“So where to?” I add so she doesn’t have to defend it. “It’s your city.”
“Um,” she says, toying with a few strands of hair, looking around her. “Well, what have you seen? I don’t have a car so I’m not sure how far I can take you.”
“I have a car. I’d be happy to drive anywhere, so long as you’re there.”
Her cheeks flush even more and I have to hide my smile. I love getting this reaction out of her, and it’s so easy to do.
“Okay, well, that might make things easier,” she says. “I think some of the best shots in the city, you know, to get a real feel for it, are a little harder to get to by public transport. Doesn’t mean I don’t do it all the time, but I’m not sure if you’re up for that.”
I nod my head toward the top of Taylor Street, beyond the school. “Come on, let’s go to my hotel and get the car. I’ll drive, you tell me where to go.”
She seems hesitant, maybe because the two of us on public transport would be safer, or at least less awkward, in her eyes. But my smile quickly convinces her otherwise.
“So, what did you learn today?” I ask her.
She sighs, adjusting the camera bag on her shoulder. “Nothing important. I mean, I guess it is but…just something I’m not thinking about yet. Setting up your own business. How to work freelance. That kind of thing.”
“That doesn’t interest you?”
She shrugs, flipping her hair. “It does. I mean, I want this to be my career, you know? But…it’s scary. Because it makes you think about what’s after that. I still don’t know what I want to be. I know what people expect me to be…”
“What?”
“My mother,” she says, pressing her lips together. She catches me staring at her and gives me a quick smile. “It’s not a bad thing. My mom is great. It’s just, well, she’s actually a well-known photographer. In the bay area, anyway.”
“Is that so? So it runs in the family.”
“Yeah, we’re all kind of artists. Except for Ben. He’s my brother. He lives in Santa Cruz, is almost done with school there. He’s into, like, MMA fighting and computer hacking and all that.” Hacking? It reminds me to tread carefully with that too. If someone with any kind of hacking experience wanted to really find out who I was, they could link me to the cartel pretty quickly.
She goes on and I make myself pay attention. “I don’t remember him being very artistic but I could be wrong. Maybe he secretly paints or something. Then there’s my dad. He’s a tattoo artist.”
I give her an impressed look. “You mean he was or still is?”
“Still is. I know, he’s like almost fifty. But he’s not stopping anytime soon.”
“And why should he?” I tell her. “My father is at the height of his…career. And he’s not stopping either. Sometimes I think he should take a break and sometimes there’s too much pressure on me…”
“Oh yeah?” Now she’s really intrigued, chewing on that shiny lower lip. “What does he do? What does he want you to do?”
I scratch at my stubble. “He’s an importer and exporter of various products. You’re pretty and white, so you must like avocados.”
“He grows avocados?”
“Doesn’t grow them,” I tell her. “He just buys them from other countries, sells them to the US, passes them across the border.”
I’m not even lying, not really. The inside of fake avocados can hold an awful lot of opioids and fentanyl. If you held one in your hand, you’d swear they were real. They even squeeze the same way, smell the same way. The drugs come in, the avocados go out. Of course my father and I don’t have much to do with that process, but we’re the ones who orchestrate it, one of the many different ways we get the drugs where they need to go—right into the hands of the American people.
“By the way, I may be white and pretty, but I don’t like avocados,” she says a few beats later as we turn onto California Street.
“No avocados? You’re rebellious, aren’t you?” I tease her quietly. “Do you have any tattoos? Or is that not considered rebellious if your father gave them to you?”
“How do you know he gave them to me?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it’s not such a bad-ass statement when your father does it. But yeah, I’ve got them. The only one you can see right now though is this one.” She peels back the sleeve of her jacket to reveal a highly-detailed Death Star from Star Wars with the word RESIST underneath.
“Resist, persist,” I say, finding myself warming to her. “You’re not just rebellious, you’re part of the rebellion.”
She laughs. “I wish. My parents taught me to question everything and so…that’s what I’ve been doing.” At that, her brows pull together, as if an unpleasant thought has slid into her brain. I want nothing more than to erase whatever thoughts she’s having that make her look less than happy. I think, no, I know I could make that happen too, if she gives in to me. The thought of her naked on my hotel bed, eyes rolling back in her head while I count her tattoos with my tongue. She’d have no thoughts, no worries, except me.
Vicente will be the only name on her lips.
“That’s probably what makes you a great photographer,” I tell her. “Questioning everything you see, never taking anything for granted. Plus, you’re observant. You noticed me in the café the other day before we even met.”