“My mother.”
“She’s a dressmaker?”
“No, but she sews up all kinds of things. Dresses, people.” Lizette laughed and nudged Luz.
Natalya removed the spectacles from her face. She wiped under her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Come back next Saturday. I need help around here, a girl with good hands.” She reached out and grazed Lizette’s right sleeve. “If I were a young, pretty girl, I’d want dress like yours. Maybe we can work trade.”
“You mean, you want me to help around here?” Lizette spoke with genuine disbelief.
Natalya returned to her ledger. “I said that, yes.”
Lizette looked to Luz and the two girls shrieked. Lizette came around the counter and startled Natalya, offering her a large, warm hug. “Thank you!”
“What about you?” Natalya said, pointing at Luz. “You have wedding coming? Need dress?”
“No,” said Luz, laughing and shaking her head.
Lizette took Luz by the arm, stuck out her tongue, and danced them toward the door. “We’re working on it.”
* * *
—
That night when Luz left Lizette’s, Avel was waiting for her out front beneath two crabapple trees. He was holding a white lily. His skin blended into night while his eyes and Stetson hat beamed with light. Luz grinned at his presence, the peaceful way he stepped out of the trees in his burly coat, moving with one hand in his pocket and the other presenting the flower. The wind had died, though the night still throbbed with a brisk undercurrent.
“Why, thank you,” Luz said, taking the lily from his hand. She gave it a good whiff and noted that the scent of lilies always reminded her of death.
“What’s your favorite flower?” Avel asked.
“Marigolds,” she said.
“Sweet but bitter. Ma always had an altar covered in marigolds.” Avel hooked Luz by the elbow and guided her away from the Westside. “They grow great big in Califas. Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’d like to see that,” she said with her chin lifted upward, her face absorbing the moonlight as if it were the sun.
The city felt dreamy. Parked automobiles and road signs were cast in stretched shadows. They walked arm in arm, Luz breathing the scent of Avel’s sandalwood cologne and his horn’s valve oil. Luz enjoyed the sounds of Avel’s bootheels clomping over pavement. She liked the way he made her feel. Safe, mostly, like she could walk the city at night without fear of being mugged or worse. She tried not to imagine what was worse. Mama had once told Luz that being raped was worse than being murdered, and Luz wondered how that could be. To be raped and to live seemed more desirable than to no longer exist. Luz did not want to find out. The fact that the protection she craved from men was mostly to ward off incidents with other men frightened her.
The couple soon came to a street corner beside the capitol where a smattering of people were leaving the front lawn. They carried hand-painted signs, WE DEMAND A LIVING WAGE, FIGHT POLICE BRUTALITY, STAND UP OR STARVE. An iceman’s horse carriage was parked nearby. The ice delivery man was high on his post, sleeping with his head falling downward, arms folded over his belly. The horses were fine and black, handsome though their eyes were shielded by blinders. Avel stepped forward first, spooking the horse beside the sidewalk. It jerked its veined neck, breathed fog into the dark. Startled, Luz accidentally dropped her lily in the gutter. She didn’t care for horses. Their size alone was intimidating, but more than that, she didn’t like how they seemed both intelligent and senseless at the same time.
“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.