Chapter Eighteen

Esmeralda studied the face of the dead man on the table. Fernando Aguilar Ortiz had lived seventy-one years, and his face was leathery from a lifetime of hot sunlight. Thick calluses covered his hands. According to the pictures provided by his family, he had a cheerful smile but a dark, serious look in his eyes.

Her job was to bring him back to life for a day.

Esmeralda glanced at the embalming room door to make sure no one was coming. Then she touched her right hand to his cold, stiff face.

Immediately, she was in the village of Rio Pequeño in Mexico, caught in a swirl of bright costumes, the sound of maracas and guitarron and vihuela, clapping hands, rhythmic voices. It was a saint’s day festival, though she wasn’t sure which one. She looked up as she held tight to the hand of an older man with a gray beard.

This was Fernando Aguilar Ortiz’s first memory.

His life unfolded around her. It had not been a very easy one. When he was a little boy, a deadly fever had swept through the village, taking several cousins, an older sister and a younger brother, and his mother.

Fernando had attended a little bit of school at the Catholic church in town, but mainly he worked for his father, who raised goats. When he was sixteen, he fell in love with a neighbor girl, Lucia, and they were married, but Lucia had not survived her first childbirth. Neither had the child.

Soon after, Fernando made his way illegally into America. He worked first on a farm, and then got a better-paying job with a landscaping company. He met another girl and married her, and they had five children. In time, he created his own landscaping company with one of his good friends and two of his sons. He had seventeen grandchildren, who gave him delight without measure.

He’d been diagnosed with cancer when he was sixty-nine. His two devoted sons and his eldest daughter came to see him over the following two years, as did five of his grandchildren. The others lived too far away or were too busy, and this brought him sadness, but in his heart he forgave them.

He had died nine hours ago at the UCLA hospital, with one son at his side.

That was Fernando Aguilar Ortiz’s last memory.

Esmeralda had embalmed the body and dressed it in the coat and tie provided by his family. Now the real challenge began, using cosmetics to bring the semblance of life back to his face. The art of the mortuary cosmetics included using color to make the body appear to have a living circulatory system. Small, careful traces of red mixed in at just the right spots could bring a healthy and vital appearance to the deceased's face.

Once she had seen someone's life, Esmeralda’s understanding of the person helped guide her in making up their face and styling their hair. Maybe it was just small touches—a little shading here and there—but she did her best to subtly bring out the personality and emotional richness the deceased had possessed. The final viewing created a lasting memory image for the person's loved ones, and Esmeralda felt it was important that the families have a positive experience.

And it was much better than working with the living.

Esmeralda became absorbed in her work. On her headphones, she listened to Vivaldi. Esmeralda had not always listened to music while she worked, but in the last few weeks, she’d had a few nightmares about work. In these dreams, the embalming room stretched on forever, with mortuary tables as far as she could see, each with a body waiting for her attention. She couldn’t work fast enough—the bodies were rapidly decaying and crumbling, putting her into a panic to preserve them.

Then a young man would slowly approach her, tall and handsome, with dark, shaggy hair, and deep brown eyes that were identical to her own. He had a dazzling smile. He would touch each corpse as he passed it. At his touch, the corpse would sit up on the mortuary table and turn to look at Esmeralda.

Esmeralda cranked up the volume on her headphones and tried not to think about those dreams.

By six o'clock, Esmeralda had Mr. Ortiz looking as if he were in perfect health, just taking a siesta on a warm summer afternoon, instead of the gaunt and pale look with which he'd arrived. She hoped the family would be pleased.

Esmeralda stripped off her gloves. Mr. Ortiz was now dressed and styled for his family, and Jorge and Luis would move him into his casket for the viewing.

She straightened up the embalming room, washed her hands and rubbed them with sanitizer. She removed her smock, said goodnight to the elder of the two Mr. Garcias, and stepped outside.

Garcia y Garcia Funeral Home had operated in eastern Los Angeles for more than twenty years. Esmeralda had graduated high school two years earlier, and now she was two classes away from her Associate of Applied Science in Funeral Service degree. Technically, she was an intern at Garcia y Garcia, but since neither of the Garcia brothers really cared to do much embalming anymore, and both were impressed with how well Esmeralda prepared the bodies, she often found herself working alone.

As she walked into the parking lot, she noticed a man in dark sunglasses watching her. He sat on a motorcycle with a huge engine and some kind of gargoyle design on the side. She didn’t recognize him. He was Caucasian instead of Latino, which made him stick out in this neighborhood, where none of the signs were written in English. Strange scars dotted his face, and his hands were sheathed in black leather gloves.

He smiled at her, which made her uncomfortable. She turned her head away from him to watch the road. She would have liked to turn her back on him entirely, but that seemed a little dangerous. Esmeralda stared at the passing traffic and watched him from the corner of her eye while she waited.

She thought about going back inside, but she didn’t want to get stuck explaining how she was scared of a man in the parking lot, who was probably just an early arrival for the Ortiz viewing.

Hurry up, Esmeralda thought, watching the cars pass.

“Hi,” the man spoke behind her. She ignored him, as if she believed he was speaking to someone else. “Esmeralda,” he said.

She tensed. She turned back to give him her best “crawl away and die” look.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Are you sure?” The man slid off his bike. As he walked toward her, he removed his sunglasses.

When she saw his gray eyes, she heard herself draw in a sharp breath, and then she completely turned her back on him. She didn’t know what her face looked like right now, but it would be full of emotions she didn’t want him to see.

“You are Esmeralda, aren’t you?” He was walking towards her. “You have to be. You’re as beautiful as I remember.”

Esmeralda wanted to roll her eyes at him, but she would have to turn and face him to do that. And then he might see how she really felt, or how her knees had gone loose and wobbly.

“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked. He was standing just behind her now.

“Yes,” she said. She got her face under control—cool, distant—and finally turned to look at him. She flicked her eyes up and down him, trying to appear indifferent, but her heart was skipping. She didn’t even mind the weird dotting of scars on his face. “You are the devil.”

He laughed, and she liked his smile.

“Your mother said I was a fraud,” Esmeralda said.

“Foster mother,” he said. “And who cares what she thinks?”

“She was very insulting. And my mother was angry.”

“I bet your mother didn’t care once you gave her the money,” he said.

“I did not give her the money,” Esmeralda said.

He gave her a surprised look, then laughed again. “You are sneaky. That’s how I’ve always imagined you. Clever and sneaky.”

“I didn’t do it so I could keep the money.”

“Sure. You gave it all to starving orphan puppies.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Esmeralda said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

His gray eyes looked into hers. He was only inches from her now. Her heart gave a flutter.

“I’ve thought about you,” he said. “Over the years.”

“Have you?” Esmeralda asked. Of course, she’d thought about him, too. He was the first boy who had kissed her, and there had been something in his kiss, electric and powerful, that she had never again felt. Mentally, she scolded herself for feeling anything at all about him—it had only been one moment, very long ago.

He reached out a leather-gloved hand and lay it next to hers, then he wrapped his fingers around her hand. Esmeralda caught her breath. She didn’t want him to think he could just grab her up after all these years…but she didn’t exactly want him to let go of her, either. His touch made him feel more real, and less like a dream.

Then Pedro’s Acura pulled into the parking lot.

“Shit!” Esmeralda pulled her hand away and took a few steps back from him.

“What is it?” the gray-eyed boy asked. He looked at the Acura pulling into the parking place beside them, and at Pedro in the driver’s seat. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“My boyfriend,” Esmeralda said.

The gray-eyed boy didn’t bother hiding his scowl.

Pedro got out of the car and stepped between the two of them.

“Esmeralda,” Pedro said. “Let’s go.”

Esmeralda hesitated, and Pedro noticed. He looked again at the gray-eyed boy. Esmeralda knew the boy was her own age, or younger, so Pedro had to be five or six years older than him. Pedro was shorter, but much bulkier.

“Who are you?” Pedro took a step toward him.

“I’m Tommy,” the boy said.

“Tommy. That’s cute, man. Maybe when you grow up, they’ll call you Tom. Or Thomas, no?”

“I hate Thomas,” Tommy said.

“Okay, Tommy,” Pedro said. “My name is Pedro Ortega Hernandez. And I want to know why the hell you’re talking to my girlfriend.”

“Pedro,” Esmeralda said. “It was nothing. Let’s go.”

“I was not talking to you, Esmeralda. You get in the car.” Pedro glared up at Tommy. “You. Why are you talking to her at her job? Why you trying to grab her hand?”

“I wanted to,” Tommy said. He didn’t look very scared by Pedro, but he had never seen Pedro angry.

“Well, I don’t want you to.” Pedro thumped Tommy in the chest. “I see you near her again, you’ll have to hire old Mr. Garcia to bury you. You understand?”

“Okay.” Tommy held up his hands defensively, but he was smirking. “Take her on home.”

“I’ll take her where the fuck I want to take her.”

“It’s been nice meeting you, Pedro,” Tommy said.

Pedro glared up at him a moment longer, then stalked back to his car. “Get in,” he said to Esmeralda.

Esmeralda looked at Tommy again, and he just folded his arms and winked at her.

“Get in the fucking car!” Pedro yelled.

Tommy didn’t say anything, so Esmeralda got in the fucking car.

 

 

 

Pedro drove in silence for a couple of miles.

As they passed the grocery store near her neighborhood, Esmeralda said, “I need to stop by la tienda for a couple things—”

“Who was he?” Pedro snapped.

“He was nobody.”

“It’s so good to know,” he said, “While I’m building houses for my uncle, and studying law at night, and fixing your mother’s plumbing because her landlord is lazy—it’s so good to know you’re out there making new friends.”

“He’s just someone I knew when I was a kid.”

“First he’s nobody, then he’s an old friend?”

“It’s not like that—”

“Then tell me what it’s like.”

“You missed the grocery store.”

“You can walk.” Pedro lit a Camel as he turned into Esmeralda’s apartment complex. “Or use your mother’s car.”

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.”

“Good. Because I was hoping to take a little more shit from you today.” Pedro stopped in front of her apartment, but he left the engine running and didn’t park. “Maybe tomorrow your friend with the motorcycle can take you home from work.”

“Pedro, stop it!” She kicked open the car door.

He took her arm and pulled her close.

“Let me go!” she said.

“I just don’t like to see you with some other guy,” he said. “I love you, Esmeralda.”

“And I love you. Don’t be so jealous.”

“Look in my eyes and tell me he is nothing to you.”

Esmeralda looked Pedro in the eyes. “He is nothing,” she said, but her eyes blinked involuntarily when she said “nothing.”

He frowned at her. “I have to get to class. I’ll call you later.”

Esmeralda stepped into the two-room apartment she shared with her mother. Immediately the sound of a Telemundo soap opera, weeping confessions backed by sappy music, jangled her ears. Her mother sat on the couch, watching the TV.

“Hola, Mamà,” Esmeralda said.

“You should not upset Pedro like that,” her mother said in Spanish.

“Like what?”

“I was watching you through the window, and he did not look happy. What did you do?”

“You spy on me and you take his side,” Esmeralda said.

“What were you fighting about?”

“It was nothing. He is jealous of everything.”

“You should keep him happy,” Esmeralda’s mother said. “That boy is going to be very successful one day.”

“A very successful asshole,” Esmeralda muttered in English as she walked into her room.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing!” Esmeralda closed her door. Then she locked it, which she rarely did. She even made sure the blinds were down, as if Pedro would be outside her room, staring at her. Sometimes she felt like he was. She’d had enough of her mother always taking Pedro’s side, too. Her mother wasn’t exactly a master in the art of picking good men, anyway.

Esmeralda opened her closet door, stood on her tiptoes, and felt around on the top shelf. She brought down a Reebok shoe box, which she had long ago decorated with glue, glitter, butterfly stickers, and markers. Much of the glitter had fallen off over the years, and the butterflies were curling off the cardboard.

She sat down on her bed and took off the box lid.

The shoe box held a few pictures from her childhood, a letter from her grandmother in Matehuala, one of Esmeralda’s baby teeth, some Valentines she had received in middle school. Esmeralda dug through these to the bottom of the box.

She took out the gold coin. It was engraved with an Indian chief’s head, and the word “Liberty,” on the front, and a bald eagle on the back. The coin was dated 1908. She had never taken it to a coin shop to check its value, for fear her mother would somehow find out and ask questions.

Esmeralda had also never turned over the thousand dollars to her mother.

When Tommy suggested she hide the money, it was the first inkling Esmeralda had that she could hide anything from her mother, even for a minute. The farmer woman who had called them to the middle of nowhere, in Oklahoma, had been livid when she opened the dead man’s trunk and found nothing. Esmeralda’s mother had screamed at her, but Esmeralda had kept the secret.

As they drove home, Esmeralda wasn’t sure how to tell her mother what happened. The longer they drove, the more possible it seemed that Esmeralda could keep the secret forever.

The real secret, though, wasn’t about the stolen money.

“What is wrong with you?” her mother had screamed as they drove back to Texas. “Why did you lie?”

“I can’t do it anymore,” Esmeralda had whispered.

“Can’t do it? Can’t do what?”

“I can’t talk to the dead anymore,” Esmeralda had said. “I don’t remember how.”

“Remember? What is to remember? You have always done this.”

“Yes,” Esmeralda said. “But maybe I am too old now.” At the age of thirteen, Esmeralda was sick of her mother dragging her around like a freakshow attraction, charging people money to hear from their dead relatives. The dead didn’t bother Esmeralda, but the living did—people greedy to find money, jealous wives wanting to know whether their husbands had cheated on them or not, and too often, there were children crying and upset as they learned the pain of losing someone close.

Esmeralda didn’t like it. And if she could get away with lying about money, maybe she could get away with more.

And she had. Her mother hadn’t dragged her out to read the dead again. Instead, her mother had finally gone back to her housekeeping job at the hotel and stopped living off her daughter’s strange gift.

As far as Esmeralda’s mother knew, Esmeralda hadn’t had the special touch in nine years.

Esmeralda rubbed the gold coin. The paper dollars had trickled away over the years, on movies and candy and shoes, but she kept this because it reminded her of him. His unreal gray eyes, the power in his hands and lips. He had frightened her deeply…but she had liked it, and relished the memory again and again.

Until today, she had almost forgotten he was a real person, and not a dream or a fantasy.

He had found her, after all these years. Esmeralda didn’t know what it meant, but she felt scared and exhilarated. She needed to see him again.

She closed her hand around the gold coin and held it tight.