Alice made it into the hallway before the sobs escaped her body. She cried for the ugliness of the boy’s cheers; for the loss of the promise of the young president; for his wife; for the little ones in the newspaper pictures, their daddy was dead and nothing would ever be the same. This was not a path she had seen coming, and it hit her like a brick.
The front office secretary came running up, her face contorted with concern and her own pain. She caught Alice right as she was about to hit the paneled floor. A great wave of numbness overwhelmed Alice, and she could barely hear the secretary call for help. A multitude of arms helped her up, and the next memory was of the nurse’s cot in the office. A cool cloth was on her forehead. She wondered what had happened to her students, not sure she cared much. There was activity outside the door, a great scuffling about and footsteps here and there. Alice closed her eyes and let her body settle back onto the stiff cot. She hated the tight skirts and mini-heels she was expected to wear day in and out. The shoulders of her matching jacket were so tight that they make her feel as though she was in a straitjacket, and well she might be. She was barreling down a path and couldn’t stop the momentum, but there were still adventures to be had, and no one, not even she, could know the outcome of such things.
She was leaving at the end of the school year; the arrangements had already been made for a year abroad teaching English in an American school in Venezuela. Her mother was decidedly happy about it, and Alice suspected that she wished she were in her place. On the other side of the door, Alice could hear muffled sobs and hurried voices. It hadn’t been a nightmare; it was very real, and a hole had been ripped right across the country. She felt a strange numbness about what she had done to the children. But what had she actually done? Surely that wasn’t possible; she had been upset and sad and shocked at their reaction. Alice felt a heavy layer of guilt and horror at her actions, and then remembered the boy with the blond crew cut in the back of the room who had started the cheering; he was so unpleasant. He leered at her every chance he got. Alice had tried to tell the principal, and he had laughed at her. He told her that boys had crushes on young teachers, and maybe she shouldn’t wear quite so much makeup if she didn’t want to attract attention. Alice was at a loss as to how to respond, considering that just the week before, the same principal had told her a bit of lipstick might help her look more professional. The boy had no regard for her or anyone, and if she had been too stern with them, then so be it. That was it, she decided. She had been overly stern, and now they would listen better.
This would pass, she repeated to herself as she reached up and pulled the cool cloth from her forehead. Soon, someone would be by to check on her, and she would have to act as though she were all right, but she was not. She would go back to the tiny apartment she shared with two other teachers, not a one among them able to afford their own place. Alice slept on the pullout sofa in the living room, and as such, had no space that didn’t belong to all three of them. Her things were neatly kept in her rose pink suitcase in the hall closet. Her three skirt sets neatly hung beside her roommates’ coats. Alice could feel the walls closing in there, but she knew that she would never have her own place here in Los Angeles. It had been her choice to move to such an expensive city, Aunt Polly told her; but still, she and Mum sent what they could, although between the two of them it still wasn’t enough for an apartment, or groceries, or coffee even.
But it was getting better. She whispered that to herself over and over when she felt she would crawl right out of her skin. The Music Man helped a bit. It still felt a bit odd, calling him by his name, so she opted not to, skirting the subject, and soon he was known as Mr. Music to her roommates and soon to her as well. He had had a real name, of course, and he looked the same as he had back in Colorado Springs as he stood in front of the band room, leading the high school orchestra. Alice had been surprised to see him again; he was so far out of context, she hardly recognized his coal-black eyes and the graceful slope of his face. She’d met him again at a jazz club that one of her roommates had dragged her to for a supposed double date. Alice’s date had left without her, and she hadn’t cared. She’d stayed behind, watching Mr. Music play the trumpet on stage. It was a grand position to be in: she could see him, but he had no idea she was watching. She wondered if he would remember her. She had been first clarinet back in Colorado Springs, and he’d been full of teacherly praise back then. Funny, she thought, as she watched him lean back into a note, sweat sticking his white dress shirt to his chest. He hadn’t aged much. She placed him in his thirties back in high school, and now, five years later, he had a streak of grey in his dark hair, but otherwise he had not aged.
To her surprise, he had spotted her from the stage as the set ended. A look of flirtatious surprise on his face, he crossed directly to her, shaking hands with the audience regulars as he passed.
“Alice Grace Kyles. As I live and breathe. I don’t suppose you’re old enough for me to buy you a drink yet.”
She was, and they drank gin martinis until the bar closed. Alice had never been able to abide vodka since the days of the cave parties, no matter the mixture; it reeked of beer and body odor to her. Mr. Music and Alice stumbled out together, and somehow she found herself at the door to his tiny apartment in Silver Lake, the taxi pulling away before she could object. She fell into his arms, not caring what the world would think and knowing full well it wouldn’t last and how perfectly terrible it would be if it did. She did it partially because she enjoyed the idea of the objections she knew would arise if anyone found out, because it was entirely naughty and wrong, and partially because the feel of his trumpet player’s lips on her neck made every hair on her arms stand on end. A warm streak of fire ran up and down her spine, and her knees buckled underneath her.
Now they spent the weekends together at the dark club and, to the horror of her roommates, Alice slept over at Mr. Music’s apartment so often that she bought a toothbrush just for the purpose. He paid her share of the rent on her shared apartment one month when the school had delayed their paychecks. Alice insisted on paying him back, but he had objected. Why didn’t she just move in to his place? he said. Alice had laughed him off, and he had grown very serious. What if we got married? he had said. What if we did?
Alice had sighed, a great weary sadness overwhelming her. In his coal-dark eyes, she saw love and music and more passion than she could imagine. She also saw the gin martinis turn to overturned bottles of cheap wine. She saw the ugliness of reality, and she saw the harsh light through the cheap curtains of his tiny apartment. She saw herself used and bitter in a few short years. It wasn’t a path that was any less or greater than what she knew she was heading toward, but it wasn’t her path, and she could not follow it. She lied to him and said maybe—maybe after she returned from Venezuela. Mr. Music had looked hopeful and perhaps a bit sad, but they still spent weekend nights at his apartment, and even though their romance had cooled a bit, he was still a welcome respite. Today, as all this horror crashed down upon the country, she knew he would reach out to her, and she would willingly fold into his arms.
After a time, the door to the nurse’s office opened, and the secretary stood silhouetted by the over-bright fluorescent lights. Her face was red and puffy from tears. The students had been sent home, she said. It was all just too much, she said, and started crying again. Alice stood too quickly and felt a rush of white light blind her for a short minute. She held the secretary in her arms as the woman cried. Alice’s eyes were dry; she needed to start being honest with herself. She knew that now, but how to start?
That night, she broke it off with her Music Man. He didn’t look surprised, and Alice had not cried. She went back to her shared apartment and curled up on her sofa bed as her roommates sat in stunned silence. No one seemed to know what to say or do. The world was ending with a whimper that echoed softly through the halls of the twilight kingdom.
THE CAILLEACH HAD NOT brought the cholera to the lost village, as was the story among t
he grown ones. She watched from her cave in the crags as it crept across the rough field grass, closer to the village. On the night of the full moon, she drew a circle in lamb’s blood around the perimeter of the town. What the townspeople could not see was a wall that stretched to the clouds, invisible to the touch and permeable as water, but enough to keep them safe from disease. One of her many daughters lived in the town; long ago she had forgotten the roots of her childhood and now lived as a baker’s wife with a gaggle of small children at her heels. The Cailleach watched her at times, hanging wash on a line stretched from tree to tree, milking an ancient cow, staring at the stars when she thought no one could see her. She looked like her father. He had been a sailor, dark and muscular. His daughter kept her length of curling raven hair tied back from her olive-skinned face. She did not look like the villagers, and they distrusted her for it.
When the ring of blood was discovered, it was she they blamed. The Cailleach watched with growing rage as they tore her daughter from the farmhouse. She spat down rain and storm clouds as they tied her daughter to a stake in the center of town. The husband turned his head away, the children threw stones at their mother, and the Cailleach swore a bloody end to them all. The flames sputtered in the torrential rain; the wind destroyed their torches. Her daughter hung limply from the stake, sobbing quietly. The Cailleach undid her protection and watched as disease marched upon the town. Her daughter freed herself from her bonds and ran into the fields as the first among the villagers fell ill. They all died, one by one: the baker, the children who had never known anything but love and had repaid it with stones and hate. By the time the moon was again full, the village was full of rotting flesh. The Cailleach drew a new circle surrounding the town, this one to serve as a reminder of the cruelty of man. The farmhouse would never crumble, the stones would never fall, the flowers would grow in neat rows along the walkway, and no living creature would ever set foot there again.
THE CORDS WOUND TIGHTLY around Alice’s wrists cut deeply into her skin, and she could feel her fingers going dead, the circulation slowly ceasing. The rag around her head reeked of vomit, and she wondered how many others had stared into its filthy darkness. Her head ached something fierce from a steadily growing lump on the back of her head, where the policia had struck her from behind before grabbing her and binding her wrists, then throwing her in the back of the aging black sedan with the thickly tinted windows. Except it wasn’t the policia, at least not the official ones. Alice had been in-country for nearly eight months now and recognized the official green-and-grey uniforms of the government policia, but that wasn’t who ran Caracas. No, the policia wore the uniforms, but Alice had learned early on that anyone with enough guns could call themselves police. This wasn’t any of those men. As she tried to make sense of the rapid Spanish, she knew exactly who this was: these were El Giro’s men, a splinter group from neighboring British Guiana, a faction of the revolutionary party—the PPP.
“Donde estan los armas? Habla con nosotros pequeno parajo,” a low voice growled in her ear.
Alice’s Spanish was slow and clumsy, and the swift, angry words of the men on either side of her sounded like a wave crashing on her aching head. She shook her head and tried to speak as carefully as possible.
“No entiendo, por favor, no entiendo.” She forced the words out, her tongue thick with fear and shock.
A hand on her thigh made her instinctively writhe away and smack at the pressure with her bound hands. The men exploded with cruel laughter. A voice from the front, in heavily accented English, broke through the din.
“Enough. Enough. We are not here to upset Tiburon’s girl. I apologize. We need your help, Carino. We are looking for someone very close to you, and we believe you know where he is staying.” The voice was silky, like the men in the telenovelas on the tiny black-and-white television in Alice’s apartment. Lupe would be wondering where she was. She was home by now; the bus dropped her a block from their third-floor walkup apartment, and she was always home by 9 p.m. Lupe and Alice kept a close watch on each other; people had a way of going missing in the city, and the Peace Corps guys that regularly slept on their tattered sofa had repeatedly warned them about being out after dark. Even Alice, who with her dark hair and eyes could pass as Latina to most, stuck out as soon as she opened her mouth.
Alice knew that this wasn’t quite so random. Tiburon, with his apple green eyes and dark curling hair, diver’s body, and golden skin—that was why she was here. Alice had known better but hadn’t been able to resist. She’d met him at a club in Caracas; she had gone with Lupe and a pack of the young Peace Corps workers who seemed to follow them everywhere. Most had been in-country for a year or more and were starved for a working shower, and they treated her and Lupe’s tiny apartment like it was a five-star hotel. They were overwhelmingly kind, and from the time of her arrival in Venezuela, Alice had been happy to open her door and listen to their stories. The particular group they had befriended was here working with the prison system; they had been assigned to work with prison officials to improve conditions, but the backlash was escalating rapidly, and their numbers had thinned as threats from officials had grown louder and more menacing.
It was difficult to know whom to trust. The steadily brewing revolution in British Guiana had stirred the ever-present discontent in Caracas, and increasingly, El Giro ran the streets. But the policia spoke for the government, and neither seemed to have much of a qualm about shedding blood. The Peace Corps guys favored the People’s Progressive Party, who some decried as Communists and by default supported El Giro, who claimed they spoke for the people and wanted the sort of reform that would turn the prisons from squalor—a modern-day oubliette—to a modern reformatory. Lupe favored the policia: she had grown up in this country although outside the city. She held no love for the revolutionaries, who she said preyed on the country folk, demanding tributes and payment, constantly questioning loyalty. She had exploded when she discovered that Alice was seeing Tiburon.
“He’s not just PPP, he’s worse. He’s El Giro,” she had cried. “He’s one of the top men, and he’ll be your death.” With Alice unable to dissuade her, Tiburon was strictly forbidden from stepping near the apartment. Lupe did not want to be associated with him in any way. The Peace Corps guys had tried to calm her nerves, but in their own way had told Alice the same thing. He’s not just a trabajador, they told her, he’s a big deal. Don’t trust him too much.
Alice heard them and understood the danger, but her heart had been Tiburon’s since she’d seen him standing in the dim light of the club that summer night not long after her arrival in Caracas. His shirt was unbuttoned in the summer heat, revealing a firmly muscled chest. He’d seen her immediately, and his eyes had locked on hers. He had looked stunned for a moment, frozen, and then snapped back to his flirtatious smirk that made Alice’s chest freeze for a moment every time, no matter the cause. They’d danced all night. The floor cleared for them, and Alice heard applause and cheers when Tiburon lifted her in a spin. The stars had been bright in the sky and everything had felt possible. In that sweet air, filled with the smell of arepas and saltwater, paths hadn’t mattered. Alice forgot everything she was supposed to know about herself; she forgot that she was supposed to be plain and ordinary and safe. With Tiburon’s strong hand on the small of her back and her hair fanning out as the joropo music rang out with perfect clarity from the stage, Alice was beautiful and free.
Even now in the back of the black sedan, with the stinking rag tied around her face and the charmingly threatening voice from the front seat telling her that they needed to find Tiburon and she should just cooperate and tell them where he was hiding, Alice wasn’t sorry. Her heart beat slowly and methodically in her chest, and she felt a courage rise up in her that can only be born when one no longer cares if they live or die. This wasn’t her path, but it was a terrifically more exciting ending than the one she had seen back on the lane in Glasgow.
“Vete al carajo.” Alice spoke slowly and cl
early.
There was a stunned silence in the car, and then the men exploded with laughter. Alice felt a rush of adrenaline course through her body. She expected the barrel of a pistol to press against her head at any moment, but instead the silky voice from the front responded.
“Calmate nina, I wouldn’t expect Tiburon to run with a girl who didn’t have agallas, but watch yourself. My boys are not known to be patient. We’re taking you to see a friend of mine, and you might want to watch your tongue. He’s a bit of a pendejo, my friend, and might not be so amused by you.”
Alice swallowed her newly found courage and closed her eyes, blocking out the laughter of the men on either side. Things had moved quickly with Tiburon. She had met him the next weekend at the same club and they had danced, and Lupe had paced the floor of the tiny apartment until she had come home. A young Peace Corps man with shaggy blond hair had met her on the doorstep. Did she understand who it was she was getting involved with? he had asked. Did she understand how close he was to the top men in El Giro? She would become a target for the policia and the revolutionaries alike. He had a lot of enemies, he was dangerous, and it might not just be Alice who was at risk, but Lupe as well, and anyone who was associated with him.
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