Excerpt from Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

While Teresa served stew, Amarga flipped through the newspaper's limp pages. "They killed El Martin Luther King last week," she began. "Right on his hotel balcony. Imagine that, stretching in the sun and they shoot you dead, right there." Teresa nodded, lighting the first in a long chain of cigarettes, eyeing grains of rice and white dribble congealing in the corner of her mother's mouth. "And they're burning every city to the ground," Amarga continued. "On every street, every other negro lit a match, and they are watching it all burn. Good for them."

Teresa fanned the smoke from her surprised face.

"Let Gringolandia burn," Amarga said, and went right back to a fibrous short rib.

At five in the evening, Teresa dressed herself. She perfumed her hair, sneaked a double shot of guaro, and sat like an ember on her bed, waiting until Cristina knocked on her door at six.

After that, nothing. A blank as large as the room. And all Teresa knew was that right now she was upright on her bed at almost midnight and the landscape was so bright that she wondered if she'd overslept until noon.

The fact that José María still wasn't home worried her. Sure, he liked to drink, but an all-night bender was rare. In fact, he had only ever stayed out till morning a handful of times during their eleven years of marriage, returning home at dawn, stumbling into the walls and obstacles that drunken men make of inanimate objects. Or crawling into bed, with his laughter and annoying jokes beneath the sheets. Once, after a whole bottle, his voice took on a childish tone and he cried in Teresa's lap. And after the most recent bender, he yammered in his sleep about boars. But always, no matter the jubilance of his inebriation or how harmless he seemed, there lurked something gnashing: the beast that all men are capable of unchaining, alcohol often the key to the lock. With the echo of her grandmother's warnings, Teresa now plucked the worst outcomes from her imagination. Maybe José María had fallen into a ditch and broken his arm. Or maybe another woman had seduced him at a bar. Or, worse but most improbable of all, maybe La Cegua had found him alone on a road and taken his life with her toothy smile.

Teresa couldn't control José María's absence, but she could find a way to fill the gap in her memory. Cristina might know. Teresa walked to the bedroom window. Barrio Ávila was growing eerily dark. A shadow devoured the moon mid-sky. Mansion roofs were painted black, then copper. Only Cristina's gaudy pink abode resisted the night, shining like a lighthouse, its top floor illuminated. It was where her husband, Desiderio, kept his studio, where he sharpened tools and chipped at marble. Where he carved statues as large as men. If Desiderio was awake, he could explain to Teresa what had happened. He could ease the tension in her shoulders.

The entire house yawned as Teresa opened the bedroom door. She tiptoed down the hallway that expanded like the esophagus of a leviathan. At the other end of the house, a small octagonal window peered out to the back of the property, where the guesthouse moped like an afterthought. It was where Amarga slept uneasily, because she hadn't slept soundly since the year Teresa's father went missing. He'd disappeared without a trace, and now Teresa worried the same of José María.

Teresa slipped into the bathroom and out of her dress. Her hair curled tight in the humidity. Coarse, shiny black waves streaked with silver. Sterling sea snakes, jellyfish tentacles. Siren songs. The sudden fluorescent light faded her dark brown skin like winter. She ran her fingers over her cheekbones, high and soft on her face, wiped her full lips of gloss, and removed her dainty gold hoops. Cristina often said Teresa was breathtaking enough to star in movies. That is, if movie starlets—Mexican or gringa—were allowed to look like her.

Copyright © 2023 by John Manuel Arias