Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

“I didn’t say anything to María Paz about the reappearance of Pro Bono and his calls, especially that last one, not a thing. I don’t know if you get what I mean, but every day I grew more and more fond of the girl, and I was sure she was growing more fond of me. Still I couldn’t trust her completely. She did not quite feel like an accomplice.”

The appointed day of departure arrived quickly, and María Paz seemed as if she was fully recovered by then, or that’s what the pirate surgeon Huidobro told them when they went for a checkup. But before leaving the United States, she had to go to Vermont to pick up her sister, and asked Rose for one favor, the last one, she assured him: to take her to Vermont. After that, the two sisters would continue on their own, under the aegis of the cyber-coyote, and Rose could return home. Those were her plans. They didn’t quite match Rose’s plans. If he stayed with her, he thought there was always the possibility that they would find Sleepy Joe. He wanted to find the bastard at any cost. He needed to settle accounts with him. Yet, something told him that this was not the time to undertake such a mission, just now, when he had started to feel calm and make peace with his memories. The pain of the death of his child, that hurtful little blade of burnished metal that had been stabbing at his flesh and cutting his bones, was losing its sharpness.

Instead, a new presence had been surging, less intense but in some ways more real: the memory of Cleve when Cleve was alive. Every day, Rose cried a little less and remembered Cleve a little more, as if he were finally recovering his son: Cleve at eight wearing one of Edith’s sweaters, enormous on him; Cleve at fifteen riding a camel during a walk along the Nile Valley; Cleve going to his first school dance with Ana Clara, the Portuguese girl next door; Cleve reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in a hammock on a hot day; Cleve very small, playing in a corner of the room with his dolls Skeletor and He-Man; Cleve in early adolescence, his face dotted with Clearasil acne cream; Cleve at three, emerging miraculously unscathed after a cabinet toppled on him; Cleve going down the slopes in Aspen on a snowboard; Cleve fleeing his mother’s house after a fight with Ned. And especially Cleve asleep in his bed with his dog, and what Edith had said when she saw them: “This boy will never be as happy as he is right now.” These and other memories from the life of his son returned in droves and with a decisive element in common: in all of them Cleve was free of his own death; Cleve’s death still had nothing to do with Cleve.

Even the incident of the jump into the empty pool had begun to be seen in more positive light by Rose, the tragedy that could have been but was not. No, definitely not a good time, this was not a good time to go with María Paz on this crazy adventure, even if she was the only path toward the retaliation that Rose believed was necessary.

“What he had done to my son made my blood boil and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the culprit. At the same time not so much, not so much, if you know what I mean. It just wasn’t me, chasing a murderer with a pistol that had belonged to the bodyguard of Pancho Villa, or whatever other pistol I had chosen. Every day that passed I saw just how contradictory the whole scenario was, and certainly I was not a professional avenger, no matter what ups and downs I had suffered. I have to admit all this to you, even though I’m afraid that’s not what you’re looking for. Perhaps you were hoping to get this spectacular story about serial murderers and superdetectives, like those that run for five seasons on television, where everyone is clear about their roles and the rest is pure action. Maybe that’s what you expect, so sorry to disappoint. This is a true story about ordinary people, full of doubts, mistakes, improvisations. There are dates that do not square and loose ends that may never be tied up, a poor father and a poor murderer: not much more than that, actually. This is not one of those heartless stories; those who have lived through it have left behind a little bit of our lives at every step.”

Rose mentioned to María Paz an insurmountable obstacle regarding the proposed trip to Vermont: the three dogs. They could not be left at home because Empera was on vacation in her country and there was no one to care for them.

“Not a problem,” María Paz said, “we’ll take them with us. A little trip with everyone.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Rose said. “In the middle of winter?”

“It’ll be wonderful, with all the snow.”

“How the hell are you supposed to fit three animals in a Ford Fiesta?”

“Good Lord, Mr. Rose, it’s like you create a problem for every solution. We won’t fit in the little car, but we’ll fit in the Toyota.”

“The Toyota? No! The Toyota belongs to Edith.”

“It used to belong to Edith. Anyway, it’s perfect for us.”

“But that car is practically an antique.”

“The dogs don’t care about that.”

There was no winning against the stubbornness of this woman. Rose ended up bringing the car to the mechanic for a new battery and tires, and to check the brake fluid and change the oil. They took off on a Saturday morning, packing a bundle of Eukanuba, a few jugs of water, and thick blankets on which Otto, Dix, and Skunko could sleep in the back. Ming’s grandfather’s Glock 17 was hidden among Rose’s clothes inside a suitcase. Violeta’s school was almost on the border with Canada, near Montpelier, Vermont, and although María Paz was anxious to arrive, Rose was more than willing to go slow. He took the chance to drive her through the forests of the Adirondacks, a northbound journey through snow country, through the high mountain terrain and lakes of a landscape that the mist turned blue, stopping from time to time to contemplate the wonder, getting out here and there to let the dogs run loose as if they were wild horses on their native land.

Impossible not to talk, not to let the tongue loosen and fall into the confessional mode, with María Paz and Rose sitting close to each other, protected from the icy expanses by the warm and fragrant condensation of humans and dogs packed inside the car, motivating María Paz to trace something on the foggy window with her index finger.

“What? What was she writing?” I ask Rose, too tempting a question to pass up.

“Well, there were three letters forming a word, or so she told me, because I asked. I remember because I noticed and became curious. Like you just did. The letters were AIX. María Paz said that it had to do with something between her and Cleve, a kind of inside thing between them. But she left it at that.”

Rose wanted to know what she expected when she crossed the Canadian border. “They are frightening, the Canadians,” he said. “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are famous for being real bastards, more animals than the horses they ride.” María Paz said she wasn’t worried, that for them Canada would be just a stopping place, the important thing was to get through the border completely undocumented, with no trace of her identity or her history in the United States. So no one would know that Violeta was crazy and that she herself was a bail jumper.

“What if you get caught?” Rose asked.

“The idea is to get caught, but in Toronto or Ottawa, only when we have crossed and are rid of the past. But not before that, no way. Look, Canada has signed treaties and conventions in which they adhere to UN policies. The coyote explained everything to me in detail, and according to these conventions, refugees are provided protection, shelter, and food.”

“And if they don’t do it?” Rose asked.

“Even better, because then we’ll be deported. Let them deport us, not a bad thing, wherever we end up is not important, it’s just a stop on the road to Seville. Because if I stay here, it’s to die.”