I arrived at Gloria's place to find the kitchen table spread with my favorite foods: stuffed chiles, corn soup, and gorditas. And Clive happily popping chiles into his mouth at the rate that Gloria refilled the serving plate.
I'd begged her not to cook because I was supposed to be having dinner with Charlotte and Guillermo, but I was already drooling at the sight of it all, and Gloria looked so determined to feed me one last time that I just sighed in resignation at the heaving table, accepting that I was gonna have to fit two goodbye dinners into my guts before the night was through.
Overfilled gordita in hand, I flipped through the huge photo album that Gloria had slid onto my lap; mostly photos of camping trips featuring a cute little baby Jules and a younger, thinner Clive. The end of the album was stuffed full of old photos of Gloria and Clive from when they hadn't been much older than me.
"Gloria! You look like a supermodel in these photos."
She giggled into her soup. "Well, defeños[1] were very fashion-conscious in those days. I'm carrying a few extra kilos since then."
Clive's ears pricked up at my compliment. "Nonsense, Gloria. You still look enchanting." He took her hand and smacked it to his lips before popping another chile into his mouth.
"Not in front of Zephyr!" Gloria tittered.
"I'm not Jules! I don't care," I replied through a mouthful of beans.
"You were the most beautiful woman on the campus," Clive continued, like he was gonna launch into a long recollection of their student antics, as he had done with the other photos in the album.
"You two went to UNAM[2] together?"
"Clive had a secondment there for three months, and we stayed together after he went back to UC María."
"How long were you living apart before you moved to Arenosa?"
"Three years," they said in unison, shaking their heads and groaning like they were wondering how they'd managed it.
"Clive visited me as much as he could," Gloria continued, her eyes glazing over at the memory. "I didn't have the money for trips to California. When I got an American work visa we lived in María for a couple of years, then we found Santa Elena. It was just a little fishing village in those days."
"Weren't you sad to leave your family in Mexico?"
"I was heartbroken. I missed them so much. But Clive was my home by then," she replied. Clive beamed at her, puffing up in his chair as she talked on. "He tried to get a job in Mexico to stay with me, but we already both knew that we didn't want to live in a city, and work was hard to find in villages in Mexico back then."
"And Gloria is the Queen of Santa Elena now!" said Clive with an elaborate bow at Gloria's chair on his way to the stove to ladle more soup. "Santa Elena's community didn't talk to each other before Gloria arrived and started the Newsletters. Now the Newsletter is a lifeline for residents, especially the seniors."
Clive pulled a stack of old printed Santa Elena Newsletters from a high shelf in the porch, some of them over thirty years old.
"The Newsletter wasn't online in those days. Gloria and Mozhgan used to take the photos for the front pages of the early copies. Then they launched the residents' photo competition, and never had to take a photo themselves again!"
I leafed through a few faded Newsletter front covers, some with beautiful photos taken by Mozhgan: big sunsets on the beach, icicles hanging on the trees in the State Park, the green stillness of the salamander ponds, dolphin pods playing in the shallows.
YOU ARE READING
The Sigma Asset 🏳️🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022
Mystery / Thriller**AMBYS 2022 WINNER** He'll never play piano again. That's what virtuoso pianist Zephyr has vowed to himself after escaping Sigma, the sprawling criminal organisation that once held him--and still holds his friends--captive in California's mega-city...
