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made it all too real. It was an old smile, and in its own way, a kind one. As if Paula were saying Welcome to the real world, chica, it’s a bitch but you’ll do just fine .
    Nodding her thanks, stomach burning, Maya slipped off the barstool, and took up her shades. Walked out the door, up the stairs, and back into the cold. Past the bouncer, out onto the broad, ice slicked pavement, and pushed her hair back, put her shades on. She’d have to run. Take her money and go. No more Mercedes, no more lies, no more of this life. Buy a bus ticket to somewhere, anywhere, and hope that she’d catch a lucky break.
    And it was then that she saw him, the man in green with eyes of fire, smiling at her from across the street as if the Carnival were about to begin.

Chapter 3
     
     
    The day she had been released from the hospital, half mad with pain and grief, she had wandered into the first real estate agency she’d seen and asked to speak to a realtor. Maribel had but a dim recollection of the man, his expensive suit, his receding hairline, his expansive gestures. He had spoken for what seemed like hours, only then, finally, asking what she needed. A studio apartment, she had said. Large windows. Lots of light. Wooden floors. Nothing else.
    Money slipped from her hands like blood from a wound, precious only to those who yet intended to live. A car ride down in his Mercedes, the feel of the leather beneath her fingertips, the hum of the car, the drone of his voice. Finally their street, a narrow lane lined with trees, kinked into an angle midway between the two avenues. Brick fronts, stoops leading up to doors, each a different color, different personality. Hers had been a dark azure, a gold knocker in the center.
    Maribel had told the agent to wait in his car. He had been displeased, protested, but she had simply stared at him. His mouth closed, and he handed her the keys, his eyes displaying a sudden doleful expression of a man used to victimization. She had not cared, had ascended by herself, and entered the studio alone.
    Light. She stepped forward, eyes closing, breathing deep as if she could pull the white luminescence into her lungs. Three large windows looked out over the narrow street, and through them came a pellucid light that immolated her. She stood still, barely noticing the white walls, the caramel colored floor, the small kitchen tucked into the corner. Time slipped from her, and then, finally drawn back by the exigencies of the world, she returned downstairs. That afternoon she had the key, signed papers, and a new home.
     
    On her third day she discovered a small park next to a church on Hudson Avenue. Square, private and small, the snow and cold kept others from it, from the icy gray benches, from lingering beneath the skeletal canopy of the few trees that stood sentry over the central space where one might sit. Pulling her thick coat around her, Maribel slowed at the entrance, one gloved hand reaching out to touch the black rail spikes that erupted like fierce thistles in a phalanx along the park’s edge. Gazed at the pristine solitude within, and stepped forward.
    Almost magically the sounds of traffic and the city receded. She walked along the oblique path to the tiny park’s center, and brushed a corner of a bench clear of snow. Sat, back straight, and gazed at the warped and slender bough of the tree that arose like a yawning old woman from the central patch of dirt. Silence. Maribel closed her eyes. She felt like a tuning fork that was about to be struck.
     
    She had been with Antonio in 2007 when the UN had been assisting Timor with its reorganization. Had flown in, only twenty eight and newly married, the whirl of photographs and fashion displays left behind in Barcelona for the desolation of the this tiny country. Antonio had taken her under his wing, and they had punctuated their love making and time together with excursions into the towns. It had been then that she had seen things that had registered