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add, explain, that it was American dollars Murray had left him but she’d brought it in Canadian money, twelve thousand, because the Cubans didn’t want American money any more. But she stopped herself and did her best to sound casual. “It’s not a fortune. . . .”
    He nodded understandingly. “No, but you’re right. These people have so little.” He shrugged. “Well, we’ll see.”
    She left him then, heading down the same path she’d come up, but as she angled toward the entrance onto La Rampa, she was looking his way again, and he waved. She waved back. He’d been curious, she thought. About the money. Of course. And what harm could he do, anyway? Nothing would come of it, though the resemblance between them was certainly amazing, and she’d done the right thing, she thought, to speak to him. But then she was in the sunshine, on the busy street. She looked around. And at the end of the block she saw a cab rank, a big one, with yellow coco taxis—which she hadn’t dared yet—and plenty of regular ones. They were all parked across from a building with a high curved facade, from the same epoch as Coppelia, a movie house called the Yara, whatever that meant. Kill Bill was playing, or “coming soon.” She headed that way. And then, as she came up the corner, she saw a young woman with a swinging ponytail and a backpack crossing the street. She was a blond, as blond as Almado ought to have been. She was hurrying as fast as she could, but as she came up to Lorraine she still had time for a smile. She passed quickly, but Lorraine caught the small Canadian flag stitched to the back of her pack. Well, she thought, Hugo certainly wasn’t Almado if this girl was his idea of a date.
    4
    The Santa Isabel was a small “boutique” hotel on one corner of the Plaza de Armas. The bar was in a courtyard, too open for espionage and with a tinkling fountain to hide indiscretion. Adamaris led the way, inspecting the room before taking a table, though their only company was a lady tourist in a purple T-shirt proclaiming “Liverpool.” Mathilde was bemused; she was letting herself be led around by the nose: all she had to do was walk away, and that would be the end of it, but it wasprecisely because of this that she didn’t . . . as if her own power in the situation could only be expressed by indulging the other.
    As they sat, Adamaris produced cigarettes and lit one with slow, precise gestures, and then turned her head to one side and exhaled a neatly shaped stream of smoke. It was rather hypnotic. Mathilde found herself remembering the first book she’d ever tried to read in the original English, Nine Stories , by J. D. Salinger: people had smoked cigarettes like this in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “For Esmé with Love and Squalor.” And in Françoise Sagan, she thought, Bonjour Tristesse . People said she looked rather like Françoise Sagan. . . . As the smoke dissipated, Adamaris said, “I would like a trayash.”
    Mathilde noted the assumption that anything required would be supplied by her; but she didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
    â€œFor my cigarette.”
    â€œAh. An ashtray. Un cendrier, as we say in French.”
    â€œI was saying it backwards?”
    Adamaris noted her gaffe with a shrug, and when Mathilde fetched an ashtray from another table, delicately rolled a shred of ash from the tip of her cigarette and continued on. “This hotel, the Santa Isabel . . . you understand, all these hotels in Habana Vieja are owned by Habaguanex, a government company? Well, this was the first, and I think it is still one of the best though, of course, I have never stayed here. You are staying . . . ?”
    â€œAt the Raquel.”
    â€œThat is very new. Art deco. It is very beautiful, don’t you think? The Raquel is in the Jewish tradition. This is Spanish. Each hotel