A Snowstorm in Cuba

By Vlad Bunea

Anna and Luke are middle-class Occupy activists from Toronto on a much-deserved vacation for romance and relaxation in Cuba. There is tension in their relationship, and they hope to ease the tumult by spending time alone, away from the pressures of life. On their way to Cuba, though, they make the acquaintance of another couple.

Catherine and Charles are extravagantly wealthy and represent what Anna and Luke detest about capitalist culture. Still, the two couples form an unexpected bond and end up spending the entire week together. Despite what on the surface seems to be a growing friendship, each player in this strange foreign game has other things in mind.

Anna, an artist, hopes to sell several of her paintings to the affluent Catherine. Luke is also interested in Catherine but for different, lustful reasons, whereas Charles seems depressed by just about everything. When an unexpected storm descends on Cuba, Anna finds herself alone with a drunken Charles; Luke is alone with Catherine. Then, someone ends up missing, and both couples are left wondering if their random meeting was random at all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491754054

Vlad Bunea

Vlad Bunea was born in Transylvania, Romania, and immigrated to Canada in 2005. He is the author of the novels Womb Town and House of Geniuses and the short story collection Gals, Gods, Guns. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Oana, whom he met in primary school.

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A SNOWSTORM IN CUBA

Copyright © 2015 Vlad Bunea.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover Photo Credit: Paul Keller. Taken on November 22, 2007

Centro Habana, Havana, CH, CU https://www.flickr.com/

photos/paulk/3086526639/

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5406-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5405-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922436

iUniverse rev. date: 01/21/2015

Contents

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Epilogue

Monday

The snowstorm had begun. His feet were cold, his eyes dim and elongated, fighting to deflect the sharp flakes that pierced into his brain and stunned him into immobility. She sat next to him, in row thirteen. She was silent. Her hand was still on his knee, grabbing softly and caressing from time to time. He looked straight ahead, into the blizzard. When his thought cycles came back to reality, he saw the back of the seat in front of him, specifically the handle that resembled a closed mouth with tight thick lips that said Welcome Luke, welcome to Cuba, a wonderful vacation awaits you. Then he cycled back to the snowstorm of his mind and heard her voice whispering and shouting, whispering again. Relax Luke, this is our time together, you’ll see, it will be fine, we will have time to find ourselves.

The flight attendant tapped his shoulder.

Would you like a glass of champagne, sir?

No, he did not want a glass of champagne, he wanted to feel warm, comfortable, he wanted to relax, to disconnect from everybody and everything, to unplug, to float over this petty world, to forget about emails, deadlines, advance payments, billing notices, balance transfers, failed erections, tooth aches, stomach aches, washing dishes, late night TV shows, software upgrades, system crashes, backup copies, identity theft, registered retirement saving plans, the florist which smelled of vanilla and Anna, yes Anna, he wanted to forget about the Anna that he felt far from, when they could not agree on what take-out to order or what’s best for this country, carbon tax or subsidies for renewable energies. He wanted Anna’s hand off his knee right now, thank you very much. He didn’t say it. He kept staring at the handle. His thoughts cycled to reality and he realized he hadn’t answered.

No, thank you very much. Perhaps later.

They were probably half way to Cuba.

She had the window seat in row thirteen. He felt a tingle of pride when they deliberately picked those seats. Superstition is for the weak-minded. He worked hard to awaken the world. He was prolific on his blog, had almost five thousand followers and an average of at least one hundred comments on each post. He was there day and night, editing and replying, formatting and proofreading, banning spammers and assholes, linking to a plethora of sources that would make Chomsky look like a research assistant. When Anna came at 2 am to his desk while he was writing and told him that he should take care more of himself he told her that he needed to take care of the world first, then he would consider himself. She went to bed and did not wait for him. At 5 am, after he made sure all the commas were in the right place he tiptoed to the bedroom and snuck in next to her, bending the spacetime in such a way that Anna rolled towards him half-asleep and grabbed his manhood like it was a stress relief squeeze toy.

Don’t say I don’t love you, he said and pushed her hand away. I’m just tired.

Do I disappoint you?

The world disappoints me.

The game repeated a couple of nights throughout a series of undone erections that filled Luke’s bucket to the brink of acute self-awareness. Only then he settled for release while she kept him close. She wanted to feel him on her skin.

Honey?

The cycle of his thoughts was set in reality. He heard her. He looked at her.

Yes, he said.

I love you.

I know.

He did not expect to hear that. His feet were still cold because of the altitude and of a bundle of icicles that squeezed his heart. He was willing to accept Anna’s hand back on his knee. If she only put it back without him saying anything. Surprise, she did. She walked the hand up from his knee to his crotch, covered him with her sweater then unzipped him.

Anna, this is not the right moment.

Ohhh, she whispered with a maternal self-assured tone. Why not?

She ignored his feeble protest and worked her way in. She kissed him. The flight attendant walked by and did not offer anything. Luke Lowe was beginning to relax while the snowstorm was moving away from his mind. He became so aware of everything around him that he forgot about his feet, the old couple with white shirts and hearing aids, the girl with enormous headphones that was reading Cosmopolitan, the disheveled man that stunk so badly that the flight crew made him wear a plastic gown over his clothes, the family of five who were surprisingly quiet, likely because all of them had tablets and were tapping on them ferociously, the two women in their fifties giggling, setting high expectations about their vacation, ahh, he lost patience cataloguing all the passengers and turned to Anna. Seriously, I appreciate the gesture, but please stop, he said.

Anna traced back her movements and restored her demeanor. She continued to kiss him, she was not disturbed by his hardheadedness. It’ll all turn out just fine, she hoped. He’ll see. This vacation is exactly what they needed and she will make sure they’ll make the best of it. She gestured to the flight attendant and asked two glasses of champagne.

You cannot say no, she said.

I won’t.

He remembered Che Guevara writing in The Motorcycle Diaries about hunting with his friend Alberto. Che was allergic to cold. When he had to swim 20 meters in ice water to retrieve what Alberto had shot down, Che suffered like a Bedouin.

I am your Bedouin, Luke said.

What do you mean? she said.

You know how to make me warm.

Oh, no, it’s the allergy again? We’ll get there soon and we can soak in the sun all we want. You’ll feel better.

I feel better already.

Anna Guevara could have been a great therapist. She could have had her own practice. She could have fixed so many marriages, erectile dysfunctions, self-esteem deficiencies and attention deficit disorders that she could have retired at 50 and have the most exotic vacations on the planet for the rest of her life. After she finished her Arts degree at McGill University she moved to Toronto, where she met Luke Lowe at a run for cancer. Luke had lost his ribbon. Without saying a word she walked to him and pinned a new ribbon on his chest. There, she told him, you look great. You look great as well, he said. Would you like to have a cup of tea with me? she said. Jolly good, I would love to have a cup of tea with you, he said. In two weeks he had moved in with her with all his books into his own shelves that she generously made available. She was in her second year at University of Toronto, majoring in psychology. Those were perfect times. Living like students, without worrying about anything, at least not openly to each other, partying wherever they were asked to go, volunteering at whatever caught their attention, making love in all corners of their apartment, to baptize the space with their souls, to delve in the spacetime continuum together on a boat made of whipped cream and apple pie, steaming around their bodies.

Anna Guevara was a painter. When she was asked what she did, that’s what she said: I study psychology to better understand what I’m painting. Luke was cool about this. He respected her space, she respected his. In their two-bedroom apartment, one room was Anna’s studio. Luke was working in the living room. He had his corner. He didn’t mind he didn’t have his own room. He loved to think about himself that he was flexible and worked for the better good of their relationship. So Anna painted as much as she wanted.

In the first months he came to the studio with breakfast on a tray and two cups of tea. They sat down on the tatami, crossed their legs and ate. She felt loved and appreciated and felt an impulse to use more of that color on her painting. I like that vermillion, Luke said. What, this vermillion? she said and applied a brush stroke on his face while his mouth was full with a blueberry muffin. They chased each other through the studio then made love on the tatami. At the end of that year he had to take a job, he has been running on loans for too long and his master in political science was not satisfying him. He was pretty good with web development. I will support you, no matter what, she told him. Then he cried and was very thankful. She said that’s all that matters, that they love each other and support each other. They were both rebels, but in different ways. Luke was bragging bluntly that he was a socialist, even a Marxist, to which Anna chuckled and took Marx’s name in vain. You a Marxist, you don’t look like one. He wouldn’t mind but continued to read and quote to her from the leftist literature when they showered together, when she painted, at parties after a couple of beers, in emails accompanied by tons of links to the fundamentals of socialist thinking. Anna thought that his passion was cute but kept this to herself. As time went by and after he finished his master with zero enthusiasm, she added a few layers of naiveté to her evaluation of his socialist passion. What do you do about it? she kept nagging him, half jokingly until one day he left his tea unfinished on the floor and retorted Nevermind and stormed out of the apartment after making some excuse.

Something had changed in him. Anna wasn’t sure if it was from all those books he had been reading or the meetings at the student union or the online forums where he was very active or Harper’s outrageous policies, or the financial meltdown, or the unemployment rates and job insecurity, or the right wing fundamentalism, or Christopher Hitchens’s mortality, or his parents who kept asking what was he doing to his life, We hope you take care of Anna, she’s a wonderful girl, and all other frustrations that one sensible soul can easily pick up in this crazy 21st century.

I absofuckinglutely love your last name, he blurted out one evening. They were sitting on the couch and were watching Steven Soderbergh’s movie Che.

Really? Do I remind you of him?

She was referring to Che, who was lecturing a group of recruits.

Yeah. When we get married I’ll take your name.

She laughed.

You’re funny.

I’m a revolutionary.

He laughed too.

Later he told her that he knew exactly the moment when he fell in love with her. It was not at first sight, when she pinned the pink ribbon to his chest at the cancer run. It was in the teashop when she told him her full name. Anna Guevara. Of course she was not related to Che, but her parents were Argentinian. There are a lot of Guevaras out there, she explained. Of course he knew that. But the serendipity of the moment had been deeply seeded into his heart forever. Luke didn’t mind she didn’t care much about Che, her opinion of Che was resumed to this: he was a down-to-the-bone idealist and an obsessive conflict-loving Communist. There you have it, she told him. In her heart she didn’t sound this critical. She was probably a socialist herself, who wouldn’t be when the world is so unjust and when the few have amassed so much power to the detriment of the other 99%. She kept these thoughts to herself. But Anna, he said, one day we will be part of a revolution ourselves. When that day comes, count me in, but don’t expect me to touch a gun. Geez, no, of course not.

The school began to take a lot of her time. Anna was not the type of person to leave anything unfinished. There were tons of assignments and a huge reading list. When she found the vermillion bottle dry she wept. Luke was writing in the living room. She came out of the studio and stopped in the doorframe. She was exhausted. Luke turned to her and asked what was going on. She explained and his only conclusion was that she had to prioritize. If she wanted to finish the second degree she’d have to give up painting for a while. He hugged her and told her softly, A revolutionary cannot be tired. You and your paper revolutions, she sobbed.

Right now, in row thirteen, their history was muted in their thoughts.

They were going to the hot beaches of Cuba.

Excuse me, can we get some champagne please? Luke hailed the flight attendant.

The flight attendant promptly presented herself with the beverage trolley and poured them two glasses. She continued down the aisle to row twentysix where another thirsty hand was waving.

The hand came from a tall man, who stood straight in his seat. He was distinguished and very British.

I would like another bottle of scotch, the man said.

"Charles, you are