This might only be the second time they’d met in person, but they had exchanged enough emails and conference calls over the past six weeks that Alejandro knew she wouldn’t back down until she had an answer that satisfied her.
Dropping the paper with the rendering marked Mi Cuba, he sank down into the black leather high-back desk chair, considering how best to pacify her interest. Without opening a can of worms he refused to fish with.
“Those are not for display,” he answered.
“Unacceptable.”
“Nonnegotiable,” he countered.
Her lips curved in a smug smile. “Word to the wise: When you wave a red flag like that in front of me, telling me something’s impossible, it only makes me dig in, even more determined to do it.”
Natalia’s physical stature might be a petite five feet two inches, but while working with her Alejandro had realized that her personality was large enough to fill the body of a seven-foot-plus professional basketball player. Large, commandeering, able to get the job done—well.
“Tell me your concerns,” she directed, her posture deceptively relaxed. “And I will allay them. That way we can move on with my brilliant idea.”
If he weren’t so freaked out by her suggestion, he would better appreciate her cockiness. She was good. But what she asked of him? No way.
Elbows propped on the chair armrests, Alejandro steepled his hands in front of him, considering how best to outmaneuver an outmaneuver-er like Natalia.
“Those are personal. The subject . . . she’s . . .”
He pressed his fingers to his lips, unable to voice the priceless value of the photographs without revealing more about himself than he cared to in this professional setting.
“She’s personal. She means something. To me.”
When they went their separate ways, those photographs and his memories were all he would have of Anamaría. Intimate touchstones from moments the two of them had shared together. His connection to the world, the woman, he couldn’t have.
Natalia stared at him for several seconds, her expression pensive. Then she turned the iPad around so she could view the screen again. Setting the device on her lap, she methodically scrolled through his collection. It was a mix of oldies from his and Anamaría’s youth and more recent ones since he’d been back home.
“This one,” Natalia said firmly. “This is the featured image for the People of the World collection.”
He sat forward in the leather seat, leaning across the mahogany desk to get a look at the iPad. Natalia lifted the far side, angling it for him to see better.
It was Anamaría, of course.
Walking in the Gay Pride Parade this past Sunday. Head high, shoulders tall, her long braid twisted on top of her head like a crown. The black short-shorts she wore showcasing her gorgeous legs and the white block letters on her purple tee announcing the City of Key West’s official philosophy: “One Human Family.”
In her left hand she waved a rainbow flag, the ocean breeze pulling it taut in the exact moment his Canon clicked. Her right hand tightly clasped that of Ormond Jones, her Red shift partner at the station.
The affable Black man who rode with her in the ambulance, or the Box as they affectionately called it, was 250 pounds of broad-shouldered pure muscle fueled by a good-hearted dedication to the people he served and having his shift partner’s back, on and off the job. That alone made Alejandro his fan.
On the other side of Anamaría’s partner, strode Jones’s husband, Eddie, a math teacher and track coach at Key West High. Hands interlocked, the camera had caught a moment when both men looked at each other, joy evident in their broad smiles, love shining in their glistening eyes. As she marched alongside her friends, Anamaría’s tanned cheeks plumped with her Cheshire cat beam, proudly part of a human chain proclaiming solidarity and the need for social justice.
Above their heads, a blur in the background with the camera’s focus on Anamaría and the two men, a mix of Pride flags waved in the breeze and a bystander held aloft a poster with the word LOVE scrawled in rainbow letters.
Love, respect, friendship, familia—
They swirled around and from them. Visible in Anamaría’s, Jones’s, and Eddie’s physical and emotional connections. From their linked hands to their shared smiles. The confident jut of her chin that said, I hear you. Jones and Eddie’s adoring expressions that said, Lean on me; I got you. The conglomeration of people, signs, and flags sending the clear message We’re all in this together.
Staring at the photograph, Alejandro heard her deep, throaty laughter. Felt the love shining from her golden hazel eyes.
Natalia was right. It was the epitome of his exhibition, his brand. But Anamaría’s pictures were different from the others. He saw it. Sensed it.
Putting her on display was like cutting open his chest for the world to see. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t lay himself bare before the eyes of his familia, their comunidad, complete strangers. He needed to leave with at least a little bit of his pride still intact. It was all he would have.
That and his talent.
Because he would leave. No matter how amazing his time with her had been, and despite a few ideas he had considered that might allow him to stay in Key West while working, it had become distressingly obvious at his parents’ house that him being here could very well destroy their relationship.
The memory of the argument between his parents he overheard a couple weeks ago was like an ice pick to his chest. Alejandro had left his room for a late-night glass of water when he came across his parents squared off like two prizefighters in the kitchen.
“¡Es nuestro hijo, Victor!” his mother had whisper yelled, reminding Alejandro of the times she had reprimanded him or Ernesto in the middle of mass.
It hadn’t taken him long to figure out this argument between his parents was not a minor one. Nor, it turns out, had it been their first since his return.
“I know he is our son,” his father had grumbled.
“Pues, tienes que apoyarlo,” his mom had insisted, as if simply telling her husband he had to support his son would be enough to convince him to change his ways. “¿Qué te pasa?”
“What is wrong with me?” his father had sneered. “More like, what is wrong with him, ingrato. He is too good to dirty his hands in my kitchen or serve those who come to our restaurant for food, laughter, and familiar faces? Que se vaya.”
His mother’s gasp almost had Alejandro hurrying around the partial wall separating them to ensure she was okay.
“Con cuidado, Victor. Be very careful. If you tell my son to go again, you will have to go, too.”
“Elena!” His father’s shocked voice had matched the trembling shock vibrating through Alejandro at his mother’s ultimatum.
Alejandro had stumbled back to his room dazed and dejected. He had heard his parents argue in the past. Hell, all kids did at one time or another. But this, a threat to kick his father out, that had never happened.
Alejandro had made many mistakes in his life, but he refused to be the wedge that drove his parents apart.
As it stood now, his mami was nearing two weeks of minimal conversation with his papi because of their fight over his refusal to attend Alejandro’s opening night.
A miserable development Alejandro had not shared with Anamaría because he was too ashamed that his presence had created a rift in his parents’, until now, solid thirty-five-year marriage.