Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias

Author:John Manuel Arias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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AMARGA HID BEHIND a palm tree that also craned its head to listen to the lovers. If she’d had any more champagne, she would have retched right then and there. A bitterness spread through her and tickled the ends of her limbs, itching her face and torso with hives. Back in Barrio Ávila, she would forbid Teresa from ever seeing him again. She would take a serrated knife to her own throat before entertaining the thought of that waiter on the beach with her daughter. What kind of mongrels would they raise? How could I ever show my face in society again?

Amarga considered confronting them both, grabbing Teresa by the ear and slapping the boy across his face. But she couldn’t run the risk of further ruining her last pair of good heels in the sand. Vanity won. Amarga stomped back to the inn.

The more swigs of guaro that Teresa and José María took, the higher the tide rose. It caressed the soles of their naked feet and nudged Teresa into José María’s embrace. He asked her many questions—who her father was, her favorite color and if it had changed since she was a girl, if she had ever ridden a horse. She answered honestly, but by the time the moon lowered into the horizon, she realized she knew nothing about him.

“¿What about your father? ¿What was he like?” Teresa asked.

“He’s gone.”

“¿And your mother?”

José María winced. “I don’t know,” he said. “I assume she’s gone too.”

Never before had Teresa met someone so secretive, so mysterious about his past and emotions. She took the hint. Teresa wouldn’t insist any further on unearthing his truth. At least not yet.

The moon dropped below the horizon. A gold coin into a pocket.

“Teresa, we’ll have two daughters,” José María said triumphantly.

“¿Is that so?”

“Yes. Two. Beautiful girls with your eyes. And they will dance just as I saw you dance tonight. Gracefully … and all the boys will follow them like fools. Like how I followed you.”

“But I don’t want them to be as dark as me,” Teresa said, her insecurities lubricated by guaro. “I hate my skin. At least in that way they’ll be beautiful.”

José María pinched Teresa’s shoulder before drinking from the bottle again. “That’s a stupid thing to say,” he said. “You have the most beautiful skin I have ever seen. They will be as brown and as beautiful as their mother.”

Teresa stayed silent awhile. She imagined two daughters with her skin. She feared what her mother would say. How Amarga would nag her to keep them out of the sun. To never let them wear pastel dresses for fear of darkening their faces with contrast. Teresa began to weep.

“I’m sorry,” José María said. “I’m a drunken idiot sometimes. Forgive my tone.”

“It wasn’t your tone,” Teresa said, smiling.

José María lifted her body from the sand and carried her into the water. The waking sun’s rays sneaked through the treetops. Giggling, ecstatic, Teresa and José María tossed themselves into the surf, their lips locked, breathing in each other’s breaths until their bodies and the sea became one.

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