Color me intrigued. There’s no way I’m walking out of here without knowing more.
“What’s so special about her?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated.” He picks up his cell and keys and moves to follow me out of the apartment. “I need your word on this as well, Joseph.”
“Then give me a hint, and I’ll back off.”
“I owe my past a favor,” he says grimly. “And the bitch just came to collect.”
12
Anna
We spend the rest of the day sweeping up glass and tossing broken chairs into the small yard behind the storeroom. Vi doesn’t say much. She doesn't share with me who she thinks trashed her place, but she knows more than she’s letting on. There’s an anger bubbling away inside of her. It’s there in the way she catches her tongue between her teeth as she sweeps the tiles; it’s building up behind her dark eyes like a gathering storm on the horizon. Any minute now, the sky will crack and the truth will come raining out of her.
Whoever did it left a note behind on the mess of her counter, crumpled-up and soaked in aguardiente. No words—just an insignia of a green and black viper with fangs dripping blood. Vi tried to scrunch it up and throw it in the trash before I could take a look at it, but I can be super quick like that. Even so, we stuck to our respective narratives. I’m here to fade away, not burn bright with questions.
Dusk starts creeping in through the open back door, followed by a couple of stray dogs. By then, we’ve managed to restock the top shelves, and all the rescued chairs and tables have been set right with clean ashtrays.
“You want that beer now?” she asks, throwing her cleaning cloth down on the counter and wiping the sweat from her brow. She tied her black hair into a ponytail about the same time her makeup sweated off a few hours ago, but her feisty vibe is still very much front and center.
“Sounds great.” I watch her flick the sign on the door to ‘open’, even though we haven’t had a single customer all day.
“Two cold Costeñas coming right up.”
She leans over the bar as I bend down to pet the black and white stray weaving in and out of my legs. My back is killing me and my palms are rough with blisters, but I find I don't mind these new aches. They’re self-inflicted. I earned them. I didn’t entice them. I didn't tease and beg, or suffer for them.
She watches me as I run my hand up and down the dog’s rail-thin spine and coo nonsense at him. “You’re good with animals,” she says, waving an untapped bottle in my face.
“I used to volunteer part-time at a shelter in Miami.” I straighten up with a wince.
“I can see you doing that,” she muses.
“In another world. In another life...” I glance toward the back door. The warm air is alive with the sound of grasshoppers and pauraques, and with unfamiliar smells. Like always, my eyes automatically reach for the sky. “Which way is west?” I ask her.
She joins me on the back step and points her bottle to the right. That’s when I see it—cruising low on the horizon—caught between the light and the dark. It’s not the moon I’m searching for, but it doesn't feel quite so alien to me tonight.
“What are you hoping to see up there?” jokes Vi. “The US colors?”
“It’s a waxing crescent,” I tell her, taking a sip of my beer. “It's the first phase toward a full moon. It’s a glimpse, a sliver, but it’ll be gone again by midnight.”
“Are you an astronomer as well as a bartender and an animal whisperer?” she says, sounding impressed.
I shake my head. “More like a super-amateur selenologist. Thanks for the beer.”
“Thanks for helping me clean up the mess.” She glances back at the bar to avoid my unspoken questions.
“Tell me about your aunt,” I say, sinking down onto the step. “Do you have any cousins?”
“I did, but we lost them to the war on drugs.” She settles down beside me, the heat of her body a sweetener to her sad revelation. I watch her pick at the label on her bottle with her ruby-red nails. “Matias and Manny,” she says. “Matias was caught in a crossfire in Bogotá, five years ago. He was sixteen. A baby. A local trafficker offered him a quick paycheck, and he forgot to ask questions first. We buried Manny last year. This is—was his bar. Afterward, I moved back to Colombia and picked up the debts he’d forgotten to pay. It’s just me and my aunt now, but she lives six hours away…”
It’s an opening for me to ask more, but to do so would mean offering up something in return. I’m not ready for that yet, so we take the next couple of sips in an easy silence instead; the waxing crescent gleaming bright in the sky like the crack in the door she just gave me.
After a while, I steer us toward safer territory.
“What did you study in the US?”
“How to avoid getting a job.” She laughs and stretches out her long legs in front of her. “I learned how to surf and I developed an appreciation for social media and gel nails. And I loved designing my own tattoos.” She offers me her shoulder so I can appreciate the detail up close.
“Did it hurt? How long did it take?”
“Long enough for me to smoke about four-hundred dollars’ worth of weed.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. It’s a strange sound, a not-quite-hollow sound. A sound I’ve missed. “Do you have any other tattoos?”
“Just some script on my hip. I’d love to add more roses, but I’d need some serious money for that. It’s never gonna happen if people keep wrecking my bar.”
There’s that cue again, and whether it’s the evening, the moon, the beer or my laugh, this time I bite.
“Do you think it’s the same men who made you fly to Miami with the coke?”
She drains the last of her beer and wipes her mouth. “Yeah.”
“Is it to do with your cousin’s debt?”
“Something like that...” She glances back at the bar again. “This is just more of his heavy-handed persuasion tactics.”
“Persuasion for what?”
“To get me to suck his dick in exchange for a debt extension.”
My stomach lurches in horror.
“What did he do to you in the SUV, Vi?”
“He tried to sell it, but I wasn’t buying.” She rolls her eyes at me, but she keeps tugging at the hem of her dress in a mirror movement from earlier. The crude details are all there, from her subtle shift in position to the re-crossing of her legs.
The strength of my reaction catches me off guard.
When will they ever stop?
“Men are so fucking talented at making your refusal to screw them the greatest imposition in the world,” she carries on with a grin, as if it’s not affecting her as much as I know it is. “It’s like you just stabbed their mother and spent all of their—”
“What if they never gave you an option?”
My admission slips out, and hangs heavy and dirty next to the moon.
Vi looks shocked. More shocked than she should be when a Colombian drug lord is moving in ever-decreasing circles around her with the same intention.