12
The French doors to the balcony were open and sunlight came through a fabric awning, tinted blue and yellow in stripes. The hotel was modest, concrete, painted pink, but it managed five stories and I was on the fifth, privy to a slice of a view past the casino billboard across the street: a glittering tropical sea, the horizon attended by small white clouds so still they appeared to have been painted there. I had fallen asleep as soon as I checked in; my flight from New York had been early. The breeze was warm, coming from the beach and picking up the smell of frying meat as it passed over the few blocks that separated my hotel from the grander ones along Playa de Güibia. I was hungry and thirsty, but a strange, light feeling clung to me. No one knew where I was, and it was warm here.
