She chose Azul, the new, trendy Thai place Juan Carlos keeps talking about, located on a second story in Granada, a newly hip neighborhood where picturesque homes have been converted into upscale restaurants and shops, conducive for barhopping and see-and-be-seen outings. It’s a beautiful evening, the kind of evening that compels skeptics to stay in Cali. The city is blanketed by the gentle breeze that has swept down the mountainside in the afternoon and pushed the day’s heat away.
Earlier, as her grandmother lay reading in her room, the blinds closed against the afternoon sunlight, Gabriella had knocked timidly. Her grandmother’s bedroom—with its tall windows and vast bed—has always been her sanctuary, the first place she heads to when she sets foot outside the elevator doors. But in the past week, the closer she gets to Angel, the harder she studiously avoids the beckoning intimacy of this room.
Nini is surprised at the visit, her expression both apprehensive and hopeful. She’s been at a loss for the past several days, unable to outright forbid her granddaughter’s choices yet reluctant to send her packing and risk losing her entirely. She justifies her silence, to herself and to Marcus, by reasoning that she’s already lived through this once, with the unhappiest of possible outcomes. That she lost Helena when they were so at odds with each other, the unresolved issues left hanging forever, still keeps her awake at night.
“Nini,” her granddaughter says now, and in the voice she hears a question and a tentativeness that harks back to a month ago, when Nini was planning this trip, before everything went awry.
Nini puts the newspaper to one side and looks at Gabriella, trying not to appear too eager or too nervous or too anxious with this simple visit, this simple little word.
“Sí, Gabriellita?” she answers as neutrally as possible.
“I’m going out to dinner tonight?” says Gabriella, reverting to her habit of speaking in questions when she’s nervous.
“With Angel?” she adds. Swallows.
“And, I wanted him to meet you. I m-mean,” she stammers, “he wants to meet you. I wanted to know if he could come upstairs to pick me up, I mean, instead of me just going down, and you know, just say hi.”
Of all the things Nini expected to hear, she doesn’t expect to hear this, and she stares nonplussed at Gabriella, standing hopefully at her bedside, not making things right, but trying to make them better. Her first impulse is righteousness, to say she doesn’t allow people like Angel Silva into her home, and that she, Gabriella, should know her place.
She can remember another time, when divorces and illegitimate children were studiously avoided, when last names meant something—a pedigree, respectability, hard-won through generations of decent living. It has come to this: her only granddaughter asking for her blessing to sleep with a drug dealer’s son.
What would her husband have done? she wonders.
“Gabriellita,” she begins to say, and sees the doubt she’s feeling already reflected in her eyes. She goes with her heart then, because her conscience is tired of arguing. “Of course. Bring him up. I would love to meet him.”
“My grandmother would like to meet you,” she tells Angel over the phone, an hour before he’s scheduled to pick her up.
“Really?” he blurts out, frankly shocked.
“Yes, really,” she says with a smile in her voice. “Don’t worry, nothing formal, just a little hi, how are you. Encantado. You know?”
“Why does she want to meet me?” he prods, mulling over this sudden turn of events. From the onset it’s been quite obvious that Gabriella wants to hide him from her family, a fact that for him is par for the course, but that he increasingly resents. That uptight cousin, for example, who thought nothing of going to his house and drinking his booze and fondling his friends, but looks the other way when they run into each other. He’s tempted to send a couple of his guys on him, just for fun.
“Well, she wants to meet the man her granddaughter is dating!” insists Gabriella. “I think that’s pretty normal, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he says nonchalantly, although he doesn’t feel nonchalant. He feels—he admits to himself—overjoyed, but also leery, as if he’s about to be tricked.
“Sure,” he says again hesitantly. “I’ll just get there a little early.” He pauses to give himself time to think. “Do I call you when I arrive?” he asks timidly.
“No,” she says. “Just tell the guard you’re coming to see me, he’ll tell you where to go.”
Angel hangs up his cell phone slowly. He’s going to meet his girlfriend’s grandmother. Girlfriend. She is a girlfriend. For the first time in months, he wishes he had a confidant other than Julio. For the first time in years, he wishes he had a mother, an aunt, someone other than Chelita, to run this by.
But Chelita is what he has. “Chelita!” he shouts from his bedroom, but Chelita, tuned to her perpetual TV, doesn’t answer.
“Chelita!” he shouts again, walking into the kitchen, turning the set off.
“What, what?” she cries, startled, because Angel never screams.
“I’m going to meet Gabriella’s grandmother,” he says with no preamble.
Chelita looks genuinely puzzled. She’s an expert in the complexities of class structure, as shown on the soap operas she tirelessly watches on TV. But it has never occurred to her that her Angel, as rich as he is, could be ostracized. “What do you mean, Angelito? You haven’t met her yet?”
To his dismay, he blushes, feeling a wave of embarrassment sweep over him.
“No.” He’s going to give her the explanation, then stops, because he can’t bring himself to say it out loud, especially not to her. “No,” he says lamely. “We just never had time.”
“Well, put something nice on, mi niño. Take her some flowers. That would be nice,” Chelita offers with a smile. “Why are you so worried? She’ll love you! How couldn’t she?” Chelita says, looking at him with such genuine love, he impulsively goes to her and hugs her, as he used to do when he was a little boy, helping her cut up the dough for empanadas in the kitchen.
“That’s a good idea, Chelita,” he says gratefully, glad in the end that he interrupted her show.
He goes with the most classic, most generic outfit he can think of: jeans, a starched white linen shirt, and a blue blazer that hides the gun he keeps tucked behind his belt. He sends Julio for flowers, almost going for an outrageously expensive orchid before settling for the safe two dozen long-stemmed roses.
In the elevator, he cradles them in the crook of his arm, adjusting his shirt collar, stamping his feet to make sure the hems of his jeans haven’t bunched up around his ankles.
When the elevator door opens, directly into the apartment, Gabriella is waiting for him, wearing the short red dress she adores and would have worn the night she met him had she stood her ground then. She leads him in by the hand, kissing him chastely on the cheek, doing all the things that nice girls do when their nice boyfriends come to visit, a vignette so normal it constricts his throat with how alien it seems to him, like a movie he’s paid to see.
“Wow, for me?” she says delightedly, reaching out for the flowers.
“No, no,” he says firmly. “For your grandmother.”
“Well, how nice,” she says, letting a touch of awe and pleasure slip into her voice.
From the hallway, Nini stands silently watching, taking in how tall he is, how assured he looks next to Gabriella’s height. And how Gabriella literally sparkles in his presence, how the color of her skin rises, how she tosses back her hair when she puts her hand on his arm, how wrapped up they look in each other’s presence. Helena never reacted like this to Marcus, or Juan José for that matter. She was always looking beyond what she had, always thinking she had missed out on something. Had it not been Juan José, Nini now acknowledges, it would have been someone else, and afterward, maybe someone else again. Nini shakes her head, resigned, composes her face, and smooths down the jacket of her fuchsia suit.
“Buenas, buenas,” she says now, stepping into the foyer, extending her hand with the relaxed practice of a socialite who can turn graciousness on at the drop of a hat.
“Doña Cristina,” he says politely, shaking her hand firmly, not kissing her, she notices appreciatively—kissing strangers is something she tolerates but doesn’t take kindly to—and instead proffering her the roses, beautiful roses, handpicked from Impoflores, she can tell from the pink cellophane, the most expensive florist in town.
“I never knew Gabriella had such a beautiful grandmother,” he says sincerely, and despite herself, she feels flattered.
It surprises her that he’s not awkward or gauche or tacky. But it surprises her more, when she looks up into his green eyes to thank him for her roses, how tenuous his comfort is, how anxious he is to make things right. She wants to ask him who taught him how to dress, how to act, how to say the right things and bring the right gift and look at her with just the right blend of gallantry and respect.
“Won’t you stay for a drink?” she asks impulsively, startling herself, startling Gabriella more, startling him completely.
He thinks of the reservation, of the table on hold, just for him.
“We’re running late, Nini,” Gabriella says swiftly, stepping in. “But maybe another night?” she adds hopefully, a little incredulously.
“We must do that,” says Nini briskly. “Perhaps tomorrow? After the bullfights?”
Gabriella looks at Angel inquisitively, a look of unequivocal trust that Nini takes in calmly. This is how she used to look at her husband, she realizes with sudden wonderment, and she wonders just how far this relationship between her granddaughter and Angel has already gone.
“That would be a pleasure,” says Angel calmly, smiling his beautiful lopsided smile, somehow managing to look grateful and happy and composed.
“Well then,” says Nini, even as she wonders if she’s making a big mistake, “I’ll be expecting you.”