The old man sat at the edge of the square with a cold bottle of Presidente and a frosted glass.
The faded ball cap that protected his bald head lay on the table next to his drink, damp with sweat. Blue eyes stared out at cobblestones baking in the heat. He had chosen a cafe that poured out from the western arcade into the plaza, which protected the patrons from the afternoon Sun. There were other cafes in the plaza and some of those were also in the shade and had more comfortable chairs, but he preferred this cafe. It always had an afternoon crowd.
“Do you think J.B. hung around here?”
“This place exactly?” said the older son.
“Well, not this place exactly. Do you think he walked through this plaza? I think he might have.”
“Could be. What do you think? He’d find a good bar and stay there all day?”
“My father? He couldn’t sit still for an hour. No...he probably walked around, chewing on his cigar, eyeing the pretty girls as they walked by. Exchanging one liners with Delt. I just wonder if he walked by here.” The old man loved this place: the old buildings, the fountain, the children playing tag, the cafes. It was big enough space that it was able to catch a little breeze, unlike like those old congested streets, and he was sure his father liked it too. It was a good place to watch the world.
“Of course he did,” said the younger son, who had been quietly smoking his cigar. “It’s the Plaza Vieja. Everyone who comes here sees this place.”
“I think he did, too.” The old man looked out into the square, imagining the scene sixty years ago, wondering if it had changed. This place was stuck in the past, and that made imagining the past easier.
The old man was too young to know exactly where his father’s exploits took him, but this was the only place he vacationed, so he must have liked it. He even went so far as to buy goods in bulk in Havana, then drive out to towns in the countryside, turning enough profit to let him stay a little longer.
There was memory here. There were the ones of his father, and he liked to wonder about those the way every boy wonders about his father’s myth, but there were also memories for him. He saw the Pontiac he learned to drive on, and his first car, a ‘53 Ford, would drive by every so often past the dilapidated buildings with their faded colors.
“Did you know Grandpa well?” asked the older son.
“Not really. I just remember him in the nursing home.”
“By the time you’d have had any memory of him, he was well into dementia,” said the old man, his reverie broken.
“What was he like? I know the stories about his horrendous fix-jobs. Duck tape, oil, and a hammer was it? His tool box?”
“The day he realized he could use a paint roller to paint a car was beginning of the end. That garage was never the same again!”
The old man laughed. “One time I bought him a car, and he rolled the damn thing. I never gave him another one!” The old man convlused in something that was half laughter and half wheezing. “You could see the line marks on it. Oh, it was awful. There was a time I was thinking about giving him this Mercedes, but I never went through with it because I was certain the Germans on our street would come after him when they saw what he’d done to the pride of their country!”
“Nah. JB could have held his own. He might have taken a licking, if there was enough of ‘em. But sure as shit, within a day, he would have shown up at their houses ready for round two,” laughed the older son. “He was a nasty old man when provoked.”
“Yep, he was the family protector. You know that story about that fight he got in when he was young? The one that got him that reputation?” the old man looked at his younger son.
“I know that story. He got his ass kicked by an older kid who was picking on his sister. So the next day he waits for the that same kid after school and beats the crap out of him with a baseball bat.”
“Nasty ol’man, he was. I forget that there’s such a difference in our ages. So you really never knew him or Grandma, huh?”
“Not really. You got to remember, you had a twenty-year head start on me. By the time I showed up and could remember anything, the family wasn't really the same. Everyone had died, or was getting on in years. I have some memories about big Christmas parties at our house with a lot of white hair and faces I can’t remember, but that’s it. I was never around for Grandma’s basement either.”
“Wow! You never went to Grandma’s basement? Hell, every Sunday we’d go over for sauce. Never went to church, but we always to went Grandma’s.”
“Hey Dad, I knew JB was a simple guy, give him a little job and he was happy being busy, but what did he like to do for fun?”
“My father? I don’t know, actually.” The old man paused and thought to himself for a few moments. “He was a very simple guy. He’d left school before twelve and just worked his whole life. Never had a trade, but always worked.” the old man laughed to himself, and then turned back to the group. “When I owned the tire stores I used to have him move boxes from one store to other.”
“What was in the boxes?”
“Nothing!” The old man broke into a fit of wheezy laughter. “I just wanted to keep him busy, else he’d waddle around like Popeye, and try to catch people stealing whether there was evidence or not. He’d say ‘I don’t like so and so, they’re up to no good’. So when you ask, what did he like to do for fun, this is the type of guy we’re dealing with. He never really had vices, except his cigars and I never saw him drunk, but once. The family was visiting from Belgium, he had been having wine all night, I remember him out there with everyone, dancing under the street light. Other than that I never saw him drunk. He stopped smoking cigars, too.”
“I remember that. He stopped smoking them started chewing them instead.”
The younger son coughed with laughter as he desperately tried to manage the exhale from his own cigar. “You’re kidding me! He’d just chomp on a cigar? There must have been pieces of tobacco all in his mouth.”
“Oh yeah, all up in his teeth. He used to spit out bits constantly. You’re gonna love this. So we used to fight about everything as kids and this one time Maura and I were getting a ride from Grandpa, and I was like ‘Maura go ahead, why don’t you take the front seat.’ Well, she couldn’t believe it. She was so happy until Grandpa got in and started spitting tobacco all over the windshield. The guy was a machine gun. Spit. Spit. Spit. Everything was covered, the windshield, the dashboard, the radio. Within twenty minutes, she never wanted the front seat next to Grandpa ever again!”
The younger son roared in amusement. “He reached all the way to the passenger side?”
“Hell yeah. It was everywhere! When you ride with Grandpa, you kept your hands close and you did not touch anything. Oh, it was disgusting.”
“Hard to understand why you gained a reputation for being a little jerk. You really tormented our poor Maura, didn’t you?”
“No...no, I wasn’t so bad. But for some reason everyone blamed me—”
“Oh I beg to differ. How about that time in Naples?” the old man interrupted.
“Oh yeah...that too. Bet you can’t find another example,” laughed the older son, his face red with sunburn and the devilish smile that had defined his youth.
“How much time you got? Because we could sit here all day with stories I got about you growing up.”
“Why did you run away to Atlanta? I don’t know if I ever asked you about that.”
“Well, at the time I was selling insurance in Boston.”
“You were selling insurance?”
“I was taking a class. So Dad gave me some money for clothes, you know, sport coats and pants.”
“I can’t picture you as an insurance salesman.”
“You don’t have to, because I never made it. I bought some clothes and was then gonna use the rest for tuition, but , I went and bought a motorcycle instead. I hated the winter and I had a buddy from high school whose family had moved to Atlanta, and he was telling me all about the weather, the girls, and all he had to say was ‘girls’ and I was in. So I left.”
“And here I am, I get a call two weeks later, asking about Chad in Atlanta. I was like, what are you talking about? He’s in Boston!”
“Now Pap, I did use some of that money to buy clothes...I just also bought a motorcycle.”
“But then you didn’t need the clothes!”
“Well yeah...that’s true. Pretty unlike me, seeing as I was always the responsible one in the family.” He turned towards the younger son, eyebrows raised, “I just wanted to make sure to make you look good. So you’re welcome! I set the bar nice and low, so all’s you needed was to step right over that sucker.”
They laughed. It was true, his middle child was the troublemaker. Growing up, he’d stolen condoms from the pharmacy and cigarettes from his Grandma. There was no shortage of amusing stories. But he turned out alright. He was everything a man could hope for in a son. He had a good sense of humor; he was good to be around; and he was sharp, although he never cared enough to apply those smarts to his schooling. Although separated by twenty years, and very different upbringings, his two boys got on very well. They were always smiling and laughing at the other’s jokes and the old man liked that very much.
“57. 52.” The old man pointed at the taxis sitting at the edge of the square.
“53,” chided the younger son.
“58…well maybe it’s a 59.” The older son teased his father. “Pap, you must have called out the years on at least a hundred cars.”
The old man didn’t notice the jab. “What are you looking at now,” he said peering over at his youngest.
“Places for dinner.”
“Oh boy,” he rolled his eyes. “Will I be able to eat tonight?”
“Alright, alright, calm down. You guys come to Cuba and all you want to eat is pizza and spaghetti. I’m surrounded by morons.”
“Hey, why can’t we have pizza for dinner?” The older son sat looking at his brother with a wide smile across his face.
“I’m done with you both! Really, how many days are left? Too many!”
“Funny, we were thinking the same thing,” japed the old man.
“You realize, without me, you two schmucks would have zero idea where to eat, what to see, or where to drink? I got this.”
“Hey, can we have pizza tonight?”
“Dad, I still have no idea how at seventy-five, and with your diet, you’re so spry.” The younger son turned to his brother. “You look at Dad’s food pyramid, it's big rectangle of ice cream and Italian food and coffee. The diet of an olympian!”
“You and your Mom have been giving me crap for years, I got news for you, I’m not gonna change!” a response that amused him.
“They need to study you, that’s for sure.”
“So if Dad is still alive, that means we can get pizza tonight? Right?”
“You know what? I’m going back to writing. To hell with you both!” That response gave the man and the older son quite a kick. The younger son had given up, and they had finally received the satisfaction they were waiting for.
The old man’s youngest lived in New York, and before that, Washington DC. He even spent five months studying in Rome, which in practice was less studying and more eating and drinking his way to becoming a proficient Italian speaker. Out of college he had worked as a trader, and it was grueling. The old man liked drinking and socializing and always had worried his younger son work too hard. He didn’t want him to miss life so he was happy when he quit his job after years of being unhappy, and with that change, found a new sense of adventure. He’d climbed Kilimanjaro and went trekking in the Arctic wilderness. It wasn’t what he had in mind when he gave his son advice about living, but he couldn’t argue that he wasn’t. His next adventure would be rock climbing in Wyoming, and the old man made it clear that he didn’t want to know anything about it until his youngest was back safe in New York.
“You got that sense of adventure from your mother’s side. My family has no adventurers or intellectuals. We’re simple folk who like simple things.”
“Let me show you what dad wrote down in my notepad on the flight over. He grabs my pen, and right next to addresses of our house and some places I found to eat, he writes this list.”
Day 1:
Cerveso
Mojito
Cuba Libre
Some people + buildings, Too!!
“See, a simple list. I have simple needs.”
“Ha! The younger son grabbed his pen and started scribbling something in his notebook. Then he turned to the older son. “Dad loves to complain. That’s his new thing. He doesn’t mean it, though, it just keeps things interesting. Doesn’t it Dad?”
“Is that what you’re writing down in your little book of yours? Lies about me! I’m just sitting here enjoying my drink—”
“And giving me shit whenever you can!” shouted the younger son, half kidding.
Complaining had become a sport to him. And his son was right. He didn’t mean it, but it was an easy form of amusement. His friends enjoyed the sport as well. They were talkers not philosophers, so when they sat around pushing tables together at the cafe where they got their morning coffees, the content was banter. A little business, a little politics, a little about family, but always banter. The solutions they formulated to solve the world’s problems were simple, and they could never understand why everyone else had to make things so damn complicated.
“So what do you think, we’ll give the old man the other key, and he can find his way back when he wants?” said the older son.
“Works for me,” said the old man.
“Where will you go, Dad?”
“I don’t know. What does it matter? I’ll be here, I’ll be there. Music. A couple of cuba libres. I’ll make some friends, get a conversation going. I do like the Plaza Vieja.”
“He’s drinking us under the table.” The younger son took a deep pull from his cigar, and after the plume of smoke had drifted into the air, a shallow sip of rum.
The old man looked around the cafe. He took note which patrons were enjoying themselves, and which ones were too serious, and it was clear the younger tables carried a more somber mood. He wondered what it would be like to be young again and how much fun that would be and how it was strange to see all those beautiful women so stoic and the young men always looking ready for a fight. They were always looking at their phones and not each other and that seemed silly since the young women were pleasing to look—
“Another?” asked the waiter who had snuck up behind them.
“Cuba libre”
“Mojito. Con miel, sin azucar. Gracias”
“Diet coke, thank you.”
Making a mental note of the orders, the waiter nodded and slipped back into the cafe.
“How long has it been since you stopped drinking? Apart from yesterday with me?” asked the younger son.
“Since I had a drink? Three years.”
“Damn. I’d really hate to be the reason you broke that streak. I wish I asked sooner”
“No, I’ll be fine. It was good sharing one yesterday. I’m fine with a cigarette, now”
“It's funny, you smoke half a pack a day, yet you can’t smoke a cigar.”
“I turned green last night, didn’t I?”
“I thought you were gonna cough up a lung.”
“Who would have thought this guy would have been the one puffing on cigars, drinking straight rum, reading and what not,” he said turning to his father.
“College boy. You really should have been a professor,” said the old man. “That’s your mother's side of the family.” His youngest wore a dark beard and was the only member of the table to have a good swath of hair still on his head. With his dark aviators, cigar, and fatigue shirt he looked the part. Some kind of young intellectual always on the edge of some kind of thought.
“The younger son exhaled smoke and looked out past his father to where the tight streets met the plaza, “I suppose I’m still too busy chasing the bright lights of Manhattan. You might not be wrong, Dad.”
“I just won’t see it for myself,” the old man smirked.
By the time the drinks arrived the entire square had fallen into shadow. The younger son took the last pull on his cigar, exhaled, and smothered its burning end in the ashtray. With the cigar out of his way, he could continue jotting down some thought that appeared in desperate need to come out of his head. The older son sat with squinted eyes flipping through pictures on his camera. The old man had no such distractions at the table, only the people around him and the plaza. That was more than enough to keep him entertained.
The old man looked at his son who was squinting to see the screen on his large camera. “Get some good one’s?”
“Yeah, a few. I’m gonna get up early tomorrow. The light is best at dawn and dusk, when the Sun is low. In the height of the day you have shadow and sunlight and it’s all too much for the camera. There’s too much going on. Sunrise and sunset. That’s when you can see the world for what it really is.”
“I’d like to see Havana at dawn. Maybe I’ll join you,” said the younger son.
Over the next half an hour they finished their drinks. There was some chatting and some silence. While his sons kept busy, the old man watched the the world unfold around him. After a while, the oldest son finished with his camera, and he joined his father looking out at the Plaza. But he was restless from the sitting, and with nothing to occupy his mind, he could not help himself from shifting about in his chair.
“Alright, I’m heading back to the room.”
“I’ll go with you, I need to get out of this heat,” said the younger son.
“What do you guys mean? The Sun’s down.”
“I want to go back and take a shower. Probably lay down a bit in the A/C, too” said the older son. The old man shook his head in disbelief.
“See what I’d tell you, Dad is drinking us under the table!”
The old man waved over the waiter. “Cuba libre, thank you.”
“You know how to get back?”
“I walk down that street. But don’t count on me turning up at the room, just meet me back here. If I’m not here I’ll be in a bar somewhere on our street, between here and the casa. I’ll call out to you as you walk by. Don’t pull that shit you guys did yesterday. I was drinking for two hours wondering where the hell you were, then I come back and see you two smoking cigars and drinking beer on the balcony!”
The younger son laughed in an ashamed sort of way. “We were just taking it easy. Every next word out of your mouth is ‘relax’. That’s what we were doing!”
“You two are a couple of beauties. You know that?” he said with a smile. “Always going somewhere or doing something. Not me. Give me Cuba libre and a nice view, that's all.”
“Pap, how do you think I stay beautiful? Taking naps!”
“Get out of here! Both of you! I’m going to make some new friends.”
They walked away and the old man sat smiling. The waiter brought over his drink. The glass was beaded with moisture and it felt good in his hand. The Sun had retreated behind the tops of Havana’s crumbling buildings, and the streets draped in shade had begun to fill with people. Music from nearby bars floated through the stagnant air, seeping into the plaza. Cuban music had a good rhythm and could make any man feel alive. A young Cuban in a fedora and worn vest entertained one of the nearby tables with magic tricks. The old man sat chuckling to himself, watching the movement of hands, the cards, and a red foam ball shifting from one finger to another.
When the magician had finished his act, the old man called him over. He had a sharp mind and he liked to use it, so he paid close attention to each trick and when it was over he would try to tell the magician how he had pulled it off. After fifteen minutes the routine was over. He tipped the young man well, patted him on the back, and ordered another cuba libre.
His head was swimming from the rum and he couldn't help from smiling as he looked around cafe, blue eyes dancing. Everyone he had ever met remembered those eyes, and they had always gotten him in trouble with wrong sort of women. Pretty girls sipped their cocktails and young men drank their beers. Men with bald spots sat talking to middle-aged women in flowing linens. Guidebooks and cameras and cellphones were littered across clean white-tiled tables. Young couples looked unsure how to sit in silence, while older ones showed no concern over the lack of conversation. Behind him on the porch, the band unpacked their instruments. All the tables were taken. All tourists. That’s good, he thought, tourists were fun and they spoke his language. All you need is a cafe, and just enough people to fill it.
At the table next to him, two gentlemen chatted while their eyes pointed out at the square. One had golden brown skin, a shade only given after many decades in the sun, that struck a sharp contrast with his white beard. The other man was tall and slim and had a full head of grey hair, and he reminded the old man of the Europeans he had seen passing through that plaza in Brussels, and his father sitting next to him on the bench smoking a cigar. Remembering that scene so many years ago, he felt J.B. next to him, sitting at the cafe with his coke-bottle glasses, a cigar hanging from his mouth looking out at the Plaza Vieja. And for every inch the Sun fell in the sky, the old man's blue eyes glowed brighter and brighter.
Pivoting in his chair, he turned to get a better look at the two gentlemen. Two beer glasses, sweating profusely, lingered on an otherwise bare table. Leaving his father to his cigar and to watch the young women in sundresses walk across the square, the old man leaned over in their direction, and with a deliberate nod, motioned towards the Plaza Vieja.
“Fine view, isn’t it?”
