Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  “Guillermo helped the Duarez family when Elena was captured. They say they owe everything to him.”

  “Elena.” He says her name as if he is only just remembering it, as if he hasn’t been carrying it around for years, thinking that he should at least call and ask how she’s doing.

  He’d read about Elena’s release in the papers. If he’d been aware of the kidnapping while she was missing, he would’ve visited her family, offered to bring them dinner at their home, or at least sat awkwardly in her parents’ living room, staring at the family portrait that he and Elena might have been part of, together, in another lifetime.

  Instead, he learned about her kidnapping after it was over. Andres remembers it vividly, right down to the taste of the coffee he was sipping when he got into an elevator, pressed the button, and caught the back-page headline: “Kidnapped Daughter of Newspaper Owner Released after 37 Days.” The article explained that the family hadn’t disclosed the kidnapping to the public sooner in order to ensure Elena’s safety. Andres experienced fear and relief, desperation and gratitude, all in the time it took to get from the first floor to the fourth. When the doors dinged open, as if to say, Time’s up, Andres decided he would process the news later. Later, when calling Elena didn’t frighten him. Later, when the sound of her name didn’t make Marabela clench her jaw so tightly he could hear her teeth click.

  When Elena and Andres were children, born just four months apart, their parents would leave them with the empleadas while the mothers went to their gatherings together and the fathers went to work. The men were cofounders of El Tribunal de Lima—a small newspaper that had grown into one of the city’s larger dailies by the time Andres and Elena were in school.

  To make up for the fact that he was always at work, Andres’s father let him spend entire days at his office. The first time Rolando took him to work, Andres took a notebook and a pencil with him, thinking that working alongside his father meant he’d be a journalist. Instead, they went from sales meeting to sales meeting, where Andres was encouraged to take notes on his father’s pitching style. Fifteen minutes into the first meeting, the men were shaking hands and Andres hadn’t written a word. He hadn’t noticed his father was selling anything until he’d already sold it.

  “Well? What did you write?” his father asked.

  “I thought you were just making small talk and asking questions. I didn’t realize that was a pitch.”

  “Exactly,” Rolando said. “The best negotiators don’t let on that they’re negotiating.”

  Sometimes, Elena’s father, Saul, came into the office, and the men discussed the final layout of the day’s paper; Saul took care of editorial while Rolando arranged the ad pages, each providing input for the other. One day Rolando suggested it was time they add more pages. Andres, just a few days into summer vacation, remembered a problem he’d worked on in math class about how many oranges should be squeezed into a glass of orange juice if they wanted to sell it for a set price. The teacher had explained to his class of bewildered students that it was an exercise in keeping costs down to maintain profit. Squeeze more than a certain amount of oranges into a glass, and you’d either have to increase the price or lose money on the sale.

  “Can you print that many pages, Father? Won’t it be too expensive?”

  “People always need information,” his father said. “Their curiosity is a bottomless well.”

  And so it was.

  Rolando kept getting advertisers, Saul kept getting readers, and, year by year, the business expanded. It was an unspoken expectation that if the men were business partners and the women were best friends, of course the children would marry.

  And they nearly did. When they were young enough to bathe together, their love seemed natural and innocent. Over time, kids started to tease them for holding hands as they walked toward the school playground. The girls called Elena a tomboy and the boys called Andres a maricón. By the time they were teenagers, the insults had evolved along with their hormones. They called her a slut and him a prude for refusing to admit they were doing it.

  Despite all the troubles their friendship caused them, Andres and Elena would rather be together than apart.

  “Doesn’t it bother you? All the things they say?” Elena asked one day as they walked home from high school.

  He shrugged it off. “They’re nothing but horny teenagers taking their frustrations out on a relationship they’re too immature to understand. I bet you they’ve had about as much sexual experience as Sister Mary Anne. Next time they try to tell you anything, just imagine them dressed in a nun’s habit.”

  This made Elena laugh so hard she had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and lean on an ice-cream cart for support. He loved making her laugh; it was what he lived for back then.

  His parents, especially his mother, loved Elena. Andres was an only child and he suspected Lorena saw her as a surrogate daughter, an outlet for a tenderness she couldn’t express with her son. They shared a secret language; he often caught Lorena winking at Elena, pinching her chin, or patting her on the shoulder before she left the room. He and Elena were putting together a puzzle one afternoon when she suddenly blurted out, “Your mother is the only adult who doesn’t make me feel like a child.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She talks to me like we’re both women. She asks for my advice. Did you know I helped her pick out your birthday present?”

  For his seventeenth, Lorena gave Andres a leather briefcase that was identical to his father’s, and a leather-bound notebook custom engraved with the words Make it your own. It’d seemed so like his mother to push him to follow his father’s path. But now that he thought about it, the notebook and engraving had Elena’s unmistakable touch.

  “That’s not surprising. You two are always plotting things behind my back.”

  Elena laughed and shoved him with her shoulder. She reached over him, plucking a puzzle piece that looked like a small animal with its limbs outstretched, and slipped it into a spot he’d been trying to fill for the past half hour.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked. He’d picked so many other pieces that looked identical.

  She shrugged, scanning the table for more. “Sometimes you see one and you just know it’ll fit.”

  When Andres looks back, he can’t understand how their simple relationship turned so complicated. If they hadn’t followed exactly in their fathers’ footsteps, if Andres hadn’t gone to one college for business and Elena to another for journalism, they might have followed through on their childish fantasies. Maybe Andres would have stuck to the plan if he’d never experienced the rush of the unexpected.

  But then one day, when he went to pick up Elena after class, surprise, surprise—there stood Marabela. He didn’t even wait for Elena to introduce them; something about her energy, the way she spoke with her entire body, gave Andres an uneasy feeling—and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Elena leaned in for a kiss on the cheek and placed her hand on his shoulder, their movements so steady and natural as they came together. In that moment, he felt Marabela’s presence throbbing at the edge of his mind, a weight pressing against his thoughts. It was intense and exhilarating and uncomfortable in a way he’d never realized he wanted.

  The call to the consultant is quick. In just a few words the man asks Andres who referred him, when he last heard from the kidnappers, and where Andres lives so he can arrange to meet him at his home.

  “Right now?” Andres says.

  “Do you have time to waste?”

  Andres doesn’t say anything. Everything feels like it’s happening so fast but adding up to an eternity. He tries not to think of how much worse it is for Marabela.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour and you can tell me the details then. As it is, we shouldn’t be holding up the phone line this long,” Guillermo says.

  While he waits, Andres organizes some papers scattered across his desk. The kids are still at school and the maids in their room, probably folding the laund
ry they hung to dry last night. He hopes Guillermo won’t arrive at the house too quickly; he needs time to calm the nerves riled up after speaking to his mother. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she’d been so cold to him, even under the circumstances. Andres shut his parents out of his life years ago, for good reason. What would Marabela think if she knew he finally caved and called Lorena?

  Back when the wounds of their estrangement were still fresh, he’d tell Marabela, Me hacen falta. I miss them, or, really, I lack them, as if a piece of him was gone in their absence. Marabela would nod and try to comfort him, but she could never fully understand. Her whole life she’d been separated from family. Her father died when she was a teenager and her mother, overcome with grief or happiness—“Who could tell with her?” she once told him—gave up on their life together, moved to Bolivia with her lover, and left Marabela with her uncle and his wife. Family had never been a constant in her life; it was a way to define eras that had come and gone. On the rare occasion that she looked back at her childhood, Marabela didn’t reminisce for long. That part of her life was over.

  The first birthday Andres’s mother and father missed was Cynthia’s third. He’d hoped they would call, or send a card, or even show up at the house uninvited. He’d spent the afternoon with his eye on the doorway, hoping that the sea of red and yellow balloons would part and from behind them would emerge his parents, smiling. As if Marabela hadn’t gone behind his father’s back at the newspaper; as if he’d never fired her, and they’d never said the kinds of things to one another that can’t be forgiven or forgotten.

  “Maybe I should call them,” he’d told Marabela. He was grabbing a drink in the kitchen while she arranged tiny trio sandwiches on a tray. She held them with two fingers, moving them around and stepping back to look at them, like one would a bunch of flowers.

  “Do whatever you want, dear,” she’d said, her attention still focused on trimming a few more crusts.

  Andres knew better. He’d heard that phrase from his mother enough times to realize that she and Marabela were more alike than they’d ever admit. Just the thought of them being in a room together, stretching him thin with their silence, was enough to change his mind.

  The years after that—the missed birthdays and quiet Christmases—became easier. The Jimenezes were a hardheaded family, after all. Time only multiplied their stubbornness. Even faced with her own husband’s death four years ago, Lorena stood ankle-deep in her grudges. When she called Andres to tell him his father was in the hospital, she acted as if they’d only spoken yesterday. Clearly, their feud was still fresh in her mind. “Bring the kids. He’d love to see the three of you,” she said. Andres waited for her to correct herself, to add Marabela’s name to the request. She said, “You should know he’s in a delicate place. I wouldn’t want anything upsetting him.”

  So he went alone, hoping his mother was exaggerating his father’s condition. He didn’t take the kids because he didn’t think it’d be fair to expose them to a death they wouldn’t be able to make sense of. Marabela took it better than he’d expected, respectfully keeping her distance even at Rolando’s funeral. She waited in the car while Andres buried his father. Watching the dirt hit the casket while Lorena gripped his arm with her gloved hand, Andres decided enough is enough. No more time wasted on a picture published six years ago. He gave himself and his mother time to mourn, then tried to make amends, but Rolando’s death seemed only to have hardened her.

  “Is she ready to apologize for what she did to him? What she did to this family?”

  He knew then his mother’s resentfulness ran deeper than the photo, to Elena and broken promises and a place neither he nor Marabela could follow.

  The distance came as second nature this time. Lorena made it so hard to swim against her. Andres was tired and let the undercurrent of her pain push him further and further away.

  The buzz from the front gate startles him. Andres pushes the blinds apart with two fingers and watches as the man approaches his house. He’s surprised that Guillermo appears at least ten years older than him. His dark hair is tinged with gray, and his skin is tanned gold with light undertones. His build is average—not lean or thick—but when he shakes Andres’s hand Guillermo squeezes just hard enough to flex the muscles in his forearm.

  They take a seat in Andres’s office upstairs.

  “Let me just start by telling you how sorry I am that you’re in need of my services,” Guillermo says. “I won’t pretend to know exactly what you’re going through, but I have worked with enough families to understand that there are few things more difficult than this. If we are to work together, I need you to know that I’m not insensitive to your feelings, and that the best way I can ease them is to do my job, which means being honest and direct with you.” He studies Andres’s face, as if assessing how to proceed.

  “I would welcome that,” Andres says.

  He has the kind of voice that seems to suck all the air out of the room. Every time Guillermo opens his mouth to speak, he takes in a quick deep breath. It gives added weight to his words. “For everyone involved, this is essentially a business transaction. Our goal is to negotiate in such a way that your wife returns safely. If you start by offering everything you have, you’ll have nowhere to go from there if they refuse, and the kidnappers are more likely to hurt her if they believe you’re not cooperating.”

  Andres nods, taking it all in. “I hate that I have to ask this, but your payment . . .” He stretches out his words, hoping Guillermo will jump in.

  “Of course. It’s five hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. I’m sure you may have heard of consultants who charge a percentage of what they save the client in ransom negotiations, but I’m not one of them. I feel that presents a conflict of interest. Your wife’s safety is my top priority, and I’d rather we go into this agreement in as concrete terms as possible. If, after we’ve discussed how this all will work, we both agree to move forward, I’ll require an up-front payment to cover the month.”

  “A month?” He’d never considered it might take that long, but the thought of it charges at him.

  “Nobody wants it to take that long, but I’ve seen it take weeks or even months. I believe in preparing for the worst in order to get the best outcome,” Guillermo says. He lowers his voice, his words slow and emphatic. “It’s important for your wife and your family’s safety that you know what will happen, what is likely to happen, and what we’re trying to keep from happening.”

  “I understand,” Andres says.

  None of what follows is easy for him to hear, but Andres listens and takes notes intently. Before they can start negotiating he must set a minimum, maximum, and optimum ransom amount. He’s relieved to hear Guillermo say that the kidnappers’ initial demand isn’t an option—the first goal is to move them off it because no true negotiation can start until they’ve done so. Less is more, he says. The second the kidnappers start thinking he’s easy money, Marabela and the family will be in more danger. It’s important to make it a little hard for them to get paid.

  “They have two things working for them: time and the threat of violence. You can’t allow them to manipulate you with that. Remember, this is a business. It doesn’t make sense for them to kill their one commodity.”

  Andres feels his legs going numb. He gets up and takes a few steps across the room, standing straight as he tries to take deeper breaths. “Has it ever ended like that?”

  Guillermo doesn’t respond immediately. “It’s rare. It’s the kind of thing that, if it were to happen, it would’ve already been decided from the start. It wouldn’t be anyone’s fault but theirs. It’s important you understand that, but it’s even more important that we move on to what we can do to help your wife.”

  “Of course,” Andres says. He appreciates the change of subject.

  “Do you know where she might have been when she was taken?” Guillermo asks.

  Andres tries to picture how it all happened. The elevator is in the heart
of his company’s building, and Marabela usually takes the stairs by the rear entrance, teasing that it is only four floors up and that the button in the elevator marked PH for “Penthouse” is a joke. They could’ve taken her from the back parking lot, or ambushed her in the stairwell, where the carpeted steps would’ve dampened the commotion. He imagines Marabela fought them hard. She is always at her strongest when challenged.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “She could have been near my building downtown.”

  “What about her car? Have you gone to check if it’s there?”

  In all his anxiety, the thought has never occurred to him, a fact so embarrassing it renders Andres speechless and he has to sit back down. Guillermo reads his face and nods forgivingly.

  “We’ll look for it in a couple of hours. You can’t expect to think of everything in these situations,” he says. “When did you last speak with her?”

  “It was close to rush hour. Thursday. She left to pick up some papers at my office shortly after we spoke,” he says. He wonders if she could have been followed, pictures it in his mind: a rusty car, with the front bumper decaying like Swiss cheese, and a passenger window that doesn’t roll all the way down.

  “Do you think they’ve hurt her?” Guillermo asks.

  “She said they hadn’t, but she sounded scared.”

  “It’s a kidnapping, señor. She should be scared. Remember that these people’s currency is threats. They’ll trade them for as much as they can get.”

  Andres shifts in his seat, and the leather underneath him squeaks as he moves. The more he tries not to think of what they could do to her, the more he imagines all the ways she could be suffering. It’s like trying not to blink in a rainstorm.

  “I don’t have the money,” he admits. He tells Guillermo, finally, of his foolishness, of the botched ransom drop that’s left him hopeless and helpless. He admits that he’s not even confident he’ll be able to come up with the money for Guillermo’s fee. Andres is nearly breathless when he finishes; he’s on the verge of crying. Afraid to see the look on Guillermo’s face, he presses his fists to his forehead and leans back in his chair.