The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Cordova

  He failed. He looked hard and long. If he’d been a simple man, he’d have accused her of bewitching him. As she glittered under the spotlight, he felt himself stop breathing. More humiliating was Horacio the Hunchback snickering as he walked past him backstage. Bolívar hadn’t been sure why the stagehands were snickering until he looked down. He adjusted his erection straining against the buttons of his tailored slacks. He took a lap. Splashed cold water on his face from the stable troth. Ran a wet hand against the back of his neck and returned to see the end of Orquídea’s set.

  He wasn’t sure if the show was made more radiant because of her, but when the pink clam shell opened and she danced and moved her body like she was suspended on a wave, it was over for him.

  He complimented Mirabella, the seamstress, for tailoring Orquídea’s scalloped mermaid tail and matching the sheer materials to her perfect skin.

  When he showed up at the cabin that she shared with Wolf Girl and Agustina, he purposely avoided the old fortune-telling witch’s eyes. Bruja, she was. Always filling his head with nonsense about being careful of destiny. What did he need destiny for when he had stumbled on the greatest power known to man?

  “Señorita Montoya,” he said. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the opera tomorrow night?”

  She said no.

  And he wanted her more.

  Orquídea knew to be wary of men. Bolívar had been kind to her. Helped her escape the Buenasuerte house. But he was also too beautiful to belong to anyone. Not truly. It was a funny thing that people warned of the dangers of pretty women, that there was power in beauty. But Orquídea thought beautiful men were even more dangerous. Men were already born with power. Why did they need more? She’d been witness to girls in her school and neighborhood who fell prey to those men. They ended up the same—pregnant and penniless. Like her mother. She did her very best to resist his charm.

  Still, when she was near him, she perked up like a flower toward the sun. Bolívar Londoño III could have had anyone in the circus, but he wanted her when no one else had. Didn’t that mean something? When he looked at her, she felt every brick she’d built around her heart come crumbling down.

  Until finally, she said yes.

  Bolívar was going to be patient when it came to her. If she wanted, she could have whatever she wished. He would turn himself into a fucking genie just to make her happy. When she’d appeared at dawn, after he’d asked the heavens for his true love, she felt like the answer to every prayer he’d ever made. Fuck destiny and fuck Agustina for saying that his heart was brittle. When he was with Orquídea, it had never felt stronger. Beat harder, faster.

  Everyone in the carnival loved her. She helped Wolf Girl brush the tangles out of her hair. She made teas for Strong Man’s muscle aches. She went swimming with the Seal Boy when no one else wanted to. She listened to Agustina’s predictions without laughing. Unlike the others, she never asked for her own future to be unveiled. He wasn’t sure if she didn’t believe, or if she didn’t care. He eavesdropped one night and heard Orquídea say she didn’t need a psychic to remind her she’d been born cursed. His Orquídea. His whole heart. Cursed? He’d have none of it.

  One night, as they traveled along the French Riviera, she rode with Bolívar in his train compartment. The other performers were stuffed in cargo holds. He assured her she should not feel guilty. Her bare feet dug into the plush rugs and he filled her glass with champagne. He wanted nothing more than to kiss her. The want of it all was the biggest rush he’d felt next to performing, and he would wait. He let her ask everything her curious, clever mind wanted to know. It was like she could see through him. She knew Pedro Bolívar Londoño Asturias was a ruse, a story he’d concocted because it was what people wanted to hear. He’d come up with the name Asturias after looking at a map of Spain. He’d added the name Pedro because it sounded old, established. He wove words together that turned into mirages, but only Orquídea seemed to recognize the truth behind it. She wanted to pull his curtains back and see the fibers of his being. She prodded at him with her questions. She’d never known her father’s name, and legacy made her curious. What happened to his mother? Did he ever wonder where she was? What did he love, truly love, about this life he’d built? And he felt, for the first time, that when he gave her the answers she asked for, he couldn’t lie.

  Orquídea took in the gold painting trim, the prisms of the crystal glasses. She tucked her fine legs up on the settee. She’d begun the night on the other end, and she was slowly moving toward him like the tide.

  “How did you attain all of this?” she asked.

  “My father.” He told the story of his father and grandfather. He’d turned their misfortunes into something that could not be ignored. Something the public wanted to witness. And he’d done it all by the age of thirty. “I show people that there are true marvels in the world.”

  “I’m a marvel?”

  “No. You are divine. My Orquídea divina.”

  With her, in the privacy of his room, he was just a man. There was nothing special about the silver buttons on his shirt, there was no wax in his beard or oil in his hair. It was as vulnerable as he allowed himself to be.

  Then she closed the distance between them and kissed him. Bolívar had never been kissed this way. Slowly, carefully, as if he were the one who needed the soft touch. Like she had peered into his brittle heart and wanted to have care. She undid the silver buttons of his shirt that had always appeared like blinking stars when he was on stage. Her warm palm rested between his pectorals.

  “What’s this star on your ring mean? It’s everywhere in the Spectacular.”

  She ran her fingers along his bicep and forearm until she touched the signet ring snug on his finger. An eight-pointed star, like a compass rose.

  He hesitated, then said, “A family sigil.”

  “I’ve never seen silver so lustrous.”

  He could have lied. Said it was white gold. Platinum. But he couldn’t seem to lie to her. Not in the beginning, at least. “It’s from a star.”

  She playfully rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe him and that was all right. Maybe that was best. Letting his hand rest against the dark hair of his chest, she continued to explore him, and he sat there, a table set for her hunger. He’d never been so aware of his every breath, the uneven murmur of his heartbeat.

  “You look afraid,” she said, kneeling on the furs.

  “I’m not.” His laughter was a dark rumble because it wasn’t quite true. Bolívar had never been afraid of anything, or anyone. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was about this young woman, this girl who had never been anywhere before she’d met him. He’d watch her stand still when the lioness roared in her cage. He’d watch her laugh with glee at the storm that set upon their ship across the Atlantic. Now, with her mouth on his swollen erection, she was a lightning rod splitting him in half. And he realized that it wasn’t Orquídea he feared, but the way he lost control when they were together.

  Bolívar yanked her on top of him, pushing up her dress. His drink spilled over her and he drank it off her skin. He thought he was consuming her, but it was she who was taking from him until they were naked and tangled on the floor among the fringe and furs.

  He pulled a cushion under his chest and turned to the side to look at her. She filled her glass with what was left in the champagne bottle. Traced a cold finger along the scars on his bicep, the hard muscles of his back.

  “But how did you find all your marvels?” she asked.

  He rolled over on his back and rested a hand on his chest, grazed her leg with the other. “My father wished for them.”

  She frowned and pinched the taut skin of his abdomen. “I may be from a small country, but I’m not stupid.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “It’s not whether or not you can trust me. It’s whether you want to. If you have secrets, I swear I would never tell.”

  Bolívar weighed her words. He made a choice. “One day, my fathe
r saw a shooting star. He saw where it fell near our camp and we went in search of it. But what we found instead was a boy. A living star.”

  “Are you trying to convince me that the Living Star is real? Bolívar—”

  “The ground around him had turned into a small crater, and everything was covered in what looked like glass. Even in the night, it lit up like a prism, like water on an oil slick. I cut my finger on it.” He held up his index finger, where there was a thick scar across the pad. She kissed it.

  “Am I supposed to believe you?”

  “It’s not whether or not you can believe me. It’s whether you want to.” He climbed on top of her, caging her with his forearms. He kissed her deeply, until she unfurled her knees for him. Kissed the brown skin of her nipples, the hollow between her breasts. He wanted to consume her heart as she had done his.

  “I thought that it was a trick. Like the magicians who pull animals out of their jackets and get sawed in half. Like how you made me a mermaid.”

  He nuzzled his face into her shoulder and sank into her. He couldn’t think clearly. He wanted to drown in her. His siren. His mermaid. His answered wish of true love. “Real as you and me, mi divina.”

  She sighed. “But how?”

  “He just fell right out of the sky.”

  18

  WAIT, DO ASHES COUNT AS ORGANIC MATTER?

  Leaving Eddie and New York City further behind was easier than Rey had expected. Although, Rey had come to hate international travel. His new career had taken him to most countries in Europe where he always felt like he was the one on display rather than his paintings. Mexico and Argentina had been better, but there was an expectation, a judgement from the locals when they discovered that he didn’t know how to speak any Spanish. Once, in Buenos Aires, an art critic slaughtered him in a review because Rey had said “español” instead of “castellano.”

  Going to Ecuador did excite him. Even if he, Marimar, and Rhiannon had to get private screenings on account of the flowers protruding from their skin. The TSA agents didn’t have anything in the handbook for their peculiar body extensions, and it took five people to determine that their flowers were organic material and should be considered body modifications.

  “Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the TSA agent. “There was a woman with horns grafted into her skull. Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you the art guy from that magazine?”

  “Yup.”

  A painting hanging at the MoMA, a front cover of The New Yorker, and this guy who might as well have been a mall cop called him “Art Guy.” Rey needed to stay humble.

  Their family occupied half of the first-class cabin, a small gift from the Art Guy. While the rest of them took the opportunity to sleep on the red-eye flight, he watched the tiny screen in front of him, tracking the flight path across state and country lines, over oceans and seas. Even though his life had changed since that great and terrible day at Four Rivers, mostly for the better, he didn’t want to be the kind of person who ever took this for granted.

  Orquídea had never gotten on a plane. She’d said she walked all the way from Ecuador to the United States, but never stopped to see the sights or relax at a restaurant. “I kept going because stopping was not an option,” she’d said. She couldn’t be the kind of person who might say “I see myself living here” for fun or out of ennui. One trip had been enough for her. But Rey—he’d inherited the wanderlust she didn’t get to savor.

  She’d stayed in the valley that had seemed destined for her, and people came to her. Before he finally fell asleep, he stared out of the airplane window at the pitch-black sky, the silhouette of gray clouds, and wondered if his grandmother had ever regretted staying, because now she was rooted there, unable to go anywhere. He pictured her tree. Then a woman of twenty with a husband and a rooster charting a path that spanned thousands of miles. Why had he never before wondered who had been chasing her, and why, after everything, had he not believed that it might come for him, too?

  * * *

  Their flight landed in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s Aeropuerto Internacional José Joaquín de Olmedo. Even though Rey was the one who had actual travel experience, he and the Sullivans followed Marimar’s lead. They disembarked and followed the crowds of crying children and tired adults, the men in canary yellow soccer jerseys, the small women in black hats and long braids, the white tourists in open-toed sandals and overstuffed backpacks with hand-sewn patches that boasted of open borders and open minds, but their money was strapped to their torsos.

  Marimar watched them all and wondered if this was their first or last destination. How many were returning for good and how many were coming to visit. She was someone who had never had to go anywhere and now she was in the country where Orquídea had come from. She felt like a stranger.

  As they followed the crowd through Immigration and Customs, Marimar became more and more aware that her dead uncle’s remains were in her backpack. That Tío Félix had not enjoyed the bottomless wine service and microwaved dinner and dessert. He’d wanted to be scattered, not with his mother, not where his wife and daughter would eventually be buried, but in a country he’d never set foot in. Who was she to question his final wish?

  At Customs, Marimar stumbled her way through the questions volleyed at her by a short agent with shrewd eyes—

  Are you all traveling together? All of you? Yes, we are all one family going to the same hotel.

  Where are you staying? The hotel Oro Verde.

  How long are you staying? Three days.

  Three? What is the reason for your visit? A funeral.

  Do you have anything to declare? Wait, do ashes count as organic matter?

  Do you have the body of the deceased? In my backpack.

  That made the woman pause. Cremations weren’t common in Ecuador, apparently.

  Do you have the permits? Yes.

  The airport was a maze of its own with empty designer shops, cheap souvenirs. Families hauling mountains of luggage and screaming children. Marimar didn’t quite feel like she was in another country yet. She remembered being very little and her teacher asking them to color in the map all the places their families had traveled to. She was too young to know that there had been a before place for Orquídea, and that’s how she’d thought of Ecuador for so long. The Before place. Getting details of the Before was worse than pulling teeth. At least teeth came out eventually. This was more like trying to dislodge something buried in cement.

  She’d asked, “What was it like, Mamá Orquídea?”

  “Hot.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I had to go.”

  “Will you take me?”

  “I’ll make you a deal. If you can catch a hummingbird with your bare hands, then we’ll go together.”

  “Why a hummingbird?”

  “Do you want to make a deal or not?”

  Marimar did want to make a deal. As she tried, she could never catch one.

  Now, she thought she heard the buzz of wings by her ear, but when she whirled around, it was just a fan. Mike held on tightly to Rhiannon’s hand and she pushed her own roller suitcase, pink with several butterflies printed on the plastic shell. Sweat spread around his armpits and the center of his shirt. He covered his mouth and coughed.

  “Did you get the taxi confirmation?” he asked Marimar.

  “Tía Silvia sent it to me,” she repeated tightly. He’d been asking about the itinerary since they transferred in Houston. “She made all the reservations.”

  As they passed baggage claim, several porters tried to flag them down and get their attention, but they kept walking.

  Outside the terminal there were dozens—no, hundreds—of people waiting behind the arrivals gate. They held balloons and “¡Bienvenido!” signs. A woman holding a baby screamed as her husband dropped all of his bags and ran to them. Grandmothers were swallowed up into waiting arms, and couples devoured each other. Marimar felt a twinge in her stomach.

  “This makes me think of
the time everyone at school got singing telegrams for Friendship Day except you and me,” Rey said.

  As they waded through the crowds, Marimar tried to pull up the taxi email on her phone. She felt people turn toward them, like a slow wave. A little boy ran up to Rhiannon and tried to yank the flower from her forehead. Marimar swatted him away and he ran screaming back to his mother, who glowered at them and made the symbol of the cross over her entire body.

  “Do you think they’re wary because we didn’t bring more than carry-ons?” Rey laughed, putting on his sunglasses even though it was three in the morning.

  “Hilarious.” She stopped short of throwing her phone against the glass walls. “Roaming isn’t kicking in. Look for a sign that says Oro Verde,” she told them.

  But they weren’t exactly listening. Tatinelly was trying to help Mike with the tangled straps of his backpack and Rey was taking a selfie. Rhiannon chased after a stray balloon and Marimar ran after her. Someone asked to join Rey’s selfie and soon it was a swarm. If this was how the rest of the trip was going to go, then they would not survive. Marimar caught up to Rhiannon before she got lost in the crowds.

  “Hey, baby girl, don’t run off, okay?” Marimar said, brushing Rhiannon’s hair back. The delicate pink rose looked different. The petals’ edges were saturated pink, the color leeching from the center. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sleepy.” Rhiannon scratched at her forehead and watched the red heart-shaped balloon drift up and get stuck in the ceiling.