Fifty Grand

I’m leaving, Jack. I’m going soon. You’ll come see me? Defy the U.S. Treasury. Rendezvous in the Hotel Nacional. A good career move. Maybe they’ll put your picture up next to Robert Redford’s.

He grins in his sleep and I close my eyes. Feel his warmth. Lie there.

The winter sun burning through clouds. Ice melt. Water tap-tap-tapping on the window. My boy smiling in his dream.

I touch his cheek and his eyelashes flicker.

Wake up and we’ll skip this scene. I could be legal by noon. Drive me to the FBI office in Denver. This year alone five thousand Cubans have come over the border from Mexico, all of them now on the path to citizenship. Citizen Mercado and her boyfriend, Jack.

You like the sound of that?

And I’ll forgive Paul or Esteban or Mrs. Cooper.

María is the sovereign lady of forgiveness.

Forgive. Yes. I don’t even think I’d care if it was you, Jack. Not Youkilis, Youkilis covering for you somehow.

It wouldn’t matter, would it, Jack?

Uhh, he says in agreement.

I put my arm under him. My breasts press against his back.

Yes. Let’s slip away.

You’ll understand, Dad, won’t you? After all, what did you ever care about any of us? What were you thinking about on that slope? Did you see my face? Ricky’s? Not Mom’s. Probably you were drunk or high. Crying out for Karen or the girls you had on the side. Drunk and happy like you were the day you abandoned us in Santiago. Did you see me as you lay dying? You were not on my mind. I wasn’t even in Havana. Wild goose chase for a wife killer. Train to Laguna de la Leche. Reading one of Hector’s extensive collection of banned books. Thucydides. Given to me as a birthday present. Yeah, that’s right… the day after my birthday. Well, Pop, did you even bother to look down on me on your way to eternity? You would have liked Pajero, near Laguna-a perfect shithole. Moonshine shacks, tin houses, open sewers. Our killer-of course-long gone. Girl on a bicycle brought me a message from town. Señora, a phone call from Havana. Phone call? Sí, señora. Back together on the bike. Two of us. East among the sunflowers. East into the dying sunflowers, the words of Pericles by the lake, while you were being unmade.

Ring-ring on a rickety black café phone from the thirties.

Ricky’s voice as distant as the moon.

How did you find me?

Listen, darling sit down, are you sitting? I’m sorry, Dad’s dead, some kind of accident in Colorado.

What? Where?

Colorado.

My first thought: Good riddance. Not one letter. Not one dollar.

But then the memories flooding back.

Crying and Ricky’s voice: I can get permission to go.

How?

Strings. Blow jobs.

Me laughing through tears.

Hang up the black Bakelite receiver.

The café owner, a police narc: Bad news?

Yeah. My father. Dead.

On a road in the mountains of Colorado.

That road, out there. Out the window.

Oh, Papa, there’s nothing I can do for you. This is the Castle of No Escape. And I like it here. Yuma, land of the Yankees. I like it. I asked for the key to my own dungeon, a thousand miles from the dandelions on the salt trail and the bean-fed boys and the red dirt fields and the teardrop skies.

That road. That road. There through the glass.

A creak on the deck outside.

Someone there. This time I’m certain.

I’m alert, fully awake, flooded with adrenaline. I sit up quickly, look for shadows on the balcony. Nothing, but I know I’m not imagining things-that was no squirrel or stray dog. That was boot on wood.

I throw back the duvet, jog to the fireplace, and grab a cast-iron poker with a vicious-looking hook at the end.

I undo the lock on the french doors and walk onto the deck, checking blind spots and the roof.

Fresh powder under my feet.

“Hola?” I ask.

No one answers. But the birds are quiet.

The gate’s closed, no strange cars, nothing out of the ord-

Wait a minute. Bootmarks in the gravel. Bootprints coming to the house.

“Hello,” Sheriff Briggs says behind me.

I bite down a yell and turn.

He’s wearing an overcoat but I can tell he’s got the full uniform on underneath. He’s come as a cop.

“You scared me. I didn’t see you there,” I tell him.

He flashes the pearly grin, rubs the bottom of his chin.

“Yeah.”

He looks at my breasts through Jack’s T-shirt. Fishes into his pocket and pulls out a cigar. Other pocket, Zippo. I shouldn’t be waiting out here. It looks guilty. I should go back inside.

“Excuse me, señor, but I-”

He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”

“But Señor Tyrone is-”

“I’m not after Jack. I’m looking for you.”

Meek. Eyes down. “For me?”

“Yeah, for you.”

“What do you mean, señor?” I say in Spanish.

He grins, blows a smoke ring. “No, no, don’t do that to me. I know your English is just fine. Now be like a good little puppy and take a seat over there.”

He points at a wooden deck chair. I brush off the thin layer of snow and sit. Water seeps up from the wood, through Jack’s sweatpants and against my skin.

“You weren’t in the motel,” Briggs says, leaning forward and taking the poker out of my hand.

“No.”

“Weren’t in the motel so I asked around and figured you were here.”