The Domino Diaries by Brin-Jonathan Butler

n from the boy’s father in Cuba, without his knowledge, let alone permission. After some negotiation at the highest levels of government in the United States and Cuba, Eli á n would be sent back. The young boy became yet another feather in the cap for Fidel against the United States.
    For my own research, I was reading Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports by S. L. Price. Price’s book was the most current, in-depth breakdown of Cuba’s enigmatic powerhouse sports machine. I wanted to learn how to locate boxers and how to properly approach them to see if any would be willing to teach me. I had no idea how to handle negotiation in Cuba or what the risks involved were. But I’d read that the black market economy in Cuba eclipsed its official economy. In the book, Price details how each elite athlete he profiled encountered the same hopelessly impossible decision to stay or leave as every other Cuban on the island, only with a lot more money at stake if they managed to escape. Whereas Te ó filo Stevenson had rejected five million dollars in the 1970s to fight Muhammad Ali, the going rate offered to F é lix Sav ó n, Cuba’s latest heavyweight destroyer, was in the neighborhood of twenty million, to defect to America and fight Mike Tyson. Even the act of writing a book exploring the ambiguity of the choice involved had caused Price to be banned from ever returning to Cuba. “You have penetrated an impenetrable system,” he was told by security agents. The bombshell of the book was a Cuban boxer, H é ctor Vinent, a two-time Olympic champion, confessing to Price his desire to escape. No Cuban athlete, in Cuba, had ever confessed such a thing on the record before. Yet Vinent never managed to escape. He was punished before he’d ever had a chance to try. Vinent only wished to leave Cuba after the government had banned him from boxing for the rest of his life. Price’s book didn’t say what became of Vinent, whether he remained in Havana or had returned to be with his family in Santiago de Cuba in the east of the island. If Vinent was living in Havana as I flew over, he was twenty-eight, and my guess was he could probably use some extra money training me at a local gym. It was as good a place as any to learn about his island, too.
    My mother’s prediction about friends I hadn’t met yet came true before the plane ride was over. Across the aisle from me a middle-aged Latino, wearing reading glasses that kept falling off his nose, was devouring pages from For Whom the Bell Tolls nearly as fast as the rum and Cokes he was ordering. I noticed his hands were getting steadier with each sip of alcohol. There was a casual sense of doom about him that intrigued me. He was ordering rounds for the three people sitting next to him as if they were his friends, and then drinking them all himself. I’ve always spooked pretty easily around heavy drinkers. They tend to hold up a mirror that I have difficulty turning away from. And this guy was getting steadier the more he drank, not sloppier. In his novel Under the Volcano , Malcolm Lowry describes this sensation as “the shakes of too little and the abyss of too much.” As I looked across the aisle and tried not to think about the stranger who epitomized this, he smiled at me.
    â€œYou don’t even seem drunk,” I said.
    â€œDrunk?” He held up his empty glass. “Why would I be drunk? This isn’t drinking. I’m in training .” He reached up and pushed the button for the flight attendant again. When she arrived he ordered another round. “My name is Alfonso.”
    â€œI’m Brin. You’re Cuban?”
    â€œNo Brinicito , I’m Guatemalan, but I’ve divided my time evenly between Havana and Toronto for many years now. I need to get off this fucking plane and get something to drink.”
    Alfonso wasn’t kidding. His cirrhosis, I’d find out