28
“I hate to disappoint you. Dr. Flores has the day off.”
“I’ll swing by tomorrow, Amaris. When’s a good time?”
They’d met the museum curator on their first tour of the San Carlos Institute. The patient woman had taken her time to share
the provenance of the handmade tile and the significance of the José Martí statue before the director stepped in and took
over, repeating the same information with his signature flourish. Today she sat behind the display table near the entrance,
facing the doors that opened to Lower Duval. Instead of proposing an appointment, Amaris gave him directions to a nearby park
where the doctor could be found playing dominoes with a cousin and a brother-in-law.
“I wouldn’t want to disturb him,” Leo said. “Tomorrow is fine.”
“Nonsense!” Amaris cried. “He’s a big fan! He wanted you to sign his copies of your books but was too embarrassed to ask in
the presence of the others. I’m sure they’re as brilliant as you are, but I wouldn’t know one way or the other. I don’t read
scary stories.”
“We don’t all write scary stories,” he said.
She leveled her watery green eyes at him. “But you do.”
There was no denying it. “Yes.”
“If you don’t mind waiting a minute, I’ll grab them for you to sign.”
“Will it earn you a Christmas bonus?” Leo asked, amused.
“Let’s find out!”
Amaris rose heavily and he noticed, too late, that her ankles were swollen. Leo wished he could call the whole thing off,
but he understood it was a point of pride for her to get what the director could not. Who was he to rob her of the minor victory?
It took more than a minute for her to return. He blindly perused the stacks of vintage postcards that had held Ayesha’s attention
on the day of the tour. Naturally his thoughts returned to July. He hadn’t seen her since Tuesday night. After dinner, she
asked for space. He was nothing but accommodating. When his parents asked him to leave, he left. When Francesca ended their
relationship, he packed his things. Jules asked for space, and he gave her all the space she might need. That didn’t mean
he’d given up. His strategy was a simple one: give her what she asked for. A step in any other direction would be a mistake.
There was no need to pressure her. She was tied in knots. All he had to do was tug on the end of the string to watch her unravel,
and she was unraveling. Once steady on her feet, she’d come to him, not because she belonged to him. They belonged to one
another. It was a matter of letting fate play its hand. He was committed to the long game, which was a gamble, but he was
sure of his hand. He could drag this out like the last chord of a violin concerto, until the bleeding sound hurt the soul.
Amaris returned with his books. She set aside the boxes of vintage postcards, stacked the volumes on the table, and handed
him a pen. “Are you enjoying your time in our city?” she asked.
“Very much,” he replied.
“Where are you staying?”
“The Aurora Inn.”
She turned up her nose. “Do you like that place?”
“I do,” he admitted.
“You would,” she said, likely considering what he did for a living. “I’m a chicken. I could never read your books or stay at that inn.”
“You think it’s haunted,” he said, cracking open a special edition hardcover copy of his second novel, written after a terrible
bout of the sophomore slump.
“It’s cursed,” she said. “No doubt about it. So much death and sorrow walk those halls.”
Leo wouldn’t be good at his job if he couldn’t sniff out a story. “I heard about the tragic end of the young Aurora Martinez.”
“That’s only half the story, or one third,” Amaris said, taking obvious pleasure that she knew something that he did not.
“It was a messy love triangle, fit for a telenovela!”
He signed the title page. “Now you’ve got to tell me everything.”
“It’s gossip! A little chisme!” She waved away his request. “It wouldn’t interest a scholar like you.”
Gossip was almost always more informative than heavily redacted and overly embellished historical texts. “I’m working on a
novel set in her time. You never know. It might help.”
She shrugged. “If you’re not in a hurry.”
Leo went straight for a folding chair leaning against a wall and set it across from hers, the display table between them.
“No hurry at all.”
“There’s also a link to the political tensions in Cuba. I know we say that about everything but it’s true in this case, specifically
the fire of 1886.”
Leo’s notebook was open, and his pen in hand. “Let’s hear it.”
“Aurora was the third daughter of a Cuban family,” she said. “She was young and pretty. Her father had married her off to
the master shipbuilder to settle a debt. Women were treated like cattle back then.”
“A tragedy,” Leo said.
“Even more so because her heart belonged to someone else.”
Leo drew a triangle on the page, adding Aurora and Jacobsen’s initials to the base corners.
“The boy came over from Cuba to work at one of the cigar factories,” Amaris continued. “His name was Leonardo or Leopold,
something like that.”
Leo rolled his eyes and added the initial L to the top corner.
“He was handsome. All the young ladies loved him. Even Aurora’s domestic servant. That’s your love triangle.”
Interesting . . . “Do you know her name?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
He drew an X over the first triangle and drew another with initials A and L at the base and a question mark at the apex.
“They say the young man kept coming around the house after dark, hanging around the gate. When Aurora found out his true motivations,
she flew into a blind jealous rage.”
“And leaped to her death,” Leo concluded.
“That’s what they say,” Amaris said, absolving herself of the sin of spreading gossip. “Understand, Mr. White, she was a young
lady and not meant to compete with the lower classes. It was a final humiliation in a long string of slights.”
“It’s Leo.” His name hung between them. He made a quick joke to clear the air. “No relation.”
They shared an awkward laugh.
Leo shifted on the metal chair. “What about the fire?”
“Oh, the boy took off immediately after the fire. The cigar factory had burned down. He returned to Cuba, put it all behind
him.”
“He fled the scene.”
“Exacto.”
Leo itched to take everything he’d learned to July, the triangle diagram and every scrap of information, for her to sift through, analyze, and dissect.
He wanted her eyes on his work product, a feeling that was foreign to him.
Solitude had always been key to his methodology, but this now felt hollow. He wanted a partner.
Leo thanked Amaris and took off on the scooter he’d rented for the week, heading to Pocket Park. It was hot, as usual. Above,
a blue sky turned gray at the seams, hinting at rain. He found Dr. Flores on the bench under a mahogany tree. He wore a bucket
hat and a cotton shirt, a splint on one arm, a folded newspaper tucked under the other. He wasn’t so much playing the game
as simply observing the one his companions were engaged in. The director ripped off his hat at Leo’s approach. “To what do
we owe this honor?”
His companions had no idea who Leo was, yet they beamed, impressed.
“What honor?” Leo asked. “I’m intruding on your free time for my own selfish reasons.”
“Nonsense!” Dr. Flores bellowed. “What can I help you with?”
“I have some questions for you.”
They migrated to a nearby table, waiting for an iguana to scurry away before settling down. “Let’s talk,” Dr. Flores said.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I’m interested in the Great Fire, and you’re the local expert,” Leo said. “Ever since you brought up the tragedy, I haven’t
been able to shake it. I believe there’s something there.”
“It’s a dramatic tale of sabotage, loss, death, and destruction. Everything is there. We’re coming up on the 140th anniversary.
The fire started over the night of March 30, my birthday of all days, and burned past dawn. It reduced the city to ashes,
yet here we are, thriving, resisting hurricanes and floods, intact as a pearl.”
“Are you a poet, Dr. Flores?”
“Only in my spare time.”
Leo reached for his phone and tapped on the voice notes app. “Do you mind if I record this interview?”
“I don’t mind.” The director pulled a rectangular wooden box from his tote bag. “Do you mind if we play a hand of dominoes while we talk?”
“Not at all.”
Leo was no expert domino player, but having something to keep their hands distracted would go a long way at keeping the director
talking. To rest his injured right wrist, Dr. Flores delegated to him the task of laying domino pieces face down on the table
and scrambling them like eggs.
“Where do we begin?” Leo asked as they each drew seven pieces to start.
“This is a triple-layer cake,” Dr. Flores said. “We begin with the greater geopolitical forces at play.”
“Sounds good.”
Leo had the highest double, a double five to Dr. Flores’s double three. He set it down at the center of the table while the
director set the scene.
“Key West was fertile ground for Cuban exiles with an entrepreneurial spirit. They started cigar factories, some making great
fortunes. Yet for every dollar earned, a fraction was funneled to the island to strengthen the revolutionary efforts of those
fighting against the Spanish Empire to free it from colonial rule.”
“Key West was the political hub,” Leo said.
“And the cigar industry was fueling the unrest. This lifeline had to be eliminated, and so Spain devised a plan, and they
weren’t subtle. The fire started at a coffee shop next to the institute’s former location on Fleming Street. The wooden building
was quickly engulfed in flames. However, they must have been laboring under an auspicious moon because the conditions were
ripe for a catastrophe.”
Leo drew from the boneyard hoping for a playable domino piece. “You mentioned the fire engine was out of commission.”
“That didn’t help, of course, but the strong winds refused to let the fire die.
It raged on through the night, ravaged factories and warehouses, destroyed homes.
The commercial area was wiped out. A staggering loss.
The most destructive fire in our history.
It burned for twelve hours. Can you imagine? It must’ve been hell on earth.”
Leo had no trouble imagining the horrors of that night, the howling wind and the flames raging through the buildings reducing
entire blocks to rubble. Smoke, screams, and cries of anguish. The missing, the injured, the destitute. And the morning after?
An ash-gray sky hovering over heartache and desperation.
“How many died?” Leo asked.
“Seven.”
“Was anyone held responsible?”
“No. They got away,” he said. “And I hope they’re roasting for all eternity, which is only befitting for master arsonists.”
In Leo’s novel the culprit would be a villain with pyrokinetic abilities, but what would push an ordinary man to unleash such
devastation on an unsuspecting community? Power, favor, a few gold coins?
Leo abandoned his dominoes for his notebook. “I’d like a general idea of where the fire spread.”
“I’ll show you.” Dr. Flores opened his phone’s browser to a period-accurate street map. He outlined the path of destruction,
from the business district to the shore.
Leo pointed to Caroline Street. “That’s where I’m at, The Aurora.”
“The old Jacobsen house,” Dr. Flores said. “It was spared, but other grand properties on that street went up in flames and
a prominent couple died in their home. The next day, a Spanish vessel was waiting offshore to take any willing workers back
to Cuba. Not surprisingly, many accepted.”
Leo pictured the men filing aboard the vessel, resigned, returning to the status quo.
“Finally, to add a pinch of insult to injury,” Dr Flores said, “a trade paper in Havana ran the story of the fire the day
before it occurred.”
“Jumped the gun, there.”
Predictably, Leo lost at dominoes. Dr. Flores’s buddies folded their game and came over to collect him. “Looks like the storm
is rolling in early.”
Thick clouds hovered ominously. Before leaving the inn this morning, the front desk had warned him of rain. He’d figured a
light spring shower, not a full-on storm.
“Well,” the director said regretfully, “all good things must end.”
Leo narrowly beat the rain. By the time he made it to the inn, he was drenched anyway. The humidity alone made his T-shirt
cling to his chest. He went up to the tower, emptied his pockets onto the desk, and stripped off the damp T-shirt on his way
down. He was toweling dry when someone knocked at his door. The rain was coming down steadily. Just outside the bedroom windows,
the east-west palms bent under the weight of the rain. He hadn’t ordered anything. He wasn’t expecting anyone.
He opened his door, hoping.
“I have it on good authority that we’re fated lovers.”
It was July, hand-delivered by the gods, in a bathrobe, barefoot and clear-eyed. Deep in that onyx gaze, however, danced twin
flames that mirrored his own desire.
He’d gambled and won.
“What authority?” he asked.
“Elvira from the ghost tour. She reads cards, and she’s excellent at it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, but why do you need third-party validation to confirm what you already know?”
“You give me too much credit,” she said. “Anyway, I’m here to return your robe.”
“But you’re wearing it,” he observed.
“Not for long.”
She swept past him. He kicked the door shut.
July struggled with the knot of the belt, but with one tug he got it to unravel. The bed was close, but the floor was closer.
She pulled him to her, and they stumbled onto the rug. They both wrestled with undoing the rest of his clothes, pleading without
words, fighting for a breath between each torching kiss. His instinct was to slow the pace, but if the cards were drawn, why
fight it? His instinct failed completely when she parted her thighs. If she wanted him now, hard, fast, loud, with the wind
howling outside and the trees slapping at the windows, she’d have him. But first, one ground rule: “This is not a revolving
door.”
She offered up her throat for his kiss. “Don’t stop,” she said. “We’ll sort it out later.”
“No, we won’t.”
She curled her fingers in his hair. “There’ll be nothing to sort if you don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
He was sinking inside her. His mouth to hers, he took in her first gasp.
He couldn’t wait, either. Her need matched his own and met his new understanding of what they were to each other.
With a leg wrapped around his thigh, she guided him deeper.
He was inside of her, on top of her, and tasting her, yet Leo wanted more.
He demanded access into the darker tunnels, straight into the beating chambers of her heart.
He wanted to find the trove of things she was hiding and wouldn’t share.
But then she started to rock, and the house rattled to the studs.
Leo would have forgotten his name if it wasn’t on her tongue when he kissed her.
She was close, he could feel it. He shifted onto his back and gave her reign.
She rode him mercilessly. When she shattered into his arms, he could taste her tears.
“July, don’t cry, love. We’re together. It’s okay.”