The Heel Stuck in Santo Domingo

Three percent battery.

The phone screen flickered with that sickly glow that precedes digital death, right as the five o'clock sun finished staining the whitewashed walls of the Santo Domingo cloister a dirty orange. In the interior courtyard, Cartagena's stifling humidity offered no truce: it smelled of midday-parched bougainvillea, altar candle wax melting over coral stone, and that inevitable concoction of coconut sunscreen fused with the sweat of seventy people crammed into raw linen.

Manuela pressed her back against a faceted column, opened the messaging app, and typed in a rush with a trembling thumb:

«S.O.S. If I don't make it out of this wedding alive, tell my mom I donated my clothes and please burn my notebook.»

She looked at it for two seconds. Deleted everything with a harsh sigh and typed a less melodramatic version:

«All under control. Only forty uncles asking me why I came alone. Send me memes.»

Send.

Two percent.

She tucked her phone into the tiny gold-beaded handbag—which actually belonged to her sister and had been sitting in her closet for three years with no sign of return—and adjusted the left strap of her emerald-green dress. The satin was sticking to her shoulder blades because of the salty humidity rising from the city walls.

"Are these crab or cheese?" she asked the waiter who hurried past, weaving through guests with a dented silver tray.

"Costeño cheese, miss. Nice and hot."

"Give me two, please. Crab breaks me out in hives."

"Have three, the party is just getting started and the drinks are hitting hard."

Manuela popped a cheese ball into her mouth, chewed slowly, and stared into space while the nearest ceiling fan emitted an agonizing hum, like an old cyclist climbing a hill. In the background, a stringed quartet half-heartedly attempted an instrumental version of La camisa negra. A disaster.

Things I am not going to do tonight:

1. Make eye contact with Felipe Zúñiga.

2. Accept another lukewarm daiquiri served in a plastic cup.

3. Explain for the fifth consecutive time that being a product designer doesn't mean I weave backpacks or decorate coffee tables.

Felipe was barely ten meters away, leaning against the cistern's railing with the offensive ease of men who have never had to finance an appliance in installments. He was wearing an immaculate guayabera with microscopic tucks, a wristwatch worth more than Manuela's car, and that smug smile that at nineteen had seemed like charisma and at twenty-seven felt like a lack of respect.

If only she had made up a fulminant case of gastroenteritis in Bogotá to avoid coming—

"Manuela, darling!"

The voice cut through the murmur of conversations with the precision of a poisoned dart. Manuela swallowed hard and felt the cheese croquette get stuck in her throat.

Aunt Leonor was carving her way through the sea of white linen with a half-melted daiquiri in her left hand and a sandalwood fan in her right. Her turquoise taffeta dress rustled with every step like a bag of potato chips. Her radar was on, her eyes fixed on her target, and she wore a smile of familial condescension that portended a massacre.

"No, no, no," Manuela muttered to herself.

She took a step back, calculating the distance to the arch leading to the street to sneak away among the tourists in the square.

She took the second.

And the ground took its revenge.

The stiletto heel of her right sandal, as thin as a number two pencil, slipped right into the irregular, moldy joint between two colonial cobblestones. Manuela tried to take the next step, but her foot remained anchored with the solidity of an underwater rock. She pulled hard, her ankle bending outward at an indecent angle, and a dry snap—clean, resounding, definitive—echoed against the stone.

The wooden heel broke in two.

Shit.

Manuela hung suspended in an instant limp, balancing on her left leg like a flamingo in distress and resting her right foot only on her toes, in a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that she had lost ten centimeters of height in a single blow.

"Oh, but what a miracle to see you looking so elegant!" Aunt Leonor's voice fell over her like a lead blanket. "Look at you, alone as always but regal. Although you look kind of crooked, doll. Is that a new yoga pose?"

"Hi, auntie. No, it's... the humidity. Gives me calf cramps."

"What you lack is a good husband to give you massages," the aunt finished, letting out a high-pitched chuckle while fanning herself furiously. "Because tell me something, Manuela: and the boyfriend? Your cousin Camila is already on her second kid and you're still living in that tiny apartment with your plants. The train doesn't stop twice, my queen."

Two steps away, alerted by the aunt's shrieking, Felipe Zúñiga approached with a glass of whiskey in his hand and arched eyebrows.

"Manu, what a surprise," he said, lowering his gaze to her feet with barely contained amusement. "You look... different. More down-to-earth."

"I'm perfect, Felipe. Thanks for your humanitarian concern."

Lying to family is never a premeditated strategy; it is a survival reflex to avoid suffocating to death in someone else's guayaberas.

"Don't change the subject on me," Leonor insisted, taking a sip of her watery drink and fixing her with an inquisitorial stare. "The whole family is asking why the independent girl didn't bring a date. Don't tell me you're still waiting for one to drop from the sky?"

At that moment, a man walked past them with his back turned, covering the event with a SLR camera hanging from his neck. The mechanical shutter released a dry, metallic burst—click-clack, click-clack—cutting through the stifling heat between the three of them.

The photographer was wearing a black shirt with rolled-up sleeves stained with saltpeter on the shoulders, messy hair, and a dented metal thermos sticking out of the side pocket of his backpack.

Manuela's brain disconnected its reasoning.

She stretched out her left arm, hooked it with relentless force around the photographer's bicep, and pulled him toward her battered side with a radiant smile.

"In fact, auntie, he didn't drop from the sky," Manuela blurted out, squeezing the stranger's arm with the desperation of a shipwreck victim clinging to a log. "He came with me. Meet my fiancé."

The man stopped dead in his tracks.

Felipe frowned. Aunt Leonor almost choked on her daiquiri straw.

Slowly, the photographer lowered the heavy camera from his face and turned to look at her. He had sun-weathered skin, an eyebrow slightly arched with irony, and dark eyes that Manuela recognized before she could stop the panic.

Rodrigo.

The very same Rodrigo who ten years ago had stood her up on the high school steps in a peach-colored dress and a withered orchid on her wrist.

"Fiancé?" he repeated, looking her up and down until he stopped at the broken heel. "Well, honey, I didn't know we were in such a rush."

Manuela wished the earth of Cartagena would open up and swallow her whole.

"These things happen," she said through clenched teeth, digging her nails into the fabric of his shirt.

Rodrigo smiled with his usual exasperating calm.

She was screwed.