Chapter 12
twelve
RODRIGO
The seat is a plastic sardine can in coach, and it is the most beautiful seat I have ever occupied in my entire life. Aisle. Exit row.
The woman to my left is already asleep, her head tipped toward the porthole glass.
The man across the aisle is reading something thick and joyless about finance.
The flight attendant is three rows ahead with the drink cart, moving toward me at the glorious speed of imminent rescue.
Outside the window, Chicago recedes into the grey— a smear of amber and cold light going soft behind a wall of cloud— and our plane is high above it all, taking me, Rodrigo Esperanza, alive and unbroken, back home.
I sigh. So this is what safety feels like.
The drink cart arrives. I accept a sparkling water and then, because I feel I’ve earned it, I add: “And a whiskey. Gracias.” The flight attendant moves on.
I settle back against the headrest. The engine hum surrounds me— the sound of the universe being reasonable for once.
I think about our family home in the Italian countryside, where Benny will have already stocked the fridge.
When all of this is remedied, I can go back to my old life.
I can work construction, and paint on the weekends— I’ll be able to sit in front of a canvas without worrying for my life.
In a moment of peace, without thinking, I reach for my phone.
I open Instagram. The feed delivers its familiar freight: a sunset from someone from a job site in Seville, a restaurant meal, a dog in a hat, a painting by an artist I’ve followed for years.
And then: Alana.
My thumb slows before my brain gives it permission. I can’t help it. Her account shows a new post: forty minutes ago. My chest does the thing it does when I see her name now— not longing, but fear. The body’s memory of danger.
I look at the photo.
She is at a bar, wearing something pink, because she’s always in something pink, and her hair is perfect, and she is laughing her full-luminous laugh.
And next to her, laughing too— with a real laugh, the unguarded kind— is Billie Harper. The woman from the baby shower.
I sit with this information, a cold chill running through my veins.
Billie, I think, how can I tell you that you must get away? My heart breaks for her, but I try to shake the feeling away.
I remind myself I don’t really know Billie.
She is beautiful in the way of someone who doesn’t know they’re beautiful, which is the most disarming kind.
She has enormous dark eyes with gold in them.
And from what I could tell, she is kind and she is smart.
She could be a monster, I remind myself, just like Alana.
But then I concede that— even if Billie is a person with flaws and not the idealistic woman of my imagination— almost no one on the planet deserves what Alana is likely to put them through.
Billie is at a bar. With Alana.
Laughing.
And then: DING.
A text notification, from Alana. Of course. She couldn’t just let me go without getting the last word.
I open it.
The first thing is a photo: same bar, same amber light, same two women, drinks raised this time.
Billie’s smile is aimed at the camera with an open, trusting quality that tells me this is best evening she’s had in a while– she doesn't know enough to be afraid. Alana’s smile is radiant.
It is always radiant. That’s the problem with Alana’s smile— it means nothing at all.
Then the text:
Alana
Having a great time without you My vision board is still working. Better watch out when you land, though, babe. Wouldn’t want you to get HIT at the airport. The fun will continue if we don’t get back together by Thursday. XOXO
Then, below that, a small pink heart emoji.
I stare at the message for a moment. Then I put the whiskey down, because it seems like a bad time to be enjoying anything.
Alana has taken out a hit on me. She has gone to the Twin Ledger and put a price on my head.
This means my photo has been sent to hundreds of assassins, all of whom will get a cash prize if they take me out and send a photo of my remains to the Twin Ledger.
Alana has put a contract on me and communicated this via text message with a pink heart at the end, while sitting next to Billie, who does not know that any of this is happening.
Billie is drinking with a murderer, and I’m going to get taken out at the airport as soon as I land, before I can even warn her. We are both in real trouble.
Then, it hits me: why didn’t Alana kill me herself?
Perhaps because— even though she is La Diabla— there is some real feeling there.
She cannot kill me herself, because there is a piece of her— an icy, tiny little piece— that is attached to me.
And perhaps I can use that fact to stop anyone from getting hurt.
My hands are moving before I’ve fully committed to the decision. This is what happens in situations like this— you don’t decide so much as you start moving and let the decision catch up. I open the conversation with Alana. I type:
Me
Coming back. Please don’t do anything crazy.
Send.
The lie lands in my chest with a dull, boring weight. I am not coming back. But I am buying time.
She responds immediately:
Alana
Don’t worry babe. You don’t have to come back.
Then, a long pause before the next message:
Because I’m coming to YOU.
I put the phone face-down on the tray table.
I look out the window. The clouds are solid white below me, a clean, complete erasure of everything.
I breathe for a moment. Maybe Alana will believe my lie enough to cancel the hit?
But now she plans to come to me herself.
That, too, will inevitably end in murder when she realizes I have no intention of getting back together with her.
But perhaps it will give me a chance to do what I should have done at that baby shower and get a message to Billie, an innocent woman, warning her to stay away from her new friend.
I think about Billie’s gentle smile, and her Bambi eyes. I cannot be the reason this woman suffers.
I pick the phone back up.
Melissa.
Melissa was at the shower. Melissa is Billie’s best friend— the real one, the actual one.
Alana made me add Melissa as a Facebook friend after the shower, because she claimed we’d be doing “couple’s stuff” with her and Steve.
I open up facebook and scroll through my friends— thankfully, Melissa has accepted the request. There’s an option in the Messenger app to video call her.
I hit the call icon, and wait as it rings.
It rings twice. Three times. I look out the window at the white. I think about Billie raising a glass in the amber light of Tilly’s and not knowing to put it down.
On the fourth ring: the line connects.
“Hello?” Melissa appears on the screen of my phone, her face arranged in a confused expression. She’s probably wondering why a near-stranger is video-calling her late night from an airplane.
“I know you don’t know me well,” I say, speaking as quickly as I can. “But this is Rodrigo, Alana’s boyfriend? And she’s not who you think she is.” I pause, trying to find the right words. “Your friend Billie is in danger. We don’t have much time.”