Island of the Sun

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Arturo?” Luke said.

  The young man stared at Luke a moment, and then nodded as a smile gradually broke his severe expression. “Lucas? Yes? Lucas?”

  “Right,” Luke said. “Lucas. Felipe’s amigo.”

  “Lucas,” the young man said, still nodding, and then suddenly stepped aside and motioned for them to enter. “Please, come, come.”

  “Muchas gracias,” Luke said, and with his American accent it sounded slow and blunt and awkward, but charming. He gestured for the rest of them to go first, so Betty led the way, followed by Eleanor, then her mom, and Luke behind them.

  They entered a small, dim foyer at the base of a winding staircase. Arturo closed the front door and then squeezed around them. “This way,” he said, and started up the stairs.

  The echoes of their footsteps trampled all over one another as they climbed to the second floor, where Eleanor found a rather comfortable apartment. Clean carpet remnants, some still bearing their edges of plastic-coated mesh, overlapped on a cement floor painted white. The walls were white, too, hung with a few pieces of colorful landscape artwork, as well as a crucifix and a painting of a golden-haloed Virgin Mary. Decks of electronic equipment filled an entire wall, with blinking LED lights, a couple of computer monitors at the center, and banks of CD drives on either side. Through a doorway, Eleanor saw a brightly lit kitchen and smelled that something delicious and warm was simmering inside it.

  “¡Mama!” Arturo called. “¿Te acuerdas el amigo de Felipe, Lucas?”

  “¿Quien?” said a woman from in the kitchen, and then a moment later, a short piñon pine of a woman walked out, wiping her hands on a white apron embroidered with roses at the hem. When she saw Luke, she grinned and then gathered him into a genuine hug. “¡Ah, Lucas! ¡Es tan bueno verte de nuevo!”

  “She say it is good to see you,” Arturo translated.

  “Tell her it’s nice to see her, too,” Luke said, smiling back at her. “And I want her recipe for that potion that keeps her looking so young.”

  Arturo translated, with a wink, and his mother swatted the air between her and Luke. “Eso costaría más de lo que puedes pagar.”

  “She say you can no afford it,” Arturo said. “But you need it.”

  Luke nodded. “You’re right about that.”

  Arturo’s mother said something quickly and forcefully to her son, pointing toward the kitchen, and Eleanor would’ve thought it was a question, except the woman didn’t wait for an answer before bustling away, and in the next moment, the clatter of dishes came from the kitchen.

  “She feed you,” Arturo said with a sigh. “You like migas?”

  Luke let out a sigh of his own, but one, it seemed, of pleasure. “Oh, sí,” he said, and then to Eleanor, her mom, and Betty, “You’re in for a treat.”

  Arturo led them into the kitchen and sat them at a small table of gold-flecked formica, where his mother had already set out four mismatched bowls. On the stove, a large pot released an aroma so thick with spice and meat, Eleanor felt she could take a bite out of the air above it. Her mom, on the other hand, sat stiffly in her chair, and Eleanor knew this would not be easy for her. Whereas Eleanor enjoyed the excitement of trying new things, her mom did not; even Uncle Jack had a hard time coaxing her into eating some of his dishes.

  Arturo’s mother carried each of their bowls in turn to the stove and ladled into them a hearty stew. When she set Eleanor’s bowl back in front of her, Eleanor noted a thick bone jutting up beyond the rim, still full of marrow, tender stewed meat just barely clinging to it. When everyone was served, Arturo’s mother said, “Please, eat.” It made sense that those would be some of the few English words she knew.

  “So, what is this?” Eleanor’s mom asked with a wooden smile, her spoon poised above her bowl.

  “Pork bones simmered with chilies,” Luke said. “Thickened with stale bread. It’s normally a breakfast food, but I’ll take it.”

  “Me too,” Betty said. “My aunt Celia cooked migas.”

  Eleanor dipped her own spoon into the soup, blew on it gently, and then tasted it. “Oh, that’s good,” she said. The broth was dark and rich and thick with chunks of bread, but it was quite spicy, too. Eleanor used the edge of her spoon to scrape a shred of tender meat from the bone, and it fell apart in her mouth. She almost couldn’t believe how good it was, but then, she hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since Phoenix. That thought made her miss Uncle Jack’s cooking. He would’ve loved this stew.

  Arturo’s mother stood away from them, hands clasped at her waist, watching them eat with a look of expectant worry.

  “You like it?” Arturo asked.

  Luke nodded. “Heaven.”

  “Better than when my aunt made it,” Betty said.

  “Delicious,” Eleanor said.

  “Please thank her for us,” Eleanor’s mom said, going through the motions of eating without seeming to actually put any food in her mouth.

  Arturo translated, and his mother beamed.

  Eleanor felt a bit embarrassed by her own mom, and frustrated, too. Aside from basic manners, they needed help from these people, who seemed very kind. Couldn’t her mom suck it up for once and just eat something different? But Arturo’s mother didn’t seem to notice. After she passed a few moments hanging back by the stove, she came around to the front of the table and stood there, still wringing her hands.

  “Lucas?” she said. “¿Cómo está mi hijo?”

  “What did she ask?” Eleanor said.

  “She wants to know about Felipe,” Luke said.

  CHAPTER

  6

  LUKE REACHED INTO HIS POCKET AND PULLED OUT THE cell phone he had brought with him from the plane. Here at the table, Eleanor could see it was an older phone, one of the cheap burners you could buy at a grocery store. Luke checked his watch, nodded, and after punching in a number, held the phone to his ear.

  A moment passed in which Arturo and his mother both stepped closer.

  “It’s me,” Luke said into the phone. “Yeah, we made it. Uh-huh, they’re right here.” Pause. “No. Least I could do. Hang on a sec.” Luke turned toward Arturo’s mother and held out the phone toward her. “Felipe,” he said.

  Arturo’s mother took the cell like a sacred offering, brought it to her ear, and whispered, “¿Hijo?” In the next moment her expression opened with a wide-eyed smile that quickly turned to laughter and tears. “Oh, hijo mío, es tan maravilloso escuchar tu voz!” A pause. “¿Qué?” She pressed the cell to her ear with both hands and left the kitchen.

  Arturo gave Luke a slow, deliberate nod. “Thank you, amigo,” he said before following after his mother. Their conversation could be heard in the next room, and though it was in a language Eleanor didn’t understand, she could hear the joy and relief it contained.

  “So what was that all about?” Eleanor’s mom asked.

  “You probably noticed the computer setup in the next room,” Luke said. “You can buy anything in Tepito, much of it pirated or counterfeit. Felipe sold some, uh, merchandise that got him into trouble on all sides. So he had to leave, and landed in Alaska. I just wanted his family to know he was safe. Been carrying that burner phone for a while in case I ever had the chance to find them.”

  “That’s good of you, Fournier,” Betty said.

  Luke shrugged and dove back into his soup. “Ain’t hardly a thing. I’m about to ask a much bigger favor of them.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think they’ll mind,” Eleanor said, remembering how Felipe had helped her, and how glad she was to be a part of giving something back to his family. This was her vision of the world—one, she thought, that stood in opposition to Skinner’s. A place where people took care of one another, and made sacrifices for one another, and no one was left behind.

  They finished their stew, except for her mom, whose bowl looked entirely untouched for all her poking at it, and shortly after that, Arturo and his mother returned to the kitchen, both of them wiping their eyes. Arturo handed the p
hone back, and his mother grabbed Luke in a hug tight enough to squeeze a grunt out of him. He smiled and hugged her back.

  “Dios te bendiga, Lucas,” she said. “Muchas gracias.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  She let him go and began clearing their bowls away, appearing much happier than when they’d first met her, and Eleanor was pretty sure the amount of food left in their dishes was the last thing on the woman’s mind.

  “Felipe say you need help,” Arturo said. “So I help you. What you need?”

  “I think someone might be tracking my plane,” Luke said. “I need to clean it.”

  Arturo nodded. “When?”

  “Soon,” Luke said. “Now.”

  “Okay.” Arturo pulled out his own phone and staccatoed away at its screen with his thumbs for a moment. “Okay, sí,” he said. “We meet you at your plane.”

  “Gracias,” Luke said. “We’re at the international airport. South hangars.”

  “Okay,” Arturo said. “We will meet in thirty minutes. I take care of it.”

  Luke nodded and rose from the table. So did the rest of them, and Eleanor asked Arturo how to say thank you for the soup in Spanish.

  He looked up from his phone and blinked. “Gracias por la sopa.”

  Eleanor nodded and tried her best to repeat that to Arturo’s mother. The older woman smiled, said something back, and offered her a hug not quite as tight as the one she’d given Luke, but warm and more motherly than most of the hugs Eleanor had ever received from her own mom. Then Arturo showed them out, and they found their way back to the edge of the Tepito market through an evening sunlight that bronzed the canopies over their heads.

  They summoned another black shadow of a cab that came and drove them back to the airfield. There they found their plane situated in a hangar near the runways, and it seemed Luke’s bribe had worked for now, because no one else was around. Luke set about opening up panels he could reach from the ground and getting the plane ready for the sweep. Betty stayed by his side, helping, while Eleanor and her mom sat down on a couple of metal folding chairs they found near a mobile computer terminal.

  “I guess Simon’s not back,” her mom said.

  The way she said his name brought up a question that had been buzzing around her head for a while. “Simon?” she said, stretching his name into a tease.

  “Oh, stop it,” her mom said.

  “He calls you Sam,” Eleanor said. “No one calls you Sam.”

  “My friends do.”

  “So he’s just a friend, then?”

  Her mom hesitated. “He’s a handsome man with a brilliant mind I admire. But given our present circumstances, I have not given a lot of thought to romance. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  Eleanor smirked. “If you say so.”

  “We’ve become close,” her mom said. “But nothing has happened, and I don’t see anything happening.” She crossed her legs, her ankle immediately bouncing in the air. “Maybe when this is all over.”

  “He is handsome,” Eleanor said, smiling sideways.

  Her mom gave her a gentle swat on the arm, and Eleanor felt the affection in it, but after watching Arturo’s mother, she was left wanting . . . more.

  Not long after that, Arturo came, and he brought with him a man and a woman. He introduced the man, a tall, gangly guy with curly hair, as Flaco, and the woman as Gabriela. She wore a battered leather jacket that could not possibly have looked as cool on anyone else as it did on her, and had her long, thick hair up in a chaotic knot. Flaco carried a couple of duffel bags with him, one in each hand.

  “Is the G.E.T. after you?” Gabriela asked.

  “What makes you say that?” Luke asked.

  Eleanor didn’t remember them saying anything about the G.E.T. to Arturo.

  “They’re outside the airport,” Gabriela said. “Lots of them, just sitting in their cars like they’re waiting for something.”

  “Waiting for clearance from the government,” Eleanor’s mom said.

  Eleanor wondered what would happen if they decided not to wait. Not to mention the fact that Dr. Powers and Finn and Julian were still out there in the city.

  “We need to hurry,” Luke said.

  Within minutes, Gabriela and Flaco were scurrying around and under and over the plane, wielding the different sensors and equipment they’d brought with them. It didn’t take long for them to find the tracking device, or rather devices, since it turned out the G.E.T. had placed two of them in different parts of the plane. They resembled little metallic turtles.

  “They really want to find you,” Gabriela said.

  “And now,” Luke said, “thanks to you, they can’t.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said, and held up one of the tracking devices. “But they won’t find you with these. We’ll leave them running and plant them on another plane about to take off. Throw them off your scent and buy you some time.”

  “Much obliged,” Luke said, and then Eleanor and the others each thanked them in turn. After Flaco and Gabriela left, Arturo and Luke stepped off to the side for a private conversation that lasted a couple of minutes. They concluded it with a quick embrace, and then Arturo left as well. “Let’s get on board,” Luke said. “Time to go.”

  “But Finn and Julian aren’t back with Dr. Powers,” Eleanor said.

  “What?” Luke stopped and drilled his fingers through his shaggy hair, which had started to go lank. Eleanor was sure she looked no better. They all needed baths. “I hadn’t even noticed,” Luke said. “Been so wrapped up in cleaning Consuelo.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be back any moment,” Eleanor’s mom said.

  “They should have been back by now,” Luke said.

  “What do we do?” Betty asked.

  “Doc seemed to know what he was doing,” Luke said. “Guess we wait.”

  The sun had been down for a couple of hours, and the city had changed its clothes and become its nighttime alter ego. Eleanor could hear the sounds of music, and see the lights, from where she stood in the hangar doorway, watching and waiting. Luke had gone aboard Consuelo to take the opportunity for some sleep. Eleanor’s mom and Betty sat in the folding chairs, talking sparingly. Still, neither of them seemed to be as worried as Eleanor was.

  She paced back and forth, rubbing her folded arms as the night air grew chilly. Still nowhere near as frigid as the Arctic, or even Phoenix, but cold enough that she felt goose bumps rising.

  “Come sit down, sweetie,” her mom called to her.

  “The G.E.T. is out there!” Eleanor rooted herself. “Aren’t you worried?”

  “I am,” her mom said. “But there’s not much we can do right now. Worry about the things you can change. Dr. Powers is—”

  “So he’s back to being Dr. Powers?” Eleanor asked, feeling her anxiety denature into anger.

  “You can keep reading into what I call him all you want,” her mom said. “It’s not going to change anything.”

  Betty had gone still next to Eleanor’s mom, hands in her lap.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes and turned away, facing the airfield, where planes roared up the runway and lifted off into the night, and the lights of the distant passenger terminal glowed in a row. The people in there were traveling for business, and possibly even for pleasure. Down here, farther away from the distant threat of the ice, the world just seemed to be getting on with things. But that was exactly what the ice wanted. Eleanor knew its methods well: its predatory patterns, the way the cold deceived, and circled, and waited, and then crept in to strike the almost gentle, final deathblow. It was only a matter of time before Mexico City became like Phoenix. And then like Fairbanks.

  “Eleanor!” she heard Finn call as three shadows jogged around the edge of the hangar. They approached her, entering into the light of the hangar, and she could see they had all been running, dark rings of sweat under their armpits.

  “We have to leave,” Dr. Powers said, panting hard as he marched past her
into the hangar. “The G.E.T. found us.”

  “They spotted us at a museum Dad wanted to see,” Julian said, almost as an accusation. Eleanor could tell from his tone the suggestion of a museum hadn’t been a welcome one.

  “I wanted to go, too,” Finn said.

  Julian snorted. “I know you did—”

  “Boys!” Dr. Powers said. “We’re not doing this again!”

  Finn and Julian fell silent.

  Dr. Powers shook his head. “I’m not certain the agents knew who we were. But they were suspicious enough to follow us.”

  “But we didn’t want to lead them back here,” Finn said.

  “We’ve been trying to shake them for hours,” Julian said.

  “It’s too late,” Eleanor said. “They’re already here at the airport.”

  “We should take off immediately,” Dr. Powers said. “Did Luke find the tracking device?”

  “Yes, two of them,” Betty said. “Consuelo is clean.”

  They boarded the plane and roused Luke from a nearly comatose sleep that required Dr. Powers to shake him by the shoulders. As the pilot staggered to his feet, yawning, Eleanor wondered if he was alert enough to fly. But he widened his red eyes and dragged his fingers down his cheeks as they explained the situation, and he seemed to be mostly himself by the time they finished.

  “Let’s get this bird in the sky,” he said, and shambled up into the cockpit, where he switched on Consuelo’s controls and then hurried a bit more sure-footedly down toward the airplane’s main hatch.

  Eleanor and the others all took their seats, the same ones they’d had before, and soon Luke was back in the cockpit, and the engines spoke up, and the plane inched ahead. They crept out of the hangar into the night, the lights on the tips of Consuelo’s wings blinking as Luke radioed the tower, asking permission to take off.

  “Let’s hope we don’t get shot at this time,” Betty said, cinching her seat belt tighter.

  “The tower’s asking us to sit tight,” Luke said.

  The cabin went quiet.