thighs, her breasts, and wonder what would it be like to lie in bed, naked, next to her. He assumed that his obsessions were normal for a boy his age, but they presented an immediate problem. He had to go to confession every Friday at BelŽn, his school, and he had to confess his steady stream of impure thoughts, as well as other sins. He kept his list down to three all encompassing infractions: "Father, I've lied, I've had bad thoughts, and I've masturbated." Sometimes he reversed the order: I've masturbated, I've had bad thoughts, I've lied. This sequence must have come across as more perverse and he would get a longer penance.

His sins, it seemed, were inevitable. He had no intention of stopping. He was so used to masturbating when he went to bed at night that he simply couldn't fall asleep if he didn't do it. He did it again when he woke up in the morning, and often in the bathtub, when he returned home from school. He suspected his habit was excessive, and it embarrassed him. The priest would ask him how many times he had masturbated during the course of the week:

"21 times, Father."

Tony would hear a sigh, then the priest would tell him that his behavior was unacceptable and each time he masturbated the devil was clamping on a stronger hold on him. Before assigning the penance, the priest would ask if he was going to try harder to control his shameful weakness:

"Yes Father," he'd lie, committing the first sin for his next confession.

Then he discovered Father Antonio. He first became curious about him when he noticed that the line to his confessional was always the longest line, and he learned why. Unlike the other priests, Father Antonio wasn't interested in the exact frequency of masturbation. Tony would recite his list and Father Antonio would say: "Try to be better." That was it. He was never upset and he gave a short penance. Sometimes he added: "And pray for me. I'm also flesh." That was a clear signal that he masturbated too. He was one of them. Tony was also thankful he never pursued the "I had bad thoughts" part of his confession. If anything, that was his worst infraction.

He certainly had bad thoughts every time Sylvia Machado came to his house to play cards with his mother. Many of the women in his mother's circle were attractive but Sylvia stood out. She could have passed for Ava GardnerÕs double, and she was divorced, which Tony knew shocked some people, but as far as he was concerned, it made Sylvia exciting, and mysterious, and available. She paid some attention to TonyÑshe would always greet him as if she was particularly glad to see him, and she would bend down slightly, offering her cheek for Tony to kiss her. Tony knew that Sylvia had been a champion swimmer for the Havana Yacht Club, and all that exercise, he assumed, must have contributed to her excellent figure. Every time he greeted and kissed Sylvia Machado, he wondered what it would be like to make love to her. Had he been her husband, he wouldnÕt have sleep one wink during their entire marriage. He had seen her the previous summer in Varadero Beach, in a very tight one piece bathing suit, and afterwards, often, he'd lie at night in his bed, staring at the ceiling, awake in the heat, busily concocting different scenarios all ending with him and Sylvia Machado wrapped around each other in her bedroom.

Lucia was another source of bad thoughts. She was only three or four years older than TonyÑthe youngest maid in CocoÕs house. Coco, his maternal grandfather, had eight servants; most had been with him for years, like Joseito, the black cook from Oriente, who had been cooking for his grandfather for thirty years, and Jose Ignacio, the perfectly correct Spanish butler from Galicia, who had immigrated to Cuba from Spain during the Spanish Civil War and had been with Coco since then. Coco paid his servants well, and the turnover was minimal, but there seemed to be a slot for a young maid, someone who came from a small town in one of the provinces. She would stay in the house for two or three years, then meet a man who would propose marriage and she'd be gone. Gonzalo, the chauffeur, also had his eyes on Lucia, and had wasted no time explaining to Tony his theory about provincial girls. They viewed sex as a natural and matter-of-fact activity, mostly because they were used to watching animals do it. Tony suspected that Gonzalo was oversexed, and prone to exaggerate, but his theory made some sense to him. He certainly watched Lucia more closely after listening to Gonzalo.

He watched her while she dusted around the house, or moped the marble floors, and noticed how her muscles in her arms flexed, and how her maidÕs uniform clung tight to her body and revealed a very nice figure. Lucia would notice Tony watching her, and sometimes answered his glances with a smile, and a polite "good morning," but would never say much more. In his Lucia fantasies, he certainly knew what to do: every morning, after the adults left the house, he would sneak into the bedroom where Lucia was making the beds. The moment he entered the room she would smile a naughty smile, tell him to make sure the door was locked, then she would slowly take off her clothes. Then she would undress him. They would move towards the unmade bed where all sorts of natural and matter-of-fact sexual activities would take place.

Another bout of erotic fantasies occurred every morning on the school bus trip to Belen. Tony would get a window seat so I could watch the daily spectacle of an army of young women waiting for buses, walking to work, and he wondered what it would be like to be intimately involved with this one or that one. Working girls were very sexy. Gonzalo claimed that working girls worked to afford their own apartments, so they could get away from their families and the old traditions, like the tradition of going out with chaperones, or waiting for marriage to have sex. In their own apartments they felt free, and after work every day they couldnÕt wait to call a boyfriend and have him come over for dinner and you-know-what. TonyÕs fantasies were put on hold at school, where he concentrated on how to divide fractions, the eating habits of manatees, and the distinctions between Limbo and Purgatory. He managed to do all his homework in study halls at school, and after school, always found time to sit around and talk with Gonzalo, usually in the back porch off the kitchen, where the servants took their breaks. More often than not, they talked about sex.

Often, he would accompany Gonzalo on his errands. On one of those errands they drove to Luisa, the seamstress, to pick a dress for Tony's mother. Gonzalo parked near Luisa's, ran off, and quickly brought the dress back to the car. "I'm going to visit a friend in Obispo Street," he told Tony. "I'll be back in half an hour." Gonzalo claimed he had a girlfriend in every sector of the city and Tony figured he was visiting the girlfriend in this sector. He decided he'd go for a walk around Barrio Colon, a ten square block neighborhood near Luisa's, famous for the fact that every other building was a brothel. He had read an article in Bohemia about the sorry state of Cuban morality. A professor from the university had done a study and discovered that there were 700 brothels in Havana and over 10,000 full time prostitutes. Many of the brothels in the professor's survey were in this area.

It was close to the end of the work day; the sidewalks were filled with workers starting on the trek home. The noise level in Old Havana streets was alarming; there was a continual traffic jam, and drivers took turns insulting each other or honking their horns. Lottery vendors screamed their numbers. Jackhammers hammered. Men whistled and made comments when attractive women walked by. Above the street, women leaned on their balcony railings and carried out loud conversations with the women on the balconies across the street. He noticed how men were walking into and out of the houses, and how the women sat by the windows and said something naughty to every man or boy who passed by. He passed a group of boisterous American sailors, walking down the middle of the street, beer bottles in hand. A woman extended her arms through the iron grills and grabbed one of the sailors, like a human VenusÕs flytrap. Tony was cautious; he kept a safe distance from the window grills. His hair bleached very light with the summer sun and he often was mistaken for an American. A woman sitting by a window started talking to him, in very poor English:

"American boy, come here. I fuck you good. Two dollar. I suck you good. One dollar."

"No, thank you," Tony said, very politely. But he liked being asked.

He kept walking and repeating his "no thank you" after every new proposition, always trying to enunciate his English well. He felt safer, posing as an American.

After a while, he looked at his watch and decided it was time to walk back to the car. He was sitting on the hood when Gonzalo showed up. Tony asked him where he had been.

"I visited a girlfriend. I fucked her," Gonzalo said, smiling.

Gonzalo didn't believe in keeping his private life private but Tony never knew what to believe when Gonzalo talked about his sexual affairs. It could all be true. Gonzalo was tall and handsome and simpatico. But in this instance, Tony thought, there couldn't have been too much foreplay or conversation, because barely twenty minutes had passed before he had returned to the car.

"You fucked her fast," Tony observed.

"On the dining room table," Gonzalo replied.

"Why didn't you do it in a bed?"

"My friend tells me that she only does it in her bed with her husband. That's OK. I respect that. But letÕs not talk about my sex life. What I want to know, Tony, is when I'm I going to take you to a brothel?"

Gonzalo was particularly interested in this question because in well-off Havana households chauffeurs were entrusted with the sexual education of the oldest son. Tony thought that Gonzalo brought to his role of tutor a definite zeal. Gonzalo had a theory: Men were defined by their biological need to have sex. Everything else was secondary. Tony knew that Gonzalo had a tendency to exaggerate but he felt there was some truth to what he was sayingÑTony himself thought about sex with every other thought.

But then, Gonzalo would carry on: "I'm married and I love my wife, but that doesn't prevent me from having sex with other women." And: "Men have a moral duty to bed as many women as possible." Every time he visited his friend in Obispo Street he was simply performing his moral duty. Tony wasn't sure about all that. He believed in love, in the sentiments expressed in the Lucho Gatica song. When he married someone he would have to be totally in love, and there would be no need to have sex with anyone else. Gonzalo would listen to this and he would laugh: "Love and sex are two different things,"he'd say. And heÕd add, darkly, that men who did not share his sexual philosophy had faulty biological wiring, and they were not to be trusted, nor respected. They were, undoubtedly, maricones.

It was obvious to Tony that Gonzalo was not happy with the progress his sexual education. Tony had mentioned to Gonzalo all about his obsessive train of bad thoughts, but Gonzalo wasn't impressed. "Thinking is one thing," he would say, playing his role of stern sexual tutor, "but doing is another." Gonzalo let Tony know that he didn't think it was right for a thirteen-year-old boy to spend so much time making model planes or bouncing balls off walls. If he kept doing that he would have serious questions about his wiring. He wanted Tony to go in one of those brothels at Barrio Colon and get on with the business of being a man. In his eyes, a 13-year-old Cuban boy, still a virgin, was a national disgrace, a disgrace to the race of men.

Tony knew that eventually he would have to go to a brothel. He not only had to contend with Gonzalo on a daily basis, but also with Ramiro, his cousin, who had already gone. 3 Ramiro was had always been his best friend among his cousins, almost exactly his ageÑbut lately, Tony thought, Ramiro was becoming unbearable; he never missed a chance to kid Tony about his condition: "What's the matter," Ramiro would say, grinning, "are you chicken? Are you afraid you won't get it up?" Sure, he was afraid. He knew he felt more like a boy, who made model planes and bounced balls off walls, than like a man, who went to brothels, or like Ramiro, who was becoming too mindless for his taste. Before he was ten Ramiro had broken his arm three times, twice while jumping, unsuccessfully, for the same branch. That was when Tony and Ramiro lived together in La Estrella, Tony's grandfather's sugar mill. Later, when the sugar mill was sold, and the entire family moved to Havana, Ramiro continued with his reckless ways. He rode the Havana trolleys kneeling down on the back fender, which was dangerous and illegal, and Ramiro had to contend with both the policemen and the conductors, his idea of fun. The tram cost only five cents, so Tony chose to ride inside, usually in the back seat where he could keep in visual touch with his cousin.

When they went to the movies Ramiro always wanted to sit on the first row in the balcony. Often, he would bring a paper bag full of eggs; in the middle of the movie he would toss the eggs, one at a time, into the darkness below. They would hear a splat, and then a howl, as a horrified moviegoer discovered what had happened. Ramiro was a budding delinquent. Now Ramiro was claiming that he had gone to Marina, a three-dollar brothel in the Malecon section of Havana, and wanted Tony to go with him. Tony knew this: he had no interest in going there; he had heard that crabs were guaranteed at Marina. If he was going to go somewhere, he would go to The Mambo Club, which cost ten dollars, but he could dance with the girls before he chose them, and the Mambo had a house doctor, who inspected the girls every day. Rumor had it that Batista, the president of the republic, also went there. But he was in no great rush to go to the Mambo; the mechanics of love making were a mystery to him. And he certainly wasn't going to go to Marina with Ramiro. By the time they had turned thirteen, Tony was consciously trying not to hang out with Ramiro. Ramiro's friends were all the other delinquents at the Yacht Club, the boys Tony avoided. One of them, a troublemaker named Conseca, had bragged to Tony how he had found a litter of kittens in the back of the bowling alley, and how, just for the hell of it, he had buried them all alive. Ramiro and his friends also seemed to get into a lot of fist fights. Getting into a fist fight, for silly, inconsequential reasons, was a test of manhood. Ramiro and his gang scared Tony, and he knew enough to avoid them. The only thing he planned to do with Ramiro, when the beach season started in early May, was some snorkeling on Saturday mornings, at the Havana Yacht Club. He figured he couldn't get into too much trouble snorkeling with Ramiro.

Tony got to the Yacht Club early, changed into his bathing suit, and started looking for Ramiro. He could usually find his cousin shooting baskets at the courts, or at the pool. He wasn't at the courts, and Tony could only see a group of girls from his age group sunbathing by the pool. He knew the girls, but he wasn't about to go up to them, by himself, and say hello. He felt shy with most of the girls in his group. The thought that made him nervous; he probably would marry one of those girls, which was not a horrible prospectÑsome of those girls were nice and very attractive. But they would all want a house with eight servants, which was the situation they were used to. He couldn't even start imagining what he would do as an adult to support such a household.

He decided to walk back to the courts and half way there he spotted Ramiro walking towards him. Ramiro lifted weights and carried his muscular arms like weapons. Tony didn't like his tough guy strut. Ramiro was always smiling, very happy with his persona. Tony didn't like that either. He thought Ramiro should be more aware of his shortcomings. But in some ways, he was jealous of Ramiro. He certainly had more friends. Most people thought Ramiro was amusing. Ramiro was certainly a doerÑhe did crazy things, he was gutsy. Tony admired some of that.

Ramiro approached Tony and threw a fake left hook into Tony's ribs, stopping the punch just before making contact. He was a skilled boxer, and threw his irritating left hook as a way of greeting.

"Torrecita, what?" he said, grinning. "You haven't picked up any girls yet?"

Tony didn't like it when Ramiro called him Torrecita, a diminutive for de la Torres. He was shorter than Ramiro, and much lighter.

"Not yet, Ramiro," Tony said. "I'm waiting for Casanova to lead the way."

"I'm your man, Torrecita. Girls can't resist me."

Unfortunately, Tony thought, there was some truth to that statement. Cristina de la Torre, a cousin, had told him that girls considered Ramiro very good looking. Ramiro was especially proud of his hair, thick, black, always perfectly combed straight back. He could never pass a mirror without stopping to check his hair, adjust it, and admire his appearance. Tony didn't feel so good about his hair. It was too curly and the sun and salt water bleached it nearly white every summer. It didnÕt look Cuban. On one occasion he had gone to a Negro neighborhood in Havana to have my hair straightened. He had been the only white boy in the barbershop, and he felt out of place and slightly embarrassed. But afterwards, he felt very attractive for two weeks, then his hair curled again

Moments later they swam out from the beach. The water was getting murkier every year, probably because there were too many power boats; they didn't see too many fish. After a while they climbed on the floating wood platform at the tip of the Yacht ClubÕs pier, and watched the bathers at La Concha, the public beach next to the Yacht Club. They were dangling their finned feet over the water, making little splashes.

La Concha was a popular public beach, always crowded on Saturdays. It's Moorish style building and pavilions had been designed by a famous American architect, and it was rightly considered the best public beach in Havana. A concrete diving platform, fifty yards from the shore, featured a few diving boards and sitting on the platform, a giant beer bottle, twenty feet high, an ad for the company that had built the platform. Climbing the bottle and diving from the top was, for the boys in Ramiro's group, another favorite test of manhood. La Concha, in Tony's mind, was an exciting place for another reason. This was the beach were young maids went when they had a Saturday off, as well as the working girls, so the female bathers at La Concha were, potentially, all sex fiends. Tony had also noticed that many prostitutes worked at La Concha. They picked up men at the beach and walked across the street, in their bathing suits, to a posadaÑa one hour motel. The rooms went for one dollar, the girls charged two dollars, and afterwards the girls would come back to the beach, looking for more clients.

"Let's swim over to La Concha and talk to the prostitutes," Ramiro said.

"Talk about what?" Tony said.