Tell Me Something True (31 page)

“I don’t get it,” he says with a trace of awe. “How can you play things like Prokofiev and Beethoven, when your fingers are
so delicate? How can something this soft be so strong?”

And those are his last words, because the next instant, he has shoved her hard, and she grabs the tablecloth to keep from
falling, but instead, drags it with her to the floor, and the plates and the candle crash beside her, and all she can hear
is firecrackers, and she wonders stupidly why he’s pushed her and why there are firecrackers inside the restaurant, and then
the screaming drowns everything else.

She can’t see him. Can’t see him draw the gun from behind his waist, even though he knows, as he does it, that it’s too late,
knew it was too late from the moment he saw them come in and automatically pushed her aside to safety with his left hand.
Too late because he was suffused in her, because he trusted Julio to keep him covered, forgetting Julio wasn’t next to him
this time. And the shooters didn’t count on that, either, because there is the briefest of hesitations before they open fire,
as they seek out Julio and find her instead, and in that tiniest wrinkle in time, Angel pulls out his gun and manages to squeeze
out a shot, dropping the first one, but already he feels a succession of hard thuds, in his chest and his arm and his stomach,
and he’s flung back, like an errant punching bag, screaming for Julio.

Julio who went to take a piss, buying himself two more minutes of existence, because his men were the first to go, dispatched
with two neat bullets to their heads, clean and simple, their faces slumping down into the bar almost elegantly, everything
over so quickly that they never got the chance to reach for their guns. The bartender stepped back, hands up, pressing flat
against the sink, but it wasn’t necessary, the gunmen were already moving on into a room that still hadn’t acknowledged their
presence, because they had avoided conspicuous machine guns to fool the guards downstairs, opting instead for little handguns,
the kind you can easily hide inside a suit pocket, the kind you can point and shoot, barely causing a ripple, as they’ve done
in this place, where the din of conversation and the familiarity of Carlos Vives’s voice singing “Sí, sí, sí, este amor es
tan profundo, que tu eres mi consentida y que lo sepa todo el mundo” over the sound system muffled the shots.

Angel recognized the purpose in their eyes the second he saw them standing there, scanning, out of place, out of place. Why
hadn’t anyone downstairs caught on? he thought. Such a security breach, he would fire somebody over this.

But now, lying on the floor, when he tries to breathe, his throat is clogged and his chest burns like it has been branded
with an iron. He’s choking, and when he coughs, bubbles of blood splatter over his linen shirt. He can’t hear through the
screaming, but above him, he sees the second man, the one he wasn’t able to get, and he’s standing over Angel with his small
but deadly gun raised for his grace shot, because, Angel knows, you always finish the job with a shot to the head, just to
be sure.

And then, the bullets start again, a flurry that comes from behind him and strike the man on his face, on his arms, everywhere,
the bullets flying across the room, hitting him, hitting everything in their path, hitting the triptych of paintings behind
him, which slowly come unhinged, then hurl into the wooden floor, the frames splintering, cymbals reverberating inside his
head as the chain collides with the floor.

He can’t see, but he knows it’s Julio, his loyal Julio, who was right of course about the futility of this vain, stupid, stupid
evening, who, quite literally, is caught with his zipper down, rushing out of the bathroom with his underwear flapping outside
his pants when he hears the shouts, his semi-automatic cocked, but he can’t see Angel and proceeds to spray the restaurant
with bullets, cursing himself and them at the top of his lungs—hijueputas, hijueputas, hijueputas—for laxness, for failing
to adhere to protocol, for capitulating. As he lowers his gun, a last shot is fired from the ground, hitting him—by pure chance—in
the neck.

Julio falls to his knees, his eyes open in surprise as he numbly brings his hand up to the spot just below his jaw, from where
blood is now spurting out in short, heavy spasms. He can’t stop the blood, and he feels his life pumping out of him, everything
around him a hazy red, like the apples in the paintings that are tumbling to the floor. His last thought is that Don Luis
will never forgive him for this. Even if he gets out of here alive, he’s a dead man.

Gabriella is buried under the tablecloth, immobile, praying, even though she never prays, except to her mother. But she prays
to God now fervently, because she thinks she will really die, because she can’t stop her legs from shaking uncontrollably.
There are consequences after all, she suddenly thinks, remembering her mother and her flight of doom. How could she have been
so arrogant to think herself immune? She is going to die here on this floor, and now she wants God to know that she believes
in him, she really does, she will not live a life of perpetual purgatory because one day she fell in love with the wrong boy.

Something crashes behind her, something big and monstrous because splinters fly from the floor onto her bare legs, curled
tightly underneath her, and for what feels like an eternity, the noise reverberates across the room until it’s gone, completely
gone, taking with it the screams and the shots, leaving only Carlos Vives as he sings about the love he wants to share with
the world.

She realizes the floor is sticky under her hands, turns them over to find them red and viscous, and although she’s never touched
blood, not like this, she knows that’s what it is, and she stifles the impulse to scream, like they do in the movies, because
her instinct to live is much stronger and she doesn’t know if there is still evil lurking around her, seeking her—and Angel—out.

His blood, she thinks, his blood, his life seeping under her hands, and she needs to find him, but she can’t see properly,
because everything is covered by a thick haze and the acrid smell of gun smoke sits heavy inside her nose and stings her eyes.

She hears a cough, and she crawls toward the sound on her hands and knees, her hands leaving imprints of blood on the beautiful
wooden floor, and finds him bleeding from everywhere, from his chest and his arms,
oh,
and his stomach, and she tries to stop it all with the tablecloth, but in a matter of seconds it’s soaked up again, and she
knows she’s crying and that’s not good, because he’ll panic and already he looks desperate and afraid—something she’s never
seen him look before—but she can’t help herself. She’s soaking up his blood and he can’t muster a word; all he can do is cough,
and with each cough, a little more blood leaves him and drips down onto his beautiful white linen shirt, which is now completely
ruined, and she can barely believe this helpless man is the same person who picked her up tonight. She thinks, with rising
panic, that he’s dying, he will die on her, and she can’t bear the pain that the mere thought is already causing her.

The smell of blood rises from the floor—she had no idea blood smelled—a sickeningly sweet smell that blends with the burned
stench of the gun smoke, and Gabriella, by sheer force of will, swallows the bile that has gathered perilously close to her
mouth. Vomit, how could she—it would be his last conscious remembrance of her, her vomiting over him as he lay dying. She
searches desperately for her cell phone, using one hand to press down hard on his chest, the other futilely seeking out the
floor beneath her, because her phone has to be there, dragged down to the ground with the tablecloth, but there’s nothing
to be found underneath her frantic fingers, until she sees it, glinting cheerfully underneath the dead man’s cheek.

She needs it. She needs to call an ambulance, the police, someone who can save them. Overcoming her fear and disgust, she
tentatively reaches for it, never taking her gaze from that face with the staring, open eyes, and when her fingers almost
reach it, he releases a slight helpless shudder and blinks.

She lets out a small gasp involuntarily, her hand drawing quickly back before she reasons that he can’t do anything to her—he
can’t move, he’s as good as dead—and she angrily inches forward again and in a split second snatches the phone from underneath
him and jumps back. She dials 911 before she remembers there is no 911 here, and then she simply begins to shout for help,
but she isn’t shouting, she’s wailing hysterically. She no longer cares who hears, because no one is helping. Why isn’t anyone
helping? She screams, but no one is moving. The entire room is immobilized by terror, and no one has made the least gesture
toward her. They’re all hiding and Angel is bleeding, and the blood continues to trickle to the floor, no matter how hard
she presses, and he’s not even looking at her anymore. His eyes are shut, and his face is now a dull gray underneath his tan.

“They’re coming back!” someone cries, and people scramble from underneath the tables, making a mad rush toward the restrooms,
the kitchen, anywhere they can hide. Gabriella is left alone with Angel, and all she can think to do is grab another tablecloth,
wrap herself inside, and huddle against the wall, curled up tightly, trying to make herself disappear.

She hears the stomping of steps coming up the staircase, swirling about her, the walkie-talkies, the shouts. She doesn’t dare
move; she hardly breathes. She closes her eyes and clutches her knees tightly against her chest and goes into a place deep
within herself, a place she didn’t know existed, where there is no time and space. That’s how they find her, more than an
hour later, long after they’ve taken him, when one of the soldiers thinks to look at the tablecloth piled against the corner.

I
went to pick Helena up that night. Like I pick up Gabriella. The same flight. The same time. But by nine thirty, it hadn’t
landed. No one knew what was happening. We waited and waited for some announcement from American Airlines. People went upstairs
to the counter. Downstairs. They kept saying the plane was about to land.

I had a bad feeling about the trip ever since she told me she was coming. A two-day trip—right before Christmas! But she said
she needed to come. She had some urgent business. But she couldn’t stay over the holidays. She wanted to get back to spend
the holidays with Gabriella and Marcus.

Your grandfather was with me that night. It’s the last time he ever went to the airport. But if it hadn’t been for him…

We were getting frantic when someone came running and said the plane had crashed. Well, people went crazy. They ran upstairs
to mob the American counter.

Everyone kept shouting, “Where! Where!”

Oh, God. Women were wailing. I felt like I was watching a movie. I couldn’t conceive that the plane had crashed, that Helena
could possibly be inside. It was too—unreal.

But there was an ambulance right outside, and my husband stopped them, said he was a doctor. And of course, they knew who
he was and they let him go along. He wanted to send me back home with Edgar, but I—I just couldn’t do that. We finally decided
Edgar and I would follow them in the car.

We just drove and drove. I don’t know where the ambulance driver was getting his information. Somebody was probably radioing
them. But we drove for hours on that dark highway. I later learned that the plane had crashed just five minutes before landing.
I still don’t understand how it could have been so far. But it was.

We finally got to the base of the mountain, where the road ended. They said we had to go on foot or wait for helicopters to
take us.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t think we would have been allowed to go up, but because my husband was a doctor, and there
was no one else there—we were the first ones—they let us go on the first helicopter.

We circled and circled. There was so much fog, and it was so dark, it was hard to see with just the spotlight from the helicopter.

There were, oh, God, there were Christmas presents hanging from the trees. Ribbons. Clothes. Jackets and blankets. I mainly
remember the Christmas presents and the wrapping paper. There were dolls. A tennis racket. I remember a tennis racket. I was
in hell.

We couldn’t land. It was too dark, too dangerous. The pilot couldn’t find a place to land. So we had to go back to the foot
of the mountains, and the soldiers and the Red Cross went back up on foot with flashlights.

We spent the night in the car. I couldn’t fathom going anywhere without finding her first. At five in the morning, we went
up again in the helicopter. But nearly eight hours had passed. Afterward, when they found the two survivors, they said they
thought more people might have been alive, because the crash hadn’t been a full-speed, frontal crash. But who
knew
?

It was so cold up there. All I could think of was my Helena, without a jacket. She never traveled with a jacket.

It’s quite amazing, if you think about it clinically, what happens in a plane crash. We followed the things. There were objects
everywhere. But we couldn’t find the people. The soldiers finally found the first ones, almost a kilometer from where we were.
There were no severed limbs or anything like that. Thank God. They told us it was because the plane was already preparing
to land. The pilot had already put down the landing gear and the plane had slowed down, so the impact wasn’t as great.