It was the tourists that were the hardest to deal with.
A stereotype for sure, and a cheap one at that. Yet it was a well-deserved cliché, and its subjects had embraced it wholeheartedly. Isabela Cristóbal liked to privately hand out scores in her head as she worked, watching foreigners wallpapered with sunscreen, tinto de verano on their lips and fingers stained a jaundiced yellow from paellas devoured in the pounding heat of an Almeria summer.
The tiny chiringuito was packed to bursting day in and day out. Open all night, ever since the July holidays had sent the collective pasty hordes of Europe charging to the beaches of Spain. Now the streets of the forgotten towns abandoned by Mr. Marshall teemed with crimson lobster-people, their tread muffled by the abominable union of the sock and flip-flop.
Isabela was aware of the xenophobic dimension to her grudge against the children of Albion (yeah, she read a lot-what, a waitress can’t have an education?) but her fellow Europeans were fair game. It was the travellers treating the country like a Mary Poppins painting to be hopped in and out of without consequence, living by the creed that cash could make up for any amount of trashed nightclubs, vandalised streets and sleepless locals that drew her ire. The British and their American cousins came thick and fast, a farcical inversion of the fourteen-hundred-ninety-two-sailing-of the-ocean-blue, leaving crumbling sandcastles mosaiced with beer cans and wilted cigarettes where once North African fleets had brought mosques and palaces.
It should not have bothered Isabela as much as it did. Yet there was an inescapable bitterness that had festered in her, fanned by a day-to-day of smug customers barking out orders, of smarmy college students pinching at her backside and spewing grammatically mangled catcalls: cuerpo muy buena, mucho guapa, mucho sexy. Horndogs, minds warped by fantasies of commercialized Hollywood Latinas, seeing in Spanish Isabela the muted but still very much fuckable reflection of their Salma Hayeks (Mexican), Ana de Armas (Cuban) and Sofia Vergaras (Colombian).
She had begged the restaurant manager, Arturo, to be allowed to wear something else other than the gauzy white shirts that were the standard uniform of the female waiting staff, but he had not budged. Isabela would have been willing to stomach the added heat if it meant respite from the trailing fingers of another pack of middle-aged, potbellied creeps, gazes perpetually trying to slip past the protective shield of Isabela’s notebook and down into her skirt. The ends of their orders punctuated by the inevitable flirtations, give us a kiss love, ‘camon, mucho sexy indeed.
She hadn’t felt sexy in years. Hell, she would be prepared to say that she hadn’t felt human in years. Dashing across the restaurant every day even after the sunset bled its runny yolk over the sand, her feet spongy and cracked, the back of that ridiculous shirt peeling to her skin. Smiling, enduring the whinging complaints, the outraged squawks and casual harassment. A death by a thousand cuts administered with every neglected tip (‘I just don’t believe in that kind of thing’) and euro note tossed her way as if she was nothing but a cheap prostitute.
Sheer spite kept her going, a perpetual motion machine of suppressed anger that refused to let the Universe have its way with her. So, she cried in the cool and saline dank of the supply closet, dabbing at her puffy eyes in the obsidian mirror of the paelleras. Isabela’s father had always said: ajo y agua, a joderse y a aguantarse and rent did not pay itself. So, like an automaton, she trundled herself out to laugh at the jokes that weren’t remotely funny, forced a blush at the sexual innuendos of speckly teens who thought that leaving a big tip meant she might go home with them, when’s your shift end bonita?
She would try to tell herself that, to a certain degree, her resentment was misguided. More sensible to direct her anger at the apathetic boss rather than the strangers just looking to spend their money for a month somewhere with cool waters and a sun that never quit.
A friend of hers, Bea, had told her she should never ascribe intention to people’s actions. Maybe the snot-nosed kit throwing his plastic trucks at her head was working out a hidden family trauma. The sour-faced couple refusing to pay for their meal because it had arrived ten minutes late when the restaurant was at full capacity might be needing to save money. For all she knew the shrieking drunk who had demanded Isabela apologize to her in public (and Arturo that miserable son of a bitch had forced her to, because the lady’s table were spending upward of fifty euro on drinks alone) for ‘acting slutty in front of my boyfriend’ was actually deep down just angry because her dog had died or the Flying Purple People Eater had gobbled up her sister.
But if she so much as opened her mouth, if Arturo’s ears detected the quivering intake of breath that signalled the beginning of an opinion, his finger would jab at the slogan placed behind the counter of the chiringuito bar. The One True Commandment, a tablet adhered to in the service industry with more severity than any scribbles lugged down the rocks of Mount Sinai: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. This was no guideline, but a reality-altering spell able to reshape truth itself. Under its influence, it did not matter if the especially miserable individual Isabela had seen pluck one of his own hairs into the salmorejo had actually done it or not: he got his meal on the house, and Isabela got her pay docked and a reminder of how generous Arturo was for not firing her.
Now it was almost midnight, and the restaurant had been mercifully emptied. Rows of tables crowded around Isabela like sheepdogs as she tidied up. At this time of day most of what was left to clean were drinks and cocktail glasses, the bitter slivers of alcohol curdling as tiny kernels of ice melted into slush. It was boring work, but it was oddly satisfying to see everything packed up and folded away. For a time at least. Isabela could not shake the feeling that this was but a temporary truce. That the cracked red plastic chairs with their Cruzcampo slogans and wrinkled tablecloths pinned to the tables by plastic clips merely lay dormant. Slumbering until they grew hungry again and opened their gaping maw in supplication for a greater sacrifice of time, energy, dignity….life.
Isabela leaned against the bar, breathing slowly. Today had been a pretty bad day alright. A troop of partygoers had decided to start their pre-game drinking session right when the restaurant was operating on a skeleton crew. One of the merry band had careered right into her, sending a riot of cocktails to shatter onto the floor and Isabela scrambling on her hands and knees to a backing track of idiotic howls of laughter and the inebriated customer’s mumbled words of encouragement (fuckin’ blind bitch….whachwhereyagoing….fuck). She fancied she would never be able to get rid of the echoes of derision that had cascaded over her as she scrabbled pathetically to tidy the mess.
She was supposed to be minding the bar, but Arturo had left early and he could hang for all she cared. His insistence on keeping the place open was an idiotic idea and usually it was only the occasional drunk or insomniac who stumbled in for a midnight refresher. Plus, all the girls agreed that the place was just a bit creepy after the sun went down. Under the curtains of night, with no sounds save for the metronome screeches of cicadas, it was difficult not to imagine things emerging from the shadows, towards the light-house glow of the chiringuito sign. Alone, and always in the distance, the susurration of the ocean, a siren-song beckoning the lonely to sit on the wet sand and stare into those sheets of ink that had outlived them all.
When Isabela stared out at the sea she felt as if each crash of the waves was dragging a piece of her out with it. How tempting to think of nothing else, not of essay deadlines, feet cramps, back pains, minimum wage, bastard landlords, stinking hands and the jeers of tourists. How tempting to imagine that the sea could just wash out all the bad, the same feeling Isabela got when she rinsed leftover food into the sink. A girl could dream, right?
She lit a cigarette, its tip a firefly wavering slightly in the sky. The night advanced, lashed ever onwards by the whips of the waves. She hugged herself just as a reminder that she had not disappeared yet. The lifeguard’s chair at the lip of the beach was a spindly nightmare, its towering, arachnid legs skittering over the sand. Isabela sighed and put out her cigarette, a funeral pyre to an overactive imagination.
“You shouldn’t smoke, even if we’re outside.”
Isabela didn’t scream, though her whole body seized up. She had realized there was a customer outside with her. Strange-she’d just finished cleaning up every table and there had been no-one sitting by the terraced seats. As Isabela calmed down, she felt a distinctly sour twist in her stomach at the thought of the stranger watching her in silence, enjoying his private view. She turned slowly, not willing to give them the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.
She could not help but feel a little underwhelmed. The man was as unassuming a portrait of a tourist as there ever had been. He was sitting down, slouching in his chair, one arm hanging over its back like a discarded jumper. The other arm was a pendulum swinging lazily by his side. He was wearing a garish Hawaiian t-shirt, bedecked with brightly coloured palm-trees and riotous hibiscus flowers.
“I appreciate the concern,” said Isabela. Usually, she’d be unable to avoid a hint of sarcasm into her voice, but the stranger’s demeanour was less a sleazy performance of cool and more the lazy routine of a housecat stretching out on a sunbeam. “They’re for the nerves,” she said, wiggling the cigarette and shrugging her shoulders in a life’s a bitch, but hey, what can you do about it? sort of gesture. The stranger blinked. Feeling a small, shameful warmth in her face, Isabela could not help fixating on his eyes. They were the sluggish, treacle hue of honey, a deep and soft amber, almost caramel in the dark.
“Are you nervous often?”
Isabela shivered. His voice had a rumbling purr hiding behind its edges, crouching between stalks of yellow grass. It rolled over your skin and quiver inside your stomach. Nevertheless, Isabela couldn’t help but laugh.
“That’s the understatement of the year sir.”
“There’s no need to call me sir.”
“I can’t call you anything but sir if you don’t give me your name, sir.” Isabela’s lips were tugging slowly but insistently upwards into a smile. The newcomer was also grinning.
“Names are important, young lady,” he said. “Not all have to walk around with them stapled to our chests.”
Isabela was momentarily taken aback at this-by her calculations the man looked to be only slightly older than she was. His face was coloured by the beginnings of a bronze tan, his cheeks pebble-dashed with pale freckles. Fine blond hair tumbled up to his shoulders like dunes cascading over the horizon. Isabela filed the young lady away for later. In any other circumstances this would have come across as unbearably patronizing but the matter-of-fact conviction behind the speaker’s words had been so casual that something made her hesitate. If anything, she was still trying to figure out why the way he spoke was so weird. Instead, she decided to keep the atmosphere light.
“On the run from the law, are we? I can’t recommend a place like this to hide though, but before the Guardia Civil comes to haul you away I will suggest the specials.”
“I thank you for the discretion, Ms. Cristóbal, though I have no quarrel with the law. If it is a name you want, you may call me by my city of origin. They shape our identity as much as our parents or teachers do. Memphis will do quite nicely if you please.”
Memphis. An American then, judging by his looks, but one who spoke very good Spanish.
“Well then, Memphis, may I get you anything to eat, or drink? Our kitchen closes in half an hour.”
“Nothing for me, thank you.” He pulled a crisp twenty-euro bill from the pocket of his cream-coloured shorts and lay it flat on the table. “I’d rather you join me for a drink. My treat of course.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I’m still on duty.”
“Yes, the place is packed, I can see that,” noted Memphis dryly. “Just a couple of drinks, courtesy of a worn-out tourist with more money than he knows what to do with. It’ll do a wonder for those pesky nerves, and you look like you could use it more than I do.”
Isabela’s hand shot self-consciously up to her dishevelled hair. Suspicion was creeping into her like lead flowing down a thermometer. Was this guy trying to sleep with her? It wouldn’t be the first time.
“With all due respect, Mr. Memphis”-
“Just Memphis will do.”
“With all due respect, Memphis, I’m not interested in going home with any customers tonight. I have a boyfriend.” This last part was complete fiction, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Oh no, no, please, don’t assume my intentions are so low,” assured Memphis hurriedly. “I wouldn’t presume to attempt to take advantage of a fine young woman like yourself.” There it was again. She supposed Memphis was just trying to flatter her.
“So you’re treating me purely out of the kindness of your own heart?”
“I would never have guessed that was so hard to believe.”
“Not in this line of work. People want me to serve drinks, not sit down with them and join in for a quick chat.”
“There’s a first time for everything. Consider this then a rare olive branch between customer and host. No strings attached, on my honour. Just a well-earned reward for a hard-working young lady, a small thanks in a job so often thankless.”
Isabela shifted uncomfortably on the spot. It was something about Memphis’ manner of speech. It seemed to trail dust in the air like the spine of an antique book. His words never matched his boyish, collegiate features, and there was that smell the wind carried from him…. dry and hot, loaded with a coppery bite that made some long-forgotten ancestral gene think, incredibly, of blood.
“Look, this is extremely kind of you, but I really have to get back behind the bar, my boss sent me out here, like, fifteen minutes ago and he’ll be really upset if I spend my time gossiping with a customer”-
“Arturo Muñoz Tomás left early tonight, Isabela, and is currently in his apartment watching a football match on Canal Plus. He is drinking his way through his sixth beer of ten, which he waters down from his tap to save money. He will not make it to the end of the match. As is usual, he will instead call his friend Guzman del Pino to talk about scalping tickets to next week’s UD Almería game. Then, adhering to routine, he will smoke two cigarettes, shower and masturbate whilst imagining you in uniform fellating him in his office, a fetish picked up from the pornographic magazines sold at his local kiosk,” said Memphis, looking bored. “If you do not wish to talk to me, simply state your truth. Lies are of no use.”
When he moved the overhead lights flickered in his eyes. They were shining disks of gold.
“That-you can’t talk to me-this isn’t funny you know! If this is some kind of stupid game Arturo put you up to then till him that…that I’ll quit tomorrow if he keeps up this crap!”
“No, Isabela you will not. You cannot afford to quit, in as literal a sense as possible. As for Arturo, I have never met the man in my life. I simply know that he will do what he does because he does it every-day. The same way you watch telenovelas even though you feel you will be judged for enjoying them, use red bands in your hair to remind you of your friend Bea and still sleep with a stuffed elephant named Pedro. Your father gifted him to you when you visited the zoo in Madrid aged five.”
Isabela’s face had drained of colour, stiff and pale as a used napkin. Jesus Christ, she had run into a psycho, a stalker, some kind of freak who’d followed every aspect of her life and tracked her down to where she worked, why wasn’t she screaming. It was like trying to call for help in a dream. She should be screaming.
“The truth is not something you can hide. Candour is a virtue all humans should aspire to. The ability to cut through deceit, that is the skill of heroes. It is something I have long taken an interest in: to find those worthy of favour is to find those able to penetrate to the centre of truth. I think you may be worthy.”
Isabela nodded mechanically. There was no one in sight. The cooks would be packing up by now and leaving through the back door. She was, for all intents and purposes, alone with a deranged lunatic. She settled on going with the flow of his ramblings-if she humoured him for long enough, she might be able to think of a way to escape.
“I think you’ve got the wrong person, sir, I’m not worthy of anything,” croaked Isabela.
Memphis tutted, shaking his mane (oh my god, that was what it was like, a bedraggled old lion shaking itself awake in the African sun, just like that) and narrowing his eyes.
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “You have shouldered every petty humiliation ever thrust your way, you have clung to your convictions and your dreams in a world that thinks such things can be changed on a whim by euro bills or foreign exchange dollars. If that is not worth, then I could not tell you what is.”
“This is a gameshow, right? One of those hidden camera ones, ahahaha, right, I see, I’ve won some sort of prize, the hard-working waitress gets a big windfall, great for views.”
“No, Isabela. A game-perhaps, in a sense-but you have not won anything. Not yet. You are at a crossroads in the journey of your life, and the straightforward pathway has been lost. Now a beast bars your way, and you must find how to continue. It is an old story, you are a smart girl, you will know of it. A predator awaits the side of the road; it waits for everyone at some point in their life. Life is dangerous. Life will question you, menace you, challenge you, but can you see through the fog of lies?
Can your knowledge tame the wild beast, or will end as a helpless victim? I do not ask this lightly.”
Thin tears were burning down Isabela’s cheeks. A single thought blared a hurricane siren behind her skull: this man was threatening to kill her.
Isabela leaned one hand on the table. The alternative was collapsing, because he was right, she did know this story, pretty much everyone did. That Ancient Greek yarn about the soon-to-be incestuous king. Waiting by the entrance to the gilded city of his birth, the human-feline monstrosity. The invincible guardian who, indeed, sought truth above all things, the truth to a question that had endured long since the myth had crumbled into dust and the ruined king had marched, blind and bloody eyed into the wilderness.
“Well then,” said the man who came from Memphis, not that city of Graceland memorials, but a city half-forgotten. Buried under the sands of a kingdom held aloft by the plundered husks of tombs built for men who were Gods. A country overseen by a four-legged protector, noble even with the scars of time’s rhinotomy ravaging its face.
“I think we shall begin,” he declared promptly.
“But…why?” rasped Isabela incredulously. “Why here? Why me?” she added hurriedly.
“Because I like this place. It reminds me of a home I had, one lost under a wave of Coptic converts, Macedonian conquests and Jesuit missions. I …enjoy this country. It is full of dying legends, much like me. I hope to test people like you, to see if they can finally kill these legends. Do not forget, Isabela, my roots: I am a guardian first and foremost, long before I was a bandit waiting to assault the unwary as they went along the path of their lives. Yet only those able to survive the ambush may claim my protection. A hard truth, I know, one for savages and wild animals, but have you never wished for bright claws and fangs to fend off the jackals that scavenge from you every day?”
“Yes…but…there has to be another way. There’s always another way.”
“No.” Memphis smiled. Except he wasn’t smiling. He was showing her his teeth, brilliant white rows that tapered to fangs in the darkness of his mouth. He had not blinked once, his body leaning forward, hands prowling across the table. Isabela’s stomach turned. She controlled her breathing, her eyes never wavering from the pale suns in Memphis’ skull. He was no different from all the others, just more dangerous. Another predator slinking over the dunes, half-mad with hunger, starved of its worship, denied its attention.
“You bastard,” whispered Isabela. Memphis shrugged, a picture-perfect mirror of her earlier apathy. Life’s a bitch, but hey, what can you do about it?
“I am a monster, young lady. My cruelty is a kindness. You have already been forged in the fires of this summer, now it is time to see if your blade will hold firm under the hammer and the anvil. A quick lesson in etymology first,” said Memphis. For all of his talk of finding righteous, worthy heroes, he was having fun. Like a kitten tossing a mouse in the air before it rips its head off, except she could not let her guard down, because the real big cats always lunged straight for the throat.
“My name, my real name, derives from sphíngō. It’s Ancient Greek, it means ‘to tighten’ or ‘to constrict.’ One only gets the most juice from fruit by squeezing them dry, Isabela, coals form diamonds only when crushed by the weight of the underworld itself. Will you become a diamond, young lady, or let yourself be shattered?”
“This isn’t right”-
“The customer is always right,” snapped Memphis, his words tailing off in a throaty snarl that Isabela felt in her spine.
“That’s just a word on a sign, it doesn’t mean anything,” said Isabela, her rage carrying her into the realm of suicidal bravery. “It’s…bullies like you who give it power, it’s not true.”
“Then show me, show me how you can come to the truth,” said Memphis.
“I don’t need to prove anything to you.”
“Prove it to yourself then. Slay the monster, defeat the beast, dispel the darkness, that is what heroes do, is it not? Hear the riddle, solve it, wash your hands of it, but know you can only live if you truly grasp what it means.”
Isabela made a fist to stop her hands from shaking. If Memphis was speaking truthfully (and he was, that was the whole point) what choice did she have? To run? Impossible, that wasn’t an option, because it was precisely when you turned your back on the world that the animals pounced and held you down until you bled out. Because you had submitted and for them to submit meant you deserved to die. What she deserved…. what she deserved was to be able to binge Betty la Fea, finish her essay on Cela, go nightclubbing with her friends next weekend, maybe get laid, pet a dog on the street, buy a Coke by the beach, swim in it, sunbathe, do her hair properly. All of this stretched in front of her until it was a thin, pebbled road. Lying on it, licking its reddish fur, a thin, starved lion with golden eyes and sandy hair.
“All right then,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Memphis nodded curtly, interlacing his fingers. He intoned the riddle without decoration, a teacher reciting a problem as he set it out on the blackboard.
“Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed in the morning, two-footed in the evening and three-footed at night?”
Isabela’s first impulse was to laugh. There was no way that it was easy as this: the sphinx had recited the most famous riddle in all of history! Even kids knew the answer to it. Isabela hesitated for a second, coughing to clear her dry throat. She was waiting for the twist.
Yet the creature only looked at her, waiting patiently. As she dithered, Isabela realized there was no trick. This was an ancient creature, a being bound by conventions so old most people had forgotten why they continued them in the first place. It was a thing that sought truth above all things, to the point of pontificating its importance to a tired waitress in the dead of night as seriously as if it had been talking to a titan of legend. Isabela chuckled madly.
“Well, uh. Man. That’s the answer, right? It’s man. We crawl on all fours when we’re babies, walk on two legs when we grow up and then use a cane when we’re old and tired. Everyone knows that one….”
She stopped as she saw that Memphis was nodding slowly. He sighed deeply, like a lover reaching for a cigarette in bed.
“Very good. Now tell me what it means.”
“I-I don’t understand, I just did”-
“No. You described it to me, gave me the answer. Now tell me what it means. Why this, of all riddles? Why not question you of that which has a bed that never sleeps, or a horse named Friday? Why after centuries, no, millennia, do my kind always fall back to answering that famous question, and why, even after guessing it correctly, are still so many deemed unworthy?”
“Well, it’s just a gimmick, right? It’s phrased in a way that is meant to mislead you, designed to make you think of something else. Like a prank.”
“Incorrect, Isabela. You have two more guesses,” said Memphis calmly. Isabela gasped.
“Hey, hold on, that’s not fair, I told you the answer”-
“Indeed, now tell me what it means,” repeated Memphis.
“It, well, the riddle is about human life, right? It’s about the different stages of growing up, split into a trio-the three different times of day.”
“Good. Continue.”
Isabela fiddled nervously with the hem of her skirt, trying to think ahead and convince herself that the way Memphis’ fingernails seemed to be blurring into points was just her imagination.
“Three different times of day…it all happens in one day. It’s gradual but it all ends by the time night falls, like a mayfly or a bug. Twenty-four hours. Because…because…in the grand scheme of things, to something like, well, you that lives forever, that’s all we get. A day if we’re lucky. Hell, a few minutes if we’re not. By the time that sunrise starts to darken we’ve already forgotten what it was like to crawl.
We blink and, damn, all we can remember is using a stick, or even having four legs again but with wheels and electric engines this time. But…but there’s not another morning. Not for us anyway. The riddle doesn’t start again, the sphinx…leaves.”
Isabela met Memphis’ gaze.
“It leaves because the way ahead on the road is free now and why bother? It’s going to end somewhere, Thebes or whatever, but the road’s going to finish and there’s no point in the monster coming back. The creature gets to three-legs, and the riddle stops, because the answer was a human life, and…that’s it. You worked so hard to figure out the solution that by the time you got it, all that was left was walking the few miles to the final destination.
The End. El Fin.”
Isabela’s tears splattered dully by her feet, but they didn’t sting like before. Instead, she saw Memphis through a clear film. It was only then she properly noticed that he was, indeed, a lot older than she had given him credit for. The freckles on his cheeks mingled with spotted brown bruises, and his tawny hair was flecked at the edges with dirty grey. Isabela wiped her face and realized she’d been too quick to assume he lived forever. Thousands of years, certainly, but…maybe not eternity. And she wondered about what he had said earlier, about finding someone who could let legends die. Maybe all the beast had been looking for was someone who could reassure it, like a mother reminding her son that she loves him before tucking him into bed and turning off the lights.
Memphis had gotten up from the table, brushing himself down with the dignity of a prince. “There,” he said softly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? “He folded the twenty-euro bill and slid it towards Isabela, adding an ample stack of bills to it. Isabela could not help but gawk: they were all five-hundreds. Memphis waved away her incredulous spluttering.
“It’s not the usual treasure trove or magic sword we beasties usually relinquish, but take it, young lady. All over in one day, my dear. It may not seem like it now, but it will. Walk down your road knowing the truth, unafraid of lions and the wolves. They don’t matter. By the time the sun sets, nothing will. A word to the wise, from an old fairy-tale like me: don’t waste your mayfly days in a place like this. It may be open all night, but you most certainly are not. There is a life outside of these walls and you have two legs still; walk on them far and wide, and lean on your third when you can walk no more.”
“Where are you going now?” asked Isabela softly.
“Who knows? Perhaps it is time for me to solve a riddle of my own,” grinned the sphinx. “Do not despair, you will have your reward. Name it, and it is yours. I can kill those who mocked you, stalk and slaughter the ones that trod on you, make it so that they never arrive to any truth at all,” said Memphis. “I started life as a protector, remember. Speak the word, and I will do so.”
Isabela blanched. It wasn’t just that the creature’s proposal was shocking. What had truly shaken her was how quickly she had considered saying yes. She could visualize Arturo and his disgusting fantasies, pulped beneath the paws of the monster, was tempted at the prospect of her daily tormentors being savaged in one fell swoop. Yet how long before more came along? She could not mindlessly crush her problems underfoot, hoping they would go away.
With a twist of shame, she realized how quickly she’d forgotten every kind word, every curious question, compliment, generous tip and joke she’d ever received: they were fewer yes, but they were still there. What kind of world would she be willing to accept, if every grievance was paid back a hundredfold in a blizzard of gore? A life condemned to hunkering by the roadside, lying in wait, transformed into just one more reflection of the brutes that knew no other form of sustenance than to gorge themselves on suffering. Isabela laughed weakly, shaking her head.
“Sorry, I don’t think I can accept that. You said that long ago you were a protector. You should be one, not an attack-dog. That’s all I ask. Something to keep me safe is all. No need to hurt anybody.”
Memphis nodded, tugging at one of his locks of hair, which came off. He placed the warm golden curl into Isabela’s palm, patting her hand gently.
“Wear it on your person, and you will not come to any harm. It will bring luck to you and…misfortune on those with ill intent. An eye for an eye, yes? I couldn’t deliver on those drinks in the end but consider this a just reward from a dusty myth,” He winked, a circle of shimmering gold.
“Congratulations, Ms. Cristóbal. You have defeated the legend. You have arrived at the truth. Do not let it go to waste.”
Isabela clutched the hair close to her heart. It smelled earthy and hot, like a cinder heap after a bonfire. She gave the sphinx a curt nod, who tipped an imaginary hat in her direction, wandering out of the hazy electric light and into the night, towards the expanse of the beach. The darkness rushed over him and the sands stirred in a gust of wind, leaving behind the copper tang of blood and the sweat-laced traces of musk.
—
The very next day, Isabela used the sphinx’s money to pay two months of rent in advance and stored the rest for later. She had already called the girls, promising (in a streak of unusual generosity) that drinks tonight would be on her.
Shampooed and clean, her face pink after a long bath, she lay back on the couch, reaching for the remote, fiddling with golden curl of hair as she did. They had been given the day off work. Plus, Isabela had a feeling she wouldn’t be marked down for a late-night shift for quite some time.
Arturo had called from the local hospital early that morning, his voice strained and high over the phone. He’d taken a tumble in the shower after slipping on a bar of soap, where he had broken a leg, as well as split his groin.
Pablo Lacalle Writing 