The Last Season of Light
He parked the car. He walked into the radio station. The red light blinked on.
Augie placed the master recording on the passenger seat. He lit a cigar—the last of the good ones, a Montecristo No. 2. He looked at the ocean. Somewhere out there was Florida. Somewhere out there was the future. But here, on this seawall, was the past.
He rolled down the window. He turned the radio on. The only station still broadcasting played a scratchy recording of the national anthem, then silence. hav hayday
A voice crackled through. It was not a record executive from New York. It was the station manager.
Augie picked up the 78-rpm master recording of "Dos Gardenias." It was still wet. He held it in his hands like a communion wafer.
“You sing ‘Dos Gardenias,’ Augie,” Pepe had said, sweating through his guayabera. “You sing it like you mean it, and the gringos in Miami will eat you up. We go to New York. Vegas. We leave this island to the crabs and the cane toads.” The Last Season of Light He parked the car
“Augie,” the manager said, his voice trembling. “The President is on the line. Batista’s men are leaving the city. There are reports… the rebels are coming down from the Sierra Maestra. Tonight.”
He walked out of the studio, past the panicked announcers, past the shattered glass of a casino window that had just been looted. He got into the DeSoto one last time. He drove not to the airport, but to the Malecón. He parked the car facing the sea.
“No,” he said softly.
The hayday was over. And the silence that followed was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
As he drove down the Prado, he saw them. The students. They were gathered outside the University gates, printing leaflets on a rickety press. Their faces were young and hard, not like his face. They didn't want a DeSoto. They didn't want to sing at the Tropicana. They wanted the casinos closed and the Americans gone. They looked at Augie’s suit and saw a collaborator. Augie looked at their clenched fists and saw the end of his hayday .
He looked at Pepe. The Mexican was already stuffing cash into a briefcase. “The plane leaves in two hours,” Pepe whispered. “Miami. You can still make it. You have the voice, Augie. You don’t need the island.” Augie placed the master recording on the passenger seat