Half the Day Is Night (42 page)

She got up and looked out the window. The condensation on the outside of the glass made the world outside distorted. “We can
ask
Tim,” she said.

Tim would probably love the idea. Tim would think it was macho, dangerous. All the more reason not to use Tim, he would get in trouble and it would be on their heads, on their hands. “How do we contact him?” David asked.

“We call him,” she said.

“What if the phone is, how do you say, they are listening?”

“They weren't listening when you called,” she said.

“That was a mistake,” he said flatly.

“We could call from a public place. Talk to him. I could tell from talking to him if someone was listening.”

He didn't even bother to answer.

“Seriously,” she said. “Tim can't hide anything, he's like a big child.”

“He is like a big child,” he said. “You are thinking of bringing a big child into this. It is foolish. It is wrong.”

“If we don't do something, we won't get out,” she said. “Do you want to disappear?”

He shook his head. It was still wrong.

“Then I won't go through with it,” she said. “And without my money, you can't.”

“You are using him,” David said.

“Not if I ask him,” Mayla said. “Then it's his own free will.”

“You have always used him,” he said. “Until you didn't want him anymore.”

“I am trying to survive,” she said.

“That is what every tyrant says.”

Ugly words. But she just shrugged. “Too bad,” she said.

*   *   *

In the end she won. He had known she would, she had the money. They went out and called Tim.

They took a taptap up a level and just wandered for a couple of streets until they found a place where they could make a call. As they walked he found himself thinking over and over, “this is not a spy vid.” The words fell in time with his footsteps, until he was marching along to “this-is-not-a-spy-vid.” It was stupid to play games. It was stupid to think they could get out of here, they had no friends and they didn't know what they were doing.

He watched her make the call. She flicked the monitor off and used the handset, her finger in her other ear to block out noise.

When she spoke he almost jumped. “Eess Teem there?” she said, “this is Leesa.” She was talking in a hard Spanish accent and it sounded too artificial to be believed. He wanted to take the handset from her and hang it up. He could, too, just reach up and take it.

He found himself curiously embarrassed.

“No,” she said, her voice still stilted and hispanic, “I am a friend, he will remember me.” And she grinned, not at David but at whoever was on the other end, even though they couldn't see her. Falling into her role. “Hello, Tim? This is Lisa, do you remember me? This monitor, it is broken, but this one is near my house.”

He could not hear Tim's answer over the handset.

“Can we talk, you know, I mean, no one is listening, right?”

Tim must have answered affirmatively, because she reached out and flicked on the monitor. “Hi Tim,” she said in her normal voice.

Tim blinked in a moment of surprise. “Oh my God,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Have the blue and whites been looking for me?” she asked.

“We called them when you didn't come home,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” she said.

“What happened? Let me get Jude.”

“No,” she said, “don't. If you go get Jude I'll cut the connect.”

“Is someone there?” he asked.

“David is here,” she said. Habit made him tense when she said his name. It was okay, he reminded himself. No one knew him as Kim.

“David?” Tim said neutrally.

“I found him,” Mayla said. “It's too long to tell here. But I need to meet you somewhere.”

Tim was silent.

“I can't talk to you like this,” she said, exasperated, “Jude or Santos or someone is going to walk in.”

“Are you okay?” he said again.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I applied for a visa to leave the country and they denied my application. You know what that means?”

Tim shook his head.

“They think I'm involved. They were going to arrest me.”

“Arrest you,” Tim said. “You haven't done anything.”

“This is Caribe,” she said. “You don't have to do anything, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don't tell anybody, just meet me somewhere, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “Where?”

“I don't care, someplace you know. In the Warrens or something.”

He named a place. “Sure,” she said, “where is it?”

*   *   *

The place was in the Warrens, a little bar/sandwich place. It was long and narrow, with a bar running the length of it and dark-green plastic booths, like a fast-food place, down the other side. The benches were nicked and scarred, and the plastic tables were graffitied, but the place was clean. David expected blue and whites waiting when they got there but there was only Tim. Tim looked bigger than David remembered. And … neutral. Not friendly.

“What's going on?” he growled as Mayla slid into the seat across the table.

“You want something to eat?” Mayla asked. “A beer?”

“A beer,” Tim said.

“I'll get it,” David said. While he stood at the bar, they waited, silent. He felt them waiting. The bartender was a bronze-colored man with skin so dry it looked dusty. David felt itchy.

He brought the beer back, the glasses already condensing, the water running down like tears.

“I'm really scared, Tim,” Mayla said.

Tim kept his face still, but David felt a shift in tension. A little sympathy, maybe?

“I think that the government is going to use me, as a scapegoat.”

“Mayla,” Tim said, “they blew your house up. How can the government use you?”

She shrugged. “Then why did they deny my visa to leave? They set me up that night, at the police station, when I signed that statement I perjured myself. They can use that anytime they want because they've got me on record saying I couldn't identify who was in the car. And I don't have the bank to protect me anymore.”

“That's paranoid,” Tim said. “Why didn't you tell someone you were leaving?” Meaning, David thought, why didn't she tell Tim? He didn't understand Tim and Mayla.

“I've got to get out of here,” she said. “David has got to get out of here.”

“How did you find him?” Tim asked.

“It was my mistake,” David said. “I gave her a call, you know? I was working at a fish farm, so she tracked me down, from the call.”

“You traced the call?” Tim asked. As if she had some sort of secret equipment built into her console and she could do that.

Mayla shook her head. “Somebody asked him a question about salmon trays, so I just started calling fish farms and telling them I had lost the name but the guy I wanted to speak to was oriental. There aren't a whole lot of oriental fish jocks.”

Tim grinned, and Mayla smiled, too, relieved.

“I need a favor,” she said, and she outlined the deal they had made.

She left out Henri, and all names.

“Wait a minute,” Tim said, “you met this guy at a fish farm?”

David shook his head. “This guy, he sells pyroxin, he knew of someone, who knew someone, you know, like that.”

“No,” Tim said. “No goddamn way. It's crazy. You don't know these people. Politicals? Half the time they're blowing themselves up and getting themselves caught, and you think they can get you out of the country? No.”

“What else can we do?” Mayla said.

“Come home,” Tim said. “Nobody can believe you're guilty, they blew up your fucking house.”

“Then why did they deny my visa?” she asked.

“They don't want you to leave until the investigation is finished.”

“You don't understand,” she said. “I tried to leave. In their eyes that means I have to be guilty of something.”

“How do you know,” Tim said.

“Because I've lived here all my life, and I know how this place works!” she said, too loud. David glanced at the bartender who was ignoring them.

More quietly she said, “And what about David? They're looking for someone to pin this whole thing on. Anna Eminike was Anzanian, David served in Anzania, ergo, there's a connection.”

Tim shook his head.

“That's the way it works,” she said. “A connection, so they can arrest someone, so they can say they've done something.”

“Then you come home and I'll help with David getting the documents,” Tim said.

“You already reported me missing to the blue and whites,” she said.

He shrugged. “Tell them you couldn't handle the stress and you went to stay with a friend.”

“They'll want to call the friend, or the hotel, or wherever. And if I tell them I found David, they'll arrest him.”

“I've gotta think about this,” Tim said.

“We don't have time,” Mayla said.

“When do you have to have an answer?”

“We're supposed to get the documents on Saturday.”

So they sat and drank their beers.

“You didn't even ask,” Tim said after a minute. He waited, but when Mayla didn't say anything he went on. “About your grandfather, you didn't even ask.”

“Okay,” she said. “You're right, I'm sorry. Is he all right?”

“Well two days ago he was terribly confused all day, and Santos finally took him to the doctor. They said he had like a mini-stroke, and that it could be the first of a lot of strokes or that he might never have another. But he's okay. They just sent him home.”

“He's okay?” she said in a small voice.

“Yeah,” Tim said.

“He's mad at me?” she said.

“He was worried,” Tim said, “but since the stroke thing, I don't know if he always remembers that you are gone. I think he forgets that you live there.”

“Okay,” she said.

Tim left first. They would call him the next day and meet again. David and Mayla walked back to the exchange to catch their bus.

“He'll do it,” Mayla said confidently.

“You are so sure,” David said.

She nodded. “We have to get in touch with Henri, set up the deal.”

“What if Tim won't do it?” he said.

“He will,” she said.

David thought, she likes this. It's like the bank, making deals. And he felt cold.

*   *   *

Henri was waiting on the street where the political lived. He was standing on the street corner, blue braids shining in the fluorescent streetlight. He was whistling and drumming on his thighs, and something in the way he stood reminded David of a cop. As if this was Henri's beat, his neighborhood. Which, of course, it was.

“Happy to see you both,” Henri said.

Mayla shrank. She was reduced by Henri's presence, she pulled in, and her shoulders came up.

Henri liked that. “Good morning sister, have you been well?” he boomed.

“Fine,” she said in a small voice.

Henri would ignore David, so he didn't say anything. Henri didn't like that, he wanted David to try and be big so he could put David in his place.

He should let Henri put him in his place, because things could only go better if Henri was kept happy, but he couldn't. And it wasn't Henri that mattered anyway, it was the political.

The room smelled just the same, musty and personal, as if the political never left. Maybe he didn't. Maybe the room that he and Mayla were staying in smelled just as intimate and they couldn't smell it anymore.

“They aren't ready yet,” the political said.

“We didn't think they would be,” Mayla said. “But we came to talk.”

“There's nothing to talk about.”

“You understand that we're trusting a lot to these documents,” she said.

The political looked at her, blank. Not inquisitive, just stiff, uncaring.

“I have done some business before,” she said.

“I'll bet you have,” said the political and for the first time, smiled. It was a little, ironic kind of smile.

Mayla shrugged off the innuendo (if that's what it was). “In business, I would normally ask for a guarantee.”

“Fine,” he said. “If you're not satisfied, return the documents in thirty days for a complete refund.” He sat back on his chair. He was wearing a long shirt like divers wore under diving suits and when he leaned back, David could see that he was thickening around the waist. For the first time it occurred to David that maybe he wasn't a student, maybe he was older than David thought.

“We have made a different arrangement,” she said briskly. “We will take the documents, and when we have left the port, and it is clear that they're good, then you'll get the rest of our money.”

“No,” said the political, flat and uninterested.

“Yes,” Mayla said. Would she be so tough if Henri were in the room instead of waiting on the street?

“Go somewhere else for your documents,” the political said.

Mayla stood up. “I'll tell your friend with the blue hair,” she said.

The political shrugged.

“Come on,” she said and started for the door.

She was bluffing, he thought, and the political wasn't. Or else she had decided they stood a better chance with Saad. He followed her because he didn't know what else to do. They had lost so much money here. They wouldn't have enough for Saad.

He could stop, force her to stop. He couldn't think fast enough.

“Wait,” the political said.

She was at the door, one hand against it.

“Listen, bitch,” he said, “the world doesn't owe you a damn thing.”

What did that mean? If Mayla knew what it meant she didn't say anything. She just stood, waiting.