ride came. Also for some food and drinks from the vending machine.
Before I had handed the ring over, though, I wrote up a quick paper, both of us signing it in good faith. The owner honored the deal, and all he asked for was his proper pay and some for accidentals when Brando went to settle the debt.
Something told me the man was smart enough not to try anything untoward with the crazed Italian standing in his small reception area.
Brando gave him five hundred dollars extra, apart from whatever had been incurred, which was too generous in my opinion, but I wasn’t going to argue the point. It made me think of silence money.
I sat in the back seat of his Texas rental, refusing to sit up front with him. I had little to say, and he didn’t make a fuss about it either. Halfway home, he demanded that we stop for the night. I agreed. But I wanted my own room. He refused. We came to a deal; two beds instead of one.
I stood under the warm shower until the water turned cold. The spray washed away the second skin that had developed over the last couple of days. The new clothes Brando had bought for me—a thin flannel shirt, a white tank top, and black leggings—fit like a glove and felt better than clean skin. I slept sound.
As the journey continued on, we ran into some rain. Light at first, it progressed into substantial showers. He slowed the car, intent on taking his time. Every few minutes his eyes would flick to the back seat.
After a while of this, I lay across the leather, needing an escape.
We drove for about another hour before he inserted a tape he must’ve brought with him. He turned the volume up. The songs were mixed, but none of them sad. An old Cat Stevens tune came on.
Maggie Beautiful’s favorite. She would slow dance with herself, eyes closed, lost to some memory. Sometimes she’d cry, the loss apparent in the pain of her features. Other times, her smile would be one of contentment, satisfied to have whatever the thoughts offered.
“Scarlett.”
I shut my eyes tight, pretending to be asleep.
A few seconds later. “Scarlett.”
I took a deep breath in and out but added nothing else.
He turned the music up. After the song came to an end, he listened once more. Then he did something that almost caused me to sit up.
He started to cry.
The profile of his face was the only part of him truly visible to me in the rainy darkness. The lights of passing cars shone every so often, highlighting his tears. Not long after, he pulled the car into an empty parking lot, holding on to the steering wheel like he wanted to strangle it.
He cried and cried and cried, not a sound coming from him. I cried and cried and cried, not a sound coming from me.
Right before we made it to my parents’ house, he whispered, “Scarlett Rose, you ripped my heart out with your bare hands.”
“I know,” I said. “But you murdered me with the weapon first, Fausti.”
Those were the last words spoken between us before I left him without so much as a goodbye.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Scarlett
Maggie Beautiful once told me that there are three occasions in a soul’s life that demand a memory:
1. The moment you get facial hair. (True for a man and a woman.)
2. The day you fall in love and the day your child is born. (She said these two were separate but that both were veins leading directly to the heart of things.)
3. The day you grow up. (She said people know, even if they refuse to believe it. For a man, she said it was simple—it was the day he recognizes his obligations and accepts them. For a woman, it was less simple, because she believed that when a woman loved, she loved with her entire being—it was the day she gives her heart to another (woman, man, or child), and after she gives another soul part of her soul (which to her translated to making love.)
I knew Brando had been an adult for much too long. And me? I knew the moment I walked away that I finally had the courage to call myself a woman.
Life after Texas pushed me into forward motion with great speed.
After my return home, I laid it out for my parents, mostly my mother. I would go to Paris. I’d start packing that evening. She still griped at