He felt an immediate jolt, like an electric current, running through his veins and something like a spark lighting him inside. All of a sudden the apartment was gone, melting beneath his feet. He saw a barren desert landscape with a sky of the most unbelievable blue; a blue he’d never seen before. A tortoise walked before him, slowly following a highway that was a black ribbon, twisting, turning, melting into the distance, and he sank into the highway, into the melting blackness of the pavement. Then he was running through a city. Past warehouses and shacks, past a circle of homeless people sipping booze in the darkness, until he reached a chain-link fence and scrambled up it. The fence was gone and he was holding a gun in his hands, and then it wasn’t a gun, it was a decapitated human head. He dropped the head and it rolled onto the floor, spreading a coat of red upon the white tiles. Red the walls and red the ceiling and red every single speck of everything until—
Atl’s hand wrapped around his wrist, steadying him, and he stared at her.
“You’re going to drop your cup,” she said in a hushed voice.
Domingo blinked.
The cup, he thought, and looking down he realized yes, he was holding a cup.
He took a deep breath.
“I got you a drink,” he said.
Atl sat up on the bed and took the cup from his hands. She sipped her tea. Domingo stayed by the side of the bed, still too rattled to attempt to stand up.
“They’re just memories,” Atl said.
“Huh?”
“Memories,” Atl said. “My memories. It happens, when you’ve shared your blood with someone. There are echoes, bits and pieces that stay in your head. When you touched me … I’m tired, I wasn’t prepared for it, and you saw.”
That’s almost like a superpower, he thought.
“I saw a highway,” he said, frowning, and now he did move, by her side, sitting on the bed. “And there was a human head. What was that? Was that real?”
“They sent the head in the cooler,” she said, speaking as if she’d informed him about the weather or the time of day.
Domingo blinked.
“My mother’s head,” Atl said. “They chopped her head off and delivered it to our house in a cooler. The funny thing about a decapitated head is that it looks completely fake. You stand there and think, ‘This isn’t real,’ because it’s simply so rubbery. And my sister, they killed her too, burned her.” Her eyes fixed on him, cold, unpleasant. Her gaze was hard, black enamel.
Domingo didn’t know what to reply. He swallowed.
“They killed her. But I got back at them. I got them where it hurts. There is a phrase, ātl tlachinolli, ‘the water that scorches the earth.’ My name means ‘water’ but it is also war.”
She laughed, a brief burst of derision.
“What did you do?” he asked.
She shoved the cup back into his hands, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’m too tired and hungry and it’s not making any sense and you shouldn’t know this. You shouldn’t listen to me.”
Atl covered her eyes with both hands. He thought she might cry by the way her voice cracked, and it might have been better if she did because he was befuddled, watching her sudden distress and not knowing what to do. She teetered at the edge of panic but did not quite fall.
“Do you want blood?” he asked. His body, after all, was the only thing he could offer.
She snapped her head up and stared at him. “Blood volume is replaced within twenty-four hours. Red cells need about a month for complete replacement. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“I can’t be drinking too frequently, no matter how much I want it.”
“Um … you don’t look too hot.”
“It’s my fault,” Atl said. “I’m soft. Pampered. My sister was right. She should be alive. She’d know what to do, how to do it right. I just keep messing up.”
“It’s all right,” he said, resting a hand upon her shoulder.
Atl smirked. He saw the white of her teeth. Normal teeth. Not fangs like in the comic books. But her eyes were odd, red, like she’d been weeping.
“Your eyes,” he said. “They’re—”
“I can feel it,” she said. Atl walked to the bathroom; the dog followed her, quiet as a shadow. She leaned against the sink, opened the faucet, and splashed water on her face with both hands. She placed her lips against the faucet and drank directly from it. When she was done, she looked into the mirror with a sigh. She peeled off her jacket, tossing it to the floor. She followed it with her blouse and stood in her undershirt.
“Are you going to shower? Should I turn around?” Domingo asked, and he immediately wondered if he was a total perv for asking that.
“No.”
“No, I shouldn’t turn around?”
“No, I’m not showering,” Atl replied, stepping out of the bathroom and sitting in the middle of the living room, her hands resting against her knees. “I’m…”
The dog headed toward her, sat next to its mistress, and her hands fell upon its head, an automatic gesture. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. The silence seemed to stretch for minutes and minutes.
“You know, I used to have a swimming pool as big as this apartment,” she said, the words slurred, as though she’d been drinking. “And now here I am. My kingdom for a fan. Or an ice tray. I feel warm and cold at the same time. Damn it.”
“If you really want a fan I can get you one,” he said.
“You don’t need to get me anything. You don’t…” She sighed. Her hands twitched and she clasped them together, as if in prayer. “Talk to me for a bit, will you?”
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“A movie you saw. Your favorite color. Anything,” she said, shrugging.
“I saw Dracula on the TV one time. Black and white,” he said, sitting down in front of her.
Atl rolled her eyes at him. “Good God, it’s always Dracula.”
“I saw Germán Robles one time, for real. Well, I was walking down Florencia and he was having a coffee at a coffee shop, just like everyone else.”