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Ani imagines Barquisimeto as a quaint city, a mix of old and new, European and South American. A few googled photos give her the notion of plazas with cafés, trees, street sellers, city life. When she arrives there the impression only grows stronger, with less street vendors and more European-like cafes. The boat landed somewhere to the north and a car drove her and Felicia all the way to the interior of the great state of Lara, through dark highways, then state roads. It is past 4 o’clock in the morning when they dash through the center of the city. Ani lifts her head from her phone long enough to see the grand buildings, nineteenth century style, the quiet, clean, open streets, the trees. The tall skyscrapers and lower-lying modern architecture buildings created a knot on her throat. The city is beautiful, even in the dark of the night. Ray would like it here. She swallows the knot. Ray will like it here. She runs her finger over the touchscreen of her phone, drawing the password, and refreshes the news site. Nothing. No dead cop found. The phone vibrates, warning her, again, that the battery is getting low. Felicia covers her hand with her own and squeezes.
“He will be here,” she says.
Ani nods and watches as the phone dies in her hands.
They stay at a family home, some friend of a friend of a cousin of a friend, or something liked that. The room is clean and has two beds. Ani would rather not rely on the kindness of strangers, but she dares not log into a hotel with her ID. She crashes for twelve straight hours, waking only when Felicia shakes her shoulder. Her body aches a little and at first she has trouble seeing in the bright light, when Felicia opens the shutters.
“Come, we need to go see a man. Do you have money?” Felicia asks.
“What?” Ani grumbles.
“It needs to be done now. If you don’t have the money, I can get you some. We’ll work it out later when Ray comes.”
Ani presses her lips. Ray isn’t coming. She takes her phone, but the charger she was lent had a loose fit and her phone was not charged overnight.
“Fuck!”
She quickly showers, grabs a slice of bread on her way out and looks at the pristine sky. Ray.
She has her ID. She has her phone. She has a little cash loan from Felicia, who is about to leave. She is set for her new life. She needs to get a laptop and dig out some secure messaging software. In another life she fucked a tech guy for a few weeks and picked up a few tricks. She’s no hacker but hopefully she remembers enough to talk with her father and with Athena without getting picked up.
For all her previous phone checking, she now doesn’t really want to see the news. Felicia looks at her inquiringly, sitting at the edge of her bed. Ani sighs and goes to the Vinci Daily homepage. There it is. She stifles a sob as she reads “Dirty Cop Shot in the Woods While Escaping Arresting Officer. Six Dead.” Her hands are shaking and she can’t light up a fucking cigarette. Felicia takes her cigarette and her phone and holds her as she thrashes against her, until she breaks and cries. Sometime later she realizes Felicia is crying too.
“You we lucky,” Felicia says.
Ani looks up, startled.
“You had him. I waited for a long time, but he…” Felicia covers her face with her hands. “He only ever saw a friend.”
Ani places a hand on Felicia´s shoulder, pulls her closer into an embrace. It seems they can’t stop crying.
Ani sees the woman of the photo across the park, staring up at the Obelisco. She’s wearing white, the same as the previous day. Jordan Semyon is strangely beautiful. Her eyes are too small, her lips too thin, but she is an alluring woman. One who, like herself, is stranded in this city waiting for a man who will not come. Jordan bites her lower lip, takes a few aimless steps. The man with her, Nails, was it that Semyon called him, is looking in her direction. Felicia is going tomorrow. She wants to see her safely.
Ani starts walking. El Obelisco is not the quaint little phallic sculpture placed on top of a carefully manicured lawn of a perfect little town square. It’s ugly and big, sits in the middle of a gigantic roundabout and it’s a nightmare to find a way there. Nails watches her walking with his hand conspicuously placed inside his jacket. Ani raises her hands. “Peace,” she mouths from across the road.
Jordan and Nails come to her.
“Mrs. Semyon,” Ani says. “Your husband sent me.”
“He said he would be here,” Jordan whispers. “Inside two weeks, he said.” Her voice sounds raspy and her eyes are swollen.
Ani fights the temptation of looking at her shoes. As a cop, she has delivered the bad news more than once. You have to look them straight into the eye. “Mr. Semyon was found in the desert. Bled out. They are blaming the Mexicans.”
Jordan wails, then holds on to Nail’s arm sobbing as she leans her forehead against his shoulder.
“He wanted to be here. He asked me to tell you that.”
“No. No. No!” Jordan looks at her and Ani sees in her face the same despair she felt two days ago.
“I gather you haven’t seen this yet.” Ani hands the phone to Jordan, on the Daily Vinci. Frank Semyon smiles in the photo on the news. Jordan reads, scrolling furiously down. She hands Ani the phone and once more turns to Nails. Ani notices that the man is sniffling discretely. She wonders if anyone will feel that way once she is gone. Will she ever see her father and Athena again? She can’t go back and she’s all alone. Not that she minds it. She’s as tough as they come, isn’t she? She’s been winging it alone since forever, since mom left, since she had to be the older sister. Since those four days.
She turns to leave but Jordan says “Wait.”
They follow Nails to a black car. Ani lifts an eyebrow. “I have some money. I always have a something tucked away,” Jordan says. “Frank always laughs at me for that.” She pauses. “Laughed.”
They get in, drive around for a while, talk. Jordan wants to come back, take revenge on the Mexicans, Vinci PD, the world. Ani dissuades her. They can’t go back. They can’t.
In addition to loyal and brave, Felicia is resourceful. The goes back to the Black Rose and to her life. No one noticed her absence. No one really objects as she opens a probate proceeding to claim Frank’s body from the morgue. He has no family and no money left. They let him go. She finds the diamonds in his belongings, in his tatter, dusty suit, just where Jordan said they would be. She sends them all four of them. As soon as Jordan can turn them to money, she makes sure Felicia gets her share. Frank would have liked that. He also would have liked Antigone.
Jordan has been living in close quarters with the cop for four months now. She really likes Antigone. Not Ani. That’s not a grown woman’s name. They are still sad, the both of them. Sometimes she hears Antigone crying in her room at night. Sometimes Antigone can hear her, she is sure. Sometimes they talk. It is funny how pain is measured. A six year marriage no one thought would be successful. A one night stand. Yet, the pain is the same.
“Did you love him?” she asked Antigone one time, in the beginning.
“No. I had only just met him,” Antigone replies, too quickly. Then she lights a cigarette up. “I love him. I don’t know.”
Jordan waits. Hearing Antigone talking, more to herself than to her, distracts her from her own grief. “He was different. Kind. Sweet, almost. But not mushy. I hate that.” Antigone massages her forehead with two fingers. “He looked like a burnout at first, and maybe he was, but he was a good man. And that night. Something… connected us. Something different, you know?” She sighs. “I am not sentimental or tender. It was odd because in that moment I was too and it felt so intense, like, I don’t know… like we belonged. Two pieces of a puzzle and all that crap.” Antigone snorts. “My father would have loved this shit, soulmates and whatnot.”
“You loved him,” Jordan states.
“Maybe. Now we’ll never know,” Antigone says, a little too flippantly. She drinks down her very large glass of bourbon.
Jordan drinks too. It takes the edge off. There’s no sign that they know where they are, for now, but Antigone is still on the most wanted list and Jordan herself is considered a person of interest. No one seems to be looking for the diamonds or Osip’s money. Still, she lives between anxiety and depression. It’s too soon to kick back and enjoy the rest of her life. She wonders if that moment will ever come and how will it feel, without Frank by her side. She pours herself a new one and sits back, reminiscing. Her last time with Frank. His voice echoes inside her head. “This one is between you and me.” Her chest heaves out of its own accord and Antigone is by her side, helping her sit up, rubbing her back. At least she has a friend there. Antigone kisses the top of her head and holds her and she holds on to her too. They are all that they have left, and Nails too.
Maybe it’s the booze. Probably it’s just sheer loneliness. Everybody gets horny at funerals, they say, but neither of them had at least that chance to say goodbye. The fact is that when Jordan lifts her head Antigone lowers hers and they kiss. It’s not passion, not really, just blind need. She has done girls, a long time ago, when she was still taking her Accounting degree and had bills to pay and wild nights at the clubs. It’s pretty obvious Antigone knows what she’s doing too. It doesn’t matter, who knows what, who has done what. More than Antigone’s presence, she feels Frank’s absence. In the way Antigone holds her, treats her a little roughly, she knows that her friend feels the same. Ray is not there, but he is. Frank is not there, but he is.
They don’t do it again, not for a few weeks. They don’t talk about it either. It’s just a night. The next time, there is no booze in the mix. Jordan is not even sure how it happens. Antigone knocks at the door of room, comes in, they talk about the impending move to the south side of the city. She is wearing a negligée and the shoulder drops. Antigone lifts the strap. They kiss, not too gently and the rest follows, two shipwrecks holding on to each other in the wide sea of loss.
The third time comes soon. It’s quieter. It’s still not love, not the kind of love she had with Frank, not a vast, deep, all-fulfilling story, but it’s better than alone, better than empty. And she does like Antigone so much.
“You’re belly’s curving,” Jordan says in the aftermath of the sixth time.
“The food here is good.”
“No… You see, I’ve been waiting for my belly to look like that for a long time…”
“No.” Antigone sits up in the bed. “Shit. Fuck.” Jordan has told her about her trouble conceiving with Frank, so she is not surprised that Antigone instantly knows what she means.
“It could be a good thing…” she says, sitting up as Antigone hastily dresses.
“It’s not that,” Antigone says, pulling her sweater down. “I need to get to a pharmacy and get a test, now.”
“So it could be true?”
“Yes, I wasn’t on the pill,” Antigone replies as she tucks her knife on her boot.
“You’re smiling and frowning, all at the same time.”
“Yeah.”
Antigone is gone before Jordan can even reach her discarded negligée.
“Es un varoncito!” the doctor says at the five month ultrasound.
Antigone melts down. Jordan holds her hand and reassures the doctor. “No, no, ella es muy feliz.”
“Doctor Hernandéz,” Antigone asks, once she stops crying. “Are you sure all is fine?”
Jordan holds her hand. She knows how scared Antigone is that her drinking and smoking might have hurt the baby.
“He looks perfectly healthy,” the doctor replies. “Very well developed.”
Antigone smiles and to Jordan, it feels as if the room lights up.
“Soy sua hermana,” Jordan shouts as she tries to follow Antigone into the delivery room and a large, squat nurse bars her. Antigone is in too much pain to say anything.
Later, when she is holding Raymond in her arms, and in turn is held by Jordan in the quiet of her hospital room, she cries again, as she notices how similar her son’s hands are to his father’s, right down to the shape of the fingernails.
“He’s beautiful,” Jordan says.
Antigone lets her take the baby in her arms. Jordan was born for that, while her… she has never thought of having kids. But now, as Jordan hands her back little Ray and he latches to her nipple, it feels right. She can do this. And she can share him with Jordan. The love of some kind that percolated through them until it filled the gaping holes of absence is something. More than something.
Nails comes in with flowers. Antigone smiles as he runs a finger over the downy head, but then she sits up.
“Listen,” she says. “I’ve been gathering stuff online. I also have the files I brought. It is time we start.”
“But the baby was just born…” Jordan and Nails simultaneously say.
“This is for him,” Antigone replies. “For him. For Ray. For Frank.”
She looks into Jordan’s eyes, then into Nails’. Both assent with a nod.
“There's truth that lives and truth that dies,” she says, feeling determined, focused, ready. “We will get this done.”
Finis
August 2015