and vaguely dangerous. They all appeared to be talking or listening. They looked straight ahead at their computers.
Luna began to unbutton her shirt. Across the alley the women shifted and tilted, all those heads and talking mouths seeming to form a singular unit rather than disparate, individual parts—like a cornfield or a stadium crowd. Today Luna had worn her black bra, the push-up that tended to generate more tips when she bent over the ice maker or leaned forward to deliver a glass. It wasn’t something to be proud of, but every bartender did it, the men rolling up their sleeves to show their tanned, veiny biceps, the women and their tight tops, short skirts. But now the bra seemed to mark her as manipulative, dishonest, guilty of something: Why else parade yourself like that? Behind all that skin and seduction, what were you trying to hide?
Luna folded her shirt carefully. As she placed it on the table, there was a quick, short knock, and then the detectives reentered the room before she had time to respond. With them was a uniformed woman who stood to the side of the door and looked in Luna’s general direction without looking at Luna.
The female officer stayed where she was as the men approached Luna, their eyes fixed on her torso, her naked middle, the black bra, and her breasts barely concealed within it. Luna shivered and crossed her hands on her stomach.
“Please uncross your arms,” said Detective Henry, not unkindly, and he walked around her, inspected her. Up and down the two men’s eyes traveled.
“Okay. That’s it. Thank you, Miss Hernandez.”
Luna pulled on her shirt. She focused on forcing each pearly white button through its seamed hole. She kept her eyes lowered to the task. More intimate than the act of standing before these men half naked was their witnessing of this, Luna rebuttoning her shirt. The female officer, Luna realized, had silently left the room.
“We apologize for any inconvenience,” said Detective Castellano. “We have a bus token for you.”
Detective Henry deposited a gold token on the table and waited for Luna to pick it up, and then the policemen ushered her out of the room, out of the building, and deposited her on the sidewalk in front of the precinct. Luna stood there for a spell, staring at the gold disk in her palm. It was early evening now, the sky streaked with orange, the day’s heat starting to pull away. She’d been with the detectives for just under an hour, and in that time the news of Joe’s death had become something else; it had become his death. This time there was no mistake, no false identity. In his apartment, on the floor. A brain injury. The horrible thud of Joe’s fall: Why hadn’t she realized? Why hadn’t she called someone?
A grain of doubt and regret, horror and sadness, lodged then deep within her, an oyster’s piece of grit, and it would remain with Luna for the rest of her life. Year after year it would grow layered, polished, and it would with time become something beautiful—a testament to Joe, a cautious tenderness that Luna would apply to her future choices. But in this moment, remembering the office full of talking women and the detectives’ cold eyes, Luna experienced these feelings only as sorrow, as the falling away of Joe’s life and of her own.
The bus token was warm from the heat of her palm, and she threw it onto the sidewalk where it landed with a flat and tinny sound. Luna began to walk.
Chapter 11
An X of yellow police tape ran corner to corner. do not cross do not cross do not cross. The grim sense of purpose that had been building within us all day—on the flight from New York, meeting with the detectives, the hot, breezy taxi ride from downtown Miami to South Beach—now faltered. No one moved to open the door.
“Just rip it down,” Caroline whispered at last, although it was unclear if she was speaking to me or Renee or to herself. Behind us the elevator doors clanked shut. There was a subtle whoosh as the box descended, and its absence made the hallway quieter, the air thicker.
I stood behind my sisters. The floors were pale gray marble, sconces glowing gold on the wall. Above our heads cool air spilled silently from a silver vent. The shimmering heat of the street outside, the blue fuzz of the sky, the Atlantic’s salty tang existed in a