The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (74)

He bit kisses at her neck. “Te amo, Divina.”

Orquídea took his face in her hands and said, “You can love us both, now.”

She guided his hand to her belly.

Bolívar laughed. He laughed the way he did with the other actors and dancers while they played cards and drank rum out of teacups. “Even I am not that good. Besides, it’s too soon to tell.”

“No, I’ve known for three months now. Can’t you feel it?”

His eyebrows shot up. His pants were still unzipped. He tucked in his wet, flaccid penis and buttoned up. “Are you sure, querida?”

She didn’t like his reaction. Didn’t like the way he pulled away from her, like she’d become a lit match and he was afraid of getting burned.

“You’re upset.”

“No!” He kissed her cheekbones. Her nose. He kissed her left eye and then her right one. Her mother had always said that when a man kissed your eyes shut, he is lying to you. The only reason she believed Isabela Montoya Buenasuerte was because her mother had always been too righteous to be superstitious, but that saying she recited like it had been done to her, a personal curse.

“I’m thrilled.” His eyes were soft as he squeezed her shoulder, digging his fists in the fur of her mink. “I admit. This was sooner than I expected our family to grow, but we’ll make it work.”

“All right,” she whispered.

He finished buttoning his trousers, shoving his shirt into the tapered waist. “Don’t wait up for me, my darling. Fedir has a game in the parlor, and he owes me.”

Bolívar walked her back to their cabin, where he kissed her forehead and then scampered down the hall. Orquídea ran a bath. She slipped into one of his soft silk shirts. She wanted to be surrounded by his scent in her sleep.

Was that how men reacted when they discovered their wives were pregnant? A few years later, when she was with her second child, Luis Osvaldo Galarza Pincay would weep and kiss Orquídea’s naked belly. He never did kiss her eyes.

She woke to a metallic chime, the kind she imagined stars would make if she could hear them winking. But it was well past midnight, and when she reached out across their rumpled sheets, Bolívar was still not back.

A tugging sensation pressed at her belly button, and out of fear that there was something wrong with the baby, she pulled on her thick robe and her slippers and went in search of Agustina. Her potent teas always soothed her.

Instead, Orquídea took a wrong turn in the labyrinthian guts of the ship’s halls. She came upon the parlor, the door ajar. The table empty of players. Cards tossed on the green felt and cigars extinguished in the dregs of highball glasses. She would have kept going, had it not been for the deep, mournful cry of pleasure she knew so well.

She felt weightless, brittle, hollowed out. If she was still standing on the deck of the ship, the Irish Sea winds would have blown her away. Bolívar was standing, his trousers at his ankles. One hand pulled his shirt up, the other held the girl in place. She was on her knees, taking him deep into her throat as only someone called “Mishka the Moscow Sword Eater” could.

She was pretty, pale as cream with wide eyes that gave her the permanent expression of just having had her bottom pinched. She stared up at him then, watching as he threw his head back.

He noticed Orquídea, like she was a phantom in the corner of the room. At least he had the decency to stop, to stutter, to cry.

“Divina, it’s not what you think—”

What did she think? Her husband, who had fucked her on the open deck of the ship just moments before he learned that he was going to be a father, and what did he do? Reward himself with drink. With another woman.

Mishka wiped her swollen pink lips with one of the cloth napkins. She got up and tried to move past her.

Possessed by her own fury, Orquídea grabbed the girl by the throat and shoved her against the wall. She was so breakable, this girl who ate fire and metal. Orquídea leaned in close and whispered, “If you tell anyone about this, if I see you here again, I will poison everything that touches your lips until there’s nothing but holes in your throat.”

Mishka muttered something in Russian. A curse, an apology. Whatever it was, fearing Orquídea more than Bolívar’s scorn, the girl ran.

“Orquídea, please,” he stuttered quickly. “Don’t be angry with me.”

He went on that way, trailing behind her like a kicked dog all the way back to their cabin, where he washed himself and then crawled into bed beside her. She tuned out the world. Curled in on herself so tightly she wished she could vanish into nothing.

“I was terrified,” he whispered in her ear. “This news terrified me.”

She knew she shouldn’t let him touch her. She knew she should throw all of his belongings in the tub and set them on fire. She knew she deserved better. The world, like he’d promised.

“I was weak. I am so, so weak, Orquídea. When you are not with me, I am nothing. Please, I won’t be able to live if you don’t forgive me.”

She turned around then. They faced each other. He was so solid, so strong. It was then, as her heart splintered, that she realized that he was built of a more fragile substance than she was.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t want to hurt you.”