Burn (Story of CI #3)

by Rachel Moschell

  Cail had been back to Nebraska a few times since then, and to saw it was hard on her was an understatement.

  Now she was here at her parents’ house, rocking back and forth on the low wood heels of her clogs, shivering a little inside the black pea coat she’d thrown on over the too-thin white shirt. An icy Nebraska wind rattled the wreath against the front door, ruffled Cail’s hair. Lalo was huddled inside a navy wool coat, hands stuffed in his sleeves. The temperature here after Mali was still shocking him and he wore a tan and green striped stocking hat over his super-short hair.

  And then the oak front door swung open and Cail was saying hi to her mom and dad and being swept inside. Everything was so familiar, yet updated: new sage floral rugs on the floor, some new beige sofas instead of the sagging plaid ones where the Lamontagne family had done homeschool for years.

  Cail’s two youngest sisters were there, too, still living at home because they didn’t believe in going to college and hadn’t gotten married yet.

  Everyone was smiling, even though the smiles thrown Lalo’s way were a little bit plastic. Cail hadn’t told her family she was bringing a friend when she came to visit. She knew her parents didn’t believe in male friends. But standing there, still shivering in the open doorway, Cail felt nothing but relief for Lalo’s warm body at her elbow. This would have been a cold, cold day without him.

  She introduced her friend Lalo as they were all moving towards the couches. Cail’s mom brought lemonade and a big thermos with weak black coffee, the kind Lalo, as a Latino, liked to call gringo coffee. Cail noticed her mom looked old, but then she was sixty-three and had given birth to sixteen children, including the two who were stillborn. Brenda Lamontagne was wearing a cornflower blue denim skirt with a row of snaps down the seam at the front. Her top was crisp and white with embroidered pink flowers. Mom still wore the long braid that fell all the way down to her butt.

  Just like Cail used to wear, until she went crazy.

  They all talked while the little sisters fussed in the kitchen with something that smelled amazing. Maybe chili and probably at least four homemade apple pies.

  Cail’s dad was sitting across from Lalo, hands folded over his pot belly, eyeing the guy who had shown up with his daughter. Dad had this puffy, steel-wool beard thing going on, kind of like a character from that show a few years back, Duck Dynasty. He was wearing a red plaid flannel and very dated jeans.

  Lalo was calm and friendly, all relaxed and sinking back into the beige microfiber, close enough to Cail that she felt herself actually not having a horrible time. By the time they all sat around the battered oak table that used to hold sixteen people, Cail was practically drooling. Yeah, she could cook and make bread but there hadn’t exactly been time for that lately. There was a pile of shredded cheddar, organic sour cream, a steaming wreath of whole wheat bread and a big vat of chili. Cail caught Lalo practically ogling everything. The guy’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he breathed in the scent of good cooking.

  It all tasted just as delicious as it looked. Cail and Lalo ate like starving concentration camp victims. Cail’s sisters told funny stories about what all the brothers and sisters had been up to, and somehow no one mentioned church.

  After the apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, however, it appeared it was time to get down to business. Pastor Henry cleared his throat and glanced at Cail’s mom, then got out his big black Bible and read the family after-lunch devotions. Cail felt like she was ten again, but that was ok. She could handle listening to five minutes of Proverbs while the food digested. Lalo was serving himself more pie.

  The Proverb the family was supposed to meditate on that day had something to do with fornication.

  Oh joy.

  Cail just let the verse slide over her brain, as usual. If she tried to really think about it, she’d never think about it well enough and a big chain of obsessions would start. And today, she just did not have the patience for that.

  Dad had been thinking about it, though. “Cail,” he drew her name out. “It’s so good to see you. After so long. We have your old bedroom ready upstairs. For you.”

  Ooo. That didn’t sound fun.

  Visions of long corduroy skirts and kneeling to pray frantically on the pea green carpet skittered across Cail’s brain.

  Happily, Cail was not going to be sleeping here tonight.

  “Oh. Thanks.” Cail smiled a little lopsided. “We’re only here for the day, though. This time. We’re staying at the Super Eight.”

  The bridge of Cail’s mother’s nose started to turn a rosy pink.

  “With him?” Pastor Henry frowned.

  Cail was so used to spending time with people from the whole world. She lived traveling, worked in CI with people from so many countries. For a little while, she’d forgotten Pastor Henry’s views on illegal immigrants and Hispanics in general. Lalo wasn’t illegal but that was kind of beside the point. Pastor Henry thought the “Mexican” guy was sleeping with his daughter.

  Cail frowned at her dad. Did her best to keep frowning and not blush. “No…I mean…”

  “In the same room?” Brenda said incredulously.

  Oh crap. “Not any of your business,” Cail tried to say smoothly, “but yes. In the same room. To save money. And that’s the only reason why.”

  She and Lalo had been sending a lot of their CI salary to help the kids who’d been burned in Mali, along with their families. Plus, the plane tickets last minute to Nebraska hadn’t been cheap. The Super Eight wasn’t spendy, but she and Lalo liked to save money however they could.

  Everyone at the table was horrified. Even Cail was horrified.

  She was not sleeping with Lalo, but no one was gonna believe her.

  Cail felt herself grinding her teeth together. It wasn’t fair. Just because she wore pants and didn’t have hair all the way down her back didn’t mean she had no morals.

  Well, the lecture started there:

  I hope you were listening to the Proverb we read today, honey. God hates fornication. We just want what’s best for you.

  It pains my heart, Cail, to see how you’ve thrown away the calling God has for you. He chose you. And you’re throwing it all away to try everything the world has to offer. Tattoos. Worldly clothes. Boyish hair. Oh, and let’s not forget fornication.

  Somehow, for a few minutes, Cail totally forgot about the man beside her, calmly stuffing the last bites of warm apple pie into his mouth.

  “Cail, you know we love you,” her mom was saying. “But if you continue down this path, God will have no choice but to hand you over to the devil. Everywhere you look there will be only destruction.”

  That was it. Cail leaped up out of her chair, set to grab Lalo by the arm and storm towards the front door and anywhere but here. She only made it into a crouch because a warm hand gripped her shoulder and pushed her back down into the chair.

  It was Lalo. He scraped his chair loudly across the wooden boards until it touched Cail’s and slung his arm around her shoulder. Lalo was still wearing the wool coat, and the warm fabric against her neck helped Cail to take a deep breath. Cail felt her skin steaming, her insides quivering.

  “Excuse me. Ma’am.” Lalo raised a finger to interrupt everyone at the table. Pastor Henry squished up his face at Lalo as if Lalo were a naughty child that just stripped to his diaper at the supper table. “We’ve already suffered,” Lalo said. “The destruction you’re talking about? We’ve already been through hell, and it wasn’t our fault. If there is a God, he’s for us. He’s not the one who brings death and destruction. That would be Satan. And us, the human race, the things we do to each other.”

  Everyone just stared. Cail grabbed Lalo’s free hand under the table and squeezed it til she thought she might break a couple knuckles, but Lalo didn’t even wince.

  He was used to the pain.

  She wasn’t. After so much suffering in her head and in her heart, being here still hurt. It was an ache she could barely stand.

  What Lalo had been t
hrough had made him strong enough to be there for her.

  She had never cared for him more.

  Cail’s mom started to cry, and Pastor Henry looked like he was thinking. He kept thinking while he had some more pie. The sisters scurried off to do the dishes, probably scared that someday, somehow, this could happen to them. They could rebel against God himself and end up with short spiky hair, sleeping with a scary-looking Hispanic guy in a cheap hotel room.

  But Cail started to laugh. Lalo looked kind of surprised. “Mom,” Cail said through the giggles, “thank you for having us over for lunch. I think that’s about enough for today, though. Don’t you? We’d better be going.”

  She had to bite her tongue to not add something funny about the sleazy hotel room waiting for her and Lalo. Actually, when they left here they’d probably go cruise the mall, then share a five dollar Little Caesar’s pizza, tuck themselves into their separate queen size beds and drop off to sleep under the stiff cotton comforters.

  It had been a long, long flight from Morocco yesterday.

  But Cail’s mom was scrubbing away tears with a fat white Kleenex and waving one arm Cail and Lalo’s way. “No,” she gasped, then cleared her throat and tried to smile at the two of them with puffy red eyes. “No, please don’t go yet. Please. We could make popcorn. And watch a movie. We haven’t seen you in so long!”

  Cail felt something in her heart soften. Lalo’s face totally said “It’s up to you,” and Cail really did not want to leave this place for five more years without giving it another try.

  “Little House on the Prairie?” she asked.

  Pastor Henry grinned. “You always loved Little House on the Prairie.”

  That was because it was the only thing the Lamontagne kids were allowed to watch, but Cail decided to just not go there.

  “Girls, leave the dishes.” Cail’s mom turned towards the sisters. “Get out the big cast iron pot and get some popcorn going. Melt some of that butter we made last Saturday. Oh Cail, the butter turned out so good!”

  Cail grinned.

  “I’m still hungry,” Lalo said lazily. His arm was still tucked around Cail’s shoulder. Until she was ready and shrugged it off, he wasn’t going anywhere. “I could totally do popcorn.”

  “Did you ever see Little House on the Prairie?” Cail leaned into Lalo’s side.

  “Nope, can’t say I have.”

  Slow moving show with sweet characters and violin music…it sounded right up Lalo’s alley.

  “Homemade butter and Laura Ingalls Wilder,” Cail told him. “You are in for a treat.”

  Good

  IT WAS DARK DOWN HERE, AND LALO was sitting all alone. The couch in the basement TV room at CI headquarters was boxy and plaid. In the darkness it looked like a florescent landing strip crisscrossed with jagged gashing lines.

  Next to Lalo on the coffee table was a frosty glass bottle. He scooped it up and took a sip, then almost gagged. “Bubbly green tea with mint flavor” the label said. Ice cold, carbonated green tea was not nearly as good as it sounded. But it was calming his stomach down, and right now that was a good thing.

  The shadows in the room around him hissed and whispered his name.

  Lalo really wanted to turn on the lights.

  But ever since he had used his gift to find Cail, he’d dreamed about his father and the freaky eye of fire too many times. It was getting better, and it had been two nights now since Lalo had that evil dream. Lalo had been fighting it, focusing on good, refusing to believe the lies that evil had to win.

  He was not going to let the darkness win.

  Lalo was gonna sit here with the lights off and just. Plain. Not. Think about it.

  He could think about Romina now, though. He wasn’t that afraid of the fiery visions anymore, and the cold truth had already sunk in, finally, after all these years: she was gone. Now Lalo could just remember her, the good times. There were some good memories from Colombia and Russia, and all of them shone with her.

  Someone was coming down the stairs, footsteps creaking on the old wood. Lalo really hoped it was Rupert or Cail, not something from the darkness.

  “Lalo?” The light blazed on and Lalo craned his neck to squint at Cail, standing there in hot pink yoga pants and a huge gray hoodie. She grinned at him.

  “Want some freaking awful ice tea?” he grinned back.

  Cail walked over and leaned around him to see the bubbly iced tea on the table. “Eww. I hate that stuff. I don’t know why Rupert buys it.” She plopped down on the couch, just as heavier footsteps sounded on the staircase. Rupert came into view, shuffling around in lamb’s wool slippers and a fuzzy plaid robe. He was balder than ever, maybe from stress during everything that happened over in Mali.

  Rupert peered at Cail and Lalo over his glasses. “I’m just getting something from the spare office,” he told them. “Then I’m going to bed.”

  “We’re gonna play some Xbox,” Cail announced. “I’m about to beat Lalo at something. Car racing, maybe.” Lalo glanced over at her and lifted an eyebrow.

  He didn’t think so.

  Cail’s fiery green eyes threw a challenge at him and she got up and went over to tinker with the Xbox controls. Rupert called goodnight as he climbed back up the stairs to finally get some sleep. Lalo punched the on button for the TV and blinked at a giant Facebook screen with a picture of Cail riding a camel at the top corner.

  “Crap!” Cail said. “I forgot to log out! I was using the internet down here earlier cause my tablet was updating!”

  She grinned at Lalo, then they both stared at a big picture of Jonah from Ancient Texts, dapper and happy in a black tuxedo and silky turquoise bowtie. The nerdy scientist guy was planting a large smooch right on the cheek of his new wife, who wore a poufy white dress with sleeves that looked like icicles.

  “Yeah, they tagged me in, like, all the pictures from the wedding,” Cail rolled her eyes. “Lucky me.” It had been two weeks since she and Lalo went to Nebraska and saw Cail’s family, the same day Jonah got married.

  “They look happy. Thanks to you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saved his life. I don’t want his eternal gratitude, though. I already got what I wanted. Forgiveness.” Cail looked down at the faded carpet and logged out of her account. “And here we are. California Racing. Ready to lose?”

  It seemed like they played forever. All the tracks blurred into one, tunnels of waving palm trees and sparkly waterfalls and yellow checked flags that said You’ve Won.

  It was awesome, being here with Cail.

  Lalo thought about Wara, and wondered what she was doing these days. She wouldn’t talk to anyone since they’d left Mali. Lalo heard she had gone to her parents’ house for a while, but no one really knew where she was.

  He wanted to talk with her, because it sucked how she must be destroying herself over what happened. The situation Wara ended up in, where she was supposed to watch a guy she used to care about die…it was too much. There was only so much the human psyche could take, and sometimes people snapped. It happened.

  Everyone’s human, and everyone makes bad choices.

  What Wara decided to do when she saved Lázaro Marquez…it tore Alejo up inside. When Lalo saw him last week, before Alejo left headquarters, he still hadn’t been the same.

  He had to be missing Wara. And he had to be feeling awful.

  Rupert fired them both, Alejo and Wara.

  Wara because she had done the unthinkable and helped out the enemy. It put everyone in danger.

  Alejo had to leave CI because Rupert knew he didn’t have what it takes to do this anymore.

  Alejo was tired of the violence, and he was done.

  Wara hadn’t seen the violence long, and she found out she did not want to face it any longer.

  Lalo hoped they could somehow find reconciliation, because in the end, they wanted the same thing. Peace.

  And maybe each other.

  At some point of California Racing, all the stuff he was thinking about
his friends turned into a dream and Lalo passed out on the couch. He woke up in the morning under a wool blanket, with toasty rays of sunlight piercing the blinds. There had been no fire, no burned skin or evil eye.

  For three whole days in a row, Lalo hadn’t had a nightmare.

  He had dreamed about Cail, and it was good.

  Broken Glass and Love

  Cochabamba, Bolivia

  Four months later

  “IF YOU WANT ME TO CRUNCH UP those pistachios,” Bashir said to Alejo, “you’d better help me out by watching the onions.” The muscled Pakistani guy waved a spoon at Alejo and then whirled back to the counter, showing off the back of a black tee with a big jeweled bulldog. Bashir’s black tattoos blurred into one as the guy started chopping nuts. “You know the curry doesn’t turn out the same if the onions get browned too fast,” he warned. “There’s an art to this.”

  Alejo grinned and started stirring onions. They had chopped forty of them, getting ready for the Saturday night dinner rush later on at the Pakistani restaurant he was running with Bashir. Alejo knew Bashir before, when he lived in Bolivia. Nothing to do with the Prism, which was no longer working in Bolivia at all.

  The past four months since Timbuktu had flown. Rupert fired him; Alejo’s boss could tell that he was just done.

  Rupert fired Wara, too, because of what she did.

  Then Rupert offered Alejo a job: a safe house in Cochabamba, Bolivia that CI sometimes used but did not run. The safe house in Alejo’s home city had recently been left without anyone to manage it. The house came with a space for running a business on the first floor, whatever the person in charge wanted to set up.

  “The safe house is not for high-risk cases,” Rupert had explained. “Nothing exciting ever happens there.”

  Well, so far, it hadn’t.