El Comandante gazed out the window at the stale light of another tropical morning, at the long curve of crumbling seaside buildings. Spindly, sun-sick palms splintered the skies with their spiky fronds. The sea was a rumpled bed of blues. The usual lovebirds tangled on the malecón, verging on public fornication. He’d passed laws against such displays but it hadn’t deterred the couples. The seawall remained theirs, as it had for generations of lovers before them.
Anifre knew the others would soon know what she'd known all of this time, but they—the residents of Little Black—would never readily say anything. They'd simply stare at her neck, then her shoulders, her arms, her elbow's crook. They’d linger there, too civil and provincial to let their gazes drop to her wrists, to her hands' unconscious flutterings at her stomach. But this couldn't go on for much longer.
Hoisting onto the tiled sill in front of a window that lets in no light, Ilyana fires up a cigarette, and pushes smoke from her nose in lean, controlled wisps. She picks at the crust on her infected lobes. She adjusts the dollar sign earrings that dangle to her chin and smooth the angles in her face.
The door swings open. Farnaz cringes into view.
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