The Exile

by Gregory Erich Phillips

  A few days after her arrival, she had seriously thought about sneaking onto a cruise ship docked in the harbor. She had scoped it out all through a morning, strategically noting the possible ways on, the way she and her friends used to sneak into football matches or into hotels as children. They were never bold enough to try a ship.

  In the end, she was too afraid to try it. The stakes were too high now. As a child, she would have gotten shouted at, whipped at worst if caught. Now, who knew what a man who discovered her hiding on a ship might do. She’d given up and gone into the restaurant to work. She hadn’t even been sure it was an American ship. Even if she had succeeded in getting aboard, she might have ended up in Buenos Aires or someplace else.

  Maybe she could get a legitimate job on a cruise ship. Would they let her work on one without identification? That could be her way back. She could slip ashore at a US harbor—illegally, of course, but people did it all the time. She had to stay sharp and look for a chance.

  Until then, she mustered the energy for her shift each day, pushing aside the pain in her heart. Serving was hard work, but it was work she knew and was good at. She’d landed at a good restaurant. The people who dined there were the right kinds of people. Perhaps, though she could not yet envision how, she might meet someone who could help her find a way back home.

  Because Cartagena was not home. Home was wherever Ashford and Cristina were.

  Alejandra kept trying to draw her out, to get her to come out with her on one of their nights off. Leila wouldn’t go that far, but she found herself enjoying being drawn into the jokes and the girls’ gossip. It made her feel human again. Last night, she and Alejandra had danced a cumbia together in the kitchen, to the sound of the band out in the bar. Leila found herself laughing harder than she had in weeks but felt guilty about it afterward. Work was something she could enjoy because it had a purpose. But play—dancing, going out with other girls—she couldn’t do that.

  But why not? Why should she feel guilty for laughing last night? A moment or two of enjoyment during a heartbroken existence was no sin. She had done nothing wrong to deserve this. She never hurt anyone in her life. Why did people want to hurt her? Why, even now, after all she had suffered, did she have to go into hiding with a false name? Must she live in fear as well as loss? She seethed with resentment toward the people who had done this to her—Samantha first and now Paulo.

  Her eyes followed a pair of gulls flying low over the calm water of the harbor. A couple of boats pushed out, braving the afternoon heat.

  Her anger, sadness, and fear had worked her up to the point that it was now hard to think straight sometimes. But the routine of the job helped her feel more grounded. Quiet moments like this helped too. She wondered if her confusion had made her read too much into things, particularly that encounter with Paulo. Maybe he wasn’t as malicious as she remembered, not as powerful as he seemed. Maybe she was being overly cautious in trying so desperately to avoid him.

  That first day was now a blur in her memory. Paulo had probably given up looking for her. He could find other girls to paint. After trying once to see if he could get her to submit to him, he would have moved on. Surely, he had better things to worry about as a police chief. Why waste his time?

  She recalled the extreme caution of her letter home. Why couldn’t she let her loved ones know where she was and how to contact her? They must be dying of worry, when really, she was okay. She would email them again tomorrow. She had gotten herself too scared by what happened the first time, but there were ways to do it that would be safe. She could open up a brand new email account on Hotmail or something. Paulo wasn’t that sophisticated, and he surely didn’t care that much. She had simply been careless that first day.

  After emailing, she could arrange a phone call. It would be so good to hear Ashford’s voice. The isolation was killing her.

  She couldn’t go back to America, but perhaps Ashford could visit her here, bringing Cristina. Maybe, even though it seemed too much to dream of, they could start a new life with her in Colombia.

  She shook her head. She had slipped into dreams again.

  That would be too much to ask from Ashford. She had already asked much more from him than he was ready for. He had a good start to his career now. Why would he want to leave America? She knew he loved her, but how long would it take for him to forget? And then Samantha really would have won.

  Stop it, Leila. These were horrible thoughts, worse than the unrealistic dreams. Theirs was not a family that had any business being broken up. These were the thoughts Samantha wanted her to think. Ashford was a good man. He loved her, and he took his responsibility as a father seriously. She could no more take Cristina away from her father than he would be able to rest knowing she had been taken from her mother.

  Those thoughts she’d had in the early days of her pregnancy were before she fell in love with Ashford. Now, she could no more give him up than bear the thought of being forever separated from Cristina.

  Time would give them a chance to be together again. She had to keep hoping. If anyone knew dreams sometimes did come true, it was her.

  She stood up, stretching her tired back and sighing. It was time to start her shift in the restaurant. One more day and night. One day closer, she had to believe, to being reunited with her daughter. She slung her bag over her shoulder—a makeshift purse filled with all her possessions. She didn’t have much besides the clothes she came here in, but she couldn’t leave anything at the dormitory. A woman roughly her size would not be above stealing her nice jeans or leather jacket.

  She turned away from the sea and walked up to the hotel grounds.

  It was Saturday. The restaurant would be busy tonight. Tomorrow was her day off, which she usually dreaded. This time, she looked forward to it a little with the thought of sending another email.

  Nearing the hotel office to sign in for her shift, Leila heard an unexpected voice. It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “Yes, I’ve seen her.” That was the hotel manager’s voice. “She works here.”

  Leila froze, then slid behind the wall and crouched beneath the back window of the office. She carefully set her knee down on the gravel.

  “How long?” Now, Leila placed the voice. It was Paulo’s secretary and Manny’s former friend, San Juan el Bautista Velasquez. Panic rose in her chest.

  How did they find her? Her caution had not been unwarranted. She hadn’t been paranoid. She hadn’t been careful enough!

  She heard another voice through the window: Alejandra—her friend.

  “Yes, I know her. She stayed at my apartment the first few nights because she literally had nothing. She told me she was deported from the United States.”

  “How did she seem to you?”

  “Really sad . . . upset. I would be too. She has a baby daughter they took her away from.”

  Leila clenched her fist. Now, Paulo would know about Cristina.

  “Has she done something wrong? Is she in trouble?”

  “No. But there’s someone who wants to meet her.”

  “She should be here any minute.” It was the manager again. “Her shift starts soon if you’d like to wait.”

  “No. I’ll go. And please, don’t tell her I was here.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She heard San Juan el Bautista leaving and had a rash impulse to confront him. What harm could it do now that he knew she was here? Maybe now, away from the police station, she could convince him to help her, not to give her up to Paulo. Wasn’t he once her father’s friend?

  But she stayed where she was behind the window. Thinking she could trust him would be more foolish than having trusted Alejandra. She would be better off acting like she knew nothing of his visit. Let them think they had her. She would work her shift, then disappear. There was no reason to go back to the dormitory. With her upcoming day off, she would have a two-day head start. One more night of Saturday tips would help too.

  She touched the in
side seam of her uniform pants. The bad fit was a bit of a blessing because she had space to sew in all the money she’d earned so far, as well as the knife she stole from the police headquarters. She would have to work tonight with extreme alertness, ready to dash away at the first sign of danger—ready to fight if she wasn’t fast enough.

  And after tonight, what then? The easiest thing would be to find a job in another hotel, but how long would it be before Paulo tracked her down again? Perhaps she should leave Cartagena, but she didn’t have enough money to get far, and there would be no work outside of the city. What if Ashford and Manny were looking for her? She had to hope they were. But how would they find her before Paulo did?

  She mentally counted the money she had sewn into her pants as well as tonight’s expected tips. It could last her a couple of weeks, paying for daily food and the cheapest bed. By then, she would have to work again. She couldn’t survive long without working. But first, she had to make herself disappear. That part she was good at. She had learned how to disappear at a very young age.

  What had she done to deserve this exile? Now, not only to be taken away from her beloved, to have her own baby wrenched from her breast, but also to be hunted so that she couldn’t even take the time to grieve? Had she not suffered enough as a child to earn a chance at joy?

  39

  “UNA CERVEZA MAS. Este es la última.”

  San Juan el Bautista knew he should have stopped two beers ago. But he still wasn’t ready to go back and face Paulo. He’d rather be a little drunk.

  He didn’t go far after making his discovery at the hotel. He only drove a few blocks before deciding to stay in the Getsemaní neighborhood. It would be a long drive back to the headquarters on the opposite side of the city. The open-air bar grew crowded as the Saturday evening livened up, but Juan felt his solitude as he sat alone at the end of the bar. A man like him didn’t fit in around here. The beer made him less uncomfortable about it, even though each one cost twice what a beer cost in El Centro.

  Paulo had been sending him to Old Town almost daily for this search. He complained about it every time. But Paulo had been right—the girl did come here for work. Paulo would be giddy when he learned what Juan had found, yet Juan was in no hurry to tell him. He would be helping Paulo ruin another person’s life—just as Paulo had ruined Juan’s.

  Juan knew why Paulo cared so much about this girl. It was ridiculous, but after all these years, Juan understood his boss. Paulo couldn’t stand to be beaten, not by anyone. He had worked so hard to track Manny and never stopped resenting Manny for escaping him. To make it worse, Manny took a girl Paulo had set his eyes on. Her falling back in his lap was more than Paulo could have dreamed of. Now that she was so close, he wouldn’t rest until he found her, paying back Manny after all these years.

  Juan sipped at his beer, his shoulders slouching over the bar top.

  His heart burned with resentment. He hated Paulo but also needed him. He was oddly comforted by the control. Knowing this made him hate himself too.

  Juan often wished he’d died that day at the Palace of Justice in Bogotá. He had dreamed of a better Colombia back then. Now, he worked for the kind of man who made it a corrupt and evil place. It was hard to remember that boy he’d been—full of vitality and hope. It changed when he started killing. With each bullet he fired, it was a little piece of himself that he killed.

  Manny told him that day would make him a man. But he never said what kind of man. It turned out Manny, who ran away, became the better man, while Juan, who stood and fought, had nothing at all to be proud of.

  He touched the gun under his shirt. In his youth, it felt good to carry a gun. Now, it felt ridiculous. Not being official police, he couldn’t carry it openly, but Paulo had supplied him with a department-issued weapon anyway. He must have known how much Juan would have liked to kill him every day, also knowing that he would never dare.

  There wasn’t much to hope for anymore. Things would never change. Even simpler dreams of other men were beyond him now. He would never marry and have children. Even if he had not become unattractive—out of shape and uninteresting—he had nothing to make a woman think twice about him. There was no story about himself he could tell, no sense of humor to draw on, no talents or interests. After being a handsome boy, he doubted any woman had taken a second glance at him in the years since he got out of prison.

  Juan glanced up as a group of young people came into the bar, laughing and hanging on to each other’s arms. A man and a woman leaned over right beside him to order their drinks but didn’t seem to notice that he was there. Anonymous as always.

  All he had now were his comforts, like this warm sensation from his beer. He hated the comforts too, but he couldn’t give them up. His work for Paulo allowed him to have a nice little apartment and never go wanting for food and drink. He consumed more of both every day than he should. These comforts meant something after the poverty of his youth—the poverty that drove him toward revolution to begin with. These simple comforts should have been enough to make some poor woman want to be his wife, if only there was something compelling about him.

  Juan turned around on his stool, savoring the last few drops of his beer. There wasn’t much to distinguish the bar from the street outside as passersby mingled briefly with the people spilling out of the crowded bar. He more intently watched the people on the sidewalk, on this side and across the street, in anticipation of the one he hoped might pass.

  Because now, depressed by his thoughts and emboldened by alcohol, he didn’t really want to let Paulo win. He didn’t care what happened to the girl. He didn’t even care about her father. Manny deserted him, after all. He had no loyalty left for Manny. But he would enjoy seeing Paulo outsmarted for once. He would like to see Paulo have to suffer with his desires just as Juan suffered with his own. It wasn’t fair that Paulo always got the girl.

  Getting in Paulo’s way would be incredibly foolish. If he weren’t drinking, it never would have crossed his mind. He wasn’t smart enough to do anything without getting caught. Better to go home and suffer his loneliness in peace.

  San Juan el Bautista finished his beer and stood up on wobbly knees. He stepped through the bar crowd into the street. His eyes latched on to a figure coming toward him from the other side of the street.

  Even if he hadn’t been watching for him, it would have been hard to miss the man with the baby strapped to his chest, who walked with tired sadness toward his lodging at the end of another fruitless day. He looked so out of place.

  He had been watching this man too while searching for the girl. The blond father with bad Spanish was the newest neighborhood character. Juan had suspected a connection and now he was pretty sure of that suspicion after learning this afternoon that she had a child. He wondered if the poor man knew how everyone in Getsemaní was talking about him. Everyone knew he had been asking questions in the local hotels and restaurants. It was a wonder the girl hadn’t heard about him by now.

  Juan crossed the busy street and fell into step beside the man. “I often see mothers looking for their baby’s father in Cartagena.” He trusted that the stranger understood Spanish well enough. He himself would not have been able to say more than a word or two of English. “But you’re the first father I’ve seen going to seek the mother.”

  The American looked sideways at him, surprised, maybe even afraid. “Who are you?”

  San Juan el Bautista smiled. It had been a long time since someone had looked at him with fear. He savored it.

  “One with open eyes.”

  “Stop playing around. Who are you, and what do you know? If you’re trying to get money out of me, it won’t work.”

  Juan snorted. Typical American. “I bet you’d pay to know where your girl is.”

  “What do you know about Leila?”

  The man stopped and examined him. Juan stopped too. The baby looked from one to the other in confusion.

  “She’s here in Getsemaní.”

  �
�You’ve seen her!”

  “Not here. Weeks ago I saw her, after she arrived in Cartagena.”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  “Why should I?”

  The American grabbed his arm. The fear in his eyes had disappeared. Now, he looked angry and annoyed. Juan knew he had been foolish and was now desperate to get away. He may have been the one with the concealed gun, but he had little doubt this man could hurt him, even kill him if he wanted to, despite the baby in his arms. Such was the strength of his grip and the passion in his eyes.

  “Let me go,” Juan pled. Having lost his moment of power over the man, he now began to hate him. “I’m not the one who wants to hurt your novia. She’s working in the restaurant at Hotel Caribe.”

  The man released his arm.

  “You’d better hurry and find her before Paulo Varga does.”

  “That name!” Fear returned to the man’s face.

  Juan laughed. “Sí. Ese nombre. You’d better not let him find you either.”

  Juan scampered away, relieved to be free of the crazed father. It was time he told the chief what he’d discovered.

  40

  ASHFORD’S HEART BEAT wildly. Could Leila really be this close? After a week without hope, might his search end tonight?

  He wanted to run straight to the shoreline, to find the Hotel Caribe. He remembered the name. It was on his list, but he hadn’t gotten to it yet. But Cristina had started to cry, reminding him that she had needs too. Her diaper was full, and her stomach was empty. His own inn was close. He needed to take care of Cristina first.

  Ashford was frustrated to be slowed down by the baby when his goal could be so close. His first week in Cartagena had been a series of frustrations. Soon, everything would prove to have been worth it.

  At the front desk, Elena gave him precise directions to Hotel Caribe. “You’re not thinking of leaving us, are you? They’ll charge you much more.”