The lever on the 1970s Russian pay phone is stuck. Jiggle. Jiggle. Twenty centavos more do the trick.

"Camilla!" I shout, at last getting through the hospital switchboard. In the rapid, syllable-clipping Spanish everyone here speaks, I confess: "I slept with someone."

"Finally!" she says with her tinkling laugh.

"It's not like that. I -- " I look around and lower my voice. "I got paid."

She laughs harder. "You're a Cuban girl now," says my best friend here, a respected Havana heart surgeon a few years my senior. "Tell me."

Talking faster than a wet parrot, I relay the details of the afternoon into her sympathetic ear. Camilla's morality is like that of the majority of Cubans: Sleeping with foreign men and getting paid, usually in the form of clothes and perfume and money for family emergencies -- for something always seems to come up when a love-struck foreigner is around -- isn't actual prostitution.

There is a word, in fact, for women seeking out a rich boyfriend, either for marriage or regular remittances, and that word is "jinetera." Spanish for "jockey." Jockeying boys and girls are the hopeful light of their supportive families. For to jockey is to dream of a successful future, to dream in a country that feels so bereft of hope, of promising careers, of stable relationships. It's also the only way for many to make dollars, in a country where lawyers earn $18 a month and a meal in a restaurant costs twice as much.

"What did he pay?"

I have no idea, so I root around in my bra for the money. "Two hundred," I say, a bit surprised.

"Dios mio. You're going to put us all to shame," she says, laughing again. "You blondes are always worth more. When do you see him again?"

"Never," I stammer. "I'm never going to do this again!"

"Right," she says, knowingly. "Next time, mi vida, don't ask for money so fast."

"I didn't," I say, feeling I have let her down. "I refused to see him again, and so he made some snide comment about how if I wanted to be a good capitalist, I'd better learn to set a price upfront."

Camilla sighs. "You weren't being a bad capitalist, you were being a bad Cubana. These men here aren't looking for a one-night stand, they want a Cuban girlfriend while on holiday." Then, wistfully, her voice trailing off, she says: "If he gave you $200 for an hour, imagine a whole week."

Camilla is 33 and one of the sexiest women in a country of sexy women. Her hair is cropped short to showcase a graceful neck and a dancer's erect body. The $20 monthly surgeon's allowance doesn't pay for much, so Camilla has acquired a handful of foreign boyfriends who deposit money into her account each month. When they arrive in town a few times a year, she dutifully attends to them.

"I'm not going to be anyone's girlfriend," I say. "I've got more important things to do."

"Any news on your father?"

"I'm off to check," I say, and hang up. The raging sun is starting to set, and the line across the street for peso ice cream stretches down the block. La Rampa, as the street is known, is packed with boys who cuff their jeans like James Dean. Boys looking for men who love boys. Men with money to spend.

Shivering in the heat, I make my way home.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

My landlady is asleep on the couch wearing polyester underwear in functional beige. A Cuban novella blares on the radio: A woman is sobbing because her husband won't stop banging her sister.

But my landlady doesn't stir. Pilar is a biomedical engineer, so depressed by the lack of satisfying work that she's sleeping her 30s away. I tiptoe past into the high-ceiling, Spanish-tiled rooms I rent illicitly. Our landlord-tenant arrangement is black market; the web of neighborhood-watch types she has to bribe to keep quiet is too complex for me to unearth.

I read my messages and dial. "Victor?" I ask into the receiver.

"Oye. I'll swing by."

I wait by the side door for my Cuban spy. A government worker, Victor has access to classified records. He watches me carefully.

"You look different tonight," he says. "Anything wrong?" I shake my head, and we crouch on the creaky wooden staircase. Victor pulls out his notes, and modulates his vocal cords down to a whisper.

"Your family lived here in Havana under Mr. Carter, and was employed at the U.S. Interests Section." Victor adjusts his glasses. I stare at a slick chunk of hair that has slid rebelliously over his forehead. Victor's hesitation tells me he doesn't want to say what he's found.

"Your father -- "

"Stepfather," I interrupt.

"Your stepfather was born in Connecticut, worked in the diplomatic corps. Your mother, she was also American."

"From California," I say impatiently.

"Like all Americans, they were under routine surveillance while living here. The notes I found indicate your mother had repeat encounters with one Cuban male in particular. They appear to be, to have been, romantic."

I nod. My mother had told me as much, shortly before her death two years ago. In the haze of medicines that made her last days bearable, answers weren't forthcoming. She fondly remembered my father, insisting that he loved me, that he was in Havana, his whole family waiting, and that I should go find them.

The first year I came and went. No answers. No luck. Real penetration in Cuba is not for the foreigner. About eight months ago, I made the decision to stay. If my father was alive, as my mother believed, then I should find him, before what happened to my mother happened to him.

Victor gives me the papers. "I have dates, and a description of what may be your father. It's all in there." I take them gleefully, thinking I can cross-check them with my mother's meticulously kept agenda, copies of which I'd been poring over for weeks.

"Did they follow him? Was there an address, a place where they were secretive?"

Victor swats away the errant hair. "I can find out," he says. I interrupt him with an enthusiastic nod. "That, of course, will take some time."

It always takes time. It took six months to find Victor, to find someone with both access and willingness to disclose information. Using the same bills from the afternoon encounter, I pay Victor his bribe and kiss his cheek. It's the first concrete confirmation of my mother's account, and I'm both encouraged and daunted by the news.

Tomorrow: Joining the jinetera

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