Lights On

Chapter 1

Alma

Honestly, jumping to conclusions is my favorite form of cardio.

I’m enjoying the air conditioning at full blast when the driver makes a turn that isn’t on the way to anywhere I recognize. First conclusion: he’s padding the fare. Easy, common, fine. Second conclusion, arriving about four seconds later and with much more confidence: he’s lost, he won’t admit it, and every minute he spends not admitting it eats a minute from a schedule I built with no slack in it.

Third conclusion—and I want it on record that I know this one is insane even as my heart rate makes its position clear—is that the three of us are being kidnapped, and I will be the one who has to handle that too.

I open the app to check the route, mostly so that I have something to do with the panic. Your driver, Óscar. The little car icon is going somewhere the blue line did not suggest. This is unhelpful.

Óscar lifts his phone and fires off a voice note in rapid, irritated Spanish: “Pati, can you find out why they closed the whole center?”

Sabrina, Lis and I exchange the specific look of three women recalculating whether tonight survives.

A reply comes back a block later. He reads it at a red light. His grip on the wheel goes tight, and then he says, to no one, with the exhausted disgust of a man whose evening has been ruined by a delegate of God Himself:

“¿Un cura DJ? ¿Cerraron el microcentro entero por un cura DJ?”

A priest. A DJ priest. The entire center of Buenos Aires closed because somewhere near Plaza de Mayo a member of the clergy is, at this moment, dropping a set.

I did all that cardio. The kidnapping, the entire collapse of the evening. I built all of it, from a left turn, in under fifteen seconds, and the actual answer is a priest with a sound system. There is no version of me, however prepared, that has a contingency for that. It is almost relaxing.

“So,” I say, when I can speak without laughing. “Reservation’s confirmed for tonight.”

“Good. After Lis arguing with that guy from Rosario in that last round table, I need alcohol.” Sabrina chuckles.

“I’m just saying.” Lis crosses her legs. “If I hear the words ‘let’s weave networks’ one more time, I will need a drink too. That phrase is so vague, it always gets me.”

“The last time we went out-out, Sabrina was wearing a bride sash and threatening strangers with fernet,” I say, adjusting my bag on my lap.

“God, we had too many fernets that night,” Sabrina says.

“There’s never too many fernets, amiga. What kind of Cordobesa are you?” I say with a grin.

“Anyway…” Lis interrupts. “Tonight we’re celebrating a night without kids, husbands or patients. Just us with nobody asking us to do anything.”

Sabrina gasps and takes out her phone and shows a picture of her daughter frowning over a piece of paper. “Did I tell you guys that Agustina learned to write her name already?”

I take the phone from her hands and zoom in on Agustina’s crooked letters, grinning. “I can’t believe she’s turning five in two weeks!”

Lis rolls her eyes, “Promise there won’t be any patients, husbands or kids-talk when we go out tonight.”

“You know that’s hard, especially if we’re doing cocktails. I get chatty when I drink,” Sabrina says.

“Oh, we know. We have a bingo card prepared for that event,” I say and they laugh.

Sabrina glares at me. “A bingo card! If you’re using me as a bet, I get half the proceeds.”

“Deal!” Lis and I say together laughing.

Back at the rental, I go and take a shower. When I come out, I put on a pink dress with thin straps, and we order some dinner—nothing fancy, just poke salads and water. Responsible adult practices and all, eating healthy and hydrating before partying.

When the delivery driver texts that he’s downstairs, I head to the elevator. The doors open and there’s a man already inside. Our eyes meet for a second.

“Hola,” he says.

“Hola, ¿cómo estás?”

He smiles, and I know it’s because of my accent. He doesn’t comment on it. “Bien, gracias.”

He leans on the elevator wall and I catch the woodsy smoke on him—the unmistakable trace of someone who’s just been at an asado. I don’t comment on it either. We’ve made a small, silent agreement, apparently, to leave each other to our own evenings.

It would be rude—and frankly an insult to womankind—not to look. I watch him discreetly. He really is kind of cute. Thick, dark hair that curls a little at the ends, thin beard, the colorful edge of a tattoo on his forearm—most of it tucked behind the hand holding his phone. I’m a little lost in how strong his forearms look when the doors slide open. He steps out first, holds the door briefly with his shoulder for me, and turns toward the lobby.

By the time the delivery driver hands me the bag and I’m back at the elevators, I assume he’s long gone, up to whatever floor men who smell like grilled meat go to.

But the elevator is still there, his shoulder braced against the door.

“Thank you,” I say, stepping in.

He smiles, and my stomach flips. I smile back. He presses the button for the terrace; I press ten. We ride in silence, and it isn’t awkward, which is somehow worse—that I notice it isn’t awkward, that I’m cataloguing the absence of tension as if it means something. I count the floors. I think about the curl of hair just behind his ear. At ten the doors open and I step out without looking back, because looking back would make this a thing, and it isn’t a thing.

It absolutely isn’t a thing.

Back at the apartment, we eat our responsible-adult poke salads, hydrate, and start getting ready for the bar a colleague recommended. It’s called Victor Audio Bar, just four blocks from where we’re staying.

The four blocks are a mistake. It’s almost ten and Buenos Aires is still breathing on us—that wet, leaden January heat that doesn’t lift after sundown, the kind that makes me miss Córdoba and the way the air goes thin and cool the moment the sun sets behind the mountains. By the time we reach the door, I can feel my dress sticking to my back and Sabrina is openly cursing her hair.

Then someone opens the door from the inside and the bar exhales over us, cold, dim, bass through the soles of my sandals, the smell of citrus peel and something smoky underneath. Lis lets out a small gracias a Dios. The bar is packed; our reservation is for 10 PM.

We find our seats and order espresso martinis.

Lis looks around. “This lighting is doing God’s work. I approve.” She takes a sip. “Also, I predict a long night of dancing.”

Sabrina nods. “Hope my feet can take it.”

“Feet. That’s a square. If I win, drinks are on me,” I say bumping Sabrina’s shoulder.

She raises a brow and takes a very long sip while Lis breaks her own rule and goes on to tell us about her last date night with her husband.

The DJ shifts to a more upbeat set. House classics from the 2000s, the kind of songs that scream adolescence at all three of us—first boliches, partying until sunrise, eyeliner applied in a friend’s bathroom. We sway in our seats and sing along unashamedly.

I scan the room—half out of habit, half because I like watching people enjoy themselves—and that’s when I see him.

Elevator guy. At the other end of the bar with a group of friends. So this is really happening, apparently Buenos Aires is the size of a napkin.

He’s here, no longer with the look of someone who’d spent the afternoon at an asado watching a partido. Dark jeans, white shirt, sleeves rolled. The tattoo on his forearm is fully visible now and I think, stupidly, that if I got close enough I might finally figure out what it is.

My martini is halfway to my mouth and I’ve forgotten to put it down.

“What’s wrong?” Lis asks.

“I ran into that guy in the elevator earlier,” I say, and finally take a sip.

Lis and Sabrina turn to look so fast the table wobbles.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I hiss. “What are you, twelve?”

“He’s cute, Alma,” Sabrina says, in the warm, encouraging voice she uses on her daughter. “You should talk to him.”

“We’re not in a sitcom. Besides, we were celebrating.”

Lis tilts her head. “Are you really going to spend your one weekend in Buenos Aires telling us about ergonomic assessments and what outfit you’re planning for Agustina’s birthday?”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“You were. I could see it forming.”

Sabrina is still doing the soft voice. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since you, you know.”

“Since I what.”

“Since you did anything that wasn’t planned three weeks in advance.”

That hits me harder than I want it to. I take another sip to cover the fact that it hit me at all.

The truth is, I have a way I do this. I have had a way I do this for years. Cute man across the room, three drinks in, eye contact, careful inventory of red flags, polite exit. I’m thirty-three and very good at not embarrassing myself. I’m also, lately, very bored of myself.

I excuse myself to the bathroom, anything to make them change the subject. By the time I come back, I’m not even fully in my seat before Sabrina starts.

“Sit at the bar.”

“What?”

“Just go sit at the bar. Order something. If he comes over within twenty minutes, talk to him. If he doesn’t, come back and we’ll dance and pretend none of this happened.”

“You plotted this in the four minutes I was in the bathroom?”

“Three,” Lis says. “It’s not a complicated plot.”

“You’ll be safe,” Sabrina adds, the mom-voice creeping back. “We’ll be watching. You text us one word and we materialize.”

“What word.”

“Pick one.”

“Fernet,” Lis says.

“Of course fernet.”

I look across the room. He’s at the other end of the bar with his friends, leaning over to say something to a tall guy who’s laughing too hard, the laugh of someone being cheered up on purpose. He checks his friend’s face for a second, then jumps in, laughing along. I tuck that little detail away.

Lis is watching me watch him. “Go now,” she says, quieter. “Before you talk yourself out of it.”

She’s right, I am about to talk myself out of it. I can feel the script forming, all the very reasonable reasons: I’m leaving tomorrow, I don’t do this, he’s probably with someone, I’m tired, my feet hurt, I don’t know what his tattoo is and probably never will and that’s fine, that’s a perfectly fine outcome for a Saturday night.

I move before my brain can take over. I order another espresso martini and sit at the bar.