In the Age of Love and Chocolate (12 page)

“Hey, Luna,” Theo said. “Your loving brother is here, too.”

Luna ignored him. “And this must be Natty. The smart one, yes?”

“Most of the time,” Natty said.

Luna whispered conspiratorially to my sister, “I am the smart one in my family, too. It is a terrible burden, no?” Luna turned to her brother and me. “Nice of you both to show up
after
the big cacao harvest. I could have used your help a week ago.”

Natty and I had just set our bags in our room when I was told that Bisabuela wanted to see me. I changed into a dress and went up to her room, where Theo was already by her side.

“Ahn-juh,” she said in a scratchy voice. Then she said something in Spanish, which I could not understand. My Spanish had become rusty. She wagged a knotted finger at me, and I looked to Theo for help.

“She says she is happy to see you,” Theo translated. “That you look very well, neither too plump nor too slim. She is sad it has taken you so long to come back to the farm. She wants to say again that she is sorry about what happened with Sophia Bitter. She—Nana, I am not going to say that!”

“What?” I asked.

Words were exchanged between Theo and his great-grandmother. “Fine. She says we are both nice Catholic kids, and she doesn’t like us living in sin. And God doesn’t like it either.” Theo’s checks turned as red as an overripe strawberry.

“Tell her that she misunderstands,” I said. “That you and I are only friends. Tell her that it’s a very large apartment.”

Theo shook his head and left the room. I took Bisabuela’s hand. “He is only my friend. It’s not a sin.” I knew this was not quite true, but I felt fine about a lie that would make a sweet old lady feel better.

Bisabuela shook her head.
“El te ama, Ahn-juh. El te ama.”
She clapped a hand to her heart, then pointed to the door by which Theo had just exited.

I kissed her wrinkled cheek and pretended I had no idea what she was saying.

*   *   *

I had been too worried to truly appreciate my last Christmas at Granja. I had been on the lam and torn from everyone I loved. But this Christmas, with Natty there and my worries at a record low, I allowed myself to drink in Theo’s family.

We exchanged presents in the morning. Natty and I had brought silk scarves for the Marquez women. For Theo, I had purchased a new leather suitcase, which I had already given him before we’d left. He traveled so much for the Dark Room that I thought he would find it useful. My present from Theo was a sheath for my machete, with
ANYA BARNUM
, my onetime alias, burned into the side. “Every time I see you pull that machete out of your backpack, I laugh,” he said.

Christmas dinner was turkey
mole
and
tres leches
. Natty ate so much she fell asleep—siesta was a sacred tradition at Granja. While my sister napped, Theo asked if I wanted to take a walk around the cacao orchard.

The last time Theo and I had walked these fields, we’d been attacked by an assassin come to kill me. (As absurd as it sounds to report such an incident, this had been my life.) Theo had been gravely injured, and I’d cut off someone’s hand. Two years later, I could still remember the sensation of swinging a blade through flesh and bone.

Still, the field did not have only bad associations for me. It was where Theo had taught me about cacao, and if I hadn’t come here, I never would have opened the Dark Room.

I saw a cacao pod with signs of rot. Out of habit, I drew my machete and sliced it off.

“You have not lost your touch,” Theo said.

“Guess not.” I resheathed my machete.

“I’ll sharpen it for you before we leave,” Theo said. He slipped his fingers through mine, and we walked in silence for a while. It was almost sunset, but I was glad to be outside with the last rays of warm Mexican sun on my skin.

“Are you glad you came?” Theo asked me.

“I am. Thanks for making me. I needed to get out of the city.”

“I know you, Anya,” he said. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

We walked a bit farther, stopping every now and then to tend the cacao. When we came to the end of the field, Theo stopped.

“We should turn around,” I said.

“I cannot,” he said. “I must speak.” But then he did not speak.

“What is it, Theo? Out with it already. I’m getting cold.” In December, the weather in Mexico abruptly turned from pleasant to frigid. He grabbed me by the leather belt that strapped my new machete sheath to my waist. He undid the buckle.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He took my machete out of the sheath. “Get your hands off my machete,” I said, giving him a playful smack on the wrist.

“Hold out your hand,” he said.

He turned the sheath over and a small ring—a silver band with a white pearl—fell out of the case and into the palm of my hand. “You did not look close enough,” he said.

I stood there, dumbfounded. I sincerely hoped it was not what it looked like. “Theo, what is this?”

He grabbed my hand and forced the band over my knuckle. “I love you, Anya.”

“No, you don’t! You think I’m ugly. We fight all the time. You don’t love me.”

“I tease, I tease. You know this is my way. I
do
love you. I have never met a person I love as much as you.”

I began to back away from him.

“I think we should be married. We are the same, and Bisabuela is right. It is wrong for us to spend our lives together, as we have been for the past year, and not be married.”

“Theo, we can’t get married just because we’ve offended your great-grandmother.”

“That is not the only reason, and you know it. I love you. My family loves you. And no one will ever have more in common with you than me.”

“But Theo, I don’t love you, and I never claimed that I did.”

“What does that matter? You lie to yourself about love. I know you, Anya. You are afraid of being hurt or of being controlled, so you tell yourself you are not in love. You are afraid of happiness, so you destroy and vex her whenever she arrives.” He took my hand. “Have we not been happy this year?”

“Yes, but…”

“And is there anyone you prefer to me?”

“No, Theo, there’s no one I prefer.”

“Of course there is not. So marry me, Anya. Give yourself over to the happiness.” He put his arms around me.

“Theo,” I said, “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone. Look at my parents. Look at Win’s parents.”

“We won’t be like them. I can see you as a little old woman and me as a little old man. We cook and we tease each other all day long. And we are happy, Anya. I promise you that we are happy.”

I could tell he wasn’t listening to me. I didn’t know how to make him understand. I felt trapped, tricked, and fooled by him. But I also didn’t want to lose the little traitor either. I looked at him. What was wrong with me anyway that this handsome, funny boy was not enough? “Theo, let’s give it time,” I said.

“Do you mean an engagement before the wedding?”

“I’m still very young. I need time to think.”

“You are not young,” he said. “You have never been young. You were born old and you have known your own mind as long as I have known you.”

“Theo,” I said, “even if I did love you, I don’t believe love is enough of a reason to get married.”

Theo laughed at me. “What is enough of a reason then? Tell me.”

I tried to think of one. “I don’t know.” The ring, with its too-tight band, had started to hurt my finger. When I pulled it off, it flew from my hand, landing somewhere in the dirt. I got on my hands and knees and began combing through the soil, looking for it. “Theo, forgive me. I think I lost your ring!”

“Calm down,” he said. “I see it.” He had sharp eyes from years of tending cacao. In a second, he had located the ring. “Not hard to find a pearl in the dirt,” he said.

He tried to hand it back to me, but I would not accept it this time. I kept my fists closed. “Theo, please,” I said. “I’m begging you. Ask me some other time.”

“Admit that you love me. I know that you love me.”

“Theo, I don’t love you.”

“Then what have we been doing for the past year?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was a terrible mistake. I like you so much. I like kissing you, and I couldn’t be more grateful to you. But I know I don’t love you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I … I have been in love. And it is not what I feel for you.”

“Do you mean with Win? Why are you not still with him if you love him so much?”

“I wanted other things, Theo. Maybe love is enough for some girls, but it isn’t enough for me.”

“You leave Win, the boy you claim to love, because you say that love is not enough. You have friendship and work and fun with me, but that is not enough for you either. You don’t want love, but then you do. Has it occurred to you that nothing will ever satisfy you?”

“Theo, I’m only nineteen. I don’t have to know what I want.”

Theo set the ring on the palm of his hand and contemplated it for a moment. “Maybe we break up? Is that what you want?”

“No. I’m saying … What I’m saying is I can’t marry you
right now
. That’s all I’m saying.” It was selfish and weak, but I didn’t want to lose him. “Let’s forget this ever happened. Let’s go back to New York and back to the way we were.”

Theo stared at me and then he nodded and put the ring in his pocket. “Someday, Anya, you will be old, old like your nana and my
bisabuela
. You will be sick and you will need to rely on someone other than yourself. And you may find yourself sorry that you sent everyone who tried to love you away.” He offered me his hand, helped me up off the ground. I brushed the dirt from my dress, but because the ground was damp, most of it would not come off.

XI

I ALMOST FOLLOW IN MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS

W
HEN I WAS TWELVE,
I had discussed with Scarlet what would happen if a boy (perhaps a prince) proposed marriage and you were put in the awkward position of having to reject him. “He’ll probably disappear the next day,” Scarlet had said. In any case, the discussion had given me the false idea that a no might convey the power of magical banishment. And wouldn’t that be for the best? Because how could a boy be expected to stick around after he’d offered you his heart and you’d said,
Thanks for your heart, but I’d prefer a different heart. Actually, I’d rather not have a heart at all.

When we returned to New York, I half expected Theo, who I had always known to be proud, to move out or even leave the country. Of course, that was impractical—he lived in my apartment, and we ran a business together. Instead, we both went on as if nothing had changed, and that was awful. He did not bring up the proposal, though I felt it hanging in the air above us like a rain cloud in August. Maybe he was being patient. Maybe he thought I would change my mind. I wanted to say to him,
Please, my friend. Go and be free. I release you. I owe you so much and I don’t want to cause you unhappiness. You deserve more love than I can give you.
But I was too cowardly, I guess.

Occasionally, his insults felt less playful and more pointed than they had in the past. Once, when we’d been arguing over the minimum amount of cacao a certain drink required, he told me that I had “an ugly heart to match my hair.” In moments like this, I felt we were on the verge of having the argument that would lead to the final act.

*   *   *

By March, the first of the new wave of Dark Rooms was ready to open. The location was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and it had been quite easy for us to get the place going once we had the money—the laws and many of the logistics were the same as those for the Manhattan club, and travel by the L train, though it only ran once every other hour, was not difficult. The new club was in a building that had once been a Russian Orthodox cathedral. Though my cousin Fats had run a speakeasy out of a church for years, this was
my
first “holy” location. Perhaps I should have paid greater consideration to the spiritual issues, but I didn’t—it was not my faith, and as I have already mentioned, I had more or less given up on organized religion during that period of my life. In its favor, the site was central and picturesque, with yellow brick walls and copper-helmeted domes in the Russian style. In truth, the Russian part gave me pause more than the cathedral part, as I still did not wish to associate the club with my Russian crime family. But the Dark Room was so popular in Manhattan that I thought the potential association wouldn’t be much of a hit. Plus, the price was right.

I was getting dressed for the opening of the new club when my cell phone rang. It was Jones. “Ms. Balanchine, there’s a body outside the Manhattan club. The police have already been called, but I think you should come down, too.”

*   *   *

The police were slow in those days, so I was not surprised to find that the body had not been attended to by the time I arrived. An overweight man lay facedown on the steps. I could not see any obvious trauma to the body. Even from behind, he looked familiar. I knew you weren’t supposed to touch a body at a crime scene, but I couldn’t help myself. I bent down and I lifted the big onion-shaped pate, which reminded me of the domes of the Brooklyn club. The head was still unnaturally warm in my hands.

It was my cousin Fats, the boss of the Family.

I was not an observant Catholic anymore, but I crossed myself.

I instructed Jones to cover Fats and then to erect velvet ropes, routing our customers around my cousin’s body. While I waited for the police to arrive, I went inside to call Mouse, who in a relatively short time had managed to become Fats’s second-in-command. “Mouse, Fats is dead.”

Mouse, like me, was not a crier. She was silent for several moments, which I knew to be her way of coping with hardship.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

“Yes, I was thinking,” she said in a voice that sounded as calm as milk. “It must have been the Balanchiadze. Look at the timing. They knew you were opening the second Dark Room location, and they must have decided to make a statement by killing Fats. It’s only a theory, but Fats had been fighting with them for months. He was trying to protect your business.”