Vesuvio
Salvador has suggested they meet at Vesuvio. For him, the bar is a place of nostalgia. Whereas, Luisa has never left San Francisco. Lives in that same rent-controlled studio on upper Grant, where she paints, teaches, and sleeps.
She stops first for coffee and a sandwich at Trieste. “One clarifying gin,” she tells Jacques, a student of hers who works the counter. “Then I’m out.”
“Ooh, old lover in town,” returns Jacques, sliding over a steaming espresso.
“Oh, he’s old, all right.” Salvador must be seventy now. “He’ll probably show up in a beret,” Luisa cracks.
“I don’t buy the cool act, momma. You’re excited. Here; I have a brooch and a hat for you. Cobalt blue.” In exchange for painting lessons, Jacques provides a bounty of paste jewelry, sweater-dresses, and hats. His second job is manning a donation drop-off box in the grocery parking lot near the Mark Hopkins. Castoffs from opera and symphony hall ladies.
Salvador is waiting for her at a table overlooking Kerouac Alley. Yellow guayabera. Short beard. His hair is silver now. Messy. The sill is lined with potted spider plants. They are the only customers here.
His deep-set eyes take her in as she stands before him. Only to him is Luisa still young. “My heart,” he says. They take each other’s hands.
The bartender sees Salvador’s nod. Brings glasses of Hendricks with fat cubes of ice and slices of lime. Salvador leans toward her. “Something on my mind these days, Ms. Luisa. How easy it is to dismiss drug-fueled intimacy as false. But think of the absolute trust it took to go so high together.”
Luisa smiles. It’s like Salvador to launch into heavy talk after all this time. She supposes most of his friends in the suburbs have gone sober.
“Yeah,” she allows. “People now don’t get that. The core you, the real you.”
“Letting something consume you. Letting it come.” He releases her hand. She catches the scent of his sweat when she shifts to remove her hat. “I mean … that’s intimacy.”
Also intimate: That backyard brunch where they met, where Luisa, then in her twenties, had a couple of mimosas and tried to play his conga and Salvador said to slow way down first and let the feeling rise up from her pussy. Give herself over to it; feel herself burn. He was an older man and married. Her gay friends laughed about it, but Luisa had given him her number.
“Absolutely.”
“Pure intimacy in other ways, too, Ms. Luisa. An ecstatic union. We had that.” His eyes turn serious. “Just my statement.” She is brought out of her body at his words. Watches that tongue as he speaks. This man has pierced her. Tattooed himself on her skin. The same tongue. She strokes his arm and melts into herself.
***
Their drinks have been drunk and replaced. They’ve each filled the other with a little news, but mainly themselves with the other’s scent. Salvador’s tongue is dancing in Luisa’s ear. His fingertips taste of lime. She breathes him in.
Because someone who knew Luisa in her twenties knows what she is about.
Because Luisa feels like herself for the first time in ages. In the man beside her, she sees the broad-chested lover whose skin smelled of amber, who all those years ago would mouth her wrist and let her see the tip of his tongue before making her legs go liquid.
Because he sees her as she was, too.
After bringing more drinks, the barman makes himself scarce. Salvador’s tongue moves to Luisa’s neck. She feels like a woman in one of those French films they’d watch at the Roxie. In the glasses before them, ice cubes slide down across each other’s facets like the instant before an avalanche; like so much arriving, but slowly at first.
When Luisa at last excuses herself for the toilet, Salvador stays seated beneath the swagged stained-glass lights. She knows he’ll leave Vesuvio while she’s away from the table. She has seen his old man shoes, the folded-up walker. Luisa feels her old lover’s eyes on her rear as she walks away. In the toilet, she regards her reflection. What a gift, to be seen and desired. She touches her fingertips to the delicate skin beneath her eyes. Adjusts her beautiful cobalt hat.
Yes, he is gone. The barman gives her a polite nod. He would have helped Salvador to his Uber. Or maybe one of his family members has spirited him away to a group dinner. A sunset view. The drive back across the bridge and the freeways to home.
Luisa walks Grant Street past the Savoy Tivoli. She is a little dizzy. Past tall steps to iron scrolled gates. And finally reaches the grated entry to her own building.
Once, Luisa had burned for this man. Available for Salvador any time he could come. She spent more than one dawn curled in the fetal position on her bathroom floor, bereft. But by the time he announced his plan to divorce his wife and be with her, she sent him away. He’d wept, spent the night slumped outside her door. For years, Luisa ignored his letters.
Also true: Salvador exists. He is not a phantom pulled from a lifetime ago. He is flesh and blood, a man who knew Luisa in her juicy full-throated youth. He is the same man; she is the same woman.
She has her painting. Beautiful Jacques, who brings her treasures and weeps in Luisa’s arms when a boyfriend has jilted him. Coffee friends. Wine friends. Painting friends. The astonishing beauty of San Francisco. Columbus Avenue slanting down to the Bay and the Golden Gate.
She does not pine for bygone days. She owns her memories. They are hers.
***
Now Luisa has a new memento with its own color and heat. Lays it upon the old memories. Brimful desire is like a tradewind. Equatorial. Her urgent fingers find her center.
The window is open. Sunday night sounds. The smells of cooking. Luisa thinks of Salvador’s tongue. She and he are each other’s secret, still. They don’t need to see each other again. His hand is on hers, teaching her to play the drum. Under her raincoat, that afternoon at Washington Square Park. His tongue is marking all of her. With that thought, a feeling of great depth blooms in Luisa, where her soul resides. She lets ecstasy take her over, lets herself burn.
Mini-interview with Patricia Quintana Bidar
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
PQB: It was definitely around reading the works of working-class people like myself. And it wasn’t just a moment, but a galaxy of puzzle pieces swirling and clicking over the years. It was understanding that I am a western writer, a third generation Angeleno and first-generation college student shaped by a unique ancestry of a Mexican woman who married a Dutch general store owner in Southern Arizona, Spaniards who invaded Santa Fe in the 1500s, poor English laborers, and Danish Mormons in Holden Utah. I’m shaped by not belonging.
HFR: What are you reading?
PQB: Right now, two things. Solito, Javier Zamora’s stunning first-person account of having migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert at the age of nine. Zamora was joining his parents—who fled El Salvador during the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War—in the United States. I’m listening to the audiobook; it’s read brilliantly by the author. My words aren’t doing it justice! The other book is a “cultural and literary companion” to Mexico City; part of the Cities of the Imagination series put out by Interlink Books.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Vesuvio”?
PQB: Well, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the ages of characters in flash fiction and feeling salty that nearly all are from the perspective of either children or people in their 20s and 30s. I’m as guilty of this as anyone and there is nothing wrong with it. But I wanted to write something set in San Francisco, where I lived for many years, about people in their sixties or older. Then came a challenge I participate in from time to time: Monet Thomas’s Sexy Writing Challenge. The theme for this one was Tongues!
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
PQB: I’ve focused heavily during the past seven years on placing individual flash pieces in journals. My first full collection is being published by Unsolicited Press in 2025. I’m shopping my second collection around now. It’s so good! I am pivoting to thinking of myself as a creator of collections of short works—including the long short story form I embraced in grad school.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
PQB [Mounts plastic milk crate]: I see unchecked ageism absolutely everywhere. You don’t need to look hard to see messages prefaced with “Not to sound old, but …” or celebrating being mistaken for a younger person. Sexual elders depicted as hilarious. A flyer I found amusing depicted people over 55 as being hunched over and walking with canes. People fell over themselves insisting on their sexiness and vibrancy. I joked that the people in the flyer were over 55. Why aren’t people allowed to be old? Why is old even a pejorative? Messages that include generation-specific tags (Gen X, Gen Z, Millennial, Boomer and the like) chap my ass! I muted them on Twitter. I thought we writers were supposed to be creative, yet even people I admire cling to stereotypes—and openly denigrate people who are older—without a thought. I am a hundred times wiser than I was at 40. If we are lucky, we live to grow old. [Shakily dismounts.]
Patricia Quintana Bidar is a western writer from the Port of Los Angeles region. Her short fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Pinch, Atticus Review, and Moon City Review, and has been widely anthologized, including in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024 (Alternating Current), and Best Microfiction 2023 (Pelekinesis Press). Patricia’s novelette, Wild Plums (ELJ Press) is available from Amazon. Her collection of short works, Pardon Me For Moonwalking, is coming in December 2025 from Unsolicited Press. Visit patriciaqbidar.com. Twitter: @patriciabidar. Instagram and Facebook: @patriciaqbidar.
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Heavy Feather Review 