Half the Day Is Night
Page 29
It had been stupid luck that he had found this, how would he find something else? Maybe they should go to another city? To Del Sud? But that would mean Port Authority.
“How did you get this job without a workcard? Or do you have a fake workcard?”
“No,” he said. “They pay me off the books.”
“What do you think we should do?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I think you should have stayed at your grandfather’s.”
“I didn’t want to go to jail,” she said.
“You have money, you could get a lawyer. You could get away.”
“They turned down my request to go to Miami,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She told him about trying to get permission to leave. He didn’t know what to make of that.
“Still,” he said. “You didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know when you ran away,” she said.
“So, I was wrong.”
It was strange to be her equal.
“You are here now,” he said. “We have to think.”
She chewed on her lip.
“We need different jobs. Or maybe not a job,” he said, “maybe we should just hide. I have some money, you have some money.”
“We need to get out of Caribe,” she said.
“Is there another way?”
“We need documents,” she said.
He sighed.
“No,” she said, “we need documents. Is there someone here who might know someone who could get us documents?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He thought about Lopez, who sold contraband beer. Lopez wasn’t exactly a criminal, but would he know someone? It was not safe to ask.
“I know someone,” she said.
“Who?” he said.
“I have to think about it,” she said.
* * *
The next morning David waited for Mayla at the lunar pool. She had been here for a whole day. He felt that there was a clock ticking, the longer she was here, the more dangerous everything got. Time to go. He sat with his legs in the water so the pyroxin wouldn’t make him too hot.
He knew her the moment he saw her, she was as tall as MacKenzie, and her diver’s suit was too big around the waist. It bunched around her weight belt. He felt himself curiously glad to see her.
“How can you stand that?” she asked.
“What?” he asked.
“Sitting in the water that way?”
“You don’t want to get too hot,” he said.
“Oh, right,” she said, sarcastic. “Big problem. God, this sucks.” She sat down next to him but didn’t put her legs in the water.
Was she taking pyroxin? Maybe nobody had told her. If Santos hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t know. He thought about getting into that water without it and shuddered.
“If you’re cold, get out,” she said. “We’ve got a few minutes.”
“I’m okay,” he said. “Did anyone talk to you about, eh, keeping warm?”
“Not specifically,” she said. “What?”
He looked around, there were other people coming to get on shift. He felt funny talking about it in front of people. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay,” she said.
He watched her at the site. She was awkward with tools. He would be better off if he took off without her. An anglo and an oriental, they would be obvious. Foolish to think they could disappear together. Maybe it was foolish to think he could disappear at all.
It would be easier not to be alone, though.
He would have to find out how she thought she might be able to get them documents. This was her home, she had been pretty well connected.
Maybe she could get them out. Maybe he could go home.
* * *
Mayla found David in the bunkroom after dinner.
Women were allowed in the men’s bunkroom until ten, men were never allowed in the women’s bunkroom. But there was no sense trying to talk in the bunkroom. There was no way that they could have talked in the dining hall during dinner, either.
Santos said, “Hi.” Friendly, a little respectful. His face was carefully neutral. Meeting some guy’s girlfriend.
Mayla said hello. “You still have Mephistofeles,” she said. She fondled the cat’s ears. Meph sniffed at her fingers curiously and David couldn’t tell if the kitten remembered her or not. It had not been that long ago, really. Just weeks since the house was blown up. It seemed like a long time, that was all.
“After all the trouble you went to,” Mayla said, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” She smiled, making the connection between them.
Santos looked interested. Shit, there would be questions later. “Come on,” David said.
He took her down to the dining hall. It was too bright, brighter it seemed because it was nearly empty after dinner except for some jocks playing cards. The chairs were loud when they pulled them out.
She sat across the table from him, leaning on her arms. “You said you can get documents?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I know someone to try, but you may not like it.”
“Who?” he said.
“Saad Shamsi.”
It took him a moment. “The guy with the slave bracelets? In Marincite?” he asked. He remembered the partner, the crazy man on drugs. And the girl.
She nodded.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “He is a crook.”
“Who do you think is going to sell us documents?” she asked. “A nun?”
“You would not work with him,” he said. “He will not want to work with you now.”
“Money is money,” she said. “He wants money to immigrate to the U.S.”
No. No, no, no. Craziness. “We don’t have enough money for him to immigrate. And he is in Marincite, are you going to call him? You think in Marincite they don’t record every call?”
“I wasn’t going to call him,” she said. “I could go there.”
“Right,” David said. “Go to Port Authority, buy a ticket for Marincite.”
“You can pay cash for Marincite,” she said. “Go the way we did, second class. They don’t care what your name is, they don’t even ask if you buy your ticket at the terminal. It’s like taking a bus.”
Too crazy. Marincite, the spider web. He didn’t like it, remembered the sullen security force. Like going to a military base when you are on the run from the police, stupid. “There are people here that I can try. Let me try first.”
“Like who?”
“Lopez,” he said. “He’s a jock. He sells pyroxin.”
“Some jock who sells pyroxin isn’t going to be able to get us documents,” she said.
“But he might know someone who can,” David said.
Now she shook her head.
He partly agreed. Lopez wouldn’t know anything about documents, but he bought his pyroxin from someone, and someone above him would know how to get documents. How many layers up before there was someone who could get them documents? But it was better than going to Marincite. “In Marincite there will be Uncles.”
“The Uncles aren’t the blue and whites,” she said. “They don’t like each other. The Uncles won’t care about us.”
“You don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know about Lopez, either,” she said.
He tapped his fingers on the table. Sighed. “We were not meant to be criminals,” he said.
“Fugitives,” she corrected. “Criminals have done something wrong.”
Maybe the distinction mattered to her. If he had done something criminal, it was to be criminally stupid. “Lopez will not get us in the kind of trouble that Marincite might.”
“There’s no way that Lopez is going to be able to come up with documents,” she said.
“I said that he might know someone who could.”
She shook her head. “It’s a waste of time. And the more people we talk to here, the more risk.”
“Is that so bad?” she asked.
Was it? The fish farm had been a place to hide, but now that she was here and using her own name, it wasn’t anymore. He wondered, too, how much of her refusal to consider Lopez was because it wasn’t her idea. In her head, he suspected, she was still the boss.
“If we are going to quit, then let me try Lopez first,” he said. “If we have trouble, we can just leave.”
“I don’t think you should,” she said. “Maybe we can get a day off, go to Marincite. If we can, then we can try Shamsi and if it doesn’t work out we can still come back here.”
“It was safe here,” he said, “until you came.”
“I’m sorry,” she snapped.
“You said you come here, you came here, because I know how to hide,” he said. “So this time, we will do it my way, okay? And if it does not work, we will try your way.”
“If it doesn’t work, we may not be able to try it my way.”
He didn’t bother to answer her. In his mind, if they tried Lopez, they might lose their money, they might have to leave the fish farm, but Lopez was not going to turn them over to the blue and whites.
Shamsi’s partner was a crazy man, a drug man in a way that Lopez was not. Maybe Lopez’ connection was as bad, but it was better than going to Marincite.
She did not like it, he could tell. But she couldn’t stop him, and she knew it.
He smiled to himself. It was good for her not to be in control. Let her learn what it was like to take the orders.
* * *
Lopez was société; on Sundays David had seen him dressed in white for the meeting. But he couldn’t wait until next Sunday, it was already Tuesday evening and he felt that the longer they waited, the shorter their odds.
He sat on his bunk awhile, then finally got up and walked past Lopez’ bunk, but there were jocks around. There were always jocks around Lopez, usually in the evening they were drinking beer. Lopez’ bunk aisle was the local bar. The bottom bunk across from his was kept empty, and David figured it was because so many people sat there.
Lopez was stocky and dark; somebody had said sometime that he was from Guatemala but David had only a hazy idea of where Guatemala was.
He tried to think of ways to get Lopez so he could talk to him. People were always pulling Lopez aside so they could talk to him—to buy pyroxin. But he felt strange just walking up to Lopez and asking him to come and talk. Better to wait until morning.
In the morning, Lopez was late out of bed. In the dining hall his table was full of jocks. And out at the site it would be impossible to talk to him, because anything David said would go over the mic and everybody could hear it.
David got to the locker room early and suited up, then watched for Lopez.
Lopez came in, rolling on short legs, grinning at something someone had said.
“You need pyroxin?” he asked David.
David shook his head. “Not yet. I need to ask you some things.”
“So ask,” Lopez said.
It was late, they were supposed to be in the yard soon. Mayla would be waiting and wondering where the hell he was. “I have this problem,” David said. “You see, it is my ex-wife.”
Lopez nodded, frowning.
“I cannot use my own workcard, so here I am paid off the books. Do you know what I mean?”
Lopez knew.
“I am looking for someone who can help me get a new workcard, maybe some more identification.” David paused, waiting to see what Lopez would say.
Lopez shrugged. “I can’t help you.”
He opened his locker and started to suit up.
“Do you know someone who could help?”
Lopez thought, dumping his tights and tunic onto the floor, pulling his boots out of the bottom of the locker. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” Lopez turned “think” into “theenk.”
“Thank you,” David said.
“For what,” Lopez shot back, “I haven’t done anything yet.” And he grinned.
David smiled and nodded, and backed away.
And then there was nothing to do but wait for Lopez to answer.
14
Out of Water
Mayla pulled her suit out of the locker. She thought she could have handled the cold and the mind-numbing tiredness if she only knew what she was doing. Not that it mattered if she didn’t know about construction, she wouldn’t be here long. If David could get something out of Lopez, they might be gone tomorrow.
The suit was bulky and there was never enough room in the locker room. She tried to keep her elbows in, fighting into the leggings. Everybody else had to have the same problems, but she felt exceptionally stupid.
They were going to be putting up walls again today. The interesting part was that she had never seen how things were built. Things like light fixtures and all the parts of buildings that looked so smooth. It was surprisingly obvious.
The seals on her suit resisted her efforts to close them. No one else had trouble, but the suit was so much thicker than the ones she was accustomed to, her fingers couldn’t get them to do what they were supposed to do. Christ, how was she supposed to use tools when she couldn’t even seal the fucking suit?
Luz, next to her, was chattering in rapid Spanish. Luz intimidated her. Luz had coffee skin and brindle hair and wore eye makeup even when she was diving. Streetsmart. Which Mayla knew she would never be. She also knew Luz knew she was incompetent, even though Luz had never said so. “Here,” she said suddenly in English, “let me help you.” English was taught in school, but some of the women didn’t speak it.
“You remind me of my daughter,” Luz said, unexpectedly.
Mayla smiled, not sure what that meant. She hadn’t even known that Luz had a daughter.
“She’s fourteen, she stays with her father. I miss doing things for her, you know, brushing her hair in the morning and helping her get ready for school? Not that she would let me anymore. There you are, all sealed up.” Luz patted her shoulder.
“Thanks,” Mayla said. “I feel like such a klutz.”
“Everybody has to learn,” Luz said. “Anybody willing to work is already ahead of all those bums that sit at home and moan. Like my sister’s boyfriend, he is, you know, a waste of breathing space. My parents, when they came here they were so poor they didn’t have a corner to die in, you know? But they worked, and they kept us together, and even during the revolution, my father had money hidden and my parents kept us fed.”
Luz gathered up her gear without stopping. “They lost everything they had during the revolution, but they started all over again. And my mother runs the bodega all day, and my father works. See, when it’s time for my father to retire, they’ll sell the bodega so they have money for their old age, and this way they get groceries for cost.”
Mayla nodded. She’d seen the little bodegas, just a narrow little grocery that sold masa fina and rice and all the basics.
“So someone like you,” Luz said, “I mean, you can tell that, you know, you come from better, and you lose your job at the bank, and you don’t give up, you become a fish jock. I admire that. ’Cause you’re working. So if people give you a hard time about learning, fuck ’em. They weren’t born knowing how to run a sealer. Somebody had to show them the first time, too.”
What would Luz think when she quit? “How long have you been a fish jock?” Mayla asked.
“Eleven years,” Luz said. “Now, though, I don’t work all the time. I do a lot of construction work, ’cause the pay is good, then when the project is done, I go back and spend some time with my husband and daughter. Then I can pick up another job. I could be a foreman at a couple of places, I had offers, but then I never see my family but two weeks a year. And Rafe won’t live on a fish farm, even if he could get a job.”
/> At the lunar pool Luz stopped again, popped something in her mouth then shrugged her recyc on. “You’re smart not to take pyroxin, too,” she said. Then she pulled her mask on and sat down and fell back into the water. Just like that, no hesitation.
She sank away for a moment, down through the clear water of the pool, and then turned and flicked her flippers.
Mayla didn’t feel as if she could just get in; she knew that just going straight into the water could shock your heart. You were supposed to sit half in and half out, let your body acclimate a little. She sat down and dropped her legs in the water and waited for David.
Luz took pyroxin. David had said that Lopez sold pyroxin, she wondered how many of the jocks took it. Chasing the dragon. It was supposed to speed everything up, and make you feel warm. It wasn’t worth it though, not if she wasn’t going to stay here long. Last thing she needed was to get in trouble for illegal substances.
Keep your nose clean, she thought.
A couple of jocks came and sat down, one of them was David’s friend, Santos. Her chron said she had only about five minutes more to get into the yard. Was David working in the lab today?
“Santos?” she asked, “is Kim diving today?”
“He’s coming,” Santos said. “He’s talking to Lopez.”
Was that a good thing? Lopez could be saying anything, he could be saying that he didn’t know about anything like that—but if so, why hadn’t he said something the night before? Maybe he had gotten in touch with someone?
She couldn’t help hoping. She was afraid of going to Marincite; she didn’t know what Saad would do and she was terrified of meeting Saad’s partner again.
She just wanted to get through this.
David came with Lopez but they weren’t talking. She watched David for any sign, but he just said hello and sat down. She didn’t know whether she should say something in front of Lopez or not. Better to be safe and say nothing. Better to wait until the dive was over and she could ask. There was no sense in risking anything.
Her stomach turned on itself, acids devouring.
Better to do something rather than sit here. She pulled her mask down and pulled her legs out. Turned around and fell back on her recyc unit, on her back, into the pool, pushing off the side with her legs. It was cold. She thought she would never get used to it. Patel said she needed more fat on her.