Page 80 of Old Flames

“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.”