The Center of the World (11 page)

CHAPTER 18

T
he next day, Kate headed to Fernando's, the only other haven in Antigua. Nothing in her life prepared her for what she needed to do next. If she was going to get the child out of the country, she needed help.

She pushed open the door to the café and found a corner table. Fernando was not there; a young boy served her a tepid cup of
café con leche
. Without Fernando's steady grace, she felt like the ground was once again moving beneath her. Sofia was under Marta's generous wings back at Casa Candelaria.

A man emerged from the inner garden when she came in. He walked through the door that separated the two rooms. He was a young gringo, probably an American hitchhiking through. He stopped the young boy, placing a hand on his arm, and spoke in a low musical voice, unhesitant in his Spanish. He ordered a plate of beans, tortillas, and rice.

He picked a table near a window, closer to the front door, and settled in with a Guatemalan newspaper. He looked like every other traveler in this difficult country; well-worn running shoes, jeans, a small day pack, an extra layer of grit over his skin. Where was Fernando?

Kate felt the young man watching her and caught his expression in a reflection from a faded glassed print hanging on the wall of the café bookstore. She glimpsed a three-quarter profile, darkened by shadows, giving him an air of sadness, the part that he might not want to show. He dipped his tortillas into the beans with local expertise. Maybe he'd been here longer than the average traveler.

Kate dropped her eyes so that he wouldn't catch her looking at the glass. She stood up and walked across the room and picked another picture on the wall to examine, this time a painting of the Agua Volcano on the outskirts of Antigua spewing a dragon's spiral of steam. Maybe he wasn't North American; perhaps he was Australian, French.

She longed for home and wanted to feel only grass and sky and clean water, to take Sofia to a park where other children would squeal and laugh. She wanted to talk about the earthquake because it was astounding, but here in a land of daily carnage, danger, and massacre, an earthquake was hardly worth mentioning. She felt like a bomb ready to go off. If Fernando wasn't in, she'd come back later. She returned to her table to finish the coffee.

Kate tipped her cup to her lips, taking in the last drops. She closed the book that she'd purchased the last time from Fernando's slim supply of English books, a worn copy of Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men,
slid out of her chair, and slung her string bag over her shoulder. The room was dim and the glaring sunlight streaming in the door disoriented her.

She passed the man and glanced at him, tipping her head a fraction of an inch. Gringos tended to acknowledge each other; the tribe of travelers assumed something about others who looked like them, who had time to idle in a shop, drink coffee in the middle of the day. She smiled. Kate was one step away from the outer world with all its bright light when something desperate reflected in his eyes, something tied down with boulders. Like the eyes of the man who had pulled her down to safety before the massacre.

She turned, as if a gravitational field caught her, and in doing so, her knee caught the edge of his table, connecting with a jagged piece of wood, a splinter ready to pierce whoever came too near. The sharp stab to her knee shocked her.

“Shit,” she said, grabbing her knee.

“Hang on there,” he said, springing from his seat. “What happened?”

He stood between her and the door and his silhouette against the sun forced her to put her hand over her eyes, shading them from the light that framed his body. Kate looked down at her knee and saw the first few layers of skin buckled up accordion style. Dots of blood emerged, ballooning out.

“God, this hurts. I can't believe that kids do this kind of thing all the time. Scrape their knees, I mean. No wonder they cry.” Tears had sprung to her eyes.

He reached out his hand. “Come on. Let's take a look at that.”

His hand was warm, lightly callused, with nails in a clean, squared-off style, but still subject to slight variations. And he was American, his accent was clear enough.

“You broke the skin. You should get antiseptic on that right away. Or get bottled water and wash your knee off. Don't let it get infected, not here.”

He was late twenties, or even in his thirties, but she sensed an elemental difference that she couldn't put her finger on. The red bubbles of blood rose to the surface and flowed down her shin.

He'd been in the tropics long enough that his hair was lightened by the sun, a mix of gold and brown; parts of his hair were so curly and stiffened by sweat and dust that she imagined grabbing on to it like a handle. They stepped out to the sidewalk with its wide slabs of stone, facing the large park in the center of town.

“Did you feel the earthquake last night?” she said. Then she froze. A jeep filled with young soldiers rumbled along the side of the park toward them. The air buzzed around her in charged particles. She stumbled backward with an unbearable urge to hide. She couldn't keep responding like this every time she saw soldiers, but panic overwhelmed her.

The gringo glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the sound. Without thinking, she stepped forward, so that his body covered her from the street view, and embraced him, wrapping one arm around him in an iron grip. He hesitated and then placed his hand on the back of her head, pulling her closer. When she turned her head away, he pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, “Don't run.” As if she wanted to, as if he knew.

Kate registered a full-body shock. The instinct to run still blasted through her and all of her urgency pushed hard against this man who smelled like black beans and cheese with a hint of coffee. A column of ribs pressed into her. The jeep slowed as it neared them; the soldiers hooted and whistled in unmistakable male camaraderie. What if they stopped? What if they got out of the jeep, guns slung over their arms?

The driver accelerated, squealing around the corner. The man released her and backed up, hands palm up.

“I take it that you didn't want to see those guys, but don't you think you might have taken unfair advantage of me?” he asked with a smile.

Kate leaned against the outside of the café, her face hot. Had she just grabbed this man and wrapped her arms around him? Had this man just held her and nuzzled her neck?

“Your knee,” he said. “Let's get it cleaned up. The soldiers are gone. You're okay.”

Fernando said to be careful, not to trust anyone. But this man had just helped her, had shielded her from the militia. She needed to tell Fernando that she had decided she would take Sofia with her. She licked her dry lips. “I'm Kate. I think I should thank you but I'm not sure. Should I apologize?”

His shoulders softened and he smiled. “Nope. I just took the kind of liberties with you that would have gotten me into all kinds of trouble in Brooklyn. But it was all I could think of. I'm Will.”

“Should I call you William?” she asked him.

“We'd be off to a terrible start if you did. I'm a one-syllable guy, despite what my parents must have thought.”

His smile was dazzling and almost erased the pull of sadness from his eyes. When he smiled, he looked like everything he touched turned clean. She was sure that his mouth would taste like ice cream.

The mutual question begged to be asked and answered by them; it always did with travelers, but especially here. They couldn't take another step until it was broached. Why was she here in a country riddled with civil war? Why was he here?

“You first,” he said, before she could start.

“I'm adopting a child.” She jutted her chin forward a notch. This is the first time she had said the words and her voice sounded unlike anything she'd ever said before.

“Oh. You're here with your husband. Now I really am in trouble. Is your husband large and uncontrollably possessive?”

A red string of blood traveled down her shin. “I'm not married. It makes adoption more complicated.” Lies of omission were easier than she had imagined. She had never practiced lying before; there had been no reason to do so. Even after her mother died and her father emerged from his grief long enough to see that she was drinking his beer and spending all of her time with the boys.

Will stepped back into the café and returned with a paper napkin and handed it to her. Kate spat on the paper and then wiped the punctured skin.

“I wasn't in Antigua last night. If there was an earthquake, I somehow slept through it,” he said. “I was in Guatemala City.”

Why would she need to nudge him to find out what he's doing here? People emerged on the street again, a clear sign that the soldiers were gone. The smell of hot tortillas traveled on the breeze and Kate suddenly wanted to know if the tortilla lady from Santiago was among the dead. Who else had died in the carnage?

“Why are you in Guatemala?” she asked.

A muscle along his cheekbone pulled up, a twitch of sorts. “I'm just a guy from Brooklyn out to see the world,” he said. “Do you know your way around here? Is there a
farmacia
in Antigua where we can get you some Band-Aids?”

They walked together to the
farmacia
that Kate had gone to when she and Sofia arrived the week before. The pocket-sized store held an astonishing amount of medicine, all stacked in bottles and small boxes on the back wall. Will's Spanish was flawless, or at least it seemed so to Kate. He told a joke to the man behind the counter, something about music and medicine and the Pope. The man behind the counter tossed his head back in helpless laughter.

Kate sat down while she cleaned her leg and bandaged her knee, feeling that all the attention for such a tiny wound was unwarranted compared to the true catastrophe that had happened along the lake. They left the shop and before Kate could think of a way to say good-bye, Will said, “Why were you so afraid of the soldiers?”

Her heart beat faster.

“Boys with automatic weapons are unpredictable,” she said.

Will arranged his day pack on his shoulders. “The whole damned country can be scarier than the worst nights in New York City. But they're gone, and we're here and I need to find the local market. Would you be my guide to get me started?”

Kate doubted that Will needed help getting anywhere. But she could bring back some fresh food for Sofia. “I can be your guide for just a little while.”

 

They pushed through the open-air market, past the mountains of brilliant handwoven fabric and the women who sold them. Kate's neck contracted when she saw the women, seated on the ground, weaving, moving the shuttle back and forth until their particular pattern emerged. No women were here from the villages dotting the lake, but it was only a matter of time. Kate worried that the women in the marketplace could see through her, see her running off through the jungle hillsides with the child who did not belong to her.

They walked into the food section of the outside market and Will stopped to buy a sack of avocados. “Here's the best thing to eat,” he said, gently guiding the green globes into his string shopping bag. “Avocados, tortillas, and fresh squeaky cheese. That's my Guatemalan diet and I'm sticking to it. Also, hard-boiled eggs and bananas.”

“I have a short list of things I'd rather not tell you,” said Kate suddenly.

He didn't ask her what was on her short list. She wanted to release the steam that demanded release in her chest.

“I am going to adopt a child and I don't know how to get the papers.”

She'd been so careful with the men she had let closer to her, at least when she was in college. She had to be sure that they wanted her, that they had more of a need for her. What was different about Will?

Will peeled a small banana about the size of his thumb and ate it in two bites.

“Best damn bananas I've ever tasted. This will ruin you for bananas back in the States.” He folded up the banana peel and put it into his bag. “What's the matter with the adoption agency? Are they asking for a payment that you hadn't expected? Did they want a bribe?”

Kate stiffened. A bribe, as if all Guatemalans were devious, despite the fact that yes, she expected the topic of bribes to be discussed. As if Sofia was tainted. Already, everything flowed back to Sofia. Who was this man anyhow? Would she go out with him if they were back at UC Davis, or would they see each other and keep walking?

“I haven't exactly gone through an official adoption agency. Yet. So far, it's been an informal process.” She had said too much, but what could it matter if a wanderer from Brooklyn knew she wanted to adopt?

They turned down another street. Marta's guesthouse was only two blocks away.

“What exactly does informal mean?” he asked. They crossed the street. A shadow washed over his face, a two-muscle twitch of his eyes, and then just as quickly, the tanned skin around his eyes relaxed, as if he had said to himself,
Relax the face
.

What would it hurt to tell Will? He'd probably go back to wherever he came from in a week. Come to think of it, he hadn't told her why he was here, not really.

“Informal means that I already have a child but I don't have any documentation.” She regretted saying this. She sounded like a criminal.

They stopped in front of the large door to the guesthouse.

“Let me even things up a little. I was in the Peace Corps; that's why I'm here. I'm headed home soon. There's nothing mysterious about me, but you shouldn't tell a guy who you just met about not having documentation for the child.” He put his hand into his bag and extracted some bananas. “Here. All kids like bananas.”