There was just one week left before Manny would be allowed to go back to work. He had no doubt it was going to happen because he felt good and was able to walk on his foot without any pain at all. The doctor had taken off the initial thick cast that kept it in place and wrapped it with a thinner plaster, placing an iron rod underneath his foot so he could walk. He continued using the stick Tito had given him.
“One week left,” he murmured, staring at himself in the small mirror he used to cut and trim his beard. He’d let it grow out some since he’d hurt his ankle but wasn’t planning on keeping it. He liked to be cleanshaven when working in the mines. Beards made him feel extra greasy and dirty when he came out.
He turned his face this way and that, examining his skin. He poked at it in specific areas, checking the elasticity of his skin.
“Getting old,” he murmured.
“You in here talking to yourself?”
His heart leapt with joy when he heard Imogen’s voice behind him. She’d come to his tent every day without fail ever since that two-day break when she came back complaining of her father’s behavior. Every day she came, every day she left later. Later and later it got until it was pushing dark before she would leave.
It seemed like they always had something to talk about. She had asked him about the job duties they’d given him while he couldn’t be in the mine, and he’d told her what it was all about. She had been impressed with the job he’d done so far and had told both him and Tito as much.
They’d even done a little play-acting, where Imogen would pretend to be one of the workers and Manny would interview her using the questions he’d been provided. He laughed at her impressions, telling her she did a good job when her acting talents were actually questionable.
She didn’t mind, though, and never got her feelings hurt by anything. She laughed easily, and teasing rolled right off her back.
“I was talking to myself, yes,” he said, turning swiftly to give her a big smile. “I do like to get my opinions on things. I find them to be both satisfactory and smart.”
Imogen shook her head. “You really do speak English well, Manny. I am always impressed.”
“Gracias, mi amiga,” he replied. He’d taught her the regular words already, so he was confident she knew what he’d just said.
She grinned at him. “De nada, mi amigo.”
Admiration for her slipped through him, and he resisted the urge to grab her for a kiss. They weren’t quite there yet, even if they had spent every day together for two weeks.
“I need you to sit over there while I redress your bed,” Imogen said kindly, gesturing to the chair she usually sat on. He was immediately on his feet, transferring himself to the chair from the bed. He watched as she stripped off the dirty sheets and put on clean ones. He always loved it when she washed his bed clothes. The quilts were soft and smelled good. He didn’t know how she did it. He certainly didn’t want the community laundress to do it now that he knew what Imogen was capable of.
Then again, he didn’t want anyone doing for him the way Imogen did. He wanted that and her for the rest of his life.
“You do that so quickly,” he complimented her, watching as she spread out the sheet evenly and tucked it under the mattress of his cot. She fluffed his pillows before she set them back at the head of the bed. “You do more for me than I deserve, you really do.”
“No, no.” She shook her head, wagging one finger in the air in front of him. “I don’t want to hear that. You pay me well for doing this work. I’ve not been serenaded that way since I was eleven years old and my parents threw the biggest birthday party you’ve ever seen. Happier times, they were.”
“You will have happy times again in the future.”
He was relieved when she nodded, the melancholy look leaving her face to be replaced by one of hope and excitement.
“Yes! That’s what I’m hoping for! I really am.”
Manny gave her a return smile. “You can do anything you want if you try hard enough.”
Imogen nodded. “That’s what I believe, too. And I’m willing to try as hard as I can to get my goals met.”
When Imogen turned away from the bed, she knocked a glass off the small stand near her, and it fell to the ground. The tent floor was nothing more than a thin sheet like the one she’d put on the bed. She suspected he did that because he couldn’t afford a rug, and otherwise, it would have been all dirt.
Despite the cushioning the thin sheet might have provided, the glass hit a rock hidden underneath and shattered into a million pieces.
“Oh no!” Imogen cried out, jumping back from the flying debris.
Manny was instantly on his feet, in between Imogen and the pitiful broken glass. “It’s okay. It’s done. Might have a small clean-up job, but that’s it. You all right? You get cut?”
“I didn’t get cut, thankfully. Let me clean this mess up. I’m so sorry about your glass. Of course, I will replace it. I’ll buy you a whole new set of four!”
Manny gazed at her kind face. “You don’t have to do that, but if you do, I would gladly taste some wine in it with you.”
Imogen laughed as she turned to get the small broom and dustpan from a corner in the tent. He watched her retrieve it and begin to sweep up the broken glass.
“There are a lot of small pieces here, Manny, some fragments that aren’t going to come up in this dustpan. You’ll want to be extremely careful. Don’t want to cut yourself on one, do ya?”
Manny looked down. “No, I reckon I don’t,” he replied.
They were both quiet while she did her work, and he wondered what she was thinking about. He couldn’t get his mind off the fact that she was still there with him, that she wanted to be there with him. He hoped she was thinking the same way about him. She seemed to be. What other reason could there be for her return day after day?
Manny couldn’t say he minded.
In fact, as time went by that day, he was more and more convinced that the attraction between them was mutual, that he wasn’t alone in this.
All they had to do now was figure out how to get it past her father and the men in town he catered to.
By the time Imogen left, the sun had dipped behind the western mountains. She’d told him she shouldn’t have waited so long to leave but not to worry. Her father had never physically laid a hand before in her life. She was sure he wouldn’t start now.
He watched her leave, still fearful. There was nothing he could do, so he followed at a safe distance until he saw her getting close to her mansion on the main street. The door was opened for her, and she was ushered in. She didn’t look like she was fighting against it. But they weren’t close enough for him to really see, and there was no way he could hear the exchange between Imogen and the person who opened the door. In fact, it might not have even been a woman.
Perhaps a man or a woman, the maid, the cook, the metal worker from across the street. It could have been anyone.
He let himself stay where he was a few more minutes before turning back to go to his tent. Tito was spending the night with one of the ladies he’d met in town who volunteered. Every now and then, he and this same lady would spend a night together. Manny knew it was Tito’s way of coping with having his family taken away before the two of them met in Tijuana years ago.
He was on his own tonight and looking forward to several long hours of restless sleep thinking about Imogen.