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Terri Russo.
    My grandmother took a deep breath. “Otra cosa,” she said. “You will have to change something. Aqui. ” She pointed to the paper and explained what it was she wanted me to add.
     

     
     

     
    I’d gotten into it, I always did, adding details, blending with my fingertips.
    “Bueno,” she said, then sat back and crossed herself. “But… está mal. ”
    “What’s bad? My drawing?”
    “No, neno. The room.”
    “It doesn’t seem so bad, uela. ”
    She raised a jeweled hand to stop me from talking. “There is a man in the room—or the spirit of a man. Chango has sent a warning. I cannot see him, but…maybe you can.”

    “You want me to draw a man you haven’t seen?”
    My grandmother looked at me as if believing I could, but lifted a finger to my lips. “Escucha,” she said.
    I stopped talking and did as she asked, listened.
    “Hay más,” she said, and explained it.
    I went back to the drawing and tried to capture what she described.
    “It looks like hell,” I said. “Your vision. Not my drawing.” I laughed, but my grandmother did not. She crossed herself. “There is something else in that room. ¿Cómo se dice? Un diseño. In front of the window, a circle…And inside the circle,” she went on, “ un diseño, another one…I had it in my head, but…it is gone.”
     

     
    “Close your eyes and let it come, uela. ”
    After a moment she said, “¡Lo veo!” and told me what to draw.
    When I was finished she smiled because I had done a good job, but her smile faded fast.
     

     
    “The ashe in that room, no es bueno. ”

    Ashe: the basic building block of everything according to Santeria.
    She reached for my hand. “Nato,” she said. “Tengo más que decir.”
    “What is it, uela ?”
    “You, neno, ” she said. “You are in that room. Not now, but…sometime. It is hard to explain.” She let go of my hand, crossed the room, and gathered up seashells scattered between the goblets of water on the bóveda. “I will read the shells and figure out exactly what sort of ebo will keep you safe. No te preocupes. ”
    “I’m not worried, uela.”
    “Nato…” She tried to smile. “Make your abuela happy.” She plucked a large purple candle off the table and handed it to me. “Take this and burn it in your apartment. For me, for your abuela.”
    “It doesn’t work if you don’t believe, does it?”
    “There are forces stronger than you, Nato. Por favor, toma la uela.”
    She handed the candle to me, and I took it.

9
    B ut we have theater tickets, Perry, you know that.” His wife whined in the singsong Indian accent that he once found so adorable.
    “Take one of your girlfriends, baby.” He pulled her to him, locking his fingers firmly behind her back, their faces inches apart.
    “You smell like a cigar.” She managed to get one of her hands to his chest and tried to push him back. “And don’t call me baby.”
    They’d met at the UN, some party for the delegate to Botswana. He’d come with the woman he’d been seeing at the time, a leggy blonde, secretary to the delegate from Botswana, but the moment he’d met Urvishi he’d forgotten about the blonde. Urvishi was a translator, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But that had been seven years ago. And who was it who said that no matter how beautiful the woman, somewhere there was a man who was tired of fucking her? Wise man, thought Perry Denton.
    “You used to like it, bay-bee.” He grinned and tightened his grip, then let her go and took a step back. “Look, baby, you’re the lucky one. You get to go to the theater. Me, I’m stuck in another damn meeting with the mayor.”
    “You spend more time with the mayor than you do with me.” She pouted like a little girl.

    “You have any idea the kind of pressure that comes with my job, baby?”
    “I think you like your important meetings.”
    Denton’s hands clenched into fists and twitched at his sides, but the wife of the chief of