By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez
HAVANA TIMES – One morning last week – I don’t remember if it was Monday or Tuesday – I found myself near the home of an old friend. I hadn’t heard from him for some months, since he doesn’t have a cell phone nor do I often frequent the zone where he lives. The point is, I decided to drop in and say hello to him.
It was around 10 a.m., more or less, and incredibly he was at home. After the greetings and the volleys of “How’s it going?” “You’ve been missing!” “Like you can see,” or “Imagine that,” he decided to make coffee. We were getting ready to savor the dark beverage, when a noise was heard, like some boards being unloaded off a truck, followed by another like a drawer full of glasses falling from a certain height. Immediately afterwards came the sound of someone running down the hallway.
I stood up and said: “Hey! What the hell was that?” My friend signaled to me to be quiet, and I sat back down again. Later, yells were heard from the people living furthest in the back. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying – well, often these days, I understand almost nothing, since I’m going deaf, which is sometimes convenient, especially when there’s nothing good to hear.
It’s like that here constantly, my friend told me. Then, coming closer to me, he lowered his voice and continued: “It’s occurred to the neighbor next door, an old boy approaching forty, to get into the ‘chemical.’”
I imagined a prolonged fight between the kid in question and someone of the chemist’s profession. But when my friend realized that I had lost the thread, he clarified: “The chemical, compadre – that stuff the kids of today are smoking, or taking, I don’t really know. A kind o
