The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

a table. At midnight, streamers and balloons fell from the ceiling. Each New Year’s Eve she spent at home, just like Pili had said, eating twelve grapes before the TV set in a mockery of festivity. Other than that, there were her sister’s superstitious traditions: sweeping the floor at the stroke of midnight to empty the apartment of negative thoughts or tossing lentils outside their door. None of that now.

The clinking of glasses with real champagne, the whole thing – not just the alcohol – went to her head as she kissed Elías on the lips.

When she lay down on his bed, too tired to even bother with the zipper of her dress, she looked at the ceiling and stretched out her arm, pointing up.

‘We had stars. Do you remember?’ she asked him.

‘What?’ Elías muttered.

‘In your old apartment.’

She turned her head and saw recognition dawning on his face. He nodded, slipping off his jacket and lying down.

‘I remember. You painted them,’ he said.

‘It was to help hide the mold,’ she recalled.

‘Yes. In the corner of the room. That place was too damp.’

‘You had leaks everywhere. We had to leave pots and pans and dishes all around.’

She rubbed a foot against his thigh, absentmindedly, more present in the past than in the now. Back in the grubby apartment, the water making music as it hit the dishes. Gold and silver stars. It had been a lark, one afternoon, and Elías had humored her, even helped paint a few of the stars himself.

‘You printed all those photographs. Photos with an analogue camera, like any good hipster,’ she said, sitting up and trying to reach the zipper of her dress. It was stuck.

‘It was the feel of it, of the negatives and the dark room, that I liked,’ he replied, a hand on her back, undoing the zipper for her in one fluid swoop.

Amelia pulled down the dress, frowning, her hands resting on the bed.

‘What did you do with my pictures? Do you still have them somewhere?’ she asked.

‘Yes, in Monterrey. Why?’

‘I don’t know. It just seems like such an intimate thing to keep. Like a piece of somebody.’

‘Sympathetic magic,’ Elías whispered, running a finger along her spine.

She thought of the tossing of the lentils, the wearing of yellow or red underwear, washing one’s hands with sugar, and the myriad of remedies at the Market of Sonora. All of it was rubbish, but he… he’d had some true magic. It hovered there, under his fingertips, something that wasn’t love anymore, yet persisted.

*

A phone ringing. Amelia cracked her eyes open, trying to remember where she’d left her purse, but Elías answered.

‘Hello? Oh, hey. Yeah, Happy New Year’s to you too. No, it’s got no charge. No, it’s…’

Elías was standing up. Elías was going out of the bedroom. Amelia shoved away the covers and sat at the foot of the bed. When he returned, he had that apologetic look on his face she knew well.

‘That was my father,’ he said.

‘I figured. Keeping his eye on you, as usual,’ Amelia said, finding her underwear and stockings. Her dress was crumpled in a corner and it had a stain near the waist. Spilled champagne.

When they’d dated, Elías played at independence. Half-heartedly. Dad paid all the bills, after all, but he played in good faith. He told himself they were at the brink of freedom.

Now, he played at something entirely different.

‘I have an early Epiphany present for you.’

As Elías spoke, he opened the door to the closet and took out a box, laying it on the bed and opening it for Amelia to inspect the contents. It was a set of clothes. Slim, black trousers, a gray blouse. She ran a hand along the fabric.

‘Did you give your fiancée a present too?’ Amelia asked. ‘Was it also clothing, or did you pick something else?’

‘You don’t like the clothes?’

‘That’s not what I asked,’ she said, raising her head and staring at him.

A rueful look on his face. He did not appear older most days, but that morning, he was his full twenty-five years, older still, not at all the boy she’d gone out with. He’d looked very much the Hero when she’d first spotted him and now he did not seem the Villain, but he could not save maidens from dragons or girls from space pirates.

He had settled into the man he would be. That was what she saw that morning.

Whom had she settled into? Had she?

‘My father picked her present. I had no say in it,’ he assured her.

‘I guess you don’t get a say in anything.’

She fastened her bra and proceeded to put on the change of clothes he’d bought for her, leisurely. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

‘Amelia,’ he said sharply, ‘you know I care about you. My father wants me back in Monterrey, but I want nothing of him.’

‘Except for his cash.’

‘What would you have me do? I was going to break off the engagement, but he doesn’t listen to me, just goes on and on, and when I brought it up—’

She stood up and touched his lips before she kissed him very lightly. ‘I know,’ she replied.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said and he held her tight. And she should, she would move away in a minute. She was tidally locked. She was but a speck orbiting him and it didn’t even matter now whether she could, would, would not, should not move aside.

10

The gang had once again laid claim to the subway’s entrance. Amelia ended up sharing a car with a man and a life-sized mechanical mariachi. It was just the torso, skillfully painted, but he had a hat and held a guitar in his hands. She couldn’t help but ask the man about it.

‘It’s for bars,’ the man said. ‘It has integrated speakers and can play hundreds of songs. It’s better than any flesh-and-blood musician. I also have one that looks like Pedro Infante and another like Jorge Negrete. Say, I’ll give you my card.’

She tried to tell