Neal Pollack

It was not unusual for him to come home hurt, to have sprained an ankle running, to have his face torn apart in a fight, to take a bullet in the flesh of his arm. He’d always come to her first, he’d always come to be cured by her hands and to sleep off the doubt and fatigue in her bed.

He brought her the usual romantic offerings of chocolate and flowers but also books and records, including an import of Moraima Secada singing filin, which could always make her cry. Instead of cocaine, he brought her what seemed an interminable supply of hormones; these made her smoother and curvier, her muscles softer though she was no less formidable.

Sometimes, on her days off, he’d show up in the early evening and they’d watch a movie and make dinner together. Destiny realized she’d never seen him anywhere outside of the club or her apartment, a place she kept warm, ready, but barred to all other visitors out of respect for Beto. Except for that last time

At some point, of course, Virginia knew, the other queens knew, everyone knew. But it was so startling that even as time passed and all the little clues accumulated to create a rather convincing circumstantial case, doubt nagged even the most vociferous gossips; insecurity, and perhaps fear too, because Beto Chavez wasn'’t anyone to trifle with, dogged even the most convinced.

Could it be real?

If things hadn'’t changed so dramatically, if everything hadn'’t ended so abruptly, if her world hadn'’t collapsed so utterly, Destiny wondered how long they could have gone on like that

Back then she would have said forever, she would have wanted forever, would have believed in it.

But now, even as she sometimes touched the loosened shoelace on her own homemade altar to Sain't Dimas, she knew that everything Zoe Pino would write about her—the pageants, the titles, the movie, her sanctified role in the most prestigious drag show in all of Chicago, the ridiculously profitable website (Quique, now her manager, had come up with it), the sensation she caused on returning to Havana for a millennium appearance captured by CNN (for 2001, not 2000, because the Cubans did not agree with the rest of the world on the new century’s commencement)—none of it would have happened if she and Beto had continued their journey together.

Catastrophe happened on an early and placid Tuesday evening in late summer. Destiny’s windows were open and she heard Beto’s voice downstairs greeting the barber, who’d stepped outside to take in the wild palette of sunset descending west on 18th Street. She leaned out eagerly, imagining herself like Juliet for a moment, ready to hear promises from her Romeo, when she suddenly caught sight of a pickup truck inching its way down the street, a couple of black-garbed men, not cowboys but more like ninjas, leaning over the cab, the stout barrels of their automatics slowly taking aim.

Destiny’s mouth opened. In her head, she screamed, as loud and precise as a missile. But the only sound heard for blocks and blocks was the explosive rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire as Beto Chavez danced like a marionette on the cracked Pilsen sidewalk, his arms reaching out to the barber who fell beneath him. Within seconds, the pickup truck was an eastbound blur, a cloud of smoke and black powder slowly settling in its wake.

Destiny raced downstairs, her throat still incapable of noise. She pulled Beto off the barber, onto his bloodied back, only to find the bullets had made tripe of his chest and belly. Her hands went to keep him together, to keep him whole. The barber’s wife was now on the ground beside him, the light disappearing as people gathered, leaning in. Someone tried to pull Destiny off Beto but she cuffed him so hard he fell back and no one else dared get near her.

“Go

” Beto whispered. “Get out of here

”

She tried to protest but the words were still struggling to exit, impossible to form. She noticed his chain with the Sain't Dimas cross on the ground and picked it up, letting the light glint off of it so he could see she’d saved it.

He licked his lips. “See you in paradise

okay?”

Zoe Pino cocked an eyebrow in Destiny’s direction. “C’mon, he didn'’t really say that.”

“I swear.”

Destiny lit another Romeo y Julieta. She’d lost count. The bitch had gotten her to tell the whole damn story and now she didn'’t believe her?

“‘I'’ll see you in paradise’? I mean, that’s

”

“I know, I know,” Destiny interrupted. “How do you think it made me feel? And how do you think it makes me feel now to know I can never tell that story because nobody will ever fucking believe me?”

“No, no, I believe you,” Zoe insisted. “It’s just, well, unbelievable. I mean, it’s

Look

you know what I’m trying to say.”

Destiny nodded.

“So that’s when you left Pilsen?”

“I had to.”

“What do you mean you had to?”