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To call them women would be flattering them. In their daily lives their great-grandmothers, tasked with raising an army of children and maintaining order in their families.
But every evening in the tiny Mexican seaside town of Ciloteca, these ladies who must be pushing 90 leave their worries at home and come to this bar as they sit and drink margaritas and watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.
“Gracias, chica,” one of the women says to me and I smile. It’s the end of my shift and I put my tray on the bar counter and walk around the bar.
It’s a quiet evening today, the local soccer match that’s happening at the stadium has much of the town focused on that. I walk up to the bartender who’s counting the money for the evening. He turns to me and smiles and I return the smile back. No words need to be spoken as he leans over and I wrap my arms around him and we kiss.
I feel his arms go around me and his hands descend down my back as we kiss some more. I raise myself on my tiptoes as I feel his hands reach for and cup my ass cheeks. I smile into him and pull back.
“Lucien,” I whisper, “We have an audience.”
Lucien Stone turns around and the ladies are looking at us and smiling. Or rather, they’re looking at him.
“Hola, guapo!” one of the ladies says as she raises her glass at Lucien.
“Muy chico!” I say with mock severity as I pull Lucien closer.
The ladies laugh good-naturedly and I smile to see if there are any customers left who will get info on the teasing that is most likely to commence.
But there are none. The sun is on its trajectory in descending over the Pacific Ocean and the bar is empty. People are all at the soccer match.
“Guess we better lock up?” Lucien asks me. I nod and we start going through the motions in closing up the bar for the evening.
After the first night in the motel, we realized we couldn’t stay in Southern California.
The next morning, we really ended up leaving everything that we had behind, converting as much as we could to cash, and hitching as many rides as we could find until we ended up in Mexico.
Once down south, Lucien was able to take charge again, finding us a place to live and a restaurant to work at.
We didn't have much. But we had each other. And we were happy.
And knowing Lucien, it wasn’t long before he purchased the bar and restaurant outright. I continued to waitress and Lucien continued serving drinks, only now he did this from behind the bar as opposed to walking around with a serving tray.
Life has been good. I have the man I love standing next to me.
I peek into the back room and look at the bassinet as it sits quietly. I crane my neck to the side a bit.
“Babies can tell when you’re watching them, Kerri” Lucien says from behind me, startling me.
I turn around and stick my tongue out at him and he chuckles, walking over to stand behind me so we can both take a look at our beautiful little baby daughter, Miranda.
I feel Lucien place a hand on my shoulder and I reach up with my hand to grab his.
We could have maybe stood there all night, watching our little daughter as she slept, but we’re interrupted by one of the town boys who runs up to the bar.
“Senor Marshall!” the boy yells as he comes up to the open-air bar that Lucien owns. “Senior Marshall! You have a letter! From Estados Unidos!”
Lucien turns to me and I shrug. Neither of us have been expecting anything from the US. Lucien never had much to look forward to since he was in jail, and once I sent off the paperwork to the attorney regarding his case, I had stopped looking for mail as well.
So, it is with some haste that Lucien leaves my side and goes over to the boy, thanking him, and begins to read.
I look to Lucien’s face to see what kind of reaction he’s having as he continues to read. But then again, I realize that this is Lucien Stone we’re talking about here. Rock sometimes has more expression than you can find on the face of this man.
Bereft of an expression to tell me what Lucien is reading I go up to him, curious as to what he’s seeing. But he looks up at me as I arrive.
“They’re dismissing all charges against me,” Lucien says. “They’re even awarding me a summary judgment for all the time and suffering that I’ve already endured. But basically, when they re-examined my case, they found that I wasn’t the killer who they had thought of at first.”
“So, you're cleared?” I ask, clapping my hands.
