by Ann Aguirre
“Let me have your hand.” Delicate as butterfly kisses, he smoothed salve over my skin where scars crisscrossed until you couldn’t tell where one stopped and others began. The unguent soothed immediately, numbing the worst of the trauma. After all this time, I didn’t let myself consider it might be his touch; he’d always been able to make the top of my head tingle with just a fingertip.
“Thanks.”
I prefer handling textiles, where I feel like the item is afire in my hand but it never actually catches, and I don’t wear new marks afterward. But over the years I’ve been offered a lot of metal: rings burning in concentric circles, bracelets leaving welts, and larger items doing damage that it took a doctor to treat.
Why had I done it for so long?
Clients never did understand why I wouldn’t handle multiple objects the same day, why they had to pay for a second consultation. I have a pretty high threshold for pain, but that’s just beyond me, by and large. On occasion, I’ve pushed myself to two and effectively crippled both hands.
I won’t do that unless it’s dire; the last time it was to try to find an eight-year-old girl yanked out of her own yard. The swing was still moving when her mama missed her. They found her alive because of Chance and me. We did some good, back in the day, and it helps offset what came later.
Once upon a time, he fed me soup and ice cream after we saved the kid. We’d watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s in bed. He had a weakness for Audrey Hepburn, for polished, elegant women, and I never knew what he saw in me. He used to act like he could read my future in my ruined lifeline. I wondered what he saw now, bent over my palm.
At length he raised his head and folded my fingers back. My heart remembered how he used to pretend he was sealing up a kiss for me to save for later. It hadn’t all been bad or I wouldn’t have stayed so long.
We stared at each other, more than the expanse of a glass case between us.
The Devil Makes a Deal
“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?” Chance, vulnerable—that was something I’d seen only a handful of times in the three years we were together. This time, it might actually be genuine, and to cover my uncertainty, I took a sip of my Coke.
“I thought I just did.” I felt surprised I could sound so cold, particularly where his mother was concerned.
My burned palm tingled in anticipation of what he would ultimately ask me to do. Sure, he’d hem and haw, try to charm his way around asking outright, but the fact of the matter was, he intended to use me to follow her trail. I’m not a human bloodhound, so it’s stupid and awkward, but we’ve done it successfully four times before, including the salvation of that little girl, and the need had never been this personal.
“Not what I meant.” He tried on the old smile with a cock of his head, and I found it no longer rendered me witless.
“I know.” My answering smile felt touched with melancholy as I moved from behind the counter to flip the sign on the door to CERRADO. I surprised a mustachioed man on his way in, and Señor Alvarez offered an apologetic look, clutching a red plastic bag. He was a slight man of indeterminate age, always clad in tan pants and a white undershirt.
His murmured accent sounded strange, the singsong Spanish native to Monterrey. The peddler hadn’t been in Mexico City much longer than me, and he glanced at Chance curiously from heterochromatic eyes. “Lo siento, Señorita Solomon. Usted está generalmente abierta a esta hora.”
Chance probably wouldn’t know Alvarez was just observing that I’m usually open at this hour. I knew a flicker of satisfaction while I conducted business in functional Spanish. I’ll never be a poet in this language, but I was capable of making an offer for whatever Señor Alvarez had in the sack. It’d be good too. In the eleven months he’d been bringing odds and ends to my shop, I’d noticed he had a knack for finding things I wanted.
Today he’d brought me a pair of gorgeous silver candlesticks crafted in Taxco. When I recognized the artisan’s mark, I knew they’d fetch two thousand pesos in an antiques auction, not that they’d ever see such a thing. Unless I was grievously wrong, they’d wind up gracing the dining room of an elderly lady from New Hampshire, who would reckon them a steal next week at a thousand pesos and rightly so.
We haggled a little because he had some idea of their worth, but in the end, he took four hundred and an ice-cold Coke. “Thank you for your time and again, I am sorry for the interruption,” Señor Alvarez said in his schoolmaster’s Spanish, letting himself out.
I followed, turning the bolt behind him as a precaution. The peddler was already too curious about Chance, who stood quiet during the negotiations, but I could tell he didn’t like being out of the loop. Without speaking, I snagged my drink and passed through an arch that led to my private staircase at the back of the building.
I have a small apartment that occupies the second and third stories above my shop. Sometimes it looks as if my junk is overflowing from downstairs because I don’t respect the fire safety code and I store stuff in the stair—well, line the walls with opened crates and stacked paintings. Some of it I’ve acquired on my own and some I inherited from the old woman who sold me the Casa de Empeño for less than it was worth. Mostly she just wanted to join her sister in Barra de Navidad and get out of the capital before the election. Since the protesters closed down Reforma Avenue this summer, I couldn’t blame her.
Chance followed me, touching this and that with feigned curiosity. He wasn’t interested in the oddments of the new life I’d built from the wreckage of the old. I’m sure it looked shabby to him, the crumbling white plaster, steps covered in a black vinyl runner. The second story housed my living room, a dining alcove, a half bath, my kitchen, and a small balcony complete with flower box. When I first saw it, I thought it charming, like the boudoir of a working girl in some old Western. Like the store, the bi-level apartment was cool and dim, the windows barred with black iron.
On the third floor, I had a surprisingly luxurious bathroom with an old-fashioned claw foot tub and two bedrooms, the second of which I used as an office. It had a single bed, but right then it was buried beneath a shipment of good pottery, as I hadn’t decided what I’d sell and what to give the woman next door for her Tuesday market stall.
I decorated the place in handmade rugs and wall hangings in bright colors and Aztec patterns, although the traditional shrine and painting of the holy mother was conspicuously absent. The only holy mother I acknowledge gave her life for me when I was twelve; her name was Cherie Solomon. You might say I’ve been at war with God ever since.
It’s funny. While she was alive, I never acknowledged that we were different. I don’t reckon I knew.
Other kids in my school had daddies that went missing; it wasn’t that rare. But other families in Kilmer didn’t observe Beltane by jumping a bonfire or putting out food for the dead on All Hallows’ Eve. Other girls didn’t read the ABC Book of Shadows while their mamas made candles that could bring back an old love.
From the beginning, she made sure I knew there were bad things out there, scary things, things that shouldn’t exist. She cautioned me. Warned me. But I never questioned that Mama weighed in on the light side. Maybe she had some inkling of what was to come; I don’t know.
And I never will. At this point I wouldn’t believe it if somebody told me they’d gotten a hold of her, or that she had a message for me from beyond the grave. Because I suspect she gave everything she had, everything she was, in her final working. I think Mama meant to imbue me with all her magick, but somehow it only ever manifests in one way: the Touch. Maybe that’s all my limited mind can manage.
But I’ll never know whether that’s right either.
“Great place,” Chance said finally.
I dropped down into the fancifully carved armchair, serpents and feathered gods at my feet. Done in turquoise and crimson, its upholstery didn’t match anything else in the room, but that was sort of the point. He struck the only somber note, a dark scar against the otherwise cheerful
ly raucous decor.
And hadn’t that always been the case? We’d always been the raven and the peacock, possibly with all inherent mythological connotations. He sat as he did everything, carefully, not disarranging the satiny profusion of couch cushions I’d thrown in a fit of artistic glee.
In this light, he looked weary. He probably was if he’d come straight from Monterrey, a ten-hour haul for me, nine if you drove like Chance. I didn’t like the tug that made me want to push back the crow-wing hair that tumbled over his forehead.
I ignored his comment about my apartment. That was mere filler, as he waited for me to cut through the bullshit. That too was typical.
“I know what you want from me.” I sat forward, elbows on my knees. “The question is, what can you offer me in return?”
“You can’t be so cold,” he bit out. “This is my mother we’re talking about. She loved... loves you.”
“True. But you’re asking me to return to a life that was killing me,” I told him as gently as I could manage. “Maybe this is hard to grasp, but I’m happy, Chance. Sweeten the pot—make me an offer I can’t refuse.”
Maybe it made me a coward, but in all honesty, I didn’t want him to. I wanted a reason to send him away; his problems weren’t mine anymore. I didn’t want to be the solution. I’d wanted out eighteen months ago, bad enough to sneak away in the dark.
His eyes turned hard as amber with something old frozen in their depths. “Who the hell are you? You’re not the woman I loved.”
I smiled then. “Back in the day, I half killed myself trying to please you—and nearly did, that last time. And all you cared about was the next payday. You never once suggested I stop, that it was hurting me—”
“If I didn’t love you,” he said tightly, “I wouldn’t have let you go. I was awake when you kissed me good-bye, Corine. So don’t tell me what I felt or why I did the things I did.” He broke off, his jaw set.
That rocked me. The past rearranged itself in my mind’s eye like a jigsaw puzzle I’d put together wrong. Remembering the intensity, which I ascribed to the rush of completing a job, I realized he’d known it was the last time. I saw our bodies straining, our skin like rayed satin. Saw his back arch, his mouth coming down to mine. He’d kissed me as he rarely did during sex, hot and open, like he wanted to suck all the taste from my mouth.
Afterward, I saw him lying in the rumpled bed, arm draped over his forehead. Feigning sleep so I could go. He lay there, silent, hearing the sounds that meant I was leaving him forever. He lay there, quiet, accepting my Judas kiss.
Did I hurt him? For the first time, I wondered, marveling I might have the power. I’d decided that to him, I was nothing more than the goose that laid the golden egg—with benefits. Or maybe this was just more of his bullshit, wrapped around the fact that he was awake when I left. I tried to steel myself, but I’d already convinced him I was iron.
“Fine,” he said. “Revenge is what I offer. You want the people who did your mother. You know why I refused to look before.” His smile flashed, bright and unwelcome as a paparazzi camera. “But if I turn my luck to it, we’ll find them. And then you can make them pay however you choose.”
Chance had always insisted bad things would come if he turned his luck down dark ways. The years we were together, he never gambled for the same reasons I didn’t work on commission. But with him, you never knew what was real, what was smoke and mirrors.
This was an old crime, more than fifteen years gone. The mob that converged in Kilmer had long since changed jobs, wed, divorced, and begat children, but he could help me find the answers I craved. Maybe I should have let it go long before now, forgotten the sounds and smells, but letting things go wasn’t part of my makeup. I still wanted justice. They should pay for what they’d done.
It wasn’t right they’d gotten away with murder and changed me from a nice, normal girl who wanted nothing more than to ride her pony.
My mouth suddenly felt dry. “You can deliver that? You’ll turn your luck to it?”
West of Normal
He looked momentarily disgusted with me, as well he might. Forget diamonds; promises are forever. A select few realize that, and that’s why Chance always tried to wheedle his way out of giving his word, always tried to leave himself a back door.
“I swear,” he said deliberately. “I can and will. But we find my mother first.”
That was fair. Justice had waited fifteen years. It would wait a little longer, like the thing that sleeps beneath the Hudson Bridge.
With a sigh, I gave in. Chance was back in my life for a while and I had to live with it, at least until we found Yi Min-chin.
“Hungry?” I asked, like it had been a couple of days, not a year and a half.
“I could eat.”
We both smiled because he always could. I went into the kitchen and he trailed close on my heels, leaning on the counter while I buttered the pan for some quesadillas. The right recipe for them includes homemade tortillas (which I buy at the corner comedor along with my rice and beans) and good Oaxaca cheese. I heated the former and then I served the food on mismatched ceramic plates with a bowl of fresh salsa.
There’s certain fluidity to it as a condiment; you can add pepper, cilantro, and onion according to taste, chop everything fine or leave it chunky. I’ve sometimes thought you might be able to read a person’s mood according to how they make it and wondered what mine said about me as he scooped it neatly onto his tortilla. After one bite, he augmented his quesadilla with a spoon of rice and beans. Noting his appetite, I decided he was worthy of guacamole, so I fetched the container from the fridge.
The sun had gone while we talked before, and it set over the rooftops in a gentle pink haze as we ate. Some women put a clothesline on the roof, but I have a small garden, something I never dared before. I was afraid of putting down roots, afraid of committing to anything I couldn’t pack on ten minutes’ notice. The plants made this place home.
“How long do you suppose we’ll be gone?” I asked eventually.
Chance shrugged. He’d always been able to pack more meaning into that gesture than most college professors could in a thousand-word essay. I’d once found it charming.
After inhaling five quesadillas, he pushed his plate back. I saw him looking everywhere but at me, taking in the whimsical, hand-painted marble iguana tiles inset along the plaster. I thought they were marvelous; he’d probably call them tacky.
“Remember the day we met?”
I nodded. “I was working at the dry cleaners and you forgot your keys.”
“You knew they were mine,” he said with remembered wonder. “I took two days getting back there, and you didn’t even wait on me the first time, but before I said a word, you handed them over.”
“And you knew I was somewhere west of normal.”
“Special,” he corrected in that voice, giving me that look.
My spine tried to turn to oatmeal and I felt like I needed to get a continent between us. “Don’t. Don’t do that. I already agreed to help. Just... don’t ruin my life. Please.”
Being Chance, he made the predictable leap. “Are you seeing someone?”
I had to laugh. “If I refuse to sleep with you, there must be someone else? Don’t you ever get tired of lugging that ego around?”
“I bought a wheelbarrow.”
“Not a little red wagon?”
“It wouldn’t take my weight,” he said, prim as a vicar.
I wanted to laugh, the sheer pleasurable audacity of him washing over me. For a moment, I considered the furtive encounters over the last year, men who didn’t want to know my real name or what I thought about. Then I realized he might take that for validation—if I wasn’t seeing someone, it had to be because I couldn’t find anyone to fill his shoes. That was irritatingly true; his only flaws were that he was too ambitious (that one nearly killed me) and he took himself too seriously.
Now, as he joked with me, it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d change
d, but I was afraid to believe in him. Chance could spin anything, and I didn’t want to be gullible. Not when I’d walked away and made it stick. I didn’t want to be a woman who went back to the man who hurt her.
I stood then and started clearing the table. When I bent to collect his plate, he flinched from me. Gawking, I hovered until he waved me back, but his tiger’s eyes blazed in his brown face, stripes of verdigris and amber gilded by the setting sun.
He sounded hoarse. Raw. Not polished, not perfect. “You’re still wearing it.”
I was. But then, he’d always possessed a sharper than average sense of smell. This morning I daubed on Frangipani Absolute after my shower, just a whisper at throat and wrists, because my supply was running low, and I didn’t look likely to take a trip to London to replenish anytime soon.
In his eyes I saw his memory of that vacation. I was blond then and we’d run across Old Bond Street in Mayfair, laughing in the rain. Well, I laughed; he was annoyed at ruining a perfectly good overcoat. But he was beautiful with the droplets beading on his skin. I’d wanted to lick them up, one by one. Still did, really, but I’d learned Chance wasn’t good for me, like too many sweets.
Of course that didn’t stop me from eating a box of doughnuts when the craving struck.
The idea of tasting Chance made me shudder from head to toe.
I hadn’t wanted to go into the perfumery, where even the shop girls looked posh. I swore they’d see the red Georgia dirt ground into my skin. Though I felt gauche and out of place, he wanted something to commemorate the occasion and bought me a ridiculously expensive scent that made him close his eyes in bliss.
When he opened them, he’d said simply, “It smells like you.”
Of course I was still wearing it.
My tongue felt thick as I tried to work out what to say. I finally settled on: “Yes.”
What he would have said, I’ll never know because his cell rang. Looking apologetic, he answered (he’d once taken a call while receiving a particularly artful blow job). That too was vintage Chance, and I scurried like a nervous gerbil back to the kitchen, where I occupied myself washing up the few dishes I’d dirtied.