Federico Escobar
ANGELA
He got to the bus stop trailed by wet footsteps that merged with the night. His Converse shoes squished as he walked, and his drenched denim jacket clung to a watery button-down with its belly buttons missing.
The only person at the bus stop, a woman with dark roots chasing after streaks of dyed blonde hair, sized him up, slid to the end of the bench, and went back to thumb-scrolling on her phone. He took off a baseball cap and squeezed what felt like a gallon of water onto the sidewalk.
“It was raining when I left,” he said.
She took five seconds to return his gaze. “Figured. Either that or you feed dolphins for a living.”
“I don’t feed dolphins for a living,” he said. And squeezed again, his left sock this time.
Another five seconds. “Figured out that part, too, old man.”
He stared at a metal sign from eight years ago that announced a new bus system rolling out in December. “So, is there a bus coming or not?”
Her eyes narrowed at a video on her screen, then relaxed at a status update. She closed the app, reopened it, scowled, looked at him again. “Well, there better be, because I need to get home pronto.”
“Kid?”
“Something like that.”
“Husband?”
“Something like that, too.”
He rolled his pockets inside out and wrung them. He pulled what was left of a travel brochure with an offer to visit San Andrés.
“Me, I’m just sleepy,” he said.
“Work?” she said, not looking up.
“Something like that.” A smile came and went, unseen.
He pulled out his belt, combed water out of it, and cracked it forward like a whip. Up went a cloud of mist that would’ve been a rainbow if the sun had come through. She wriggled in her seat.
“Good thing I got that haircut.” He wiped his scalp. “It was a joke, you know.” He pointed at his head. “Nature’s haircut.” He stretched out his legs, waited. “You? Ever felt nature cheated you out of something?”
“Oh, sure, out of one of those,” she pointed at big, windowy houses cresting the hills, “with the chill of an afternoon breeze and cellophane-quiet nights and people to pick up after you, to fix things for you.”
“You can say that again.”
“Always wanted to wake up to those views, you know?” She looked at a faded billboard for wine across the street, then beyond it at mountains left sterile by fires. “Well,” her smile disappeared, “cheated out of that and—”
A noise filled the street again, the braying of a bus. Not their bus. She wrapped her hands around her belly. Empty, the street was empty except for the busyness of cicadas and frogs. She flipped open a mirror and checked what the tears had done to her makeup.
“Life, right?” His gaze was lost in the chiaroscuro of the mountains fencing them in. “All these plans, and then… You know what? Forget plans. Here’s—well, listen.”
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone, wiping the screen on his sleeve. After a few taps, a song began to play.
The opening trumpets made her widen her eyes. “Now you’re talking, old man.”
The music jolted them to their feet.
Las estrellas y hasta el cielo, fueron ellos los testigos, del amor que yo te di.
He stretched his hand toward her. “Angela, will you—?”
“My name’s not—”
“Just for this one song, yeah?”
She dipped her hand into his, took in his moisture through her palm.
They paused there, their breaths slowing down, stretching, falling into the same rhythm.
They pushed bags and wet shoes out of the way and spun into each other under the pale light of the bus stop. They danced as a bus roared past them. Their bus.
His steps followed the trumpets and the drums. His fingers chased each other across her back. “Sorry,” he said, a loaned word, someone else’s word.
“No, babe, it’s me who shouldn’t have—”
They danced until the song ended. And then the next song.
They let each song finish their sentences, one after another.
Federico Escobar grew up in Cali, Colombia, and has lived in New Orleans, Jerusalem, Oxford, and Puerto Rico. He has published short stories and poems, as well as academic articles and translations, in both Spanish and English. His literary work has been published or is forthcoming in Cabinet of Heed, The Phare, Bending Genres, Passengers Journal, Typishly, Tulane Review, HermanoCerdo, Revista Eñe, Sad Girl Diaries, and Stone’s Throw Magazine. Federico Escobar currently works in education.
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