Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  “I just got a little dizzy. Thank you.” He sits up straight and inches his thigh away from the man’s leg. Andres has never had the need or desire to ride the city buses. They remind him of unsafe canisters stuffed with the wrong kind of people; under the circumstances he has more reason than ever to mistrust everyone he encounters.

  The bus arrives, billowing out a gasp of warm exhaust. The old man places his hand on Andres’s shoulder and pushes down on him for balance as he stands up.

  “Take care,” he tells him.

  The crowd lines up, waiting for the bus to empty, but Andres remains seated. He wants to be the last to board so no one can tell him he forgot it, or, worse, take it for themselves. By the time Andres gets on, the driver is impatient. He steers the bus away from the curb while Andres walks down the aisle, swaying side to side, his gaze forced on the ground. He knows if he looks up he’ll be tempted to look out the window to see if his bag is still there.

  Andres is used to tasks being marked with some sort of punctuation at the end: a handshake, a door closing at the end of the day, a signature on a contract. He has only climbed aboard a bus. After the excruciating buildup to this moment, it feels like he hasn’t done enough.

  Over the course of several blocks, Andres’s adrenaline calms and his mind starts to clear. He watches as ice-cream vendors push their carts on yellow tricycles down the narrow sidewalks along the street. When the traffic stops at a red light, the rush of pedestrians squeezing through the small spaces between cars makes him cringe. No one pays attention to the street signs indicating when and where to cross; everyone, whether on foot or in cars, seems to push one another along. He scrutinizes each passing face until he can no longer keep track of them. The thought that any one of them could penetrate his life so deeply makes his stomach harden.

  Finally his hour passes. Andres gets off the bus on a tree-lined residential street corner where several houses have been partially converted to nail salons and general stores. He crosses the street and boards the bus heading in the opposite direction. When he arrives back at his starting point, Andres checks the bottom of the bench. The bag is gone, but its absence brings no relief. He makes his way back to his car, feeling less in control than he’s ever felt in his life. It’s almost two thirty, and across the street children are running out from behind the green gates of his son’s school.

  Andres decides he’ll wait by the school entrance for Ignacio; he could use the company on his drive home. At first, Ignacio walks right past, then takes a step back.

  “What happened? Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I didn’t go in to work today, so I gave Jorge the day off. I thought I’d come by to pick you up.”

  “Okay,” Ignacio says, unconvinced. They get into the car and Andres makes his way toward Cynthia’s school, just a few miles away. “What’s really going on, Dad? You’re acting weird.”

  “I’m sorry that you find my wanting to spend time with you strange,” Andres says, trying to make his voice light and cheerful.

  “Whatever. Take this right,” Ignacio says.

  “What? Why?”

  “If you keep going straight you’ll hit too much traffic and keep Cynthia waiting. This is the back road Jorge takes.”

  Andres follows his son’s directions until they reach the back of Cynthia’s school. It’s a tall three-story building with the classroom windows tilted open. As they pull up to the front, Andres lets the car idle. Girls of all ages rush out the main door, pouring onto the street in clusters. The smallest ones walk hand in hand with an older sister, or, like Cynthia, stay behind the main gate waiting for their ride.

  He scans the crowd for his daughter, but before Andres can spot her, Ignacio climbs out of the car. “I’ll go get her,” he says.

  In the brief moment that the car door opens and closes, Andres hears the sounds of the students’ voices come and go. Their collective rejoicing at being free from school hits him like a quick breeze and leaves him cold. He can barely breathe as he sees his children walk toward the car, Ignacio with his arm wrapped around Cynthia’s shoulders. When he smiles at them he can feel his lips start to quiver.

  “Hola, mi linda. Surprised to see me?” he manages to say.

  Cynthia giggles as she squirms out of her backpack and nods. “Did Jorge go to get Mom?”

  Andres can feel her eyes on him through the rearview mirror. “I gave Jorge the day off and your mother is still on her trip. She’s very busy but she misses you both and sends you kisses. She’ll be home soon,” he adds. He remembers the last lines she wrote to him in her letter and struggles to keep his focus on the road, his mind flooded with images of what she must be going through in this moment. To not even know whether she’s alive or dead, safe or hurting . . . the possibilities are almost suffocating. And yet, here they are, driving home from school on a Monday afternoon—Ignacio scanning the radio stations and Cynthia staring out the window—as if . . . nothing. He has never felt so lonely.

  “Can you believe this?” Ignacio says. He turns up the volume and a reporter’s voice comes through quick and urgent, like a sportscaster watching his soccer team lose. An explosion has gone off at the Jorge Chávez International Airport, wounding five airline workers. Andres switches the station, taking the next left to avoid the panic-induced traffic near the airport.

  When they get home, he tells Ignacio to go inside and help the maids set up lunch.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Ignacio asks.

  Andres shakes his head and decides that he will not eat until Marabela comes home. He sits on the trunk of his car with the garage door open and watches the driveway. Watches how the sun makes it appear moist, how the shadows glide across its surface as the sun sets, how the streets start to clear with the coming night, and then finally, when the sky turns black and moonless, Andres waits for the motion-activated driveway light to flicker on. It never does.

  DAY 6

  It’s now dawn. Somehow, the sun has crawled halfway across the sky and still Marabela has not arrived with it. Everyone else sleeps, but Andres is so hungry his stomach seems to wrap itself around his spine. He pictures what Marabela must look like now. Is she even with them? Did they release her in a location so remote that she’ll never find her way home? Did they toss her aside, thinking she’s worthless to them now that they have their money?

  He has done everything they asked and they have given him nothing in return. The last fourteen hours have been a silent torture. He tries not to think of all the things he should’ve done—asked to speak with her first, at the very least; arranged to pick her up from wherever they left her—because he needs to be strong for her despite his feelings of incompetence. He envies Ignacio’s and Cynthia’s dreams, their minds capable of thoughts that have nothing to do with death, blood, or broken promises.

  Andres paces the house quietly and steps into the bathroom in the upstairs hallway to splash cold water on his face. When he comes out and turns off the light behind him, his eyes struggle to adapt, so he feels his way through the darkness, running his fingertips against the wall. Its rough texture gives way to a sleek, cold door barely the width of a linen closet. Instinctively, he pulls his hand away, but then he leans into it, his ear pressed against the metal surface, wishing he could hear Marabela’s breath or gentle movements on the other side. The darkroom is Marabela’s sanctuary, but to Andres it is another place she goes where he cannot follow. Even now, when her absence is a bleeding wound, he feels like an intruder at the threshold of her space.

  He returns downstairs and sits on the living room couch that faces the front door. If Marabela were here, she’d yell at him to put on a shirt, remind him that the white couches are for guests only, and ask why hasn’t he shaved in four days. Doesn’t he realize he looks like a bum?

  This normally irritates him, but today he would welcome her harshest words. He would welcome her coming home just so she could pack her bags and leave him of her own free will. Anything but the thought
of Marabela being held somewhere, thinking that he is not coming to her rescue.

  As sunlight enters the house, Andres stares out the window at the potted plants on the patio. Last night they were soaked in raindrops; this morning, the moisture has gone. He searches for any bit of hope inside of him, but it, too, has evaporated. Tears come in its place, bringing a reluctant sleep. When he wakes it is because someone is shaking his shoulder, gently coaxing him to get off the fancy couches.

  “These are for guests,” a sweet voice says.

  When he opens his eyes, Andres sees a small figure just inches from his face.

  “Off the couch,” Cynthia says, in her very best impersonation of her mother.

  Because everything good in his life has come when he least expected it, Andres tries his best not to think of Marabela. There have been so many things worth waiting for—the acceptance letter from college, the day he met Marabela, even Ignacio’s birth, which came six long days after his due date. None of these things happened in the exact moment when he was wishing for them. Still, Andres can’t will his attention to focus on anything but his wife, and for this reason he wonders if he’s already doomed.

  He drags his feet across the living room and starts climbing the stairs, stubbing his toe on a step his body should have memorized by now. As the pain settles in, it spreads from his foot all the way up his thigh, and he has to lean against the wall for balance. He focuses on his breathing so as not to yell.

  The phone rings in the exact moment he can barely move.

  He pushes the pain aside, separates his mind from his body to get to the phone. When he hears the voice on the other end he barks out, “Where is she?!”

  The man mumbles a question Andres doesn’t understand, his tone confused.

  “I’ve been waiting almost twenty-four hours. You said she’d be home by now. What did you do to her?”

  “She’s right here, Señor Jimenez. She’s not going anywhere until we’ve agreed on the proper payment.”

  “What? What are you talking about? I gave you everything I have. I did everything you asked. I even went back after the hour passed and I know you took the money because it wasn’t there anymore. I did my part, now it’s time for you to do yours.”

  “Para de joder. How could we have picked up the ransom when we haven’t even agreed on an amount?”

  “You said one-twenty and all the jewelry in the house. Haven’t you counted it yet? It’s more than you wanted. The watch alone was my great-grandfather’s.”

  “I would never agree to such a stupid deal. You should know better than that,” the man says, an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. “Whoever you spoke with wasn’t me. I go a couple of days without calling and already you’ve allowed yourself to be taken by some impostor hoping to make quick cash.”

  It can’t be true. Andres would rather believe that this man is cruel enough to go back on his word and pretend that they’re starting from nothing than believe he was had by a stranger who had never seen Marabela in his life. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  Now he can see everything he did wrong, clear as daybreak after the fog. The different voice, the rush to agree to an amount so much smaller than the one originally demanded. How could he be so stupid? The warning signs all fit together like puzzle pieces, though he knows he couldn’t have seen them coming. How was he supposed to distinguish one uneasy feeling from another?

  “That quick money was everything I had.”

  “You’ll come up with more. You’d be amazed how resourceful people can be when they absolutely have to.”

  The man is so confident. That should have been the first sign. When Andres thought he could control the situation with the last caller, he let his ego get in the way of his judgment.

  “Please let me talk to her,” he says.

  He waits—he always waits—minutes and centuries until he hears Marabela’s voice.

  “Andres, they’re telling me you’re not coming.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “They say we don’t have the money, but I know we do. Just give them what they want.”

  “I will, Marabela, I promise.”

  She doesn’t answer. They’ve already taken the phone away, and the man is back on the line, serious now.

  “Don’t do anything stupid before we call next time,” he says.

  He hangs up and Andres listens to the dial tone. It is empty, just like he is.

  3

  ANDRES TRIES NOT to think about where Marabela might be right now, about what they might be doing to her, but despite his best efforts, his thoughts have already carved a path to the darkest corners of his mind. This path is so well traveled by now that to think of anything more productive is a struggle, an effort in waking his mind and convincing it to trudge past its sorrows. Andres rips a sheet of paper from a spiral notebook, jots down the ransom, and stabs it into the corkboard that hangs behind his desk with a red pin. There, I’ve done something, he thinks. It is a fruitless action but an action nonetheless. When the frayed side of the sheet twitches from the fan’s circulated air, Andres rips the paper from the corkboard and crumples it up. In almost the same motion he lifts the phone and dials.

  He hasn’t called this number in two years, but his fingers know the motions across the keypad by heart. He’s had a long-running joke with Marabela that when he and his mother finally speak, it will be a life-and-death situation. Marabela has never really laughed at his hypotheticals, and he finally understands why.

  “Hello, Mother,” he says, and just like that he feels like a child again.

  Though she doesn’t respond right away, he can hear her catching her breath. He imagines his mother in her pearls and heels, one hand on the long, ornate wooden table where the phone rests, with just her fingertips grazing the surface as if to show she can hold herself up. Perhaps she reaches for the cold glass of wine that’s always nearby, likely preparing ammunition for what she’s about to say next.

  “Hola, hijo. I guess we both knew you’d call eventually. It’s just that I hoped for this moment for years until I realized you probably would only call if your life depended on it. I can’t imagine you picked up the phone with good news.”

  “I’m sorry to call like this.”

  “I’m sorry you had to. What is it?”

  Andres finds he can’t just spit it out, not like the kidnappers did. There has to be a way to share this news with some humanity, but by its very nature, he knows this is impossible. Instead, he says, “Marabela’s been taken. Somewhere between the gala committee’s offices and my building, I think. The kidnappers called a few days ago demanding a ransom.”

  As he waits for his mother’s response, he’s struck with an unfamiliar longing to be with her. It makes no sense at all; at best, Lorena will be indifferent to news of Marabela’s suffering. At worst, she’ll be pleased.

  “What is it . . . ? What do you hope I will say? I can’t say I’m surprised. These things happen all the time, to people we all know.”

  “I want you to say that you’ll help me.”

  “Andres. What have they told you so far? Is she hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But the money is too much. It’s all too much.”

  “The ransom, you mean.”

  He wants to say he meant the pain, the guilt, but he just nods as if she can see him. “Can you help us?”

  “She wouldn’t want my help, and frankly I’m not exactly inclined to give it to her. You don’t remember what she did with the last favor we gave her?” Lorena says.

  “Not this again. Not now.”

  “It seems Marabela finally got her wish. She always wanted to be in the middle of the action, didn’t she?”

  “Mother, that’s cruel.”

  Lorena says nothing, which is the closest she’ll ever come to an apology. Then, instead of changing the subject, she restarts the conversation as if nothing ever happened. “I don’t know what I coul
d possibly do. Although you could bring the children here. They would be much safer, and they’re long overdue for a visit, don’t you think?”

  “She’s your grandchildren’s mother,” Andres says. “They need their mother.”

  “They need a good mother,” she replies.

  “Let’s not make this an argument about something we’ll never agree on.”

  “Then let’s say what this is really about. You want my money because you don’t want to let go of yours.”

  “Do you think I like admitting that I don’t have it?”

  “I think you can’t admit to yourself that you do have it.”

  He takes his drink, already warm, and finishes it.

  “Life is hard work and sacrifice,” Lorena says. “That’s what your father would have said.”

  “Christ.”

  “Hard work and sacrifice,” she says again. “You’ve done the work. Now sacrifice.”

  “Mother—”

  “I can give you a name.”

  “A what?”

  “A consultant. He helps people through these kinds of situations. So you have a better chance for a good outcome,” Lorena says, lowering her voice to a near whisper that Andres recognizes. His mother, ever the problem solver, has never been capable of helping him out of trouble without first getting in a good reprimand.

  He scoffs. “Right. I’ve heard of these kinds of people. Men I pay to help me pay to get my wife back.”

  “Not just pay. They help you negotiate so you don’t do anything stupid out of desperation.”

  Andres feels his face grow warm, his cheeks and forehead flooding with anger and shame over the failed ransom drop. It’s just like Lorena to hit a nerve that she doesn’t even know exists.

  “And if all goes well, you get her back, Andres. That’s what counts. ¿Me entiendes?”

  It’s the second time someone’s asked him that today. “How do you know about him?”