Alma of My Heart Read online

  ALMA OF MY HEART

  A Love Story

  By

  Susanna Lo

  "Susanna Lo has taken me on a joyful, heartfelt journey. Filled with beautiful imagery, this book is a must read.”

  - Heather Matarazzo, Actress

  The Princess Diaries, Hostel: Part II, and The L Word

  -

  "Alma Of My Heart is a novel destined to be a cinematic gem."

  - John Corser, Academy Award-Nominated Producer

  STAY THIRSTY PRESS

  An Imprint of Stay Thirsty Publishing

  A Division of

  STAY THIRSTY MEDIA, INC.

  staythirsty.com

  Copyright © 2010 by Susanna Lo

  All Rights Reserved

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected]

  Atten: Permissions.

  Cover Design: Jason Mathews

  Susanna Lo

  ALMA OF MY HEART

  A Love Story

  If you have friends that know your heart,

  distance cannot keep you apart.

  - Wang Bo

  1

  Tijuana was a putrid, foul place for the poor. Death festered in every corner while drunken frat boys chugged beer and tanked shots of tequila like liquid gold. Oblivious to the poverty and grime of this Mexican border town, these privileged youth caroused the night for reckless fun and cheap cunt.

  Gael Rivera Fonseca made a fortune from these wealthy brats, enough money to keep him in a life of luxury with a beach house along The Calafia Coast. He was smart enough to never do business in the heart of Tijuana’s Avenida de la Revolucion. He invited his clients to a nice lobster dinner at his restaurant in Puerto Nuevo and all transactions were handled over a fine glass of Don Julio. He even let them stay over in his guest wing at the beach house if they were too drunk to wind through the dark roads of Rosarito on their way back to their precious Estado Unidos.

  Such a lovely man, Gael Rivera Fonseca.

  Irena Montoya worked for Gael at his beach side estate. She cooked, she cleaned, and she wrote his e-mails as Gael was illiterate. He made one million pesos a month, close to nine hundred thousand US dollars a year, and paid Irena one thousand pesos a month, less than eighty US dollars. Some nights, he kept Irena so late catering to his clients that she would have to spend the night out in the laundry room, as there were no buses left to take her back to Tijuana. Irena never complained. She was grateful for the work. Not the cooking, not the cleaning. Irena was grateful to have access to Gael’s computer.

  Gael slept until noon. He spent the late afternoons and early evenings looking for new clients in Tijuana. He ate his dinners in his restaurant and frequently didn’t return home until ten at night. This gave Irena much free time to use his computer, and the Internet, where she educated herself and learned to speak English.

  When Irena was a child growing up in the poverty soaked hills of Tijuana, people always used to shake their heads when they looked at her. “Such a beautiful child, it’s a shame her mother is so poor and so proud. If she weren’t so poor, Irena could marry a rich man. If she weren’t so proud, Irena could sleep with many rich men and make lots of money.” Irena didn’t want to marry a rich man or sleep with any for money. She wanted to be educated. She wanted to make her own money. She wanted to marry a poor man, if he loved her and she loved him.

  Roberto Quinones Chavez was a poor man. And he loved Irena. Although Irena cared deeply for him, she knew she didn’t love him. Not in the way that made two hearts pound as one while joy filled their souls. Her love for Roberto was the love for a friend. But not a day went by in which Roberto would say to Irena, “Marry me, have my children. My cousins live in Los Angeles, we can go there together and start a new life away from the filth of these hills.”

  Irena liked the idea of moving away from the filth but she did not want to marry Roberto or have his children.

  In The Hills of Tijuana the underprivileged spent their nights drinking and gossiping to forget the pain and suffering. They spent their days on the decayed concrete of the highways and roads that lead to San Diego; dreaming of the better side while laboring for a precious dollar that could feed the whole family for a night. They required their children, young and old, to walk the sidewalks, selling cheap Chiclets with a toothless, decayed smile and trading in a carefree childhood for a lousy meal.

  Irena’s mom was a single mother, common in The Hills, where the men left for better pastures across the borders with a chaste promise to return. The women, foolishly falling for the fake declarations of chastity and love, would send their men off with tears and the loss of their virginity never to see them again. Mothers took care of daughters as grandmothers took care of mothers too young to take care of themselves and a child. It would lead to a life of despair, crime, tragedy, that only drinking and gossiping could soothe.

  Irena and her mom were often gossiped about. They were too smart to sell Chiclets at the side of the road; too proud to spread their legs for the soldiers that crossed the border for a moment of pleasure. Each morning, Irena and her mother took the bus to Rosarito Beach then walked two miles to the luxury homes in Calafia to work for the wealthy. They made less than the women who gave it up for the American pigs that streamed in each night, but they were happy. They had each other. And they were proud.

  Which is why The Hills were lit with gossip the night Irena fell from grace. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her fault, she asked for it. It didn’t matter that it caused her great pain and suffering, she deserved it. It didn’t matter that she was one of their own, she wasn’t. “Irena Montoya got what was coming to her”, they praised.

  The day started off like any other day. Irena would wake up at five in the morning to shower first and make her mother a special breakfast of onion and tomato frittatas. Irena’s mother was originally from Barcelona, Spain and moved to Ensenada with her parents when she was sixteen. That would explain her fair skin and Spanish green eyes. And her love for frittatas. Irena wanted to give her mother as much extra sleep as she could. Her mother’s health had been poor of late and Irena wished for nothing more than to be able to take care of her mother and let her rest in her older years.

  As they took the steep walk towards Calafia, Irena’s mother started breathing heavier than usual. Knowing this was not a good sign and realizing they didn’t have the money for a proper doctor, Irena insisted her mother head home and she would cover her work for the day. It is for this reason that Irena was late arriving at Gael’s home and needed to stay longer to finish her chores and his emails.

  At 10:00 pm, Gael returned home with three young men from Los Angeles wearing USC Lettermen jackets. Relieved that Irena was still there, he had her make them her specialty Pina Coladas, in a way only Irena could make them. Irena had an amazing knack for cooking and drink making. Her food tasted like delicacies from heaven and her cocktails were magical potions.

  She made them each a glass and blended an extra pitcher, spending an additional hour cutting the pineapple and cracking fresh coconut to squeeze the juices from. By the time she was ready to leave, it was too late to make it back to Rosarito and catch the bus to Tijuana. She would have to spend the night in the laundry room on the makeshift bed created from the table she used to fold Gael’s clothes. Although his house had two wings and eight bedrooms, it never occurred to him that he should offer Irena one of the rooms for the night.

  She was exhausted when her head hit the wooden table and her eyes quickly drifted off to sleep. She didn’t hear the door to the laundry room open. She didn’
t see the three men enter the room until it was too late.

  Her screams were useless. Gael was the only one who could hear. And just like it never occurred to him to offer her a room in his house, it never occurred to him that she was suffering, in pain, crying for mercy as the three men violated her. The only thought that crossed Gael’s mind before he fell asleep was, if she didn’t come back, how would he be able to find another girl who could make mole as well as Irena and also be able to type.

  Irena curled herself into a ball and cried herself through the night. She dreamt of a hot shower and the comfort of her mother’s bosom. Years later she would still remember the stench of the drunken men’s breath and the brutality of their bodies as they rammed into her.

  In the morning Irena left for home, painfully walking through the winding road towards Rosarito. Gael had woken up for a brief moment and hoped she’d remembered to make her special onion and tomato frittata before leaving. He promptly fell back asleep before giving it a second thought.

  The people on the bus ignored her partially torn skirt and bruised legs. They ignored the swelling in her right eye and looked the other way. As the bus approached The Hills, Irena considered staying on it until it reached Avenida de la Revolucion. She wanted to spare her mother the pain of finding out what had happened to her. She wanted to save her mother from the incessant gossip of feeble minds.

  She lived at the top of The Hill; by the time she reached her home everyone in town knew what had happened. And for once, they were happy. Except for Roberto who started to cry. And Irena’s mother, who had a heart attack and died.

  2

  Mount Olympus was a very unique hill in the heart of Hollywood. With streets like Wonderland Drive and Zeus Lane the implication was that this neighborhood was for gods and royalty. Bentleys and Jaguars perused the streets without a care in the world on the hills of Mount Olympus and the views were spectacular. You could see the city lights for miles on end but you could not see the laborers and peons that needed those lights to work through the night.

  Colby Winthrop III lived on Zeus Lane with his brand new BMW 7 Series, his classic green Triumph TR6 and his titanium and diamond studded Rolex. His fiancé, Tatiana Jones, also stayed there from time to time. Tatiana preferred to live down the hill with the more common folk along Sunset Plaza and Alta Loma Drive. She liked to walk to Café Med after a long session with her trainer at Crunch and preferred shopping on her own at Trader Joe’s and the farmers’ market instead of having her food delivered by Bristol Farms. Tatiana needed to touch and smell her foods before she ate them.

  Unlike most women who spanned the section of Sunset between Fairfax and Doheny, Tatiana was a natural blonde. Her Russian heritage from her mother’s side gave her strong, tall bones, and her upscale English roots made her refined and genteel. But Tatiana wasn’t just a pretty face; she held a Graduate Degree in Architecture from The University of Southern California.

  From the moment Tatiana was born she was a creator. Her mother would hand her a crayon and paper and she’d turn it into a castle with shining stars and dolphins swimming in the open sea. On her third birthday Tatiana’s father brought home her first Lego set and within an hour she had built a skyscraper to rival Trump Tower. By the time she was ten, Legos and crayons were no longer enough. Her taste for the bizarre started to emerge when she requested a trip to the Gaudi Museum for her birthday. Of course her father obliged while her mother shook her head in confusion. On her sixteenth birthday she asked to be sent to Saint Petersburg so she could see the unique Russian architecture. Her mother beamed with pride and happily accompanied Tatiana on the trip.

  So it was with such dismay that a gifted creator like Tatiana couldn’t create the greatest thing imaginable: Life. Tatiana had always had problems with her period as a teenager. Her mother was in a panic when by the age of sixteen her monthly flow still hadn’t arrived. Tatiana’s father, however, was highly relieved. His little girl could continue to be his little girl even though she was pushing six feet tall. When her period finally came it arrived once and she bled for ten days straight. She thought she was simply going to bleed to death. When she finally stopped bleeding she was so relieved she didn’t notice that her period didn’t come again for another four months.

  Twelve years later, on the eve of her bridesmaid shower, Tatiana received the bad news from Dr. Singh, her OB-GYN. “I’m sorry to tell you, Ms. Jones, but you cannot conceive a child to full term”.

  Dr. Singh was from New Delhi and had a tendency to sound quite formal when she spoke. Tatiana had been seeing her for over three years and with each visit insisted that the doctor call her by her given name, but to no avail.

  “Even with In Vitro?”

  “It does not work that way. If you want a child, Ms. Jones, have you considered adoption?”

  Tatiana burst into tears. She cried from Dr. Singh’s office to the elevator. She cried all the way down the twenty-four-story ride on the elevator. The young messenger riding with her offered his paper napkin leftover from his lunch. She put her head on his shoulder, about four inches shorter than hers, and sobbed into his shirt. He felt compelled to walk her to her brand new red Range Rover, an engagement gift from Colby, and fumbled to open the keyless lock before realizing the code was her thumbprint. The messenger was baffled as to what a woman with such wealth and beauty would be crying over. She seemed to have everything. He didn’t even know about her brains and talents and he was already impressed.

  She drove home in a blur, not to her condo on Alta Loma, but to Colby’s house on Zeus Lane. Tatiana knew this would be the end of her wedding. She had to tell Colby that she could never have his children and she was sure he would want nothing to do with her after that. Why have barren wasteland when he could have his pick of fertile soil? Women had always wanted Colby the second he walked in the room. Even if they didn’t realize he was the heir to the Winthrop Airline fortune they threw themselves at him. At six foot three he was a nice compliment to Tatiana’s five eleven and a half. He was the Ken to her Barbie but only on the surface. When she blurted it out through her tears that she couldn’t have children he put on a brave, melancholy smile and said, “How ‘bout a cocker spaniel?” This made Tatiana cry even more.

  So it was with a tinge of sadness ten days later when Tatiana walked down the aisle of Loyola Marymount’s Catholic Church and accepted Colby’s hand in marriage. Colby seemed unaffected as he kissed her passionately with the priest’s permission. In fact, the priest was quite shocked that a Catholic man had such chutzpah to kiss his bride open mouthed in front of the whole congregation.

  Tatiana, always first to find the beauty in the ugliest of things, quickly recovered and was spinning happily on the dance floor by the time they reached their reception at The Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey. Colby, being the considerate man that he was, gave her a special gift at the reception wrapped in a big, silver box with a red, velvet ribbon; a beige cocker spaniel puppy named Bella. Of course, Tatiana immediately nicknamed the pooch Belly and would eventually feed her so much ice cream that she would live up to the name.

  Tatiana’s dad watched Belly as the newlyweds went on a three-week honeymoon to a luxury resort in Bali. The room had a private swimming pool and an outdoor shower surrounded by bamboos and gardenias. At night, the moon was so bright one could read a book while swinging in the hammock without switching on a light. Tatiana and Colby made sweet love each night but at the back of her mind each moment of pleasure was accompanied by a twinge of pain as she realized this was all there would ever be.

  3

  When Irena’s grandparents moved from Barcelona, Spain to Ensenada, Mexico with Irena’s mother, they never expected to lose their daughter to a common street vendor. Ricardo Vasquez Montoya came from a family of vendors that worked the arena at the Rosarito Bull Fights. One sunny afternoon he met the woman of his dreams when she approached him to buy a bag of mangoes, extra picante, double limon. He could not take his eyes off her shiny black hair
and stunning green eyes. In the blaring sun of the Mexican summer, she was pale like only the wealthy could be. He knew this young beauty would have to be his wife.

  Like the woman he loved, Ricardo Vasquez Montoya was a proud man and he knew he could never approach her parents and ask for her hand in marriage with the savings of a street vendor. In his neighborhood at The Hills, his family was one of the better off families. They had indoor plumbing and a bathtub, a luxury that would become his daughter’s passion at the end of each day of hard labor. Ricardo knew he had to become someone special before he could marry the woman of his dreams.

  On the night before his departure to Los Angeles to make his fortune, Ricardo secretly proposed to his green eyed beauty. From his life savings as a vendor, he spent 30% to pay the driver that would smuggle him to Los Angeles, kept 10% for his survival when he arrived, and used the remaining 60% to buy his beloved an emerald ring to match her eyes. She smiled in happiness when he got down on one knee and placed the ring on her finger. A single tear from her precious eyes dripped onto his face and he cherished the salty pleasure as the liquid glided into his lips. He did not expect to make love that night and fought the urge with all his might but his lover’s desire overwhelmed him and he succumbed.

  An hour before dawn’s early light he arose and left with a tender kiss to her precious lips and promised to return a rich man before the first summer light.