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“I saw the reap hook, Go-Getter. Very funny. We could say I even tried it.”

Once more at the door. I was back, like he’d asked, and I was furious.

“Touché. You look at me like that one more time and you’ll kill me, my queen.”

“Why?”

“Do you expect me to talk in the doorway? If you say yes, I will bring a couple of chairs to the landing—”

“Why did you have me cut?”

“Oh my Queen, my queen, I would never do anything to alter your tremendous beauty.”

I went in. I got to the living room, grabbed a beer bottle on top of the TV, and threw it against the glass shelves. A storm of raining, cascading glass. A glass jar remained untouched and I threw it against that horrific stained-glass door to the kitchen. I had always found it threatening. Only the lead molding was left.

“Don’t stop now, darling.”

The Go-Getter opened a small built-in compartment in the bar. Cups, tall glasses, short glasses, fat glasses, and miniatures. I looked at him with a raving hunger to hurt. My blood pressure made the patch on my nose burn. I bit down.

“Why?”

“My angry queen, you are the only one to blame for that cut, though I have no doubt it has a delicate and glorious future on your face. You alone are to blame.”

“Who has the hand?”

“Are all your cravings like this?”

“I want the hand.”

“My nostalgic empress... What do you think you’re looking for, Victoria? A queen doesn’t rummage about in the garbage. I fear your treasure is now in some dump outside of town, rotten, devoured by rats.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Santo.”

But he was no longer Santo, just the Go-Getter. There was no reason for him to fuck with me. I was being ridiculous. I felt ridiculous, my legs, my belly, the boobs about to blow up. I had to sit down. Stupid. The memory of the night when Magic Hand played for us, for Santo and me — or only for me, because that was how I remembered it — that magic summer night in which I decided to be who I was during the course of a concert aglow with bonfires and the smell of Sant Joan gunpowder; to be who I used to be — that memory played a dirty trick on me. You can’t have your soundtrack ripped off like that, you can’t be thrown off like that, all the time, by things as strange as a mall. That hand had worked my patience so hard; I had turned it into a symbol, a personal aggression that had now become pure, hard shame in front of this guy, the Go-Getter, no longer Santo.

It was getting dark and the multicolored lights from the expansive mall surprised us through the large window like a balm. The inside of that dirty cave wasn’t the same either. Pink, lilac, blue, yellow neon lights. I let enough time pass so that my Santo’s explanation, the old Santo, wouldn’t embarrass me too much.

“Give me some of that whiskey, dude.” I touched my belly. It’s all good, little one. Just a drink.

“Have you heard of Dubai?”

I’d heard of Dubai, of course. Who hadn’t? “Do you have clients on that fake palm-tree island, Go-Getter?”

“No, but if I did, I’d try to comply with my commitments. If you stick your nose in other people’s business, they’ll chop it off. Look at yourself. That’s a warning, you owe me for that. If you make a commitment to do a concert, you play your fucking music, whether your name is Magic Hand or Manolo, and if Magic had a hangover, or if he was lazy or had a prima donna attack, it would have been better for him to swallow it, because these guys don’t put up with nonsense, my queen, these guys pay, and if they don’t get what they want, they get it back the only way they know. So if you say you’ll give a concert for them, you play. At least I would. The punishment for stealing from them is rather gruesome, isn’t it?”

It was a good thing he didn’t turn the light on. The tower from the mall was surrounded by blinking neon lights: pink, lilac, blue, yellow.

Pink, lilac, blue, yellow.

Bringing Down the Moon

by Valerie Miles

“Let the black flower blossom as it may.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Gràcia

He split her open like a pomegranate, and I knew then I had made a big mistake.

That late-June day had been airless and hot and caused tears of sweat to trickle down the valley of muscle that cupped my spine. I was hiding, crouched in a tiny space behind an unsteady dressing screen in her boudoir. Heel bones dug hard into my rump to keep balance, wary to make the slightest move lest I upset the wicker screen safeguarding my intrusion.

The bell tower of the Rius i Taulet plaza tolled three p.m. I knew she would be coming. My body tensed at the sound of the third chime and sent a hard cramp through my thigh. It felt as though someone were pulling a ribbon of red muscle straight out of my leg. I grunted through the pain. Even the slightest move echoed in wicker-speak and wobbled the delicate screen. I had been compelled to the dirty enterprise, but it would soon be over, I told myself, trying to relieve my conscience.

I heard Lydia open and close the door of the workshop where she spent her mornings with the hermanas Furest. They were expert weavers, the three of them, and she oversaw their work on fabric designs, sewing splendid patterns. Her light staccato steps tapped over the old stones of the courtyard as she crossed the open-air garden, which was encircled by a gallery of arches and intricately carved stone columns. The tic, tic, tic... punctuated the soporific murmurs of the plants growing there. This was all that remained of an edifice that at one time must have belonged to an opulent family. The rest of the palace, now located in Vila de Gràcia, was built around this ancient spot over a hundred years ago, before the city of Barcelona swallowed the village in its thirst for expansion. Now, one could hardly imagine such a lush and centuried interior — always still, so very still — existing among the boom and bangle of daily life in this rough and tumble part of the city.

Lydia spent most of her time here, caring tenderly for her breathing things: the ivy serpents and tendrils of morning glory that had grown over and bearded the statue of a dancing faun, the purple blossoms hanging like jewels from his marble flute. Sometimes a slight wind would rustle the buds, making it seem as though the creature were dancing or playing a melody. She also grew savage herbs such as belladonna, monkshood, cinquefoil, foxglove, and herb-of-grace, or rue. A row of Japanese blood grass encircled the fertile foliage, guarding the place at the center reserved for the dusky flowers. There, only black blossoms did Lydia grow.

Lydia would have stopped at the marble fountain on her way across the courtyard; its pool of cool water was what sustained these extraordinary botanicals. It was something she did every day, a ritual ablution of sorts: wet her hands in the gurgling water, anoint her brow, brush her throat with long, delicate fingers.

I admit it, yes. I used to watch her obsessively, this exquisite creature perusing her private garden. My office overlooked the courtyard from the second floor and I would observe her as she indulged in unusual displays of affection, being otherwise so guarded. Every once in a while, I could almost feel the moment her finger would break the water’s skin at the fountain. I imagined myself as one of the succulents in her charge, receiving these tender affairs. Sometimes she wore delicate, homespun fabrics and I could glimpse the outline of her taut figure against the light. But I knew all too well to keep my distance.