The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (84)

“Perhaps,” Lazáro mused, “I will find another girl with a heart of ice who wants her dream just as badly as you, perhaps more so.”

She sat where she always did, at the door of his cage on a wool blanket. How many times had he said that to her? Always the same threat. “Too bad, my dear fallen star, you already showed me your hand. I am the one you were looking for.”

He allowed himself to laugh with her and accepted her offerings. He’d never cared for human food because he hadn’t known that Bolívar had only ever fed him the same scraps they fed the dogs. Orquídea brought him cakes filled with cream, tartes topped with candied berries. She’d made him try wine and tell her the story of sailing across the stars. What it felt like to be pure energy and light and consciousness. She never grew tired of that one, of the promise of infinite wonder.

Every time she left, he’d say, “Do not forget your promise, Orquídea.”

“I won’t,” she’d assure him. But she could never figure out who she was lying to, herself or him.



* * *



During the height of her pregnancy, Bolívar treated her like glass. The most fragile thing in his collection. She stopped performing but watched all the same. Watched his eyes linger on a pretty face in the crowd, watched as he auditioned new performers alone, at night, for hours. He wouldn’t make love to her while she was in her “condition.” After the baby came, a healthy beautiful boy who was a replica of him, Bolívar’s habits remained the same.

Orquídea could no longer escape the whispers. Mirabella and Agustina watched her with sympathy. Lucho gave her a kind smile and he never smiled at anyone but his lady love. Sometimes she wondered if this is what her mother had felt when Orquídea was born, waiting for a man to come back while a baby bled her breasts dry. Then she reminded herself that she wouldn’t feel the same shame. She was determined to be a better mother to Pedrito than Isabela Buenasuerte had ever been to her.

Soon, Bolívar’s cycles became hers. He left, he returned, he loved her, he left again. He assured Orquídea that his promise, the one he’d made to love her forever, was written in blood. She had his name. She had borne his child. Nothing else mattered but that and no tryst could compare.

She decided to put his theory to a test. Though Orquídea wasn’t unfaithful, she flirted with the danger of it. While the show was stationed in La Paz, Bolivia, she left Pedrito in the care of Agustina the Fortune-Teller and spent the night with her friends at a tavern. Men bought her drinks, tried to get close enough to count her freckles. They wanted her autograph written on the skin over their hearts. She was mid-signature when she heard the tavern door slam and she knew that it was him without looking up.

Bolívar found her. One of his porters must have followed and snitched. This time, Lucho wasn’t there to pry Bolívar off the man who’d touched his wife. He beat the stranger until both his eyes were swollen shut, until Orquídea let out a scream that shook him from his fever, and he was taken to the local jail.

The stranger had lived but went blind out of one eye, and Orquídea paid twice the bail funds in order to bring him home on the condition that the circus leave La Paz that same night.

Bolívar and Orquídea clung to each other out of desperation and fear of solitude. It was only when they fought that they could reignite the passion they had once felt for each other. He wanted her to scream his name. She wanted him to beg. Orquídea knew that it was not enough. Bolívar’s words were no longer enough. That life was no longer enough. And so, she made plans. She searched. She learned about the galaxy and magic from Lázaro. In order for her betrayal to work, she needed to be in Guayaquil. She needed his ring, which he never took off, and she needed the key.

When Pedrito was three months old, Bolívar started carrying on with one of the new Egyptian belly dancers they’d taken on for the Peruvian leg of the tour.

Orquídea admired herself in the mirror, taking down the pins from her hair, and he was getting ready to go back out, when she said, “Give Safi my compliments on her performance tonight.”

This time, he didn’t deny it. He just stormed out. And when he returned a breath later, she foolishly thought he’d come back to apologize. To make it up to her. To fuck her instead.

He’d only forgotten his top hat.

That was the moment Orquídea Divina figured it out. One part of her three-pronged conundrum. There was one item she’d never searched. There was a second item he always wore, and only took off in their private cabin.

With Bolívar gone for the night, she snuck in to see Lázaro. Pedrito slept snug in a sling against her chest.

“I know where the key is,” she said breathlessly.

Lázaro diminished his light in front of her and grinned. She’d grown used to his pale, naked figure. The pearlescent beauty marks on his skin. His irises moved like a starry sky. But she’d never seen him smile with such satisfaction. He was rather beautiful when he did.

“Then why are you here instead of getting it?”

“I told you,” she said. “We have to be in Guayaquil. I have to be home. There’s still the matter of the ring. He sleeps with it on. I’ve never seen him take it off.”

“Then seduce him until he is fast asleep.”