Half the Day Is Night (45 page)

And it wasn't what she wanted. But she didn't not want it either. And she did really feel closer to him than she had to any other man in her life. So he leaned forward and she closed her eyes and kissed him back, a kiss with lips closed. He was hungry but careful, respecting her need to accustom herself. They kissed for a few minutes and then he drew back.

“Do you want to go do something?” he said.

Would this moment disappear then, as if it had never been? Or would it hang between them awaiting consummation?

She shuddered, and he pulled farther away, mistaking it for a denial of him.

She didn't know what to say, only that men always said women talked too much, so she turned her face towards him wordlessly and after a moment, he leaned back towards her and she closed her eyes.

After a little while he put his arms around her. He was small, narrow around the chest, but all hard bone and muscle. It wasn't helping, she was still self-conscious, aware of the time. But it would have to work at some point, wouldn't it? It would have to overwhelm everything, at least for a bit.

He unzipped her tunic. “Is it too cold in here?” he said.

“Let's get under the blanket,” she said.

He stood up and she did to, thinking she was supposed to get undressed now, but not exactly sure, and watching to see if he did. He unzipped his tunic and pulled it over his head without fuss, but he sat down on the edge of the bed with his back to her to take off his tights.

She undressed as quickly as she could, checking only to make sure he had taken off his underwear, and then got into bed, too. She didn't feel sexy, she felt trepidation.

He waited, looking at her. He had interesting eyes, she had never gotten to stare at someone with oriental eyes except her grandfather, and David's eyes were not like her grandfather's. They tilted or appeared to tilt and her grandfather's didn't. And her grandfather had creases in his eyelids, but David's were smooth, like curtains.

She stroked his eyebrows and he smiled. “That's nice,” he said.

“I'm a little nervous,” she said.

“Me, too,” he said.

He kissed her again, and traced a circle around her nipple, which felt playful and almost ticklish. She touched his and he flinched and smiled again.

“Touchy,” she said.

He took his time with her, he was considerate, and it helped. And briefly, she did forget about everything. So it was worth it.

*   *   *

Waiting for Tim to get off a sub she wondered if he would be able to see any difference in her. She didn't really think so, she didn't feel that much different, just tired because she had had trouble sleeping with David. She couldn't go to sleep and worried about keeping him awake tossing and turning, and then she had kept waking up, it seemed as if every time she needed to turn over she woke up.

Tim was not on the eleven o'clock.

“What do you think,” she asked David.

“Maybe he missed it?” David said.

Or maybe he was detained. Maybe he was detained last night when he got off. Ironic that she might have been in bed with David while Tim was being interrogated.

“If he's not on the twelve-fifteen then we need to get word to Saad,” she said.

David didn't say anything, so she didn't know if he agreed or not.

She looked for the Uncles. As if she would know a plainclothes officer if her life depended on it.

So she looked for anyone who looked as if they didn't belong, or anyone who looked as if they were watching her and David.

“Sit still,” David said under his breath.

“What?”

“Sit still,” he said.

What, she looked guilty? Well, she probably did, she felt guilty.

She wanted Tim to get off the sub. She pictured him getting off the sub, wearing his bright blue sweater, blond and shining, screaming anglo. She pictured it. Pictured it with everything she had, as if she could construct him with force of will, with the strength of her wanting.

When he got off, she was so grateful she could have hugged him.

“What took you?” David said, sharp.

“We had to wait until after eight to make some transfers,” Tim said. “The money is in a bunch of accounts. But you have three accounts, two with 30,000cr, and the third with 45,000cr. So you'll have a little money when you're in the U.S.”

“What did my grandfather say?” she asked.

Tim shrugged. “We didn't ask him. Jude just took the account numbers out of your grandfather's files. The encryption key authorizations were right there with them.”

It was too easy, it was all falling in place, it was too sweet. For a moment she thought it was a set-up, and she stared into Tim's face looking for guile, looking for some sort of proof that the blue and whites had set him up to it. But it was Tim. It was just that the deal was sweet and she knew from banking, when the deal was sweet it just went and all the obstacles just fell away. You worked and worked on the ones that went sour and the sweet ones just fell into your lap.

It was an omen, it was all going to happen.

Tim recited the account codes, long meaningless strings of letters and numbers, and she wrote them down. It was one thing if Tim got picked up with them, but if she got picked up it didn't matter if she had anything incriminating on her or not. She was with David, that was enough.

“Okay,” she said, “give the first 12,000cr account to Saad, and tell him that's for the cost of the documents. The second 12,000cr goes to him before we leave, and the rest gets paid to him in Miami.”

Tim nodded. It wasn't the agreement, but Saad would have to understand that it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

“Are you going back tonight?” David asked.

“Yeah,” Tim said.

“Okay. We'll meet you at the diner where we had lunch,” David said. “You know, I think you should leave Caribe. Before we do.”

Tim nodded. “I've been thinking about that.”

“In case something goes wrong, you know. You might be, you know how this country is, what do you say, involved.”

“You're right.”

Tim would be leaving. Scary, even though it didn't really matter, since she would be leaving, too. All that time she had wanted him to leave.

“I think I'll try Belize,” Tim said.

“Do you need any money?” Mayla asked. “I could give you some, I'd have to send it after I got to Miami—”

Tim was embarrassed, “No, no, that's okay, I've got some put back. You always paid pretty good, Mayla.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” Because she couldn't think of anything else to say. She didn't know if all the debts were paid up, she wasn't even sure what all the debts were. “Okay.”

It was an awkward way to say goodbye.

“We should go with you to the sub,” she said.

“No,” Tim said, gruff. “The less time you're with me, the less likely something can go wrong.”

“Okay,” she said again, feeling stupid. “Well, get in touch with Jude when you have an address, someplace I can get in touch with you, okay? So that once I get to Miami I can make sure you're all right.”

“I'll do that.”

In front of the restaurant they stood there, all four of them, and no one quite knew what to do. “I've got to get back to work,” Saad said. He stuck his hand out to Tim. “Good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” Tim said.

Watching Saad walk off gave them something to do for a moment.

“You know,” Tim said, “it would have been better if I didn't work for you.”

Regrets? Maybe now he saw the mistake it had all been?

“It killed our relationship,” Tim said. “Money does that. If I hadn't taken the job from you, the relationship might have worked.”

“It might have,” she said, smiling warmly through the lie.

“Yeah,” Tim said.

And then he walked away, too.

*   *   *

“Okay,” Saad said, “I've talked to somebody, he says he can do it. I've set it up so that he gets half the money when he gives us the documents, and the other half twenty-four hours after I leave the country. He can guarantee them but he can't withdraw before that.”

That was what she had needed to do all the time, but cut off from the banking system, she couldn't do it.

“When do we get the documents?” David asked.

“Friday,” Saad said. “Traffic will be busiest Friday, there'll be a bunch of people going out of the port. I've got three tickets reserved. We decompress on the Miami side. It's more expensive then decompressing here, but I thought you wouldn't mind.” He grinned.

Nobody minded. Decompression, more days in a room. But it would be different, she could stand to be bored when she wasn't so afraid.

She would call her cousin in Hawaii, maybe go out there for awhile. She had never been to Hawaii, she had heard it was hot and bright. Then she would look for a job, maybe finance with a corporation.

It was almost too much to think about. Maybe eventually she could come back? The government would change eventually, she would come back to Caribe.

She couldn't eat her enchilada this time.

She couldn't think what they would do for two days, either.

“Thursday night you need to get ims taken and have some bio info put on the card, okay? We can do it at the loft.”

“Is this through your partner?” Mayla said. Alarm bells, if the Argentine, Moustache, was involved, then she had to think.

“No,” Saad said, “Galvez is in Del Sud for two weeks, making connections. I don't want him to know I'm even doing this, he'll kill me if he finds out.”

Set-up. She looked at David.

But David was nodding. David was agreeing to everything. He had been since they got in touch with Saad. Before he had always been worried, but now he just nodded, allowing events to take him.

Or maybe the deal was really this sweet, maybe he felt it, too. She was being paranoid, they either trusted Saad or they didn't.

She needed to be clearheaded. She hadn't suspected Polly Navarro, and she'd thought that Henri's political could be guaranteed.

“Thursday night,” Saad said. “At seven.”

On the street again she said to David, “I wish I could go to sleep and wake up on Thursday.”

As soon as she said it she wanted to take it back—it sounded as if she wanted to spend the next two days in bed. And she didn't, not at all.

“Better than that,” David said, “how about waking up in the U.S.?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. Relieved. Still not sure what he would expect, but relieved.

“Do you want to go do something?” he asked. “Go to see a show or something?”

“Sure,” she said. Meaning, she supposed, instead of going to bed together. So he had felt it, too, that it was a one-time thing. Unless, she thought he felt that he ought to take her on a “date.” Which given the present situation was ludicrous. But he had said that they should stay in the room, so why change his mind?

But if she said they should stay in the room, would he see that as an invitation?

“Look,” she said, “why don't we just go back to the room and watch the vid or something?” She thought of the “or something” and it flustered her. “I mean, watch the vid. I mean, I don't regret last night, but it was a onetime thing, okay? I mean, it's not you, it's just that this is all so awful—”

“Okay,” he said, “I understand.”

She had insulted him.

“Really, it's not you,” she said. “It's just wrong, like what Tim said about hiring him. Anything we do now is just craziness, we don't know what we're doing.”

“It's okay,” he said. “It is okay, Mayla. I thought it was for one time, also. I did enjoy it, but it is what happens when people are afraid. Yes?”

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

“We will go back. We will wait for Thursday.”

*   *   *

By Thursday she was glad to be doing something, no matter how afraid of Saad's partner she was. She could not get the fear that it was a set-up out of her head.

“Maybe,” David said. “We will just have to see.”

“How can you be so calm?” she asked.

He laughed a little. “I am not so calm. But there is nothing I can do. We just have to see.”

She stood up and looked around the room. Now that the time had come she was afraid to leave it.

It had all gone so wrong before, with Henri and the political.

“Do you think it will be okay?” she asked.

“I hope,” he said.

“You do the talking,” she said.

“You do better than me,” he said. “You convinced Saad.”

She shook her head. “Saad wanted to be convinced. I make too many mistakes, I don't know what I'm doing.”

“No one knows what we're doing,” David said. “Come on, this is just talk. We have to go.”

“I talk too much,” she said.

“Some people talk when they are afraid,” he said. “Some people can't say anything.”

They walked down to their chute station. “Their” chute station, she thought. Two days in a room and this was “their” neighborhood. The human capacity to make alien places “home.”

She wondered if Tim had left Caribe yet.

Her thoughts flitted and she tried to be calm. Only one more night, she thought. Only one more night in the room lying there wanting it all to be over, wanting to be able to sleep without being afraid.

It would not go wrong. That was the only sensible way to think.

The chute ride was longer than she remembered, so long that she wondered if they had missed their stop.

The chute station was full, but Saad wasn't on the platform when they got there. That scared her. A set-up, she kept thinking. Saad had betrayed them, to Polly Navarro maybe. Not to his partner the Argentine, the Argentine wouldn't call the Uncles. Although he was paying the Uncles, so maybe he had.