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crack, I saw Emilio let them in, my father and the man I recognized from the docks the day before. I remembered his sparse beard, his sloping shoulders and sagging belly. He’d talked to Papi and Emilio while Lola and Ana scoured the marina for guys.
    From the closet he looked different than he had at the docks. His face was the color of cigar ash, and when he spoke I could hear the trembling. My father’s face was full of things I’d never seen there before. Disgust. Cruelty.
    They spoke in Spanish, their voices too muffled for me to decipher their words, even when I pressed my face right up against the crack. And then the talking stopped. My heart thundered louder, faster, fuller, because it knew something about that silence that my mind didn’t. It had to have been my heart that told my eyes to look down.
    But I couldn’t.
    Papi nodded to Emilio and crossed his arms over his chest. The man started whimpering, and I felt the why? swirl faster and faster inside of me. Why would Papi and this man come to the yacht at two a.m., and to Emilio’s room, and why was my father staring at Emilio like that? Look down, look down, look down. My heart thundered it, but I couldn’t.
    Papi’s eyes commanded something. Prove yourself. Yes, that.
    One minute.
    I can’t do this anymore. I’m not waiting for the alarm.

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SIX       
    I ’m late again, but Jacques waits. Of course he waits. He scowls, complains, drags a chair I haven’t seen before—a soft, high-backed, brown leather dream—from the back office over to my radiator. And before he goes, he leaves another box of chocolate for me.
    â€œThank you,” I say.
    â€œYou look terrible.”
    â€œJust tired.”
    â€œMaybe you should sleep.”
    â€œMaybe,” I say.
    He shrugs and pulls gloves over his hands, a hat over his head.
    Again, I have to wait while he warns me against every possible danger, but it’s worth it. The longer I play here alone, the more intimate the music becomes. It seems unreal to think that I used to play outside the Metro where anyone could hear. Where Lucien could see.
    But Jacques does leave, and once my fingers are pulling at strings, I’m somewhere else. The music teases the real Emilio back to life. Like magic. And the other Emilio, the one with the floating arm and tight grip, the one with the dead eyes, doesn’t even exist. I’m plucking from sweet memories only.
    Like the night near the end of the summer that my father went into Key West for drinks with old friends and stayed overnight at their home, and Emilio and I had the deck to ourselves.
    â€œWhat do you want to be when you grow up?” His voice tickled my ear, making it hard to concentrate on the words. Cocooned in his arms, in a blanket, wrapped in a breezeless night, we were smaller than small, nearly invisible. Just specks on a boat, two heartbeats. The ocean could roll and swallow us if it wanted to. Thick black mist hid the stars and the moon, clung to my skin, made his skin cling to mine. We were waiting for the rain.
    â€œI’m not grown up to you?” I teased.
    He kissed my shoulder. “You know what I mean.”
    â€œI want to do what my dad does.”
    Did I feel his arms stiffen, or is that a detail my memory added later? I wish I knew, but this memory is too well worn to be purely truth, so maybe I’ve slipped that in since. Maybe he was only silent, waiting for me to continue.
    â€œI want to buy art,” I said.
    â€œYou want to be like him.”
    I did, but admitting it seemed childish. “Art makes me happy.”
    â€œOf course,” he said softly. Sadly, I think. Yes. That detail is definitely true.
    I turned my head and spoke into his neck. “Art and you.”
    There. The words out, I suddenly felt the