under the circumstances. "Migrant farming is when you go from farm to farm with the seasons, depending on the crop."
"Ah," she said, unhappy with the clarification. "So smart, Joseph. You know everything."
"You asked, chica."
"Did you just call me 'chica'?"
"I believe I did."
"Your accent is horrible."
"So's your Gaelic."
"What?"
He waved it off. "I'm a work in progress."
"His father was a great man." Her eyes shone. "He took me into the home, gave me my own bedroom with clean sheets. I learned English from a private tutor. Me, a village girl."
"And his father asked for what in return?"
She read his eyes. "You're disgusting."
"It's a fair question."
"He asked nothing. Maybe his head, it swelled a bit for all he did for this little village girl, but that was all."
He held up a hand. "Sorry, sorry."
"You see the worst in the best of people," she said, shaking her head, "and the best in the worst of people."
He couldn't think of a reply to that, so he shrugged and let the silence and the liquor return the mood to a softer place.
"Come." She slid out of the booth. "Dance." She pulled at his hands.
"I don't dance."
"Tonight," she said, "everyone dances."
He allowed her to pull him to his feet even though it was a fucking abomination to share the same dance floor as Esteban or, to a lesser extent, Dion, and call what he did the same thing.
Sure enough, Dion laughed openly at him, but he was too drunk to care. He let Graciela lead and he followed and soon he found a beat he could keep a kind of pace with. They stayed out on the floor for quite some time, passing a bottle of Suarez dark rum back and forth. At one point he found himself lost in cross-images of her; in one she ran through the cypress swamp like desperate prey and in the other she danced a few feet away from him, hips twitching, shoulders and head swaying as she tipped the bottle to her lips.
He'd killed for this woman. Killed for himself too. But if there was one question he hadn't been able to answer all day, it was why he'd shot the sailor in the face. You didn't do that to a man unless you were angry. You shot him in the chest. But Joe had blown his face up. That was personal. And that, he realized as he lost himself in the sway of her, was because he'd seen clearly in the sailor's eyes that the man held Graciela in contempt. Because she was brown, raping her wasn't a sin; it was just indulging in the spoils of war. Whether she'd been alive or dead when he did it would have made little difference to Cyrus.
Graciela raised her arms above her head, the bottle up there with her, her wrists crossing, forearms snaking around each other, crooked smile on her bruised face, eyes at half-mast.
"What are you thinking?" she said.
"About today."
"What about today?" she asked but then saw it in his eyes. She lowered her arms and handed him the bottle and they moved out of the center and stood by the table again and drank the rum.
"I don't care about him," Joe said. "I guess I just wish there had been another way."
"There wasn't."
He nodded. "Which is why I don't regret what I did. I just regret that it happened."
She took the bottle from him. "How do you thank the man who saved your life after he dangered it?"
"Dangered it?"
She wiped at her mouth with her knuckles. "Yes. How?"
He cocked his head at her.
She read his eyes and laughed. "Some other way, chico."
"You just say thanks." He took the bottle from her and had a sip.
"Thanks."
He gave her a flourish and a bow and fell into her. She shrieked and swatted at his head and helped him right himself. They were both laughing and out of breath when they staggered to a table.
"We will never be lovers," she said.
"Why's that?"
"We love other people."
"Well, mine's dead."
"Mine may as well be."
"Oh."
She shook her head several times, a reaction to the alcohol. "So we love ghosts."
"Yes."
"Which makes us ghosts."
"You're drunk," he said.
She laughed and pointed across the table. "You're drunk."
"No argument."
"We will not be lovers."
"You said that."
The first time they made love in her room above the cafe it was like a car crash. They mashed each other's bones and fell off the bed and toppled a chair and when he entered her, she sank her teeth into his shoulder so hard