Page 5 of Thin Lives

Closing his eyes, Calisto could almost bring back the sensations he felt when he was in the midst of the memory.

All the anger and sadness.

Rain hitting his face.

Light and metal.

Calisto opened his eyes once more—the church. He had been at church, refusing his priest time for something the man wanted from him.

Father Day had long been a confidant of Calisto’s—even when he was young boy. He hadn’t gone to see the priest beyond the occasional Sunday service that he fit in between work and rehab.

Calisto wondered if that’s what he had been missing. Was his brain trying to tell him to go back to the start of that night, to the place where an end had just begun for him, so that he could find what was missing?

He didn’t know.

But he was going to find out.

Calisto swung the keyring around and around his finger before dropping the set into his pocket. At the front door of his condo, he grabbed three things resting in the glass bowl set atop a mahogany side-table.

His wallet.

A black rosary with a silver cross.

And a casino chip.

He’d woken up from his accident with all three of those things waiting for him on the bedside table. None of the nurses had any explanation as to where they’d come from, except for his wallet and the rosary. Those had been inside the pants they cut off him before his first surgery. The poker chip had apparently shown up in his room over the course of his short coma.

It didn’t escape Calisto’s notice how the rosary reminded him of two things. One was the rosary of his priest, which was very similar in design. But Father Day’s rosary sported a gold cross instead of a silver one. The second thing was the intricate, realistic tattoo Calisto had at some point, gotten inked on his arm, wrist, and hand.

No one had any explanation for that, either. The tattoo was relatively new, if a few months old, considering the ink was still a heavy black and there was only a slight bit of fading on the cross where it had been permanently tattooed on his palm.

Nonetheless, the rosary provided Calisto with memories from his younger years. It resonated a sense of fondness he held for his religion, for God, his mother’s unwavering faith, and the priest who had once let a small child play with a rosary while his uncle confessed.

So, instead of packing the item away, he stuffed it into his pocket and kept it close throughout the day. It gave him a sense of being grounded to his life, despite the fact he was missing so much of it.

The poker chip, however, was a different story.

Calisto flipped the chip with his thumb. He watched it spin in the air, and fall back into his grasp easily. The name embossed on the chip belonged to a hotel in Las Vegas. He’d checked one day when he was bored, only to find the hotel was owned by Emma’s father.

Emma—his uncle’s wife.

Affonso was always quick to pass over the details of Las Vegas—and the marriage that followed—whenever Calisto asked. He still wasn’t even sure if he had also gone to Vegas when Affonso did, but he assumed that he had, considering he had a poker chip, and people assured him that he had, in fact, gone to Vegas.

It probably came from his stay.

But why that casino?

Why this chip?

Calisto wasn’t the type of person to hold onto things for no reason. The chip had to have meant something to him in a private way, especially considering how insignificant it seemed.

Was it insignificant?

His mind drew a blank.

His chest grew tight.

Each time he thought about something like the poker chip, Calisto was left with more questions than answers. No one ever questioned him on the poker chip.