T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

“That was Sally Lieberman,” Kyra said. “She says they showed the Da Ros place.” Her voice caught. “It's gone. She said it's gone.”

If this was the case, the reporters on Channel 7 failed to confirm it-at least in this segment-and their counterparts on Channels 2, 4, 5, 11 and 13 didn't report it either. They all showed the blackened rocks, the white ash, the corrugated air rising from the remaining hot spots and the sweaty exhausted firefighters plying their hoses, but already the fire was old news-there had been no deaths and precious little destruction of real property-and they turned to other matters, to the drive-by shootings, the fatal knifings, the traffic gore.

“Maybe not,” Delaney said. “Maybe she got it wrong.”

Kyra was wearing her frantic look. “I've got to go check.”

“What, now?” Delaney was incredulous. “It's dangerous. The thing isn't out yet, you know-it could flare up again. Besides, they've probably got the road blocked.”

He was right, and she knew it. She sank into the chair, volitionless, the phone clutched desperately in her hand. She was thinking of who to call next, how to get around the roadblocks, how to make things happen. “There's nothing you can do,” he said, “and we've got to get all this crap out of the cars before we do anything. You don't want people stealing it, do you?”

Kit appeared at that moment, still looking a bit disoriented but more herself now-she'd wrapped a turban round her head to conceal her frayed hair and reapplied her lipstick. Delaney saw that she was holding something awkwardly in her right hand, out away from her body, as if she'd found a bit of offal or a dead rat under the bed. But what was it-a belt? A Walkman? Or no, it was a black plastic box dangling from a neatly severed strap. The thing was wrong somehow in his mother-in-law's hand, anomalous, out of place, but powerfully evocative for all that.

“I found this in my purse,” Kit said, and her voice rose in surprise and puzzlement. “I can't imagine how it got there.”

But Delaney could. It came to him all at once, and he glanced at Kyra and saw that she understood too. “Dominick Flood” was all he could say.

“But why-?” Kyra began.

Epiphany came to Kit with a force all its own and her eyes sank back into her head in shame and hurt-Dominick Flood had been playing a very nasty game with her, stringing her along, waiting his chance. “I can't believe it,” she said.

Delaney pictured him, suave and unctuous, Kit clinging to his arm as they watched the spectacle of the fire from the safety of the police line, and the dawning realization coming over him that this was his opportunity. The monitoring device would still be sending out its signal from Arroyo Blanco, even if it wasn't from his own house, and the people at the Los Angeles County Electronic Monitoring Service would have known that he'd been evacuated overnight, that there'd been an emergency-it would probably take them days to sort it out. And Flood? A bank account in the Bahamas? A chalet in Switzerland, a beach house in the Seychelles? He would have had all the eventualities worked out.

Kit drew in a heavy wet gulp of air. She looked as if she was about to break down and Kyra had just crossed the room to sit beside her on the sofa and offer some daughterly comfort when Jordan came tearing into the room, his clothes even dirtier and more disarranged than they'd been twenty minutes ago. “Mom,” he panted, and you could see his ribs heaving against the thin skin of his T-shirt, “I looked all over the place and I just can't find Dame Edith anywhere.”

CáNDIDO SAW THE CAT THERE AND AMERICA CRADLING it in her arms like a doll even as her body went rigid with the pain and then relaxed and tensed all over again for the next contraction. His first impulse was to shoo it away, but he stopped himself. If it helped take her mind off the pains, then why not? — and it seemed lost and hungry just like they were, content in the face of all this smoldering disaster to curl up and comfort his wife. All right. But the fire was creeping closer, charged one minute by the winds and then knocked back again when they ran out of breath. It wasn't safe here-they were taking a gamble, a big gamble-but he didn't know what else to do but watch and wait. And pray. Maybe pray too.

He already knew what was on the other side of the wall, and the prospect wasn't very comforting. In fact, if he let himself think about it his heart raced so much he was afraid it was going to burst. A development of big rich houses lay just a stone's throw away-he'd seen that much from the roof of the shed-and it was as dark as dark and totally deserted. He knew the place now. He'd worked in there one day with Al Lopez on a fence, but he didn't remember the wall-that was new, he was sure of it. What chilled him, though, was the thought that if all these people had been evacuated, abandoning all their things, their fine rich houses and their lawns and gardens and all the rest, then it looked grim for him and America. The fire was coming this way, no doubt about it, and they would be trapped, burned alive, the fat under their skin sizzling like backmeat in a frying pan, their bones charred and broken. He watched her. He sat with her. And he prayed.

Sometime in the small hours of that insufferable night America called out so sharply it was like a bark, like a dog's bark, and the cat was startled and jumped away from her and she tried to get up from the bed he'd made for her from the bags of seed. “Cándido,” she croaked, “I have to go, I have to move my bowels, I… I can't… hold it in any longer,” and as he tried to lift her up, to help her, he saw it between her legs, against her naked thighs and the red paste of the blood: her baby, his baby, his son. The crown of the baby's head was there between her legs, black wet wisps of hair, and he held her down and lifted her legs and told her to push, it was coming, and to push, push, push. Then there was a sound like gas released from a balloon-_Pffffffft!__-and there he was, his son, lying there all wrinkled in a bag of skin, slick with blood and mucus and what looked like curdled cheese. The noise of one of the big bombers came low overhead and there was the whoosh of its load driving back the flames below them, and Cándido smelled the strong human smell of the birth and the placenta coming out too, rich and warm in that shed full of seed and chlorine and manure. América's face was transported. She took the baby in her arms, the blue cord attached to it still, and cleared its mouth and started it breathing, started it crying, a thin mewl like the cat's, and she cradled it, the real thing, alive and healthy.

It was the moment Cándido had been waiting for. He leaned forward with the knife and cut the blue cord that was like a length of sausage and with a rag dipped in water wiped the mess from the tiny limbs and torso. He felt exultant, infused with a strength and joy that made a mockery of his poverty, his hurts and wants and even the holocaust that had leapt out of his poor cookfire in the depths of the canyon. He had a son, the first of his line, the new generation born on American soil, a son who would have all the _gabachos__ had and more. And then, moving the rag over the baby's abdomen as América put it to her breast-and there, between the legs, swabbing it clean-he discovered something in the unsteady wash of light that made him pause, hesitate, stop cold with the rag in his hand. This was no son. This was- But America already knew. “You know what I'm going to call her?” she said in a drowsy voice, the voice of someone in a dream so beautiful they don't want to let it go.

Cándido didn't answer. He was trying to absorb the fact that he was a father, finally a father-the father of a daughter-and his mind was already leaping ahead to the fire and the deserted houses and where they would stay the night tomorrow and the night after that and what would happen to him if the _gringos__ got hold of him.