XIII

The Things a Young Woman Must Consider

Baldo is a boy and worse. You can’t very well call him a simpleton in all things, because in some ways he exceeds the insight and skill of most men. Experience is limited in a young woman like Lyria, but she suspects few people anywhere can commune with little turtles as well as Baldo can. She suspects him gifted as well with his sexual skills.

Granted, he is of the tireless age, but he is more, so slow and deliberate and sensitive to a young woman’s needs. He makes eerie sounds and sometimes wants to commandeer awkward positions, but that’s only an effort to ape his hero. Lyria wants to keep this phase of experiential data collection simple, straightforward, and concise, and she maintains authority quite easily, given her superior age and wisdom.

Okay, so she allowed an ear-grab once to see what there was to see but will not try it again. For one thing, it doesn’t work so well. With his pinga pointing skyward and him squeezing her ears, nothing fits properly. No, lying down is the only way. Besides, what’s to see? A scenic coastal drive this is not. Please, leave my ears alone. For yet another thing, she will not do that again. It is disgusting and made her gag, and riding the tapioca flood, Baldo shrieked like a monkey, wild with flailing and flopping.

Well, a girl can learn certain things only by experience. Now she knows. She might try these things again, but only with the man who takes her for a wife. Short of marriage, she might consider these contortions with he who is willing to keep her in a casa chica. In either case, repetition will not be with Baldo; he is so far removed from the practical world.

This interlude is merely an experimental phase for all parties concerned, because experience is the best teacher. But who is she kidding? Who would take a woman for a wife when everyone knows she is soiled? Antonio will not. On this we can depend.

She briefly considers enticing Antonio shamelessly to the ficky fick, but he’s too smart. Even if she succeeded, he has only to count the months. But maybe if he becomes very drunk. Well, maybe, we shall see. We can only be certain at this point that the little fling with Baldo will not survive the experimental phase. He is crazy. Le patina el coco. He could hold his head in one hand and a coconut in the other and not know the difference. Worse yet, he is a boy who needs constant supervision.

Already the line is drawn ending his nightly indulgence, except for last night, because he really is very good, and once a young woman knows certain things, she can’t very easily forget, as if she doesn’t know. She knows; yet knowledge comes at no less expense than originally paid by Eve with her apple and Adam with his serpent.

The lesson was there all along; no sooner is knowledge acquired than it reveals vast ignorance. The simple question rising from the ashes of recent experience asks what a woman can do now. A gawky fellow with huge hands and many teeth on TV assures her that she can do anything she imagines with a properly directed mind. He will direct for her if she attends his seminar for only nine thousand pesos, which seems out of the question, even though Lyria knows where to find the down payment. It’s in the jar under the dirty clothes Antonio keeps in the corner. Well, she could borrow it and then pay it back, once she gets direction and some money coming in.

But what good is guidance for a woman big with a child? No good at all is the answer, because the condition is a direction all its own that will not detour to whim or fancy. Of course there is the other, but abortion would haunt her the rest of her life. Then again, a child would haunt equally with far more needs, unless of course she was married to a proper husband to support her and the baby.

But she is not.

And an abortion would be known by herself and the church and by Rosa too, which seems altogether too much to bear for now.

Well, a raven-haired beauty with big, dark eyes and a figure as svelte as the disco dancers on TV should need no seminar to test her fortune. The world demands maximum efficiency in resource utilization. This is the fallow field waiting only for sowing. The village may not be optimal for testing potential, but then what is a girl to do, ride the bus to Mexico City, where beautiful women abound on every corner? No, she can test things at home, where failure is easier to absorb.

So she shortens the hem of a rayon dress and tries it on with no brassiere, which might have worked on a bold day before the swelling, but not now. Except of course it works very well to heighten the drama of the presentation and erase all doubt on potential, once the mind is properly directed to the objective at hand. She’s not yet lactating and does want to measure the market that is the real world.

So why not?

She has no reason not to proceed, and besides, she will not be a prostitute, never that. She only wants to test the water, so to speak, for a relationship acceptable on practical terms. Prospects for a young man of wealth and gentility would be greater in Mexico City, but there is time enough for that if this works. In the meantime several more months as a maid will help with a down payment on the trip. The focus for now is faith that a big fish will take the bait. Besides, testing skills in the city would require new equipment, like a brassiere and shoes. Staying home represents savings for now.

She shaves her high thighs, shins, and armpits smooth as peach skins. She hurries, because a girl with a few more months knows that the swelling is relentless, one week to the next. Still, she takes time in applying her resources, conveying warmth to a world in need of warmth, to assure perfect strangers of her weakness for sweets and liquor, and of course comfort and security. Who can know what luck will bring before time runs out, and life will be foregone?

So she eases seams here and there and squeezes in. Make no mistake; heads will turn to see such a woman with no brassiere. Natural beauty will lure them in. Just look: slowly twisting before the mirror as Mrs. Mayfair did, hips forward, she draws the skimpy dress tight across the chichis.

She reaches up as if to hail a cab, bends over to pick up two hundred pesos and saunters casually down a street.

The mirror gives back with each practiced pose the riches so critical to a young woman in a bind.

Oh, she will be seen; visibility is a given. The problem will be the billy goats and geezers. How can a girl know who is which? Not that a billy goat or geezer can’t have the money to keep such a prize, but a younger man with nice looks would be so much better. That’s another thing; how much money will it take? The hotel pays a hundred a day to clean rooms.

But what difference does that make? Can that compare to cleaning a man’s tubes? Is a thousand a day too little or too much? Certainly a handsome man with a nice body could keep a prize for less. But where does a girl start the bidding?

And how does she hook the right fish, since she really doesn’t know the difference between trolling with a lure and dragging a net? She does want a young one, but he should be old enough to have the money worked out, and it should show, the money, the manners, and the gentle touch, like Antonio.

She smiles sadly and struggles against the tears, realizing he would not qualify because he has no money for a casa chica and his manners are those of an exhibitionist. But he can be gentle, and something feels terribly lost.

Does her pain rise from the love between them that will never be? Does the child they would have made but is now displaced by the taller, lankier seed sadden her? How can such harm come from one moment of weakness? If her back itches, and she can reach it, should she not scratch? That’s all it was.

Except of course it was more, allowing the brother of her beloved to put his pinga between her legs. But what could she do? More than twenty years old already and practically serving her luscious self on a platter to a fool who remains spent on a gamy old gringa.

Well, looking back in sadness is for those who don’t mind turning into salt, which is not the case for Lyria Elena Alvarez, who learned at a tender age that tenderness is for those with the basics provided. The rest must look ahead, only ahead. Now she is providing for two, maybe three, or will it be four?

No, she will never let that happen.

Baldo will not be her ward but will remain his brother’s charge. Maybe some weakness in this time of drawing the line didn’t hurt anything more than it’s already hurt, but now the experience will stop. Well, maybe it won’t stop, but it will go in a new direction. Maybe it was only natural between a ripe young woman and a quite naturally beautiful young man, but it changed everything, and he also happens to be demented or criminally insane or something other than normal.

So yes, it must stop. And I mean stop, not tomorrow or next week but right now, without even fifteen minutes’ notice, which is really all it takes if you don’t count the time he needs to worry like a woman over his little turtles when such a hot dish could well be cooling. No, it will stop now, because it’s been enough. Well, maybe not enough, but enough of him and enough for now.

A young woman has enough of stumbling over sevens and eights every step of the way without an imbecile and his buckets of turtles to worry about. She doesn’t even have the right shoes. What can she wear? Maid shoes that look like nurse shoes with their wedge heels and chalk white color? Or huaraches? New shoes will cost a hundred pesos, two hundred if they’re to last.

These and other concerns accompany Lyria two blocks to the shoe store, where life and love take a breather for new shoes at a hundred eighty. The heels are only six centimeters, but that’s enough to show off her shapely long, smooth calves. Besides, the tall ones are four hundred and make her look too beautiful for any one man, which is really all she wants for now. So she settles on the moderate heels and wears them, putting her sandals in the plastic bag.

To tell the truth she’d rather have new shoes than a new brassiere any day, and it’s high time, and a girl needs to feel good about something if she hopes to look good enough to make someone else feel good about her. Not that a man needs much more than the fleshy basics to feel good about a woman. Not at first anyway. Romance will come, if you take your time and use what you know and are careful in your selection.

Ask Mrs. Mayfair for advice?

¡Nunca!

Well, not before trying things out alone. Let the old woman see what her endless needs have caused. What does Mrs. Mayfair know, other than that a man with a rippling stomach leaves the yellow stain in her panties? Antonio was a good choice for Mrs. M, which a girl can know in her mind even with the bitterness in her heart.

The bitterness seems to be going around. How does Antonio feel about things? To tell the truth, he seems hurt but not bitter, as if his brother cannot be held accountable. How does he hold me? If not accountable, then what does he think, that a woman will fail sooner or later, given the chance?

Isn’t that like him?

What can I do, sympathize? He thinks I’m made of rubber, and his tales of happy ear grabbing will bounce off easy as that.

Do I have no heart?

Maybe it’s too early in the afternoon. A woman can look good in mild perspiration, but this is sweat, rolling like a river.

And look, there is my only admirer, a dirty old man. Perhaps the air will be cooler in the shade by the water.

So Lyria forgets her destination with a laugh, since she had no destination in the first place and isn’t quite sure how to define one to reconcile her need and disposition. She heads west to the waterfront, where iced tea costs more than a beer anywhere else and a beer costs the same as a meal. Such is the price of what the tourists want most, which is what they call a view. Lyria wonders what they view at home as she strolls casually toward the touristic waterfront. At least the short benches in the shade cost nothing.

Perhaps a tourist would be best for starters, to sample the experience and measure the money available.

Sitting in the shade, she sustains productivity by trying different poses, crossing her legs, uncrossing and turning her knees aside, because a working girl keeps working just as a fisherman keeps his bait in the water if he hopes to come home with dinner.

A boy stacking crates between buildings across the promenade tries to look up her dress when she shifts her legs. Then he drops a crate. If she times her changes properly, he can’t stack and peek without dropping crates, exposing him as well to unsavory consequence. They scrimmage like a point forward and a goalie. She can’t help the moment of exposure between positions, and then she doesn’t care.

He’s just like the rest, willing to waste his time and accept an ache in the back to stay at ground level for a little peak at her you-know-what. She won’t give in but knows he craves what he knows nothing about.

Who cares?

Lyria stares off at nothing as if seeking resignation from the world of woe, striking a pose of indifference. With acceptance comes the slump and a new pose, beauty in utter dejection.

It is this beauty in its sad splendor that Viorica Vicente Valenzuela first sees. She approaches clandestinely and observes from behind as Lyria turns to a pose of weary resolve. With a wary voice the new woman softly announces, “Hola. I am Viorica Valenzuela.” She pronounces it Vi·OH·rica and gives her last name as a matter of habit, allowing a new friend to consider her formally. “I am visiting from Venezuela,” she says in a moment, allowing time to separate Valenzuela from Venuzuela so a new friend might be spared unnecessary confusion, or perhaps to displace one confusion with another.

The two women meet in the eyes and share a half-smile like old familiars meeting again. One is light-spirited with a practiced caution. The other seems innocently uncertain of social expectations in the real world.

Viorica Valenzuela is beautiful and glamorously finished as Lyria Alvarez can only hope to be. And look: heels rising to every inch of fifteen centimeters make her no less pure than a statue of the Blessed Virgin or Liberty or someone like that.

Viorica offers a splendidly finished hand that has suffered no ammonia or cleanser, much less touched the insidious stray hairs on a toilet rim.

Lyria takes it softly to explore its texture and smoothness. Not hands to wipe or scrub or make beds and grasp the vacuum cleaner for a thrust under the bed to suck up who knows what kinds of filth, these hands have absorbed the finest lotions. Lyria looks up at the face above the hands.

It smiles warmly down now and asks, “What is your name?”

“Lyria. I am Lyria Alvarez. I’m sorry.” Lyria straightens her knees and slides over to make room. “Won’t you sit down?”

Well, yes, Viorica Valenzuela believes that she will, if you don’t mind. And here they are, comfy cozy in the shade with a view, time and tide converging serendipitously at last, bringing randomly drifting women together for a visit as only soul sisters can understand. In no time the two are giving and receiving. Each counsels the other as needs prevail and as only women can do. Minutes ago total strangers, they form the bonds of like-minded souls with vastly similar experience, lost and alone but found in the most pleasant company.

The world whirls about them with men, money, shoes, dresses, and cruel indifference to a woman of nubility who only wants to get along and maybe a little bit ahead. So much is understood between them as they fast forward to now from their common past that they rise to tacit agreement in a very short time. A ravaging hunger for trust and confidence is slaked by simple friendship. Like found money, each is observed by the other with the feeling that now my luck is changing.

Well, perhaps their past is not so common, considering the one’s familiarity with cleaning agents and thrusts under the bed, and the other’s explicit ignorance of manual labor and familiarity with thrusts of a more delicate nature. But two women sensing lasting friendship will attest to the giddy euphoria accompanying prospects for a girlfriend and fun.

Lyria advises no, this section of town is not the best for dining, unless you are a tourist, which you are, but still. The best and most romantic places are there, six blocks over, four blocks down.

Viorica asks if Lyria is here for the dining. No, Lyria is only here for the shade and slight relief from the heat, available near the water. Forgive me; these places are suitable for dining, if you’re hungry and feel too hot to walk so far.

A man’s voice erupts from the bar by the alley where the boy finagles his crates for a view up the dresses of dos putas now seated for spectacular potential. The man exhorts another man, who listens listlessly, that he does not like the tourists; they’re so drunk, with such cows for women. Not even as good as our waitresses are these tourist women. So stupid; they will order anything if you tell them it’s special and charge too much. Like the special of the house, which is Consomme con Pollo Rojo, which is a cup of chicken broth with a boiled chicken leg cut roughly into chunks with a machete, bones and all, and served in a bowl mixed loosely with ketchup and tomato paste. “They love it!” The man bellows. “Because I tell them it is so good!”

Lyria blushes but doesn’t know what to say, so Viorica touches her arm and says, “Many men are like that man. Others are only persistent, like the boy. But some men have better manners. That’s the best we can do. That and some money.”

“How can you know these things?” Lyria asks, blushing again. “I mean, I know how you can tell what kind of man he is, because he is so gruff and loud. But how can you tell with a man you don’t know?”

“You must know. You can know. Have you never had a boyfriend?”

Lyria feels like a labriego estúpido just come to town from out of the dirt. A thousand times she has passed this way, but now this way is different, like another place and time. She wants mightily to speak decisively with worldly knowing but can only smile. Out of the blue sky has come a fairy godsister with no requirements or expectations, an angel who seems willing to share.

Well, it’s a hazy sky and not an angel but a very nice woman she can trust. She knows these things and feels confident like she did only a few months ago. Certitude restored eases her burden, allowing cruel knowledge to be shared.

Lyria knows a few things, all right, but cannot account for the deep and dire cost of knowing. This may sound similar to the very first burden of the very first woman in the very first garden, which was vaguely similar to current surroundings, but what else can a woman come to with only men from whom to gain the knowing? Because the way of the world is very little changed in all these years since the beginning of time. If you think it otherwise, then you must be something other than a woman.

The lesson of the ages is the same as all men have always tried to teach all women, if the women are gullible enough to accept it. Yet gullibility is too simple in this case because of the love involved between Lyria and her boyfriend and his brother. Well, he’s hardly her boyfriend anymore, but he was and lingers like he is, and maybe in a way he still is. But of course he’s not.

Viorica listens attentively, as only a patient and trusted friend will do, until asking incredulously, “Are you saying the boyfriend is not the brother?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean they are brothers. One is … or was my boyfriend. The other is his brother. But I have loved them both as brothers. I have loved one as a boyfriend, and the brother, I have …” Lyria falters here, perhaps realizing on simple verbalization the magnitude of her behavior.

Viorica reads the rest of the sentence on Lyria’s face. “You have been romantic with the brother but not the boyfriend?”

Lyria reddens deeper still and hangs her head. “Yes.” And so it hangs, ready for the lop of Damocles, who surely swings his sword from the ether of all knowing.

Viorica laughs and touches Lyria serenely, gently as Mrs. M had done. But this feels different, and the difficulty hovering overhead like a sharp presence these past weeks and months suddenly vaporizes. With a touch the ominous ether turns to sprightly mist—or sprightly humidity, anyway. A bit of sprightly laughter blows it away.

The trouble and the dark presence are no more than bird squat, so easy to avoid stepping in. So why step in it? Why not step around it and step ahead? Because what we have here is a long and happy road in front of us, in which youth, vigor, and beauty pave a way where few can tread. All this flows over the little bench with a happy laugh. Viorica makes lightheartedness official when she says, “You are quite a woman. You will have to tell me more. Come. I want to buy an iced tea for you. Or would you rather have lemonade? Do they have lemonade? Surely they do.”

In mere minutes a day of difficulty becomes a momentous change in time, in which the huge, crusty doors of relief swing open at last. Moreover, the laughter is shared. This is the most potent of all tonics, curing Lyria in stature and spirit. In fact, this is more fun than she can remember, much more even than the knowing she so longed for with a man. This is knowing of a different nature, at least as fulfilling, and though she feels far removed from the electricity that arced her loins and released strange, unearthly sounds from within, this knowing wants to go on and on. It will leave no mess and no doubt. This, a girl can feel. She smiles in response to the soft current from just as deep inside as that other current.

Leaning her elbows on the table and sipping lemonade through a straw, she revels in Viorica’s touch when the older, wiser woman gently reaches across the table and plucks a lemon squidgy from above Lyria’s lip. She nearly trembles in the silence, savoring the camaraderie that can allow such comfort with no words. She’s never done this, simple as this pastime may seem to a worldly woman on tour from another country. Such a thing should seem simple to anyone. Now it seems simple to Lyria as well. She cannot say why she has yet in her life to enjoy a lemonade in the shade with a girlfriend.

Does life not pass quickly as an afternoon? Should it not hold some relaxation and shade and lemonade for a girl who takes care of her mother and works hard and endures a living hell for one little slip? Well, the slip is probably up to ten or twelve by now but is categorically still one.

Here she is twenty-two, or good as, and never yet wasted an afternoon talking, laughing, and savoring the unknown. She knows full well that a tourist is headed home, and with guarded anxiety she asks, “How long are you here, Viorica?”

Viorica smiles with a big, inverted smile and exaggerated shrug that seems to say, as long as it takes.

Lyria wonders how long it could be, and what it is.

So Viorica touches her gently again and says she’s been visiting from Venezuela for two years now, but you haven’t seen me because I spend so much time in the city.

So Lyria asks the next question that seems natural enough, though she will learn in due time that such a question is hardly de rigueur. “What do you do?”

“I am looking,” Viorica says, looking at Lyria to see if such an answer will do.

But Lyria is not stupid; she is merely uninformed, waiting for this situation to change.

“I am looking for, shall we say, investments.”

Lyria looks aside, perhaps wondering if a girl of her background is not meant to know certain things. She knows the word investment indicates money, the kind of money that is not counted in pesos by the hour but is much more, say, enough to keep a beautiful woman in a casa chica. Well, a person would actually need more money than that, for a man wouldn’t keep such a woman with the main portion of his wealth but only with money he doesn’t need elsewhere.

Besides that, Viorica doesn’t mean she’s looking for investments; she’s looking for investors. Isn’t she?

“Don’t you mean you’re looking for investors?”

The new girlfriends join anew in a blush for the ages, as if such redness is ordained to make them one with the very first blush. They agree, sharing each other’s eyes that they’ll have no more of difficulty, or at least avoid it where they can. Lyria blushes for her unbridled presumption in getting so personal so fast. Viorica blushes for the truth, which may sting a bit at first, but such a sting is not of her making.

But though Viorica Valenzuela is an easy match for wrongful knowing, she rights the world around her with a most extraordinary beauty. She turns a blush to radiance easy as that, displaying as well her skill at quick recovery. With simple technique she effectively allows them to back up from their dead end to begin again. “And you?” She asks, hardly ruffled. “What do you do?”

Never in her life has Lyria Alvarez doubted what she does or why she does it. She simply does what needs to be done. But something sticks in her throat now no less than a bone in a bird’s craw. Clearing the blockage, she glances both ways as if seeking an easy crossing of this difficult thoroughfare. With eyes cast downward, she smiles sheepishly and nearly mumbles, “In a hotel. I work in a hotel. I am a maid. I clean rooms in a hotel.”

Viorica looks quite stern now, jutting her chin and shaking her head. “This is a waste. You know this, don’t you?”

Well, it’s another moment of knowing. Realization is harsh and sudden, arriving from the blind side and whacking a young woman square in the emotional jaw. After all, it’s been quite a day of change and reassessment. Yet in an instant Lyria must agree that much has been wasted. Her face skews to match the inverted smile recently learned, but Lyria’s is different from the charming, practiced exaggeration of Viorica’s.

Lyria’s sad smile is that of a baby, twenty-one years after the fact. Like a baby who is cold and hungry but can’t yet verbalize her need for warmth and succor, her face contorts in failure. Finding no words to express her frustration, she fails again, reeling from the impact of the horrible truth upon her. Breathing becomes difficult, just like acceptance of what is surely true.

She wants to contain herself, to preserve an element of dignity here in the face of a new friend. Limited success holds the big tears in the corners of her eyes. Another silence enfolds, this one far from comforting, filled with the tension and strain of growth. The picture now is not one of beauty but only sadness.

What is ever gained in life without losing something else?

Two lemonades warm between two beautiful women, one of whom feels her face twist like a rag until droplets rise. The other watches grimly, reflecting her new friend’s anguish.

Viorica reaches across the table and takes Lyria’s hand in both of her own. “I want you to know something,” Viorica says. But the touch of another who has come so close so quickly to share the burden that was carried so far all alone is like a touch to a droplet hanging by sheer tenacity. Itself failing, the droplet falls with no concern for the end of its life as a droplet contained. Every droplet falls to the earth or dries up, and it doesn’t matter, because all rise like spirits do, up to the heavens where new droplets convene.

Sometimes they gather with ebullient energy in lightning and thunder. The valley brightens and booms in monsoon. This deluge feels biblical in its torrential proportion, just as it feels unavoidable in curing the world around us. On a personal level its embarrassing nature may be the crucible of understanding between new friends.

Afterward all is calm, with little droplets clinging again where they may. “I want to tell you something,” Viorica begins again. But again she must wait for another torrent to flood the valley.

Lyria cries her eyes out.

Who cares what Viorica is looking for in this shell of a town gone to tourism or what she does with investments or investors or what she has to say? Lyria squeezes her new friend’s hand and only wants to know how much longer they can be friends. She hopes it can be forever, because she can’t bear these burdens all alone with nobody to talk to but the lint and stray hairs and the high whine of a vacuum cleaner to answer her questions and pose its own.

The sun stops in its slow, greasy slide. The breeze huffs like the idle buffoon in the bar over there. Neither breeze nor man can quite make the point.

The two women sit, holding hands, waiting for the flat spot of the afternoon to sink in. When Lyria’s tears slow to a drip, and her breathing only trembles at the top, Viorica says, “I want to tell you. I have men following me, calling me, and begging me to be with them. Rich, powerful men.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because they want to be with me. Some have been with me and want to be with me again. Some only hope to be with me and never will, unless, well, maybe. But it’s what they want. It’s all they want. It’s how they are.”

“No. I mean, why do you want to tell me this?”

Viorica smiles sweetly and leans closer. “So you will know.”

Lyria tries to smile back and nods. “I know.”

So they sit and wait, sighing and sipping, until Lyria asks, “What happens?”

“Nothing is what happens.” She waits for Lyria’s puzzled look, and there it is. “Nothing until I say it is okay for this to happen. And here is what you will pay. My dear, sweet Lyria. They must be made to pay. They know this in their hearts every bit as much as they know their mothers and wives are beyond payment. They must pay as much as they are able to pay, because they have nothing better to do with the money.”

Again the more seasoned woman waits for absorption, but even a young woman with limited experience needs little time to know the meaning of these words. “You are a prostitute. The men are the investors you seek.”

“Please. Lyria. Prostitute is such a judgmental word. What were you looking for today? You wear these cheap shoes that are no good to anyone and hurt your feet. These shoes tell me that you want something different but are afraid to commit to the right shoes that might cost more but will make you comfortable and more beautiful. What is your mother looking for today? What will the three of us have in common in a hundred years? Lyria, I’m not looking for investors. Like I told you, I’m looking for investments.”

They sit a while longer, waiting to know more, pondering long time and short time. Lyria has heard this word judgmental in passing reference on morning TV, where the women seem to agree that it is wrong. She wonders how these TV women always know what in the world is good and what is bad. She wants to know more of such wisdom beyond her limited world.

Viorica is serene again, relaxing in the shade, a paradigm of quick recovery to rhythm and stride. What else can a woman do in a world of hurdles?

Lyria thinks and nods, displacing bitter tears with tart, sweet lemonade down to the sump sounds at the bottom, where Viorica brightens with an easy question. “Where do you live?”

Lyria tells her, seven blocks over and four blocks down.

“Well, then,” Viorica asks, “Do you want to come for a visit to the hotel? We can freshen up and visit some more and have a drink.”

Lyria would like that very much but must be home soon or her mother will worry.

Viorica smiles, reaching across the table for another touch, and says, “So sweet.”

Lyria again matches her new friend’s smile and feels the elixir flowing between them. This too is sweet, and out of the clear blue sky comes another vision, more of a recollection, actually, of Antonio with his faults, which are the faults of all men, except for the single damning fault of all men but him.

He only wanted to love her more than she deserved.

Viorica will explain the nature of love and deserving. She will know why fault has no meaning in assessing either one. She will offer insight to happiness and its transitory nature, and when she meets Rosa she will see the mold that cast the clay.

Rosa will see as well and nod in understanding or resignation.

But explanation will come later tonight after more drinks and a sunset walk to the quaint hotel in town where Viorica is staying. For now the day steams at the apex of its heat. Flesh slumps on bones and most people lie back to pass this lazy time in siesta.

Lyria feels weary enough to sleep but can only stare at the thin air and wish Antonio could learn to love her again as only a few weeks ago he did. And she cries again in a torrent over all she’s lost.