When We Believed in Mermaids(17)

“You only?”

“No, no. Four of us. Three boys and a girl. I am second oldest.”

The one who needs attention, like me. Aloud, I say, “The oldest always gets everything.”

He inclines his head slightly, disagreeing. “Perhaps. My sister is the oldest, and she is not a demanding sort. She’s very quiet, afraid of the world.”

It’s my turn to be bold; the wine has loosened my inhibitions. We’re two strangers on holiday, and I don’t have my phone to amuse me. “Why?”

His face shutters, and he looks down. He shakes his head.

“Sorry,” I say. “Too far.”

“No, no.” He reaches across the small space and touches my forearm. “She was kidnapped when she was small, so small that no one knows what happened to her. She was not the same after that.”

“Poor baby.” A little of the sheen of the night washes away, and I think of Josie.

“Pssht,” he says, sweeping it away and grabbing his glass. “Holidays are for forgetting, eh? Salud.”

I grin. “Salud.”

Both of us fall to eating then, and the quiet is easy. The garlic of my dish and the extreme garlic of his perfume the air. A pair of boys walks by, shoulder to shoulder, one Maori, the other white, their legs moving in perfect sync, and a clutch of skinny teenage girls skitters by, hyperaware of themselves, chattering in a language I don’t immediately recognize. It’s still humid and hot but not as terrible.

For once, I’m happy in my skin, just sitting there eating.

Javier says, “My friend is a musician who is playing at a club not far from here. Would you like to go with me to hear him?”

For a moment, I wonder if it might be better to just go back to my room, get some sleep. “I don’t feel dressed for that,” I say. “And I have groceries to put away.”

“It is only a little way to the apartment. We could go by there first, then to the club.”

Which is really what I’d rather do. “All right.”



Lightning gathers on the horizon as I walk back to the apartment with Javier. He’s agreeably taller than me, with a solidness to his shoulders and thighs that makes me feel small as I walk along beside him, not something that’s all that common when you’re five ten in stocking feet.

He waits in the lobby while I run upstairs, plug my phone into the new charger with a sense of relief, and change into a sundress, with a thin sweater to go over it. The wall-to-wall mirror in the bathroom reveals a madness of curls from the humidity, not something I can do much about. To counter it, I smear on some lipstick. My mouth is my best feature, a mouth that belongs to my Italian side. The matte red lipstick makes the most of it.

When I exit the elevator, Javier makes a show of admiring me and offers his elbow. I take it, and we wander back out into the thick air.

“Do you travel often?” he asks.

I dodge a trio of girls dressed in their evening best and answer on the other side. “Not much at all, actually. It’s hard to get away from my work. You?”

“For me it is the opposite. Too much travel the past few years.”

“Work?”

He gives a simple nod, doesn’t elaborate. In companionable silence, we walk a few blocks. I take in the glitter of lights against the sky, the glimpse of water through tall buildings, the hint of music behind windows. We detour down a bricked alleyway, and he pauses, looks up. “Here we are.”

When he opens the door, a roll of sound and scent spills into the street, alcohol and perfume, voices and laughter and the plucking notes of someone tuning a guitar. I enter and Javier follows, and a lot of people look at us, which makes me self-conscious for a moment, until I realize that they probably look at everyone.

And perhaps too, we make a striking pair, me with my red mouth and wild hair, he with those shoulders.

Few tables are open, and he leads us to one near the back of the room, where a girl in skinny jeans and a peasant blouse meets us to take our orders. “Beer for me,” I say, sliding into my seat. “Whatever brown ale you have.”

“Same for me,” he says. “And a tequila, the best you have, neat.” The table is quite tiny, the space allotted forcing us to sit close. His thigh bumps my knee. My shoulder brushes his upper arm. He smells of something elusive and rich, and I try to place it for a moment before I turn my attention to the stage, aware of my heightened senses, his elbow, the thickness of his eyebrows.

“Which one is your friend?”

“All of them, really, but Miguel is the one I’m here to visit. He’s the one in the red shirt. The good-looking one.”

I smile, because it’s true. Miguel has an amiable expression and high cheekbones and very shiny, very black hair. He’s the one tuning his instrument, nodding to the accompaniment. “Have you been friends a long time?”

“We met through a mutual friend.” His smile is wry. “He’s my ex-wife’s brother.”

The server brings our drinks, and the ale is a very nice shade of toffee where the light shines through. I lean in to smell it. Promising. I raise my glass. “Cheers.”

For a single second, he holds the glass aloft, his gaze moving over my hair, my mouth. “To new adventures.”

I drink, and it’s cold and refreshing and spectacular. With a sigh, I set it back down. “Oh, I do love beer.”