The day Fernandez died I laid down on my olive-green sofa with my ruby-red boots strapped to my calves. 

It was also a day that I was at work, and Ellis the homosexual watched me with those curious, inset eyes, as I took the call in the backroom. I said, “hello?”, as if an innocent housewife with no one to phone, and somebody who I didn’t care for told me he was gone.

He had done it in front of his daughter - pulled the glock out of the belt that contained his meaty belly and shot himself in the mouth. I always thought Fernandez hated his daughter more than himself. I guess I’d been wrong about that. In my dreams, late at night, I imagined he’d call me before he killed himself. Wrong about that too. 

As I kicked my legs on the couch, occasionally putting my cigarette to my mouth and flicking the ashes on the copper ashtray of the couch table, I thought to read a magazine or a book, but a growing headache snarled inside my heavy head, and I finally picked up the phone, stretching the cord. I gave  it a ring. 

“Hello?” 

The voice at the other end was young and innocent. I imagined Lina’s chubby pre-teen hands grasping the plastic, blonde locks pushed up against her rosy cheeks. 

“Your father, Lina, he’s dead,” I sat up on the couch, cringing at the sound of the leather boots. My legs were pale and shiny, as my skirt rode up to reveal the marks. “I mean, of course you know, you were there, I shan’t forget. But I have been wondering about a couple of things, Lina. I would like to meet with you. For ice cream.”

That’s how I ended up in the glaring sun in summery New York. Lina was eagerly licking her strawberry ice cream, the drippings snailing down the cone and onto her fingers, which she dappled occasionally with a paper towel. That’s what kids always do, I think, as I watched her under the shade of sunhat. They’re unaware and messy, like dogs. Perhaps that was why Fernandez never liked her.

“What was the last thing he said?” I asked, legs crossed and pulling my sunglasses down. Lina stopped licking her ice cream, setting it down on her lap. “It wasn’t about me, was it?” 

“I couldn’t understand him.” Lina mumbled, fiddling with the bracelet I bought her for her fifth birthday. 

“Right.” 

Silence engulfed the space between us on the park bench, only the bustling city that always seemed to scream its noises when you didn’t need it to, had quieted down at this time. Lina picked up her ice cream again. 

“Did you see him regret it? Right after he pulled the trigger. That split second, did you see any regret in his eyes?” 

“No.” Lina began to bite at the ice cream after she answered. 

“Nothing at all?” 

She shook her head.

“Shucks.” I looked up through the shade of my sunglasses, birds flying in flocks overhead in the ominous ‘V’ shapes, and street lamps in the stark daytime - just about as useful as a man without money. “Imagine killing yourself in this weather.”

Me and Lina strolled together through the messy streets, and I was catcalled again and again and Lina just looked at me the whole time. Looked and stared and ogled. We walked past a storefront with bold, white mannequins in daring outfits, orange, purple and deep blue respectively. I stopped to look and Lina stumbled into my side.

“Aren’t they gorgeous? Would you like anything? Perhaps, a bag? Look at the one with the golden clasp!” I pointed and sure enough the orange-themed mannequin had a striking handbag. It was a mandarin color, clean indentations in crystallite patterns. I would’ve bought it for myself if the poor girl’s father hadn’t just died.

“I’m alright.” Lina mumbled.

“If you say so. I’ll come back for that thing if you don’t want it.” 

We walked again, silently. My shoes made noise. Lina was completely soundless - soundless like animals who know they aren’t safe.

“You know,” she said finally. I looked at her. “He did say something about you.”

My entire body came to a halt. The fish flocks on the street dispersed around me and Lina, and her face flashed in and out of my view, replaced by sides of black coats and fabrics covering faceless bodies. I bent down, hands grasping my thighs were the worst of the marks were.

“Say the slur. Tell me what he called me.”

Lina looked like she had just been punched in the gut. Or like her father’s brains had just been blown onto the wall behind him.

“Say the slur.”

“Tell me the f*cking slur!”