“Anybody?” I call.
“We’re not in Montreal anymore, babe,” Marcel mutters.
“Espagnol?” I try.
Marcel laughs. “Okay, this isn’t going anywhere. She wants to know if you’d like anything else.”
“That’s all?”
I don’t realize that I’m shouting at him until I feel the eyes of the entire charcuterie on me.
He shrugs.
“Tell her no thanks, jackass. Just the tourtière is fine.” I leave the line to find a table.
“Wait,” he calls from behind me. “You want me to call her a jackass? Really?”
I don’t turn around.
There’s only one open table. It’s right by the window, so I sling my bag over the back of the chair and sit, staring out into the depressed fairy tale. It should be beautiful, frozen branches and suspended icicles, but the sludge from the cars and deep gray of the sky paint a film of dreariness over the whole. A pang of loneliness rings through me. It makes me hate Emilio for being gone, and Marcel for being nice and mean in the same breath, and myself for being so difficult.
Marcel joins me without a word, sliding the steaming tourtière in front of me. He starts to eat, but I can only stare at my food. My food I didn’t even pay for.
“What?” he says finally. “You can’t seriously be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“You are. You’re insulted every time I help you, but then when I won’t help, I’m in trouble. Or am I in trouble for stepping in and helping?”
“You can’t be in trouble. I’m not your mother or your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never had that kind of mother or that kind of girlfriend.”
I’m a jerk. Remembering the hunger that was threatening to kill me just minutes ago, I pick up my fork and take a big bite. It’s salty. It makes my tongue curl with its perfect saltiness, and it’s so warm and filling I almost tear up. More. I need more.
I’m halfway through before the guilt creeps up my throat. I put my fork down. “Sorry.”
He doesn’t look up.
“For being a jerk,” I add.
He keeps eating only a tiny bit slower, though, and I sense his surprise. Maybe I’ve embarrassed him.
“Would you accept low blood sugar as an excuse?” I ask.
He lifts an eyebrow and mumbles, “Sure.” It feels sincere. A single word, it shouldn’t seem like a real pardon, but it does. That makes me feel bad too, though. Is he so quick to forgive because people are always asking his forgiveness, or because nobody ever does?
We eat in a warm sort of silence. He offers me a piece of cheese and prosciutto, and I lend him my knife after he drops his, but the rest is conversationless.
“That was really good,” I say as we make our way back to the car.
“Worth the drive, right?”
I nod, but I meant all of it, not just the food. Dread is starting to creep along my skin at the thought of being delivered back to my apartment. “Swimming wasn’t bad either,” I add.
“Yeah.” He pulls out of the parking lot and onto the small highway that leads back to the city. “Could’ve been worse. I could’ve had my balls crushed again.”
“Why would you even bring that up?”
“Right. Sorry. Must be some posttraumatic stress disorder thing.”
“I’m still not going to apologize for it.”
“I still didn’t think you were going to.”
“Good,” I say. Out my window rows of trees lift their skeletal arms upward like they’re praying for spring. It’s a pose of desperation, the way their skinny black limbs grasp at nothing and everything.
“Maples,” Marcel says.
“They’re kind of ghostly.”
“I guess.”
I can’t pull my eyes away from their stripped frames. To think that by the time they’re covered again I’ll be thousands of miles away should make me happy. I shouldn’t have doubt pouring into me like sand, filling every inch. Doubt feels just as fatal as hope.
“So, swimming,” he says. “You want go again tomorrow?”
I turn from the maples, but I can still feel them scraping away at the sky. “Sure.”
I’m not dreaming. I can’t be, because I’m not asleep. I’m lying in bed trying to sleep, which makes this remembering or imagining, even though it doesn’t feel like either. It feels like my subconscious is forcing me to watch a movie of its own creation. If I was inside a dream, I wouldn’t be aware of the saltiness still on my lips or feel the weight of the half-digested pig in my stomach. I’m definitely awake.
Only I’m not here. I’m in Key West. It’s a ripe orange dusk, and my fingers are laced with Emilio’s as we wander in and out of shops. It’s all clutter—kitschy souvenirs and eclectic charms—but it’s beguiling clutter. I want to look, but Emilio is leading me away from it, farther from the shops toward the thick smell of roasting meats and fried plantains. I let him.
My sisters are on the yacht, resting after too much sun and wine, and my father too, all lost in their own worlds. So Emilio and I concocted separate excuses to go into town, not that anybody was listening, and now we’re pretending this is allowed. We’re pretending that he isn’t my father’s employee and that I’m older than seventeen. We’re pretending he can pull me to him suddenly and kiss me on the sidewalk without looking around anxiously before and after.
No, I’m not asleep. This isn’t a dream, or my imagination. I remember.
I remember my green cotton sundress, limp from the humidity, and I remember that Emilio tastes like tequila. His cheek scratches my skin when he leans down to kiss my collarbone. Right there on the street, he does it like he’s allowed to, his fingers sliding under the thin green strap. The terror of it is still delicious enough to make me shiver, even now.
He lifts his head, smiling, like he only just realized where we are. He kisses my lips again, but only for a second before someone bumps into us and we break apart. I glance around us. Tourists are everywhere, tipsy and sunburned, getting louder every second.
He turns me around and we walk, this time with me in front, his hand gripping my waist. I’m sticky from the mugginess of swarming bodies. The crowd thickens around us as people spill from the shops and restaurants and tiki bars into the streets, but we aren’t part of it. We’re two cool stones in a hot river of leering, sweaty faces and groping hands. They leave their wetness on my skin, and this is when I start to feel that familiar helplessness of a nightmare.
Is this part still a memory? I don’t think so. I can’t remember. Why would I be imagining it, though?
Emilio pushes me on, farther into the crowd, but I don’t want to go this way anymore. I’m drowning in music from too many restaurants that’s no longer music but a tide of pulsing noise. The colors around me have turned lurid. I don’t trust these faces and bodies, but Emilio’s hand is like an anchor. I can’t float away.
Until the anchor lifts.
I spin around and he’s gone, swallowed up by the crowd. No. Panic fills me, tastes like salt, smells like meat sweating over a fire. I was wrong. I’m the one who’s been swallowed up by the crowd, and Emilio has delivered me to them.
The phone rings. I sit up in the dark, weak and wounded from my dream, and the imaginary betrayal. It rings again, and this time it hits me. It’s him.
I hadn’t realized—not until this moment—that I’d stopped believing he was going to call.
Fingers shaking, I pick up the phone. “Emilio.”
He sighs. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
Neither of us can speak. I’m in shock; he’s too relieved. At least I think he’s relieved. A sigh can mean other things too.
“Where were you when I called?” he asks. The heaviness of his voice startles me. It’s so severe, it barely sounds like him. “Someone picked up your phone, and I thought . . . I thought a lot of things.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know until after.”
/>
“After what? What happened?”
“Nothing.” I close my eyes. I sound like a cagey teenager trying to wiggle out of trouble.
“Something happened. Who had your phone? I could hear someone breathing into the receiver, and I’ve been sick ever since, imagining the absolute worst scenar—”
“It was only Marcel,” I blurt.
There’s no sigh this time. No gasp, no cursing, no laughter. His voice is lower and expressionless. “Why did Marcel have your phone?”
“We were hanging out. But why didn’t you call again? Or text?”
“Since when do you hang out with Marcel? I couldn’t call because I thought someone had your phone. And why did Marcel have it?”
“He didn’t,” I say. “He just picked it up when I was changing.”
“What?”
“Nothing. He . . .” I trail off, muddled and sweating. I put my hand to my cheek. I’m flushed even though my room is cold. This conversation isn’t how I imagined it would be. He’s supposed to be supplying the excuses and the apologies. I’m supposed to be forgiving him.
“What are you doing, Valentina? Why are you spending time with the brother of your father’s dead informant?” he asks. “I shouldn’t have to explain how dangerous that is—we don’t even know for sure that he’s not working for your father!”
“Marcel isn’t working for my father.”
“You sound awfully certain. Is that what he’s been trying to convince you of while you’ve been hanging out?”
“You were the one who was positive he wasn’t!”
“But that doesn’t mean I would take the unnecessary risk. If you’re wrong, and if Marcel finds anything out . . .”
I’m uncomfortably close to tears. I know what he wants me to say, but I wait for him to finish his own sentence.
“. . . he’d tell Victor.”
“But he doesn’t work for my father,” I repeat.
“If Victor finds out what we’re planning, he’ll have me killed. You know that.”
“Stop!” I feel sick. He’s right. What have I been doing? Why would I jeopardize Emilio’s safety like this? I open my eyes and stare at a strip of paint peeling off the door. If he knew everything I’d told Marcel, he’d . . . I don’t know. Yell at me. Hang up. Leave Miami. Disappear without me.
Maybe all those things.
“I know it’s hard for you to hear,” he says. “I know he’s your father and you don’t want to believe it, but that’s exactly what he’d do. He’d kill me.”
That interrupted dream comes flooding back to me. How could I even imagine Emilio betraying me when I’m the one putting him in danger?
“Valentina.” His voice is gentle now, pulling at me like fingers.
“What?”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“You can’t lose me.”
“I thought someone had taken you.”
“Nobody even knows I’m here.”
“Your father knows you’re there. Probably a handful of his employees too.”
“But Papi wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Valentina,” he says again, but this time it’s too cloying, like he’s talking to an idiot, or worse, a child. “Your father has enemies. You have to be careful—”
“Stop. I’m fine.”
We listen to each other breathe, and I imagine he forgives me for telling Marcel everything. I don’t have to actually tell him that I’ve done it. I’m sorry. He loves me. I love him. That should be good enough.
“So you’re hanging out with Marcel,” he says.
“It’s nothing. He’s been going through a rough time. After Lucien . . . he just needed a friend.”
He grunts. “Last time I checked, Marcel had plenty of friends.”
“Well apparently they weren’t the kind of friends to stick around after his brother killed himself.”
“And you are.”
He waits for me to explain, but I don’t want to. I don’t feel like justifying whatever Marcel and I are.
“I guess I didn’t realize you knew each other that well,” he says.
“We didn’t, but I was sort of there for everything. He needed someone.”
“You already said that. And I know Marcel. He’s very good at making women feel needed.”
Ha. What would he say if he knew Marcel had said the same thing about him? “He needed a friend. Why are you acting like this?”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Jealous. Like I did something wrong.”
“I’m not jealous of Marcel. And it was nice of you to offer a shoulder to cry on, but you’ve got to stop seeing him. He may not work for your father, but he knows who Victor Cruz is.”
I lie back down in my bed, the sweat-drenched T-shirt chilling my spine. I’ve never lied to him before. “But he doesn’t know who I am.”
“Are you sure?”
“We aren’t doing this again,” I say.
“He’s not the kind of guy you want to be around.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. I need to trust someone. It should be Emilio. It is Emilio. “I don’t want to talk about Marcel anymore.”
“Me neither,” he says.
“I miss you. I was so scared something had happened to you, or you’d changed your mind about leaving.”
“I haven’t. I won’t.” His voice is gentler now that the jealous glint is gone. It feels like warm sun on my skin. “I love you.”
I rest my hand on my stomach. Butterflies. Wings flap and the rest has to disappear. “I love you, too. Why didn’t you call again?”
“I told you. I thought someone had your phone, maybe had you too. I couldn’t risk calling and linking the two of us even more than we already are.”
The butterflies are still swarming and swooping beneath my hand, almost distracting me from the fact that he’s not making sense. The holes in his story are too big, though. If he really thought something bad had happened to me, he’d have figured out a way to track me down. “So why are you risking it now?”
“I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to hear your voice and make sure you were okay.”
“Oh.” I stare at the water stain, which is looking less like the Virgin Mary and more like a stingray with a twisted left fin. Calling me is too dangerous, but missing me is too painful. He must’ve called me in a moment of weakness.
“You sound disappointed,” he says.
“I’m not, but I want you to tell me you’re coming, that it’s time to leave.”
He sighs. I imagine him rubbing his temples, running a hand through his hair. “I need you to be patient,” he says.
“I am being patient. But I think I should come back.” I’ve said it before I think the words through, but instantly I know I’m right.
“What are you talking about? You can’t come back. Not now.”
“Why not? I could tell Papi running away was a mistake, then leave again with you when you’re ready to go.”
“No,” he says. “He’ll suspect something.”
“But don’t you think it’s more likely he’ll suspect something if I stay here?” My heart is beating faster now, the ideas trickling down from my brain to my fingers and toes like currents of energy. “He knows I’m here, and he knows Lucien is dead so my money is running out. If he even suspects you saw me when you were here, you’d be safer if I came home.”
“You were the one who said you couldn’t go back and pretend.”
“I couldn’t do it forever,” I say, “but I could for a little while.”
“He already knows about us, remember? That’s why he sent me up there to see if I’d rat you out. You can’t just come back and pretend like before.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll know something’s up.”
“Then I could say I came back because I missed you.”
“No.”
“Emilio, please,” I say, hating the begging in
my voice. “Just think about it for a minute.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t just about us!”
Shame burns my eyes. He’s right. I’m selfish. But he’s not being rational, either. If he thought it through, he’d see his family would be safer with me back in Miami too. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He doesn’t answer. He should say he’s telling me everything there is to tell. I might even believe him.
“What’s the real reason you don’t want me to come back?” I try again.
“It’s not safe here.” His voice is missing something. Shine. Rhythm. Feeling.
I can’t help it. I picture his eyes like they were from the slit in the closet, lifeless and cruel. “Why not?”
“Your father has enemies—”
“Enough with the enemies! I lived in that house for seventeen years, not knowing about any of it. You’re telling me I’ve spent my whole life in danger?”
“No.”
“Then why are things suddenly not safe?”
“They just are.”
I catch my breath, not sure if I want to understand. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. But don’t come back.”
“My sisters are in that house. If something dangerous was about to happen, my father would do something about that.”
“If he knew.”
I pull myself into a sitting position, gripping the phone tightly. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to your sisters.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Everything will be fine. I’ll be there soon, maybe next week even, but you can’t come here, Valentina. You can’t.”
“Tell me,” I beg, knowing he won’t. He won’t. I don’t get to know. I don’t get to make the plans or the decisions. I don’t get to choose. I have to hide and wait for my rescue. My jaw aches, and I realize I’m grinding my teeth.
“Let’s talk about where we’ll go,” he says softly.
“No.”
“Come on. You wanted to go to New Zealand, didn’t you?”
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