Woman of Light (48)
“Easy, easy,” said Avel to the horse, gliding his hand along its glimmering neck, patting around its jaw for good measure. “Come here,” he said to Luz.
She shook her head, told him no. “Oh, stop.”
Avel kept one hand on the horse and with the other pointed to a spot on the ground for Luz to stand.
“People get kicked to death,” said Luz. “They call them brutes for a reason.”
Avel closed his eyes, chuckled. “No, no.”
“What if the driver wakes up?”
Avel pointed at an emptied liquor bottle, turned over and resting beneath the driver’s carriage steps. “He’s drunk as piss. I’d be surprised if he wakes up with the sun.”
Luz examined the bottle. She gazed at the driver. “Fine,” she said, and took a step forward. Avel grasped her right hand and moved it along the horse’s jaw. The cold dark pelt felt coarse though silken. If night had a feeling, she thought, this was it. The animal had calmed and seemed pleased with the strangers’ attention. “Hi, pretty girl,” Luz whispered, peering into the animal’s wet eye.
Luz was blooming with a smile when Avel leaned in and kissed her short and dry on the mouth. She moved away, studied Avel’s face, the serenity in his heavy eyes, the sheen of his shaven cheeks. Luz tilted forward, this time kissing Avel with more pressure and the tiniest slip of tongue. He tasted pleasant like salt water, and Luz imagined Avel was an endless blue sea. After a short while, they continued their walk and Luz said, “I like you very much.”
TWENTY-ONE
Invitation Only
That Thursday evening, as Luz was finishing her tasks for the day, David emerged from his office carrying a newspaper. He took a seat across from her desk and fastened his cuff sleeves. He stared at his gold watch, moving the face along his wrist. He groaned and stretched his arms above his head, cracking his knuckles in the air. “You did a very brave thing.”
Luz nodded, secretly hoping that David wasn’t there to assign her more work.
“They’ve covering Estevan’s murder in the big papers now.” David held up the Rocky Mountain News and gave it a good shake. “The protests are growing.”
“They are?” Luz asked with wonderment.
“Yes,” he said. David grinned and looked up, staring at Luz for a long second. “I like when you wear your hair down. I like that it’s longer than other girls’.”
Luz blushed. Sometimes David acted as if she hardly existed at all, but other times, his attention was drawn away from himself and directed fully at Luz.
“You must be starving,” he said. “It’s nearly dinnertime.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Luz, “I was going to get supper with a friend, but he can’t now. He’s playing a last-minute show.”
David stood up. “A friend? A boyfriend?”
“A friend,” Luz repeated, sheepishly.
David stepped around to Luz’s side of the desk. He put his hands over her papers. His fingernails were delicate, pearlescent white, as if he had them buffed and shined. “Come with me tonight, for dinner.”
Luz laughed and shook her head. “No, thank you.” She looked away from David and toward the long front windows. Outside it was dark. A fire truck ambled by, churning the walls with its screeching gears.
“Come on, Luz. Don’t make me beg.”
There was something in the way that David said beg that Luz enjoyed, the long, sharp way he carried the word out until it sounded boxed somewhere in the air. David would never beg. The idea was laughable. He wasn’t a man who needed to—anything he wanted came to him without pleading. That was how it worked, Luz decided. Those with money and an education rarely weakened their dignity. Luz shook her head once more, and her hair fell into her face.
“I’m serious, Luz. Just come.” David reached out and smoothed away her hair, clearing her face. He looked handsome with a slight mist above his upper lip and his long lashes fanned over his eyes.
She softened. “Fine.”
David said, “Go on, get your coat.”
* * *
—
David drove Luz to a private supper club called Suville’s. It was on the edge of City Park in a white stone mansion that resembled a castle with balconies and block-like towers. Luz had seen the manor on her laundry trips, but she had figured the house was vacant, for the windows didn’t show signs of life during those early mornings, and the city was now scattered with empty mansions abandoned by silver barons and bankers gone broke. Never had Luz imagined that in the evenings, behind those decadent stone walls, rich men played billiards, smoked cigars, and ate hearty portions of cheeses and meats. At a side entrance, beneath a green awning, David told the doorman a password (“mustard gas”), and they were ushered inside through a red corridor that led into a reading room and eventually into a dining hall. The ceiling was a stained glass Noah’s ark, a strange depiction of paired animals one might see painted in a baby’s nursery, their images blurred behind thick plumes of smoke. The tables fanned around an elevated stage, where a smallish white woman sang in a crystal gown the same color as her flesh. She appeared naked at first glance, and Luz had to look twice to confirm that she wasn’t. Luz couldn’t tell if she was any good. Her singing was covered by the cackles of men, their full-bellied laughter, some cursing, some jeers.