Nectarivores

Photo by Harrison Haines / Pexels

Their type was easy to spot — the guy with a wife to cheat on and a family to ruin. Jaime, who preferred the English pronunciation because it made him feel more American, whatever that meant, and Yessi — Yessica only to her parents and grandparents — staked out bars together. Sometimes it went like this: A man would approach Yessi porque se ponía unos vestiditos that made her body sit nice and right in all the obvious places, and she’d tell them that the only way she’d go home with them was if they could find another guy, que she was a freak like that. Enter Jaime. Yessi would pretend to scope out the place until she caught sight of him, usually hanging at the end of the bar and smiling at an imaginary passerby.

“How about him?” she’d say. “He’s cute, and I like his aura.”

Usually the men hesitated, excited by the prospect of a threesome, but only on their terms. Their idea of a good time involved being worshipped like the last remains of a god. But Jaime was good-looking in that way where everyone knew it except him, not because no one told him but because he didn’t believe it. If he and Yessi were out dancing, it wasn’t rare for another woman or two to shimmy up between them, which made Yessi laugh because it was Jaime getting hit on by women, and Yessi would entertain it until she pulled Jaime away as he wiggled his fingers under his chin, dispelling the charm they’d cast.

Jaime hadn’t known about the hummingbirds until he and Yessi went to a botánica one day looking for agua de Florida, which he’d been prescribed after una consulta. He was skeptical at first, even though he grew up with warnings and respect for the things forever unknowable and unreachable to him, but when the woman asked him who Felix was and why Jaime was still thinking about him, he’d relented. Another customer was making her purchase, and the clerk at the register held out a small package wrapped in red satin. She handed it over delicately, like something sacred. The other customer left in hurry, saying nothing. Jaime set his items down: the bottle, one red candle and one white one, and oil for attraction. The woman had suggested these for the baños he took at home. Yessi offered to buy the flowers.

“Para el amor,” said the clerk with an assured nod, leaning across the glass desk, where charms and gold chains sat