Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  “Okay,” she said.

  Tim left first. They would call him the next day and meet again. David and Mayla walked back to the exchange to catch their bus.

  “He’ll do it,” Mayla said confidently.

  “You are so sure,” David said.

  She nodded. “We have to get in touch with Henri, set up the deal.”

  “What if Tim won’t do it?” he said.

  “He will,” she said.

  David thought, she likes this. It’s like the bank, making deals. And he felt cold.

  * * *

  Henri was waiting on the street where the political lived. He was standing on the street corner, blue braids shining in the fluorescent streetlight. He was whistling and drumming on his thighs, and something in the way he stood reminded David of a cop. As if this was Henri’s beat, his neighborhood. Which, of course, it was.

  “Happy to see you both,” Henri said.

  Mayla shrank. She was reduced by Henri’s presence, she pulled in, and her shoulders came up.

  Henri liked that. “Good morning sister, have you been well?” he boomed.

  “Fine,” she said in a small voice.

  Henri would ignore David, so he didn’t say anything. Henri didn’t like that, he wanted David to try and be big so he could put David in his place.

  He should let Henri put him in his place, because things could only go better if Henri was kept happy, but he couldn’t. And it wasn’t Henri that mattered anyway, it was the political.

  The room smelled just the same, musty and personal, as if the political never left. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe the room that he and Mayla were staying in smelled just as intimate and they couldn’t smell it anymore.

  “They aren’t ready yet,” the political said.

  “We didn’t think they would be,” Mayla said. “But we came to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “You understand that we’re trusting a lot to these documents,” she said.

  The political looked at her, blank. Not inquisitive, just stiff, uncaring.

  “I have done some business before,” she said.

  “I’ll bet you have,” said the political and for the first time, smiled. It was a little, ironic kind of smile.

  Mayla shrugged off the innuendo (if that’s what it was). “In business, I would normally ask for a guarantee.”

  “Fine,” he said. “If you’re not satisfied, return the documents in thirty days for a complete refund.” He sat back on his chair. He was wearing a long shirt like divers wore under diving suits and when he leaned back, David could see that he was thickening around the waist. For the first time it occurred to David that maybe he wasn’t a student, maybe he was older than David thought.

  “We have made a different arrangement,” she said briskly. “We will take the documents, and when we have left the port, and it is clear that they’re good, then you’ll get the rest of our money.”

  “No,” said the political, flat and uninterested.

  “Yes,” Mayla said. Would she be so tough if Henri were in the room instead of waiting on the street?

  “Go somewhere else for your documents,” the political said.

  Mayla stood up. “I’ll tell your friend with the blue hair,” she said.

  The political shrugged.

  “Come on,” she said and started for the door.

  She was bluffing, he thought, and the political wasn’t. Or else she had decided they stood a better chance with Saad. He followed her because he didn’t know what else to do. They had lost so much money here. They wouldn’t have enough for Saad.

  He could stop, force her to stop. He couldn’t think fast enough.

  “Wait,” the political said.

  She was at the door, one hand against it.

  “Listen, bitch,” he said, “the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing.”

  What did that mean? If Mayla knew what it meant she didn’t say anything. She just stood, waiting.

  “Money can’t buy you guarantees,” he said. “You may think it can, but it can’t. No matter how much money you’ve got, there are things you can’t buy off.”

  “Okay,” she said, and pulled the door open.

  “Wait,” the political said, coming halfway out of his chair. “Close the door. How do we know you just will not pay us?”

  Outside was Henri, probably wondering why the damn door was open. David wanted her to close the door, too.

  “This friend, the one we will call, the one who will give you the money, he will need documents to leave, too. This is his way of seeing if your product is any good.”

  The political didn’t like that word, “product.”

  “It’s a referral,” Mayla said. That was her hook, she had explained that the hope they would sell more documents would make them more likely to agree. But he didn’t think they really cared if they sold more documents. Henri had some debt on this man, but that didn’t mean the man wanted to go into business. Politicals always needed money, he understood that.

  “I have to check with some people,” the political said.

  Mayla didn’t close the door but she didn’t open it any farther, either. Any minute, David figured Henri would be pushing it open the rest of the way, and saying “Hey little sister, what are you doing?” and then would she be so tough? Henri could fuck up everything.

  As if everything wasn’t already a mess, with Mayla getting Tim to do things for her.

  “Close the door,” the political said.

  She finally did.

  The political sat back down in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Let me think. Okay. I’ve got to make a call. You should both wait in the bedroom.”

  The bedroom was small, impossibly crowded with printouts of newspapers and magazines lining the walls, and smelled more strongly of old sheets than the front room did. There was very little place to stand and David didn’t want to sit down on the bed. Neither did Mayla, she stood right next to him—there was no place else to stand, studying the cover of a magazine.

  The bed was a tumble, the sheets were all brightly patterned children’s sheets covered with jungle animals with big bright eyes. He studied a black panther with almond-shaped green eyes. The panther had a red dot in the middle of his forehead. The elephant did, too. And the peacock and the tiger, they all had bright red dots as if each had been shot in the middle of the forehead. It made no sense, no one would print sheets like that—had the political marked them all? Was it some sort of obsessive thing, some mental disturbance that manifested itself this way?

  He got a cold feeling, that they were dealing with a psychotic. If the political was that crazy then they were dead.

  And then he realized they were caste marks, the animals were all marked with Hindu caste marks. They all had long eyelashes. They were a child’s sheets, a little girl’s.

  He didn’t think the political was Hindu, he looked hispanic. Maybe he was Hindu. Maybe he had converted.

  The magazines were all news magazines and political journals. Some were in English, some were in Spanish. There was a wooden crucifix on the wall, which struck him as very Catholic, so the political wasn’t Hindu after all, probably he had gotten the sheets cheap, they were overruns or seconds or something, or else why would a grown man have children’s sheets? The sheets made him uncomfortable, even more uncomfortable than the crucified Christ, twisting in agony on the cross.

  The agonized Christ. The exaggeratedly agonized Christ, like the crucifix that Anna Eminike wore, like the crucifix of the South African Catholics.

  “La Mano de Diós,” he whispered.

  “What?” Mayla said.

  “That’s the same kind of cross, the same as Eminike had.”

  “How can you tell?” she whispered.

  “The Christ,” he said, “the way it looks.”

  “Maybe they are just, you know, a fad.”

  The ebony Christ writhed on his cross, ribs and hip jutting like the bo
nes on a starved gazelle. A fad, could it be that this was something this man had bought with his Hindu sheets?

  The political opened the door. “Okay,” he said.

  David and Mayla turned, twisted actually, since there was so little floor space.

  “I’ve talked to my comrades,” he said. “They say they understand your concern.” He waited a moment, to see what they would say, then took a breath. “They are willing to accept your conditions.”

  “Are you Catholic?” David said.

  “Yes?” the political said.

  “What do you believe?” David said. It wasn’t what he meant to say at all.

  “What do I believe?” The man laughed. “Do you mean as in the Apostles’ Creed? ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth’? Why, are you Catholic?”

  “You are a political,” David said, “what group do you belong to?”

  “All groups are the same, in the end, united in the same struggle,” the man said. “It doesn’t matter really which group I belong to.” The words were rote.

  “It matters to me,” David said, but he already knew. “Were you going to wait for us here when we came for the documents? Or were you going to give us bad documents and let the blue and whites arrest us? Or did you care once Mayla did not have a job at the bank?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” the man said.

  Too many vid shows, the words sounded artificial.

  Talking too much, they should have just left. “So we will come back when the documents are ready?” David said.

  “Yes,” the political said, “when the documents are ready, but we need to talk about how this transfer will be made. About your friend and the money.”

  “Let us go in the other room,” David said. He wanted to be out of this claustrophobic little place, he wanted to be able to move his feet. In the other room he could no longer smell the scent of habitation; he’d gotten accustomed to it, he supposed. But he still had the panicked feeling.

  “My friend will meet you after we call,” Mayla said. “We’ll call as soon as we’re in Miami. My friend might need documents, too, if ours work.”

  “Where will we meet the friend?” the political said.

  “On the mall, on the first level, in front of Gautier. There’s a bench there.” Mayla was caught up in all this, she thought she was in control.

  It was too easy, David didn’t know what to think. Why wouldn’t they think that he and Mayla were going to just skip them?

  “We have to go,” David said.

  Mayla frowned, started to say something.

  “No,” the political said, “we need to discuss this.”

  “We have to go,” David said.

  Someone knocked on the door and everyone in the room jumped. But the political stood up so fast that his chair clattered over, but his face, his body was expectant. The door opened, and it was Henri. “What is it?” he said.

  “We’re still talking!” the political said. Henri wasn’t who he had expected at the door.

  “We are done!” David said.

  Henri was too big, blocking the door. “What noise is this?” he asked.

  “It is a set-up,” David shouted. “It is a set-up! His friends are coming, they don’t care about the money!”

  “No,” the political said, “it isn’t true, we need to talk!”

  “Get out!” David said.

  Mayla was too afraid of Henri, blocking the door.

  The political pulled open a drawer and David knew the gun was coming before he ever saw it, knew it was all too late, that they would not get out—

  Henri shouted, “Fuck! You owe me money motherfucker! I get you business and you screw around!”

  The political brought the gun out of the drawer but it was aiming at Henri. Henri was coming through the door, all enraged. When the gun went off it didn’t seem to make any difference, except that Mayla screamed.

  Then Henri seemed to fold a little towards them. But he just kept coming, not falling, but coming, but David didn’t know if he was shot or not. David grabbed Mayla, and the political fired again, and some of Henri’s forehead and blue braids misted in a fine fog of red. And then, he stopped and for a moment rested his hands on the table, looking down at the political. Then he started to fall, curling up as he fell, but David was dragging at Mayla, getting her out the door while there was still Henri between them and the political.

  He heard the gun again, and they weren’t clear, Mayla was behind him, and then they were out on the street. So he ran, because there was nothing to do but run. And Mayla ran with him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked after a moment, because at first he couldn’t think of the words, not in English or in French.

  “I’m okay,” she gasped.

  On the main street they turned, “Just walk,” he said. “Just walk and shop.”

  But she was crying, crying and crying in great gasps. And he was shaking.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she sobbed.

  “No,” he said. “Just walk.”

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, and he thought she meant she was going to be sick anyway, but she wasn’t, and she said, “I’m sorry,” again. So he guessed she meant about Henri and the political.

  Or maybe she meant about everything, he didn’t know.

  16

  Deep Water

  They should have been dead. There was no way Mayla could see around it, except that maybe people were harder to kill than she thought. Both harder and easier, because it seemed as if people were always miraculously surviving or being killed without effort. She wondered if Henri would survive, but she thought not. If she closed her eyes she could see the fine spray of red misting across his blue braids, but she could not remember his forehead rupturing.

  So she sat in the waiting area for the shuttle to Marincite and did not close her eyes.

  They weren’t dead, but somehow they had disappeared. When David bought the tickets, the ticket seller had paid absolutely no attention to them. They were surrounded by men and women with flat mestizo faces and sharp, dark Haitian heads and they were invisible. Just a couple of people in fish jock tunics. She needed a shower, but so did some of the people around her. Maybe part of the reason she had always stood out before was more than just being an overdressed anglo, maybe part of it was pheromones. She washed hers off, these people didn’t because water was too expensive to waste on showers every day. So now she had found a key to good camouflage, stink a little.

  “We have to call Tim,” she said.

  David frowned at her. “Tim is out,” he said. “There is no deal.”

  “We still have to call Tim.” She wasn’t exactly sure why. “We said we would call him. And I have to ask how my grandfather is doing.”

  “Do you want Tim involved in all this?” David asked.

  “No,” she admitted. But Tim would be waiting for them, she should at least tell him that she and David were all right.

  She wondered if there was anything in the paper about the shooting, if they had been implicated. “I’m going to buy a paper,” she said.

  The papers available were mostly Spanish and Creole, but the Julian paper was listed. She asked for the last update, it had been updated less than an hour ago, which meant that the shooting might be there. She requested a copy of the whole paper, it would give her something to read, and took it back to the bench.

  There was nothing about the shooting, which may or may not have been a good thing, she couldn’t tell. Maybe it hadn’t been reported? That was impossible to believe, that even someone like Henri could have been shot and it wasn’t reported.

  But it gave her something to do until the sub came in. It gave her something to think about other than Henri, or meeting Saad and his partner in Marincite. Because if she started thinking about contacting Saad, she started thinking about how they really didn’t have much chance. And she couldn’t think about that.

  In a way, if they wer
e dead, at least she wouldn’t be so scared anymore.

  She and David almost had to sit in separate seats on the sub. This very nearly panicked her. But David asked some men to move together and sat her down by the window. She nodded off on the trip but she was so tense that her dreams were like fever dreams, endless dreams of walking through city streets trying to get somewhere. The dreams started almost as soon as she closed her eyes, as soon as she started to drift.

  * * *

  They took the chute to Cathedral. She wasn’t sure how to get to the loft where Saad and Moustache had their jewelry-making operation but she thought she would know it when she saw it. None of the streets looked familiar, and it all felt like glass. Slippery. Unsafe.

  “This way,” David said. He was good at getting around. She remembered how he had gotten them to Tumipamba’s funeral. She was sure she’d remember the door because they’d had such trouble finding it. This was daytime, there would be people going in and out. But she would have passed it if David hadn’t stopped them.

  If she had to save herself she didn’t think she could. David had all these skills, he thought of things like not using his name, and noticed things. “I’m no good at this,” she said.

  He looked at her, that sideways look he sometimes gave her when she made no sense to him, but he didn’t ask what she meant.

  No one answered the bell. Were they out of business? Maybe they never found a loan? (Maybe she had not been so crazy to say “no,” maybe no one would touch them, even with Polly Navarro’s offhand recommendation.) She stood there, listening to the swirl of Indian music from across the street. What next, give Saad a call? Call Marin-cite Corp? The Uncles had to monitor every call. She could wait outside the building. But someone would know her.

  She looked at David. “I don’t know how to get to him without telling the world we’re here.”

  “Maybe we can pay someone to take him a note?” David said.

  “They won’t let just anyone in,” she said. “And we don’t want to write on a note. We need to call Tim.”

  “For what?” David said, sharp and irritated because she was harping on it.

  “He can get in, Saad has met him.”

  “He is connected to you,” David said. “What business does he have going to Saad except you?”