Sixteen They hadn’t seen or

spoken to each other since their argument in Gabriel’s neighborhood. Lucía had spent all week rehearsing how to tell him about her engagement to Ricardo. Now that she was finally alone with him, she couldn’t find the right moment to bring it up. She had made Ricardo and her parents swear they would not tell anyone. They would have plenty of time to celebrate, but she wanted to take things slowly. Her mother was eager to invite the Mestres for a family dinner and start organizing the engagement, but Lucía convinced her to wait, vehemently insisting that she wanted to have a few weeks of quiet with her boyfriend before diving into the wedding whirlwind. She told Gabriel they needed to talk and took him to the Parque Hundido. In the driver’s seat she found a bouquet of flowers that must have cost him half his salary. She was touched but said nothing. They drove in silence. At the park, they sought the magical bench where they had kissed for the first time. A family was resting there so they settled on another bench.

“What’s going to happen with us?” Gabriel asked.

“Nothing can happen except what is already happening,” replied Lucía.

“Why?” asked Gabriel.

“Because we come from different worlds. Can’t you see that? It drives me crazy that you act as if there are no serious differences between us.”

“Such as?”

“Such as money, Gabriel, what else? I always have to pay for everything, which I swear I don’t mind, but that is a fact. And then you make me feel ashamed of what I own, of the life I’m used to. And on top of everything you used me as a trophy to show off to your friends.”

“I already said I was sorry. I introduced you to my mom and my friends, but you hide me. You are ashamed to be seen with me.”

“Well, what did you expect?” protested Lucía.

Her mind was aflutter with tragicomic scenarios.

Gabriel and Adolfo sit side by side at the Sunday family meal at the Miravista, ready to kill each other. Would they invite Agustín, her father-in-law? Or would they leave him snoring in the car while they sipped their Port and nibbled on Manchego cheese and guava paste?

The wedding at the church: her mother cries tears of shame, sitting next to Gabriel’s mother, stoically dressed in her black rubber shoes and a borrowed dress, the kind they regularly give to the secondhand clothes man.

“If it’s only the money, I can make more money,” insisted Gabriel.

“It’s not only that,” she replied. “I am tired of explaining to you that it is not that easy to inform my parents out of nowhere that I am dating the son of the driver. I don’t know what else to say to make you understand this.”

“My name is Gabriel Mendoza, not ‘Son of the Driver’. ”

Lucía covered her face with her hands.

“It’s not the money, Lucía. Money can somehow be found. It’s not just that, right?”

“What?”

“That I am just the lowlife from San Gregorio Tepehualco. Your cheap fuck.”

“That’s not true,” said Lucía.

“Well, if it isn’t true, let’s go away together,” said Gabriel. “Somewhere else, who’s gonna know who we are? Who’s gonna care? Who do we need to ask for permission? No one.”

Lucía saw herself sitting next to him under a palapa at sunset in Pie de la Cuesta, digging into the wet sand with her toes, sticky with sex, her belly full of Yoli, nibbling on the grains of sand stuck to the glass bottle, both dazed by the sun and the sea in their humble but blissful honeymoon. It was possible to be very happy with Gabriel, like when they snuggled in bed and rubbed together their cold feet, the only part of their bodies that was not hot with love. When they soaped each other up under the thin stream of the hotel shower and gave each other wet kisses. When they shared bites of a gloriously fragrant street hot cake smeared with cajeta. With him she could be more crude, less dainty, more of a woman and less of a girl, more of a whore, and less of a princess. But images of scandal and failure interrupted her fantasy: lipsticked Las Lomas mouths aghast or twisted in mocking grimaces; the exiled couple, embittered by the intolerable weight of a life without resources, surrounded by ugliness.

“And where are we going to go?” she asked impatiently.

“I don’t know, to another town, somewhere else. To another fucking neighborhood, carajo.”

“And what are we going to do?”

“Well, we can get a place, live together.”

“You have no idea what you are talking about!” said Lucía.

She saw herself pregnant, boiling beans for five starving children and a dour Gabriel, all living in a brick cube in a muddy slum.

“Okay, let’s say we leave together,” said Lucía. “You should know that I don’t have half a cent to my name. My dad pays for my credit card. He will not help us. No one will give us anything. But let’s say that we live in the hotel while we find a place. You’d be unemployed and I would have to look for a job, but I don’t even know what I could do. I haven’t graduated yet. No one hires you without a diploma. But let’s say that while I get a job in my field, maybe I could work in a boutique or something. If any maid can learn to use a cash register, so can I. We take my car. Maybe we can turn it into an Uber and you drive it God knows how many hours a day. Let’s say that between your salary and mine we try to find an apartment. Where would we live? We won’t even have enough money to afford rent in a low-income housing development. And I am not going to move to provincia. People there are even more narrowminded than here. They hate us chilangos. They will look down on us. We’ll die of boredom. The beach sounds lovely but living there is disgusting. There are no good hospitals, or doctors or medicines, or schools for children. We’ll be eaten alive by bugs”.

“You’ve thought of everything, or what?” Gabriel interrupted her. “How do you know your dad wouldn’t give us a hand? You’re his favorite, right? He could give me a job in his office. He could pay for my computing classes. I can learn fast and we claw our way out.”

Lucía looked at him with a disbelief that verged on sarcasm. The possibility that her parents would react benevolently was zero. She wondered if he was insisting out of love or simply because he wanted to stop being poor. She responded with stone cold silence.

In Mexico it’s impossible to get ahead in life, Gabriel thought.

“Let’s go to New York!” Gabriel exclaimed. “I cross over and from there....”

“But you were deported!”

“I’ll cross back again somehow.”

“Would you do that for me?” asked Lucía.

“Well, yeah.”

Lucía focused on picking out the knots of her angora sweater while she debated with her conscience: You only used him for sex. He only wants you as a meal ticket. What you feel for him is love, and he is the one you really love. Your engagement to Ricardo is not official yet. You don’t have to marry him just because he gave you a ring. You’ve still got time to reconsider. Yeah, sure, let’s leave together. We’ll end up living in a cardboard box, scavenging food in garbage dumps.

“I can’t,” she finally said.

“Why?”

“Because Ricardo proposed.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“The day we went to your house, when I came back, he was waiting for me with the ring.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes.”

Gabriel felt an overwhelming urge to strangle her.

“You’re going to marry that ojete?”

“I can’t marry you.”

Gabriel closed his fists to contain his anger. He wanted to pummel her until her entire body was one giant bruise.

“But that doesn’t mean we have to stop seeing each other, Gabriel. We could still be lovers. Since we’ll no longer be living in the house, I could ask my parents to let me take you with me...”

“Go fuck yourself, Lucía. I’m not your personal slave. You only used me to fuck.”

“That’s not true.”

“You treat me like a whore’s underwear. Who do you think I am, your fucking lapdog, you cunt?”

“Forgive me.”

Tears streamed down her face but inside her heart was a corner made of poured concrete she could escape to whenever her mad love for Gabriel made her feel vulnerable. That’s where she hid, crying on the outside, but hardening inside.