In a third-floor apartment on Calle Obispo lived Magela. She was a woman who didn't just walk; she percussioned. Her heels were cowbells, her laughter a guaguancó. But now, her world was reduced to forty square meters of cracked tiles and a balcony that overlooked a ghost town.

Downstairs, a teenager with a trumpet he’d forgotten how to play blew a single, golden note that hung in the humid air like a question mark.

She didn’t have much. She had a radio that only caught the weather report, a bottle of cheap rum she’d been saving for a wedding that was canceled, and a pair of worn-out dancing shoes. She started with the rhythm.