LAST CUBA LIBRE

CLAUDIO

CLAUDIO

Metropole is a fancy place where they select their customers ruthlessly and have prices that will bankrupt you. Clearly, it's always packed. That's how it goes... the more expensive a place is, the more the people fight to be admitted.

I enter at midnight with Giada and her friends and we sit at the table they've booked in a booth in the room upstairs, where an avant-garde percussionist is playing to a recorded backing. Giada greets people. I greet people. Bachelors in the company of nightclub girls who are sucking their cocktails garnished with tropical fruit and looking bored. Oldies, wearing sequins like eighteen-year old girls. Clerks and secretaries of the marrying age. Then I see Tony, leaning on the bar, blind drunk, he's handing over his drink card to the barman for him to mark the umpteenth drink.

"I'll be right back," I say to Giada, and I join him.

"I'm glad to see you," says Tony. Then he turns to the girl behind the bar, "A Black Hawk," he says.

"What are you doing here?"

"Errrmm... I'm looking for my soul mate."

"Greta?"

"Dumped her."

For a few seconds I stare into his blank eyes. "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Well... It was about time. When did you do it?"

"This afternoon, on the phone."

"On the phone?"

"Yes. I would never have found the courage to tell her personally."

"How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," says Tony. "But I don't want to have any other girls. It's strange. As long as I was with her I wanted others. Now I don't."

"It's normal," I say. "You just need to give it time:"

"Maybe:"

That's all, trust me."

"Anyway, Greta is wonderful. I'll never find another girl like her."

"What a load of fuck! You'll find all you want."

"You don't know her. She's an angel."

I turn and give the girl behind the bar my drink card and order a Devil. She pours vermouth and port in equal measures into a container and adds half a teaspoon of lemon juice, then she pours the drink into the shaker, shakes it hard and serves it in a low glass with two ice cubes.

"Listen, I'm here with a real ace," I say to Tony.

"Good for you. Has she got any friends?"

"No," I lie. The truth is that Tony's pissed. He'd show me up.

Tony is staring at the floor and nodding his head. The girl behind the bar is watching him disapprovingly. Tony notices, so he turns towards her and mutters, "You're thinking I must a poor drunk, right?"

The girl behind the bar just continues looking at him in exactly the same way. "Aren't you?" she says, raising one eyebrow.

"Drunk, yes!" says Tony loudly. "Poor, no!"

I can only laugh. The girl shakes her head and goes off to serve a customer.

"What are you waiting for?" says Tony, turning to me. "Go back to your cunt."

"I'll call you tomorrow," I say, then I give him a pat on the shoulder. "Keep your chin up, mate."

"Hey, would you lend me a cigarette."