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‘Let's go for a drive,’ was what Teresa had said, standing disconcertingly close to James as she leaned forward, balancing on the arm she’d set against the countertop of the kitchen island. At such proximity, she appeared to him smaller than expected, which was strange in itself considering just how familiar James was with her petite frame.
A minuscule tilt of Teresa’s head snuffed any inquiry James might have had. For the briefest of intervals, he stood captivated by the movement of her hair, the woollen waves descending in a ripple over her shoulder. As she walked away, a silent instruction for him to follow, he noted her more casual, slouchier dress, something rare for her these days.
It was a gusty winter night in New Orleans, the chill shading Teresa’s cheeks and nose with a washed-out hue of red. James bumped up the heating in the car, following her vague guidance of left and right. He didn't know where they were going. From the spontaneity of Teresa’s commands, it became evident that neither did she. The grandiose quiet of the Garden District waned as they drove up Canal Street, the signs of rampant life already visible. Taking a turn, Teresa pointed out a place to park.
As they walked through the congested tumult of Bourbon Street, he didn't question her. He didn't need to. Concealed amongst the meandering undulations of the nocturnal crowd, they were granted anonymity, the appeal of which was evident. The ambience, the stuttering neon signs and the huddled groups dotting the street like the spots of a viper daunted Teresa with déjà vu. Transported back to Calle Juarez, she was a money changer again, wads of cash that smelt faintly of body odour in hand. She envied every pedestrian. The hobbling elderly, the precocious children, the wary mothers. All these people and their everyday problems, blissfully ignorant as they proceeded with their ordinary lives. She wished she could have a taste of it—of normal.
Jazz blended with reggae merged with hip hop as they passed restaurant after bar after nightclub. The park, which bustled during the day, seemed to them darker than the surroundings. If Teresa sidled closer to him by degrees as they sat on the stone steps of the riverfront, James merely attributed it to the cold.
Sitting with James, Teresa realised she had come to take comfort in the cold. As a little girl, people often remarked how similar she was to her father—a shadowy figure. Where her mother would coddle her with caresses, her love as soft as cotton, her father remained withdrawn, his affection something remote. Almost nonexistent. But child though she was, she never despised the distance, was always sure of his love. Now, so many years after that final look to her as she hid behind the dumpster, knowing his child was about to witness his death, unable to say goodbye with anything more than his eyes, she felt closer to him, connected by the coldness that had settled into her, a coldness akin to his.
‘There’s an outbreak in China—some new virus,’ James startled Teresa out of her reverie, the strange, abrupt words refusing to accommodate to any form of sense. His sideways glance at Teresa was expectant, betraying the trained nonchalance in his voice. ‘They're locking the whole country down.’
‘What?’
‘Yep. It’s all over the news,’ he said, an easy curve to his raised eyebrows. ‘Apparently, it originated from a bat.’
She could only blink, not knowing what to make of his words, a random wooden rod swinging through the clutter of her thoughts.
‘A bat?’
Stifling his amusement, he nodded in mock solemnity, eyes roving over the flush of her face, the chaotic movements of her breeze-stirred hair.
‘Yeah, you know they're worried it could spread here, everywhere. I'm surprised you don’t know about it.’
Shaking her head, she smiled. ‘Well, I’ve been a bit busy.’
A smirk of accomplishment danced across James’s own face, feeling more pride than necessary at coaxing out of Teresa a flicker of playfulness.
As she looked out at the choppy currents, she said, ‘Just wanted to get away from it all for a while,’ in a voice so weightless that a gale of wind carried it along to a distance that rendered it barely audible. With all lightheartedness effectively over, James couldn't help but observe that whatever she wished to ‘get away’ from didn't include him.
Notwithstanding the absurdity of it, he felt a churn of hope, or rather, of recognition, stirring somewhere unfathomable inside him. His reappearance, as if he were an errant sheep returning to his flock, bought with it much pain and heightened awareness. Bent on surviving, protecting Teresa, paying off the debt he owed Devon with blood, he hadn't allowed for the possibility of Teresa changing. Instead, he had nurtured the memory of her he left with, expected her to remain that way, as stagnant as a fossil. Disillusion was too harsh of a word, had implications too severe to be accurate. It felt more like sorrow.
The sorrow held onto him. It took shape in his reticence, in his subordination, even when obedience proved detrimental—to her, to him. Dumas and Gamble, Shaker and Bledsoe. A few times, he had resolved to have it out, make her face herself, remind her this was not who she wanted to become. He had wanted to fight, yell out his frustrations. But with each steady step closer to her, nearer to the climax, beyond which would be the coveted denouement, he wavered, and his intent failed to keep pace with him, halting someplace behind. He didn't have the heart. The truth was that all the bad things she did mattered less to him than his sorrow—than her pain. And pain radiated off her in sine waves.
But greater than that was his dreadful longing. It was a gnawing ache, like a rotting tooth, nerve raw and exposed. When the night was darkest, and he couldn't be more alone, James lived in the memory of Teresa, of the inebriating pleasure of her weight on him, the warm silk of her bare skin under his palms, the hazy scent of powdery tuberose as she bent over him, hair curtaining his face as they shared a clandestine kiss. And he could almost smell it, smell her, tried to find it, capture it, nose burrowing into his blanket, his pillow, in a torturous search, and his heart would ache, even as he reached desperation. The recollection would go on teasing in that taunting, intangible way that olfactory memories do.
He missed her. More than before, than when he was with Devon. And there's something unendurable about missing someone when they’re within arm’s reach. If he had known, he would've held onto her tighter in Manhattan; he would've pulled her closer before she had the chance to slip away.
Teresa's eyes fixated unabashedly on James. The attention, her scrutiny, the brown of her irises, deeper than his own—it was too much, too sudden. And still, he held her gaze, not daring to look away. He ignored the disorienting impression of vertigo, restrained the itch in his fingers.
‘Why did you let Kelly Anne go?’
It was a long time coming, that question. James had been anticipating it the instant he saw the characteristic blonde head gliding, or so it seemed, into his room, just as the inquisition reached its end. He expected an aloofness when it was put to him, the very softness of Teresa’s voice accusatory and sharp. Far from aloof, however, she was sitting so close their knees brushed. There was no note of hostility, no tremor of disapproval. Nothing was hidden in her soft voice. The rising inflexion was of simple, unadulterated curiosity.
‘She made a mistake. And I believed her when she said she did it for you.’
Perhaps that was easy for James to believe; Teresa couldn’t accept it, even after burying the hatchet.
‘Frame you? For me?’
The paradox seemed to her ludicrous. High as Kelly Anne was, scared as she may have been, Teresa couldn't overlook how self-serving, how shameless it had all been. She couldn't forget the persistence. I know you have feelings for him—well, if she knew that, Teresa thought, then it couldn’t have been for me, then she would never have finished the sentence off with you can't let that cloud your judgment.
‘Look, I did my fair share of fucked up shit for Devon. If I didn't deserve to die for it, neither did she.’
In saying that, he was well aware of what he was doing. It was a challenge, an open acknowledgement of his rebellion, deliberately unapologetic. It was an I defied your order because I thought better. He laid down the gauntlet. It was up to Teresa to take it up.
Teresa, however, wasn't thinking of orders or defiance or suchlike. Her decision had been for him—Kelly Anne’s life as payment to James, reparation for the damage caused. Teresa believed sparing her would’ve been another slap in his face. Far from objecting, she’d convinced herself he would’ve wanted her dead.
But he hadn’t. Whatever his reasons were, he had spared Kelly Anne. It was then, as she looked into his eyes, eyes that stared right back, that she realised how grateful she was for his decision.
She remembered feeling the sting of injustice. Time barely alleviated the helplessness Teresa had felt in Bolivia when everyone zeroed in, falsely incriminating her. Most of all, she recalled the hatred she had felt for Sasha, a woman she hadn't even known but with whom she had forged what she had believed to be an alliance. Far removed as she was, she could still feel the wisps of outrage by that betrayal.
And James—he had been incriminated by his own, betrayed by his people, in his home. Remorse rankled at Teresa’s heart. She thought of Sasha and her outrage and then of James and his composure. She thought of the trust James so willingly, so conspicuously surrendered to her as she held him, as she kissed him. If it was hard for her to trust people, it was just as hard, possibly harder, for James. Teresa remembered the bitter sting of injustice when people she didn't know—when self-seeking predators—betrayed her. She couldn’t bear to think of the anguish James had suffered. Taking his faith, his devotion, his loyalty, the trust that he had left in her care, she had sullied it with suspicion. Even after knowing the true reason why, an importunate part of her insisted that if she had done things differently, he wouldn't have left.
With great effort, James overrode the reflexive flinch at the surprising sensation of Teresa’s icy fingers on his hand.
‘You're a good person, James.’
His breath caught. When she had said it the first time, after he'd coached her on the importance of not leaving loose ends (and the irony wasn't lost on him), her words incited inner turmoil, an eruption of feelings he couldn't begin to understand, and all he could think to do was take offence. Now, with Teresa just as earnest, slightly admiring, too, it was worse. Now, it hurt.
Without thinking, in the frenzy of his hurt, he took her hand, held it in one of his, covered it with the other. He chafed it, thumbs drawing not so gentle arcs, drawing out the cold. She didn't stop there, though.
‘I wish I could go back, do things differently.’
‘Teresa—’ more than anything, James wanted to move past what happened. ‘Teresa, I forgave you a long time ago.’ And it was true. With the freshness of the wound had come anger just as bitter. The stubborn part of him had wanted to hold onto it, the events replaying on a loop in his mind. When resentment didn’t come as easily, he’d exaggerated the memory until it was too ugly, too convoluted to be realistic. Self-pity was never his style, and he quickly moved on, understanding that simulated anger was wasted energy, a futile effort. Against Teresa, James couldn't hold a grudge.
He saw it, the paroxysm of pain coupled with relief reflecting off the tears in Teresa’s eyes. She didn't let them fall. Instead, she turned her face to the river, swallowing emotions before turning back to James.
‘I know this isn't what you expected when you returned. I know I'm not what you expected.’
‘You’ve changed,’ he assented, a repetition of what he’d said to her in New York, but this time the weight of his meaning, of his understanding, settled in the small space between them.
‘I came to New Orleans still thinking I could do it all differently. But a lot happened while you were away.’
‘Tony. . .’ It had been on the tip of James’s tongue ever since he’d learnt of his death, but Teresa’s hardness always deterred him from questioning her. But with her nearness and the dark privacy of the river, he finally found the courage to broach the subject. Her only reply was a glance, her downcast eyes confirmation enough. ‘Tell me what happened,’ James gently requested.
After an interval of silence as James watched Teresa undergoing the stages of retreat—shuffling almost imperceptibly further; averting her gaze which had until then remained on him; growing smaller in an incomprehensible way, before his very eyes—he had all but forgotten about the prospect of an answer. But, having hidden as much as she could, she smiled a sad smile and said, ‘It was my fault.
‘When you left, I hired Javier.’ (Here she peeked at James, the same sad smile on her face as he continued to rub her hand between both of his, and added parenthetically: ‘Not smart; I know.’) ‘He was good. But he was a Jimenez: hot-blooded.
‘The judge had a nephew, René. He was an asshole; he got a kick out of winding Javier up. Well—Boaz came by the bar on a night when René just so happened to be there. Pote and I were dealing with another problem, so we weren't there. While we were away, Boaz and Javier killed Lafayette’s nephew. And then lied to me about it.’ At that, she shook her head with her jaw clenched tight. ‘Tony was staying with me because I thought it'd be safer. There'd been sicarios after him. Kelly Anne saved his life. That's why I let her back in.’
‘Yeah, Pote told me that.’
‘Lafayette thought I killed René. So he put a bomb in one of my cars to kill me.’
A shiver ran through James, and he could only clutch Teresa’s hand tighter, rub more vigorously.
‘We were teaching Tony how to drive. I just—I only wanted to do something nice for him,’ she said, and there was a childlike note to her voice, a tremor, thin and frail, something James had never heard before. The disparity between the woman with the sharp edges he'd become accustomed to as of late and the woman before him now was a vast gulf. She never said in words what James had already inferred.
‘Dumas mentioned you were in the hospital.’
‘Yeah . . .’ she nodded, ‘the blast knocked me out.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I was in a coma. Honestly, it was for the best. I couldn't have dealt with seeing him.’
At a loss for words, James’s convulsive grip on Teresa’s hand became tenacious, vicelike, as if his hold was anchoring her down. As if she would float away, lighter than helium, up into the aether.
‘How did you handle it?’ James almost felt it was a trick question.
‘Handle what?’
‘That little girl—Suzie.’
How could he possibly explain to her that he hadn't handled it, that he never would? He had lapses of hours, moments of reprieve when some more pressing matters eclipsed the guilt of murdering a child. But once his world stilled, and he settled into quiet, it bit back, all the more voracious. How could he convince her that it wasn’t the same, that whatever culpability she assumed for what happened to Tony could never amount to his own? But she was too far gone in her agony, her heartbreak and would never accept his reasoning. So he told her the only truth he could.
‘You helped me get through the worst of it.’ And I can try to help you, James thought, if you’d only let me.
And maybe it was his earnest expression or the reverent emphasis he placed on the word you, but the thought was written on his face, as limpid as the river before them. Teresa was able to read and comprehend it, as well as if he’d said the words aloud.
‘I’ve been using,’ she stated shortly, blunt and clipped.
It took a beat for her confession to make sense to James. And suddenly, all the times he'd heard her sniffle and seen her brush against her nose with her fingers, her bloodshot eyes and the sleepless nights, her irritability, her misery—it all came together, the beads of a necklace tethered on a string, both ends knotted together, coming full circle. Startled by the admission, he remained devoid of a reaction, prompting Teresa to face him, swivelling around in her seated position, opening herself up to him, no longer hiding.
‘James, I don't know what else to do. I'm always so angry. And so tired.’
With unchecked abandon, unable to reign in the onslaught of his feelings, James shifted so they were face to face, one arm curling around Teresa’s waist, the other alternating between clutching at her wrist and hip, hoisting her towards him, tugging until he tucked her into his side, his left thigh pressed flush against her right. He made micro-adjustments, placing one of her hands over the steady pulsation of his heart as he settled the other in the dip above his hip, sliding both under his jacket. Cradling her jaw, he angled her face so that he felt her breaths warm on the skin of his neck while his cheek pressed against her forehead.
James swathed her in his arms, caressing in antiparallel lines across the tiny expanse of her back. Every inhalation and exhalation became deliberately deep, knowing she would feel the slow rise and fall, hoping to lull her in the safety of the rhythm. In half kisses, his lips lingered, journeying around the circumference of her hairline. All impulsivity and lack of inhibitions, James’s only objective was to keep Teresa warm. At that moment, with quietness whipping past in wailing gusts of wind, with no human insight, fighting himself seemed ridiculous.
Teresa, heavy with grief that refused soothing, with a wild craving for freedom, escaped from it all in James’s arms. She huddled into the shelter he provided for her. Too exhausted to cry, she remained pliant and limp, mind tranquil with the soporific pressure of James's hands massaging up and down her back. The effect of it was more potent than coke.
‘You know I’m here for you, don’t you?’ James murmured into her hair. She lifted her head to look up at him, staring into the brown of his irises, lighter than her own.
‘I know, James.’
After an age of mere minutes, a fleeting lifetime, James resumed the lighthearted vein he began with, holding her close, head resting against hers. ‘So, tell me—what’s it like in that other life, where there can be a you and me?’
Teresa obliged, allowing herself to dream of an alternate reality where she was ordinary, blissfully ignorant in her normality.
‘Hmm . . . Well, we’d have a small house.’
‘Small?’
‘Yeah. But with a backyard. It has to have a backyard.’
‘Okay . . . And we’d have a big dog. A huskie.’
‘Or a cat.’
‘Fine. A cat and a dog.’
‘I’d cook.’
‘And burn our house down?’
Teresa had the grace to laugh at his rude teasing before clarifying, ‘My grandmother taught me how to cook,’ as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and there was a smug glint in her eyes, knowing just from his silence that she'd managed to surprise him.
‘Your grandmother taught you to—Teresa. I've never so much as seen you make toast.’
‘Well, I've been a bit busy.’
‘Can you seriously cook?’
‘Mhm.’
Taking her hand, James guided Teresa back through the tumult of Bourbon Street, past nightclub after bar after restaurant, basking in the obscurity, holding onto another life for moments longer. He drove them back to the safehouse, bumping up the heating in the car, keeping Teresa warm.
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Last Edited Sun 31 Oct 2021 08:49PM UTC
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