The Boat (9 page)

She stops at the gate to have a cigarette with one of the guards. Stand where I can see you, she says, waving to me like a schoolgirl stepping down from a bus.

At first I cannot find Claudia, then I hear her harsh whisper from the opposite alley.

Just come out, I say. They know you're here.

She comes as far as the corner, her forehead and kneecaps glowing white under the streetlights, and I walk to meet her there. She frowns – it makes her face look angry.

He is letting you go?

I don't know, I say.

She begins to cry – and I realize it is the first time I have ever seen her cry. Not even after her mother tried to kill herself did I see Claudia's face like this. It is all soft.

Hernando is dead, I say. I have to force myself to say it rather than ask it.

I know.

Hearing her say it severs something deep within me. For a moment it is as though I have lost contact with myself. I force myself to concentrate. In that case, I say, tell Luis I thank him. For organizing the business today.

She nods.

He knew that you would want revenge, she says. But he did not want to tell you about Hernando's death, if you were in hiding, and did not already know, and there was no need ...

She trails off, seeing where that leads. Everyone knew, I think again. But I do not feel bitter at all.

El Padre knows you are here, I repeat. He wants you to go to our
moco
and bring back the guns.

I do not want to look at her crying face. I look into the half dark behind her, make out the contours of a ditch, the banks of rubbish packed hard as rock. I think I see the face of a child appear behind a candle, and then disappear. The sky feels like it is sinking closer and closer to earth.

My mother, I say.

Don't worry about that, she says. I will take her away.

A strange look crosses her face and her narrow shoulders lurch toward me. Her teeth scrape across my lips. I feel embarrassed. I try to kiss her back but I have difficulty controlling my mouth. Her lips are on my ear. She is saying something. She is saying something but I cannot hear her, and when I try to listen I cannot remember what her voice sounds like. I am pulled back into myself.

She is saying, Take it. She presses it into my hand, guides it into my pocket. It is hard and cold and shaped like an apple. It is one of Pedro's grenades. I do not dare to look down.

How do you feel? she asks me for the second time tonight. She asks it with a small laugh.

I do not know what to say. Can I say, My body feels like it is all water? Can I say, Perhaps, perhaps I am glad?

The revenge killings will not finish for a few weeks, I say.

She nods again. You are scared.

Her left hand is still wrapped around mine and it is trembling. This, I think, from Claudia, who has the steadiest hands I know. I look at her and then, in her eyes, I see a window, framed by her mother's body, and I find myself thinking about how easy it seemed for her mother to jump to a death she did not want that badly.

Yes, I lie to her. Yes, I am scared.

I look back toward the house and it is clear from Damita's posture that she has finished her cigarette, is bored with the guards, is cold and is waiting for me. The house, with its candlelights, looks somehow sacred under the gray clouds, and the moon, which has come out beneath them, looks like a huge yellow magnet.

My fingers rub against the cold metal in my pocket. I have to go, I say.

Claudia embraces me again, her fingertips digging into the gaps between my back ribs. She is breathing shallowly now. Tell him you will never come back. Tell him he can trust you. She says it quietly but there is enormous pressure behind her words.

Yes, I say. But first you must go get the guns.

She will not let go of me.

I hate this place, she says, wiping her eyes on my shoulder. We will leave together. Your mother too.

My mother, I say.

I look up at the house, shimmering high on the black hill before us. Claudia clings to me. Her body is warmer than usual. From the gate, Damita looks in our direction and I step back, away from Claudia, seeing her now as though from a growing distance. She is small, and soft, and alone, and I force myself to look away from her.

You must get the guns, I say.

He will let you go.

She has gathered her voice with effort. I smile into the night.

He will let me go, I say after her.

At the front door Damita loops her arm around my elbow and leads me inside. This time the guards do not search me. As we walk up the stairs, Damita's hip bumps against mine and her bare stomach shifts and lengthens in the angled light. El Padre is behind the bay windows, standing outside on the balcony. He gestures for me to join him.

From the balcony, the brightness of the candlelit house makes the hillside seem even blacker. We stand there in silence – El Padre and I, and a guard motionless against the far railing. As my eyes adjust, I can make out hazy lagoons of light in the distance.

El Padre makes a quick gesture with one hand. I spin around: another guard holding a submachine gun is jogging toward me. I fumble against the leathery skin of the grenade in my pocket and maneuver it between my fingers: the pin.

Better than
basuco
, says El Padre. He continues to look out over the hill. It is only when the guard is next to me that I realize he is holding out a spliff. El Padre takes it from him, takes a long drag, then holds it out to me.

I nod – I am unable to speak – and unclench my fingers from the pin of the grenade. When I draw in the smoke it rushes deeper and deeper, without seeming to stop, into the cavities of my body.

Much cleaner, no?

He smiles now: a charming host. In the deflected light, I notice for the first time a fiabbiness in his cheeks. His braided hair looks wet. We stand on the balcony and look out over the blacked-out barrio. There are valleys out there, and swells, and rises, all unseen by our eyes. The night air gives off traces of wood smoke, sewage. In the immediate candlelight, the glass on top of the walls glimmers hints of every color, and it is beautiful. For a moment I imagine the house is a ship floating on the silent ocean, high in the wind. This thought calms me, which is strange, for I have never seen the ocean – and I am reminded of evenings when I have stood in the cobbled yard outside my mother's back window, watching her asleep with her makeup on, or taking her medicine with
aguardiente
when she thinks no one sees, or coming out of the glowing bathroom with her hands in her hair, a towel and a quick unthinking motion. It calms me, watching her like this.

El Padre says something. His words splinter endlessly down the dark well of my thoughts.
Vamonos
, he is saying.
Vamonos
, I need something to warm my stomach.

I look at his smiling face, the black moons of his eyes.

Come on, he says. I have a special room for drinking. We will wait for your friend there.

The two guards on the balcony do not move.

We will toast your farewell, says El Padre. I hear you like to drink. He begins to walk indoors. Where will you go? Have you decided?

I don't know, I say. Maybe
Cartagena
.

Cartagena
, he repeats. Then he beckons, and the two guards fall into line behind me.
Cartagena
, I think, where Hernando waits for me. Even now, at the last, we are connected. I can feel Claudia's teeth, her dry lips against my mouth. I rotate the grenade in my pocket – Hail Mary, I think – my palms slippery with sweat – and finally, when my thumb finds traction on the safety lever, I thread my middle finger through the pin and pull it out, hard. It falls free. El Padre looks back at me and smiles.

So, he asks, have you ever been there?

Gripping the lever tightly, I follow my benefactor into the house. A third guard opens a door from the main office and goes in ahead. No candlelight shines from inside. El Padre goes next and I go after him, as though deep into the throat of a cave, the two guards unfailingly behind me. The smell of Damita's perfume is strong in the darkness. Somewhere in front of me, El Padre's voice asks again about
Cartagena
, and this time I say, No, and as I say it, my thumb wet and unsteady on the lever, the memory returns to me, the picture as I have imagined it so many times in the past. Luis is sitting on the old colonial wall and looking out toward the ocean. As the sun rises, he says, you can see ten black lines leading into the steel gray water, each line maybe twenty meters apart, and as the water turns orange, then red, you can see that each line is made up of small black shapes and that they are moving away from the water, together, all in harmony, and then as the sun rises higher on your right you can see that each black shape is a man, there are hundreds of them, and they are hauling one enormous fishing net in from the ocean, slowly, step by step.

SHE'S COMING TODAY. It's 11:40 a.m. and I can feel my ass again. I get into a kneeling position in the bathtub then slowly stand up, one trembly, lard-like leg at a time. Water runs down my chest, over my creased stomach, coalesces on my creased balls. With my right hand I reach down and squeeze them, sponge-like, until what remains in my fist is a shriveled sac of skin. My ass is burning. My head was doing okay for a while there. I flick the soggy cigarette in my other hand into the bathwater, grab the tube of lidocaine and smear some of that sweet stuff onto my rosebud.

You're a dirty old man
, Olivia used to say, speaking generally, smiling that toothy, canine-sharp smile she reserved for me. It made me horny and she knew it. We used to spend half our time here, sitting in this long, deep tub, spying on the street below. She liked to watch strangers. I liked watching her. I almost demolished this apartment so we could both get our perve on. It took a binder full of expert appraisals and zoning permits before I was allowed to knock out the wall, put in a steel frame and glass-brick the whole thing back up.

It gets me a bit loose-headed, all this reminiscing. I climb out of the bathtub and take off my sunglasses. It's not so bright outside, not today. Some days it gets so I can barely even see the street, its lines and depths – cars, buildings, people – everything looks so bleached out. But not today. I light up another cigarette, avoid the mirror, ignore a wolf whistle from outside and half lope, for the dozenth time that morning, to my computer screen. I quickly scroll down through her website bio: Elise Kozlov, cello prodigy, noted for her precocious facility of technique, her inventive fingering for passagework, her grace of phrasing, etc., etc. There's a mention of me too: Henry Luff, "well-regarded neo-figurative painter" – as well as her mother, credited as "raising" her in
Russia
. Selected by Elena Dernova for the St. Petersburg conservatory at age five; member of Anatoly Nikitin's celebrated Cello Ensemble at age twelve; world's youngest owner of a Guadagnini. Then there it is: the solitary statement that popped up only a few days ago: "Delighted to announce her engagement to Jason Sharps."

I leave off, walk into my walk-in wardrobe. It hurts less when I take small, shuffling steps. Get your clothes on and get working. Olivia liked to say that too. But the thought of picking up a paintbrush right now makes me jittery. The order of the day, then:

First, get dressed. Something swanky for the concert, a penguin suit, probably. It's Carnegie Hall. No counting on time to go home to change after our late lunch. I run my fingers along the plastic-wrapped shoulders of my tuxedo rack: full dress, half-tailcoat, black tie, white tie ... finally I pick out a classic number and truss myself up. There I am in the mirror. Craggy, sure – heavy in the lips and nose – but not altogether undistinguished.

Just as I'm leaving I feel the compulsion-one last time-to see what she looks like. The computer blinks the photo on. Long black hair; impatient, deep-set eyes. She's mine in the strictest, most accidental sense. She's beautiful. She looks nothing like me.

***

I'M TAKING MY CLOTHES OFF AGAIN. This time for my gastroenterologist, Eric Hingess, whose patient list includes the likes of Ed Koch and Art Garfunkel – and who charges accordingly. I was lucky to get this appointment just before the long weekend.

"I may as well admit it," I tell him. "I'm nervous as hell."

"It's a natural response." He leans back in his chair, wearing a suit that looks stitched together from carpet samples, watching me as I try to undo my bow tie. Rabbit chasing the fox. Oddly, Hingess seems more nervous than me, sniffing and jerking his eyebrows like a conductor rehearsing a piece in his head.

"This is a big day for me."

"Here," he says, handing me a pill and a plastic cup. After a moment he sighs: "Valium. To relax you."

I swallow the pill. "Yeah, I'm meeting my daughter today. First time in seventeen years."

"Goodness," he says absently. "How old is she?"

"Eighteen."

The metal disk of his stethoscope against my chest is as cold as an ice cube and I imagine it melting, trickling down onto my gut, Olivia's squinting eyes above it and her tongue retracing its route. I follow the lines her tongue chooses. I shiver. The doctor's saying something.