Vina (working title)

Why? Why am I laying beside him? In the darkness she felt him with her mind rather than seeing him with eyes, the man she was with. Marriage is for fools, he’d once told her. They still referred to her as Señora (1) Varjello though, the ones who spoke to her. On Thursdays Roberto played poker with some other men, a group of 4 or 5 interchangeable lawyers, politicians, elite bankers even the less and less occasional rising cartel worker. The only consistency among this group of men who pretended to be friends that was apparent to Vina was the woman they each brought on their arms. Were they the same woman? No. Different women than the one’s they’d bragged about last week, and the one’s they’d brought the week before, and different women than their wives, and yet all with the honey golden hair that was a commodity in Mexico, and their pale skin and blue eyes, both of which also made them seem more like exotic pets beside men of dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes. More so than with money, with the silence and fearful gazes people in the streets and the markets paid them, men of this kind kept women of theirs on leashes too short to venture far beyond their influence. It was a shame for a respectable man to be cheated on by such a woman, yet no faces hid themselves one humid Saturday eve, when Vina and Roberto had been on the back deck of their little home in the village, eating dinner before the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them. A man Vina recalled as being the reluctant cousin a businessman had brought to a poker game about 2 months ago came walking around the back of the house. An honest man himself Vina would guess, but not looking any more shocked than he was disturbed as he relayed the discovery of a woman’s body laying facedown in the mud after Friday’s heavy rain. She was young, no older than 20, and beautiful except for the gruesome X someone had carved into her back with a machete. An act of a jilted Lover, some had speculated, but while perhaps a jealous man had mud on his hands, a man defending his pride was awash in blood.

These were the kinds of people who talked to Vina, and to them she was either Señora Varjello, or just Vina. Vina, like the Spanish word for wine, and all too appropriate for a woman as intoxicating. Roberto was not unlike any other man in his circle, who openly ventured to other women. As the undisputed paramount of success in Mexico, as the envy and the curse, the hero and the villain, as the man who walked into church on Sundays like a deity himself, and whose wrath people prayed to never invoke, he had the respect, the power, the self assurance to attain Vina as his mujer de primaria (2). There was undoubtedly talk of other women, but it was Vina, with her charmingly sensual smile, her quietly intelligent eyes and thick ebony mane, and her sun-traced skin and unapologetically non-European looks. It was all that that was the woman who regularly attended charity events, business dinners, and socialite occasions at the side of Roberto Varjello. Marriage was for men of insecurities he’d said to Vina, and Roberto Varjello was not insecure.

Roberto owned an oil company. Vina found this ironic when she thought about how easily and often Roberto’s crooked friends slipped from the grasps of commoners’ justice. She thought about it often as she lounged in the rear courtyard of the main estate Roberto owned. One day she smirked and walked a little slower, taking some bizarre satisfaction in the way their gardener Felipe stared at her, when men who held an entire country in their grasps had done to her with their hands what he was probably doing with his eyes. He tore his gaze from her smooth and bare legs back to the roses he’d been pruning, and the family Vina knew he Loved. Truly Loved, not like the families Roberto’s friends had for social ornaments and nothing more. Felipe worked long hours to remain a poor man who could come home to his 2 children and wife as a man they Loved. But Felipe was human, and as she stood looking down at him on his knees in the dirt, his face nearly level with her hips and looking up at her, he almost looked like he was praying. This, and the new beads of sweat that’d formed at the top of his spine on an unusually cool day in Mexico, brought another smirk to her face. “Sí, Señora Varjello?” (3) Felipe was one of the excruciatingly few people outside of the well-paid criminal’s corner who talked to her, and Vina had no mind after several boring weeks to pass up her chance for a conversation that wasn’t on paper. She set down her book lightly and sat cross-legged beside it in the middle of the paved garden path, and gave an amusedly expectant stare back to his of amazement at the copper Aphrodite less than an arm’s reach away. She asked him about his wife, realizing suddenly she could not think of any better way to start a conversation with him. The gardener, being only a few years her senior, looked much older, already bearing the weariness of the working class on his face, yet nevertheless Vina knew he’d be hard at labor in the grounds before the sun dared to shine in Mexico the next morning.

Felipe was not an absolutely plain man. He had nice eyes, Vina had noticed, and they sparkled when he talked about things he Loved. His brown eyes glittered when he talked about his family, the village he’d grown up in, the future he planned for his children. His son Emilio was 8, and his daughter Constance was 7. They were going to go to college. For a man of Felipe’s modest status and even more modest finances, this was a daring statement, but in his eyes Vina saw that the doubt and the worry was outweighed by a shining pride for the better lives his children would have than his own. This was Love, Vina realized. She’d never seen her father’s eyes happy over her; she’d hardly seen him at all. Roberto’s eyes glowed for things he Loved too. Things like money and power, and he was proud for the profits he made that led men like Felipe to kill themselves from the shame of losing their children’s college savings, their homes, their health, their lives.

Vina realized he was confiding in her. Felipe did all the talking, and she engrossed herself in listening to him unlike the way she pretended to be interested when Roberto talked about the same business matter 10 times.

In her mind Vina could conjure an image of the small village in which he’d been born, of his mother at the antiquated stove her mother had owned, making tortillas and chorizos. Felipe told Vina of his childhood, the beginning of his life. He told her of everything; whether it be from the sight of a beautiful woman or some other reason, even Felipe realized he could not stop himself from pouring out things that even his wife was not privy to. It was as if the words were being dragged from his lips by spell, and yet even more frightening, more exhilarating, was the quiet attentiveness of this woman. Unlike his wife she offered not comfort or chastising, or even her own words. It was this silence, and her eyes so focused on him that made Felipe finally fall quiet as well. The silence held, and the gardener could feel a shiver down the back of his neck; her rather large amber eyes were silent as her lips, and yet the latter did not seem to be threatening to swallow him whole. He’d said so much; he could say more, but didn’t. Her next question was unexpected.

“How much does Roberto pay you, Felipe?” His stammering answer brought another smile to her lips, but this time Vina hid it, rueful to be taking pleasure once more in the poor man’s skittishness. With the way she ran her tongue over her lips, Felipe wondered to himself whether she was simply thinking, or like a snake she was tasting power in the air. If she was, he knew who had it. He wondered if she was offended by his blatant loquaciousness, or whether she would fire him. Should he make some attempt to apologize?

Again Vina surprised Felipe when in a swift motion and blur of caramel-colored flesh, she stood up. She stood before him, towering over him once more. Felipe was on his knees, and while being no small man at 6 feet tall he was an ant, a perfectly miniscule organism to the height of her power. Her fingers tangled themselves in his sweat-damp hair and she tilted his head so that his eyes were cast directly upon her face.

“You have a way with flowers, my dear Felipe. I think I can talk to Roberto about being a bit more generous.” She released him only by hand, and as if he’d been struck by a divine lightening, Felipe stared shamelessly after the bronze Goddess who walked hip-swayingly back to the main house.

Vina could not come up with her answer. She couldn’t sleep in the dark either, next to this man who people loathed and revered all at once. Why? His sleeping form remained dormant as she slipped out of the bed. She did not wear shoes. The cold tile roused her senses a little more as she walked into the kitchen. Through a window over the sink, Vina could see a full moon hovering in the night. Where did Roberto keep his cigars? Vina blinked hard and thought a moment before pulling open a particular drawer and rummaging until she found an expensive case. It was not the money he was worried about, but rather the image it might portray of him for her to smoke. “I can’t be seen with a woman who smokes like one of those ash-tray, used up whores.” Well fuck him, Vina thought. She picked up her novel from where she’d left it on the counter, and she took the whole case of cigars with her as she strolled along the paved, lengthy path that led to the pool. The moon illuminated Vina’s still form ravenously. She was resting back on a lounge chair and she looked out over the surface of the water that seemed more like an infallible glass sheet. She lit the cigar and swore aloud when it occurred to her, now fully awake, that she couldn’t read a word in this light. Her fresh odium for Roberto along with this mild irritation made Vina throw the entire case of cigars as hard as she could at the stone by the poolside. An expertly crafted wooden case Roberto had purchased for the same amount someone might buy a car cracked sharply, and several thousand-dollar cigars rolled out, which Vina lit. His favorite smokes were aflame, providing a decent reading light as they destroyed the stone Roberto had had imported from Brasil. That case would be ashes within a few page’s reading for her, and Vina knew for this there would be something much worse than the bruises and cuts she had after that day’s incident.

“He’s just some working moron, Vina. Why the hell should I be bothered to pay him more for work he’ll do at less?” Vina had come to Roberto for the third time in two days to ask about raising Felipe’s pay. He’d been in the large oak study which he’d spent a sickening sum of money to have built to his every whim of perfection. It was his least favorite place in the house to be bothered, but Vina was getting impatient. Quite frankly so was he. She’d opened the wood and glass doors behind his back just a bit, like he didn’t hear her. He did, but Roberto waited until she ambled closer, close enough that the material of her sundress brushed his side. He looked up into her eyes as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and Roberto made no attempt to hide his extreme annoyance.

Querido, amante, hermoso (4). She kept her expression sweet, and her words sweeter, but Roberto knew well enough to spot a woman who thought charm was all she needed. Finally his irritation grew to the point that he pushed her away. She looked a little hurt, almost, but neither of them really felt bad. Was that even a flicker of anger he’d seen in her eyes? Roberto brushed it off without thought and reminded her that it was Thursday.
“I’m aware of the day, Roberto.” The honey in her voice had turned to a slowly rising venom. “Well have you even started cooking dinner? You know that damned new cartel boy who thinks he’s so up and coming is going to be over for this week’s game, and he has a habit of showing up early.

Vina laughed a dry laugh. “I thought you hired a maid. What? Does she only do the cooking and cleaning when you’re not busy screwing her?” Roberto had been unfaithful many times, but the round, dowdy woman who serviced more than the estate and who wouldn’t look Vina in the face was one of the sexual escapades he’d made a great effort to hide, even from Vina. She took the shadow of bewilderment that touched his face as fuel for another taunting laugh, and stepped closer to him. Without warning Roberto’s right hand shot out and smacked Vina across the face so hard she was sprawled onto the floor. A ring with a particularly large stone set in it had cut her cheek badly, and when Roberto saw blood on the floor he kicked her hard in her side, so that she curled her body to protect herself and gasped for the air he’d knocked out of her lungs. Roberto stood there over her, cruel and silent, until she slowly uncoiled herself like a snake. Her face was contorted with rage as she looked up at him, no longer the radiant, womanly beauty she’d been just minutes ago. Vina looked like an animal, like an enraged creature that was ready to unhesitatingly rip his throat out.

“Clean up that blood, Querida, and don’t think you can fucking shame me like that again.”

Vina had cleaned up the blood. She’d gotten a rag and a bucket of soap and water after she found out where they kept these things. Jose Santino, a very noticed and young prospective leader in the Mexican drug industry did show up early. Roberto cast a look like an owner would to his badly behaved dog at Vina, who was on her hands and knees scrubbing her blood off the floor, and then he stepped out of the study and closed the door behind him. Vina heard him greeting Santino, laughing and exchanging their shallow small talk woes of “business these days”. Vina gazed around the office, and she barely heard Roberto’s easy explanation for the lack of prepared food for that night’s game. Vina had been ill in bed all week, he said, and he was telling the young man in his 20’s that he had the best maid who he’d simply call to do the cooking on short notice. Let that whore cook, it’s not as if she makes the sheets around here any cleaner. With that spiteful thought, Vina sat down in Roberto’s chair and tended to more important things.

It was not the Mexican sun that had made sweat trickle under Felipe’s collar these past few days. She’d said nothing more about a change in his wages, and in fact she’d said nothing to him at all. He had spotted her lurking throughout the grounds several times since their one true encounter, and everyday he had to force his eyes to stay on the work at hand. He Loved his wife, and when his mind would begin to dance across the territories of her skin and seek places that his eyes dared not, Felipe felt nearly as though he should drag garden shears across his throat. He was not perfect, being a creature of flesh, but he Loved his wife and his kids deserved better. If that were not true, he would not stay here, Felipe told himself. Señora Varjello would ensure that his children escaped the impoverished life he had not.

Emilio was stubborn but bright, and he wanted to be a lawyer someday, while Constance was caring and concerned and adored animals. She had often hugged and consoled her father after a particularly long or stressful day at work, and Felipe knew she wanted to be a Veterinarian. Felipe was not a child, he was a grown man who wanted nothing more than to give his two children the means to get their educations and the jobs that would save them from going hungry, as he had so often done when he was their ages.

Lost in his own thoughts now, Felipe’s heart leapt into his throat when fingers on the back of his neck, pulling at his collar a little harshly, broke that reflective solitude in which he’d been laboring.

It was her, standing there like a mirage of lust brought by the heat rather than her own long and shapely legs. Neither Felipe nor any other man could’ve resisted devouring her with his sight; she was wrapped in a white cloth that hugged her surely flawless form, and the provocative modesty of it drove him mad. Without a word she took his hand and guided him away from the vines he’d been grooming, and when Vina relinquished her physical hold she put the stem of a wineglass to his palm. Felipe held it clumsily and drank instinctively by the pool and listened to her as she began to talk. His eyes saw the horrid mark on her cheek that was like someone had taken a jagged knife to Mona Lisa’s face, and a second serving of red wine was what he swallowed down with his shock. He was drunk and he knew it. Señor Varjello was going to fire him for being drunk like this. Señor Varjello was going to kill him for letting this woman seduce him. His wife would die poor and alone and miserable, and his children would either die with her or they would starve to death because their father was an unfaithful fool, and he had crossed the wrong man both once and one time too many.

Felipe felt her pulling on the bag at his side that he brought with him to work everyday. She did not take it off him, it was slung over his shoulder, but he heard a rustling of paper and felt the bag jerking on his hip, as if she were stuffing something inside.

She’s not a Goddess, nor is she an angel. She’s some horrible, wicked creature who’s come to drag me to hell. As if by command of his thoughts, the beautiful vine standing at the edge of the water shed her pure, white cloak and revealed herself for something sinful. Felipe wanted to scream, but even as he felt his arms around her he couldn’t, and he had no choice in his inebriated and drugged state but to follow staggeringly where she was leading him.

When Felipe awoke he realized through a thick pounding in his head that the sweltering heat he felt was not of unearthly fires, but a harsh glare from the sun. It must’ve been hours; the mass of fire in the sky was threatening to set off on its journey to south of the horizon. Vina lay with half her body tangled beneath him on a lounge chair that she must’ve moved earlier without him noticing. They were in the front courtyard, Felipe realized with a nauseating panic; the only thing protecting them from public view was a line of hedges that wrapped around the estate. Felipe’s stomach rolled and tossed in a way that made him sure he would get sick when he heard a voice, it was the same voice that had reminded him for weeks to do his best work with the gardening, because people of great influence were visiting today. He dared not move, dared not breathe. He dared not pray to a God who probably wept right now, so Felipe laid there as if he were dead, for surely that was what he was soon to be. No sooner had he closed his eyes than Vina opened hers. They found Roberto standing in shock next to a very important man who had a grip on the drug trade in America to match Roberto’s in Mexico. Don’t do anything to embarrass me, Vina recalled him telling her with a delicious smile. His eyes, the eyes of the other man, and the eyes of his wife and the working-boy who carried their luggage all fell on Vina’s unapologetically nude body wrapped with the gardener’s. There was a nearly empty bottle of red wine sitting beside the furniture on which they were twined together in some licentious act that made the American man’s wife cover her eyes with her hands. Amidst the silence, the staring, and the utter shock, Vina propped herself up on one elbow and gave the 4 people standing in the opening of the hedges a flirtatious grin before getting to her feet. She made a show of retrieving the two wine glasses and stretching her arms over her head slowly, as if there were some inch of her skin she had not exposed to the horrified onlookers already. Vina gave another seductive curl of her lips, but this time it was directly for Roberto, whose eyes burned with unquenchable rage. Her own eyes took one quick scan of his company one more time before she hauled Felipe to his feet and forced him to follow her gracelessly out of their sights.

Felipe did not know what to do, so he’d done the only thing he could do, and he’d ran. He snatched his clothes from where Vina had left them, and paid no mind to her amused look that she wore as he scrambled with his bag in tow to his truck. Amused and sad. It was a miracle of all miracles that he still had two legs with which he could run, but that damn woman might have killed him yet. By the time he ran back through the front courtyard Felipe did not see Señor Varjello anywhere. He drove to his home 50 miles over the speed limit the entire way and packed his family and a very few of their possessions before driving away from their home for the last time, and it was not until he stopped driving for a moment’s rest more than 12 hours later that he opened his bag and found over 200 million pesos worth of paper currency stuffed inside.

Vina did not ask questions. Unlike the other night, she was not around to hear Roberto’s explanation, but she could be sure it was not of the same confidence he’d had before. Vina had waited until she heard Felipe’s truck retreating down the road, and when the sound of his roaring engine faded for distance, she fished her wrap cloth out of the pool and donned it once more. She noticed without impression that the bottle of wine was nearly empty, and she took the last swig clumsily, not caring when red flecks stained her pure white cloak.

By the time she ambled through the main back doors the house was empty, except for a reserved and thoughtful Roberto. He remained this way all the way to their little home on the village outskirts. Unlike their eloquent and large estate, this place had a feral beauty about it, and it was secluded from prying eyes by thick, untamed terrain and deserted space rather than neatly pruned bushes. Vina had not argued with Roberto when he told her they were going there. He’d remained quiet and to himself for the entire drive, and when he pulled the car up to the front walk, since Vina had no packed anything, he told her to go straight upstairs, and 10 minutes later he found her on the deck.

Undeniably she was beautiful. She was exotic and exuberant, yet simple and quiet. He gazed at this beauty only with the admiration one would pay to any true work of art. She was woman and animal, standing in that same white garment, not looking at him. He had no remorse for what he would do, and yet there was no shame in drinking from her Loveliness one last time. He’d brought a bottle of wine; for all she’d had of alcohol that day, Vina was clearly sobered up a considerable amount. The final rays of sun were preparing to escape through the leaves that wrapped them in their private world here on this deck 25 feet above the ground. Roberto did not Love Vina, and couldn’t be bothered to care much about how she felt for him either way, but he had decided this would be easier to do when she was relaxed. He brought the bottle of wine and set it between them on the railing, and when she turned her head to him a final streak of sun caught her face and painted it vividly in his mind as something of sheer exquisiteness.

Vina took the bottle and took out the cork and indulged a long drink, then handed it back to Roberto. With an amused smile he took a sip as well to humor her, and then he handed it back to her once more. In silence they did this, and by the time they were nearly finished, a sleepy, dreadful quiet had fallen. There was no sunlight or sound, and it seemed as if in their indulgence of drink, the world around them had become so drunk it could not make sense of itself.

Vina was relaxed, her breathing slow like that of the earth’s. Roberto placed a hand on each of her hips and lifted her slowly until her top half was hanging over the rail. She made no attempt to fight him, but her hands lay steadily on the cold metal, almost as if they were poised. As he asked her if she knew what he was going to do, Roberto slid her just an inch farther, so that her hips were pressed into the railing now. She was quiet, she would go easily, but this wasn’t nearly enough for him. He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back roughly, forcing her to look at him, to see the roiling anger in his eyes, and to allow himself to search for the terror in hers. He did not find it. He found a gaping blackness that shook his soul in an iron grip, an emptiness which he would never know whether he created. With her last ounce of will to remain alive, Vina wrapped her hands around Roberto’s wrists, and in a voice of steel she asked “do you?” and with her over the edge, Vina took a man who rose to his height of greatness only to fall to his death in the arms of a woman and her wrath.