Water Memory: A Thriller (Sentro)

by Daniel Pyne

  And then he still flunked them. On purpose, she suspects.

  She’s never thought of her mother as helpless, never worried about her. And now this. Jenny is terrified. So much of their childhood feels like it was spent waiting for their mother to come home or trying to pack too much in before she left again. In her stays and her absences, though, things calmed; life settled. Somehow normal, either way. That Jenny resented her, felt abandoned sometimes, lonely and aggrieved—that was upsetting and true as well. But she took for granted that her mother would always be there, good or bad.

  What if Jeremy fucks up?

  “Cold brew on the bar for—” She doesn’t know the chubby man’s name.

  “Doug,” the customer mumbles.

  “Peace out, Doug,” Jenny tells him. And takes her break early to go into the bathroom and cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  This hotel, she’s discovered from the covers of some dog-eared matchless matchbooks discarded on the floor within her limited reach, was once called the Simón Bolívar. And in its grand ballroom, with dusk shedding its dander light through the slit curtains, Sentro’s eyes have opened from another dreamless sleep or loss of consciousness to discover Dr. Morehouse gone.

  And pregnant Eccola gone.

  And no ice pillowing her head.

  But the fire-blistered Zoala remains sentinel, crouched at Sentro’s feet in the long shadows, motionless, watching her. Half-boy, half-ancient, wearing a dead man’s football jersey, so many questions in his restless gaze.

  Sentro says to him, “What.”

  Zoala lifts a handheld device and types. Then scutters over to Sentro and shows her the green-and-gray LCD screen. It’s a tiny first-gen computer translator like people had back in the nineties. Portuguese to English:

  i help you kill pirates

  Sentro considers Zoala. His round, willful face. The chunky gold Rolex loose on his bony wrist.

  His burns.

  Sentro gestures to them as she asks: “What happened to you?” She tries various languages: “Pourquoi? Por quê?”

  The boy types; the device translates:

  pirates

  Zoala stands abruptly, pulls up his jersey to show Sentro the full extent of the wicked, suppurating, and peeling welts on his body. He spits out what must be the story of his injury and abandonment and near death at the hands of pirates, perhaps the same ones who plundered the Jeddah, but Sentro can only nod and guess and listen until he stops talking just as abruptly.

  There is then a silence of his waiting. For what?

  “Okay,” she says, nodding.

  The boy types.

  help you kill them

  “I need a phone. Do you have a phone?”

  The boy holds out the translator. Sentro rattles her bound wrists, looking at Zoala. “I can’t use that, not with these on me.”

  Zoala seems to understand this and makes a long, careful calculation to consider the risk. There’s a key around his neck; he draws it out from under his shirt, kneels, unlocks just one of the handcuffs.

  He puts the translator on the floor in front of her. She types on the tiny keyboard: Do you know where the pirates are?

  Zoala reads the Portuguese translation, looks up at her warily, but doesn’t offer a response. She guesses that he doesn’t know, but she’s tempted to enlist his help finding them. Then she makes the hard assessment: a brain-fogged stranger and a blistered boy who the twins, for some reason, wanted dead. What are their chances, really? Fool’s errands are what Sentro has been trying to put behind her.

  So she types, Can you get me a phone, and mimes holding one and talking on it. She’s confident that if the boy can just get her something with which to call for help, the act of holding that phone will trigger her elusive memory of the number she should dial.

  The boy types.

  dr say no to you

  Not for the first time, Sentro wonders if Morehouse has an agenda of his own. “I need to pee,” she says.

  She types: bathroom.

  The boy’s eyes narrow with suspicion. Playing her bluff, Sentro shrugs, points to a chipped bedpan nearby someone must have helped her use when she was cuffed, less conscious, and in need. It’s not a wholesale lie, and sure enough, from the look of disgust on his face, it wasn’t Zoala who was tending to Sentro, nor does the boy seem to have any interest now in playing nurse.

  He scoots forward with his key chain, pulls it from under his shirt again to reach and unlock the other cuff from Sentro’s wrist. As soon as he’s done so, she grabs the kid by the leg and snaps the cuff around one of his skinny ankles, binding him to the shopping cart. He screams and flails at her. The translation device slips from his grip and shatters on the floor, scattering parts.

  Catching one of Zoala’s arms, she secures it to the other cart with the opposite cuff, snaps the chain from around his neck, and slides out of reach as he kicks at her with his free leg.

  “Sorry,” Sentro says and gets up, only to regret it. Her head spins. She reaches for a support to steady herself. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “But you have helped me.” She finds some rudimentary Portuguese has come back to her: “Eu sou . . . pesaroso.” Was that even right? Unsteady, she takes a tentative step farther away, stumbles, collides with a packing box that falls and scatters sex toys across the floor, including more handcuffs and other cheerful bondage accessories. She’s wearing a loose cotton shift that doesn’t belong to her, with nothing under it, feet bare and tingling with unfamiliar movement, a pressure headache building. And now, looking across the ballroom, Sentro takes in the full measure of all the motley goods Zoala and his sister appear to have lifted from pirated cargo ships: mini flat-screen TVs, running shoes, laptops, microwave ovens, several boxes of the handheld translators, automatic coffee makers and espresso machines, basketball shoes, yoga pants, sweatshirts, tennis rackets, Chinese smartphones, Christmas lights, industrial drain cleaner, underwear, socks, rice cookers, hot pots, toaster ovens, high-heeled pumps.

  Zoala is bellowing angrily and tugging at the cuffs. The carts jangle. His voice echoes across the ballroom, but no one seems to be in the building to respond. After finding underwear that seems adequate, sunglasses to cut her headache, and a familiar-looking pair of high-top sneakers that are, in fact, hers, Sentro slips all these on and, ignoring the plaintive cries of the boy behind her, strolls across the vast parquet floor on ungainly rubber legs to a pair of huge, heavily bolted, carved double doors, which she unlocks and opens to join the world outside.

  Well. A lobby, anyway.

  The vaulted, stone-tiled lobby of the once-grand Simón Bolívar now evidently functions as a huge, bustling third world flea market that spills outside into the driveway and overgrown front courtyard of the defunct hotel. The sky is black, awash with stars; what she thought was daylight fighting through the ballroom curtains is the bright beams of old carbon arc lamps fastened to rusted scaffolding that, perhaps, is all that remains of a distant effort to restore the Bolívar to its former function. Fruit stands and fishmongers, fried-meat kiosks billowing black, fragrant smoke, and hung fabric fluttering in a brisk wind off the bay. The clamor is disorienting as Sentro tries hurrying through.

  From all sides, vendors bark; their clientele is a strange pastiche of global diversity, as if someone shook the world and a sampling of unfortunates all tumbled to rest here. Sentro recognizes at least five different languages spoken and several more she can’t identify. It feels like a dream.

  The market thins and becomes ramshackle where the driveway abuts it, overgrown with tropical foliage and crowded with cars and trucks and pulled trailers and motorbikes. A stray street vendor sells from his cart more of the sexy lingerie Sentro last saw raining in bits and tatters to the deck of the Jeddah.

  An old green-and-white Checker taxi rumbles up the driveway, catching Sentro in its headlights, and for an instant, she can see the surprised faces of Morehouse and Eccola in the back seat. The cab rattles up to the hotel’s service en
trance, and Sentro hurries off and disappears into the streets of the crowded city center.

  There’s a gap. A slip in time. Empty, black.

  She’s in her mother’s arms and they’re crying, in the motel, with the carnival blue-and-red lights dancing across the curtains, the heat like liquid night, crying and holding each other, and her mother is whispering:

  Sing.

  Bright.

  Hectic.

  Neon signs spit and flare in Spanish, Chinese, and Portuguese; girls in tight skirts and Spandex roost on stools tucked into smoky alleyways at entrances promising Vietnamese massage or the girlfriend experience or sex acts in voyeur rooms. Families lumber past, lugging groceries in translucent plastic sacks, and those same sacks are everywhere, guttered, blowing, fluttering from dead trees in median planters, car lights raking them as they snake through the city, stereos booming rap and K-pop.

  The smell of grilled peppers, sewage, and hashish.

  Half the men strolling the sidewalks and staggering into the street have automatic rifles slung over their shoulders or handguns on their hips. And with every step, Sentro realizes the immensity of her mistake in running off:

  —she doesn’t know where she is.

  —her head is in a fog.

  —she has no idea where she’s going.

  —no money, no papers, no phone.

  She stops couples who look approachable, asks, “Excuse me, do you speak English? Você . . . você fala . . . English?” If they hesitate, “American? Parlez-vous anglais?” They all regard her with suspicion and slip past, muttering apologies.

  There’s a shorter gap, or a gap that seems shorter, anyway—nothing in this one, white noise, then—

  Circling a small city park with towering mangroves, she feels a pack of boys no older than Zoala that has been shadowing her for several blocks. Mocking her. (“Parlay vooz!”) A brave one cuts across the grass along the corner to step in front of Sentro as another, darting up from behind, tries to pick her shapeless dress’s pocket (which of course is empty). It rips easily, and Sentro, reacting automatically, sets her feet and rocks her elbow; it whams into the side of his head, and the pickpocket goes reeling into traffic, where horns blare and tires skid and two cars collide. He screams obscenities at her, and the other little punks join the shouting, mounting their attack on Sentro en masse, but Sentro lays another one out with a straight arm and darts through traffic to the other side of the street, where two Porto Pequeno policemen, with whistles screaming, catch her by the arms and wheel her up against a wall, riot sticks ready.

  “Is there a problem here?” A sweaty face presses into hers and asks this, in French.

  In French, Sentro tells him she’s an American.

  “Tourist?”

  Yes.

  “Passport.”

  Knowing she has no identification, Sentro pats her ripped pocket as if she did, realizes she’s exposing more flesh than she wants, and holds it closed, explaining that her documents were stolen from her—and that she needs to speak with the American consulate. The ship she was traveling on was hijacked and—

  “Which ship?”

  Sentro can’t say. In truth, she can’t remember. Her hesitation suspicious, the partner cop puts his hands on her shoulders and spins her around against the wall to pat her down with probing hands.

  “Don’t touch me like that,” she warns him, switching to English, hoping it helps.

  “Like what, madame?”

  “Take your hands off me.”

  “I’m looking for drugs.”

  “Not there, you’re not.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Actually, she wouldn’t. Sentro jerks away from him but resists lashing out. His tiny yellow teeth gleam in the night light. She’s scared. It’s a new, raw feeling. Glancing speculatively at the weapon holstered on his hip, Sentro studies the buttoned strap that holds it in and decides she can’t hope to get the gun free and useful before his partner reacts.

  “Is there an American consulate here?”

  The cops ignore her, conferring in French. “No identification.”

  “Drunken tourist.”

  “North American.”

  “Yankee slut.”

  The sweaty one asks, “At which hotel are you staying?”

  Hesitating, Sentro spies, across the street, a familiar filthy madras sports coat striding back the way she just came. She recalls its pirate owner—what was it? Spanish surname. A metal splint taped over his nose glints brassy in the old mercury-vapor streetlights, the scar slashed across his face obscured by it. Sentro wouldn’t have recognized him but for the jacket.

  “Which hotel?” the handsy cop echoes.

  Sentro says, “I’m not exactly sure.”

  The cops exchange a wolfish look. “Perhaps we can take you somewhere quieter so you can remember.”

  “Tia! Tia!” Zoala shoves through the crowd that’s gathered to watch the show and embraces Sentro with a big awkward stage hug. A green-and-white Checker taxi swerves to the curb, and Dr. Morehouse hops out.

  “You found her, thank God.” He flashes some kind of ID and switches to French. “I’m a doctor; this is my patient”—gesturing—“mental patient. We’ve been looking all over for this woman. Thank you.”

  Disappointed, the sweaty cop takes a stance and folds his arms to study Morehouse. “Why does the brown boy call her ‘auntie’?”

  Ignoring him, Morehouse calls into the cab in Portuguese, and Eccola slides out of the back seat to take Sentro by the arms and starts leading her to the taxi, making weird baby cooing noises. But the cops aren’t ready to release anyone.

  “What hospital?”

  “It’s a private guardianship, Officer. Up in the hills.”

  “Sisters of Mercy?”

  “If only. No, no. Secular. Public.”

  Sentro looks back to see Morehouse shaking both cops’ hands and pressing some folded money into them.

  “Gentlemen. I am deeply indebted to you. Thank you so much. I tell you, we’ve been looking all over. She’s a firecracker, this one. Walked away during evening meal.”

  Eccola is desperate to get Sentro back in the taxi, but Sentro stalls, holding on to the lip of the roof and searching the street behind them for her madras sighting.

  “Por favor,” Eccola pleads. “Entre no carro.”

  Morehouse takes leave of the cops and comes to them. “Get in the fucking cab,” he whispers and shoves Sentro in and follows. Eccola slides into the front seat with the driver, and Zoala squeezes in back beside Morehouse as the door shuts. Sentro sees her friend Handsy the Cop step out into the street, helpful, and blow his whistle so the cab can merge into traffic and drive away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Dude. Get a grip. You really thought taking a runner was a good idea?”

  Sentro is pretty sure he doesn’t want an answer. Her head is woolly, and her shoulder has stiffened.

  “You suicidal or just stupid?”

  “Was that my money you used for the bribe?”

  “Yes. Well spent too.”

  Sentro tells him she needs to find the hostages from the cargo ship the pirates attacked. If they’re pirates at all.

  Morehouse just stares at her, incredulous. “Find them. And do what?”

  Sentro stays quiet, eyes on the street beyond the windshield. Concentrating. She’s a specialist. She does this for a living. Saves people. Names float through her head, in and out of reach: Bug, Unger, Drewmore, Scott Chang. Bobbing for memories like apples in a tub.

  Chang is a client she saved once. But from what?

  “Dude.”

  Zoala echoes, “Dude.”

  From the front seat a giggle, and Eccola’s withering, mocking, “Duuuude.”

  Morehouse continues, “The hostages’re gonna be fine.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. For sure, I do. This is how the game is played: boats are caught up, deals are struck, money changes hands
, nobody gets hurt. It’s totally chill. You are harshing the flow.”

  Everyone keeps telling her this. The taxi slows, locked in traffic.

  “Somebody already got hurt,” Sentro says.

  A pink hoodie flutters down from a stairway deck through the pale-blue sky of her memory.

  Morehouse shakes his head. “God is indifferent. That’s why they invented life insurance.”

  She’s starting to like him, despite everything.

  But over the doctor’s shoulder, out the window, she has seen a madras coat again, slaloming through the sidewalk crowds. Before anyone can react, she flicks the taxi door handle, steps out clumsily, and falls into the street, and the traffic thins and the cab accelerates before Morehouse can stop the driver, and the door slams shut.

  Sentro gets back on her feet. She makes one full rotation, up over the curb to the sidewalk, where she shoves through a pack of men gathered outside a windowless bar, the green field of a futebol game glaring down at them. She stops and scans the street to the intersection, spies the madras jacket settling astride an ancient yellow Vespa. He guns the throttle, pops the clutch, and takes off, hurrying down a hill toward the docks in a fog of exhaust.

  Driven by habit, by instinct, by inclination, Sentro gives chase. Sprinting on heavy legs, or what she can approximate as sprinting, it’s a losing cause. She’s bruised and aching and too old for this.

  There was a run like this in Cairo, wasn’t there?

  A chase. Or was it a flight?