Exotic Stranger: Hallowed Blues 1 Read online

  Javier smiled.

  He does have a nice smile, Camila thought as she stared more than she should. And then they both blushed.

  Camila re-started the engine before things could get any weirder.

  Chapter Seven

  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Javier redeemed himself for the eggs. He cleaned and weeded the courtyard, cleared the property behind the chicken shed so that they could have a garden, and started the garden, negotiating with the plantain farmer for the seeds.

  The seeds sprouted quickly in the tropical heat and the garden grew well. Even Martina grew to anticipate being able to collect fresh tomatoes and peppers. The first harvest was reaped in a little less than two months. By then, they had a Dutch family staying with them -- and they had a bit of a party with the succulent tomatoes and crisp peppers.

  Camila tried to help him recover his memory, but he couldn't write down his dreams because he didn't know how to write. Martina had shrugged when Camila told her about this.

  "In the poorer parts of the Yucatan, children don't go to school very long," she'd said. Any word-association games they'd tried ended in awkward silences -- Javier either didn't know what she was talking about and was too ashamed to admit it, or the answer he gave was so bizarre Camila couldn't understand how it related to him.

  His response to "Banana," for example, was "The soul needs only to be pure."

  Neither of them could understand where this scrap of his past, a disjointed fragment of who he was, came from. There wasn't much time, in any case, to understand him. After he'd fixed up the courtyard, Chico drafted him to help fix up the other bedrooms, grout the bathrooms, plant trees in front of their door, and reinforce the roof.

  Javier was eager to help and there were days when Camila worried that her parents asked too much of him. One instance, she found him collapsed, asleep on the kitchen floor during after-dinner drinks.

  "You're not our slave," she told him on these nights. "If you are too tired, say so."

  "You don't understand," he told her one night. He'd been living with them for almost three months now, and it was getting to the end of the tourist season and the beginning of the hurricane one. "This is the only way I can find out who I am."

  She blinked, confused. "You're right," she said. "I don't understand."

  They were in the kitchen -- all of these conversations took place in the kitchen while her parents were doing their accounting for the day or having drinks with the guests -- while they were wiping down the counters, putting away the dried dishes, and sweeping the floors. Camila could detect the faintest whiff of ozone over the artificial lemon scent of the cleaner. A storm was coming.

  "You have a lifetime of memories," he said. "I have only these..." he counted on his fingers, "seven weeks. If I never recover my memory, then who I am is -- this." He waved around him, gesturing to the house, the roof, the courtyard.

  "Javier, you are more than the work you do," Camila protested.

  Javier shook his head. "You are very kind, Camila," he said. "But I know. I am just your -- handyman, right? In English? You see more in me because you will be more someday. One day you will leave for the city and university, and you will find a boyfriend, return to the United States and get a good job and never come back. But I am not you. I cannot write, I can barely read. There is nothing for me out there. This is my life now. This is who I am."

  "That's not true!" Camila cried, though she couldn't find fault in his words. "I couldn't -- like--" Not love, Camila dearest, she thought, frantically, " -- you so much if you were only the sum of your work."

  "So, we are friends?" Javier asked, after a moment.

  Camila gave him a weary smile. "Why do you think I join you in the kitchen every night?" she asked playfully, tapping him on the arm with her fist.

  "Because it's mango season," he said, tossing her a mango he fished from a tray. She gasped in surprise but managed to catch the perfectly ripe fruit before it splattered on the newly-cleaned floor.

  "I don't like them that much," she retorted, tossing it back to him.

  And just like that, the moment -- the window where she could have told him how she truly felt about him, her opportunity to plant a kiss on his lips, her chance to take his hand and hold it -- passed.

  Once again, they were two young people stuck together under one roof, making the best of things.

  Chapter Eight

  FOR THE MOST PART, Camila was grateful that these moments passed. As much as she liked joining him in the kitchen at the end of the day, a part of her still held on to the fantasy of getting on a plane and going back to Boston and just resuming her life there.

  Even after two years, she still wasn't over Boston, or Trey Lewis, the guy whom she might have gone out -- and fallen in love -- with, had her parents not packed up and headed south. He was two years older than she was, and walked with just enough of a swagger to let other guys think that he was one insult away from jumping them and cutting their throats.

  But he also had a quote from Shakespeare to cover just about any occasion. The first time Camila saw him, she was waiting for friends by the rust-and-fiberglass bleachers of the dilapidated track, and he walked onto the crumbling surface, did two stretches, and lit out. She could still recall how her breath caught in her throat as she watched him fly over the track, the grace with which his long limbs floated over the ground, and the steely determination in his eye as he kept what seemed an impossible pace.

  Her friends had laughed at her when she asked them who he was.

  "Don't you know? That's Trey Lewis! He's like, only the biggest track star Middlebrook has ever had."

  "I'm going to ask him out."

  Which she never did. Instead, she went to the track every day after school, and just watched him run for up to half an hour -- that was all the time she had, because she needed to get to the pool to do her laps.

  Sometimes he said "Hi," and on those occasions, she'd wave shyly.

  "Why are you here?" he asked her, one cold November day.

  "I like to watch you run," she said.

  "No, I mean, why are you here?" he repeated, grinning.

  "I like to watch you run," she said, smiling back.

  "You think you can catch me?"

  "Haven't I already?" she retorted.

  And he blinked in surprise, and then he smiled. That was when she knew she'd won him over.

  But they never had the chance to date. Her parents spent December making plans to move to Mexico and in January, they boarded the plane. There simply wasn't enough time to progress from slightly-awkward-friendship to possibly-in-love in a month, especially since he was two years ahead of her. They'd exchanged emails before she left, but they never wrote each other. At first, it had simply been a matter of there not being anything to say. And then, it was just too awkward to break the silence.

  As time went by, the silence began to serve a different purpose -- it allowed her to imagine that it was still possible to climb on a plane, fly back to Boston, and pick up where they'd left off. For two years, Camila had clung to this dream to save her sanity, to mitigate her loneliness, to remember that there was a world where things worked and the water was safe to drink and people lived in houses that didn't blow over in a hurricane.

  But tonight, for the first time, Camila began to seriously consider that maybe her life in Boston was over.

  She began to think about a life with Javier. Factually, of course, her life in Boston had ended when she boarded the plane to Mexico. But before Javier, there had always remained a bit of hope -- maybe Trey wouldn't have a girlfriend, maybe she might be able to find a job that miraculously paid well enough for her to get an apartment and a car and food. Accepting that that part of her life was over was a lot easier now that she had someone to start a new chapter with.

  Of course, this was based on the premise that Javier liked her as well.

  But she was fairly certain that he did. The confessions he'd made to her were not the sort of thing
s Martina would appreciate hearing or Chico would understand.

  But she couldn't know for sure because if Javier trusted her enough to tell her the secret fears of his heart, then that implied that she should trust him with her great secret -- her plan to get herself back to the US. And that was something she just couldn't do, because making him her confidant would require him to lie to her parents.

  It wasn't hard for her to justify stealing from her parents -- a dollar here, five there, padding the exchange rates to cover a ten. To her mind, they'd brought this upon themselves, moving her into the middle of nowhere without any means for her to earn her own money. At least in Mexico City or some of the larger cities, she could have gotten a job and made her own money. It didn't feel right, but it did feel justified, a distinction which explained why she could now buy herself a plane ticket back to Boston, if she ever had an excuse to go to Cancun.

  But Javier -- what would he think? He wasn't stupid. He'd know that she'd have taken the money from her parents. He would be honor-bound to report her because even though she'd saved his life, her parents were the ones, after all, that permitted him to live with them.

  Camila glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning. The storm had come and gone during her musings, and now the night was quiet.

  Shit. Well, if she wasn't sleeping now, she wasn't going to sleep tonight.

  She got out of bed, silently glided out of the cool, air-conditioned cocoon of her room, through the courtyard, and out the door.

  The beach was empty and in the sky, the moon was a graceful sliver of light. The sea seemed to glow faintly. In the distance, the lights of Cancun created a faint glow in the night sky.

  Being so isolated does have its upside, she grudgingly admitted to herself as she scraped out a little seat for herself in the sand. The stars were never this bright or numerous in Boston. She didn't know any of the constellations other than the Big Dipper, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate how beautiful they were.

  Chapter Nine

  "CAN I JOIN you?"

  She startled and nearly fell over backwards.

  It was Javier.

  "Sheesh, you scared me!" she said, patting the sand next to her.

  Javier sat down, folding his legs against his chest like she'd done.

  "I couldn't sleep," she said.

  "Me, neither," Javier said. "I come out here a lot, actually. Sleep doesn't come easily to me. It feels like there's a memory hiding just beneath the surface; one I can only find if I am asleep. But the harder I try to sleep--"

  "--the harder it is to fall asleep," Camila finished.

  "And so I come out here," he said. "To lose myself in the stars."

  "They are beautiful," Camila agreed. "You can't see them like this in Boston. Too much light."

  They sat in silence for a while as they stared up the sky. Camila found herself wishing she knew what Javier thought of her just as a meteor went streaking across the sky. She glanced at him, even as she reminded herself that she didn't believe in silly children's tales, and was surprised to find that he was watching her.

  "Some people say that when you see a falling star, you make a wish and it comes true," she said.

  "I have heard that somewhere."

  "Did you wish for anything?"

  "I wished for--"

  She waited, holding her breath. Could he possibly have fallen in love with... she didn't dare finish the thought.

  After a moment, though, it became apparent that he wasn't going to finish the sentence.

  "What did you wish for?" she couldn't help but prompted.

  "This," he said, reaching towards her in the dark. His cool fingers brushed her cheek. When she made no move to dislodge his hand, he moved closer, tilting his head for what could only be a kiss.

  Even now, she hesitated. The moment grew longer in her mind as she mentally zipped through all of the scenarios with Trey that she'd made up in these last two years.

  Was she ready to give up with Trey? Was she really ready to start something new? To give up Boston?

  To hell with it, she thought, and leaned in to kiss Javier.

  INSTINCT KEPT them from mentioning anything to Martina or Chico the next day, but the shift was palpable.

  When Camila stopped thinking about getting back to the US, the resentment she'd been harboring towards her parents evaporated and instead became channeled into making plans for their future. Her parents didn't quite understand what brought this on, but they were nonetheless relieved that the fighting and arguing and tensions dropped.

  Camila and Javier would meet on the beach after the manor house had darkened into sleep if the weather was good, or Camila would go to Javier's room -- it was farther from her parents' room. They would talk quietly, which is to say that Camila would talk quietly while Javier listened in awe of her descriptions of Boston and New York.

  She had to describe snow to him -- he didn't even know the word.

  It was both touching and a little frightening how naive he could be.

  What Javier lacked in worldliness, though, he made up for in his ability to read and understand people. He was the one who pointed out that Martina wasn't actually a mean person, just stressed out and under an incredible amount of pressure to make sure everything went off well.

  "The next time she starts to get to you, ask her what she wants you to do," Javier advised.

  Camila was skeptical, but she tried it, and he was right -- it worked. Martina told her to mop the floors, and the tension evaporated faster than the water did.

  "You're like a mind-reading genius," she said that night.

  "I don't read minds," he said. "I understand the heart."

  "So tell me about mine," she said.

  It was now a month after their kiss. They were in Javier's room, lying side by side on his bed with his left arm intertwined with her right one. They were surrounded by the dark and his clean scent. They had shared a few more kisses since that night on the beach but nothing more. He would stop when things start to become heated, and she would let him, satisfied at the knowledge that he wanted her, too.

  They had a few things to consider. It wasn't just the fear of what Martina would do, though that contributed some. It was mostly that neither Camila nor Javier felt the need to go further.

  They could wait. It wasn't like high school where every other girl wanted every other boy and sealing the deal was the only way to guarantee a certain degree of monogamy. Actually, it didn't. But it was easier to believe it was until later.

  They had oceans of time, and an ocean they could sit next to -- the infinite waters recalling the infinite nature of love.

  "Are you sure you want to know?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said, simply.

  He rolled off the bed and took her smooth hand in his calloused one. She could feel his fingertips tracing her palm, kissing her knuckles, and sometimes, his lips skimming the sensitive skin under her wrist.

  "You want something more from this life," he said. "You want me to give it to you."

  "And will you?" she asked.

  "You want me to say, 'Yes'," he said. "But I don't know if I can."

  She sat up. "Well, that was romantic."

  He sighed. "You said you wanted to know."

  True, she thought unhappily. But then, what was the point of pursuing this relationship if Javier didn't think he could make her happy?

  "You are more than I could ever hope to be," Javier said as she stood up. She shook her head, furious with herself for asking, furious with him for being so honest.

  What was so terrible about a white lie every now and then, she wondered. Why couldn't he be sweet, for once? It wasn't like she expected him to bring her flowers or anything.

  His grip on her hand tightened. "Please, Camila. Don't go," he said.

  "Give me a reason to stay," she retorted. "Give me that 'something more' that I'm supposed to be looking for, then."

  Javier dropped her hand and backed away from her,
fading into the darkness. "No, Camila. You know I want you. But not like this."

  It wasn't until she felt the pang of disappointment that she realized what he was saying. "That wasn't what I m-meant..." she began, but even as the words faltered she understood that it was, indeed, what she meant, what she wanted.

  Blood rushed to her face, and even though it was dark she had the feeling that Javier could see her blush.

  "Camila..."

  She left him without saying another word and she slipped back into her bedroom, furious -- at him, or at herself, she couldn't tell.

  But either way, she wasn't sleeping that night, and she wasn't going to the beach to calm herself, either. She wouldn't let herself forget this stupidity that easily.

  Yet all the while that she was trying to sleep, she was aching for Javier's lips and the warmth of his embrace.

  Chapter Ten

  CAMILA WAS AWAKENED the next morning by her father. He knocked on her door and brought her a tray with sweet buns and a cup of coffee.

  "What's going on?" Camila asked, suspiciously. Her father didn't normally bring her breakfast.

  "It's your birthday," he said.

  "Shit, really?" She glanced at the calendar hanging above her desk. "It is. Holy crap! I can't believe I forgot!" she said.

  "I thought maybe you might want to go with Javier to Cancun today," he said, setting the tray down. He sat down at the foot of her bed, smiling at her as she dug into the food. "You know. Do a little shopping. Show Javier what a city is like."

  Camila understood the unspoken part of the suggestion -- her father wanted her to run some additional errands as well. She wondered how to tell him that she didn't want to go anywhere with Javier, not after last night. Not this soon, anyway. But refusing to go to Cancun altogether would make him worry.

  "I hadn't made any plans for the day," she said, stalling for time.

  "It's okay," Chico said. "We don't have any guests right now, so your mother -- " he dropped his voice to a stage whisper, " -- wants to throw you a surprise party."

  "Papa, you're not supposed to tell me that!" Camila said, laughing. "And anyway, since when does Mama throw me a surprise birthday party?"

  Chico shrugged. "Okay, well, it's not actually a birthday party. But we -- and I mean the abuelos and Javier and everybody -- thought we'd celebrate finally getting this place into shape."

  "At the end of the tourist season," Camila said. It was a bit mean, but she couldn't help it. Chico, fortunately, didn't seem to mind.