A Small Fortune

by Audrey Braun

  “He keeps calling like every two minutes. I haven’t answered yet but—”

  “No! God no, Oliver. Whatever you do, don’t answer.”

  How am I going to make him understand? My leg. The camera on Willow’s laptop. “I know it sounds crazy. You have every right to question your father and me. Just do me this one favor. Stay on the train and I will e-mail a photo of my leg to your phone. It’s gruesome, but it’s proof.”

  “Uh…”

  “I’ll have a computer in about an hour to take the picture. I’m sorry, Oliver. I have to go now. I love you, sweetheart. Sit tight and everything is going to be fine.”

  I’m so used to Oliver hanging up without saying a word that I almost miss his mumbled, “Love you, too,” right before I hit the button. I fall facedown onto the bed and laugh until I cry. So this is what it takes to win the love of a teenager.

  I strip the dirty sheets from the bed and replace them with the clean ones the maid left by the door. I pop the DVD into the player and crawl under the covers with the remote. The breeze ripples the thin white drapes into the room like ghosts standing guard at the balcony. It may be hot outside, but the breeze feels cool and I’m still having trouble regulating my body temperature from all the adrenaline rushes, the constant shock, a cocktail of medications coursing through my veins.

  I go straight to the film credits. A list of actors I’ve never heard of. Down to the grips and gaffers, and still no Benicio Martin. Maybe he goes by a different name. I go back and start again. This time a name catches my eye. Emily. Emily Sandstrom. Shopgirl in comic book store.

  I pick up the breakfast tray with the food I didn’t finish and place it across my lap. I take a deep breath and start the film from the beginning.

  I turn the volume down so I can scrutinize every face. There are so many street scenes full of people in the background that I’m like Jonathon on his BlackBerry, my fingers pecking away on the remote. Pause. Play. Pause. Play. Thirty minutes into the film and I haven’t seen anyone who looks remotely like Benicio. Then the comic store appears on the screen.

  I up the volume as a young woman (Harold’s daughter?) walks in with a group of friends. They spend a few moments messing around in the aisles, making fart jokes and punching each other in the arm, and then the camera pans to the counter where the shopgirl informs them that the books in the store are actually for sale. The group of kids make another fart joke, and then the shopgirl turns to a guy stacking comics on a nearby shelf.

  I hit Pause. I leap off the end of the bed and get close to the screen. I hit Resume.

  “Good one,” Benicio says sarcastically. Good one. The same way he said it when I asked if he was joking about being a comedian. I sit back on the bed, my body suddenly trembling at the sight of him. The scene moves forward with the group of kids leaving the store, and for a split second there’s Benicio’s back, his hands so familiar, his head shaking at shopgirl with an understanding. Emily, the woman Benicio nearly married, rolls her eyes.

  I watch it again. The look between them is so familiar. It could be Seth and me in his bookstore on any given day, our secret world layered with jokes only the two of us understand.

  Benicio is who he says he is. The film backs up his story. I scroll the closing credits one more time and search for anything resembling “shopguy.” There it is. Shopgirl’s assistant: Mateo Blanc. His stage name.

  I shut the television off and walk onto the balcony with my phone. I think of Benicio working in the garden at the condo, of the life he left behind and how badly he must’ve wanted to return to it. He was working for me in exchange for help getting back into the States. He was in love with some woman in L.A.

  How does Jonathon know this?

  Emily doesn’t really care about him, Benicio had said about the man Emily married. At least that’s what she says in her e-mails.

  27

  Willow arrives with the laptop.

  “Any news from anyone?” I ask. I hid the guns in the drawer of the bedside table before inviting her in.

  “Nada.”

  I’m still shaken from the sound of Seth’s voice, still reeling from the mixed emotions of seeing Benicio’s face.

  “I did see a weird story in the paper though,” Willow says. “About a guy they found in the jungle a couple of days ago.”

  My heart hurls against my chest. “What guy?”

  “It said he was in the hospital. At least at first he was.”

  It’s not a body. It isn’t Roberto. Treated in a hospital. “What was his name? What do you mean, at first?”

  “Apparently the guy managed to slip out of the hospital by jumping through the window.”

  I lower myself to the edge of the bed. What’s he made of, titanium? “Did you get his name?”

  “They withheld it on purpose to protect his family or to notify them first, something like that.”

  I bite my lower lip.

  “It’s your friend, Benicio, isn’t it? That’s why the cop called here today. Because he escaped.”

  I breathe deeply and let it go. “There is still so much I haven’t told you.”

  “Well?” She pushes her ears forward with the tips of her fingers.

  I do it. I tell her everything. From Seth, fourteen years ago, to Jonathon and Benicio and the kidnapping and the scam Jonathon’s trying to pin on me and poor Oliver on the train and something that has to do with Switzerland, and finally back to Benicio and the film and the woman in L.A. and me sitting there on the bed not having a clue what to do next.

  Willow’s mouth hangs open. “I’m sorry, but this is the most excitement I’ve ever had at this job. At any job.”

  We both laugh, and the tension, the strange shock of hearing and telling such a story, loses some of its weight.

  “I was thinking of selling the place,” Willow says. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Just don’t sell it before I leave. I need you to help me get out of here.”

  Willow smiles. “What did you have in mind?”

  “When did the paper say he escaped?”

  “Yesterday, I think.”

  “He could have walked all night. He could show up here any second. Are you headed to lunch now?”

  “I usually pick up something on my way home and then take a little siesta like everyone else.”

  “Is there a sign on your door showing when you’ll be back?”

  “A little clock set at two.”

  “Thank you for this.” I pat the laptop and realize that Willow is the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in years.

  “I’ll pop in and pick it up when I get back.”

  After she’s gone I take the laptop out onto the balcony and breathe in the moist salty air.

  How can one person feel so many things at once? Doubt. Gratitude. Outrage. A steady drip of sorrow and love.

  I remove the bandage and snap a photo of my leg. I throw in a couple more of my bruised and insect-bitten arms and e-mail them off. I think of taking one of my face but can’t bear the thought of Oliver seeing the pain and fear in my eyes. This seems far worse than the gruesome hole in my leg.

  A cruise ship sails in the distance. A tiny toy on the horizon but I know it’s the size of a whole city, full of people, people having the time of their lives. What I wouldn’t give to kick back in the sun and disappear inside a Joella Lundstrum novel, to have the luxury of lingering on beautiful phrases, losing myself in prose, to have everything that’s once muddied transformed into something crystal clear.

  My conversation with Seth replays in my mind. He paused at first, and then said, “Can you hold, please?”

  “Seth? It’s me.”

  “Yes, I think I put it aside. Let me check in the back.”

  Then he returned, his voice clearly shaken.

  “Celia. Jaysus. Celia. My wife answered the phone. She was standing right there. I couldn’t, Jaysus, I couldn’t speak.”

  I hadn’t thought the whole thing through. The last thing I w
anted was for anyone else to be lied to.

  “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  “No apologies, please. It’s been so long.”

  “Fourteen years.”

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” he said in a voice filled with an excitement I didn’t deserve.

  There wasn’t enough time for me to explain everything in detail. I simply stuck to the fact that Oliver was on his way there because Jonathon had done something awful and we needed to escape. We had nowhere else to go. This fact alone was humiliating enough. But there were so many other reasons for me to feel foolish. I apologized more than once. I didn’t mention I was in Mexico. He listened carefully. If he thought I was crazy, if he was passing judgment on me I never sensed it. In the end he told me he was honored that I felt I could ask him such a thing. “Of course I’ll look after him. Of course.”

  Then right before we hung up he said, “I don’t blame you for doing what you did back then. You were a married woman with a family. I had no business doing what I was doing.”

  He was now a married man with a family of his own. Was this his way of saying nothing could happen between us again? Point taken.

  “Do you regret the time we spent time together?” I asked, knowing I was crossing the line.

  “No. Never. Not for a second.”

  I look across the ocean now, the sound of Seth’s voice still humming in my ear. I may never know what Benicio’s true intentions are. But what I do know is that it no longer matters. I know exactly what mine have been. And I don’t have a single regret.

  28

  “That thing is sick, Mom.” Sick meaning cool in the case of the hole in my leg.

  “I’m glad it was sick enough to keep you on the train.”

  I explain where he needs to go and who will be there to take him in.

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “Is he a friend of yours? I never heard you mention him before.”

  “He’s someone I trust,” I say. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

  I explain how I hope to arrive not long after he does. I tell him to open a new e-mail account and write to me at my new e-mail address. Most of all he just needs to stay put. Wait it out. And of course, not tell a soul. “You didn’t tell Maggie, did you?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Oliver!”

  “No.”

  My stomach hardens.

  “Oliver, you didn’t!”

  “No. I said I didn’t.”

  But long after I hang up the sensation lingers in my gut. It won’t let me be.

  I return to the computer, unsure what to do next. I type Benicio Martin into the search engine and rows of articles appear, everything from comedy shows as Mateo Blanc to the raid that led to his deportation. All of it is true. Everything he told me about himself is true. I hit “Images,” and there he is smiling, his perfect nose, his face shaven and clean. I feel a pressure in my chest. It deepens when I see a photo of Benicio and Emily, his arm thrown around her shoulder, the two of them so beautiful together, dressed in black, their happiness palpable through the screen.

  He loves a woman in L.A. He loves Hollywood.

  I step away and tighten my hair inside the clip. I need to think. Ideas are competing inside my brain. How can I get through customs? How can I board an international flight without luggage? I’ll have to get a suitcase. I’ll need things to put inside. And the guns? I can throw them into the ocean. And then what? How will I protect myself from Jonathon once I’m back in the States?

  I check my e-mail and see a message from the bank. It’s the confirmation I’ve been waiting for. I plug in the passwords and log on. I brace myself for what I’m about to find.

  What I’m not prepared to find is my checking account intact. My money is untouched. Fifteen hundred dollars and twenty-two cents, to be exact.

  I check my money market. Ten thousand, plus. That’s a lot of money. Why hasn’t Jonathon taken it? It doesn’t make sense. The only activity going in and out of this account in the last few months has been the automatic deposit from my checking, and a small amount of earned interest.

  It doesn’t make sense. He hasn’t taken a dime.

  “Goddamnit!” What the hell is he after?

  I click on the portfolio my mother left behind. I know there won’t be anything for Jonathon to bother with, and I’m right. More than right. Not even a dollar amount listed. No zero balance. Nothing. Just a series of numbers and codes. At the bottom of the page it reads, BALANCE UNAVAILABLE. There are no other options.

  I’m about to leave well enough alone, assume that it’s finally gone belly up, but something in the back of my mind tells me to slow down. My mother’s voice. Not so fast, Cee-Cee. Take another look. I tap my pursed lips and let my mind wander. Maybe the lack of information on the account is due to the type of fund. Dividends originating from an investment account. I didn’t pay much attention when I signed the paperwork from my mother’s estate. That was years ago. All I remember is the lawyer saying that one of her investments had been virtually worthless, and yet my mother insisted everything she had be dumped into it and then put in my name. It came with preconditions, too. “Good thing it doesn’t have much money in it,” the lawyer had said, “because if you ever wanted to withdraw it, you’d have to go all the way to…”

  Am I remembering this right? Did he really say Switzerland? I’ll have to go all the way to Switzerland?

  29

  By the time Willow knocks on the door to retrieve her computer, I’ve been wringing my hands for an hour.

  I swing the door back and pull her inside. “I need the fax number of your office.”

  “Whoa.” She stumbles in. “OK. Hi there.”

  “I figured something out. At least I’m starting to figure it out.”

  “Can we sit down? Because it looks like your head is going to explode.”

  “It is. Listen,” I say as I continue to stand. “I think this has all got something to do with an investment my mother left me in her will. It’s from Switzerland. I’m sure that’s what the lawyer said. I mean, he said it nineteen years ago, so I can’t remember word for word, and of course I was pretty distraught at the time, my mother had just died—”

  “I just had a nap. Can you start over?”

  “This fund wasn’t worth anything at the time, it hadn’t been worth much of anything I don’t think, for decades. The lawyer said that it came with odd preconditions and that it was too bad my mother insisted that all of her assets go into it because the shares had this terrible track record and even if it ever did amount to something I’d have to go to Switzerland to get it out!” I pace the room with my fists pressed against my clenched teeth.

  “I’m not following you,” Willow says. “If there’s no money in it, then why is your husband after it?”

  “I tried to check it online just now and nothing showed up except numbers, something that looked like codes. I don’t know if there’s money in it or not. It doesn’t say what’s in it. I’m just going on a feeling. He wants whatever it is, or maybe he just wants to use it for something else. Either way he can’t get to it because of the conditions in the will, and that’s why I need your fax machine.”

  “You’re just going on a hunch?”

  “I’m going on a vibe. A big vibe. A vibe as big as a wave crashing over my head.”

  Willow yawns and shakes her head. “Can’t argue with a vibe.” She agrees to run out and purchase another disposable phone with the cash I give her. “Let’s just hope that for once business stays slow and no one notices the office is closed.”

  When Willow returns I immediately get the lawyer on the line, though it’s now the lawyer’s son, Marc Jacobson the second, who took over the business after his father passed away.

  “How do I know you’re who you say you are?” Jacobson says. “I can’t just fax this stuff over without proof.”

  He isn’t even trying to be helpful.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll f
ax you my passport picture and Social Security number. Do you need anything else?”

  “A signature. Something that has your signature beneath a written request.”

  “It’s on its way. And do me a favor. Send the entire will. Every piece of information you have.”

  “We normally charge for this sort of thing.”

  “So send me a bill. I’ll pay it the moment I get home.”

  “I could just charge it to your husband’s bank account.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “It’s just that I already have it. The one I used when I sent copies over to him.”

  “What copies?”

  “Of the will. And the information about the trust.”

  “Why would you do that? Everything is in my name!”

  “Um, no. Both of your names are here in my office. You gave him permission to have access, at least to the information.”

  “But my mother left everything to me. I wasn’t even married when she died.”

  “All I can tell you is that his signatures are right next to yours.”

  “When was the last time he requested a copy?”

  “I need your written signature before I can give you that information.”

  “You just gave me information without the signature.”

  “That’s all I can give you over the phone.”

  “Fine. Fine! But make sure you include everything with the fax. Anything at all that pertains to my mother’s will. I can’t call back again.”

  Forty-five minutes later Willow arrives at my door with a stack of papers the size of a novella.

  “I think he added some things just so he could charge you extra,” Willow says.

  I don’t remember this much paperwork, though the truth is I barely remember anything about that day in the lawyer’s office, and then later at the bank, moving through a fog, shaking Jonathon’s hand, agreeing to have dinner with him. The whole thing took place as if in a dream.

  “You’re a gem,” I say to Willow. “An absolute lifesaver.”