Hot Sur (55 page)

She asked him to wait and excused herself to use the ladies’ room, went into a stall, got rid of some of the filling, and returned a couple of months less pregnant. Rose asked if she had been followed and she replied that she hadn’t, and had taken precautions.

“We have to get out of here, right now,” he said. “I have the car in the parking lot, we need to talk, a matter of a clamp.”

“A clamp?”

“It’s complicated.”

“What if I’d rather go to the movies?”

“The movies? Are you nuts?”

“It’s been a long time since I went to the movies, I’d really like to. There are a bunch of theaters here.”

“You don’t understand; you have the entire police force after you and a clamp inside you. You have to have the clamp removed, it is very important. Your friend Mandra X told us about it, she saw the X-ray—”

“There’s too much noise here, I can’t really understand what you’re saying. Come on, Mr. Rose, let’s go to the movies, nothing will happen.”

Rose suddenly thought he saw enemies walking around everywhere, his paranoia in full force, but she insisted on going to the movies with such naive teenage-like enthusiasm that he began to give way, not sure why, perhaps because he had no other choice. At least during the movie, they would be more hidden, anything better than to remain there, exposed, in this very busy place.

“But what movie do you . . . ?” It was the dumbest question.

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever is showing. Come on.”

So off they went, crossing from one end of the huge mall to the other looking for a movie theater, and she took him by the arm. She did it as naturally as a daughter would with her father, and that gesture just smoothed away any feelings of distance or distrust that may have lingered in him. He was very nervous, but he was there, holding on, somehow feeling supported, accompanied for the first time in months. He even managed to smile despite the tremendous tension, calibrating how suspicious they may have looked, checking out their reflection in the windows, the image that they must have presented to others. And what was it that he saw? He tells me he saw himself with a young woman, more or less his son’s age, a girl who could be his daughter, well, if Edith had been another ethnicity. There would have to have been some uncommon ethnic pairing to get a father so fair-skinned and a daughter so dark-skinned. That part was strange. In any case, she could have been adopted, the father an engineer working in Colombia who had adopted a baby orphan and brought her back. Rose supposed he looked like a father with his daughter in the mall taking advantage of the last days of her pregnancy to do some holiday shopping.

“Anyone who saw us must have thought we were out buying clothes for the baby,” Rose tells me. “I remember thinking if it was a boy, it would be called Jesús, because it would be born on the twenty-fifth, like the child in the manger, and you know how Latinos do things like that, christen the son with the name of God; it’s like the Greeks would name a child Zeus, or Muslims with Mohammed.”

“We should get at least one bag,” Rose suggested. “Everyone is carrying bags except us.”

“Good idea,” she said. “If you want, you can buy me a Christmas gift.”

“What about some chocolates? Look at those chocolates?”

“Alright, stuffed cherry bonbons. To eat at the movies.”

It was all so stunningly normal, in fact, amid the rampant abnormality, amid the unhinged situation, all so amazingly standard, Rose really her father, she really his daughter, and the baby about to be born fully his grandson, a scene to inspire tenderness even.
That could someday have been my life if they hadn’t taken Cleve from me,
thought Rose.

Because the rest of the movies were sold out, they went to see a horror movie,
The Rite
, with Anthony Hopkins and several demons, and there, in the dark and nearly empty theater, Rose tried to convince María Paz that she needed to have the operation to remove the clamp. She was more interested in the movie, screaming whenever Asmodeus or Beelzebub possessed Hopkins, who was playing Father Lucas. There was no way to get through to her. To María Paz the whole mess with the clamp sounded like a story. She just would not believe it, it was not the right time for it, and she would not hear of an operation that was going to put her on a spit like a dead cow right in the middle of her great escape. She had designed the plan and put it in motion, and she was ready to fulfill its purpose at any cost. She whispered to Rose that she’d just about had it with the hiding, and that all she wanted to do was to pick up her sister, Violeta, fly out of the United States together to Seville, and get there in time to see the orange blossoms bloom. For María Paz, it was a given that she would not see Mr. Rose again once they left the mall, because at any time after that night, she and her sister would take off on their own and go for broke.

“The die has been cast, Mr. Rose,” she said.

“I know. Maktub.”

“That’s right, completely maktub.”

“But where are you going?” Rose asked. He could not imagine what kind of country would receive a creature like her, without money and without papers, on the contrary, being pursued by as many problems as enemies, and to top it with a troubled sister. Not to mention the clamp.

“I’m going to get the hell out of here, Mr. Rose. So much for my American dream,” she said, and told him that she had made contact with a coyote who was going to help her cross the northern border, to get them out on the other side.

“Which other side, María Paz?”

“Across the world. To the Promised Land, milk and honey on the other side. I’m talking about that kind of other side.”

“One assumes that’s America . . .”

“Not anymore, I think.”

“And who is this Charon?”

“Who?”

“This thug who is guaranteeing your passage?”

“A coyote I hired, Mr. Rose, a professional who’s super into the whole racket. I could tell he was cyber-coyote because all his contacts were on a Blackberry.”

“This is crazy, María Paz.”

“As crazy and full of dreams as when my beautiful mommy came from Colombia to here.”

“You can’t go just like that. First you need surgery to get that clamp out, and when you recover, you have to help me find Sleepy Joe.”

“Sleepy Joe! Why Sleepy Joe? Sleepy Joe is an asshole, Mr. Rose, vile, heinous; that type is best forgotten. And I have no idea where he might be, I’m running away from him also.”

“We’ll talk about that later. First, you have to get that operation.”

“Forget it, Mr. Rose, no operation,” María Paz said bluntly.

The cyber-coyote had not given a fixed date, but she had been told they could take off for Canada at any time and she must be available at the drop of a hat, the five senses alert, with everything needed ready: backpack, snow boots, thermal underwear, thick socks, snowboard, lined gloves, and North Face ski jackets, as well as the $3,500 dollars per head she would have to give him personally for his services.

“Do you have the money?” Rose asked.

“I have everything. My friends have been generous. I borrowed money for the fee, clothing, and gear. I’ll see how I pay them after I get out of trouble. I just need to go to the school to get my sister, take her, and take off, dressed as for the Winter Olympics.” María Paz laughed. “I have set up two of everything, for her and for me. So I have to say good-bye to you soon, Mr. Rose, I can’t stay longer. I would love to stay. But this is all very complicated, very exhausting, you know, life-and-death circumstances. The good news is that Violeta will like Seville; it was she, after all, my sister, Violeta, who said Seville in spring smells like orange blossoms. And don’t tell me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, sir, I know I shouldn’t, I know it won’t be easy, I’m very clear about that. Between here and that spring there’s a whole fucking winter in the way. ‘Winter is coming,’ so says the motto of House Stark in
Game of Thrones
. Have you seen it? Isn’t it the best? ‘Winter is coming.’ I guess that’s my motto too. Things are going to be fucked. I know that. Very cold, very scary, I know, with a whole bunch of motherfuckers breathing down our necks. Anyway, I wanted to come to say thank you, Mr. Rose, and tell you that the death of your son caused me a lot of pain. Your son was the sweetest, most beautiful person I have ever met. I came just to tell you that.”

“How did you find out about his death?”

“I was in your home when the accident happened, Mr. Rose, and I figured it out because of the dogs. They began acting very strange, running up and down those stairs like crazy, and I thought, what’s going on with these animals, why are they suddenly so unhinged? Then I took off the headphones, because it was nine or ten at night, and I was watching TV with the headphones and couldn’t really hear what was going on. I was up there, hiding in your son’s attic, hiding from you too, Mr. Rose, a detail for which I owe you a belated apology, because we did it behind your back and should have consulted you. I’m sorry. Your son had left for Chicago around four in the afternoon, but now it was well into the night, and I was just lying around watching TV with the headphones on. Your son had set it up for me so that you wouldn’t hear the TV when you were home and then have to come upstairs to turn it off. In any case, I took off the headphones, and I heard your screams. You, Mr. Rose, yours. Out of nowhere, you had started wailing, and I knew immediately that something horrible had happened. It was the most pitiful sound that I’ve ever heard. I peeked down the stairs to see what was happening, because you know, if you were hurting him, I was going to have to go down to help him, even if it was just scaring you to death with my appearance. I went down the stairs slowly, slowly, my heart pounding, and I could hear that you were on the phone with your ex-wife. Then I knew what had happened to your son, and I felt the world had been pulled out from under me. I sat on the steps and wanted to die. I thought, if I stop breathing, I’ll just die right here, and this hellish journey will be over. I was ready for anything, anything but that, that they would take him from me, Mr. Rose, my salvation, my only true friend. I swear that night I wanted to die, right there in the attic, to be found mummified one day. I almost came down to give you a hug, Mr. Rose, to ask you how such a fucking tragedy is possible, to cry with you. Of course, in the end, I didn’t dare. You had no idea who I was or what I was doing in your damn house. The following day, Empera came upstairs and told me what had happened. She said you were going insane because your son had been killed in a motorcycle accident not far from Chicago. She asked me what I planned to do, and I told her I was getting out of there. She made me some chamomile tea to calm me down and instructed me to wait until half past three, because she finished work at that time. When she was off, Empera pulled her car into the garage, hid me well in the backseat under a pile of blankets, and that’s how we slipped out without a hitch through that ring of patrol cars and police vans.

“I’ll never forget the horror within that car, Mr. Rose. After the death of my mother, that was the saddest and most desperate moment of my life, Empera crying while driving and me crying while huddled under those blankets, waiting for the car to stop where I would get out on who knows what corner of what town or what stretch of road, again no better than a stray dog, cast off by fate and unprotected. In the days that followed, I did nothing but mourn, terribly missing both your son and the dogs, especially the baby, Skunko, what a loving little dog. You should have seen how we hit it off because he reminded me a lot of Hero. Sometimes I even forgot that he wasn’t Hero and was surprised to see him run off without his cart. I called Skunko Hero and he kind of got used to that name, because he came running when I called him.

“I even missed you, Mr. Rose; although you may not believe it, I had grown fond of you even though you had never even met me. I watched you out the window when you went down to the garden to play with the dogs, or take them out for a walk, and it inspired me tenderly. I saw this and I thought, a man who cares for his dogs so much has to be a good man. How I wished I had a father like that. Now once again, Mr. Rose, the time of parting again, so goes life, one good-bye then another. What can we do?”

“For now, there will be no good-byes, María Paz. You can’t go,” Rose told her, the ring of command in his voice. “Don’t go before you take out the clamp. Then you have to help me find Cleve’s murderer. Tell me who killed Cleve.”

“Nobody killed him, sir.” Surprised at the undesirable twist that the conversation had begun to take, María Paz took a few steps backward, away from Rose. “Cleve was killed in an accident, sir. His bike killed him . . . Good-bye, Mr. Rose. Maybe someday we’ll see each other again.”

“You need some money?” Rose asked as a last attempt to keep her from leaving. “I can give you money, if you need . . .”

“No, Mr. Rose, thank you very much, I don’t need anything,” she started to say, moving farther away, but still facing him and holding his gaze.

Just at that moment, the air seemed to crackle in the mall and people moved to one side, sensing an approaching commotion ahead.

At first, it was just a rough perception without details: it filled the place with the acrid smell of stampede and violence in the making, still undefined. Seconds later, María Paz saw several policemen rushing toward her in a flash, pushing their way through. Were they coming for her? It unleashed a mad drumming in her chest. Yes, they were coming after her and this time she was trapped. How many times in recent months had she experienced the same feeling of having reached the end of the road? After so much forced immobility while locked up in Manninpox, she had not stopped running ever since she was released. Now the police were on top of her. Fear paralyzed her, and for a moment, the image of Violeta crossed her mind. She would not get to see her sister, Violeta. Things had to go to shit with only a few days to go. But were they really coming for her? María Paz was not going to wait around to find out. She overcame the momentary panic and set her mind to not surrender. Her survival mechanisms kicked into gear and within seconds her body became a type of getaway vehicle, strengthening its cardiac capacity, increasing blood pressure, intensifying metabolism, accelerating her mental activity, and increasing the blood glucose, which flows into the large muscles, particularly the legs, fueled and ready to run. María Paz was about to do it when something stopped her, a hand that grabbed her forcefully by the arm, like a vice that immobilized her.