Soul Kiss

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “I don’t want to take drug money.”

  “How do you know it’s drug money? Maybe he made it as a graphic designer.”

  He just looked at me, then led me to the ticket window.

  We had to show our IDs when we bought our tickets. I was worried that some kind of alert would go off because they were fake, but the clerk just gave them a quick look and then passed them back to us.

  I made a pit stop on the way to the train. As I was washing my hands, I saw a vending machine hung on the wall filled with condoms and other sex stuff. In a train station bathroom? Were they expecting people to get sexy on the trains?

  There was no one else in the bathroom. I remembered having the talk with my mom, that once I was old enough to have sex, I should always make sure the boy used a condom. Was I old enough? Was I ever going to do anything more than kiss and hug and fondle with Daniel?

  What the hell. I slid a dollar into the machine and then put the condoms in my backpack. You never know, right?

  The train was pulling into the station by the time we got down to the track level. I had taken the train a bunch of times, into Philadelphia with my mom, or into New York with Brie and Chelsea, but this felt different. I took a deep breath and followed Daniel into a car.

  We found our seats and settled down. “So,” I said.

  “So.”

  “Do we have a plan, beyond just going to find this Lopez guy?”

  “There has to be a reason why my mom had his name and address in that box.”

  “Along with all those IDs,” I said. “She was ready to run away from something. You have any idea what?”

  The train started up with a jolt and began moving out of the station. “Not a clue. She never would talk to me about things like why we left Cuba or why we didn’t have any relatives.”

  “You think maybe this guy is your uncle or your grandfather or something?”

  He looked out the window. The slums of Trenton were speeding past us, brick row houses and leafless trees under a gray November sky. I wondered who lived in those houses, if there were kids there like Daniel and me, and what they were worried about.

  Before school started, all I cared about was hanging out with my friends, doing okay in school, and getting into college. I couldn’t wait to get out of boring old Stewart’s Crossing. Now I was doing just that, and I wasn’t exactly happy.

  Even a week before, I couldn’t have imagined running away like that. I liked Daniel and I was intrigued by what was going on with my brain after kissing him. But I was also worried about stupid stuff, like my story for the literary magazine and why Chelsea was mad at me and how I could get revenge on the Big Mistake for teasing me.

  Now things were very different. Daniel’s mother was missing, we were running off to Miami to look for her, we were trusting a gangbanger, and my parents were going to have a cow.

  I opened my cell phone and texted my mom. Going on quik trip w/DF. Bak soon. No worries. Lv M. Then I hit send, and once the text was gone I shut the phone off.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon looking out the window, watching the countryside and the occasional cities pass by, talking now and then about what we saw. Around dinner time I pulled some snacks out of my bag and we shared them. As the sun went down, we slumped next to each other and dozed.

  Just before midnight we stopped at a station in North Carolina. The station was very brightly lit, a big contrast to the darkened tracks, and it shook me awake. In the car around me I saw a couple of spots of light, people reading or playing games, but most of the rest of the passengers were sleeping.

  I looked out the window. An old black lady with a carved wooden cane was struggling down the platform. A mother and father with two little babies fussed with a double-wide stroller, and a couple of young Hispanic guys in hooded sweatshirts stood behind them. Immediately I was scared again. What if Oscar had sent these guys to keep an eye on us? What if whoever had kidnapped Daniel’s mother was going to try the same thing on us?

  My parents had brought me up not to be prejudiced against anybody. They had black friends and Hispanic friends and would never let us use any bad language about people’s origins. I had to remember that, not let myself slip into easy distinctions. Oscar had been a nice guy, driving us to the train station, even giving me that money. There was no reason to distrust him, or anybody else for that matter.

  I shifted in my seat, rested my head against Daniel’s, and closed my eyes. By the time the train started moving again, I was dozing off.

  I had weird dreams, a mix of reruns of old Miami Vice episodes I had seen on cable TV mixed up with memories of my parents. And there were some things I must have imagined, stuff like a broad oceanfront promenade with all the signs in Spanish and a boat trip with little kids crying, the smell of salt water and vomit and the sun beating down hard.

  We both woke up around the same time, as the sun was rising outside the window. Daniel yawned, then asked, “Where are we?”

  I looked at my watch, then at the train schedule. “Somewhere in Georgia, I guess.”

  “How soon do we get to Miami?”

  “Not for hours yet. Almost seven o’clock tonight.”

  “That can’t be right. Florida isn’t that big. Can I see your phone?”

  I pulled it out of my backpack and turned it on. “Five missed calls from Home,” popped up on the screen.

  “I told them we were going,” I said. “Honestly. Can they not understand a simple text message?”

  He fiddled with the phone for a few minutes and managed to get a map of the state of Florida just as we were pulling into the station in Savannah, Georgia. Then he took the schedule from me and compared it to the map. “This is ridiculous,” he said, showing me the phone. “We could just go straight down the coast from Jacksonville to Miami, but instead we zigzag all across the state, to Orlando and then Tampa. That’s why it takes so long.”

  “Complain to Amtrak,” I said, reaching for my phone.

  He shook his head. “There has to be a better way.” He kept punching keys on the phone. “We could get off in Jacksonville and take a bus, maybe. That would go direct.”

  “Daniel, think about it. A bus? The train has to go a lot faster than a bus.”

  “Here’s the schedule. We can catch a bus from Jacksonville.” He scanned the phone. “No!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The bus takes even longer than the train.” He slammed my phone shut. “I know. We can steal a car. I can figure out how to hotwire it and you can drive us to Miami.”

  “Daniel. You’re talking too loud.” I lowered my voice. “We are not stealing a car. We’ve already paid for these tickets, so we’re staying on the train until it gets to Miami, all right?”

  “But we’re wasting time. What if someone is hurting my mom?”

  I took his hand and squeezed. “I know you’re worried and scared. But we can only do what we can do. You’re not helping your mom by getting all upset.”

  He frowned, and looked out the window. I opened the phone and sent another text to my mom. DF + I R fine. Don’t worry. Love M. Then I turned it off again.

  Daniel calmed down, and we started watching for fun stuff as the train passed, like different kinds of palm trees and funny white birds with long, skinny legs.

  It did get tedious, though. We each got up and walked around the train for a while, just stretching our legs, as Florida dragged on and on. A lot of the landscape outside the window was boring, just flat brown land with patches of green, and I was having trouble seeing why people went there for vacation.

  Finally we started traveling through really urban areas of Florida, watching the stations tick by: Okeechobee, West Palm Beach, Deerfield Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood. Then as the sun was going down we were pulling into the station in Miami.

  It was a flat, modern concrete building in a run-down neighborhood. As we got off the train, the heat and humidity hit us—it felt like somebody had dumped a scratchy, sogg
y wool blanket on me. Daniel, though, inhaled deeply and said, “Isn’t this great?”

  Fortunately there was a cab waiting outside the station. Daniel spoke to the driver in Spanish and gave him the address we were going to.

  I didn’t want to say anything, but I worried. What if this Egidio Lopez wasn’t home? It was Saturday night, after all. Suppose he had a date? Or went to the movies? What were we going to do, just sit around outside his house?

  Miami didn’t look all that nice. We got on a very busy highway for a while, and I realized it was I-95, the same one that ran past Stewart’s Crossing. That made me feel better, like a familiar friend had stopped by. Then the skyscrapers of downtown Miami appeared on the horizon, a wall of glass towers. The cab driver said something to Daniel.

  “He says the beach is right over there,” Daniel translated. “I remember it.”

  “Did you live here?”

  “For a while, after we came from Cuba. Then we moved to Tampa, then Winter Park, then Atlanta.”

  “That must have been hard,” I said. “Moving around so much like that.”

  He shrugged. “I was really little. I wanted to make some friends, you know? Stay in one place for a while. But it wasn’t up to me.”

  “You think your mom was running away from whoever took her away, all that time?”

  He looked out the window. “I don’t know. I wish she had told me more. I mean, we don’t even know she was kidnapped.” He took a deep breath. “Or killed. Maybe she just had to go somewhere.”

  I squeezed Daniel’s hand. “We’re almost ready to get some answers,” I said.

  Cafecito

  We got off the highway and the driver told Daniel we were in Little Havana. “He calls it Calle Ocho, Eighth Street,” Daniel said, even though we were actually on Seventh Street, heading one-way, away from the ocean.

  My nerves came back strong. Who was this Egidio Lopez? Why were we going to see him, anyway? It had all seemed so clear back in my bedroom. Now it was anything but.

  The driver took a couple of turns, and then pulled up in front of a single-story house with an iron fence around it. There were bars on the windows and a statue of a skinny, shirtless man with a halo around his head in the front yard.

  “It’s San Lazaro,” Daniel said, pointing. “Saint Lazarus. He’s a Cuban saint, the saint of the poor. Also called the Miracle Worker.”

  “Like Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead?” I asked.

  Daniel nodded. He spoke to the driver in Spanish, then pulled some money out of his pocket and paid our fare. We got out, carrying our bags, and stood in front of the gate as the cab drove away. “Let’s hope he can work a miracle for us,” I said.

  Daniel opened the gate and we walked up the cracked concrete sidewalk. My heart was beating fast and I squeezed Daniel’s hand. He rang the doorbell, and we heard its tinny sound from inside the house.

  There was no answer. It was getting dark, and we were at a rundown house in a strange city. I was ready to cry, but I struggled not to, to be strong for Daniel. After all, I knew exactly where both my parents were, home in Stewart’s Crossing worrying about me. Daniel only had his mother, and he didn’t have any idea where she was.

  He rang the bell again, holding it down. We were just about to turn away when from inside the house we heard the voice of an old man, grumbling in Spanish. I looked at Daniel and smiled, and he squeezed my hand again.

  Finally the old man came to the door. I could see his eye through the peephole. He said something in Spanish, and Daniel said his name, and that he was looking for Egidio.

  There was some fumbling with a chain, and then the door opened. The man was shorter than we were, skinny and bald, wearing a stained undershirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants with the University of Miami logo on them. “Danielito?” he asked.

  Suddenly he had his arms around Daniel, kissing his cheek and hugging him so tight I worried his fragile old arms would break.

  Daniel pulled back and introduced me, telling the old man that I did not speak Spanish.

  “Come in,” the man said, in an accent a lot stronger than Daniel’s. He motioned us into the small, crowded living room, filled with furniture, papers, and another statue of San Lazaro.

  Daniel’s stomach grumbled as we walked in, and mine echoed it. We had eaten all the food we brought with us for breakfast and lunch, and we hadn’t had time to get any dinner, going directly from the train to Egidio’s.

  “You are hungry?” Egidio asked. Without waiting for an answer, he led us to his tiny kitchen and motioned us to sit down. There was a casserole simmering on the stove. “My neighbor, she cooks for me,” he said as he ladled chicken stew onto plates. Then he heaped some white rice on the side of each plate. “You like pineapple soda?”

  We both nodded. He brought us the plates, with silverware and white paper napkins, then filled two plastic tumblers with ice and brought them to the table with a big half-gallon bottle of a soda called Jupina.

  “My favorite!” Daniel said. “When I was a little boy.”

  “Yes, you always used to drink it with me.” Egidio sat down across from us and watched as we ate. “You know who I am?” he asked Daniel.

  Daniel shook his head.

  “I am your mother’s Uncle Egidio. Your great-uncle.”

  Daniel looked up from his food. “I didn’t know we had any relatives.”

  Egidio sighed. “It is very sad, this exile. Families torn apart. And then, your mother, she is a special case. Where is she?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Daniel said. “She disappeared. All she left me was a box of papers. Your name was there, with your address.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean?”

  Daniel started to tell him, but Egidio kept interrupting with questions, so when Daniel finished eating he told the whole story, starting with his earliest memories, skimming through all the places he and his mother had lived.

  He had told me bits and pieces of the story, but that was the first time I heard the whole thing, about moving around every year, his mother always seeming frightened, never having contact with friends or family.

  “This is very bad,” Egidio said when he was finished. “Very, very bad.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I make cafecito,” Egidio said. “This is going to take a long time.” He got up and started fiddling with an ancient-looking coffeemaker, like they might have made cappuccino with about a hundred years ago. Soon the tiny kitchen was filled with the aroma of coffee, and I sighed. I wanted nothing more than to be back home, sitting at the bookstore with Brie over a pair of big, foamy coffee drinks.

  The cafecito, though, was nothing like that. Egidio gave us demitasse cups with strong, sweet coffee. The caffeine was a jolt to my system and despite the fact that it was nearly nine o’clock at night I felt wired.

  “Your mami and papi were so happy to know they were going to have a baby,” Egidio said, when he was sitting down across the table from us once more. “Your mami, she want to do everything best for you. She start going to the doctor right away.”

  Under the table, Daniel reached for my hand.

  Egidio shook his head. “This doctor come from Spain, el doctor Irrizarry. No one know why he leave Spain to come to Cienfuegos, but he seem very smart, very good man.”

  “Irrizarry?” Daniel asked. “Wait a minute.” He got up and went back to the living room, where I could see him rooting in his suitcase. He returned with that yellowed newspaper clipping. “Is this about him?”

  He handed the clipping to Egidio, who fumbled for a pair of reading glasses and put them on.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Daniel.

  “A doctor who was arrested,” he said to me. “I read it, but I didn’t understand why my mom kept it.”

  “Yes, this is the doctor,” Egidio said when he had finished. “You see he was arrested?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “He start to give your mother all these
inyeccións – como se dice en Ingles?” He mimed sticking a needle into his arm.

  “Injections?” Daniel said.

  “Si, si. He give her these injections. He say to make the baby healthy. Of course, she accept. She want only best for you.”

  “So then what?” Daniel asked.

  “Your mami is not the only lady to have injections. Sometimes, the baby die. Sometimes born with something wrong. Your parents were very worried, but you were healthy baby.” He looked back at the article. “See here? Is when you were five years old. You started school, very smart.”

  He looked up at Daniel. “Still? You are very smart?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s a genius.”

  Egidio nodded again. “Your parents, they get very worried. When el doctor Irrizarry is arrested, they have all his records, they start looking for these children. Men from the government come to Cienfuegos.”

  My stomach felt queasy. Was it the strange Cuban food, the potent coffee? Or was I already seeing where Egidio’s story was going?

  “Your parents want to leave Cienfuegos. Your mami went to La Habana with you. She had friends there from her school who she ask for help. Your papi stay in Cienfuegos to sell what they owned, to pay for passage.”

  He reached up to his right eye to wipe a tear away. “Your papi, he died. No one know how or why for sure, but I know. Was the government. He died to protect you from them.”

  “But why? Why would someone kill him?”

  “They know you are special, Daniel. They want to put you in government school, show off how smart you are. You will be new type of Cuban people.”

  “And they killed my father because he didn’t want that for me?”

  Egidio nodded. “Your mami, she try to protect you for many years. Now, I fear they kill her too.”

  Pancake House

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

  Maybe he didn’t, but it was sounding true to me. Poor Mrs. Florez. No wonder she had been scared all those years, moving around so much, keeping all those fake IDs. She was afraid the Cuban government was after her.