Chapter 20 #2
Suddenly, Joana was ringing the doorbell outside a three-story, wide mansion, having stepped out of the taxi and walked past three luxury cars at some point.
She didn’t get the chance to check if the man had already driven away before the door swung open, a distant dog barking somewhere deeper in the house, to reveal a young woman with wide green eyes framed by mascara.
Her hair was faux blonde — dark roots betrayed her — and her lips were painted bright red, whereas her cheeks were dusted in pink and her jaw was bronzed.
Her outfit consisted of tight black pants, heels, and a silk top with luxury printing, the first buttons almost-scandalously undone to display the upper curves of her chest. Hanging from an elbow, a luxury purse.
“Oh my God,” she said in the foreign language, then laughed, clapped her manicured hands together. She continued in Joana’s language: “I was just about to leave—”
“I wanted to drive us.”
“You wanted to trap me in the car with you,” snapped the young woman, though she immediately stepped out, pulled the door shut behind her.
“You’re crazy. This is why I can’t stand you.
” Even still, she retrieved the car keys from her bag, placed them in Joana’s outstretching hand.
“We said to meet at the club. So, where are you taking me? Are you kidnapping me?”
“Yes,” said Joana as she headed for the right car, opening the passenger door, then waiting until the woman climbed in before she shut it. After walking around the front, sliding into the driver’s, Joana added, “You still have time to run.”
“You’re crazy,” said the woman again, shaking her head but putting on the seatbelt. “Don’t think I’m not mad anymore. If you don’t stop acting so scary all the time, then I’m going to file a restraining order, you know.”
Joana hesitated, then turned on the ignition and teased, “How many years?” Tilting a long smile over at the woman, she reached to grasp her hand.
“Two or five?” The daughter of the kingpin, a girl who hated her name Guadalupe, thought it was too old-fashioned.
Years ago, her father had introduced her as ‘La Lupina’ to a warm-faced Joana.
Lupina huffed, then crossed her legs, looked away, and squeezed Joana’s hand. She confessed with the sound of a smile in her voice, “Two.” Then, Joana drove off.
This nightclub was rather different than the one where Joana had met with Lupina’s father — its theme neon with skulls and sombreros and cacti.
EDM shook the walls and thumped against Joana’s chest even from a street away after they’d parked and begun walking over.
She wasn’t well-dressed, and looked even less so beside Lupina — in her usual sneakers, jeans, and an oversized, plaid shirt she wore and that her mother often hissed made her look like a boy.
If it weren’t for Lupina’s status, then Joana was certain she’d have been turned away.
Instead, Lupina led her inside, down the steps leading toward the basement, dark in between glowing necklaces and the dim bulbs over the long parallel bars at the walls.
A DJ was up on a podium at the furthest wall, a dance floor right before it with all the bodies that weren’t standing by the small couches peppered around, each with a table holding a bucket of ice and liquor.
There was some kind of masked event today — most of the people in the building were covering their face with all kinds of coverings — which Lupina had messaged she didn’t really care for, but Joana reached into her pocket, retrieved the wrestler mask.
She yanked it over her face, turned to a laughing Lupina, then pulled her to the bar.
Joana ordered them several shots, and then downed them quickly with her, telling her about breakfast with her father while Lupina gagged.
When they finally made it to the dance floor, they were adequately drunk, but Joana took a tall beer with her anyway, for the emotional support.
‘I’m not going to bring it up,’ she pointedly thought.
‘I’m not going to talk about it.’ Joana curled one foot over another and spun on her heel to remember how to feel the rhythm of the music, almost drowned out by a singing, feminine voice.
The Harlot. Then, she took Lupina’s hand, pulled her close, then grasped her waist. ‘It’s not going to happen.
’ Routinely, Joana took sips from her bottle, and then went for another one, and then returned to dancing with her girl, her woman.
It made her sound like her dad to think so possessively, but Joana really understood him in that moment.
‘My woman, my girl.’ The shapes of the room were beginning to melt, as were the sensations of Lupina’s body pressed snug to hers.
Another spin. Lupina ground down on Joana’s leg between her own, as if they were dancing regional music out on a ranch.
Once, Lupina had taken Joana to her ranch, and they had curled up on a bench swing together, listening to the birds.
They couldn’t be at the club long, Lupina had warned the day before; her friends — a mixture of the wealthy from both sides of the river — had begun showing up here so often, but she was desperate to dance, to dance with Joana.
‘You love to dance, but they don’t know, do they?
’ Joana breathed against her girlfriend’s neck, and Lupina shivered.
‘Your friends don’t know me.’ Lupina pulled back, locked a hazy gaze with her.
‘Your friends don’t know you either. Not like I do.
’ Then, Lupina stepped away, turned on her heel, began walking toward the bathrooms.
Slow, Joana lowered her hands, breathing in, out, in, out before lifting her beer bottle to her mouth and taking the last sips.
Half-awake, half-lucid, she felt a man try to touch her, but Joana shoved him back without thinking, then headed after Lupina.
Her feet stumbled as she moved, and every kind of person bumped into either side of her, but Joana could barely hear their snaps or insults or apologies.
Only the sweep of Lupina’s hair held her attention.
Hurrying past the entrance to the bathroom, Joana noted the beautiful women by the sinks, reapplying makeup, talking, before Joana managed to catch Lupina slip into the furthest stall from the door.
‘That man your father wants for you will never know you either. Not like me.’ Joana couldn’t help remembering her argument with Lupina now, but she approached anyway.
‘I know his ugly fucking face. The stupid cut of his hair.’ The stall door was ajar, unlocked for her.
‘What is his name? I can’t remember. Your father invited me to the wedding already.
Do you want me there? Do you think you could bear seeing me?
Would you say I’m a friend or that you don’t know me well, that I’m just some girl your father introduced to you some night by the grill? Can you make yourself believe it?’
When Joana stepped into the stall, shut it behind her, Lupina took her face and pulled her close.
Quickly, the bottom half of the wrestling mask was folded up enough for a cherry-glossed mouth to slide against Joana’s.
But Joana soon tilted her face — the movement slow but feeling too quick, fast enough to jostle the burning liquor in her belly — then brought her lips to the warm pulse of her girl’s neck.
‘My girl. Maybe I should stop thinking like that, after all.’ She shut her eyes, didn’t realize it; the image of Lupina was imprinted in her mind in perfect accuracy, every detail memorized, traced by Joana’s tongue in the past. A past life, it felt like.
‘I want to be with you every morning. Should I tell you? My phone is ringing all the time. It’s my father.
It’s your father. It’ll be God one day, telling me it’s time to march right to Hell and leave you here.
Because you’re His good Christian girl, and I’m a valley of death. ’
Lupina slapped a hand over her mouth, like she always did, but her hips began to grind against the other’s knee again as Joana set her foot on the toilet seat, too firm for how weak she felt.
‘If I could talk without slurring, I’d say goodbye.
This has to be goodbye, doesn’t it?’ Her stomach turned, but Joana bit down, listening to a soft, shaking breath slip past Lupina’s fingers.
‘Goodbye. When I arrived at your father’s house years ago, and you came down from your room to ask him something, saw me among all the men, and I saw you, I remember thinking: What a beautiful girl.
’ Joana had no patience, grappling Lupina’s waist, trying to guide her to put one foot on the toilet as she set her own back on the ground.
Then, Joana dragged both her hands up Lupina’s tall body, feeling it tremble, before she began to pepper kisses down her front.
Through the top, she squeezed at one of Lupina’s breasts, nuzzled it with her nose, kissed it, then continued downward until she was crouching over the tile.
Lupina pulled her own pants down, and Joana yanked them lower to rub her jaw against the lace of Lupina’s underwear, breathing in.
‘I was half-drunk when we met. I slurred my hello. I think you didn’t like me.
’ Joana tugged the fabric aside, then dipped in her tongue, ignoring the tight throb between her own legs — partly hoping it’d start to hurt.
Her heart craved a whip of punishment; she didn’t know why, she never knew why.
‘But every time afterwards that I was in the house, you’d come offer me something to drink, some food.
Once, you offered me some of your own cooking.
You said you felt bad for me because I was just a girl surrounded by horrible men.
I told you I’m not much of a girl, and your father and his friends don’t see a girl in me either.
What was I then, you asked. I said, I’m a weapon. I’m no girl; I’m a gun.’