The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (59)

“Am I supposed to believe you?”

“It’s not whether or not you can believe me. It’s whether you want to.” He climbed on top of her, caging her with his forearms. He kissed her deeply, until she unfurled her knees for him. Kissed the brown skin of her nipples, the hollow between her breasts. He wanted to consume her heart as she had done his.

“I thought that it was a trick. Like the magicians who pull animals out of their jackets and get sawed in half. Like how you made me a mermaid.”

He nuzzled his face into her shoulder and sank into her. He couldn’t think clearly. He wanted to drown in her. His siren. His mermaid. His answered wish of true love. “Real as you and me, mi divina.”

She sighed. “But how?”

“He just fell right out of the sky.”





18

WAIT, DO ASHES COUNT AS ORGANIC MATTER?




Leaving Eddie and New York City further behind was easier than Rey had expected. Although, Rey had come to hate international travel. His new career had taken him to most countries in Europe where he always felt like he was the one on display rather than his paintings. Mexico and Argentina had been better, but there was an expectation, a judgement from the locals when they discovered that he didn’t know how to speak any Spanish. Once, in Buenos Aires, an art critic slaughtered him in a review because Rey had said “espa?ol” instead of “castellano.”

Going to Ecuador did excite him. Even if he, Marimar, and Rhiannon had to get private screenings on account of the flowers protruding from their skin. The TSA agents didn’t have anything in the handbook for their peculiar body extensions, and it took five people to determine that their flowers were organic material and should be considered body modifications.

“Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the TSA agent. “There was a woman with horns grafted into her skull. Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you the art guy from that magazine?”

“Yup.”

A painting hanging at the MoMA, a front cover of The New Yorker, and this guy who might as well have been a mall cop called him “Art Guy.” Rey needed to stay humble.

Their family occupied half of the first-class cabin, a small gift from the Art Guy. While the rest of them took the opportunity to sleep on the red-eye flight, he watched the tiny screen in front of him, tracking the flight path across state and country lines, over oceans and seas. Even though his life had changed since that great and terrible day at Four Rivers, mostly for the better, he didn’t want to be the kind of person who ever took this for granted.

Orquídea had never gotten on a plane. She’d said she walked all the way from Ecuador to the United States, but never stopped to see the sights or relax at a restaurant. “I kept going because stopping was not an option,” she’d said. She couldn’t be the kind of person who might say “I see myself living here” for fun or out of ennui. One trip had been enough for her. But Rey—he’d inherited the wanderlust she didn’t get to savor.

She’d stayed in the valley that had seemed destined for her, and people came to her. Before he finally fell asleep, he stared out of the airplane window at the pitch-black sky, the silhouette of gray clouds, and wondered if his grandmother had ever regretted staying, because now she was rooted there, unable to go anywhere. He pictured her tree. Then a woman of twenty with a husband and a rooster charting a path that spanned thousands of miles. Why had he never before wondered who had been chasing her, and why, after everything, had he not believed that it might come for him, too?



* * *



Their flight landed in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s Aeropuerto Internacional José Joaquín de Olmedo. Even though Rey was the one who had actual travel experience, he and the Sullivans followed Marimar’s lead. They disembarked and followed the crowds of crying children and tired adults, the men in canary yellow soccer jerseys, the small women in black hats and long braids, the white tourists in open-toed sandals and overstuffed backpacks with hand-sewn patches that boasted of open borders and open minds, but their money was strapped to their torsos.

Marimar watched them all and wondered if this was their first or last destination. How many were returning for good and how many were coming to visit. She was someone who had never had to go anywhere and now she was in the country where Orquídea had come from. She felt like a stranger.

As they followed the crowd through Immigration and Customs, Marimar became more and more aware that her dead uncle’s remains were in her backpack. That Tío Félix had not enjoyed the bottomless wine service and microwaved dinner and dessert. He’d wanted to be scattered, not with his mother, not where his wife and daughter would eventually be buried, but in a country he’d never set foot in. Who was she to question his final wish?

At Customs, Marimar stumbled her way through the questions volleyed at her by a short agent with shrewd eyes—

Are you all traveling together? All of you? Yes, we are all one family going to the same hotel.

Where are you staying? The hotel Oro Verde.

How long are you staying? Three days.

Three? What is the reason for your visit? A funeral.

Do you have anything to declare? Wait, do ashes count as organic matter?

Do you have the body of the deceased? In my backpack.

That made the woman pause. Cremations weren’t common in Ecuador, apparently.