ENDING THE CURSE
It’s pouring rain in Old Havana. There’s no chasing the ghost of Hemingway today. We stand upon broken cobblestones in Calle Obispo, behind a crowd pouring from the doors of El Floridita, a crumbling colonial façade that looks as bombed out as all the others. Ramón scans the tourists holding cameras to snap photos of the bronze, sauced Ernie leaning on the bar and turns to me.
“You really want to go in there?” he asks.
“No. Let’s get a drink somewhere else.”
We duck into an open-air bar with a canvas roof. Rain drips from the soaked awning onto our shoulders and into my mojito. It melts in languid drops from a fuchsia bloom clinging to a trellis framing the street.
Ramón’s hailed an immaculate ’54 Pontiac, toured me about the Malecón and the Monumento a José Martí, a tower where El Comandante stood long ago to pontificate to the masses gathered in the Plaza de la Revolución...
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