Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

When they arrested her, they had beat her up so bad, she miscarried. Then they had botched the curettage and left a clamp inside, and then they figured she was going to die on the operating table. They didn’t want to risk such controversy. So what do they do? They fix it so she can go. She was given her freedom. That was their solution to the jam they were in. If she’s going to die, let it be outside where the guilt won’t fall on them.

“That’s why María Paz was set free,” Dummy said. “That’s why these sons of bitches let her go.”

“And here I was thinking it was a miracle from Ismaela’s cross,” Pro Bono said. But no one laughed.

“The miracle was performed by the cross, sir,” Dummy corrected.

“Clearly,” Pro Bono responded. “There’s no other explanation.”

“You have to find her,” Dummy said. “She has to know and get it taken care of right away.”

“That might be difficult.” Pro Bono sighed.

“You have to, sir. There’s not much we can do from in here. Her life is basically in your hands.”

With María Paz’s life in his hands, as Dummy had asserted, that’s the state in which Pro Bone and Rose left Manninpox on that day.

“It’s practically impossible,” Pro Bono said.

But impossible or not, they had no other choice but to get working on it right away, or at least think of how to begin, start discussing possible contacts, places to look. They had to get in touch somehow. But neither of them could think of anything better than contacting Socorro in Staten Island.

“We have no other option, even if the old woman is a pathological liar,” Rose said. “Maybe María Paz went to see her.” His hand still hurt from the crushing handshake with Dummy, and he brought it to his nose, that old habit of his that Edith had hated, smelling his hand after shaking it with someone. There had been no handshake with Mandra X, not even a cordial good-bye from her. Just as she hadn’t spoken but once, she made sure there was no physical contact at any time. When she realized the meeting was over, she got up and walked out of the room in the same fashion she had come in, unapproachable and stinking, like the Queen of Saba.

Rose was suddenly overcome with exhaustion and asked Pro Bono if they could stop by his house for a while to rest and eat something before returning to New York, and so he could check in on his dogs. Pro Bono preferred to have a coffee at Mis Errores.

“We don’t have time,” he said.

“What if we put an ad in the paper?” Rose suggested.

“An ad?” Pro Bono said somewhat mockingly. “Like what, ‘Girl, you have a clamp inside,’ in the New York Times classifieds.”

That’s the point when Rose decided he had had enough. If Pro Bono wanted his help, he was going to have to come clean about some things. What the devil had happened with María Paz? Why didn’t Pro Bono know where she was? Rose said he was not going to lift a finger until he was caught up. There was something strange going on here, something very weird and confusing, and he was not just going to play along anymore. He was going to be told everything or he was out.

“Of course, I’ll explain, of course,” Pro Bono assured him, tapping him on the shoulder. “You are absolutely correct. If you’re going to be involved in this, you have a right to know everything about it. I am going to make things clear to you. Well, at least to the extent that they are clear to me, which may not be saying much. Please, calm down, I’ll lay things out, but it has to be little by little. Let’s do it section by section, like a butcher. Don’t expect me to summarize in three sentences what is a deviously complicated situation. Clarification number one: if we are going to go looking for María Paz, it has to be done in an absolutely discreet fashion. If not, we may cause more problems than we prevent. Nothing public, no fanfare. We have to figure out a way so that she is the only one who receives the message.”

“That sounds more like a warning than a clarification,” Rose protested.

“Let’s try again. But let’s get our heads in place. Let’s remember what we’re dealing with. Let’s see, it’s only eleven. We still have time tonight. Do me a favor, Rose; can you take me somewhere? It’s near here,” Pro Bono asked, paying for the coffees.

“Right there, to the left,” Pro Bono said as they neared the place. “That hotel right there. Let’s see. I think that’s it. Yes, this has to be it. The Blue Oasis. I should have remembered a name like that. Blue Oasis, okay, that’s it.”

“Do you need to use the bathroom? Grab a bite? I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I’m letting you in on everything. Isn’t that what you wanted? María Paz and I stopped at that hotel when she was released. I was the one who was waiting for her at the gate. By myself. No one else.”

It had been raining on the afternoon María Paz was released, and Pro Bono had been waiting in his car for a while. They had told him she would be released at five, and he had completed all the paperwork, but it was already dark with no sign of her. The guards at the gate wore black raincoats and ponchos and moved like ghosts between the beams of light that cast white figures on the wet pavement. Ensconced in his Lamborghini with a portable reading light, Pro Bono tried without success to read the latest novel by Paul Auster. He had never before been at Manninpox after three or four in the afternoon and was unaware of the otherworldly dimension the prison acquired after dark. The hooded figures became friars and the bulk of stone a macabre monastery. It was almost eight when he noticed a side door open, and then he saw her exit in that darkness whitened by the spotlights.

“It was an indelible moment,” he told Rose. “I saw her approach among the thousand drops of rain made visible by the watch lights as if silver confetti were falling on her.”

Inside the car, Pro Bono asked her if she wanted to go eat somewhere to celebrate her freedom. She didn’t hear him or look at him, as if all her senses were sealed off, except for touch, because she passed her fingers over the surface of things as if remembering the texture of the tender, lovely, warm world that she had erased from her memory. Pro Bono repeated the invitation and she nodded. But not like this. She didn’t want to get to New York all wet and smelling like prison. So he proposed stopping at a hotel on the way so she could bathe and fix herself up. It shouldn’t take long, and they could have a late dinner in the city. What she really wanted was to get under a long hot shower and wash away the nightmare, baptize herself anew, and rid herself of all the prison grime, so that there wasn’t one particle of Manninpox left on her, not even under her nails. And as if she had suddenly found her voice again, she soon started blabbing, giggling at herself for talking so much, “jabbering on like one just set free,” she said, remembering a saying from her country. She confessed to the lawyer that she could lock herself up in a bathroom for hours, that she had spent months showering in groups, and that she wanted nothing more than to lock herself up in a clean bathroom and stand under the hot water without feeling the eyes of the guards checking her out, and forget forever about that little drip of water that came out of those showers that she only had access to twice a week, with her back pressed to the cold wall. What joy, never again having to shower like some spider pressed to the cold wall. She wanted a hot shower, great clouds of steam, and then to dry herself with plush towels and be allowed to toss them on the floor when she was done — thick, dry, soft white towels with no holes, not damp, for she was not sure if such a thing as dry towels existed anymore. She also loved those little shampoos and conditioners in hotel rooms.