Vida by Patricia Engel Read Free Book Online Page B

said that he’d use his one phone call to reach me.
    It was a cool November night and I’d taken a few days off from work to be there. I went to see him at his new place, a cute townhouse on Euclid with its own patio and everything. His new-arrival cousin Nacho was staying with him. The primo was another knockout, taller and tanner than Diego, with delicate features. He spoke English with a British accent, which Diego thought was ridiculous, and he was always asking me about art, which I liked. But Diego said it was just because Nacho was trying to land himself a rich girl and I felt instantly stupid.
    Diego had to go make a delivery, so Nacho and I were alone in his place. Diego had photos up on his wall of our Key West road trip with Elsa and Vlad. I missed Elsa a lot. After that summer, she decided she had had enough of life as a Manhattan financial analyst and went to Russia to teach English, but decided she hated it and went on to Israel to work in a kibbutz. She’d write me that I should go join her there, that working with your hands in a community kitchen is much better than it sounds. She said she was growing out her blonde hair, which, for Elsa, was a big deal. She was talking about getting her Israeli citizenship and I was like,“Elsa, you’re from Jersey,” but she said it didn’t matter, that she belonged over there now.
    Diego had blown up and framed one photo that Elsa or Vlad must have taken of us without our knowing. It was during the drive down, when we pulled over in Key Largo to swim at Pennekamp. We were the only people there and the sea was flat as glass. Diego and I were up to our waists in water and he reached over to hold my hand, just as some dolphins started flipping in the distance. Like a fucking movie scene.
    I remember thinking I might be in love with him. But that evening he met some sorority girl in Mallory Square in Key West and sneaked off to be with her. I’d ended up crying on a bench while Elsa and Vlad were inside a bar. Then Elsa came out to hold my shoulders and told me that none of this was real.
    “You don’t really want him,” she said. “You just think you do because he’s always there.”
    Nacho was next to me, handing me a drink, some expensive beer, which was funny because I remembered that when I first met Diego the only beer he bought was Natural Ice, which gave us the worst headaches ever.
    Nacho came to South Beach for modeling. Apparently he was already pretty successful at it in Buenos Aires,thought he’d make it big here, but they said he was too old already, almost thirty. “I’m not like my cousin,” he kept telling me with distaste, which I thought was a pretty shitty thing to say since his cousin was the one putting him up and giving him dollars to spend. But Nacho thought Diego was from the dirt side of his family and that the fact that he was dealing was shameful, and what’s weirder is that I found myself defending him, saying Diego dealt pot with integrity.
    “I have a business degree,” Nacho told me from across Diego’s living room. “I’m an entrepreneur. I have so many ideas. I just need a little backing to start and I’ll make a killing. I’m brilliant, you know.”
    I thought of that old joke you always hear Colombians telling: How do you kill an Argentino? Make him stand on his ego and jump.
    I laughed to myself and Nacho looked offended, then shot point blank: “So what’s a girl like you doing hanging out with a guy like my cousin?”
    “You don’t know anything about me or what kind of girl I am.”
    “I know you’re a rich girl who likes to play poor.”
    It sucks when a perfect asshole manages to hurt your feelings. It was even harder to confront that Nacho was so good-looking and the art history major in me was a martyrfor aesthetics, which is why I ended up letting Nacho kiss me on Diego’s couch.
    To this day I don’t know if Diego found out about me and Nacho getting busy like that while he was out. But just a few