This has to be my most cherished picture from the old Havana days. To say Rick and Delilah were regulars at El Club de Mentiroso - The Liar's Club ,would be an understatement. My own Casablanca was more like an ad hoc Embassy than a watering hole. The expatriates were drawn there by the buzz on the streets and the locals shunned the place. They were crazy days and only the toughest made it here.
My career there started quite auspiciously one evening when I couldn't scrape together the pesos neccesary to pay off all the rum I consumed that day. Manuel, whom I thought was the proprietor, was kind enough about it. I swept the broken glass and rinsed off a few dishes, and ended up sleeping it off in the tiny loft above the bar.
When I awoke manuel was gone but the place was filled with expats once again. Thats when I met Rick and Delilah. Everyone assumed I worked there so I didn't want to let them down. Manuel never came back and no one ever told me I couldn't run the place, so I did. I took all the drink money and stored it in cigar boxes in the loft every night, less a little something for my effort. No one ever claimed the place. I did what I could to make that bar and that loft home for the next eighteen months or so.
Eventually my ship had arrived and i was getting off the rock. It seemed Rick and Delilah did not have passports and they had not planned on ever leaving. The place had no keys, so I gave the cigar boxes to Rick and kissed Delilah goodbye. I don't know what those crazy kids were running from, but I know where you can find them now.
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