Read Online King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online

much cannon fodder in the war between the drug cartels and corrupt government forces. Woe to anyone who got caught in the crossfire.
    El Comandante and his wife were escorted into Babo’s building and up the elevator to his penthouse. Walls of bulletproof glass overlooked the city. Everything felt tightly sealed, vacuum-wrapped, airless. Babo’s second wife, Gloria, to whom he’d been married thirty years, greeted them in her bare feet, her white linen dress absorbing the thin afternoon light. Despite her keen eyes and calm, ironic tone, she was something of an old hippie, if you could call the heiress to one of Mexico’s petrochemical fortunes a hippie. Gloria was the opposite of the dictator’s own wife, who had the good-natured sincerity of a puppy.
    The atmosphere in the apartment was as somber as the decor. Gone were the wicker chairs and open-air patios of Babo’s seaside home, replaced by stiff, cretonne-upholstered furniture. The three sat in silence as a maid served them coffee and petit fours, which Delia ate with abandon. Gloria didn’t touch a thing.
    “The doctors say he’s in his last hours.” Gloria lit a gold-tipped cigarette. She blew the smoke toward a chandelier and waited for it to dissipate before continuing. “I know he’ll be happy to see you, Jefe.”
    “The truth is we—” Delia started, but she was cut short by her husband’s glare.
    El Comandante didn’t want to risk Delia mentioning that they almost didn’t come. Dying friends dispirited the tyrant.
    “Do you think he’ll recognize me?” he asked.
    “I know he will.” Gloria smiled one of the enigmatic smiles that Babo once confessed had hooked him like a helpless trout. That, and the fact that she gave the best head in all the Americas.
    “I’d like to see him, Gloria.”
    “Claro, Jefe. Follow me.”
    He trailed Gloria down a dim corridor to Babo’s study. It was here that his friend had insisted on spending his final days. He wanted, simply, to die surrounded by books. There were no family photographs, no souvenirs of his travels, no sign of his Nobel medal or snapshots of him with the great men of his day, the tyrant included; just books—his and others’—Babo’s eternal friends, and a vase of hyacinths on the nightstand.
    El Comandante approached his friend cautiously. He was relieved that Babo was alive but afraid that there was nothing left for them to discuss. In their heyday, their conversations had lasted for days, interspersed with fishing trips and the reverential hush that accompanied their smoking of fine island cigars. There were few subjects they hadn’t broached, analyzed, laughed over, and argued about, all the while growing fonder and more admiring of each other. Not that there hadn’t been a thorn or two. Once Babo stopped speaking to the tyrant for months over a rust-colored beauty they’d discovered on a visit to El Cobre’s foundry. She was just Babo’s type, too—pure liquefied mulata sugar. But at the last minute, the tyrant chose her for himself, pulling a revolutionary droit du seigneur. Every now and then the incident rippled through their friendship like a Cuban water snake.
    Nonetheless, Babo had proved as savvy about politics as he was at writing about the darkest recesses of the human heart. It was a rare combination in a man of his accomplishments, and there’d been a time when the tyrant had envied his friend’s gifts. (In truth, his envy still flared on occasion.) But Babo’s unfailing good humor, his generosity toward the Revolution, and his unflagging personal loyalty to El Comandante had won him over. There wasn’t another soul on the planet, save Fernando, whom he trusted as much.
    “Hombre, what are you doing lying there like a beached whale?”
    Babo opened his rheumy eyes and cracked a half smile. That initial spot on his lungs had developed into a tangled web of ailments impossible to unravel. As the afternoon light faded, Babo’s surprisingly small study filled