“It’s beautiful,” Damián says. His voice has dropped into a register I have not heard from him before. I pull the shirt down slowly and the fabric covers the skin again. The air between us does not go back to normal because he looked at a part of me I put there on purpose, and the looking felt like being read.
“We should head back,” I say, trying to get my mouth to form sentences. “The heat gets worse from here.”
“The heat’s been worse since ten.”
“The heat in Atlanta after three develops opinions about you. It’s not weather anymore. It becomes a relationship.”
He laughs. The surprised one.
We walk back toward Monroe and the sun is lower when we arrive. The light has the late-afternoon weight Atlanta does in June, gold and thick, the kind that makes everything look like a photograph.
“Thank you,” Damián says. “For the tacos. For showing me the city.”
“My pleasure. Tomáš asked me to show you around.”
The sentence comes out. I hear it land half a second after I have said it. I just put Tomáš‘s name between us as a shield. The corner of Damián’s mouth tightens.
“Right,” he says, nodding and looking over my shoulder. “Tomáš asked.”
He looks me in the eyes, thanks me, then turns and walks toward the hotel, his shoulders carrying whatever they are carrying as he moves toward the life expecting him to come back.
I walk home. The Beltline curves familiar around me. A woman with a stroller, the mural near Highland I have photographed six times, the flower stand woman who waves and I wave back and nothing requires translation.
I have read twenty-seven romance novels. I know what it means when an arm stays on your shoulder and a thumb moves in circles. I know what it means when someone reads the storyon your skin with their eyes. The notes have not been useful in my actual life until now and the usefulness is the problem.
Impossible has been my entire arrangement. Possible would break me open.
I keep walking. The spot on my arm is still warm. The line on my ribs is still warm. I am behaving as though something has happened. I am declining to investigate what.
Chapter 8: Damián
The lobby is cool after the afternoon. The woman at the front desk nods. The elevator opens on the first push of the button and I am grateful for the lack of waiting because waiting means standing in a hotel lobby with a feeling I have not yet given a name.
Fourth floor. Key card. Green light.
Šíma is on his bed with his laptop on his stomach and a protein bar hanging from his mouth like a cigar.
“Vež. Where have you been? You missed Kovár‘s attempt at American barbecue.”
“How did that go?”
“He ordered something called pulled pork and complained it wasn’t schnitzel. Novotný tried to explain smoked meat and Kovár kept asking why it was pink in the middle. They went on for twenty minutes, Vež. Twenty minutes on the moral character of smoked meat. The waitress brought him coleslaw at some point and he looked at it like it had insulted his mother. He is deeply unwell about American food.”
“Kovár doesn’t understand anything he can’t cover in breadcrumbs.”
“He understands pasta.”
“That’s true.” I take my shoes off and sit on my bed against the headboard.
“Where were you?”
“Walking. Tobík showed me his Beltline.”
“What did you do?”
“Walked. Ate tacos. Met half the small businesses on the path.” I smile thinking about all the people we talked to on the Beltline.
“You found tacos?”