THE PAINTED LADY
“Love never dies.”
—tagline from the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
She was one to talk, that giving in to breathing the tequila air was to take in, like a lover, the nervelessness of affection without hope or resurrection. Lost love can be found in the bottom of the bottle, she said once, with that smile bordering on sadness; or madness. I remembered this because her face was a haze when she spoke to me last, but that was Veronica. She was always a puzzle. Also this: that everything else began to shrink around me, everything consciously there, and yet not there, everything throbbing and mocking.
Soon I gave up even trying to breathe deeply, and I found myself gasping, doubling up with exertion. The air was suddenly cold, every hair in my body rebuffed its roots. I
