Parents: Do not read.

The taxi driver didn't know where it was but he said we could ask for directions once we got closer.  But as we rolled slowly down the dark neighborhood avenues of Havana, the streets were as silent as a wax museum--not a soul in sight.

It was one o'clock in the morning and I was fresh off the plane--phoneless, nearly cashless, friendless, and hopelessly lost.  So I read again the address  I had scrawled in my notebook, as if the verbal repetition of the words would magically transport me to their destination, like Dorothy and her red slippers.  "There's no place like Calzado Aires, Numero 60, Apartamento 6."  Again.  Again.

"Tiene que estar por aquí, no?" (It has to be close to here, right?)
He didn't know.

Eventually we found the street.  Numero 50, 52, no-number building, no-number building, 64, 70... We rolled backwards.  I looked out the window into the night, squinting up and down the shadowy concrede edifices.  No numbers.  But it had to be one of those two.  That is, if indeed I had written the correct address.  Which I had.  I was almost positive.  Right?

So I asked the driver to wait for me to go knock, praying that he would value the CUC15 I hadn't paid him more than all of the contents my backpack.  I walked slowly up the cement staircase that enshouded me with an eerie darkness and along a narrow balcony on the side of the building, passing door number 3, 4, 5, and then, the last door with a barely-visible metal number 6 nailed to the frame.

This is the part in the movie when the people in the theater start to shout, "Don't do it!  Go back now!"  I could almost hear the high pitched minor notes on the violin stretching out in climactic suspense.

I knocked on the door.

I immediately stepped back and to the side, so that when I saw the ax in the door crack when it opened I would at least have a head start.  After a few seconds of piercing silence, there was a shuffling inside.  Certainly the assassin readying the silencer on his handgun.  The doorknob clicked.

And there was Sadys--a little sleepy-eyed and nappy-headed, but undoubtedly the 25-year old girl I had been emailing.

After an introductory greeting of apology exchanges--me for arriving so late and her for falling asleep--I extended my hand: "Mucho gusto, soy Kata."  We brought up the backpack from the taxi driver that had miraculously not disappeared and she welcomed me into her markedly non-creepy apartment.

By the next morning, we could have been confused for biracial stepsisters--sipping sugary coffee in the kitchen, swapping ex-boyfriend stories in our PJs.