Tomas practiced his English hailing a cab outside the baggage claim, the vowels sticking to his tongue, the letters wanting to linger there. The driver smelled like French fries and cigarettes but when he spoke to them in Spanish, Veronica could feel herself sinking into the seat, relieved.
They came to a glinting high rise, palm trees and power lines trapped in its bright sheen. They passed a payphone on their way to the elevator and Veronica could feel the loose change in her pocket as it bounced against her thigh. But they didn’t stop. Instead of resting her finger over the silver pegs of her father’s phone number, she pressed them hard against a glowing number four. When they reached the fourth floor they found the room scribbled on the back of Tomas’ hand and knocked.
A man they didn’t recognize answered the door and Tomas followed him inside. Veronica watched them move toward a plastic card table and a few empty chairs but she hung in the doorway until she saw Dolfo sitting in the corner, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Another man she hadn’t noticed bolted the door behind her and ushered her toward the center of the room. He reached for her bag, twisting the strap out of her grasp and Tomas stepped between them.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax boy,” Dolfo said, the phone still pressed to his ear. There was a muffled buzz followed by a click and then he stuffed the cell phone back into his jacket pocket. “Give him your bags, you won’t need them here.”
“But those are our things,” Tomas said.
Veronica fell back, her shoulder pressed to Tomas’ chest, his pulse sputtering.
“What is this?” he said.
The other two men each placed a hand on Tomas, twisting him toward the ground until he was writhing on his knees.
“What are you doing?” Veronica snapped. “Let go of him.”
Dolfo brushed a hand along Veronica’s jaw. “You’re strong,” he said.
She flinched, trying not to cry.
“That’s good.”
He traced her bottom lip with the edge of his thumbnail and she bit at him, her teeth catching the skin.
“You’ll last longer than the others.”
“What the fuck?” Tomas yelled. “Don’t touch her. Veronica run.”
Dolfo clicked his teeth, impatient. “Veronica.” He slinked past her, a blade jutting out from between his fingers. “Do you want to know what will happen if you run?”
And then he slid the blade under Tomas’ jaw, his pulsing veins glinting in the metal. A dark line trickled down the edge and onto Dolfo’s thumb but he didn’t let go. Veronica watched as the blade cut into Tomas’ skin, so slow she almost didn’t see it happen, so slow she almost didn’t see his eyes—moist and quavering, the dark irises swelling on her face before going dim. Tomas fell limp, folding in on himself, his body twisted on the floor, and then so did she.
Chapter 22
Camilla
Honduras
They came upon a sparse neighborhood of concrete houses with metal roofs. There were frail chain link fences around each yellow yard and small hairless dogs that nipped at their flea-ridden hides.
Since the morning Camilla walked home, bloody and on bare feet, she’d been wary of doing another drop with Esteban but she needed the money for her mother’s doctor’s bill. Esteban had been wary too. After seeing the dark welt rising above her left eye and the shadows along her neck, for the first time in months he’d mumbled something soft, he’d touched her as if she were made of glass. For the first time in months he’d made her tangible again, someone real and not just some ghost that hung at his side in a dark alley or in a narrow doorway. And for the first time in months Camilla was almost glad.
The cab dropped them off at the end of the street and they walked two more blocks to a house with a chicken coop in the front yard. The door seemed to be made out of some thick concrete and as Esteban wrapped his fists against it the sound was muted.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” Esteban said.
The door opened, a grey musk swirling out and pulling them inside. A small woman took a step back, making room for them in the dark empty house. A lamp glowed in the corner next to a small television set and a thin man kneeled in front of it, fiddling with the antennae.
“Wait here,” Esteban said before following the woman into a back room.
The man kneeling in front of the TV struck the plastic box with his hand and let out a loud grunt. Camilla jumped, her back retreating toward the wall and the man’s eyes snapped in her direction. That’s when she noticed the scar, pink and narrow and running along his jaw line.
“What? You think I’m pretty?” He shot her a dark smile, tobacco stuck to his gums. But after getting a good look at her face it disappeared. “Who fucked you up?” he said.
Camilla looked away, her eyes fighting to make out the shadows seeping from beneath the door of that back room. Twenty minutes passed and then half an hour and Camilla’s legs started to grow stiff. The thin man had given up on the TV and was sprawled out on a dark blue couch facing a small window.
When almost another hour had gone by Camilla found herself just outside the bedroom door, her ear an inch from the wood where she could hear the faint dribble of Esteban’s voice, the words thick and muffled. It was getting late and she didn’t want to put her mother through another night like the one before. She waited a few more minutes and then she knocked.
The door swung open and she almost tumbled inside. Esteban’s face was inches from hers, his eyes dark.
“What are you doing?” he said, the concerned coo in his voice from earlier now gone.
“I was just waiting. I didn’t know when—”
“Go back to the other room.”
“What?”
“What the hell is wrong with you? I said go.”
The door slammed shut and then there was yelling. Camilla backed away until she was pressed to the front door, her fingers gripping the handle. She stumbled out onto the front steps, frozen the moment she saw the darkened sky overhead. Her eyes stretched the length of the block searching for a familiar street sign or the cab driver that had dropped them off. But the road was empty and seemed to go nowhere, winding and bending into itself, into nothing.
Headlights appeared up the road and Camilla watched as a car pulled to a stop in front of the house, front wheels grating onto the curb. The grill was bare and rusting, no plates or bumper, the back window feathered with thin cracks.
“Sorry that took so long,” Esteban said as he came down the steps, the anger gone from his voice. “Here.” Camilla turned and he handed her an envelope. “That’s our ride,” he said, ushering her toward the car.
Inside, Camilla counted the money, the scant bills leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. “What is this?” she asked.
“Your cut.” Esteban stared straight ahead.
“No. This is nothing.”
He glanced back at her from the passenger seat, his eyes fierce.
“Esteban.” She lowered her voice. “I left there last night with nothing.”
“Right. That’s why I took it out of your cut. That was almost 50,000 lempiras that I owe the narcs.”
“It wasn’t my fault. He…” And then she was quiet.
“You can just do another drop tonight.”
“This is bullshit,” she hissed, kicking at his seat.
“Hey, chill the fuck out.”
“Fuck you, Esteban.”
“What the hell did you just say?”
“I said go fuck yourself.”
Esteban placed a hand on the wheel and the driver slowed, following his lead. They pulled to a stop next to a row of parking meters.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“I said get out of the car you fucking bitch.”
Esteban got out of the car and threw open her door. He hooked Camilla by the arm, dragging her onto the sidewalk. She kicked at him, his grip on her all too familiar and when he finally tore away she was curled up on
the ground, eyes closed. She waited for him to grab her, to fit his hands around her throat, but all she heard was the sound of his door falling closed and the tires crawling back onto the street.
Chapter 23
Veronica
Miami
Everything was dark. They took the sun and all that was left was Tomas’ face, his vacant body abandoned on the floor of that hotel room. Veronica felt the blindfold knotted behind her head and she tore at it. They gripped her scalp, shook her. She felt the door handle, the plastic button over the automatic lock. She reached for it and they threw her into the floorboard, shoes grinding into her spine.
She felt the road tearing out from under them, her shoulder scraping the front seat when they slowed to a stop. She clawed at the floor, at the shoes pressed into her back, at their hands. She rolled and kicked and tried to scream, to hurl her voice at the other cars passing by, at the other idling engines that were just a few feet away.
She screamed for Tomas, for her father, for Isa. She screamed until she was raw and burning. She screamed until they made her stop. Until they pressed something over her face, the smell making her dizzy, the taste making her gag, and then she felt Tomas luring her into the darkness and all she could do was follow him.
Chapter 24
Camilla
Honduras
Camilla rested her head on her arm to ease the heaving, but when she glanced at the floating mess in the toilet below her, she retched again. She tried to close her eyes but even within the red glow of her lids she could still see the doctor’s forearms, pink with her mother’s blood. She heaved forward again but nothing passed her dry lips.
She glanced at the clock above her and saw that her mother would be leaving recovery soon. She pulled herself to her feet, head aching, and she splashed some warm water on her face before heading to the nurse’s station to find her mother’s room.
When she found her she was still sleeping and Camilla couldn’t help but stare at the hollow blankets lying flat below her mother’s elbow. The infection was too wide spread, the doctor had said, they would have to remove the arm. But that wasn’t all they’d taken. The money Camilla had earned the night before was gone. All of it.
She thought about Esteban’s eyes, the way they’d cut into her when she’d interrupted his meeting, and the way he’d grabbed her, casting her onto the sidewalk like a dog. But then Camilla looked at her mother, at the body she wouldn’t recognize when she opened her eyes, and she found herself at the nurse’s station, the phone pressed to her ear and waiting for Esteban’s voice to materialize on the other end.
Chapter 25
Veronica
Boston
Black trees cut into a pale grey sky, tearing up from the ground like sharp slivers of night. A few dark leaves still clung to the branches, but not as fiercely as the cold clung to Veronica’s skin. Desperate. Definite. She lay curled up next to that boarded window, naked, and she burned.
Sounds tumbled up the stairs, dull and heavy, and she couldn’t tell in which direction they were heading. But then she saw the brass knob at the far end of the room begin its slow orbit and she waited.
The man slid a plate in with the toe of his boot, the rest of him cleaved to the shadows. There was a glass of water and two pieces of stale white bread. It was the same thing he’d brought her the day before, and the day before that, and every day since that first day they’d dragged her in by her hair.
She remembered his grip, his fingers twisted behind her ear, his knuckles grating against her scalp. He’d flung her there on the hard concrete floor and tore her out of her clothes, one hand flush against her throat.
But it had been seventeen days since he’d touched her, seventeen days since he’d glanced at her from between that crack in the door. That first moment she’d seen his face, red and strained and hanging over her, she’d thought he looked like all of the other white men filing through the airport in Miami, cell phones to their ears, fingers pinched at their tie and wringing it loose. But now he was a shadow. Less than a shadow. He was the soft clank of a key, the tumble of a lock.
She tore the bread into pieces with trembling hands, letting it dissolve on her tongue before swallowing it down. Her throat was still raw, ripped open like the rest of her. The moment Tomas slumped to the floor she started screaming and for three days she didn’t stop. She still remembered his face—lips splayed against the rough carpet, her name still hanging on them, his dark eyes wide on her face.
He’d wanted to see the ocean almost as much as she did. He’d wanted to own a restaurant marked with palm trees, sand blowing in through the front door. He’d wanted to name it after his mother and send her pictures of him and Veronica barefoot on the beach or aprons tied around their waists, forearms covered in flour as they made her famous Torta Galesa.
But more than that Veronica had wanted to kiss him for the first time waist deep in the Atlantic Ocean. She’d wanted to marry him on the end of some pier, her hand slipping from her father’s and into his. She’d wanted them to be together for the rest of their lives. She’d wanted forever.
And now he was gone. Now she was alone. Bare and beaten and waiting for someone to kill her too. Hoping they would.
Veronica left the empty plate by the door, the glass stacked neatly on top, and waited for the man’s hand to slide in and take it. But when the door fell open a stranger stood in the hallway. She felt the wall cold against her back, winter stealing in from the boarded window and licking at her skin. And though she could see her hands, speckled grey and dull, and her legs, pale and twisted in a frozen heap, she knew. She knew she wasn’t numb enough just yet.
Chapter 26
Camilla
Boston
Fear had always clung to Camilla in those seconds between her knock and the soft tumble of the lock. But she’d gotten used to the sound and was able to stand perfectly still even as the handle turned and the door fell away. But this time was different. She wasn’t in Honduras anymore. She was in Boston, Massachusetts and more than ever she dreaded that first sliver of their face, that first strand of light pouring between them and the door. She inhaled, knocked once, twice. She watched as someone moved past the window, the curtain fluttering, and then the door opened.
The face was small as it edged into the space beneath the safety chain and Camilla took a step back as if she were the thing to fear. The door slid shut again and then she heard the chain sliding free. She followed the girl inside where two others were sitting on the bed, one dabbing a moist towel along the other’s forehead. Her eyes were dark, her lips pale. She looked sick. She looked dead. Because she was.
Camilla thought about standing in that dark room, a latex tablet pressed to her lips while Esteban looked on, handing her a glass of water, reminding her to breathe through her nose as she swallowed them one after another—just the way they’d practiced in his apartment with a bushel of grapes, a jar of olives.
“Try not catch your teeth on them,” he’d said. “Guide it back with your tongue.”
They’d spent two months after her mother’s surgery preparing for this drop—stretching Camilla’s stomach, applying for her passport, studying maps of the city. And when Camilla started to feel overwhelmed, afraid like she couldn’t go through with it, she thought of her mother. Of all she’d lost. Of all they’d gain if she could just do this, if she could just go; be brave.
But Camilla also knew that no matter how careful she was there was still the possibility, the chance that one of them could rupture—a fault of the design, of the material, of her. And all it would take was one. She’d be lying on a motel mattress, the blankets moist and sticking to her skin, waiting for it to be over.
“Here.” The girl who’d let her in handed Camilla a small tablet and a glass of water. “We don’t know when they’ll be back,” she said.
Camilla took the laxative, the small pill sticking to her tongue. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of the girl on the bed.
“W
hat happened?” she said, though she didn’t need to, though it was safer to say nothing at all.
The girl took back the glass of water, setting it on the television as she shook her head.
“Do they know?” Camilla said.
The girl shook her head again. “And I don’t know when they’ll be back,” she breathed, her fear stuck on repeat.
There was a soft click and then the door was swinging open. It jammed on the chain and the girl, trembling, moved to free it. Two men slinked in from the darkness, one seeming to take a quick head count before addressing the room.
“What the fuck happened to her?” he said, nodding to the girl on the bed.
In the silence, the collective shiver was almost audible—every girl holding her breath. But the man was growing impatient.
“We,” Camilla started. “We don’t know.”
“She’s sick,” the girl by the door added quietly.
“Fuck. Get her to the bathroom.”
The girl with the damp washcloth got to her feet and swung her friend’s arm over her shoulder. It hung there limp, her fingers splayed in a painful grip. Camilla moved to take her other arm while she wrapped her own around the girl’s waist. They carried her to the bathroom, her feet catching and dragging behind her. Something low and muffled escaped her lips and then she was choking, foam trickling down her jaw. They stopped, balancing her against the side of the tub as one of the men followed in after them. He grabbed hold of the girl’s arm, holding her steady.
“Get out,” he said.
“But what—” the girl’s friend started.
“I said get out.”
They left him then, Camilla stealing a glance as he lowered the girl into the bathtub and turned on the water. Steam billowed out, sticking to the mirror and swirling along the floor near their feet. The other man lingered by the bathroom door, listening. There was a low groan and he walked over to the television, clicking it on. He hiked up the volume, some Made-for-TV movie drowning out the sound. But something else, something high like a wail still slipped in beneath the noise and it drew his fingers to the door handle. He stopped there, hesitating, and then he went inside.
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