“Just her and me?” asked Luz.
“I mean, me, too, if you’ll have me.” Avel laughed softly.
“I can’t,” said Maria Josie. “I have some things to take care of tonight.”
“You do?” Luz asked, surprised.
“You go ahead, though. Just be back by nine.”
Luz was even more shocked. “All right,” she said, skeptically.
“Beautiful,” Avel said, with a clap.
“But, hear me—neither of you,” said Maria Josie, waving her forefinger, “do anything stupid.”
* * *
—
Teatro Oso was dimly lit at the bottom of the Sixteenth Street clock tower, an octagonal room with sixteen bunches of curtains, the walls painted like clouds. As they entered the theater that night, a jazz singer with a purple iris pinned to her shining hair swayed with a smoke-lined view of a piano player behind her. The barroom floor was thick with the smell of liquor and musky perfumes. Glasses clinked and patrons laughed. Conversation roared. Red lanterns on circular tables illuminated black hair, warm skin, that rich combination of people from all neighborhoods having fun. At Teatro Oso, anyone was allowed, the clock’s bell raining down on all.
“The next act,” Avel said, warm and loud into Luz’s ear. “They’re my old band, Los So?adores.”
They had taken a seat up front, stage right. The jazz singer dazzled in her spotlight, her dress shimmering with thousands of small white beads. Her black skin appeared a gorgeous blue.
“You like it here?” Avel asked, flagging a waitress with their numbered card.
“I love Oso,” Luz said. “My brother used to perform here.”
“He’s a musician?”
“No,” Luz said, finding his enthusiasm charming. “He works with snakes.”
“He must be one brave son of a bitch.”
“Or crazy as hell.”
They ordered ginger ales and watched the singer finish her set with a folding curtsy. Avel kept his hay-colored hat calmly in his lap like a sleeping kitten. Luz appreciated his attention to detail, his eye for beautiful clothes. Avel had grinned when he saw Luz had changed into her yellow McCall’s dress with the square neckline. She and Lizette had saved up for months to buy themselves enough fabric for the pattern. The inspiration came from a more expensive version they had seen, crumpled and stained, at the bottom of their dirty clothes sack.
The lights brightened to an eerie green, and Los So?adores, a five-piece with two violins, a trumpeter, a guitarist, and a woman in a black veil, took the stage. The woman walked to the silver microphone, cupping its neck in her hand like Eve’s apple. She opened her mouth. She said, “Good evening, Denver,” and then howled in a pleasurable piercing note. The band kicked off behind and beside her, the theater filling with music.
“That’s Leonora Mondragon,” said Avel. “She’s real good. Back home in Califas, she’s famous. Sings like an angel, but dresses like death.”
Luz gazed at Leonora, her face shielded in thin netting. The song she sang was heartfelt and cruel, a tale of lovers destined for destruction, the woman wailing from the ground, holding her man’s ankles, pleading with him to carry her into their home by the sea. Luz had never seen the ocean in person, and she listened intently, imagining the sea.
“It’s true love,” said Avel, and Luz laughed, searching the audience, still anxious from Diego’s attack, uneasy with her back to a crowd.
In Teatro Oso, there were Westside girls with older fiancés. Some of Maria Josie’s former friends with their unattractive husbands. A couple of Diego’s old girls, too, but whenever Luz looked their way, they averted their eyes and drank from glasses of champagne. Luz regretted her wandering gaze when she locked eyes with Mrs. Montoya from three tables down. She immediately waved and stood from her table. “Oh, good gracious,” Luz said to Avel, who watched with amusement as the middle-aged woman waddled toward their table in a garish purple dress. Her lipstick was smeared just past her lips, and one of her false eyelashes hung lazily like a half-opened cocoon.
“Luz Lopez! I haven’t seen you in ages, and I have some questions for you, jita.” Mrs. Montoya scrunched her brow into a forking path, causing her upper lip to recede. She turned to Avel. “Well, aren’t you handsome.” She winked at Luz. “Lucky.”
Luz introduced Mrs. Montoya to Avel as one of her clients. She then rested her arms across the table in a way to show that, no, there was no room for her there, but Avel drank the last of his ginger ale, pulled out an empty chair, and waved to the waitress. “Have a seat, Mrs. Montoya. What kind of client of Luz’s?”
“Oh, she hasn’t told you? She’s quite the fortune-teller, this one.” Mrs. Montoya plopped into her chair. She tossed her purse over the table’s glass covering. “Tea leaves.”
Avel patted Luz’s hand, and that side of her body tingled like with pins.
“To think,” he said, “Luz hasn’t told me how our date ends.”
A date, Luz thought, an actual date.
Mrs. Montoya snickered. “She does see it all. Now, Luz, I’ve been having the worst trouble with my joints again, and just recently after I helped Pa salt the walk, my left ankle had a pain, like a twinge, a needle of sorts, and it just wouldn’t go away for hours and you know how important it is that I get outside at least once a day. Pa isn’t in the best shape anymore, either, and I just need to know if this is a passing thing or if I should be prepared for something worse.”
Avel looked bemused as Mrs. Montoya went on, but the band started up again before anyone could say more, and Mrs. Montoya sighed in her purple dress.
Luz hollered across the table. “I can read for you, but maybe another time?”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Montoya shouted back, clearly disappointed.
When Los So?adores finished their set, Avel and Luz left their table to greet the band in a rear booth. As the stage was readied for La Chata, the room hissed with the high frequency of a crowd waiting. Leonora was gathering her long black dress in her hands, sliding into the shiny red booth. After taking her seat, she reached for a glass of water resting on the table. She removed her veil, and Luz saw that she was beautiful and vibrant with a black mole above the left side of her mouth, one front tooth jagged and chipped, the imperfection inviting.
“You made it,” she said in a voice gone hoarse, glancing at Avel. “And who’s this lovely little dove?”
Avel grinned and moved toward Leonora, embracing her with a long handshake that included much of her thin right arm. “This is Luz,” he said. “And I see you’re still covering yourself when you sing.”
Leonora tilted her face to the side. She laughed. “Hoarding my resources.” She turned to Luz, looking at her with up and down eyes. “Avel’s quite the horn player, Luz,” she said, gazing at him now, focused.
Luz stood awkwardly at Avel’s side, as if she were intruding on a private conversation. “I’ll have to hear you play,” she said.
Leonora lit a slim cigarette. Her face bones glowed in firelight. “You ever need to run away again, you’re always welcome back home with us.”