Andres taps on the door with one knuckle.
“Pase,” Consuelo says from the other side. He finds them both sitting on their beds with the television turned to the news. Carla is filling out a newspaper crossword puzzle while Consuelo sews a button onto a pair of navy pants, part of Ignacio’s school uniform. She finishes pushing the needle through the fabric before looking up, surprised to find Andres in the room.
“Oh!” she says, handing the task off to Carla while she stands up and clears a chair for him. Then, as if she has to explain herself, she adds, “Ignacio popped a button.”
Andres takes a seat on an old wicker chair he recognizes from their first apartment. He had no idea Marabela kept it, but right away he remembers how it would sink and creak under his weight, this artifact from their past life.
Consuelo tightens her robe while Carla tucks her bare feet under the covers. It’s the first time he’s ever seen them out of uniform, and it makes him feel like a guest in his own home, like he should’ve called ahead or made an appointment.
Consuelo, perhaps sensing his discomfort, breaks the silence. “How are you, señor? I’m afraid we’ve all been so worried about la señora and the children that we haven’t asked how you’re doing. It must be such a difficult time for you.” Her voice is gentle, but he hears wisdom in her calm tone.
“Yes, thank you. I—” Andres isn’t sure how to respond. “I worry that I’ve failed her,” he says, surprised by his sudden urge to tell her everything, as he imagines Marabela did at the end of her day. “I keep thinking I must have done something to cause all this.”
“Señor. What good do those thoughts do us? Focus on doing the best for Marabela now. Pray for her and have faith that the Lord will give you the strength to get through.”
“It’s just that they’ve taken so much from us. Not just her, which is practically everything. But even the little things that I never thought I cared about. There’s this bakery that Jorge used to drive past every morning on the way to my office. I’d roll down the window as we got close just to take in the scent of their bread, and now even that doesn’t feel safe. And the way Cynthia gets so excited every time the doorbell rings, insisting on opening the door herself. Do you think we’ll ever let her do that again?” He shakes his head and rubs his palms against his knees, grasping at the soft fabric of his slacks. “None of these moments belong to us anymore. I’m plagued by the sensation that they know my whole life, that they can take it all away.”
Andres looks up at Consuelo, who listens so attentively that he feels his only job is to keep talking. In his nervousness he’d almost forgotten why he came here in the first place.
“Jorge won’t be driving me to work anymore. I’ve had to sell my company, so I told him yesterday that I wouldn’t be needing his services. He didn’t seem surprised—I think he might have been expecting it. He said that he and his wife have been praying for Marabela every night. I’ve never met his wife, have you?”
“Emma. She’s a schoolteacher. She taught my nephew how to read a few years ago. Very patient, that woman,” Consuelo says, shaking her head and smiling.
“That’s good, I guess. I could barely look at Jorge because I kept thinking of how he’d have to come home at night and tell her he lost his job.”
Consuelo tenses a little, but she quickly sits up straight and dusts off the small pieces of thread from her lap. “Jorge understood the situation, señor. He was very sad to say good-bye to us, but he doesn’t blame you. He knows you didn’t make this decision willingly.”
“It’s not really a decision then, is it? Not mine, anyway. It’s like someone else is making all these decisions for me, someone I’ve never even met.” At this, Andres leans forward, clasps his hands together, and looks Consuelo in the eyes. “He leaves me no choice.”
She takes a deep breath and nods, but her head stays tilted toward the floor. The skin around her neck seems to double, creating a soft new layer for her chin to rest on. “I understand,” she says.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to stay. Believe me, I wish you could be here when Marabela returns.”
Carla, perhaps just realizing that this conversation now applies to her, looks up from her button. “You mean we have to leave?”
The disappointment in her voice shames him. If Marabela knew what he was doing right now, she would hate him for it.
“I’m very sorry. I no longer have the means right now to keep you.”
“We can stay and help until we find other work,” Consuelo says.
“Thank you, but I don’t know how long it’ll be until she’s home. I have to wait for them to call to arrange everything, and then who knows how many days will pass . . . I’m very sorry,” Andres says again. “I know this is not what Marabela would have wanted.”
“You’re doing the best you can, señor.” Consuelo reaches over and places her hand over his for such a brief moment it’s almost a tap. He thanks her, but it’s clear they’re only comforting each other out of obligation. They’ve never been close.
“Will you call when she returns? We’d like to know that she’s home safe.”
“Of course,” Andres says. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you both. She’s always spoken so highly of you, like you’re a part of this family.”
“And the children?”
“My mother will be helping me watch out for them. Guillermo is staying, too.”
“She is strong, señor. She will come back and she will fight for everything she loves.”
“Yes, thank you.” He says good night and tucks the wicker chair under a small writing desk that rests against the wall. On his way out he leaves an envelope of cash on top of the television set. “For what we owe you,” he says. They say nothing as he goes.
6
DAY 16
THE KIDNAPPERS HAVEN’T called in three days, the longest they’ve cut off communication. In that time, Andres has imagined Marabela dead, beaten, raped, escaped, left in the desert to die. Nothing can compare to this kind of anticipation, not even the dread of Monday, when he knows he’ll have to tell his employees, his friends and colleagues, that their livelihoods are no longer in his hands.
The lack of control has become familiar, though its constant presence doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. All day, he sits in the darkroom and waits. He eats all his meals at the desk and avoids eye contact with Ignacio when he walks the few steps it takes to get to the kids’ restroom instead of using his own, which is in his bedroom farther down the hall. He tries not to look at the clock, even plays games to test how long he can go without a quick glance.
He thinks, If more than five minutes have passed before I look again, Marabela won’t die. If more than ten have passed, she won’t ever leave me again. This bargaining helps him focus on other things, anything other than the phone that doesn’t ring.
He hears the sound of Guillermo’s footsteps coming up the stairs and is surprised when they turn out to be Ignacio’s. When did the boy start throwing his weight around as if it were a weapon?
“These are for you.” His son hands him a manila envelope with Edith’s handwriting in the top right corner. Para Señor Jimenez, it says in thick black marker. It’s stuffed with so many documents it looks like it could tear at the edges. Andres takes it and quickly sets it aside, but Ignacio keeps his eyes on it.
“Don’t you want to know what’s inside?” he asks.
“Don’t you?” Andres invites his son to sit down across from him. He doesn’t have to look inside the envelope because he already knows it’s just filled with unread mail from the office, papers scattered across his desk, and cards from his Rolodex—numbers, names, and addresses of people he may never speak to again. This morning, knowing he couldn’t leave the house and unsure he could bear to face the people at the office anyway, he asked Lorena to stop by and have Edith clean out his desk.
“Did you help your grandmother unload the boxes from her car?”
The boy nods
. “Me and Guillermo did. We left them downstairs in the living room. She asked me to bring you the envelope, though.”
He can’t understand why Ignacio is so curious about it. Maybe he imagines it’s stuffed with cash for his mother’s ransom. “That’s everything I have left of the company. You can look through it if you’d like. I’m sorry I won’t be taking you along to more meetings anytime soon.” He tries to smile, raising one side of his mouth. “I’m sure you won’t mind.”
“It wasn’t all that bad. It was fun seeing you in action,” Ignacio says, but Andres knows he’s just trying to make him feel better. “I know it wasn’t easy giving up the company.”
This sudden acknowledgment of his sacrifice is unexpected. Andres feels undeserving of the admiration and wishes it could be the other way around: father consoling son.
“So what now?” Ignacio asks.
He knows Ignacio’s not referring to the company, but Andres’s mind still turns to all the employees he left behind without even a good-bye. One day, when this is all over, he hopes he’ll have the chance to redeem himself in their eyes. For now, he can’t add to his suffering and dwell on it. “We wait for the call,” he says.
So they do. Ignacio makes himself comfortable in the chair across from his father. Guillermo comes in half an hour later and takes the chair by the door. They go over every detail so many times he loses count.
“They need to know you’ve done everything you can. This is your final offer, and they can either take it or get nothing,” Guillermo says. “If they suspect they can get more from you, they will try.”
Andres feels his stomach grow heavy at the thought. There’s so little left of him; what more could they possibly ask? What would he do then? All around him, rows of yellow cue cards hang from a string where Marabela’s pictures used to be. Each says the same thing with different words.
This is all I have.
I’ve sold the company, the car, taken money out on the house.
I have nothing more.
You have the wrong impression of me.
This is as far as I can possibly go.
One phrase that was never written but keeps reverberating in his mind:
This will ruin me.
He wishes he could crumple the thought.
The cards are reassuring, though; they solidify what he has been trying to convince himself of since the beginning. There is nothing more he can do. He catches Ignacio’s eye across the desk and suddenly regrets inviting him into the room. If things don’t end well, he’ll have failed everyone he’s ever loved. Whether or not his son would ever forgive him, Andres knows he’d never forgive himself.
Behind him, the clock ticks and tocks. Moments linger between each second. Time fills with emptiness and anticipation. He remembers Marabela wishing during their honeymoon that they could stop time, wondering which moments they’d stretch.
It was a rhetorical question, and now experience has answered it for him.
Time can never stand still, but some moments stay with a person forever.
The phone rings. He feels the sound etching a scar into his memory.
A second time. An eternity squeezed into a second.
A third ring.
Guillermo points at him like a stage director.
“Hello? Who is this?” Andres hears his own voice as if from miles away.
Hades confirms his identity and asks for a question.
Andres shakes his head. “No questions today. I need to speak with her.”
“We agreed on this already. Is this how you do business? By going back on your word?”
There is no way to win that argument, and the looks on Guillermo’s and Ignacio’s faces confirm it. Andres skims his list of questions and tries to choose one that won’t upset her. “At what time was Ignacio born?”
He watches his son sit up, suddenly more alert. They hear a knock on the other end, like someone banged the receiver against a hard surface, and then a painful silence.
“Three hours after eternity,” Hades says, laughing at a joke that was only meant to be shared between husband and wife. Andres doubts he’ll ever be able to hear those words again without thinking of Hades.
“Are you ready to make a deal, Señor Jimenez?”
“Tell me when and where and I’ll be there with a quarter of a million.”
“We agreed on one million.”
Andres looks to Guillermo for reassurance. “I never said I could get that. This is all I have. I’ve sold everything for it. I swear to you, there is nothing left. I have the money in cash, ready for you. Today, if you want.”
“I’ll decide the time.”
Hearing this, Guillermo pumps his fist in the air, miming victory, but Andres isn’t ready to celebrate. He needs to hear the words, wants to know that this will be over soon. He listens for the words and relief that can come only from Hades. How cruel that the man who torments him is the only one who can save him.
“Fine. Pay attention. This is exactly how it’s going to happen.”
Andres writes everything down. His hands are shaking, his handwriting is illegible, and he can see the tape recording each of Hades’s words, but still the simple act comforts him. As drops of sweat fall to the paper in place of tears, blurring the instructions, Andres starts to feel the familiar rush of a closed negotiation coming back to him. The finality of it reassures him. For the first time he sees an end to this, and for once he lets himself believe it because it is written in black and white, his only language of truth.
It is the first time Andres has noticed how many worlds exist between his neighborhood and his mother’s. The ride from one safe place to another is not a simple one; they are never driving in a straight line for long. When they finally hit the last stretch of road, it is narrow and steep, and the journey weighs down on them as the car climbs up a hill toward Lorena’s home.
In the backseat sits Ignacio with his arm wrapped around his sister. She is too weak and tired to fully realize what is going on, but Ignacio is alert, shooting sharp whispers at his father.
“Let me go with you,” he says for the fifth time since they started packing clothes.
Andres looks in the rearview mirror. He tries to be patient and reason with his son. “I need you to be with your sister and your grandma now.”
“If they wanted to get us they would have already. How is Grandma supposed to protect us?”
“That’s not the point. Think of it this way: now you’re the man in the house, right?” This reasoning seems to satisfy Ignacio. He keeps quiet the rest of the way.
Andres approaches a roundabout and turns the circle into the street leading up to his mother’s house. It’s like going through a revolving door—just a few degrees is all it takes for the world to change. Here, the trees are trimmed and the gates are manned by guards. Dressed in a khaki uniform with a navy hat, the guard asks for Andres’s name and calls his mother’s home to let her know she has guests. Within seconds the gate is opening on its own, so slowly it looks like it’s hesitating.
Andres hasn’t been to his mother’s home in six years, but this isn’t the time to get reacquainted. Lorena puts her arms around Cynthia and shows the children to their bedrooms. They walk through the house apprehensively, their heads tilted up at the oil paintings of saints, their hands barely brushing the brass railing as they climb the stairs. Cynthia is too young to remember any of it, but he wonders if Ignacio can piece his surroundings with bits of memory. If he does, he doesn’t mention it, and Andres knows this isn’t the right time to ask. He kisses them each good night and asks Lorena for a glass of water. He sips quietly, standing next to the refrigerator.
“What time do you leave tomorrow?”
“Six in the morning.”
“Where are you meeting?”
“Somewhere in the desert. They gave me directions. Sounds far.”
“You’re leaving extra early?”
He nods. She looks torn, like she just swallowed something sou
r.
“What is it?” he asks, making his way to the door.
“Nothing. Just go. Be careful.”
“Mother.”
“I just don’t want to see you get your hopes shattered twice. What if she leaves you again?”
He shrugs. “I guess that’s her choice.”
They say good-bye and Lorena draws the sign of the cross on his forehead with her thumb, begging him to take care. “Get some rest,” she says, but he knows he’ll only lie in bed tonight, waiting wide-eyed for this all to be over.
7
DAY 17
HE WAKES AROUND dawn and waits for Guillermo to arrive. The streets are quiet, even for an early Saturday morning. The few cars on the road speed past and are gone. Andres feels like the whole world is watching him, like the city has been staged for this, and any wrong move will swiftly decide his fate.
He drives through the center of town and gets on the highway, passing the usual exits he’d take to get to work or go to friends’ houses, and continues to the edge of the city. The roads start to narrow and disintegrate. The ride turns almost violent as he speeds over cracks and holes. Every few minutes he glances at his passenger seat, at the black duffel bag stuffed so fat with money that he wonders if the zipper will give. Its contents are neatly stacked piles of American money, the green and beige dull compared to Peru’s bright orange and blue and purple bills, adorned with the faces of people working in fields, picking crops under a sun they used to worship.
The contents of the duffel bag represent the fruits of eighteen years of hard work. Eighteen years of having doors slammed in his face and feeling the eyes of everyone around him digging into his back, silently hoping that he was setting himself up for failure. In the beginning, his father saw Andres’s company as a betrayal, but it hadn’t bothered Andres because he’d had Marabela’s support, a faith he could fall back on when his own failed. By the time the company started thriving, he was spending so many hours away from home that Marabela’s enthusiasm for it began to dim, and he was left to forge ahead while she tended to her photographs in the dark.
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