Page 7 of Saint of the Shadows

“You do. Her name is Annie Park.” Marisol slammed the locker shut. “She said she’s above performances of hetero normativity. In other words, we’re having a girl’s night out.” She fluttered her eyes, joking.

Marisol wasn’t exactly straight as an arrow, but if she ever did come out, she imagined there would be cake, tequila, and a smidge more sacrilege to make Mom go apoplectic, not the beat-up locker room after a long third shift. Nope, Ma Novotny’s disappointment in Marisol would come from wasting the childbearing hips she inherited with her standard case of spinsterhood.

Rossi pulled on her trapper hat. “A trip to the Varian estate? Could you spill a glass of really expensive champagne for me? Or chew up and spit out some caviar?” Finished with her layers, Rossi resembled a snowman.

All Marisol had to withstand the cold were pockets. “You got it,” she said.

Beyond the automatic doors, the air bit into her already dry skin. Rossi nodded to her and headed in the opposite direction. The morning sun blasted against Marisol’s back as she hunched her shoulders to her ears and stuffed her hands inside her pockets. First stop was the corner store to get her sunrise special.

The electric bell sounded as she stepped inside the store. It stank of old cooking oil and brewed coffee. Not the freshest coffee, but it was the best zap of caffeine for a person’s dollar. She filled one large paper cup with it and the second with hot water.

To Marisol’s amusement, the spirited conversation between the cashier and a customer overpowered the twang of the Greek guitar playing over the store’s speakers. She plopped a bag of chamomile tea into the second cup, sealed the drinks with a lid, and headed to the counter to pay, having assembled her sunrise special.

“Who reads actual newspapers, anyway?” the cashier said in an exasperated tone. “People read the news on their phones.”

“I still read it!” The customer tapped his finger against the counter—the counter he blocked. If Marisol waited any longer, she’d receive third-degree burns holding her beverages. The kook continued, “You can always tell what the rich and powerful are hiding from you with a physical paper. Not so with algorithms, links, and headlines they control.”

The cashier motioned for Marisol to step forward. She scooched behind the dramatic customer and dropped a few bucks in the metal tray under the scratched plexiglass partition.

The customer shook his wrinkled copy of the day’s paper. “Backpage and below the fold. That’swhere the real news is. That’s what will screw us over.”

The cashier tossed the change into the tray. Marisol mouthed, “Thanks” and moved on.

“Look here,” the customer continued, “not even two inches of text about the W.H.O. losing a virus in Manila. Mark my words! That’s what we should pay attention to, not Vincent Varian and whoever he’s bringing to a party.”

Vincent Varian again! Marisol couldn’t escape his vapid idiocy. The less space he occupied in the news or in her mind, the happier she’d be. She exited the store with the same sing-song bell that greeted her. The winter air provided welcome relief to her bare hands from the piping hot drinks. Though outside, she heard the conversation inside, building to a crescendo of a full-blown argument. Something about free refills being free as long as someone didn’t annoy the cashier.

Marisol hurried down an alleyway next to the hospital. Not too long ago, she and Annie would usually meet for a post-shift breakfast on one of the hospital’s well-hidden fire escapes. That was, until the morning Vincent Varian interrupted them, dry heaving over the ledge.

Annie’s heart-shaped face poked out of the cocoon of her thickly knitted scarf. With a mouthful of breakfast, she shouted, “Dude! Are you okay?”

In sunglasses and a wool coat, he was the epitome of refined cool despite his failure at ejecting his stomach’s contents. A half-chewedmorsel of English muffin dropped from Annie’s lips as she whispered, “Holy Mother of God. It’s Vincent Varian.”

Marisol handed him the last of her lotion tissues to wipe his mouth. She had splurged on the fancier ones to help her during Abuelita’s time in hospice and Caz’s arraignment. As she offered them, she said, “Some days you need the good stuff. If you swipe the toilet paper from here, you’ll sand your nose clean off.”

He gaped, dumbfounded, as if the help had never spoken to him before. “Just a hangover,” he said.

Her tissues had been there for her during the hardest part of her year, and their final use was assisting this rich bitch, who couldn’t party like a grownup. He mumbled a thank you and left.

Annie had finally swallowed her bite. “I feel like I just saw Santa Claus.”

Marisol and Annie agreed to meet in Annie’s lab, far from interruptions.

Now Marisol found an unmarked door and used her keycard to unlock it. The electronic screen welcomed in an unnatural cadence, “Hello, Marisol Novotny,” and she entered the research labs of the Varian Family and Research Hospital.

As a lowly nurse, her keycard should never have given her access, but she discovered the glitch in security shortly after her Varian sighting when she inadvertently leaned against the door, waitingfor Annie after a shift. It always worked, and no one cared to wonder why a nurse visited the labs.

Inside, she walked a few paces before smacking on a set of lights and stormed through the empty hallway toward the elevator. The elevator doors, scuffed and dented by carts and gurneys, opened feebly. After elbowing the up button, Marisol reached the sixth floor, and she followed the meager light from the lab of Dr. Annie Park.

Marisol tapped at the wired glass of the window and watched Annie’s pineapple-stem of an up-do bob while she continued at her computer.

The bespectacled doctor clicked an image of a chromosome pair. With each strand she clicked, a box of different molecular structures appeared in the screen’s corner. Marisol attempted another desperate knock. Finally, Annie noticed her and scooted her office chair to the entrance of her lab and opened the door without standing.

“Morning. I thought I’d find you here.” Marisol handed Annie the coffee.

Annie snatched the drink before wheeling back to her computer. “Morning? I always lose track of time.” She sipped the coffee, uttered a thanks, and returned to clicking.

Marisol sauntered around the counter island behind Annie. Notes and scientific journals scattered among rainbow-colored gossip magazines graced with the handsome mug of Vincent Varian. Some covers varied—his shit-eating grin on one, his posh pout on the other. Marisol read over theheadlineVINCENT VARIAN: LATE BLOOMER OR AFFLUENZA?and felt like setting it afire with the Bunsen burner. She picked up a magazine, dangling it like dirty underwear. “Really Annie? These rags?”

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