Free Small Damages by Beth Kephart Page A

lived in the room where you are living, but mostly I lived in this tree house. I thought climbing brought me closer to them. I thought as long as they could see me, I’d be all right. I was a kid. Estela would sleep down there, on the ground, beneath me. If I was here, then she’d be there. She wouldn’t let another thing happen. That was her promise.
    God, Esteban, I say, and suddenly I see it—the boy in the house, the cook on the ground, the stars coming close, but you never can stand up, touch stars.
    Esteban watches the night. He pulls at that thread. He looks at me through everything else—past me, past you, through the branches. Did you do it? he asks me.
    Do what?
    Write back to your boyfriend?
    I don’t know, I say.
    Well, did you?
    Not really. No. I haven’t.
    Will you?
    I’m not sure.
    From far away, on the other side of the
cortijo,
one guitar sounds like it is crying, and another strikes a chord and a word gets loose—
Ay! Ay!—
and I think about Kevin, an ocean and his own bright future away, and I think about Esteban, right here.
Know your own heart,
Estela said.
Be careful
. Kevin should be here. He’s not.
Dear Kenzie,
Kevin should have written.
I am coming for you. I am sorry.
    I heard them talking, Esteban says now, a little while ago.
    About what?
    About you. About Seville.
    What about Seville?
    You’re going back. Tomorrow.
    For what?
    You have been asking the questions. You want the answers. You’ll go.
    Adair? I ask. Javier?
    He shrugs.
    What am I supposed to do?
    Be ready, is all. You have to do that.
    Esteban stands and straightens his jeans. He reaches for the plate, which I’ve scraped empty. He curls his free hand against one branch of the tree, and fits his boot onto a riser, and I’d give anything to have him stay all night. To sit here with me, counting the stars, looking for people we know passing by.
    Should I be scared? I ask him.
    I don’t think so, he says.
    Do you believe in Gypsy magic? I pull out Angelita’s pouch, put it on the planks between us. Tip of a black cat’s tail, I tell him. Cure for weary eyes.
    He shrugs again, almost smiles.
    Do they work? I ask. Her cures?
    Depends on what you want, I guess. Once she tied a blue ribbon to my head when my head was hurting. In an hour or so the hurt was gone. There’s something to it. Maybe.
    Esteban? I ask him now.
    “¿Qué?”
    How do you get a horse to like you?
    Stick around, he says. For starters. And maybe stop with the so many questions.

TWENTY-ONE
    We drive past groves of olive trees and vineyards, one road, then another to Seville. The landscape grows used up and the air reeks with gasoline, and Miguel and I hardly talk, and when we do, he’s not letting me in on any secrets. When the thick walls of the city are finally in view, Miguel slows down and sits forward and messes with the clutch. He parks Gloria on one of those sidewalky streets, and I open my door and get out.
    Above us are balconies and orange-yellow building slopes, the slick of tiles, those lizards. Nothing is tall, but still and everywhere the buildings ribbon the sky into blue. We walk along beside the fortress walls, letting the women with the strollers pass, turning our faces from car smoke, stepping out of the way of the streams of dog pee that trickle away from the walls. Everything is different, and everything’s the same, and I don’t talk, and Miguel doesn’t talk, and finally he stops and rings a bell. I hear keys in the doors beyond the wall and then one iron grate door opens, and then another one does, and now I’m staring at some old lady in the courtyard of a house. It’s like standing inside another square doughnut—this one made of stone.
    The air is greenhouse air, hot and muggy. The tiles on the floor are cracked. A miniature fountain is filled up with oranges, half of them rotten, half green. There are white birds like small moths, swooping and perching. A skylight overhead lets in the sun, and the stairs circle around,