Hard Red Spring (68 page)

“Oh.”

“When you have this shirt on, people are more likely to tell you their stories.”

“I suppose so.” Jean folded her arms over her chest.

“I guess I'm a freelance truth commissioner.”

“For what? For a book?”

Lenore ran her fingers up the straightened spiral obsessively. Polishing, sharpening. “I wish I could write, could do something with all this, but I can't. I'm not educated. I was a missionary once. That's what I'm educated for, if you could call that education. It only made me dumber.”

“Then why are you doing it? Why all these interviews?”

With her free hand, Lenore began eating her sliced bananas in milk, eating as if she hadn't eaten in days. “I don't know,” she said with her mouth full. “I guess I can't stop. I guess it's the only thing I can think to do with myself. Until they let me know what I can do.” She finished her bowl as quickly as it took to explain herself. “Maybe one day they'll tell me what they want.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I'm not going to try to guess what they want. There's no way I can. So I'll just wait until they tell me.” Her words slurred, making no sense. The bottle, Jean saw, emptied.

“Who?”

“The Maya. Maybe they'll kill me, maybe they'll ask me to write a book. But I have to do something. I just can't leave.”

“I'm in publishing.” Jean offered her own bowl of bananas, which Lenore accepted. “I can write. I may be able to help you with a book.”

Lenore just stared at Jean, unable to focus on her.

“I'm serious,” Jean reassured her. Maybe this would be her chance to write a book, to have a subject, a purpose. She and Lenore needed each other.

Lenore shook her head, blinked in confusion. “You can't write this book.”

“I can't? Why not? I studied writing. I've studied Guatemala.”

“Okay, you studied. So tell me, what would be the point of this book, if you wrote my book? What would Cruzita's story be?”

Jean paused a moment, if only to look thoughtful. She knew exactly how to write it, of course. “The horrors of money and power. Of what people will do—”

“People?” Lenore scoffed, bits of banana flying from her mouth. “Does it really surprise you what people are capable of?”

“I guess so. Though it shouldn't. But to stop being surprised is to give in, to accept it as inevitable—”

“I watched my husband drive his knee into an elderly Mayan man's back for what he thought was right.” She brought Jean's bowl to her lips and drained the milk. “Fifteen years, we were married. Once I stopped seeing things as right and wrong, once I stopped thinking I understood anything, I began to think clearly.”

“Your husband, he's Guatemalan? Was he in the military?”

“My ex-husband is in Kentucky. He's probably lying on a couch right now watching baseball, eating delivery pizza, at peace with the world. He's nothing, he's irrelevant. It took me a long time to realize that. I'm talking about something bigger than right and wrong. I'm talking about God. How can you know? How can you know how to show people they are mistaken about God? The book's impossible. I hope they don't ask me to write it.”

“I don't believe in God,” Jean insisted in bewilderment. “I'm an atheist.”

“That sounds comforting.” Lenore sighed, spearing the last slice of banana. She turned it over on her fork, studying it. “But it's not enough. Not even nearly enough.”

—

After Lenore boarded her bus back to Nueva Aldea de la Vida, Jean lingered in the courtyard, contemplating her next move. Lenore needed her, she needed Lenore. Cruzita remained elusive, and she considered her options: to forget all this and leave Xela, or to wait for Lenore's next phone call. The only place she could go herself, to try to find out more, was the orphanage.

Searching for her guidebook, Jean spied something in her purse. The paper Telema had dropped when they collided the night before. She had almost forgotten, for all the beer and pot. Very old, and so fragile that it broke into four neat pieces where she unfolded the paper. Jean arranged these pieces on the table. A letter dated 1902.

Dear Sophie,

Life in Guatemala is hard, but rewarding.

Before reading on, her eyes were drawn to the middle of the page, to a passage underlined in red pencil. Faded, but undeniable:

The Santa María volcano erupted near our house and ash rained down on everything like snow.

The suit entered the courtyard, limping. Jean returned the broken letter to her bag. He proved no more detailed upon closer inspection. Still a suit, with generic looks. He had no qualms about approaching her directly now, like a man who knew she could never describe him.

“Ms. Roseneath,” he said.

“How do you know my name?”

“It's written in the guest book.” He sat down across from her. The skin beneath his eyes was pummeled, puffed blue with insomnia.

Jean would not pretend she didn't know what this guy was. She had a day left in Xela and she refused to get pulled into Telema's drama.

“I thought we could talk. Do you have a minute?” He stretched his injured knee out, tenderly, off to the side.

“Not really. My daughter should be waking up soon.”

“Well, this won't take long. I only want to ask you about Evangeline Cazador.”

“Who?” Jean remembered a few seconds too late. “Oh.”

The suit made a small cage with his hands.

“What do you want to know about her? I haven't really talked to her in months.”

“Now, that's not true, Ms. Roseneath.” Grinning, he showed clean square teeth and the receded gums of someone who brushed too often and too hard. “I want to know why she's following you.”

“It's not like that.” She hesitated, knowing fear had blanched her voice. “Listen, I don't care about her, I'm not trying to protect her or anything. I really have no idea what she's up to. She's not following me, not really. I mean, I think she's enjoying running into me in town and giving me a scare, but that's all.”

“A scare? Are you scared of her?”

“It's not how you think,” she explained, though she had no idea what this suit thought. “It's really very stupid. She's my ex. We planned this trip for fun, to take together. She bought the ticket before we broke up and it wasn't refundable. She's here doing her own thing.”

“She bought her ticket a month ago, Ms. Roseneath. You two broke up in March.” And then Jean recognized him. Telema's best student.

One of the Mayan maids came to clear the table. She slumped inside the stiff fabric of her costume, wiping up the milk that had dribbled from Lenore's meal. The proprietor, from the doorway, smiled emptily in their direction.

“Are you still leaving tomorrow?” she called to Jean.

“I'm afraid so. I'm sorry to have to cancel.” Jean regarded the suit calmly, telling herself that he could do nothing to her. She was not involved.

The girl finished cleaning and shuffled away, leaving a greasy mess behind.

“You're leaving?” he asked. “Your reservation was for a week.”

“You don't intimidate me. I know what you are. And I know I have nothing to hide. I told you everything I know about Telema.”

“What about her ties to a terrorist organization? Did you maybe leave that out?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Jean managed, her feet running in place under the table. “We dated a few months. I barely saw her, she was always away doing research.”

“We know about her research.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Breaking and entering, records theft. Stalking an elderly woman in New York, telling her she's someone she isn't. The old lady has dementia and your ex barges in and plants all these notions in her head. She's starting to believe she lived in Guatemala as a little girl, that her parents abandoned her there. Her family finally got a restraining order after she head-butted a nephew. Your girlfriend has some strange extracurricular activities. But we're more interested in her funding scheme.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, but I am pretty sure that your definition of a terrorist organization is a bit skewed. I know quite a bit about your line of work and I would argue that you are the terrorist in this country. Not Telema.”

With this, his composure cracked. He'd probably never been called a terrorist before, and surely he had never had an assignment as baffling as Telema. Jean imagined him tailing Telema on deer hunts, to the bar, and into
the library stacks for seven hours at a time, then sitting in his car, watching her parade naked through her lighted house.

“Is your outfit supposed to be ironic? Are you trying to look like a Dulles brother? Of course, I wouldn't expect you to know the history of your organization down here. You want to talk about funding, what about funneling money and weapons to genocidal dictators to kill a couple hundred thousand people? Providing helicopters and bullets to strafe villages? Training death squads? That is your legacy down here.”

“This is a vintage suit,” he said, straightening. “I didn't even have to have it altered.”

“Yes, that suit was fate. I believe it. Some goon fifty years ago, stumbling around with your exact measurements. Your exact poor taste.”

Hurt touched his mouth. He'd been trained for moles, bullets, car chases, and torture, but not a fashion critique.

“I'm sure you're the envy of your colleagues, being assigned to follow a beautiful woman around the globe. Peeping in her windows, jacking off on your notes, sniffing her underwear, though I'm sure you've reported back by now that she doesn't wear underwear.”

He wilted in his chair, blushing. How dangerous could Telema be if they sent this sapling after her? But, possibly, there were more. Jean had seen several suits in Xela, but were they all just this guy? With glasses, without. His one effort at disguise.

“I get more enjoyment out of my interviews with your daughter, believe me.”

“Don't even mention my daughter, you fascist prick!”

He grasped her weakness, pulled himself up with it. “Don't play mama bear with me. I've spent more time with Maya over the past few months than you have. And I say you got your money's worth of trouble there. Shoplifting, sex in cars—”

Jean lunged for him. “You filthy shit!”

He spun away, out of his chair, laughing, limping slightly. “Don't kill the messenger. Maybe you should talk to Maya. She did it because of you. Right here, poolside, she reassured me how experienced she was. She fucked Brett to prove she wasn't a big dyke, like you.” He blinked, remembering. “Yes, that's just the term she used.
Big dyke.
I guess people at school were giving her a hard time about it.”

The proprietor shuffled in again. “I can't trust my maids with anything,” she declared, running a finger over the smeared glass table. “Don't let them
fool you. They act like they're enslaved, but they make three times as much as the other Indians in town.” As she wiped, the streaks of grease shifted, but would not disappear.

The suit threw Lenore's white napkin onto the table like a gauntlet. A poor sense of imagery, this boy had. “She passed off a letter to you last night. We know you are involved, Ms. Roseneath, that fact is undisputed. It's only a matter of time until we find out how.”

“A letter,” the proprietor echoed, reminded of something. She gave up on the table, fished into her apron pocket, and handed Jean another letter to mail.

—

Jean did not go upstairs to talk to Maya. Whatever awaited her in Guatemala now seemed much less daunting than that encounter. The suit could be making it up, but the only way to know would be to ask her. She'd already given Maya permission to call Brett and tell him they'd be coming back early. Fifteen minutes, she'd told the proprietor, on my credit card. The peace must be maintained until they returned to California.

In the taxi, driving back up to the orphanage that afternoon, Jean tried to block out images of Maya having sex in a car with Brett. Brett on top, of course, smothering little Maya into the sweaty upholstery with his football padding. The suit, certainly, was fucking with her head. He'd probably been trained to exploit mothers. Telema had warned her against love. Our biggest weakness, and therefore our biggest enemy.

In the orphanage yard, the construction of the AstroTurf soccer field had attracted a crowd of polo shirts. One person shoveled cautiously while the others watched.

The girl at the front desk was not the same one from before. Feeling absurd, but desperate, Jean walked briskly through the waiting room up to the desk and demanded of the stunned girl, “Do you speak English?”

“A little.”

Jean pointed to her YWCA shirt and said, “I'm from the Fact Finders and I'm here for a records request.”

The girl's mouth fell open.

“You have records of the mothers here? The mothers who give up their babies?”

“
Sí
.” She looked around for help, but there was no one. Siesta time. She then strained to see out the glass doors—the polos and khaki shorts all peering over a hole.

“I'm with them,” Jean clarified. “I need the records of Cruzita Sola Durante.”

“Cruzita Sola Durante,” the girl repeated, without moving. “Cruzita is one of the bodies?”

Jean had never been required to think so quickly in her life as she had in Guatemala, in the past few days. But she had three cups of coffee in her by now, shored up by Lenore's liquor. “We're not sure. But I need your file on her. Please.”

The girl hesitated and glanced around again for help that would not come. She had to be one of the orphans, Jean realized, never adopted. A shuffled pile of papers, a week's delay, and she could have been Jean's daughter.