Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  She reaches across the table to hold Consuelo’s hand. Their callused fingers rub against one another like an old toothbrush scraping the bottom of a pot.

  “Who else has come to visit?” Consuelo asks.

  “No one. You’re the first.”

  Both Consuelo and Carla look surprised, even a little flattered. “You are very loved, señora. So many people called asking for you.” She tells Marabela how friends and acquaintances called, how Andres had told them she’d gone to the United States for a family emergency.

  “Yes, he told me about that. It seems a little absurd, though. I doubt anyone believed him. I don’t have a single relative over there.”

  “He said it was a distant second cousin, maybe third or fourth. Some uncle’s cousin’s sister-in-law who you’d never met before.”

  “Who would believe that?”

  Consuelo shrugs. “He told them what they needed to know. Señora Paula and Señora Mari called a lot at first, and Señor Tomas and Señor Juan, too. After a while they only called every few days.”

  Marabela shakes her head. “It’s just all so ridiculous. All these lies.”

  She and Consuelo are still holding hands, and she feels the woman’s grip tighten, gently, for a small moment. “He was desperate, señora. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look as lost as he did while you were gone. He questioned every decision he made—Lord knows how many times—and even after he made it, he seemed full of doubt.”

  As usual, Consuelo humbles her. Marabela wishes she could have a fraction of the woman’s sense of compassion. She lets out a long breath and tries to relax her defenses. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I’m sorry.”

  Andres returns to the patio to offer everyone a drink, and at this the women blush, eyes on the floor and backs held firmly against their chairs as they shake their heads no. Carla tucks her hair behind her ear as she thanks him anyway, and the sun catches on a small diamond hanging just above her jawline from a delicate gold chain. The earrings are simple but elegant, giving Carla’s plain appearance an added flair.

  “You look beautiful in those earrings, Carla. They suit you,” says Marabela.

  Andres glances at the girl and suddenly he’s very focused. His lips part and he squints at her; Marabela can see a rush of realization coming over his face. “Where did you get those earrings?”

  Carla doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t realize he’s talking to her.

  “Carla. He’s asking you a question,” Consuelo says.

  “Those earrings were my grandmother’s,” Andres blurts out.

  “Andres!” Marabela doesn’t like his accusing tone, but he holds up his hands to stop her.

  “If you would’ve taken them from our home, that’s one thing. I wouldn’t care at this point. Take anything you want as long as my family’s safe. But—” He coughs, a weak attempt at covering up the quiver in his voice. “I gave those earrings to someone. I put them in a bag, along with our entire life’s savings, in exchange for my wife. I gave them to a man who saw an opportunity to take advantage of another man who couldn’t think clearly. And only a few people even knew Marabela had been taken when I delivered my first ransom. So those aren’t just any earrings. Tell me where you got them, before I assume the worst.”

  Carla is so stunned, her lips tremble as she tries to form words, but none comes. She fidgets with the earrings, caresses them softly between two fingers. She stares at the floor, her eyes darting from side to side, as if she’s arguing with herself and sorting through a pile of thoughts to find one she can agree with.

  “It’s impossible. He wouldn’t—”

  Consuelo jumps out of her chair and kneels next to her niece, holding her hands. “Just tell us, Carla. Tell the truth.”

  “Javi. He gave them to me a couple of weeks ago. He said he’d been saving up for them,” she says. With every word, the conviction leaks from her voice.

  Andres curses her. He leans half his body through the glass door and calls upstairs for Guillermo. Marabela covers her mouth in disbelief but quickly catches herself and puts her arms around Carla and Consuelo, who are holding each other’s hands. While they wait, Andres paces the patio.

  “And you’d told him, hadn’t you? About Marabela’s kidnapping? You didn’t waste much time opening your mouth.”

  “Andres. Cálmate,” Marabela says.

  “I said tell no one! Did you think it was a joke? Some gossip to bring home at the end of the day?”

  “I’m sorry! I was upset and worried and he asked me what was wrong . . .”

  “And then he used you. He used you to destroy us. Marabela could have been killed!”

  “That’s enough, Andres.” Hearing him say the words out loud only cements the fears Marabela’s been trying to shed, and she feels them sinking deeper into her the more he seems to lose control.

  “¿Que paso?” Guillermo runs out to them with a confused look on his face. Marabela rolls her eyes. If they were being attacked, they’d all be dead in the time it took him to make his way downstairs.

  “Carla’s boyfriend is the impostor who took the first ransom,” Andres says, with so much indignation in his voice Marabela worries it will rot his teeth.

  Guillermo raises his eyebrows and shakes his head at her. “Carla. Who is this boy you’ve been keeping company with?”

  Her whole face is running with tears. “He’s not a bad person. I can’t even believe he would do this.”

  “He never told you what he was up to?”

  “No! I wouldn’t keep that from you. I would never put señora in danger.”

  “So you’ll help us now?” Guillermo’s language is gentle in a way that Andres’s could never be.

  “What do you mean? Help how?”

  “Just information. We need to know more about him. Is he dangerous?”

  “No.”

  “Are you saying that because it’s true or because you hope it is?”

  “He’s never done anything like this. He doesn’t steal. He doesn’t hurt people.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Five months.”

  “Does he own any weapons?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What about his friends? What are they like?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see them very much. I’ve only met two of them and they’re just quiet. They try to act tough, you know? I never bought into it.”

  Andres cuts in, right to the point. “But you know where he lives, right?”

  Carla closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and nods.

  “Good. Then you’ll take us there. Today.”

  It takes some convincing. Though Carla agrees to give them directions, Guillermo doesn’t think it’s worth the risk to go. Too dangerous, he says. Too many unknowns.

  Andres is in no mood to heed his warnings anymore. “What do you think I hired you for? You’re supposed to help protect this family.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. You won’t know what you’re walking into.”

  For once, Marabela’s on Guillermo’s side. She doesn’t want Andres taking Carla back to her boyfriend’s neighborhood to start trouble, so she stands in front of the girl, her arms held out protectively. “It’s crazy, Andres. Just let it go.”

  But he can’t, and neither can Carla. She’s so consumed by guilt, she steps out of Marabela’s shadow and stands next to Andres. It’s clear they’ll go with or without Guillermo, a fact that leaves him no choice. The three of them make their way to the garage as Marabela and Consuelo beg them not to. Marabela puts her hands on the half-open driver’s-side window, tries slapping her palm against the hood of the car as they pull away. From inside the car, the sound is but a weak thud, completely unthreatening.

  In the backseat, Carla tries to stifle her crying. They drive twenty-five minutes in complete silence, except for Guillermo occasionally asking Carla for directions from the passenger seat; a right turn here, a left turn there, a good ten minut
es on the highway until they get off in a completely different side of town, where the streets are full of potholes and the houses are cement colored with tiny, trash-strewn yards. Andres speeds up the car so that they won’t have to stop at any red lights.

  “I don’t know what you think we’ll get out of this,” Guillermo says in a deep monotone.

  “We’re just talking to him, getting information,” Andres says.

  Guillermo raises his eyebrows but says nothing.

  “Take a right,” Carla says. “It’s here.” She sounds disappointed to see her boyfriend’s house, as if the whole ride over she’d hoped that it’d be gone when they arrived. Andres doesn’t pull into the driveway but parks along the curb. The door slams into the sidewalk as he opens it, and for a moment it’s caught there—metal scraping against the grain, a dull clamor. He catches up to Guillermo, who’s walking across the yard with his arm flung over Carla’s shoulders, as if he’s an old friend and wants her to tell him a secret.

  “Tu amiguito. What’s his name again?”

  “Javier,” she says.

  “You’re not scared of him, are you?” She shakes her head. “You’re scared of losing him.” She nods.

  Guillermo stops in the middle of the yard and bends down so he’s at eye level with her. “A boy who starts with the filthy business of robbing honest people and other thieves in one go . . . he’s already on his way to a place you don’t want to follow.”

  She won’t look at him, her fingers and eyes occupied with a loose thread along the hem of her blouse. Andres feels the tendons in his neck tense; he looks away.

  Guillermo clears his throat and they both turn back to him. “Or do you? You’re better than that, chiquitita.”

  Carla adjusts her blouse and straightens her back. Andres gets the unsettling feeling that this is no longer about him or his money, and since he’s only here to reclaim what’s his, he begins to feel cheap.

  Carla knocks on the door, louder than they were expecting. They all jump back at the sound. The boy who opens the door smiles at her for an instant, until he realizes she’s brought company.

  “What’s this?” he says.

  In their rush, Andres didn’t realize that Carla has taken the earrings off. She holds them in her hand, rubbing the tiny diamonds with her thumb as if for comfort. When she opens her palm to show him, her fingers stretch out slowly. They shake along with her voice.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  The boy’s face is expressionless. He shrugs and looks at all three of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, the lie slipping like water from his lips.

  “Just give everything back. They won’t call the cops or get you in trouble. They just want everything back.” Each word Carla says sounds more like a plea than the last. “You don’t—don’t you realize they could have killed her? You could’ve had her blood on your hands, and you used me to get it.”

  “What do you care? They just had it lying around. It’s easy for them. Don’t you see? It’s right under your nose every day.”

  Guillermo takes a step toward the door, and the boy backs up. “Javier, right? Look, we can make this very simple right now. Just give back the money and the jewelry and we’ll go.”

  Javier seems to consider this. He still has one hand on the doorknob and the other pressed against the threshold, his body guarding the entrance to his home. Andres watches as Javier braces himself and then launches his body out of there, as if he were a rubber band stretching and releasing. He bolts to the side of the yard, trying to put as much distance as he can between himself and Guillermo, but the man is like a goalie, anticipating this very move. Guillermo catches him and flips him over so Javier’s back is pressed against his chest.

  “You had to make this difficult, didn’t you?”

  He squirms and his voice rises. “I don’t have it! I swear. It’s all gone.”

  But Andres can’t, won’t, believe him. This can’t be where everything ends, where his hopes get washed away by some cojudo. He runs into the house with Guillermo’s voice chasing after him, telling him to stop and slow down, be careful. Carla is shouting and crying, worried about her boyfriend’s arm getting pulled from its socket and about Andres going into the house alone. She calls his name and Javier’s in the same breath. He yells back, “Cállate!”

  The house is dark inside—little more than one room with a couch covered in blankets and an old television balancing on a cinder block on the opposite wall. Clothes, cassette tapes, and old paper plates cover the floor, and several half-empty cardboard boxes are stacked together in the corner, sinking into themselves under the weight of pots, pans, and cans of food.

  “He lives like an animal,” Andres mumbles to himself. First he checks the couch, lifting it from the side, then flipping over the cushions, but finds nothing. He slaps his hands together, trying to shake off the dust. As he rummages through the room—kicking aside the boxes, gathering old newspapers off the table—he gets that sticky feeling he usually gets at gas stations. Behind him, Guillermo enters the room with Javier in tow.

  “Puta madre. What the hell’s wrong with you? You can’t just throw my shit around. Be careful with that!”

  The boy has some nerve, but Andres ignores his request. “What did you do with it? Did you buy some coca with the money for my wife’s life? Throw a party for your piece-of-shit friends? Did you sell the rest of the jewelry for more money? Or did you give it all to Carla? Doesn’t seem like such a smart idea now, does it, giving the earrings to a girl who works for the family you robbed?”

  “Tranquilo, Andres. He’s not clever enough to hide it anyplace good. Check the kitchen,” Guillermo says. He studies the boy, whose eyes dart to the other end of the house, which holds a refrigerator no taller than a small child. “The refrigerator. Check the freezer.” Javier looks down at his shoes. “It’s probably in an old ice-cream box. Something stupid like that.”

  Guillermo laughs and Andres plays along, though he’s never seen this side of him before. It’s a part they’re playing, he realizes, extreme versions of themselves that feel more like caricatures. Intimidation works best when there’s no humanity left for the victim to appeal to.

  Andres walks to the refrigerator slowly, taking his time to torment the boy with each step. “I bet you thought that much money would take up more space, didn’t you?” The little door resists him, then opens with a swoosh of cold air that floats in front of his face, thick and white. In the center of the freezer sits a yellow cylindrical plastic container, the same kind that Consuelo uses to put away leftover soup after dinner. He shakes it, but it has an unfamiliar heaviness to it, and when he pops open the lid he sees the green stacks of money, curled into each other like guinea pigs trying to keep warm. He picks them out of the container and there, at the very bottom, finds the two blue sapphire earrings. His grandfather’s watch is gone, as is Marabela’s diamond bracelet, but otherwise several chains, pendants, and rings are tangled into one giant piece. Somehow he manages to pick the earrings apart from the rest of them. They feel like tiny chunks of ice between his fingers.

  “Is it all there?” Carla asks. She’s been so quiet Andres had forgotten she was with them.

  “It’s enough,” he answers, clutching the earrings in the palm of his hand, unsure where to put them. All the pockets on his person are too loose, and though he hates putting them back in the container, it’s the only place he knows where they won’t fall out. He covers them with the stacks of money, which he doesn’t feel the need to count. Most of it is still there. The boy didn’t even have enough imagination to know what to do with such a large amount. He kept it hidden somewhere so he could take from it in small pieces. In this way, Andres figures, he is no better than Marabela’s captors.

  He studies the boy’s face. Javier has dark black eyes and innocent, reddened cheeks, but it is still the only face Andres can give to his anger, to his torment, to Marabela’s misery. He rushes out of the kit
chen, taking four long steps toward the boy, bringing his fist through the air too quickly to give him any warning.

  He can still feel the sting against his knuckles after they’re back on his side of town, the crushing of skin and bone against each other, the warm splash of blood. It is all he can think about when they pull up to his house, and he has to force himself to let it go, like a suitcase molded to his grip, before he lets himself inside.

  Back at the house he finds Marabela sleeping on the couch, her head resting on Consuelo’s lap while the woman runs her fingers through her dark, thick tendrils. Marabela’s breath is steady but emphatic, like a quiet snore. Andres doesn’t want to wake her because in the days that she’s been home, she’s looked so vulnerable as she sleeps, something Andres is still not entirely used to. In the twenty years he’s known her, he’s seen Marabela look defensive and distant, but never vulnerable. He doesn’t know why he needs to see her like this, but he stands over her and tries to ignore the look on Consuelo’s face that asks, Can I help you? as if he is intruding on a private moment. And maybe he is. Maybe she will never be this way for him because this kind of frailty requires trust.

  Since she’s been home, Andres has hoped that Marabela would invite him back into bed, but she makes sure to place his pillow on the foldout while he brushes his teeth at night. To give herself to him so fully, to let him lie next to her while she surrenders her senses—that would be the ultimate intimacy.

  Consuelo just looks at him, not even trying to shush him with a finger pressed against her lips. She is no longer his maid, but he suspects their old roles still apply. If that’s the case, why does he feel so powerless? He waits for her to speak first, and when she doesn’t he grows impatient and whispers, “How long has she been asleep?”