Tangerine

They hover around her, smiling at the sweet foreign English girl who watches them with wide and trusting eyes, so that they are aware of how alone, how vulnerable she is, here in a country that is not her own, where she does not even speak the language. They think, with worry, of their own daughters, and in the end, they relent. After all, the girl has her passport—Alice Shipley—the same surname as the imposing older woman who had first opened the account. The connection can be no coincidence. The woman set up the payments to care for her niece while in the hospital, and though they did not ask for what ailment, they can see now that she is cured.

And the trust is in her name, so there is no reason to deny her.

ON THE STREET, SHE SMILES, feeling comfort, feeling the future, alive and throbbing, in the heft of her suitcase. She is not a thief, she reasons, for she has not taken everything, only what she is owed. For all the promises Alice made and broke. For the life she had whispered into being one cool, autumn night and that she had set alight in the bitter cold of winter.

Afterward, she makes her way onto Alameda Principal and to Antigua Casa de Guardia, where she has developed a taste for lágrima transa?ejo. She will have one last taste, in celebration, she has decided. And so she strolls slowly down the road, watching as families, couples, walk along the middle of the street that runs through the city, a pulsing vein of activity. They stop at a flower stall just there, and then another one a few feet down, inspecting, haggling, before any purchases are made.

Inside the bar, her mind relaxes.

She watches as the chalk marks that the bartender leaves in front of her grow from one to two to three. In the past, on bad days, she has ordered a small cask to take home with her. On the worst days, she paid for a hotel room in the city. Today she feels the weight of her luggage and knows there will be no more such days.

She signals to the bartender. Her bus leaves in little over half an hour and she cannot miss it, the city name printed on her bus ticket a hope, a dream she can no longer postpone. She hands over the coins, which the bartender counts quickly, before reaching into his pockets and handing her the correct amount of change. She shakes her head, indicating that the man should keep it as a tip, knowing that she can afford such things now. He dips his head in thanks.

Lucy watches as the bartender takes out a cloth from his pockets, wiping it across the wooden countertop, the number of her drinks disappearing, until at last the counter is clean and it is as though she were never there at all.