THE EVENING DARKENED, AND LUZ JOGGED CAREFULLY ALONG the steep Las Monarcas streets. She slowed her pace, feeling the stress of the decline in her shins. She was good and warm, sweating and breathing hard. Her head cleared. Some perspective wasn’t far off, and the events of the past few days settled into their proper context.
She remembered the late nights spent washing dishes in the chrome kitchen of that New Orleans restaurant. The scalding water and the sauces crusted to the plates. And she remembered how Jonah would wait for her outside the service entrance. A smile, a laugh, a pair of arms. She remembered it and knew it had been real. But she could not summon the way it had felt. She could not summon the good feelings as she could summon past sorrows and fears. Those she could call forth. She could sink into despair. Cold breath in her lungs, a prickling in her fingertips, a frightening voice in the darkness. It was as if the good moments had happened to a person who no longer existed. How could she reconcile the fact that good things had indeed happened with the fact that there was no longer any evidence of them? Maybe Jonah, here in Las Monarcas, was the evidence of those good times. Then again, if she couldn’t react in the same way to his presence as she believed she once had . . . But that, she knew, was no failing of his. And so she slowed when the street leveled out at the town bus terminal. She leaned against the wall, stretched her calves. She shook her legs out and let her breath slow before she went inside.
It was a small place full of Formica chairs. The windows were smudged. Luz took a pamphlet from the ticket counter and looked at the destination and fare charts. The ticket agent, a bored young man with acne-scarred cheeks, watched her. There was no one else in line and he didn’t say anything to try to hustle her along. She turned. A pay phone, its black receiver shining with grease, was bolted to the cinder-block wall.