Gary McMahon

“Milk, only milk. You buy me milk for my hungry leetle bebe boy?”

The young man had accosted us as soon as we’d left the hotel. Naked brown feet skimming across the cracked flagstones, crooked white teeth blazing from a face smiling so wide it could split. He said that he worked at the hotel, that he wasn’t a beggar. That he wanted to show us some of the real Havana.

I had my doubts, but you just smiled and took my hand, gripping it tight enough for me to know that you knew I’d always protect you. We followed the young man – who called himself Stanley – into the bustling streets and the dry, dry heat. As we had done since arriving early the previous day, we gazed in awe at the faded grandeur. Glitzy 1940s architecture visibly decayed around us, and the sight was quite stunning.

“You newly weds? On honeymoon?” asked our guide, and we smiled and said that we had been married for only three days. His smile lit up the entire block, and he did a little dance for you, my sweet. You looked embarrassed and delighted in equal measures, and the sunlight caught in your hair like strewn diamonds.

I recalled with fondness the day before – our first in this elegantly crumbling city – and how you’d sashayed along Obispo Street, the eyes of the local men upon you. You had looked beautiful in that grubby alleyway, like an earthbound angel; long legs striding, that striking white-blonde hair of yours held up but struggling free from beneath the wicker hat you’d bought from some grizzled old guy in the market. I was proud that you were finally mine.

Then we’d gone on to one of the countless bars supposedly frequented by Ernest Hemingway, and drunk strong, cooling Daiquiris until the sun had set like an oil painting…

Stanley marched us down some grungy back alley, smiling, smiling; all the time smiling. The bleached, calloused soles of his feet scraped loudly on the cobbles, and his thin, long brown arms lazily beckoned us to follow.

“I show you my Habana, and you buy me powdered milk!” he cried, laughing as I stumbled at the kerb.

“Yes,” you answered, grinning. “Oh, yes, yes!”

We were lost in East Havana and the old industrial quarter before we even knew it, utterly at the mercy of Stanley, our small, wizened Habanero guide. But we weren’t afraid; we were British citizens, and this simple fact would keep us safe from real harm.

Armed police officers stood on sun-washed street corners, nodding and whispering in Spanish as we passed by. They were there to protect unwary tourists, and their sombre stares were usually enough to deter any potential threat. As long as you were careful, and kept your wits about you. And used the mighty dollar to pay your way – the local peso is worthless to these people, but they crave US currency like a drug, and will do almost anything to lay their hands upon it.

“You want cigars?” Stanley enquired, that rigid grin locked in place on his weather-burnished face, but a frown beginning to surface.

“Yes,” I replied. “Cigars would be nice.” I already had hundreds back at the hotel, but the cigar was yet another form of currency on these busy, itchy, sun-flattened streets.

“Follow, follow…” he said, visibly happier now that he had made a sale.

Stanley led us into a dark doorway next to a hole-in-the-wall café, where ancient, tobacco-skinned men and women paid very little for stale bread rolls and ate them out on the street, slow-waltzing in the shade.

Inside the small decrepit terraced building (which, as you will no doubt recall, was littered with rubble, an old child’s pram, and a large pile of water-swelled porno magazines that looked to be dated from the early 1960s), Stanley dropped to his knees beneath the sagging ceiling. He fumbled around behind a big stack of rocks and fallen timber, and then at last stood clasping a rag-wrapped roll of fat illicit cigars.

You smiled at him again, my dear, amused by his eagerness. Touched by his tender desperation. And when you took out the knife, and slashed it stiff-armed across his throat, left to right, he could do nothing but grin back at you. Twice: once above the chin, and once - redly, wetly - below.

Blood spattered your lovely face as he pitched forward onto the earthen floor, and when you theatrically licked your lips I felt invigorated.

You quickly bent over to prepare the corpse, your little shorts riding up your slender thighs, and for the briefest of moments I saw the face of my old wife, the one who vanished in the heat of some long ago Egyptian vacation night.

You took her place. Coming to me from the eternal desert wrapped up tight in her skin, and wearing her pretty face like a mask across your pointed, lupine bone structure. And I fell in love with you.

And as I watched you work on poor fallen Stanley I fell in love with you all over again, drowning in the towering swells and deep ocean hollows of emotion that engulfed me.

People bustled past the doorless entrance to the building, blocking out the light in two- and three-second bursts, and I caressed your bony back as you did what you always must. Your jackal spine protruded through the thin flesh, painfully sharp and ridged, and I gazed in awe at the muscles as they rippled gently across your lightly sunburned shoulders.

I managed not to hear the sounds of slicing, sawing, tearing and biting, and instead imagined the wistful notes played by the guitarist at dinner last night, his slow smile a deep Latino promise, and his fingers moving with an almost supernatural grace across the strings and fret board.

You dropped a creased dollar bill onto our guide’s shattered body as you left him steaming in his juices, and I kissed away the dark arterial bloodstains from your thin, dark lips, drinking it from inside your glistening wet snout. Sensually licked the thick, coloured ichors from your supple long-nailed fingers. Your ageless eyes were heavy, tired, and I knew that it was time to return to the hotel to rest.

But tonight…oh, tonight we will paint Habana town red; just like we always do, wherever we go in the world.

As we stepped back out onto the street, I heard the delicate shifting of battered bones, the whispery sliding of sundered flesh, as Stanley sat up, looked about him, and struggled to his feet. He will find us much later, once he has learned how to use his new senses. And we will welcome him with open arms and eager mouths, and follow him to his home, his humble roofless casa, and his small poor Cuban familia. His wife. His hungry, hungry baby boy.

And then, my dear, we will dine together, man and wife, and add to our expanding global family.