The American President’s Visit

The news about the American president’s visit had just been broadcast when the balcony across the street fell off the face of the building. The railing dislodged from the wall in spastic increments, slanting to one side, before pieces of cement crumbled onto the sidewalk below. A large portion of the base inexplicably hung on, refusing to surrender to gravity’s will. People on the street dispersed in alarm. They looked up and stretched their arms, forming a perimeter the children going to school could not pass. Then the metal screeched. A moment of silence followed as the structure plummeted: it hit the ground in one majestic, scattering blast. Twirling clouds of dust puffed upwards, the debris smattering the asphalt like bullets sprayed from a machine gun. Reyna wondered if, in other parts of the world, this was what urban warfare sounded like.

It had happened the week before. The neighbors had gathered around the rubble, more out of boredom than curiosity. Some of the young street hustlers examined the remnants for anything they could sell—uncracked bricks, iron rods—but seemed to give up quickly. In this part of Havana collapsed buildings were a common occurrence. Just six months prior, one of Reyna’s childhood friends had watched her son die when her three-story apartment complex lost nearly half its bulk. The woman survived six hours trapped under a web of rebar and concrete slabs, a few feet away from the boy’s corpse. She’d been chasing the twelve-year-old with a broom at the precise instant her apartment toppled. While in the hospital, she recounted to visitors that she was swinging the broom when she felt the floor yield. “I was launched forward,” she said, breaking into sobs. “For a second I thought it was me bringing everything down.”