Half the Day Is Night (40 page)

She doubted it, but she nodded again.

“I have been to New Orleans,” he said. “It is a strange, strange place, sister. It is almost underwater, now. You know? It is almost like Caribe. The cemeteries are all above ground. Little cities. When you go to the States, maybe you will go to New Orleans.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“I am sorry, though, I cannot help you.”

She should have been angry, they'd waited all this time and now he couldn't do anything, but she just felt relieved.

Lopez was still smiling, and now David was watching Henri.

“That is too bad,” Henri said.

Everybody waited, although she didn't know what they were waiting for.

“I have a friend,” Henri said. “Maybe he could help you. Maybe tonight you come back with me. You think you could do that?”

“We have to work tomorrow,” Mayla said.

“You want to be a fish jock or you want to go to the States, woman?” Henri was suddenly sharp, contemptuous.

She couldn't look at him, but when she looked at the floor the spider was gone. She peered up and down the corridor, but there was no sign of it. It couldn't have gone very far, she had just been looking at it, but the fact that it was gone felt as if it meant something. Her knees were trembling. “I want to go to the States,” she said.

“So you come with me,” Henri said.

Mayla looked at David. Was this what people would normally do? Was this some sort of trap?

“Okay,” he said. “We need to do some things first.”

“No time,” Henri said.

David shrugged. “We don't have money here.”

Henri thought about that. “We talk to my friend, you and he work out the money.” Then he held his hand out to Lopez, who grabbed it. “See you next week.”

Nobody had paid any attention to the other diver. He stood behind Lopez, watching. Not like a guard, like a bystander. Was he buying something?

“Come on,” Henri said.

She looked one more time, but she still didn't see the spider. She wondered where it was waiting.

*   *   *

The sub left at about eleven-thirty. The pilot explained to her that docking fees were less at night, so most of the fish farms ran all their supplies after ten. The pilot knew Henri but didn't seem to care much for him. Henri said hello and the pilot nodded and turned his back on him. But he was willing to talk to Mayla, offered her a seat behind him and started to explain the controls of the little sub. There was no partition between the body of the sub and the pilot's area, since this was a cargo sub, although there was a partition that the pilot could pull. When she had come out to the fish farm the first time the sub had been full with people who had spent the weekend in Julia and the partition had been pulled. Now she could see the monitors and the console.

“Sister,” Henri called, “come back here.”

The pilot shook his head a little in sympathy but didn't say anything. She got up and went back, winding her way through sweating coldboxes. She assumed they were full of fish. David sat down against the wall and she pretended not to notice when Henri patted the floor next to him and instead sat down next to David.

“How long does it take to get to the port?” David asked.

“About an hour,” Henri said.

An hour trapped looking at Henri. She had sat down so close to David that she was touching his thigh, but she didn't want to move. Besides, David had said that he'd told Lopez he was trying to get away from his ex-wife. So she was supposed to be his girlfriend.

She thought about taking his hand, but David wouldn't know what she was doing. It would have been nice. He had put his arm around her once, in the car, after the shooting.

“How do you like being a fish jock?' Henri asked her.

“It sucks,” she said.

He laughed. “It sucks,” he said, savoring the phrase, delighted to be surprised. He was drugged, she was sure. “That's good, sister.”

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

She thought she could faintly smell fish, but it could have been her imagination.

David leaned his head back, too, and closed his eyes. She knew she couldn't sleep. There was a faint smell, not of fish, but a faint, dry, musky smell. It was Henri. It wasn't a real body odor kind of smell, more like some sort of oil, maybe slightly rancid. It was somehow associated with his hair, with those velvet blue braids. They didn't look dry. They didn't look exactly wet, either, but they were shining, clean looking and deep blue.

He opened his eyes and caught her looking at him and smiled at her.

She felt the heat in her face and leaned her head back as if she could sleep and closed her eyes. She was afraid he'd get up, she thought she'd hear the sound of him getting up, even over the vibration of the sub, but she was afraid she wouldn't and that he would touch her.

She opened her eyes, because she couldn't stand it anymore, even though she knew he'd be waiting, watching her, and he'd smile again. But his eyes were closed.

She sat, not looking at him, but aware. She didn't understand how men could sleep anywhere.

The sub vibrated behind her head. She was tired. She wished this was over. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again, but Henri still had his closed. So did David. David was no help at all. She closed them again.

She jerked awake, realized she'd been somewhere between dozing and dreaming but couldn't remember exactly what she had been thinking. She felt more stupid and tired than if she hadn't dozed off. She drifted again.

The sub ride was like a fever dream.

*   *   *

The docking startled her awake. Henri stretched and stood. David stood slowly and worked his bad knee for a moment. It seemed to her that she should put off getting out of the sub, but there was no way.

Beyond the municipal dock everything was dark and shut down for the night, the lights on half.

They followed Henri. She had no idea where they were and didn't know if she could have gotten back to the sub or not. The street was full of shuttered shops. One place was open, the lights inside bright, spilling fluorescent light onto the street.

“Dinnertime,” Henri said to no one in particular.

She smelled something fried, cumin and curry, Indian food. She didn't have any money on her, they didn't have any money at all. No one carried money on them at the farm, you had the foreman lock up your money, hid a little bit if you wanted to buy beer or something. Most of
her
money was in a storage place on the third level, where you paid for a lockbox.

Henri didn't ask them if they wanted anything to eat, but she couldn't have eaten anyway. He bought curry, yogurt and cucumber and poori bread like pillows. He brought it all back with a big cup of sweet/tart tamarind drink and sat down across a scarred plastic table from them. “This is my favorite place to eat,” he said. “They know me here, always give me the best food.”

The restaurant was empty except for two boys behind the counter who paid no attention to them. Were they going to meet Henri's “friend” here?

“You like spicy food?” Henri asked David. It was the first question she could remember him addressing to David.

“Some,” David said.

“Here the food is spicy, but not too spicy,” Henri said. Around the midnight-blue slips in his eyes, the whites were red and inflamed. The smell of spices made her queasy. “Sometimes, my stomach bothers me,” Henri said. “I have to be careful, eat right. This friend of mine, he is a bit political. You should remember that, not insult him.”

Political? What did he mean, political? She looked at David. He was tense, his fingers drumming on his thigh, making careful patterns.

“He is not
La Mano de Diós?
” David said.

“What?” Henri said.

“If he is
La Mano de Diós,
” David said, “we cannot deal with him.”

The curry was almost the same yellow as the plastic table. She wondered if she'd ever be able to eat Indian food again without thinking about this place, this moment.

“You are political, too,” Henri said. He shook his head. “Everyone is political, except me. I am just a poor man, making a living, and all around me this one will not deal with that one will not deal with the other one.”

“Is he
La Mano de Diós
?” David said, insistent.

“There are politics like there are shrimp in the sea, everyone has a different one. Everyone thinks of
La Mano de Diós,
” Henri said. “Because they are on the vid, because they are on the news. You say political and people are saying,” he hiked his shoulders and minced his words, girl-talking,
“La Mano de Diós, La Mano de Diós.”

David did not answer, did not rise. He waited.

Henri's shoulders dropped and his voice was suddenly different, no make believe, “If you think it makes any difference which politics it is, you are as stupid as they are, but no, it is not
La Mano de Diós.
”

David relaxed and then sighed.

“Sometimes,” Henri said, his voice once again the voice of a tour guide, talking for their entertainment, “my job, it is stressful, I think that why I got to be careful. But this place, they treat me right. Make it special, I always tell them. I been having stomach trouble since I was twelve or so. Run in my family, my mother, she's the same way.”

Henri didn't seem to care that they weren't saying anything back, he chattered on about the foods he could eat and the foods he couldn't. “The doctor, I went to the doctor, he said eat more fruits and vegetables. Shit, I try that, and you know what? It make me more sick. So I don't go to the doctor anymore. Henri know what is good for him, hey?”

It was after one in the morning when Henri finally took them back out on the street. Mayla felt twisted with tiredness, her stomach sour.

Henri was quiet, too. He simply walked, head down. He stopped at a street corner. “Wait here,” he said.

He loped on down the block.

“This is crazy,” she said to David.

He nodded.

“What do you think we should do?” she asked.

“Wait,” he said.

“You don't think we should go somewhere, maybe get a room in a hotel?”

“You think he is going to do something to us?” David said. “You think we are set up?”

“I don't know.” Henri stopped at a storefront. She couldn't tell if he was knocking or unlocking the door, but he went inside.

“You work with people,” he said. “What do you think?”

She was awful with people; it was numbers she was good at. She had gotten the damn bank sold because she couldn't read people. But she thought. Henri was keeping them off balance, not telling them where they were going, taking his time. But that didn't mean he was setting them up. Did it mean he was trying to establish some advantage before negotiating? Or that he couldn't take them to his contact too early? Or that he was just hungry?

“I don't know,” she said.

“It is Henri or Saad,” David said. “And Saad has a grudge against us.”

“But we know Saad,” she said. “Saad is after money. This guy is a drug dealer. He's crazy.”

“Saad's partner is crazy,” David said. “And Saad may not be able to get us documents. I think we must take this chance.”

She felt made of glass.

“This is bad,” she said. “This is crazy.”

He agreed. “This country is crazy,” he said.

She wanted to say it wasn't, that she had lived here all her life, but she didn't.

“We will get out of this,” he said.

Hollow comfort, he didn't know any more than she did. But she smiled at him.

Henri was gone for about ten minutes, long enough for her to begin to think that maybe he had just ditched them, but then he came back out with a stocky guy in tow. He sauntered back up the street. “Okay, we'll go see my friend,” he said. The stocky guy didn't say anything and Henri didn't introduce them. He was dressed like Henri, in a white vest, but he wore a long-sleeved shirt under it. His hair wasn't dyed either.

Henri took off, and she and David followed Henri and the stocky guy followed them.

Henri was full of energy, swinging his arms, singing to himself. He seemed to have forgotten about them completely. Maybe he'd taken something in the storefront? Popped a pyroxin?

She expected to wander around another hour or two, she'd about decided he was waiting until morning. He took them down a couple of residential streets, zigzagging through a neighborhood of narrow ways and graffitied walls. It was the kind of neighborhood that normally would have scared her to death, but tonight it just seemed to be part of the evening. Besides, who would bother them while they were with Henri?

She wished they could stop somewhere and sit, her legs ached.

And then Henri did stop at a door. He buzzed and waited impatiently, unable to stand still. He shook his hands at his thighs, dancing in place, jittering, the streetlights shining off his velvet hair.

He buzzed again, muttered, “Come on.”

She was standing outside a tenement, waiting for a drug dealer to make a sale. This was crazy. It had to be crazy.

Henri buzzed a third time. The stocky guy was looking down the street at nothing in particular, and Henri was jittering, and David was tapping out cadences against his thigh and she was just so tired she couldn't think.

The door finally opened and somebody said something she couldn't hear. The voice sounded male.

Henri leaned into the doorway to talk.

She looked at her feet. She didn't want to be part of this, didn't want to see anything.

“Okay,” Henri said, “come on in.”

The light was dim and yellow in the flat, a little two-room tenement that had the musty odor of a bedroom, the smell of sleep. The guy who had answered the door was wearing a pair of diver's tights. He was young, and he didn't look like she expected someone who used drugs to look. He looked plain. She didn't want to remember him, so she looked around the room.