Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  “It’s not very good. I did it in, like, twenty seconds,” she says.

  “I love it. Can I keep it?”

  She nods. Andres lies back on the couch and Cynthia sits on the floor against it, her pad flipped to a new page. He rubs her head and feels the softness of her hair. He prays that God will help him be strong for her, but all he feels is his chest tightening and the air thinning around him.

  The only thing that saves him is the sound of Consuelo’s voice. He startles, not realizing she’d come upstairs.

  “The food’s ready,” she says. It’s early afternoon and for the first time in his life Andres finds himself starving but lacking an appetite—his body isn’t in agreement with his mind. On weekends, they eat the largest meal of the day around lunchtime instead of waiting till the evening when he’s home from work, so he tries to prepare himself for the sight of all the food he’s not ready to stomach. Consuelo and Carla have prepared the kids’ favorite dish, tallarines verdes. It’s spaghetti with a basil, spinach, and garlic sauce, a Peruvian-style pesto, served with a thin fried steak. Not exactly a choice for the most refined palates, Andres thinks, but at least it’s good comfort food for the kids.

  Cynthia gives a quiet gasp when she sees her plate. In a loud whisper she thanks Consuelo, who’s already halfway to the kitchen. She uses both hands to twirl the spaghetti onto her fork, then nods approvingly as she chews.

  “¿Te gusta?” Andres asks.

  “Mm-hmm. Don’t you like it?”

  He looks down at his untouched plate and picks up his fork, but before he can use it the phone rings. Andres sets it down and stands up slowly. “Go ahead and eat without me. I’ll be right back.” The nearest phone is in the kitchen, where Carla and Consuelo have just sat down to eat next to the refrigerator on a table set for two. Andres reaches over them and nods at Consuelo, who instantly gets the hint. The women exit the kitchen, leaving their half-eaten meal behind.

  “Hello?”

  “Andres? How are you?”

  Any trepidation he felt over speaking to the kidnappers is quickly replaced by a different kind of panic. Andres recognizes the voice right away, but he can’t place the name. She’s a friend of Marabela’s, the vice president of a charity she does work for, and the two frequently meet to discuss the next gala’s theme and colors. The woman is calling because Marabela has missed two meetings, something she’s never done before.

  “It’s just so unlike her not to call,” the woman says, as if this is a great tragedy. “Is she okay? We’re all so worried.”

  Although he’d known this moment would come, Andres struggles to come up with a plausible answer. He’s already used Marabela’s charity work to manufacture a lie, but he’s not prepared to face her friends from the organization with another. The line fills with static and the sound of the woman’s breathing.

  “She had to go to Miami. It was a family emergency,” Andres says. He adds that extra detail hoping she won’t ask more questions out of respect.

  “Family emergency? I didn’t know Marabela had family in the States.”

  “She doesn’t, but it’s complicated.”

  “Oh. Qué pena. Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “No.”

  She waits for him to elaborate and the silence makes him uneasy. “Do you want to leave a message?” he adds.

  “Tell her the gala’s on the sixteenth of the month, and that we need her,” she says. “It’s important.”

  The desperation in her voice agitates him. Andres knows she let it slip out purposely, just to drive home her point. He resents her assumption that he’s not taking this seriously. If you only knew, he thinks, but he politely agrees to deliver the message and hangs up before she can say good-bye.

  Almost instantly, the phone rings again.

  “Carajo,” he whispers, yanking the phone off its receiver. “Hello.”

  It only takes a small moment of rustling silence for him to realize it’s not Marabela’s friend. Andres feels his stomach sink and, with it, his voice.

  “Hello?” he says again. This time the word feels more like a question.

  “Señor Jimenez. Have you given more thought to our offer?”

  Today the man on the line sounds younger. Andres wonders how many men are involved in his wife’s kidnapping, which of them is in charge of doing what. If one is tasked with feeding her and keeping an eye on her, he hopes it’s this one. This one sounds weak; maybe Marabela can manipulate him.

  “I told you, I’ll do everything I can, but even half a million will be impossible. There’s no way I can come up with that much money.”

  “Nobody wants this to take that long.”

  “Of course not,” Andres says in his calmest voice, hoping he can set an example for both men to be reasonable.

  “Well, how much do you have right now, then, in dollars?”

  The question takes Andres by surprise. Is the man mocking him? Like in any negotiation, he’s uncomfortable stating a number first. Name a price that’s too high, and the offer’s off the table. Name a price too low and risk no one doing business with you. But as much as he tries, Andres can’t think of this as a business deal. What kind of man puts a price on his wife’s life?

  “Are you there, Señor Jimenez? If this is too difficult for you we can just wait. Weeks, months, it’s your call.”

  “No, no. I can bring one hundred thousand. Where?”

  “Make it one-fifty and we won’t drag this out.”

  “That’s more than my life’s savings.”

  “Do you want this done soon or not?”

  “Yes, but this is the best I can do right now.” He does the numbers in his head, imagines all those years he’s been saving for an emergency he thought would never come. A new roof, a bad year at the company . . . those were the kind of crises he was capable of foreseeing.

  The line goes silent. He can tell the man has cupped the receiver because all he hears are muffled voices.

  “One-twenty, with jewelry, watches, any valuables added in. We’ll count it all once we have it and send her home.”

  “Okay. Yes.” He exhales into the phone, unaware that he was holding his breath in the first place. “Where do I go and when?”

  They give him a location and a time, mere hours from now.

  “That’s not possible. I need to get the money out of the bank and they won’t be open until Monday.”

  The man spits out half-words, trying to argue though they both know this problem is out of their control. “Fine. Lunes, pues.” He gives him a new time and reminds him to come alone. “She won’t be released unless everything has gone as planned. Better make sure it all goes smoothly, Señor Jimenez. Don’t go cheap on the extras,” the man says, and when he hangs up, Andres swears he can hear several giggles.

  He stands by the phone a few more seconds, half expecting it to ring again. When it doesn’t, he lets out a breath so deep it feels like he’s been holding it in for days. This will all be over soon, he thinks, but the relief he expected never comes. The phone call has left him feeling unsettled. How can he trust the promises of a criminal? There will be time to thank God and the heavens when Marabela is home safe. For now, there is plenty of hell left to survive.

  DAY 5

  On Monday morning, Andres raids his and Marabela’s jewelry boxes and stuffs the inside pockets of his jacket with his grandfather’s gold watch, Marabela’s tennis bracelet and necklace, and a pair of solitaire diamond earrings that dangle from a thin gold chain. Out of habit, he locks the now near-empty metal jewelry boxes and tucks them back in their hiding places beneath the bathroom sink. The remaining jewelry is mostly worthless, simple handcrafted silver pieces that cost no more than fifteen soles at any artesanal. The weight of his jacket pockets tell him he’s giving the captors enough, but Andres knows this isn’t true. He’s holding back and he’s ashamed for even considering it. Quickly, like a criminal, Andres reopens the bathroom cabinets and pulls out Marabela’s jewelry once
again. This is the most painful item of all, a pair of earrings that once belonged to his mother. They’re antiques, two brilliant sapphires atop a small string of river pearls. As he holds them up and they dance between his unsteady fingers, he mourns never seeing them frame Marabela’s delicate face and long neck. His mother gave Andres the earrings years before he met Marabela, always intending for them to go to the woman he would marry. After he and Marabela eloped, Lorena had warned Andres that he was giving them to the wrong person. What would his mother say now, seeing him give the earrings to a criminal?

  Andres tucks them away with the other jewels and accepts the fact that his mother was right about one thing: Marabela will never wear them.

  There are so many questions he forgot to ask and now it’s too late. Andres has already left his house and given Jorge the day off, and any chance he has of talking to the kidnappers vanished the moment he hung up the phone. Andres backs out of the driveway just as Jorge makes his exit. His driveway is a long, thin stretch of pavement not wide enough for two cars to park side by side. He wishes he had taken the time last night, like Jorge normally does, to back the car into the garage so he wouldn’t have to drive in reverse. His nerves are making it difficult for him to navigate while looking over his shoulder. Anyone following the swerving path of his vehicle might question Andres’s sobriety.

  He reaches the street just as Jorge turns the corner and disappears, and for a moment Andres wishes he could run after him and switch places. For the past fifteen years, his driver has shown up every weekday morning at six thirty. He is never late. He parks his rusty Volkswagen Beetle on the side of the street and walks up to the front door, where Consuelo hands him the keys to Andres’s latest toy—first the red BMW coupe, then the black ’81 Mercedes-Benz, and, most recently, the navy-blue Jaguar—so he can warm up the engine and get the air-conditioning going. Sometimes, depending on the order in which Andres’s and Marabela’s cars are parked, Jorge takes both keys and rearranges the cars himself, as if they were a pair of cards he doesn’t want to lose track of while they get shuffled into a deck.

  All those years of driving Andres from place to place, tagging along for the minutiae of his daily life, and Jorge has never once compared his shaky, unreliable engine with Andres’s flawless ride. Today Andres wonders what kind of life Jorge is going home to. He has never given much thought to what happens to Jorge after he drives away every evening in his own car. His driver is a private man, and over the years they’ve gotten to know each other only in the quiet bubble of his vehicle, where they talk about things like traffic and politics on the radio. He’s learned about Jorge’s character from how he drives; he’s the kind of man who keeps calm when someone cuts him off, who doesn’t hesitate to swerve into a faster lane if he sees a fleeting opportunity. If Jorge could take the wheel today, and Andres his usual spot in the backseat, he would say nothing about Andres going to the bank and emptying out an entire savings account, but his silence would be a welcome comfort, a reminder that Andres is not completely alone.

  Now Andres feel disoriented behind the wheel of his own car. His palms start sweating on the steering wheel as he looks for a parking spot close to the bank, which isn’t even open for business yet. Andres would rather wait and be the first one through the door than risk being late for the drop. In the meantime, he goes through the mental list in his mind to make sure everything is in place. He wrote the address on two different sheets of paper, one tucked into his shirt, the other in his pant pockets. His bag is a canvas duffel with a zipper and no pockets, just as the kidnappers specified. It is dark and inconspicuous—no loud logos or distinctive characteristics. His deadline is three hours from now, more than enough time to get out of his car and run to his destination if traffic or some act of God tries to interfere. All that’s left is the money.

  The bank manager greets him as he always does, insisting that he personally attend to Andres’s needs instead of the tellers behind the glass. He is one of their biggest customers, after all, which unfortunately warrants some extra attention that Andres would rather do without today. Juan Miguel asks how the family is doing, how work is going, and what Andres thinks about the bombs that went off at a nearby Japanese restaurant a few days back. Andres resists the urge to say he hasn’t been keeping up with the news unless it’s kidnapping related, and even if he had an opinion he has no time to chat about it.

  “Terrible, just terrible. This needs to stop soon,” he says as he takes a seat at Juan Miguel’s desk.

  “What they need are more of those bomb-sniffing dogs. At least animals can’t be bought, unless the terrorists start investing in dog treats.” Juan Miguel giggles to himself as he waits for his computer to turn on. “So, what can I do for you?”

  Finally, they can get this over with. Still, the words do not come easily. “I need to withdraw the funds in my savings account. In American dollars.”

  “Of course,” Juan Miguel says. He has the kind of relaxed look that people give when they’re trying hard not to react. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t smile or frown. It’s like the muscles in his face have gone numb. When he asks to see Andres’s identification, he makes a crack about rules and process, then quickly excuses himself. Ten minutes later he comes back with a green leather bag and slides it over the desk to Andres, keeping his eyes on his own paperwork at all times. Andres recognizes this act well; it’s the same kind of nonchalance he feigns when waiting for a client to respond to his company’s fees and proposals. Everyone tries to be casual about money because any other reaction would reveal we can be bought, we all have a price.

  Andres inspects the bag’s contents. It has such a large zipper it practically crunches open. Inside are twelve stacks, each maybe one inch thick, of hundred-dollar bills and a paper envelope with a couple thousand and change.

  “¿Eso es todo?” Andres asks.

  “You’re welcome to count it if you’d like. I can offer you a more private space if you’d be more comfortable.”

  “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t expect so much to amount to so little, that’s all.”

  “Yes, well, they’re American.” Another joke only he laughs at. Andres has been less than amused by the continually shrinking value of his country’s currency.

  The two men sign a few papers and wish each other a good day. With every step out of the bank, Andres picks up his pace. He’s never felt desperation quite like this. He feels vulnerable and exposed, like he’s just stepped out of the shower and been hit by cold air. He imagines that every person walking by knows what he’s up to (how could they possibly not, when it consumes him so completely?), and he both longs for and fears the recognition. Then there’s the guilt, the violation. He’s taken out this money but it’s really being stolen from him with his own hands.

  He feels guilty for even considering the size of the payout. All that matters is Marabela. Despite their recent ups and downs, she is worth the world and more.

  Everything about this feels wrong, and it gets worse when he gets to the drop point. Only now does Andres realize why the drop-off address sounded familiar: it’s a bus stop a couple of blocks from Ignacio’s school, both a statement and a threat: We have our eyes on you. We know where your family works and plays.

  His instructions are simple, the transaction quick enough that he won’t have time to look around and catch a glimpse of his enemy. Andres has been instructed to wait at the stop and leave the bag tucked under the bench in a way that it isn’t obvious to passersby. When the next bus arrives, he will get on it and stay for the next hour before getting off and boarding another bus that will take him back to his car.

  “Don’t try turning around to get a look. We’ll know if you do,” they said.

  He assumes there will be someone on the bus, keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t try to be a hero or call the police.

  It’s actually a sunny day, a rarity this time of year, when the sky is so gray everything loses its shadows. Once he’s parked, he takes of
f his sweater and lets it hang over his forearm in an effort to cover up the bag of cash. The wind pushes against the back of his neck, almost as if it’s hurrying him along but reassuring him at the same time. It’s the only part of his body that feels slightly at peace, and as he approaches the bus stop he tries to tap into that small sense of calm, willing it to multiply and cover him like a warm blanket.

  There is a small group of people gathered at the stop, making it easy for him to blend in. They don’t all stand under the cement threshold because the air is too cold under its shadow. An older woman leans against the streetlight, encircled by half a dozen or so plastic bags of groceries, surrounding her like a fort. A few feet away, a teenager sits on the curb, bobbing his head to his Walkman. Andres tries to hear everything, see everything, but the more alert he is, the more everything blurs together. All around him cars beep their horns in short, persistent bursts as they try to pass one another. The sounds multiply until they’re practically in harmony, a cacophony of desperation. Andres squeezes onto the edge of the bench and rests his back against a picture of a man selling insurance. The faded ads that paper the shelter are covered in spray paint, tired messages of consumerism smothered with protests against capitalism.

  He places Marabela’s ransom beneath his legs, looking around and half expecting to catch somebody watching him. But to the others he is only a small piece of the scenery, lost in the background. Moving slowly so as not to call any attention to himself, he pushes the bag under the bench with his legs. He pretends to tie his shoe, letting his sweater fall to the floor and just over the duffel.

  “Are you okay?” The man next to him puts a shaky hand on his shoulder, looking concerned.

  Andres has stared just a few seconds too long at the package, his head almost tucked between his knees. His hands still clutch at the bag, unwilling to listen to his mind and let its contents go. He must look sick, like he’s having a hard time breathing, and then he realizes he is.