by Reinke, Sara
He was also a black belt in aikido, a type of martial arts that utilized an opponent’s own forward momentum against them during an attack and incorporated wrist holds and manipulation of specific pressure points to overpower even someone physically larger or stronger. Pilar had been slowly learning from him over the past eight or nine months, a fact they’d kept hidden from both Valien and Pilar’s mother. Although Estela would have staunchly disapproved of a woman learning how to fight, Pilar doubted Valien would mind. After all, he was the one who agreed to let her take college classes, giving her a modicum of independence unusual for Nahual women. But he still would have wanted to know why she was interested in learning aikido, and Pilar would have been hard-pressed to explain.
“How were classes today?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I got your message.” Shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, she looked up at him. “Qué onda?”
“It’s finished.” He glanced back at the motorcycle he’d been working on. “What do you think?”
She followed his gaze, puzzled. It was a good-looking bike, but then again, most of the street rods Valien worked on were. He catered more to the racing crowd than the Harley-Davidson sort of rider; motorcycles that were tricked out and stylized were his specialty. She’d learned enough about them from their father to hold her own, both behind the handlebars and in discussing them.
“Isn’t this the SV 650 you guys have been working on the past month?” she asked.
“Jackie’s done most of the work,” Valien said with a proud smile, clapping Jackie on the shoulder and turning his head so that his friend could read his lips as he spoke.
“I’ve had a good teacher,” Jackie replied pointedly to Valien.
“It’s looking really nice,” Pilar said. Bright red and streamlined, with polished chrome fixtures and glossy black trim, nice was definitely putting it mildly. “It’s hot,” she added in hasty amendment.
“It’s a 2003,” Jackie said, his expression somewhat apologetic—though for what, she had no clue. “It’s got eleven thousand miles on it, but we gave it an overhaul and an engine cleaning.”
“It’s got electronic fuel injection,” Valien said, then with a glance at Jackie, “on what, a 645 cc V-twin, eight-valve?”
Jackie nodded.
“It’s hot,” Pilar said again. “Whose is it?”
Valien’s hand flapped; it took her a moment of bewildered surprise to realize he’d thrown something at her, something small and jangling, that winked in the sunlight. Holding out her hands, she caught it more by luck than on purpose, then blinked in new start to find a key resting in the basin of her palms.
“Yours,” Valien said, smiling as she looked up at him, wide-eyed.
“What? You mean it?”
He nodded.
“You guys fixed this up for me?”
He nodded again.
“Really?” With a delighted squeal, she darted forward, first flinging her arms around Jackie’s neck, then throwing herself at her brother. “I love it! Thank you! Thank you!”
Valien laughed, giving her a squeeze before letting her drop back to the ground again. “There’s one condition, though.”
Her smile abruptly withered. I knew it, she thought, ready to scowl. Or at least I should have.
“You have to pay for your own insurance,” Valien said. “I know with you going to school, it’s hard to find a job and balancing the books here really doesn’t cut it. So I talked to Duke…” He nodded once to indicate a bar across the street, Duke’s Place.
James “Duke” Parker was one of what the Nahual called a “feeder,” meaning he knew about them and their vampiric natures and allowed them to feed from his blood as needed. He’d been as such—and a friend besides—to their father, Enrique, for more than twenty years.
“He said he’d work around your classes, give you some three-to-nine shifts,” Valien continued. “That way you wouldn’t be out too late. There wouldn’t be much to it, he said—just waiting tables, sweeping up, helping behind the bar.”
“You want me to go to work at Duke’s?” Pilar asked, a sudden sinking feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. She didn’t need to check her watch to realize there would be no way she’d be able to do both, work at Melaza, then wrap up in time to get downtown to Duke’s by three in the afternoon.
Surprised by her hesitation, Valien crossed his arms, his smile withering. “No. I’m just saying if you want the bike, you need to cover your own insurance. Duke’s giving you the chance to do that, no strings. But hey, if you’re not interested…” With a shrug, he reached out as if to take the key back from her.
Pilar frowned, snapping her hand closed tightly around it. “I didn’t say that.”
“Bueno.” Valien grinned again, dropping her a wink. Good. “I told him you’d start next week.”
What? Pilar blinked in surprise. Next week? But that means I have to quit Melaza. That means everything will have to change…all my plans… It’s going to have to happen now.
While Valien and Jackie returned to the garage, a stricken Pilar stared at the motorcycle. My motorcycle, she thought. She’d wanted one since she was sixteen years old. For six years, she’d argued, begged and bargained with her parents—always in vain—to let her have one. More than just a hot set of wheels, a bike of her own had represented freedom that Valien, Téo and every other Nahual male enjoyed as a birthright.
“Mierda,” she muttered—shit!—because there was no way she could do everything she needed to in only one week. It wasn’t enough time. There would be no way, and then all her planning, sneaking around, the out-and-out lies she’d told to cover her tracks as she carefully stalked and plotted against Pepe Cervantes and his crew, would have been for nothing. All the dancing, the humiliating endurance of not just Pepe’s lewd regard, but every single man who had patronized the club and leered at her—including you, Elías Velasco, she thought bitterly—would have been for nothing.
“Mierda,” she said again, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes and blinking stubbornly, proudly against them.
“So what do you think?” Chita called from behind her. Pilar turned and found her and Téo walking across the parking lot.
“Did you know about this?” Pilar forced a smile and made a show of swinging her leg around, straddling the bike seat, mostly so she could swat at her eyes without either of them noticing.
“Me?” Chita batted her eyelashes innocently, looking skyward.
Pilar laughed, less feigned this time. “Puta!” she exclaimed. Bitch! “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was supposed to be a surprise,” Chita replied with a grin. Then, as she continued walking past Pilar, heading for her car—and leaving Téo standing conspicuously beside her—she added mentally, And here’s another one.
Where are you going? Pilar asked, eyes wide. Wait a minute. Come back.
Have fun with your pareja, Chita replied in a singsong kind of voice.
Pilar bristled, glaring daggers into Chita’s back. He’s not my pareja!
“So, uh, hey, Pilar. You like the bike?” Téo asked, unaware of their telepathic debate.
Still fuming, Pilar turned to him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t handsome—quite the opposite, actually, although he was short for a guy, his height only equal to her own. While this didn’t bother her, the way it affected his attitude did, and that, more than anything, was what she found unattractive about Téo.
More aggressive and defensive than other Nahual males in their corillo, Téo seemed bound and determined to prove his machismo. Under the pretense of being protective, he liked to boss her around, as if he knew better than she did, or that she was weak somehow and helpless, unable to choose for herself or decide in her own best interest.
As the eldest born son in his family, like Valien, Téo would one day inherit his father Siervo’s place of leadership among his clan. Because Siervo and Pilar’s father had been friends, their families had been
communally joined with several others to form a corillo. But upon Enrique’s murder, leaders from the other clans once associated with their corillo, except for Siervo, had been intimidated and frightened. They’d broken away when Valien had assumed Enrique’s mantle of leadership, abandoning their onetime allies to instead submit to the control and dominance of their rivals, Los Pandilleros.
“Yeah, I like it,” she said, waiting for him to add something about how it was too dangerous for her, that she could get hurt riding on it alone or that she should be sure to wear her helmet whenever she took it out for a spin.
Instead, he remarked, “You look good on it.” Sweeping his gaze from her head to her sandals, he added, “Really good.”
He’d been pestering her like this lately, his interest in resuming their previous sexual encounters undisguised. Annoyed, she turned the key and fired up the engine, sending him back a startled step.
“Are you coming to the feeding tomorrow night?” he shouted over the bike’s roar.
Damn it, she’d forgotten about that. Once every three or four months, members of the corillo and their human feeders came together so that the Nahual could satisfy their need for blood. Although as a rule, each corillo kept a refrigerated supply of bagged blood at all times they could use as needed. The festín, or feeding, was as much a social event as a physiological necessity—a veritable fiesta, a raucous, celebratory affair. And Pilar would be expected to be there.
“Mierda,” she seethed under her breath, because that gave her even less time.
Angrily, she cranked the bike’s handles, gunning the engine. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” she yelled to Téo with a scowl. “A girl’s gotta eat, right?”
Then, using her heel to knock back the kickstand, she dropped her new motorcycle in gear and peeled out of the lot.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Hi, Daddy!”
Elías sat in front of the computer in the small second bedroom of his beachfront condo, which he’d converted into a home office/storage room. Aside from the computer and desk, it was more of the latter as opposed to the former, with boxes he still had yet to unpack—more than a year after moving in—plus a vacuum cleaner and mop he hadn’t touched in at least as long, a mountain bike and a boxing heavy bag with stand.
“Hey, Manny,” he said with a smile as on-screen, his three-year-old son Manuel flashed a toothy smile.
Even though Manny lived with his mother more than 200 miles away in Miami, they spoke at least three times a week. A small webcam mounted above each of their respective monitors allowed father and son to see each other in real, albeit somewhat digitally blurred, time. “Cómo estás?”
“Muy bien,” Manny said—very good—in response to Elías’s How are you? “Look what I made, Daddy. See?”
He held up a sheet of construction paper onto which numerous colorful shapes had been drawn in marker. “This is you,” he continued, pointing to one of the abstract blobs, and if Elías cocked his head and squinted just so, he could make out the scribbles meant to designate his hair, a pair of dots for his eyes and the lateral slash of his mouth. “This is me…and this one’s Mama.”
“It’s wonderful,” Elías assured him. “I love it.”
“When will you come to see me again?” Manny asked.
“I don’t know,” Elías said gently. “Maybe soon.”
“How soon?”
“Maybe in a couple of weeks.”
“Really?”
“We’ll see.”
“Hooray!” Manny clapped. “I love you, Daddy!”
Elías smiled. “I love you too.”
After a few more minutes of idle chatter, he grew restless and bored, finally abandoning his chair and darting away from the camera. His mother had apparently been waiting in the immediate wings, because before Elías could even reach for the keyboard to disconnect the call, she came into view.
“Hola, Nita,” he said, his smile growing strained.
Her reply was equally curt. “Hello, Elías.”
They’d married young, while both were still in college, and over the next few years had faced a number of demons together, the largest of which had been Nita’s inability to conceive. After two years of trying, three miscarriages and another year spent enduring the arduous process of in vitro fertilization, she’d finally become pregnant with Manuel. But the stress of the experience ultimately cost them more than just the fourteen grand they’d spent out-of-pocket on the procedure. They’d divorced before Manuel’s second birthday, shortly after Elías received a job offer to move to Bayshore, and Nita had flatly refused to move. She’d hated the fact that his work with the Miami police was so potentially dangerous, but had apparently disliked the idea of leaving her family and friends behind even more.
“I don’t know if you were listening in or not,” Elías began, a lie because he damn well knew she had been, “but I’m thinking about coming to Miami in a couple of weeks, make a long weekend out of it.”
“Elías, we’ve talked about this,” she said, her voice still edged with a brittle sort of patience. “You know I don’t like you taking Manny for overnights at a motel.”
The inference she lent the word motel made it sound like she thought he’d take the boy to some sleazy fleabag no-tell sort.
“And it’s very confusing for him if you just drop him back off in the evenings,” Nita continued. “It makes me look like the bad guy, because I’m the one who has to explain to him—again—why Daddy can’t stay at our house anymore.”
According to their custody agreement, Elías was allowed visitation for two weeks twice a year and two weekends every month provided it could be conveniently arranged. Which Nita always seemed bound and determined to prevent.
For a long moment, he sat there, his jaw clenched angrily, the pulse point behind his temple pounding out a furious cadence. Then, with a long, slow sigh and forced amiability—because Manuel could still be within ready earshot of the computer on Nita’s end—he said, “Then I’ll drive there to get him and bring him back again.”
It was a three-hour drive one-way from Bayshore to Miami, and she knew it.
“Fine,” she said coolly. “What dates?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a calendar in front of me. And I have to check with work—”
Cutting him off, she said, “Why don’t you call me back then once you’ve had the chance to actually put a plan together for this?”
The screen went black as she shut him down. Literally as well as figuratively.
Fuck, Elías thought, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.
He’d arrived home from work less than an hour ago and had done little more than change from his office clothes into a pair of cutoff sweat pants and a T-shirt. He’d stopped on his way at a Chinese takeout place, and knew he ought to eat the Mongolian pork that by now had grown lukewarm sitting out on his kitchen counter. Though tempted by the idea of grabbing this and a beer from the refrigerator, then sitting outside on his patio to watch the sunset, he decided instead to go a few rounds with the punching bag in the corner of his office. Burning off some of the steam he felt toward his ex-wife in that moment sounded too good to pass up.
His father, Emilio Batista, had won both world welter- and junior middleweight championships in the 1970s before retiring to Miami. His dream had always been to own a restaurant, and Elías had never known him in any profession but this, but he’d grown up marveling over scrapbooks filled to overflowing with newspaper clippings and magazine articles about his father’s boxing exploits. And of course, for a time, he’d longed to follow in Emilio’s footsteps.
Although his own dreams of glory had quickly fizzled out, boxing remained stress relief for Elías, if nothing else. Having taped up his hands and wrists, he then spent the better part of an hour laying into the punching bag, slamming his knuckles into it again and again—upper cuts, jabs, hooks—in rapid-fire succession. Finally, gasping for breath, trembling with exertion, he caught the bag in hi
s hands, stopping it in wild midswing.
Stumbling forward, he leaned heavily into it, pressing his forehead against the vinyl. He’d overdone it and he knew it, pushed himself too far without checking his blood sugar ahead of time or eating anything first just to be safe. Earlier that day, his blood had been too concentrated with sugar, but now it was exactly the opposite—he’d just exhausted nearly all of his blood glucose stores. Instead of hyperglycemic, he was having a hypoglycemic episode, and he staggered clumsily across the room to the doorway.
Stupid, he thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
By the time he made it into his bedroom, he could feel the pounding measure of his heartbeat behind his ears. He felt weak and dazed and fell down hard to his knees beside his nightstand. Fumbling clumsily, he opened the drawer and pawed inside until he found the small bottle of glucose tablets he kept tucked away for emergencies. He had another such bottle in the glove box of his car, one in his desk at work and, as a general rule, one in a coat pocket at all times just in case. Popping off the lid, Elías drew the bottle to his mouth, tipped his head back and caught three of the pills against his tongue. He closed his eyes, grimacing at the cloying sweetness as they dissolved, and waited for the sugar rush to kick in.
Goddamn it. With a groan, Elías shoved his hands against his bed and staggered to his feet. He needed to eat. The glucose pills were a quick fix, but no substitute in his system for food.
Carrying his now cold Chinese in hand, he walked out onto the patio. The dusk sky looked painted in a backsplash of vibrant colors that reflected against the rippled plane of the Gulf of Mexico. He sat down on a patio chair and stretched out his long legs, propping his feet, ankles crossed, on the railing of his deck. Eyes squinted against orange glare, he watched silhouetted figures walking and jogging along the waterline below, and a last few surfers out riding waves as they tumbled lazily inland.
