Maria Josie spoke through contorted lips. “You have no idea what kinds of sacrifices I’ve made for you and your brother. What I’ve done in order to be here for you, and still, there is a reason you didn’t tell me, Little Light.”
“You weren’t here for Diego,” said Luz. “You sent him off like a stray dog.”
Maria Josie blinked. Luz thought she could hear her auntie’s eye ducts pressurize with tears. “I will not explain myself.”
“Neither will I,” said Luz, and sat down, turning her back to her auntie, who staggered away with the heaviness of an injured hawk.
What does she know? Luz thought. Nothing. But the moment she thought this, she felt ashamed.
Lizette and Alfonso had finished the dance and collected their loot in a wicker basket, stepping away from the dance floor as the band moved into a waltz. Remilio stepped before Luz. He was handsome, and while Luz was seated he was taller, towering over her with an outstretched hand.
“Your fiancé asked that I dance with you. Shouldn’t have you sitting here all alone.”
Luz looked at Avel, who watched them intently as he blew into his trumpet. When his part came to a rest, he placed the horn at his side, giving them each a smile and a wave.
“Sure,” said Luz, standing from her seat. “I’d love to.”
The dance floor was crowded by guests with a drunken sheen. There was laughter and conversation beneath the music and children darting between couples, chasing one another with white-gloved hands. Remilio was a sophisticated dancer, holding the line of his shoulders and swaying Luz delicately from side to side, her lilac dress blooming above her feet. She focused on the beat, the music vibrating throughout her ankles and heels. As they twirled beneath twinkling lights, onstage Avel breathed into his horn, and in the distance, far above the city, the moon was nearly full, cloaked in hazy clouds. When the song crashed to a close, Remilio kissed Luz’s cheek, thanking her for the company. In the shuffle of bodies ushering away from the dance floor, Luz felt a tug on the backside of her dress, then her hand in another’s.
It was David, pulling Luz across the party, as if running in the rain for cover.
“Where are we going?” Luz asked, breathless.
David shushed her as he guided them into the house, through the back door, and into the laundry closet, the same room where Luz and Avel had just been. Luz felt a strange sensation, obvious déjà vu, but something more, a vision of herself and David from above, recognition of an event before the final act.
“What is it, David?” Luz whispered.
David didn’t search for the drawstring light. He kept their bodies slightly apart, his breath warm on Luz’s face. A faucet dripped behind them. The voices of partygoers growled on the other side of the door. David’s smell was thick, sweet, soil and oranges. Something good.
“I want to know more,” David said low. “About what you saw at the Brown Palace.”
Luz could feel her own breathing surge, her heartbeat in her fingertips and neck. “Right now? I’m supposed to be outside with the guests.”
“No one will notice. Promise.”
“David…” Luz said in a honeyed way.
She turned to leave, moving toward the door, but was drawn back by both wrists. David had pushed Luz to the wall, where he kissed her on the mouth. Luz was surprised at the fervor with which she moved her tongue inside his lips. He tasted of salt and faintly of liquor. He pulled the light string, and the room came alive with white walls and a washbasin, cabinetry, rows of folded towels. They stared at each other, as if understanding for the first time a message written between them. David kissed her again and Luz saw that his mouth had become swollen with wear. She was surprised at her focus, her hunger, as if she were gorging herself on some part of David that existed where only she could go. Luz didn’t have normal control of her thoughts—her body and her mind had become want.
Though Luz was nervous, afraid of the parts of David she’d never seen, the places no one else had felt on her own body, she gripped his hands and guided them beneath her bridesmaid dress and cried out, softly, into the scoop of his ear. When she moved her face away and their eyes met, Luz made a choice. She wanted David. She wanted him more than anything.
“I want to be with you,” she said.
David picked her up with both hands, resting her small body on the edge of the sink. He unzipped her lilac dress, revealing her warm breasts, gripping them firmly. David lifted Luz and held her body against his, wrapping her legs around his torso until she felt him moving aside the folds of her dress and the thin fabric of her underclothes, guiding himself inside her body, entering her with a deep and fulfilling pain.
“I’m in love with you,” Luz said through staccato breaths, trying to make herself believe so.
David reached up from her hips and with his left hand, shoved his damp fingers into Luz’s mouth, keeping them steady, telling her to bite down, and Luz did, worried the entire time this is how it all worked.
And then the door was kicked in and this time it wasn’t Lizette.
Avel stood before them and the room filled with shock, as if the walls wanted to gag, expelling what was inside. Luz froze in horror, then dropped her legs from their position around David. Avel’s eyes moved to her breasts and Luz was ashamed, for he hadn’t seen her nakedness before. She pulled her gown upward as David adjusted himself and reached for his waistband. He kept his eyes low, not sharing a single glance with Luz.
“Avel,” Luz said, slinking off the metal sink.
David straightened his tie with deft hands. He reached for a folded towel from the rack above Luz. He wiped his hands on it and flung the white cloth over his shoulder. Without acknowledging Avel or Luz, David twisted around, moving through the doorway, walking out to the party, as if he had only been in the laundry closet cleaning up a spill.
Luz looked to Avel. She fixed her hair, holding her hands over her face. Through clenched teeth, she cried out, “Forgive me.”
Avel shook his head with a sadness so thick it felt like a wall. He reached for Luz’s throat and, with a gentle tug, snapped the golden chain around her neck, placing the engagement ring securely in his breast pocket. He said, “I really loved you.” He then left, darting into the party, his shoulders low.
Luz cried in small, climbing moans. But she soon heaved tears so uncontrollably that she wasn’t sure how a soul could feel such humiliation, such loss, all this pain wrapped together in one. She sobbed then, thinking of Diego, her father, every man who had ever hurt her. Someone must have called Lizette to the house, because she soon arrived at the laundry closet and screamed in terror at the sight of her disheveled cousin, weeping against the sink.
“What has happened? Who has done this to you?”
Lizette’s shrieks rose around them like a shelter, and Luz imagined the sounds of the cousins drifting high into the night sky, an eye looking down at the party on Fox Street, all the sparkling lights and dancing bodies, the children rushing from room to room, the steel pots steaming on the stove, the house a theater of life.
“Luz,” Lizette pleaded. “Who did this to you? Tell me.”
But all Luz could do was weep, shaking her head a violent no. “It was only me,” she cried. “There’s no one else. It was just me.”