"Hola Señorita," Bruno bent down to his fruit truck's open window to greet his favorite part of the day. His plastic-gloved hand was already on the crate of fresh mango. "Same as usual?"
A young woman smiled up at him from the sidewalk. Her hands were in the pockets of some extravagantly embroidered scrubs. The colorful flowers, loops, and animals were just restrained enough- only just professional enough for medical work. It was the same with her slicked back bun from which brown curls were already escaping.
"You know it," the woman laughed. She had dimples too, unlike any other nurse Bruno knew. Bruno thought she was lovely.
This woman's timing was as regular as her order. Grey mornings before the sun could eat through the marine layer. Sliced mango with tajín, none of the other candies, powders, and syrups. Bruno selected the best mango for her, peeled it in one long stripe, and began to slice it into pieces.
"Anything good on Telemundo last night?" His regular strained on the tips of her sneakers to be level with the truck window and watch him work. "Tryst, scandal, plot twist?"
Bruno savored the sound of her Colombian Spanish. It was crisper than the Los Angeles dialect he most often heard. And it still had all the familiar words that he had grown out of using in his decades here. The sound of home. The woman used to ask how Bruno was in general, but he only ever spoke about telenovela so the question had evolved.
"Alta Sociedad last night," Bruno informed her. As he stacked the pieces of mango, he took pains to sprinkle each angle with tajín- just the perfect amount to his taste at least. Not that he'd wanted to eat fruit for a long time since he'd started the business.
"We're still on the cousin Hector arc, approaching mid-season finale. I think the writers might ship him back to Spain if he keeps making such an ass of himself- Excuse me!"
Bruno flushed. His words got away from him and he forgot his customer service when speaking to this regular. It didn't help that whenever he did, she got an expression of thrilled joy in her eyes. Like she knew she caught him out.
"Really?" There it was. Her eyebrows shot above the lenses of her green glasses.
"I don't know, would you be able to face Helena's family after getting drunk at her wedding and falling into the pool?"
Bruno tried not to sound too tart. He'd been looking forward to that wedding. Mirabel tch'd and shook her head with a grave expression.
"Maybe they'll give him amnesia instead, keep the actor."
The minute she suggested this, Bruno knew it was what they would do. He marveled. She hadn't seen a telenovela all the way through- busy studying, she said. But she understood the spirit so well.
There was a cough. Another early customer of Bruno's, polite but not so patient. Bruno recognized her by the silver pin curls and her old fashioned nurse shoes that clipped on the concrete. He knew her order too- agua de pepino con limón.
Bruno gave his first regular an apologetic quirk of the lips. He handed her the cup of mango with a napkin and fork rubber-banded on the outside.
"A la orden, señorita."
She smiled, and Bruno's chest tightened. You're sweet on her, he chided himself. Ridiculous for a man of his age.
He watched his regular walk into the university-hospital complex, joining the crowd at the front and becoming indistinguishable from the other nurses. The slate grey infrastructure teemed with students, patients, and doctors from all over the country. Its modernist facade of glass and concrete loomed like a wave about to crash over the plaza.
His customers were the locals that helped staff the center for pennies on the doctor's dollar. He had a permit, but he still worried slate grey enforcers in slate grey police cars would come to remove his yellow truck from their brutalist utopia.
Bruno turned to his next customer, his smile a bit dimmer than before.
The day passed in cups of fruit, satisfied and dissatisfied faces swimming past the window of his truck. A fastidious stack of blue rags traveled from cupboard to hamper as they made the stainless steel interior of his truck gleam. Paying off the loan each month was a curt reminder that the truck was worth more than Bruno himself, so he took good care of it.
His regular should be in for a ten hour shift like the other nurses. But she often stayed later. Bruno knew this because he couldn't help but look for her when he was packing up the truck. By then, the night was at its darkest in a permanent twilight of red-white strobing headlights and skyscraper windows. The flow of patients had reduced to a trickle. A line of nurses cars filed out of the parking lot. But never Mirabel.
It wasn't sustainable to work that hard, Bruno thought. The first day of her shift, she was fresh and rosy. She trilled her Rs longer than necessary and one-upped Bruno's jokes. By the third, her eyes were bleary and her skin took on an ashen tint as if spending time under the fluorescent light was causing her to wilt.
Bruno worried. But he could never express it. He was sure a woman like her would have plenty of concerned friends and family. She didn't need to hear it from the fruit truck guy. He tried not to dwell on the fact that she was the first person he had worried for in decades.
The first time Bruno saw his regular out of the context of her pre-shift routine was on a heat soaked afternoon. The sun ricocheted between the buildings and radiated off the pavement. The clouds had long been burned away. It was so bright that spots appeared in Bruno's vision if he looked for too long out of the truck window. All was still as most of the activity at the medical center had been scared indoors. The fan in the chassis of Bruno's truck sputtered in discontent, the lightest wisp of air moving inside.
"Hola-" Bruno opened his window to a knock, "Eh?"
He almost didn't recognize her. Bruno realized then how much of his regular's face was shaped by some kind of internal sunniness, even on her third shift. Today, her smile was mounted in place like a specimen on a board. Two older women in scrubs were at each of her elbows- jocular and intimidating.
"Hola Señor," her voice was quieter than usual too. "Mango with tajín, please?"
I know, Bruno thought. Of course. But he couldn't say that. He nodded.
"And you?" Bruno regarded her two hangers-on. There was a thin, ginger haired doctor, and a brunette in Minnie Mouse-patterned pediatric gear.
"Nothing for me," chirped the doctor in English. She glanced over to her companion and they communicated with a glance like some mind meld. "Or her. But it's my treat,"
The doctor handed Bruno a black credit card between her first two fingers.
"It will be just one second ma'am," Bruno switched to English. He obligingly turned to scan her card in the reader he kept at the back of his truck. Most of his regulars paid cash. He could still see the reflections of the three- blobs of colors in the crenelated stainless steel.
"Jesus Mirabel, why here?" Bruno heard the nurse in patterns laugh.
Mirabel, thought Bruno.
"Be nice," hissed the doctor.
"I like this place," said Mirabel. "The fruit is very good."
Mirabel's English words were dredged out in uneven clumps. The consonants had all been filed off like she was scared to commit to them. Bruno returned the card to the nurse and donned a fresh pair of plastic gloves to put together his regular's cup. Mirabel's. He liked having a name for her.
The nurses chatted as they waited, and Bruno was treated to a feast of biographical information about his regular.
"So Mirabel, you settling in? I imagine Westwood is a big change."
"Yes, I am. And yes, it is very different," Mirabel echoed. Then she paused, seeming to gather her words. "The people, and well- the hospital. There is a lot to learn." The two others laughed, like she had made some kind of joke with her carefully-chosen words.
It appeared that Mirabel was just out of college, part of a distinguished UCLA exchange program, and now working on the most difficult floor in the medical complex.
"Dr. Fisher can really keep you on your feet, at least your first year," Patterns agreed. "He's a stickler, right? Neda and I called him Coach Fisher since he sent us on laps around the ward."
Mirabel made a noncommittal noise at the jumble of colloquialisms and idioms. Bruno felt a pang of empathy, and a bit of secondhand embarrassment.
He remembered his early days of English mastery. He kenned the rough contours of the language while washing dishes in the back of a Hilton and listening to the radio natter. Getting thrown into reception had broken him into speaking with businessmen, their aides and wives. His first American girlfriend taught him which of those phrases he learned would brand him an outsider with the swiftness of divine retribution. "Shall we grab a bite to eat?" She had mocked in a nasal drawl that had been her impression of Bruno, "we're getting a burger not fuckin'- lobster thermidor." Bruno hadn't felt like himself for years, each inch of selfhood won back by each embarrassment.
It was a shame to see the person he knew so muted.
"And how's your mother? Julieta and I did our first year here together, she told you?"
"Yes," Mirabel sighed. "Eh, she is well. She is at the pediatrics department in Bogota at the hospital of our family."
Bruno came from Bogota too. He wondered if he and Mirabel had walked the same streets, visited the same stores. They wouldn't have been so different, then. Bruno used to have a family, in fact, a large one. The empty space where they should be hurt with the dull ache of an old scar.
The three nurses then began an exchange of medical jargon. Bruno was not fluent in that language, but to his relief, Mirabel was. Bruno handed Mirabel her cup of fruit, trying to act casual and polished, improve the fruit truck optics. He had cut up the pieces of mango smaller, so she wouldn't be caught with her mouth full. It was all he could do. She took it with a murmured thanks, eyes hidden by thick lashes.
Then, the three nurses wandered back into the complex to find somewhere to sit. Bruno worried. He knocked on the wooden crates of fruit piled on the counter.
Bruno questioned her about it the next day, in a roundabout way.
"Where are your friends?" He asked, pretending to peer beyond Mirabel into the still empty plaza behind her.
"At their own fruit trucks of course," Mirabel's tone was flippant, a single brown arc of eyebrow raised above her glasses. "There's a loyalty program, right- or do I come here every day for nothing?"
Bruno laughed. This was the Mirabel the two others were missing, lost in translation. There was a pause. Bruno took the opportunity to grab a mango and spiral the peel off.
"Actually, well, they weren't friends," Mirabel blurted. Bruno's eyes shot up. "It was more of a… professional evaluation."
It made sense. The two senior staff clucking together like hens, Mirabel like a bright blue cotinga among them.
"Was it, um-" Bruno tried to be tactful. "'Meets expectations'?"
"It was fine," Mirabel shook her head at the same time. Conflicting messages. She looked so miserable that Bruno didn't pry further. They chatted about Telemundo- Hector's tragic car accident and the likelihood of amnesia.
This time when Mirabel tried to pay, Bruno refused to take her money.
"It's the fruit truck loyalty program," he told her.
"I made that up," Mirabel was earnest now. "You know I made that up."
Bruno smiled and closed the window of his truck in her face. Even if it was difficult to give her anything, he was happy to have done so. It was all he could do.
Later that summer, Bruno woke with a migraine splitting the left side of his head. He groaned in despair.
He always hoped he had seen the last of these, until the next one arrived and disabused him of the fantasy. The migraine put a perfunctory end to whatever he was doing- jobs, commitments to others, days off. Didn't matter.
He blinked his eyes open just in case he was wrong. From his mattress on the floor, Bruno could see the summer dawn pouring through the metal screened windows. The shoes and garden tools lined by the door marched the light further into the room over the tatty green carpet, past the darkened television, each fragment of light lancing itself on Bruno's corneas. Definitely a migraine. The featureless dark ceiling loomed above him like an abyss, and Bruno wished he could go there.
Bruno closed his eyes again, burying them in his blanket. He was out- a random amount of time, and longer than shorter as he got older.
And these days, Bruno had a responsibility. He pulled himself out of bed, steadying himself against a blank patch of wall. His head throbbed in protest, and the carpet swam with green visual hallucinations like translucent papel picado. He swallowed, throat parched. Responsibility, he reminded himself. Bruno grabbed his keys off the upturned crate next to his mattress and dragged himself to the door.
Señora Almeida's apartments and assisted living facility was a ring of squat, single room dwellings around a courtyard. The buildings were shrouded in dead Christmas lights, and vines that were dried up and twisted from the heatwave of the summer. The assisted living facility was run out of the rooms on the right side, apartments on the left. Every time this migraine happened, Bruno thought he should cross over the center into the other section.
Under some beach umbrellas that had been set up in the patio's center, the Almeida family's youngest son Jaime was sitting in a plastic chair watching Primeira Liga on television. As long as Bruno had lived here, it was known as "Jaime's chair"- the yellowed plastic practically molded into his graphic tee and basketball shorts. The man also had yellowed over the years- hard working and hard living. He was flanked by two of Señora Almeida's charges- two elderly hispanic women in wheelchairs with a variety of tubes and canisters wreathed around them. Bruno winced at the light from the television, narrowing his eyes against it. The crowd roared and Bruno put his hands over his ears.
"Jaime! Oy! Can I talk to you?" Bruno shouted over the noise. His own voice pounded through his head, the hateful thing.
"Hah?" Jaime spared him a glance over his shoulder before turning back to the television. The two old women didn't even flinch. God bless, Bruno thought.
"Want to make some cash today?" Bruno shouted again, switching to English. Jaime turned the television volume down a few ticks and regarded Bruno with a baleful expression. His brown eyes were usually sleepy, unfocused. They tended to stray as you bored him- Bruno often did with his talk of telenovela and Colombia.
This was his best friend in the entire blessed world.
"Busy?" Bruno asked, sparing the niceties. They'd be wasted. Jaime swiveled in his chair.
"I'm always hustling, man, you know you have to work outside the system if you want to win…" Jaime continued to ramble, devolving into such abbreviated slang that Bruno could no longer understand. So, no. Bruno tilted his head, and regretted it as the patio seemed to spill with it.
"And uh," Bruno cut him off. More important. "Are you drunk?"
"Nah, I don't touch the stuff now, you know I don't," Jaime fixed Bruno with a steady look that was spoiled by his eyes listing back towards the television set. Sober enough.
"Jaime, please take the truck?" Bruno shook his truck keys, unable to explain further. Jaime had done this before. He should know how. "Please,"
"I don't know," Jaime looked between Bruno and the game. He was a football fan before most else. Bruno covered his eyes with his hands. The sun hadn't even fully risen yet, but his face was already damp with sweat. Or maybe that was nausea.
"Two hundred. Get a steak and watch a rerun." Bruno gritted the words out as clearly as he could. "You can just park it and sleep in front."
It wasn't about the fruit, which would probably run out about halfway through the day if Jaime felt like working. What really mattered was keeping his spot. That location was what kept the business profitable instead of just breaking even. Other truck vendors saw a prime location empty and got ideas. Jaime shrugged and took the keys, standing up with a great heave. He bestowed the remote to the nearest senior resident, who turned the volume up again.
"I owe you," Keep it together, Bruno thought.
"You better pay me, man, later…. I don't do this usually, but you're always asking me these things, man-"
Jaime waved his hand and continued to mutter on the way out of the courtyard, jingling keys hooked over his fingers.
Fine. Bruno didn't need agreeable, didn't need guarantees. If he did, he wouldn't have made it this far. He dragged himself back to his room, back to the mattress he had set up in the corner. He curled up and let the migraine take over the rest of his day.
Bruno passed between pain and more pain, the valleys and peaks of it the landscape that marked his journey. He knew it well.
Just like he wondered if each bout of migraine might be his last, he wondered if this one was the time there would be no end. His dry throat rasped with each swallow. Step by step, mile by mile, forward into the dark. He could never sleep.
And then, a searing luminescence like a sun flared into his apartment. It hurt to look at, but Bruno still did. Because in the center of the light, like an angel, was Mirabel in her embroidered scrubs.
The thoughts in Bruno's addled mind shifted like sands. Dunes rose and fell to nothing, half formed Mandelas disintegrated on sight. Thoughts of death and home circled, and daytime news reels on DMT, out of body near death experiences. He could barely remember the faces of the family in Colombia.
It made sense it would be her in the light.
There was rustling-and a whisper.
"Bruno?"
His name hadn't sounded so lovely for years. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he heard it. There were more words, but he couldn't quite make out the meaning. Even the low murmuring spiked at his brain and Bruno winced. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry and his head hurt. He wrenched his eyes shut again instead.
The next minutes were in darkness. Points of warmth bloomed where a hand rested at his wrist feeling his pulse, another on his head. A soothing touch on the inside of his elbow, followed by cool air, and then a sharp pinprick. He hissed and recoiled. The hand returned, patting away the sensation and pushing him back into the mattress.
And maybe he imagined it- but there could have been fingers running through the hair at his temple. A flush of absurd embarrassment about the white strands there tickled at the edge of Bruno's consciousness. But it didn't seem to matter. The hand lingered, tangled in his hair.
Comfort like drops of rain dotted the arid, cottony landscape of Bruno's migraine. He didn't notice until it was completely flooded, the water coming to wash away the scraping sand.
Bruno awoke. First slowly, more comfortable than he had for years. The best awakening of his life.
And then all at once. He sat up on his mattress and glanced around himself. Well, he was alive. All was as he left it- same tatty green rug, cathode ray television on a stack of magazines. Lines of disposable plastic containers on the shelves that had been conscripted into a lifetime of use. He had fallen asleep at sunrise and woken after dusk.
The evening light filtered in through his barred windows to illuminate two bottles of water next to his bed. Bruno didn't remember those. He cracked one to soothe his parched throat, but put it back again after just a sip. He wasn't thirsty.
Bruno crept outside of the door of his apartment, chipped metal screen door banging behind him with metallic clank.
The courtyard looked the same as it always did in summer evenings. Harsh LED porch lights and the yellow glow behind blinds joined together into false day. A patch of real pink evening sky was just visible between the bows of a jacaranda at the entrance. The desiccated lawn crunched under Bruno's feet as he stepped into the courtyard. He could hear the murmur of recorded voices from the apartments, and the distant wailing of sirens carried by the breeze. The heat had broken with that breeze.
At the center of the courtyard, Jaime was watching superheroes quip their way through the impossibly high stakes of the latest movie. He was in an excellent mood- laughing at the jokes and sipping a corona with the rest of the 12 pack at his feet. He saw Bruno and his face lit up with general good humor.
"Corona?" He pointed at the case.
"No thanks," Bruno swallowed, not thirsty and disgusted with the thought of a beer.
"Your loss," Jaime chuckled. Then a concerning thought seemed to occur to him.
"You good?"
Bruno thought about the past day- the pain and thirst, the miles in the dark. Mostly the angelic apparition of Mirabel and how he was ready to follow her into the light.
"I think I almost died," Bruno confessed, embarrassed now.
"Good thing your little girlfriend came then," Jaime shrugged, taking another swig of his beer.
"What?" Bruno's eyes widened. He did not have a girlfriend.
"The girl at the fruit truck? She asked about you," Bruno's heart skipped as he began to tie disparate pieces of information together.
"I said you were like, ooough, auuuuh, wuaagh," Jaime clutched his head with his hands and performed the most unflattering impression of Bruno imaginable.
"Fruit was done anyway, she insisted on coming. How am I going to say no to a pretty young girl? I'm better than that, got standards,"
"I guess…"
Bruno's thoughts were swept away as a tidal wave of humiliation broke through. He couldn't believe his fruit truck regular saw him shriveled up in the middle of his dilapidated apartment. Maybe seeing that sort of thing was normal for nurses. Bruno shuddered. He hoped so. He should feel grateful.
"I guess," Bruno tried again, "I'll have to thank her tomorrow then."
Jaime killed his corona and threw it twelve feet to the recycling bin with surprising finesse. It landed with a satisfying clink.
"It's your lucky day, man," Jaime cracked open another beer. "She still here, at the senior kitchen,"
You didn't offer to drive her back? Bruno wanted to shout at him. But all things said, Jaime had outdone himself today. Bruno nodded, and ambled to the other side of the patio where the assisted living center kitchen was.
He crept through the screen door, partially lifting it to avoid the screeching of hinges. What he saw transported him a thousand miles away.
The kitchen was a dusty, wood-and-linoleum relic that hadn't been remodeled since the Almeida's purchased it in the seventies. Today, it was alive with the sound of radio, scraping knives, and the clanking of the old dishwasher at full tilt. Behind the formica counter, Mirabel was still in her scrubs but for a lotería-patterned apron tied around her waist. And next to her was Señora Almeida herself. She was a steely woman with the dour affect of an old bull terrier. But today, she was almost doting. More like the chocolate Abuelita on the Nestle packages. Astonishing.
The two were assembling tamales- bowls of filling, masa, piles of corn husk arrayed in front of them. Mirabel had a smear of masa across her cheek like she had rubbed her face and forgot. She seemed to have forgotten a lot. The years had fallen away as she chatted.
Then Mirabel's eyes happened to lock with Bruno's. Her mouth froze into a moue, eyes darting between him and Señora Almeida's.
"Hola," Bruno didn't have anything better to say. "Mirabel," he added, just so she knew he knew.
Mirabel put aside the tamale she was folding and shucked on the expression of a healthcare expert as easily as one would a lab coat. She looked like she was checking off protocols in her head.
"How are you feeling? Did you drink the other water bottles?" Mirabel asked, crisp Colombian Spanish with a clinical overtone. Bruno cringed at the memory of really, really needing her help. He'd have been fine. Probably.
"Uh, not yet-" Bruno wasn't sure where to put his hands. He clasped his left arm, and was surprised to find a blue bandaid in the crook of his elbow. A smiling cartoon character on it gave Bruno a thumbs up. Mirabel noticed him looking and her professionalism crumbled.
"You were super dehydrated. Like crazy dehydrated on top of the migraine," Mirabel's nods were almost feverish as she tried to emphasize this.
"I couldn't figure out how else… I just hooked you up to fluids. I figured, I used to do this all the time for friends who were hungover, well.." Mirabel's trailed off, flushed.
"Thank you," Bruno tried to convey the depth of his gratitude. He wondered if he should mention he thought he was going to die before she intervened and decided against it. "It's fine, I feel great-"
He paused, torn.
"I wish you didn't have to come out all the way here just for that,"
The valley was about an hour from the medical campus on days with normal traffic. Sometimes when just enough drivers pushed the freeway to critical mass, Bruno could be out there for entire afternoons being microwaved in his truck. To trek out here for him not drinking enough water or something…
"Of course I had to!" Mirabel gasped, scandalized. Señora Almeida patted her arm and shot Bruno an accusatory glare. "I'm a nurse. It's like the hippocratic oath junior,"
"Well, I owe you," Bruno repeated. It wasn't enough. How was he supposed to pay her back, when all he did was sell fruit? "I can drive you back whenever, just let me know."
Señora Almeida's displeasure intensified and she deigned to speak to Bruno for perhaps the first time in years.
"This sweet girl has made at least fifty tamales, and you want to take her away before she can have even one?"
Sweat pooled at the nape of Bruno's neck.
"Just so she knows she has a ride,"
"Of course she has a ride," his landlady gave an imperious huff. From her tone, Bruno gathered that if he hadn't volunteered himself to drive Mirabel, Señora Almeida would have volunteered him. "Mirabel," she continued, "Would you please help me move this?"
The two of them wrestled the large steamer around the tiny kitchen. Bruno sat on the living room couch next to an old woman napping open-mouthed and snoring through the ruckus. He watched as the two moved in tandem to pack the giant steamer as tight as possible, talking mostly about Señora Almeida's grandchildren. Mirabel kept glancing over to Bruno on the couch and smiling, looking for his response to the conversation or perhaps making sure he didn't keel over.
Soon the kitchen was filled with the wonderful smell of steaming tamales. Jaime came in to steal some of the tamale fillings and to recount the last half hour of the movie that was still playing in the courtyard. Mirabel asked a couple of follow up questions, and for this unprecedented gesture received one of Jaime's coronas.
Home, whispered the part of Bruno he had tried and almost succeeded at killing. Family.
Don't forget yourself, Bruno thought in his most strident American accent.
It was deep into the night by the time Bruno and Mirabel sat in the front of his truck on the way back to the city. Two scented pine trees and a San Cristóbal keychain vibrated on the rearview mirror with the engine rumble. A foil-lined cigar box of tamales for Mirabel rested on his dashboard. The headlights of cars swept over them at regular intervals, counterpoint to the ticking of Bruno's signal as he switched lanes.
Mirabel sprawled in the passenger seat, fiddling with the embroidery on her pockets and watching the billboards race by. The radio burbled almost inaudible pop and late night news. Bruno was too much of a coward to turn it off.
Bruno glanced over when he could to watch the light run over Mirabel's face and catch on the edges of her glasses. They had been talking about Colombia- romping through each other's versions of the city.
Bruno took Mirabel on the circuitous bus route into the city that stopped for every tiny village, for every farmer along the road. Mirabel's Bogota was hazier, more abstract. You could hop from east to west of the city in twenty minutes, the buses and cars combing like ants through the street.
The weather was the same. No matter the decade, Bruno and Mirabel would both end up cowering from an underestimated rainstorm under the awning of a convenience store. The only difference between them was programs playing on the television above the counter.
Bruno rhapsodized about the empanadas on a corner in La Candelaria, and Mirabel had not only tried them, but reported that they now sold t-shirts, lanyards, mugs, tote bags, and photo-ops to tourists. Other treasures were not as lucky. Bruno shook his head, disgruntled, at Mirabel's description of the hair salons and boutiques that had steamrolled the quiet suburb streets where Bruno and his friends had kicked a ball around.
They paused together at their memories of Dia de Las Velitas - all the little candles lighting up the city streets and filling every house with twinkling flames. Too homesick to continue.
They both refused to talk about family.
Now they sat in a comfortable silence as Bruno navigated the truck past the outskirts of the city, the giant billboards giving way to denser suburbs and sleeper neighborhoods, to the light-lined city center.
Bruno, without realizing it, had brought Mirabel to the usual place he parked his fruit truck.
"Sorry- force of habit, " he admitted. "Where can I drive you?"
"Here's good," Mirabel's voice was strained. The radio continued to mutter unattended. Neither of them wanted to end the moment. Bruno wondered what he should say that he hadn't said already. Mirabel broke the silence.
"It wasn't just being a nurse that made me come," she mumbled into the quiet hush. The street was abandoned at this hour- no shift change, and not even the college students coming back from parties during this time of the summer. Bruno looked over to Mirabel, tracing his eyes over the gentle curves of her cheeks, the grace of her downturned eyes.
"When you were missing… I realized," Mirabel's voice hitched, "That talking to you was one of the things helping me keep it together every day,"
Mirabel folded her arms, slumping into herself. Bruno could wince at the admission- one he could have made himself if it came down to it. But there was an equal measure of relief. They weren't just a nurse and a fruit truck guy, even if they had kept the charade going for months now.
"I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense-" Mirabel hiccoughed, and Bruno intervened. She had said enough.
"How about I give you my number?" Bruno suggested. "You can call me any time,"
For anything, he added silently.
"You should have mine too," Mirabel nodded, pulling out her phone. "I can't believe no one's written you a script for those migraines,"
Bruno didn't have insurance like that, but she didn't need to know. He produced his own phone and Mirabel smirked.
"I'm not making fun of you," she laughed to hide another tremor in her voice. "I just knew you were a flip phone guy."
They exchanged numbers. Mirabel watched with fascination as his fingers flew over the number grid of his dinosaur phone to spell out M-I-R-A-B-E-L.
"Thanks," Mirabel hesitated, and then she leaned into the gap between them. Bruno could smell floral shampoo, traces of medical grade chlorine and achiote from the tamales. Her lips were warm on his cheek- barely there- before she took off out of his truck, door slamming behind her.
Bruno watched her jog back into the medical complex. He brought his own hand to rest on his cheek, and puzzled.
Later, they would fill these dark hours with thoughts they were scared to bring out during the day. Mirabel would lean heavily into Bruno's side, challenging him to let her belong there.
Mirabel would tell Bruno how this nursing program was her last chance before her family declared her a lost cause. How she never wanted to be a doctor like her mother, but nothing else she did seemed to matter. How she hated the hospital so much she could scream- hated the sterile slate halls, the smell, and the other nurses who thought she was a lunatic.
Bruno would have learned by then how Mirabel's eyes became softer, dreamier without glasses. How sometimes she spoke in a low voice about the jungle and mountains, her family's giant Spanish style house in the countryside, each person who lived there. She would sketch them in the dark by color, their wonderful gifts, the empty space they left in her life. Bruno would run his hand over her back, feeling equal parts blessed and helpless to be trusted with these wounds he couldn't heal.
Later still, Bruno would reveal the decades-old scar where he had finally cut himself off from the great space his family meant him to inhabit.
"I was supposed to come back when I was rich and successful," he'd confess to his apartment's popcorn ceiling- even as Mirabel curled next to him, craning her neck to catch his eye.
But that brilliant future never manifested. He botched every opportunity. Every lead, every good friend, every relationship. He'd tell her how even now, with them, he was waiting for the catch. Mirabel would hold him tighter then in protest. He would be unrecognizable to that family anyway.
Bruno would let Mirabel run her fingers through his hair, even if it was greying. They'd watch the strobing of a muted television, while they kept still and safe from the passing time.
And together, their broken pieces would fit. They'd make arepas in Señora Almeida's kitchen and convince Jaime to play telenovelas for the seniors. They'd buy out all the plastic candles in the 99 cent store, and try to make a Dia de las Velitas in the courtyard. Bruno would bestow upon Mirabel each of his hard earned English lessons with kindness instead of ridicule. Colorful art, the cheery set of plates Mirabel found at a Salvation Army, Mirabel herself would all displace the disposable plastics and traveler's compromises in Bruno's room. Bruno would start living like a permanent resident in his apartment, body, and life.
That was later.
For now, Bruno drove off by himself under the bright stars of city windows- offices burning into the midnight, hotel check-ins, 24 hour convenience stores, first apartments, old apartments, the whole host who lived here.
And for the first time in years, he didn't feel alone.