The Date: December 1985
The Place: A very cool watering hole in Havana, Cuba called the Floridita.
The occasion: The seventh annual Latin American Film Festival.
Background: I am on assignment for two American publications covering the film fest. American screen star Jack Lemmon, and singer, actor and social activist Harry Belafonte are being honored.
Clarification: It isn’t just me and the Nobel prize winner in the bar. I am part of an entourage; he wanted to hang with Lemmon and Belafonte, and I was able wheedle my way into the group.

The Floridita is an old-school saloon where artists, writers and other luminaries came before the Cuban Revolution to imbibe the establishment’s cocktail of the same name. That day “Gabo,” as everyone called him, is the definition of cool. He looks like a cross between Anthony Quinn and Jean Paul Belmondo, fit, strong, proudly middle aged. He speaks pretty good English in what appears to me as his unofficial role as minister of charisma for the festival—meeting, greeting, charming all kinds of folks. In the bar, accompanied by an interpreter, he is speaking intently with Lemmon (a super guy), who had vouched for me to join the group when Gabo’s cars and drivers came by our hotel to take us to the bar.