Blue Diablo

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 changed, 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.

A few minutes later, I felt him standing behind me. Not close enough to touch. That would raise goose bumps on my skin.

“That was the investigating officer in Laredo,” he said in a tone so neutral I heard the pain bleed through. “They found my mom’s purse.”

His stillness made me want to go to him. Right now, he wasn’t even rolling the coin, and I knew what that cost him. Just five feet, the distance from the white enamel sink to the arch leading to the parlor, but it was too far. I couldn’t take the steps that would put me within arm’s reach; I didn’t trust him, and more important, I didn’t trust myself.

“Will they let me handle it?”

That was a touchy subject. Cops always want to put everything in clear plastic bags with neat labels. Once it’s been sent to a lab, personal items often sit on shelves collecting dust. As a general rule, they don’t let weirdos like me near their stuff.

“If I have to, I can bribe the evidence room clerk.” He didn’t sound concerned.

I hung the dish towel up to dry, taking a last look at my cozy little kitchen before I clicked off the light. “So we’re going to Laredo tomorrow?”

Expressionless, he nodded. “I’d leave tonight, but I honestly don’t think I could handle the drive.”

Since it was full dark and the four hundred plus miles of highway stretching between Mexico City and Monterrey spanned some pretty desolate country, that made sense, but he never admitted weakness in the old days. He could’ve proposed we catch a flight out, but I’m sure he knew I didn’t have a valid passport. The irony of living in Mexico as an illegal alien doesn’t escape me.

“I’ll make some calls.”

First I needed someone to watch my business. I expected a couple of relatively big sales in the next few weeks and it was crucial the shop was open. I didn’t want to come back to find my life in tatters because I’d left it unattended.

I dialed Señor Alvarez up; I’d given him a cheap BenQ phone on the prepaid plan so we could stay in touch easier. His success ratio was so good, I’d taken him on as a freelance buyer, more or less. He rummaged the side streets and flea markets so I didn’t have to, and rang in on his cell phone to consult with me about job lots of merchandise.

“Bueno,” he said as I connected.

That was an interesting thing. Bueno means good or well, and people answer the phone that way here. I’d demonstrated my gabacha-ness by saying hola until I figured it out. I’m still not sure why we answer the phone like this, but there you have it.

I explained my proposition. I needed to take a business trip, but I’d offer him two hundred pesos a day and thirty percent commission on anything he sold while minding the store for me. Yes, of course I trusted him, and he was honored by the opportunity. We stroked each other verbally for a few more minutes, a practice I deplore, before we sealed the deal. Could he turn up in an hour to receive the key?

When I disconnected, I found Chance watching me. “You picked up Spanish fast.”

It was my turn to shrug. “I have a gift for languages—who knew? I’ll get the spare bedroom made up for you.”

“Can we not do that?” he asked quietly. “I don’t even know if my mother is alive, and I don’t want to lie across the hall all night, listening to you breathe.”

By then, I had clean linens in my hands. My heart slowed, and then tried to make up the extra beats all at once. “What are you asking for, Chance?”