Every week and a half or so, I stop writing, reading, or whatever else I'm in the midst of on my to-do list and rummage around for the wax. Francisco sits in my desk chair or rests first one side of his head and then the other on my lap as I shape his dreds back into place. Once the little nubbins of hair finally began to grow, he stopped going uptown to see the African lady in Harlem, and we agreed that we'd save $60 a week if I did his hair instead. It's a two hour process of pulling out the new growth and gathering it up with the established locks, twisting them with the wax, and then securing each with a bobby pin. After an hour or so, he gets antsy, and though I typically put off the task as long as I can, once I'm working on the dreds, I'm into it. It's fascinating to see how much hair has grown, how soft or how coarse the hair feels from one week to the next. The pull and twist, pull and twist of my fingers is meditative, one of the few moments of full attentiveness that mark my days.

When we left for Havana in September, one of the many pre-trip preparations that didn't get done was his hair. He was cranky about it--and rightfully so, as the new growth curled away from his scalp and the dreds and was particularly obvious in the Havana humidity--but time, as usual, had run short. Since we hadn't quite finished packing everything either, we'd forgotten the wax and the pins. Surely we'd be able to find both in Cuba's capital. After all, our friend is a hair stylist. That's what I told Francisco to make him feel better.

Along with red meat, water pipes, an affordable mattress, a bike tire, and the cold water knob for the bathroom faucet, we could not find wax or pins. Francisco adopted an uncharacteristic devil-may-care attitude and let his hair get downright funky, specked with dust from the bathroom repair project he working on in his mom's apartment and sparkled with sweat.

As I walked along Infanta one afternoon, I spotted a young guy with long, perfect dreds. I ran to catch up with him, tapping his shoulder as he prepared to step onto a camello bus. "Oye, compay, donde puedo conseguir la cera para hacer el pelo asi?" He looked at me, struggling to understand-- not my Spanish, but the reason I-- a blonde headed woman with straight hair--would be asking for hair wax to do my hair like his. "It's for my husband," I explained as I waited expectantly, thinking he might tell me that he used aloe instead of beeswax. Cubans are famous for inventing ways to take care of problems using totally unexpected resources, and I felt certain this guy with the beautiful swinging dreds would be able to tell me how I could extract aloe and use it in place of wax.

"Agua," he said. Water, just water. I was incredulous and insistent, asking again if he was sure that he didn't use wax and, finally accepting that he didn't, asking if he might know where I could find some wax.

"Suerte," he said, boarding the bus. Luck. Just as you need luck to do a lot of things in Cuba, it's luck--not wax--that helps you do your 'do in Havana.