Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Eventually he tried being a spy for awhile. There was an international module but if it took him to Paris he couldn’t get that far. He stopped playing before his hour was up.

  On the way back to the room he stopped and got his hair cut short. But he still felt foreign.

  8

  Mindgames

  Mayla and Tim settled in to her grandfather’s house and her grandfather had Jude open up the rooms and take the dust covers off the furniture. It raised dust and in the dry, carefully maintained air of her grandfather’s house the dust hung, fine as fog. Mayla couldn’t see it but she could feel it, cottony tasting, coating her tongue and the inside of her mouth. It dulled the mirrors, dulled the fabric of the furniture, dulled her sense of taste and smell and made her feel tired and thick. She ran her finger across the mirror and left a line. The service came in and cleaned and the mirrors looked as clear as windows, but the next day the dust was back.

  Two men from the insurance people came out and sat on the pink flowered couch where she had sat while the blue and white asked Tim why David wasn’t coming back. The older, shorter man had a gray unhealthy face. Mayla supposed he had good insurance, though.

  “Will you be staying?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “well, yes, for awhile.” She wasn’t going to rush into buying a place and it would take awhile for the insurance money to come through.

  “You will move to the United States?” the gray-faced man asked.

  “Pardon me?” she said.

  “If you are not staying.”

  “Oh, no. No. I thought you meant would I be staying here, with my grandfather. I’m not leaving Caribe.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You see, a lot of people do, after something like this.”

  Leave home.

  He told her she needed to hire some security.

  “I will,” she said. “I plan to. As soon as things get settled, right now I don’t have a place of my own.”

  “You need someone now,” the gray-faced little man said.

  “It’s not like I don’t have someone, Tim is still here,” she pointed out.

  Tim sat, listening, his empty hands loose on his knees.

  “It has upset everything,” she explained. “I have to tackle things, one at a time. There are some things at work that I have to take care of, and then I have to find a place to live. And since Tim is here, I have security.”

  “Ms. Ling,” said the gray-faced little man, “if you are going to stay, we believe you need to hire someone professional.”

  “Okay,” she said. She could understand why they didn’t exactly consider Tim a professional. “As soon as I can.” First, she had to settle the MaTE deal. If she settled the MaTE deal, everything would fall into place; she could think about things, she wouldn’t have to worry about being a banker, about work. “It might take me a few weeks, right now I don’t have any place where someone could live, do you understand?”

  They did not understand, or rather, as they made clear, she did not understand. Her insurance rates were going to triple, no matter who or what she hired.

  “Triple?” she said.

  The house had been bombed seven days ago. And if she did not hire someone within the next fourteen days, her insurance would be canceled. She was now in a “high risk group.”

  “Because you have been targeted, Ms. Ling.” The little gray-faced man seemed sympathetic. “And your security is compromised.” He said “promised,” as if she had been promised something. “Because your staff is involved.”

  “David wasn’t involved,” she said, from habit more than conviction.

  “Yes,” the man said, “but he ran away. So, we insurers, we are conservative people, we have to assume the worst. I have a list of agencies,” he checked his briefcase, but it was his partner who handed it to her, “ah, yes, there it is. They can send you people to interview. These agencies, they are approved, you see?”

  “Yes,” she said. She held the list and read the names and when she was done she couldn’t remember what she’d read.

  Tim sat with his hands on his knees and the two insurance men sat on the dusty flowered couch, all of them looking expectant, looking at her.

  “Thank you,” she said. And then, much to everyone’s surprise, including her own, tears welled up in her eyes. She blinked and blinked, but she couldn’t stop them.

  * * *

  “I need to go back to work, to establish a routine, but I’m unfocused,” she explained to Tim. They were almost in Marincite. She was working again. Or she would be, just as soon as she got to Marincite and started. “I can’t seem to put my attention on the things it’s supposed to be on.” The house had been gone for nine days and she had twelve more to find security. “I suppose it’s normal, but I’m worried about the Marincite deal. I am not very focused, you know. I can make mistakes, say the wrong thing, because I’m not sharp. People don’t make loans with stupid bankers.” When she got back to Julia, she was going to make an appointment with a counselor.

  “Somebody else could go,” Tim said.

  “No,” she said. “There’s this Saad Shamsi business, I have to die about that.”

  “What?” Tim said.

  “It’s en la sombra,” she said.

  “No, what you said, you’d have to ‘die about that’.”

  “Decide,” she said. “I said ‘decide about that’.”

  “No you didn’t,” Tim said, “you said ‘die’.”

  “I meant ‘decide’.” She shook her head. “Don’t go analyzing, Tim. That business about Freudian slips isn’t true. It’s medieval psychology.”

  “I didn’t say anything about Freudian slips,” he growled.

  The sub lurched, lousy docking. At the subport in Miami, she thought, the docking system was automated and it was always smooth. Everything in Caribe was inept. Would she have been able to make it as a banker if she had had to in the U.S.? Or was she inept, too?

  She didn’t want to come back to Marincite, but she had to. She would stay for two days, then go back to Julia and hire some security and start thinking about a place to live. Routine. Establish a routine. Then she’d be fine. She was a competent person, she was just unsettled.

  The first class waiting room was quiet. A dark-haired man in a business suit was standing at the gate, waiting, and she thought, that person looks like Saad Shamsi. She was worried about that, seeing Saad Shamsi everywhere like a guilty conscience.

  It was Saad Shamsi. Her luck, just to happen to come in at the same time as Saad was supposed to be meeting someone.

  Then he saw them and waved. He bent his head to talk to the woman at the gate, then handed her his smart card. She passed it through a reader and he came through walking towards her with purpose.

  “Madre de Cristo, I’m not ready for this,” Mayla said to Tim.

  Tim frowned.

  She smiled at Saad as if she was happy to see him.

  “Mayla,” he said. “Mr. Navarro thought maybe it would be better if someone you knew met you.” He held out his hand and she shook it.

  What did that mean? Was Polly Navarro telling her that she should give Saad his loan? Or was he thinking that after losing her house she would feel better recognizing her escort?

  Saad was with the city government, what was he doing at Navarro’s beck and call? Because Marincite Corp. is Marincite City. Not sharp, Mayla, she told herself, she was not sharp at all.

  She couldn’t very well leave Saad to chase their baggage, so the three of them all stood waiting for it to rumble up from the depths of the port. Saad was quiet, was it awkward for him to be standing here? He would say something about her house. Everybody always did. She waited for it. He didn’t say anything.

  Finally she said, “How’s business?”

  “Pretty good,” he said.

  “Have you secured a loan with someone else?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “You said you’d think about it. Mr. Navarro suggested I talk to you about it
before I went to Caribbean Securities.”

  “I see,” she said. If it was true, didn’t that mean that Polly Navarro wanted her to make the deal with Saad? She wished she could ask Mr. Navarro, but that would be stupid.

  “We don’t have to talk about it now,” he said. He was uncomfortable.

  “MaTE will put me in a conference room, we can talk there.”

  “It would be better if you came out to the loft,” he said.

  “No,” she said. No. She didn’t want to go to the loft. Didn’t like it there. People came to her office, she wasn’t supposed to go to places like that.

  “My partner can’t very well come to MaTE,” he said.

  She almost asked why not. Her mind, where was her mind? If Saad said his partner couldn’t come to MaTE he couldn’t come. She was going to make a mistake, say or do the wrong thing. She could feel the shakes, creeping around her hands, loosening her stomach. Think this through, she told herself. Why couldn’t he come to MaTE? She couldn’t think because she was anxious. “He said everything was all right with the Uncles.”

  “It’s okay,” Saad said. “The Uncles are no problem.”

  He wasn’t explaining. He looked at the luggage claim rather than at her. She didn’t think he was lying but she didn’t know. He wasn’t going to tell her what was going on.

  “Why can’t you and I negotiate this?” she asked.

  He shook his head. She knew the answer there, she had met his partner, seen how things were between Saad and Moustache.

  Dead end. Everything was a dead end and her mind wasn’t working. Meet somewhere else? She didn’t know places in Marincite, one place was no more safe than another. Tim’s duffel rumbled up and he reached between her and Saad to pluck it. It was good to remember Tim was there, big blond Tim.

  What to say. What to do. She couldn’t very well talk about it now. She had to collect herself, she had to be calm. Take a deep breath, she thought. This anxiety, she thought to herself, it is mindless, it is reaction to stress, you can handle it. Once she had collected herself she could talk to Saad.

  “Look,” she said, “I need some time to think about this, why don’t you call me this evening?”

  “I’m sorry,” Saad said, “I don’t see how that’s going to make any difference. The loft is the best place to meet.”

  “Earlier,” she said. “Like about six-thirty.”

  “I’ll call and confirm,” he said.

  Her hunter-green garment bag rumbled up. “That’s mine,” she said and Saad leaned to pick it up but Tim said, “I’ll get it.” Saad took a short step back but Tim just looked at him for moment before bending over and picking up the bag. It was the kind of look Tim had given David when David first came to work for her. Territorial, she thought. Alpha male, squaring off.

  Tim, taking care of her. She shouldn’t have wanted him to, but Mother of Christ, she did.

  * * *

  Tim didn’t like going to see Saad and his partner, and unlike David, he made it clear. He had heard of the part of the city called Cathedral. He said it was a pit, a ghetto, a budayeen. He didn’t trust Saad Shamsi.

  “You liked him well enough when he took us to see jai alai,” Mayla pointed out.

  Tim didn’t bother to answer.

  “In and out,” she said. “I’ll just get a signature on the papers and leave.” Polly wanted the loan, then she had to do it.

  Tim scowled and hunkered down next to her in the chute. He filled the space in the bubble, overwhelmed it. She had forgotten just what a physical presence Tim could be. Put your arms around me, she thought, I want to hide. Not that she would, it was completely inappropriate and she knew the consequences. His hands looked small compared to the rest of him.

  Tim was imposing, if you didn’t know him. He would make Saad’s partner think twice. He was better than David, that way. Maybe she should remember that when she hired security, hire someone big.

  Or maybe she was supposed to hire someone inconspicuous. She didn’t know. She didn’t know enough about any of this. The men from the insurance said she had been targeted. Once she was a target, what was she supposed to do? Get protection? Emigrate? Half the people she went to school with seemed to have emigrated. Emigrate where, the U.S.? Follow her mother to Europe? Not to Europe. She didn’t like Europe. When she was fifteen she visited her mother in Barcelona. She had embarrassed her mother because she couldn’t adapt, couldn’t get used to sunlight and weather. She tried to think of something else. She wished she could take a pill right now that would make her think clearly, that would stop her thoughts from skittering around.

  The chute rose into the station, into the light. Cathedral. The humidity hit her when the chute opened. The refresh was not as good here as it was in Central and the air was clammy. Poor man’s air.

  The loft was empty when they got there. “He’s coming,” Saad said. “He said he’d be here.” The loft smelled like aldehyde, chemical sharp and sweet. “He’ll be here,” Saad promised. “You want some coffee? A soft drink?”

  “Nothing,” she said. She didn’t really want coffee or something to drink, not with that smell.

  Tim glowered. Saad looked uncomfortable.

  The loft had long tables in it now, and newspapers in bundled piles in a corner, edges curling in the damp, and a huge plastic drum with a tube and a siphon. There were dirty footprints all over, perfect prints of soles with circles, zigzag lines, and makers’ marks, as if the floor had been mopped and then walked on.

  Nobody knew what to say.

  “I guess coffee sounds good,” Mayla finally said. She didn’t have to drink it but it gave Saad something to do.

  Where was Moustache? She didn’t like that he wasn’t here. Things weren’t going right.

  Saad brought coffee for her and Tim. It seemed to her that it smelled chemical, the same sweet-sharp chemical she smelled in the air. The surface of the coffee iridesced, like oil, under the light.

  Saad went back to get another cup for himself and she heard the door open at the base of the stairs. Moustache came up the steps, followed by the tawny-haired girl, who kept her eyes on the floor. Moustache barely glanced at them. He stomped to the back of the loft and started talking to Saad, speaking low and fast. “What?” Saad said. And again, “What? I can’t understand you.”

  The girl stood in the middle of the loft. She sniffed and rubbed her nose as if she were going to cry.

  Moustache struck the table with the flat of his hand. The girl started as if struck. From the way she was standing, Mayla couldn’t see her wrist so she didn’t know if the girl was wearing a slave bracelet or not.

  Saad looked back at them a couple of times, but Moustache talked on and on, words tumbling out, thick with rage. Was he drugged? Mayla thought he had to be. Saad looked back again and Moustache grabbed his shoulder roughly. “¡ESCHUCHA!” Then his voice dropped down again, a rumble of consonants that Mayla couldn’t decipher.

  Maybe she and Tim were supposed to leave? All she wanted was to say to Moustache that she’d give him his damn loan and then she could leave here, and worry about these people later.

  The girl shifted her feet a little, as if she would like to sit down.

  Moustache looked around and said, “What do you want?”

  Mayla looked at the tawny-haired girl. The girl looked at Mayla. And Saad said, placatingly, “About the loan. She is here about the loan.”

  “Big anglo,” Moustache said. “Your boyfriend?”

  He was talking to her, not the tawny-haired girl at all. “No,” Mayla said, her voice rising in surprise. “No, he’s not my boyfriend.” Did Tim act like her boyfriend? She hadn’t even thought Moustache noticed them there.

  “Who is he?”

  “Her security,” Saad said.

  “I thought her security is the little rat-faced chino.”

  “He doesn’t work for me anymore,” Mayla said.

  Moustache didn’t like that answer. He scowled at her. “Chinga,” he said.<
br />
  Tim scowled back. Don’t, she thought, don’t start anything. It doesn’t matter.

  “What is your problem!” Moustache shouted at her. He strode across the room, into her face, so close she took a step back. “You play mindgames with us, what? WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, BITCH!” He was standing so close that spittle flicked her face and his breath had a strange odor—almost fruity like aftershave—and the whites of his eyes looked yellow. She flinched, and he grabbed her arm. She pulled away and Tim grabbed for Moustache.

  Moustache jerked away and the tawny-haired girl shrieked.

  “Hey hey hey,” Saad said. “Easy. Everything is all right.”

  “Don’t touch her,” Tim said. “You hear me? Don’t touch her.”

  “You think you own everything? This is Marincite,” Moustache said, ignoring Tim, “you are in my city now. Here, I could have you both disappear. No one would find you. Anglos, no one here likes anglos. No one likes an anglo chinga. No one would care. Here, this is not the capital, this is Marincite.”

  “Hey,” Saad said, his voice smooth and placating, “nobody is talking about disappearing. We are going to make a loan, that’s all.”

  “Shut up,” Moustache said, not even looking at Saad. “Listen, I just want you to understand the rules. We are not impressed by las norteamericanas here. Your big country may be rich, but it’s far away. So don’t play mindgames anymore.”

  She wasn’t North American. She knew better than to correct him, don’t explain, it would only make him angry if she explained. But she wasn’t from the U.S., white skin or no white skin, she was Caribbean. He was crazy, he was toxic. What did it matter what he said? The tawny-haired girl was watching, watching. Not moving at all, even her breath invisible.

  He was looking at Tim, and then he started to grin. The tawny-haired girl covered her mouth with her hand. Madre de Diós, Mayla thought. The tawny-haired girl looked scared and that was bad. This is bad, Mayla thought, the words in her head. He’s going to hurt Tim.

  Tim didn’t look scared, Tim looked furious. “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “Tim—”

  “Estúpido,” Moustache said, grinning. Behind him, Saad looked scared, too.