In Havana, On Drugs

Outside, Rodolfo and Tigre have disappeared. They had been picked up by the police and questioned about their relationship with an American tourist A me. The police took them to the station, searched them for drugs, and when they found nothing, sent them home.

They ended up walking back to Nuevo Vedado in the early morning, trudging uphill through broken streets from the Malec centsn. Stone sober, without rum, without merca or pills, without any of the pharmacological aids Tigre says make his life bearable. "It's always the same thing," Tigre grumbled later. "We can't do anything. We can't go anywhere.