Beth shook her head. “Tell me.” She needed to know this. This wasn’t about Flores. This was about how engrained the violence had become in Torres, how skewed his thinking had become.
Torres’ lips curled into a bitter smile. “Do you want to know if I rape women? Is that what you’re really asking? You’re asking if I am willing to hold a woman down and force my cock into her? Is that what you want to know?”
Beth nodded.
“Fuck you,” was his response. The ice in voice sent a chill through her.
“But you wouldn’t stop Flores,” she pressed.
Torres turned on her. In an instant her back was pressed against the elevator wall, a large arm on either side of her, his weight pinning her in place. In a blink of an eye she was completely overpowered. It was hard for her to breath. Her knees buckled. If he had not been supporting her, she would have fallen over. Torres leaned down and hissed against her ear. “Yes I would stop him. But don’t ever ask me that question again.” When he spoke, his lips brushed her ear. She shivered as his hot breath cooled quickly on the sensitive flesh of her neck.
Just as quickly, Torres released her. He righted himself just in time for the doors opening. “We’re going to breakfast,” he said, still not knowing she spoke Spanish.
Beth took a deep breath and commanded her pulse to slow but it refused. Whatever was left of the real Torres was there. The anger, that was him. “I need to get home,” she tried to say but it came out a whisper.
“Make time, Gatita. Flores needs to know there are no hard feelings.” Torres walked across the parking lot, not turning to see if she was following. Beth shook her head. What a sick world Torres inhabited, where trying to assault someone was glanced over with a nod of the head and an invitation to breakfast.
But she had put him in that world. Guilt threatened to overtake her. If Torres was the monster he looked like, she had helped to create him.
He opened the door to his black SUV and shut it behind her. His actions were more to do with making sure she got in the car than actual manners.
The interior of the car was spotless but she wasn’t surprised. Torres was meticulous with everything. He had even made the bed before they left the hotel. And he had hung up the towels and wiped down the sink so neatly, it was almost impossible to tell anyone was in the room, except of course for the tiny graveyard of alcohol bottles in the wastebasket. They were only in the trash because Torres had put them there.
Five minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of a breakfast chain. She hated to admit it, but she was glad they had stopped here because she was starving. She hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday.
A waitress seated them at a booth in front of the window, near the front of the store. The woman, whose name was Wanda according to the faded badge on her yellow pinafore uniform, smiled as she handed Beth a menu. There was a tiredness around her eyes that wasn’t concealed by her blue eye shadow. Beth recognised the look of an overworked woman. Her heart constricted painfully as she thought about her mom. The woman looked nothing like her mother, but she reminded her of her mom just the same: same job, same tired eyes.
“I’ll give ya a minute to decide,” the waitress said.
Beth knew without looking what she wanted. Only one food could cure a hangover. “Can I please get the buttermilk pancakes? And do you have peanut butter?”
The waitress nodded.
“Can I get a side of peanut butter please? Oh and a coffee please, decaf,” Beth asked.
Beth looked up to see Torres staring at her. His habit of watching her a bit too intently did not look like it was likely to end.
Torres ordered a black coffee and an omelette before he asked Beth. “Is the peanut butter for your coffee or your pancakes?”
“Pancakes,” she informed him as Wanda filled up her mug with hot coffee.
“Interesting.”
She waited for him to finish his thought but nothing followed. Beth took a deep breath. Thirty seconds went by, and then a minute. He was doing it again, not talking so she would. But damn if it didn’t work. He had obviously figured out that she was uncomfortable with silence.
“I get it from my mom. She puts peanut butter on everything. I think it started when we were kids. Peanut butter gives you a lot of bang for your buck, calorie-wise. We couldn’t afford very much but our cupboards were always stocked with discounted peanut butter. Do you remember the supermarket with the huge isles of discounted food with their yellow labels with black writing? You were never quite sure of what brand was actually inside because everything had a generic label. My mom said it was a culinary adventure.” Beth smiled at the memory. Only her mom could put a positive spin on poverty. But her mom could put a positive spin on anything. She saw everything as an adventure or an opportunity.
“You can smile. Who knew?” Torres said.
Beth nodded. “What can I say? Discounted food does it for me. Don’t get me started on government cheese.”
Torres raised a dark brow in question but he didn’t say anything.
“You don’t remember government cheese? It was the best. There was a surplus of cheese, so low-income families got massive blocks of cheese. We had to stand in line forever but at the end we got a ton of cheese. We are talking like the size of small house. Well not quite but they were big.” Beth couldn’t help but smile when she thought of the enormous pots of macaroni and cheese that filled their freezer for months. Somehow they never got sick of it. God she was talking a lot. Torres’ silence tactics were annihilating her policy of keeping her private life private. She supposed it didn’t really matter much if she told Torres things; it wasn’t like he had contact with anyone she knew.
“Can’t say I have experienced that culinary delight. No government cheese for me.”
“Maybe it was just a California thing.” Beth realised too late that she had assumed Torres had grown up below the poverty line too. She shouldn’t assume his family had received food stamps just because hers had. She never made that assumption about anyone else, weird that she would start with him.
Torres shrugged his shoulders. “They might have had it here. My parents were illegal, so there wasn’t a chance in hell of them getting in any government line.”
Beth nodded. “You say were. Are they still illegal?”
Torres finished his sip of coffee before he answered. “No. Dad is dead, Mom was naturalised. She was cleaning house for a government worker and he pulled some strings.”
The waitress returned a few minutes later with their order.
Beth spread the peanut butter over her pancakes before dousing it in maple syrup. She did not stop pouring until her waffle floated in the sticky concoction. Before she took a bite she cut off a piece and placed it on Torres’ plate. “You already had your childhood robbed of government cheese, you can’t miss out on peanut butter pancakes too,” she said by way of explanation.
Torres eyed the offering dubiously before he stabbed his fork into it.
“Well?” Beth asked before he had a chance to swallow.
Half of Torres’ mouth curled in his signature half smile. “It’s good. I have to admit the combination of sweet and salty works.” Just to be sure he cut himself another bite from her plate.
Beth smiled in return. Sitting with him here in daylight, he almost seemed…well, less scary. He still looked every part the hardened criminal but there was an ease about him that relaxed her in return. She wondered if there was an alternate reality where she could enjoy his company. Once she got past the terrifying part of him, he was actually easy to talk to, mostly because she could tell him stupid