“It is that they are hungry,” his black-kerchief comrade speaks up. He seems to be the only one willing to risk stating the obvious.
The red bandanna turns on him, a furious look on his face. “
They're
hungry?” he asks incredulously. “I'm hungry. They're hungry.” He points to all the boys. “Is everybody hungry?” he asks, his voice almost a scream, and to a one, they all nod, yes, coño, of course they're hungry!
Alma gazes up at the large clock above the desk on which a funky, old-style phone sits, same vintage as Tera's wall mount. It is almost ten. All those big pots of plátanos she saw boiling in the mayor's house must have been for the soldiers. The time for breakfast has come and gone. Are Camacho and Jim Larsen and crew going to starve them out of their siege? Is that the plan? Don't starving desperadoes shoot innocent people, especially americanos whose country has denied them visas?
“The women last night said they would send food,” the blackkerchief guy reminds them. “What hour is it?” he adds, as if there might still be time for miracles.
Alma wonders why he doesn't just look up at the clock. She remembers
Richard's saying that he was glad he had brought down digital watches. Nobody knew how to tell time on a clock with hands.
The red bandanna is wearing a wristwatch. Alma wonders if he got it from Richard's duffel bag of gifts. “Nine zero seven,” he announces. He seems pleased to be able to provide the exact time. Thanks to technology they can all know the very hour to the minute that they are starving. “That clock is wrong,” he adds, pointing at it with his gun. And then, without warning, as if in fury at its error, he shoots it off the wall. There is a burst of gunfire, plaster and metal pieces flying. Alma drops to the floor, in shock. Around the room, everyone scrambles for cover.
A moment later, realizing where the gunfire came from, his comrades curse their leader softly for el susto he has given them. But none of the curses seem particularly fierce. They are probably impressed by his show of violence. Another reason he is the leader, he can tell both kinds of time and shoot the kind he doesn't agree with.
The black-kerchief poet is the only one who seems to have expected this outburst, no cowering or covering his head, no curses or admonition that the leader save ammunition. Instead, he looks dolefully at the hole in the wall, as if it he regrets ever having asked what time it is.
In the silence that follows this blast, they hear the patients again in the dormitorio.
The kerchief poet gestures for the red bandanna to come over to a corner to talk. Even with their backs to her, Alma can guess they are again disagreeing about the patients. She wonders if the poet is arguing for letting them go, even before any food provisions are delivered. These are sick men and women. Not fags, not cunts. Human beings. Intuition says they shouldn't be used as pawns. But after a while the poet falls silent, subdued, seemingly convinced. Perhaps he realizes that poetry has never gotten them anything. It needs the muscle of power. That is why he defers to the red bandanna. Their leader is the only one who can read, tell time on a clock with hands, check out that what Alma writes down is, word for word, their demands.
B
Y MIDDAY, IT LOOKS
like that power muscle is going to have to be flexed. No food has been delivered. The list of demands Alma wrote down earlier has been sent out and no reply has been returned. The leader dictates a second message that if food is not received by six in the afternoon, “we will begin to take action on the patients.” Alma looks up as if to check that he means what he says.
“Write it down!” he screams when he sees her hesitate, the same high-pitch scream that so scared her when he first cried out that she should be frisked. Maybe Alma guessed wrong; maybe the leader doesn't know how to write down his own demands. Maybe she should embed some message.
Send food. These guys are not fooling around!
Her hand is trembling so much she worries that Jim and Emerson and Camacho won't be able to read her writing.
When she finishes, the red bandanna grabs her notebook, reads over what she has written, then tears the page, folds it, calls through the windows for a boy to be sent in. A little kid no more than five or six runs up to the porch and takes the note back. This time he returns with a reply.
The authorities will send in food once
all
the patients have been released. They will then give the captors until noon the next day to release the rest of the hostages.
Why are they starting with the patients? Alma wonders. Why not start with Richard and Alma, now that she has joined him? All lives are valuable, so the general said, but given the presence of Jim Larsen and the embassy boys, shouldn't the American lives be more valuable than others?
Maybe their strategy is to begin with the neediest, a strategy Alma would wholeheartedly approve if she were not part of the competing group of valuable lives that should go first. She has gathered from comments the young boys make while the leader is in the john or visiting the back patio that the patients have faucets and, therefore, water in their dormitories, but they have not eaten since Thursday's takeover. The captors and staff ate the last of the food in the Centro last night, cooked by the women before they were released with the
promise that they would return with food this morning. Now this new development. Food only after the release of all the patients.
And no word on the visa demand. The amnesty demand. Not even a fucking box of Marlboros.
The red kerchief is furious. It's as if their voices make no sound. Their words mean nothing. He steps into the small bathroom and brings out a handful of toilet paper, wipes his boots on it. The brown smear could fool anyone. “Tell them,” he tells the boy waiting on the porch, “this is what I think of their reply. Mierda! Mierda! We mean what we say. This is not a story. We will see what happens by tomorrow noon.”
Since this morning when she was dragged inside the clinic, Alma has felt a low-grade fear like a pilot light that burns sometimes more brightly than other times. After all, it's unnerving to be surrounded by masked faces and firearms. But after hanging out for hours with them in the front room, she has started to agree with Don Jacobo, these are not criminals, they're kids, adolescents, most of them; they have to be listened to, to be talked to in the right tone of voice; to be given one of those golden eggs of hope. But their leader is a loose cannon, and led by him, this standoff could end in violence. Alma's fear kicks up a notch, a visceral fear, in the pit of her stomach, rumbling with panic.
She wonders if it puzzles the red bandanna at all that the only demand that has been granted so far is the one for a journalist to tell the world their story. All morning, on and off, he has made comments, expounding on libertad y justicia, dignidad y democracia, the clichés he has no doubt heard from politicians on election years. Mostly, he grows more and more irritable, kicking at one of the boys dozing at his window post, shoving another one back who is headed for the bathroom twice in an hour. Another of the world's bullies with his little army of fodder foot soldiersâdon't they see through him?
In fact, Alma detects a growing tension among the young companions. From time to time, they exchange looks, increasingly worried. They have been led to this moment by a leader who hasn't thought
through the details, meals, cigarettes, visas. They are beginning to wonder what will become of them.
At least he hasn't started picking on Alma yet. Hasn't asked her when she is going to phone in her interview to the papers. So far he believes her story. But she has been kept in the front room, away from Richard and the clinic staff on the back patio. As if she has to be at the ready, by his side, like a weapon. The writer who will tell the world their story that is not a story. Such a simple plot: teenage boys in ski-resort masks and cowboy bandannas asking for a chance to be human beings.
B
Y LATE AFTERNOON,
the waiting room is hot, the only breeze is coming in from the hallway that leads to the back patio. The heat and lethargy and hunger are getting to everyone. When the leader is out of the room, Alma asks permission to use the bathroom, more out of hope that she might see Richard than out of need. No one bothers to escort her; the boys just point down the hallway. On her way, Alma peeks in an open door and is surprised to see the leader alone, his bandanna lifted like a woman's kerchief over his hair. He is sitting on an examining table, eating her PowerBar.
She hurries away. No telling what he'd do if he knows Alma has gotten a glimpse of his unmasked face.
In the bathroom, she looks around. On the back of the door hangs a poster of an attractive couple, in hot embrace, the copy urging everyone to use condoms even with a partner of confianza. The sink is tiny, the bar of soap a sliver, the medicine cabinet empty. In the mirror, Alma's face is pale, sweaty. The shower stall door is open, the floor still wet. Someone has taken a recent shower. Probably the leader, who seems to get all the goodies. A damp towel hangs from a hook.
Maybe she can leave Richard a note here. Her journal and pen are in her pocket. She could scribble something directly on the poster, but where to make sure Richard sees it? A balloon coming out of the woman's mouth? Right below the couple, by the words
partner of confianza
? Before Alma can think through the details, one of the young guardia has come back to retrieve her.
She feels like weeping as she sits back down at what has become her post, the chair she took this morning to interview the leader. How interminable this day has been! The hardest part has been her isolation from Richard. She needs to lay eyes on him, to touch his hands and face, to renew her flagging faith that everything will come out all right in the end. When it comes to being a doubting Thomas, she's just as bad as the red bandanna.
She wishes she could expose him to his minions. How can they trust a leader who hordes the last bit of food for himself? “Have any of you seen that candy bar I had in my pocket?” she asks, hoping to arouse a spark of suspicion. The boys perk up, eagerly search around. But the bar has vanished.
Maybe your leader would know where it is? she almost asks. But just then, as if sensing what's on her mind, he strides in, his red bandanna back in place, no doubt hiding a Cheshire grin on his face.
W
HEN STARR'S CELL PHONE
rings, Alma jumps, shocked at its nearby sound. There it sits on the chair beside her where she laid it down during their interview this morning.
Alma lets it ring because not only does she not know if she is allowed to answer it, but she is unsure what button to press even though Starr walked her through the easy-as-pie instructions last night before going to bed. She will give herself away as an impostor, not knowing how to answer her own cell phoneâthe one professional prop that seemed to convince her disbeliever.
“Answer it,” he orders her. “You can tell them what we have been telling you.” He must think the call is from the authorities, and the fact that they're using a high-tech cell phone rather than the mayor's five-year-old means they're ready to meet his demands.
Alma squints trying to read the small print on the teensy buttons. Finally, she presses the right button, because when she holds the nearly weightless phone to her ear, a big, booming voice is saying howdy at the other end. It's Daddy and he wants to know how his little girl's doing. Why the hell hasn't she called him today?
“This is ⦠a friend, Mr. Bell. Starr is fine.”
Her captor obviously feels uneasy hearing her speak English. He prods her with his gun. Just feeling that pressure on her arm makes Alma's hand begin to shake. What if it goes off? What if he shoots her by mistake? “What do you want me to say?” she whispers frantically. “It's a personal call.”
“Hang up!”
That's easier said than done. What button to push with her fingers trembling like crazy? In a panic, Alma returns the little phone to the chair beside her. She can hear daddy's far-off voice demanding an explanation.
The thunderous explosion sends Alma flying away from her chair, sure she has been shot. She finds herself on the floor, covering her face, feeling an ache in her leg as if she has pulled a muscle. She lies still, waiting for a shocking burst of pain, afraid to move, lest she find out the limb she is trying to move is no longer attached to her body.
Slowly, Alma collects herself. Air floods her lungs. She has not been shot but her left leg has been struck by a flying scrap of plastic which has cut a nasty flap of skin off her thigh. It has begun to bleed. She hopes it is one of those cuts that looks worse than it is. “I'm hurt,” she moans, not daring to complain too loudly. No telling what this crazy guy might do. First, he shoots the clock, now the cell phone, Alma is probably next. Not three feet away, the chair that held the cell phone has been demolished, the phone a scattering of springs and teensy pieces of metal, one of them, Alma now sees, has cut her right forearm, also bleeding.
“What are you doing?” The young poet has run in from the back with a drawn gun. Before she even sees him, she can tell from his voice that he has removed his kerchief. No doubt he thought troops were storming the front door and came running without bothering to cover himself. Now he is just eyeing the red-bandanna guy with a super-pissed-off look on his face. Only incidentally does he seem to notice Alma, wailing it must be in fear of her own spilled blood for
nothing really is hurting that much. “You shot her?” he confronts the leader, who looks a little sheepish about wounding a journalist without meaning to.
In a moment, he recovers his bravado, drunk on the error he has set going that can only end badly, he is beginning to sense. He raises his gun toward his questioner, furious to be found making a mistake. “No, I didn't shoot her. Though I should. Shoot her, shoot you.”