Page 4 of Beautiful Savage
On the third block, I come across a mother with a stroller. The toddler inside is awake, staring at me with that open curiosity kids have before they learn to look away. Direct toddler stare. No fear. Just watching.
The mother sees me. Her hand goes to the stroller handle and pulls it sideways toward the curb. Not stopping, just redirecting. She says something quiet to the kid. The child's face turns away. They pass. The toddler twists in the seat, still trying to stare back. The mother does not look.
The Saint Michael on my forearm catches the morning light where the sleeve is pushed up, an armored figure with sword, wings spread. My patron saint.
Café Cuba's window is open. Yamila is behind the counter. She sees me coming and starts the order without asking. She watches the espresso machine. Not me.
My coffee order never changes, a double-shot piccolo. After a few years, Yamila finally worked up the courage to joke about a man my size ordering a coffee that small. I didn't laugh, and she never made the quip again.
"Six fifty," she tells the register, not me.
I leave exact change on the counter. She slides the coffee across with my tostada in a paper bag.
"Gracias."
"De nada."
The transaction is done. She is already turning away.
The walk back is quieter. Early Miami, before the real heat, before the tourists wake. Delivery trucks. People with jobs that start before nine. They give me space. A woman with her dog crosses at the corner rather than pass. A man in a suit steps into a doorway and checks his phone until I am past.
It doesn't bother me. My face reads wrong, and my body reads worse. People see what they see and they make their decisions. I stopped fighting it long ago.
La Sirena's front door is still locked, so I use my key and go in through the back. The main floor is dark, chairs on tables, stage empty. This business sleeps late. I cross toward the back hallway.
Time to check the garden before I head to the security office.
The back door opens onto the garden. I push through with my shoulder, coffee in hand, expecting emptiness.
Someone is sitting on my bench.
An old man. Sixty-something. Soft. White hair. Glasses pushed up onto his forehead. Absorbed in what he is doing. A watercolor block sits on his knee, a paint tray beside him withbrushes. He is working on the bougainvillea that climbs the back wall, sitting on my stone bench.
Not next to it. On it.
My hand tightens around my coffee. The box under the bench holds nine years of evidence, and he is sitting on it.
He has been at this for some time. The painting shows everything. The stone base blocked in with charcoal undertones, bougainvillea blooms massed in crimson washes that bleed into purple shadows, the cracked plaster of the wall suggested through stippling. He knows what he's doing.
I set my coffee and tostada on the back step and cross the small walled garden in three strides. My shadow falls across his watercolor.
He looks up. The color drains out of his face.
"You're trespassing."
His mouth opens and closes. The brush trembles. "I — I'm sorry. I didn't think… the gate was open. I saw the flowers from the alley." The French-Canadian accent thickens with panic. "I paint flowers. For my daughter. She loves bougainvillea."
"ID."
People accuse me of using too few words. The same people obey the short sentences faster. Why waste the effort?
The old man's hands shake reaching into his jacket. The wallet is worn leather. He fumbles it open, slides his license out and hands it over.
Nicolas Gilles. An address in Pristine, a small town about two hours north. He's sixty-three. After a few moments, I decide he's probably telling the truth, so I'm extra nice to him as I hand the wallet back.
"Out. Don't come back."
I point to the tiny gate that leads to the alley.
