Existence (2 page)

The following night, Jago takes her to dinner at Los Gatos, an exclusive bastion of candlelit elegance where the waiters keep a bottle of their finest champagne on ice for him, just in case he happens by.

He orders every appetizer on the menu and four entrées, so they can have a taste of everything, and once they've sipped their champagne, he summons the waiter and requests a bottle of their most expensive wine.

As they drink the rich red, Jago puts a small velvet box on the white tablecloth. Alicia opens it up to find a small sapphire dangling from a delicate gold chain.

“Oh,” she says, then closes the box and digs into her meal.

It's not exactly the reaction he was hoping for.

“You don't like it? I thought it would bring out your eyes.”

“It's gorgeous,” she says. “But, it's so . . .”

“What?”

“Well, it looks crazy expensive, and we just met, so that's kind of weird, don't you think?”

“I think it's beautiful, and you're beautiful, so it seems like a perfect match.”

She shakes her head. “Well, um, okay. But I don't really wear much jewelry. It would be wasted on me. So . . .”

It's not like it was at the nightclub, or in the moonlight. It's not easy between them, and he doesn't know why. He excuses himself to the bathroom, and on his way slips some money into the palm of the maître d' and makes a whispered request.

When he returns to the table, a violinist comes over to join them and begins a mournful rendition of a childhood lullaby. Jago waves over an old woman shuffling past the tables with an armful of roses, and buys a dozen, gives her a tip ten times their value. He offers them to Alicia—she takes them but doesn't smile.

“I'm sorry, but . . .” She stops, turns to the violinist, and says, “That's
lovely, but I've got a bit of a headache, so . . .”

The violinist looks to Jago, who nods his assent, and the musician backs away, looking abashed, surely afraid he's displeased the monster of Juliaca.

“I'm sorry,” Jago says quickly. He can feel the night slipping away from him, and if he doesn't understand what he's done, how is he supposed to fix it? He speaks eleven languages fluently, knows nineteen ways to kill a man with his bare hands, holds this city in the palm of his hands . . . yet somehow, he's powerless to make this one girl smile. “I didn't realize you had a headache.”

“I don't, I just . . .”

“Is it a law, in England, not to finish your sentences?” he snaps—then instantly regrets the flare of temper. He's simply not used to this kind of frustration.

She grins. “Aha!
There
you are.”

“What? Of course here I am.”

“No, I mean,
you
. Like, the real you, not this cheesy romance bullshit. The you from last night.”

“Excuse me, cheesy romance bullshit?”

“Flowers, candlelight, champagne, violin music? A necklace, for a girl you've just met? I don't know what kind of girls you usually date, but . . .”

He dates girls who like “cheesy romance bullshit” and the rewards that come with it. These are the kinds of girls who want to date a Tlaloc—at least a Tlaloc who looks like him. These are the girls who won't ask hard questions or make demands he prefers not to fulfill.

“And what kind of girl are
you
, Alicia? What would you prefer to do?”

“How about
talk
?” she says. “You could tell me about yourself.”

He shrugs. “There's nothing to tell.”

“You go to school?”

“Sure,” he lies. “Who doesn't? Junior year's a bitch.”

“SATs, picking colleges, all that, right?” she says.

He nods like he knows what she's talking about. Jago's life doesn't
resemble that of the teenagers he sees on TV. He's been homeschooled for his entire life, taught by tutors and physical trainers behind the walls of his family's gated estate, trained not for a life of college and banal employment but for duty, sacrifice, courage, and, eventually, rule.

“I'm thinking about, uh, law school,” he says, wondering if that will impress her.

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

She stands up. “Do you think I haven't figured out who you are,
Feo
? You must think I'm pretty stupid. And I don't date people who think I'm stupid.”

“Wait! Please!”

Jago stops. Composes himself. All over the restaurant, heads are turning. He can't afford to be seen like this, begging. Tlalocs do not beg. When he speaks again, it's with imperious scorn. “What is it you
think
you know about me?”

“I know you're Jago Tlaloc, that you're part of some kind of mob family, and you're the heir to it all. I know this whole city's scared of you.” Her voice softens, almost imperceptibly. “And I know you're a terrible dancer.” She shrugs. “That's about it. I came here tonight because I wanted to know more—not because I want expensive champagne and jewelry. You can't
buy
me, Jago. Not with a fancy dinner, and definitely not with a bunch of crap lies about your life. That's not who I am. I didn't think that was who you were.”

“It's not,” he protests.

“Then prove it,” she says. “Show me who Jago Tlaloc is. The real one. The one I fell for the first time I saw him.”

“You . . . you did?” He doesn't understand. No one could fall for him, just from looking at him. His face is not designed to melt hearts; it's designed to freeze them.

“Of course I did,” she says. “I told you: I'm not stupid.”

They ditch the restaurant. Jago takes Alicia to his favorite street vendor, an old man who grills up anticuchos and picarones just north of the city center. She tries a bite of everything, and the way her eyes light up at her first taste of choclo con queso makes the whole night worthwhile. They sit on the edge of a crumbling brick wall overlooking a vacant lot and stuff themselves, licking the grease off their fingers and kissing it off each other's lips, passing back and forth a frothing bottle of Pilsen Callao, and all the while, they talk.

Jago tells Alicia about his life, his
real
life. He doesn't speak of being the Olmec Player, of course—that secret is as sacred as the oath he swore to protect and serve his line. But he tells her what it's like to be a Tlaloc, to grow up in privilege surrounded by poverty. To be loved and loathed in equal measure, to never know whether the people around you are freely giving of themselves or obeying out of fear. Jago has his parents and his siblings; he has José, Tiempo, and Chango, three boys he grew up with who he can trust to the ends of the earth. But beyond that, he has minions, underlings, hangers-on, colleagues, enemies.

Sometimes, Jago admits, his enemies feel like the truest thing in his life. At least he always knows where they stand; at least he knows the passion they feel for him is real.

Jago tells Alicia about working his way up, learning the ropes of the family business when he was just a child. Going out on protection runs, defending territory . . . He lets her believe that he would wait in the car, because to explain that he was a black belt in several martial arts by the time he was eight and spent far more childhood hours with guns, knives, and bombs than he did with cartoons and teddy bears—that would raise questions he can't answer.

But he doesn't lie to her.

When she asks if he's broken the law, he says yes.

When she asks if he's hurt someone, even killed someone, he hesitates . . . then says yes.

She doesn't run away.

He tells her he doesn't like it, hurting people—that he does it because it's necessary. And she touches his scar again with those soft, careful fingers and says, “I believe you.”

When she asks if he's ever imagined a different life for himself, turning away from what his family wants for him, choosing his own path, he doesn't hesitate. “That's not an option for me,” he says. Being a Tlaloc, being a criminal, being the Player, these things are inextricable for him, and none are
choices
, any more than breathing, or living. It's a joy for him, serving his family and his people, living up to their expectations. To be the Olmec Player, to be the Tlaloc heir, these things define him, no matter how ugly or difficult they may sometimes be. “And even if it were . . . it's not all pain and crime. My family does good things for Juliaca. We've built hospitals; we have several charity foundations. We make sure none of our people starve. We give to the poor. We only steal from—”

“The rich?” She laughs. “Okay, Robin Hood. You're a hero of the people. I get it.”

If you only knew,
he thinks, wishing that he could tell her the whole story, explain that he's sworn to protect his people against an attack from the sky, against the end of the world, that he would sacrifice himself for the survival of the Olmec line—that he has already sacrificed so much.

And then he remembers that she is not Olmec. That if Endgame comes, he will not be fighting for her.

“I am who I am,” he says quietly. “Who my people, my family, need me to be. That's all I can be. You wouldn't understand.” He watches TV, he knows what life is like for people like her, who live sequestered from their own poor, who have infinite choices and no greater worries than alarm clocks and acne.

She threads her fingers through his, holds tight. “You'd be surprised.”

She tells him that she's been taking ballet lessons since she learned how to walk—that her mother is a former prima ballerina who had to retire when she got pregnant, and who has never quite forgiven Alicia
for ending her career. “She's never forgiven me for being more talented than her either,” Alicia says, without modesty or bitterness, and Jago likes her all the more for it.

For thirteen years, Alicia has done almost nothing but dance. “Morning, afternoon, night,” she says. “I was homeschooled for a while; then I got into the academy, where classes are a joke—everyone knows nothing matters but dancing.”

“I bet you're a beautiful ballerina,” he says.

“I was,” she says, again without modesty. He notes the tense.

It's hard not to stare at the unfathomably long line of her neck, the graceful way her arms arc and wave as she makes her point. Every move is graceful, efficient, almost as if she were a fighter, like him. And maybe they're not so different after all. The hard work, the oppressive training schedule, the tunnel vision for a life oriented around a single goal . . . he recognizes all of them, and wonders whether this is the magnetic field that draws them together, this singularity of purpose.

“I've been to Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Cape Town—name a city, and I've danced there,” she says. “Danced, and nothing else. No sights, no culture, certainly no local foods. Nothing that would get in the way of the training regimen. No distractions whatsoever.” She peers at him through lowered lashes. “Definitely no boys.”

“It can't be as bad as all that,” he says. “You're here.”

“Exactly. Because I quit.”

“What? You said dancing was your life.”

“It
was
my life, and what kind of life is that?” She steals the rest of his anticuchos, gulping them down with relish. “I couldn't handle it anymore. I just did one plié too many, you know?”

He shakes his head. Tries to imagine walking away from his life, from any of it. Declaring independence from everything he's ever known. There's such a thing as too much freedom, he thinks. Freedom from everything can leave you with nothing.

“My father was cool about it, but my mother?” She shakes her head.
“
Freaked. Out
. I finally convinced them to send me down here for six weeks, kind of a trial separation from ballet, you know? I'm supposed to be ‘thinking about my options.'” She curls her fingers around the words, and it's clear that she hopes to do very little thinking while in Peru. “I've basically missed out on the first sixteen years of life, Jago. I plan to make up for it, starting now.”

“That's a lot to catch up on in six weeks.”

“I'm very efficient,” she says. “It only took me four days to find you, didn't it? And about ten minutes to catch you?”

She's so sure of herself—so sure of the two of them, even though they've spent less than a few hours in each other's presence. “You think you caught me, huh?” he teases her. “I may be more slippery than you expect.”

She puts her arms around him, pulls herself onto his lap. “Just try to get away,” she whispers in his ear. “I dare you.”

Summer school isn't like real school, especially in Juliaca. Alicia has plenty of friends to cover for her, and the teachers and guardians at the study-abroad program don't require much covering. There's no one to care if she spends all her time with Jago.

So she does.

It's different than it's been with other girls: she doesn't want him to buy her anything; she doesn't care about his power, or the things he can make people do. She likes to hear the details; she finds it fascinating, the contours of power, the things he knows, the strings he can pull. She likes to hear about corrupt officials—who gets paid off and how much—about how you can learn to attune yourself to the smell of weakness and cowardice, about how to sniff out an Achilles' heel, and exploit it.

She likes it, but he doesn't like telling her, because he can see the judgment in her eyes, hear it in her voice. She's fascinated . . . but she's also repulsed. “I just think there's something better out there for you,” she says, whenever he talks about his family and what they
do, or what they expect of him. Or, sometimes, “The police really just look the other way? No matter how many laws get broken? How many people get hurt?”

She always phrases it that way. Not “when
you
break the law.” Not “when
you
hurt people.” She thinks he's different from the rest of his family, different from this entire city, perhaps, and he knows he should resent that.