Killing Sarai (5 page)

“Sí,” she says gravelly as if forcing herself to agree though it takes everything in her to do so.

Then I hear a loud shot and shortly after a
thump!
and I can only assume that she just killed the man who helped her, likely out of anger for whatever Javier said.

Everything becomes quiet now. Maybe Izel left the room. Several seconds pass and still nothing, only the low static hum of the speakerphone itself. The American, although not famous for facial expressions, seems disappointed. He hangs the phone up, rolls the window down beside him and tosses it onto the highway. Then he makes a sharp U-turn and drives in the opposite direction.

“I take it you didn’t hear what you wanted to?” I ask carefully.

His right hand drops from the steering wheel and rests along the top of his leg.

“No,” he answers.

“You still doubt what I told you,” I say.

In my peripheral vision, I see him turn his head slightly to look at me. I’m not comfortable enough with him to meet his eyes when he instigates it. I never will be.

But he doesn’t answer.

A minute later, I say, “I’m not a whore. She was only trying to get to you in case you have any pity for me.”

Maybe I’m insulting his intelligence, just like Izel had at one point, but this is my way of defending myself from her accusation. I want him to know. And I don’t want him to think that way of me.

I go on, finally looking at him now that his eyes are back on the road again.

“But you never had any pity for me to begin with.”

Again, my attempt to engage him in conversation seems to go unnoticed and I give up and lay my head against the car window.

“I know you’re not a whore,” he says.

It’s been on rare occasion that I saw much of any other part of Mexico during the day, other than the compound. Javier wasn’t big on sight-seeing, or an early Sunday morning drive. I spent much of my life cooped up behind those fences, only leaving when Lydia and I were relocated with the other girls before other dangerous drug lords came to meet with Javier. It was Javier’s way of keeping us ‘safe’ in case a deal went bad. But we always traveled at night, so despite the predicament I’m in now, I find myself in mild awe as I look out the car window while the bright Mexican landscape flies by.

We’ve been driving for two hours.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

A few quiet seconds pass before he answers.

“I have nothing to eat in this car.”

“Well, can’t we stop somewhere?”

“No.”

If I could at least get him to stop answering my questions like that, I’d almost be satisfied.

“If you’re worried about me trying to run off,” I say, turning sideways to better see him, “then go to a drive-thru. I haven’t had anything to eat since early morning yesterday. Please....”

“There are no drive-
thru’s here.”

“Where is
here
, anyway?” Suddenly, my hunger has taken the backseat. “At least tell me where I’ve spent the last nine years of my life.”

I saw one road sign several minutes back, but I didn’t recognize the name from anything I’ve seen on the maps I’ve poured over time and time again, mostly the maps in an American high school textbook from 1997.

“We are now five miles south of Nacozari de García.”

I sigh, frustrated with myself for not having any idea where that is, either.

“You’re less than two hours from the United States border,” he says and stuns me.

I whip around, turning fully on the seat, my back pressing against the car door.

“But you said I was—you made it sound like I was
days
from the border.”

“No. I simply stated the distance was farther than I wanted you as my company.”

I cross my arms angrily over my chest. I’ve no idea where I even get off being angry at all with someone like him and even remotely showing it. Reminding myself quickly of where I am and who I’m with, I put on my timid face again.

“Is that where we’re going?” I ask. “Is this man you’re supposed to kill for Javier in the United States?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

I burst into tears. They come out of nowhere, burning behind my eyes and through my sinuses. But I’m not crying because I’m so close to home, I’m crying because his strange, stoic personality and one-word answers are enough to make me want to figuratively shoot myself. I sob into the palms of my hands, letting my fear and frustration of the American out, along with everything else buried inside: relief that I’ve finally gotten away, fear of being sent back there again, worried about how badly Izel will beat Lydia, the mere fact that I’m in a situation far from anything easy to solve, the hunger in my stomach, the dryness of my throat, not having had a bath in two days now, the fact that I could die at any moment. The only good thing I can account for is that I am, in fact, still alive and not as far away from home as I thought I was.

I feel the car veer off to the right as he pulls onto another highway.

I look over at him, sniffling back the rest of my tears. I reach up and wipe my cheeks with my palms. He never says anything, he doesn’t try to console me or ask questions. He doesn’t seem to care and I don’t care much, either, that he doesn’t. I never expected him to.

Another thirty minutes or so and we’re pulling up to the front of an old roadside convenience store. Only one truck is parked out front, a white Ford with rust along the doors.

“If you want food,” the American says, turning off the engine, “come inside and eat.”

I’m surprised that we’ve stopped at all, much less to feed me. He walks around to my side of the car and opens the door, likely just to make sure he stays by my side at all times rather than to be gentlemanly. He stands there waiting patiently for me to get out. Finally, I do, just after slipping my bare feet down into my flip-flops in the floorboard.

This place can’t be called a roadside diner; I think it would need a few more tables for that, but there is a place to sit and eat, off in a dark corner near a single black door. I have a microwaved chicken sandwich from the freezer; the American, nothing but black coffee. The two of us look out-of-place here. Both of us obviously with no Spanish genes, in a place that is clearly not a tourist town, him dressed in expensive black slacks and shoes, which were probably shiny at one time but are now covered in a fine layer of dirt. I know I must smell pretty bad. I don’t remember the last time I wore deodorant.

I scarf down half of the chicken sandwich and gulp the bottled water until it’s nearly empty. I learned a long time ago never to drink the water in these parts, that if it isn’t from an unopened bottle, it’ll probably make me sick.

The American sips his coffee gradually, reading the contents of a local newspaper of sorts. If I didn’t know better, we could almost pass for an unconventional married couple having breakfast in any typical American town. Unconventional because I’m only twenty-three, and the American, he’s older than me. Middle to late thirties, maybe. If I didn’t know what he was and I just saw him sitting here one day, like he is now with both feet on the floor and his dress-shirt-covered elbows on the table, I’d find him attractive for an older man. He’s clean cut, though with stubble in a pattern along his face. He has sharp cheekbones and piercing blue-green eyes that seem to contain everything but reveal nothing. And he’s very tall, lean and frightening. I find it notable how he scares me more than Javier ever did, yet without having to say a word. At the same time, I feel like I’m better off with the American than I ever was with the likes of Javier.

At least, for now. That’ll change, I’m sure, when he tries to hand me back over to him.

But I’ll die before I let that happen.

“Are you ever going to tell me your name?” I ask.

He raises his eyes from the newspaper without moving his head.

I can sense immediately that he doesn’t care to tell me, to get that personal with his ‘hostage’, but finally he throws me a bone.

“Victor.”

I’m so stunned he even told me that it takes me a second to think of what to say next.

I sip my water.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

It’s worth a try.

“Why don’t you finish your food,” he suggests and peers back down into the paper.

“You know my name. You know where I’m from. Why don’t you humor me,
Victor
?” The bitterness in my tone wasn’t an accident.

I figure that if he was going to kill me, I’d be dead already, so I’m not really as afraid of him as my conscience is telling me I should be.

He sighs with annoyance and shakes his head subtly.

“I was born in Boston,” he says. “I have a sister. A year younger than me. My mother is somewhere in Budapest. My father, he’s dead. He was my first kill.”

That small ounce of bravery I summoned evaporates right out of my pores. I look carefully to both sides of me, looking for the man behind the counter who sold us the food. He’s on the opposite side of the store, sweeping the floor and not paying a lick of attention to us.

I look back at…Victor, nervously swallowing what’s left of the saliva in my mouth.

“You killed your father?” I have to believe it was for some obvious reason: his father beat his mother, something along those lines.

He nods.

“Why? How old were you?”

“I think you know enough about me,” he says and takes a sip of his coffee, his long, manicured fingers curled gently around the tiny
white Styrofoam cup. “You asked to know more about me and I told you. It was a favor. Not an invitation to ask more questions.”

I wonder why he told me something like that to begin with. Maybe he was just trying to scare me into submission so I’d stop talking altogether.

I stand up from the tiny table. He raises his eyes from the newspaper again.

“I need to use the restroom,” I say.

Setting the newspaper on the table beside his coffee, he stands up to join me. He takes my wrist gently into his hand and I pull it away, shaking my head no. “I can go by myself,” I insist.

“Yes, but I’m going to go with you.”

I cross my arms over my chest and blink with surprise. “You can’t be serious. I’m not using it with you standing there.”

“Then you’re not going to use it.”

My mouth falls open with a spat of air. I look back and forth between him and the door behind him that I’m hoping is a restroom—there are no obvious signs indicating anything. I can detect his annoyance with me, faintly in his face; it makes me feel like I just interrupted his nightly love affair with a glass of wine and classical music
.

It doesn’t take me long to understand, really.

“I doubt it’ll be like it is in the movies,” I say. “I try to climb out the window after you make the rookie decision to let me go in alone.” I’m not trying to be mouthy, I’m only stating the obvious. I hope he gets that.

“Take it or leave it,” he says. “If you don’t go now, you might be holding it a while.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “Fine,” I give in and step around and in front of him.

He walks behind me into the restroom. There is one toilet that looks as though it has never once been cleaned in the decades it has been here. Four dirty walls with peeling paint and a burn mark near the tiny window that I doubt I would’ve been able to squeeze through if I had been given the chance to try. The room is so small I can reach out and touch Victor as he stands facing the door with his back to me, his hands folded down in front of him. Feeling only a little embarrassed—unfortunately, peeing in front of a madman isn’t new to me, either—I pull my shorts and panties down and take a seat.
When I’m done, I have to drip dry. Toilet paper really is a luxury that Americans take for granted.

As I’m pulling up my clothes, I notice Victor’s shoulders from behind tense up. And then I hear voices as though someone just came inside the store.

Victor reaches around to the back of his pants and slips his hand underneath his shirt, pulling a gun into view, his strong index finger already wrapped around the trigger.

“What is it?” I ask, fearful; already my hands are shaking.

Victor cracks open the door and peers outside, putting up his free hand behind him as if to tell me to be quiet.

Then he turns his head to me briefly and whispers, “Stay here,” and before I can question him, or protest, he disappears out the door and I’m left hiding inside yet another restroom. Only, this one doesn’t have a bathtub to help shield me from flying bullets and I find no comfort in that.

Despite my fears, I can’t stop myself from trying to get a glimpse of what’s going on, so I step up to the door and crack it just like Victor had and press my body against it, looking out. My hot, unsteady breath fills the confined space between the door and my face. I can barely make out the counter where the store owner stands off to the side with the broom still clutched in his old, chubby hands. But I can’t see his face. And I can’t see Victor. Several long anxiety-filled seconds go by and still no gunshots. I take that as a good sign. I notice a figure pass my line of vision, but it’s not Victor. And then another man walks by.

I hear voices in Spanish, though not entirely clear to me from my position behind the door. Something about a car part and a few seconds later, the store owner says he has one, but he’ll have to go around back to get it. I still see no sign of Victor. Did he leave me here? That thought strangely makes me even more afraid and I crack the door open just a little more, trying to get a better visual. At first my misplaced panic of being left alone here makes me second-guess my sanity, but then I realize all over again that despite Victor being an assassin and the fact that I’m being used as leverage in a dangerous game of pay up or die, I’m still a girl all alone in the most dangerous parts of a country that I’m not a native of.

Like it or not, Victor is my only protection until I can get over that border and I’m going to stick with him for as long as I can regardless of my desperate need to get away from
him
, too.