The Scared Stiff

21

Laryngitis again, and in two hours I had my passport. I loved it. It was a dull red, with harder covers than my old American passport, and the picture inside looked just like Felicio Tobón de Lozano, with his round swarthy face, bushy mustache, messy dark hair, and a black necktie this peasant was obviously not at all used to wearing. With this passport, I could travel the world.

With this passport, I could get back with Lola. That was the point. This passport was my passport to Lola.

Arturo promised he’d phone Lola to tell her their brother Felicio had a passport now, find out what news there might be, and then come let me know.

But it wasn’t Arturo who snuck into the house two days later, Wednesday afternoon, while I was reading last week’s Newsweek out by the pool. It wasn’t Arturo who went hiss! hiss! at me until I finally heard it and turned around to stare at the living room doorway. It was Luz.

Damn. I’d almost forgotten about Luz. The only time I’d seen her, since the night I’d come here and she’d spoken to me in English, was at the funeral, all in purple. But now here she was, hunched in the doorway, her face a Kabuki mask of stress and agitation, her breasts threatening to jump out of her gold scoop-neck blouse as she clutched the air with scarlet-nailed hands, gesturing to me to come over, hurry, come over quick.

Well, I’d have to deal with it, that’s all. Not looking forward to this, I got to my feet and went over to the living room, as she receded into the dimness ahead of me. I went in, prepared to explain whatever was necessary to explain — the sanctity of marriage? — and she said, with a broken sob in her voice, “Oh, Barry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“Ernesto,” I told her. “Or maybe Felicio. Anything but Barry.”

“It’s all my fault,” she repeated, and clutched at my arm to draw me toward a sofa. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t know they were so stupid.”

“You didn’t know who was so stupid?” I asked, as we sat together on the sofa. Her black skirt ended where her legs began, and her knees were angled toward me.

“My cousins,” she said, which covered half of Guerrera.

I said, “Which cousins?”

“From Tapitepe,” she said, naming the south-easternmost town in the country, at the border with Venezuela and Brazil. “Manfredo and Luis and the other Luis with the bad arm and José and Pedro and poco Pedro, little Pedro.”

“Ah,” I said.

“You met them,” she assured me, “at your wedding.”

“I met all the cousins at the wedding,” I said. “I don’t necessarily remember them. What’s the problem, Luz?”

“I tol’ them,” she said. “Not them, exactly, I tol’ a few others — in the family, you know — and now they know too, and it’s all my fault. But I didn’ know, Barry, I didn’ know they—”

“Felicio,” I said.

“I didn’ know how they’d be,” she said. “I swear it. I didn’ know.”

“How they’d be about what? You mean, you told them about me?”

“They know about it,” she said. “How you not really dead. Because you gonna get millions of dollars from the insurance and the whole family’s gonna be rich.”

“Well, no,” I said. “Not millions, and the whole family—”

“So they think that’s good,” she said. “Very good. But I tell them, We can’t say anything outside the family, because if the insurance finds out, then the family don’ get nothing.”

“Luz,” I said, “the family was never going—”

“So they say,” she went on, “if the family gets all this money if Barry Lee is dead, how come he’s alive?”

I looked at her. “Say that again?”

“Why have the risk?” she asked me. “That’s what they say. Why have the risk? If the insurance find out Barry Lee ain’t dead, nobody gets nothing.”

“Luz,” I said, “they were never going to get anything.”

“Millions,” she said.

“Not millions,” I told her. “Listen to me, Luz. Not millions. It isn’t millions. Carlos is getting a couple hundred, and Arturo is getting some, and Mamá and Papá are getting some, and that’s all. The rest of the family isn’t getting anything.”

“Millions,” she said, blinking at me.

“No,” I said.

She looked at me, and I didn’t say anything else, and gradually I could see it sink in, until finally she said, “You not gonna share with the family?”

“Not a penny,” I said. “Not a siapa.”

“But they helpin’ you!” she exclaimed, and sat up straighter on the sofa, aiming her breasts at me.

I said, “No, they’re not. Carlos is helping, and Arturo is helping. What are the rest of those people doing?”

“They come to the funeral!”

I sat back and stared at her. “They came to the funeral, so I’m supposed to give them millions of dollars?”

“Everybody knows it,” she said. “The whole family knows it.”

“From you.”

“I tol’ a couple people, Barry, I’m sorry—”

“Felicio.”

“—I was wrong, but I tol’ a couple people, and they tol’ everybody else. Just in the family, Barry, I swear.”

“Felicio.”

“But this is what happen,” she said. “So Manfredo and Luis and the other Luis with the bad arm and José and Pedro and poco Pedro, they come to me and say, Where is he? and I say, At Carlos’s house, and they say, Luz, you can get a man to do things, get him to come out of Carlos’s house — see, they don’t want trouble with Carlos, they’re much afraid of Carlos — and I say, Why? and they say, If we gonna get millions if he’s dead how come he’s alive? and I say, You can’t mean you gonna kill him, and they say, Why not? He’s dead already; we went to the funeral.”

“Luz,” I said, “that’s completely wrong. Nobody’s going to get millions, and they aren’t going to get anything.”

“Not if the insurance find out you alive.”

“Not at all.”

“If it just Lola,” she pointed out, “they can tell her, You gotta give us the money. Some for everybody.”

I sat back and thought about that. I’m truly dead, and these lowlifes from the least-civilized branch of the family lean on Lola. Or if Lola isn’t around they lean on Mamá and Papá. And they’ll never believe there isn’t millions. Money from America. That’s what everybody wants, and this is how they’ll get it.

So now what? Here’s Luz, fidgeting, saying she’s sorry, falling out of her dress — already I know for sure she isn’t wearing underwear — and telling me I’ve got in-laws that plan to kill me for the insurance money.

I’m killing me for the insurance money! There’s no room in this scheme for freeloaders. I said, “So you’re here because you’re supposed to talk me into going outside, so they can kill me.”

“No, no, not now,” she said. “Barry, I come to—”

“Felicio, Luz, please.”

“Whoever,” she said. “Who ever. I come to warn you. What they plan they gonna do, tomorrow a couple of them, they go talk with Carlos at his place, make sure he stay there, and that’s when I come get you take me out for a beer. Then they do it. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

“They need to get trucks and guns and things,” she explained. “Shovels.”

“Shovels.”

“So they not ready today, but they gonna be ready tomorrow. So I come now, to warn you.”

“So I shouldn’t go out,” I said. “That’s easy.”

“Not that easy, Barry. Whoever! Not that easy. If you don’ come out, they gonna come in.”

“I thought they were afraid of Carlos.”

“But they want the money. So if you don’ come out, they come in by the river.”

“There’s razor wire out there,” I told her. “They can’t get in.”

“They know about the stuff in the water,” she said. “They gonna steal a boat, run it onto the ground, right over that cuttin’ stuff. Come in that way, it look like robbers. Kill you, kill Esilda, steal some stuff, Carlos never gonna know it was them.”

“Carlos will know,” I told her.

She shook her head. A nipple flashed and retired. “They think Carlos not gonna know. They think they smart, Ba — you.”

“Felicio.”

“Felicio.”

“Thank you,” I said. “They aren’t smart, Luz, they’re stupid.”

“Very stupid,” she agreed. “But they don’ know that. They think they smart.”

“Shit,” I commented.

What was I going to do? If I stayed here, they’d come after me. But where else could I go? The only other people I knew in all Guerrera were Arturo and Mamá and Papá, and if I went to them the cousins would find me right away. I don’t sound like a Guerreran, I don’t have any money, I don’t know anybody, where can I go? What can I do?

Is Luz telling the truth? I thought about that, and I believed she was. She wasn’t an actress, Luz, she was very up front; she let it all hang out in more ways than one. She was truly agitated and truly remorseful, and she was certainly enough of a bigmouth to have told everybody in Guerrera that Barry Lee wasn’t really dead, Barry Lee was making believe he was dead so he could get millions from the insurance company and share it with the entire Tobón family, that good old Barry Lee. What a great guy Barry Lee is. Let’s kill him.

I said, “What if I tell Carlos? Couldn’t he stop—”

But she was already shaking her head. “Carlos ain’ gonna stop them,” she said.

“Why not? He’s too smart to believe in all that money.”

“Millions,” she said.

“Luz, it isn’t millions,” I insisted, “and Carlos knows that. If I tell him what’s going on, he could talk to—”

“He ain’ gonna do it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“On accounta Maria.”

I looked at her. She gave me a very significant nod. Her legs moved. I looked firmly into her eyes. I said, “I’m not doing anything with Maria.”

“That don’ matter,” she said.

“You mean, he thinks I’m doing something?”

“He don’ know,” she said. “He don’ wanna know. He don’ ever wanna know what Maria do or don’ do or nothing. He woulda thrown you out already, but she want you here. So if somebody come take you away and kill you, that not Carlos’s fault. Not if he don’ know about it. But you outa the house, and that’s okay by him.”

“Maria,” I said. “Maria could—”

“Gone on a trip,” she pointed out. “Anyway, the cousins don’ listen to Maria.”

“Arturo,” I said.

“If Artie talk to the cousins,” she said, “they gonna think he want all the millions for himself.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “What the hell am I gonna do?”

“I’ll hide you,” she told me, and moved all of her parts and bounced this way and that. “It’s all my fault, Ba — Felicio.”

“Luz—”

“I gotta help you, Felicio,” she said, “because it’s all my fault, I opened my big mouth. I do that all the time.”

“Right,” I said. “Who told you about me anyway? Did Arturo tell you?”

She looked indignant, shoulders back, chest out. “What do you think?” she demanded. “I’m stupid, just ’cause I like to fuck?”

“No, no, I—”

“I figured it out,” she said. “Artie say all this silly stuff, you can’ talk and hear ’cause you got the curse and all that, I know what’s goin’ on.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But now what we gotta do,” she told me, “we gotta hide you. You come to my place in Napalma, we—”

“No, Luz, thank you, but no, I can’t...”

I can’t go live with Luz, with her bouncing around, falling out of her clothes all the time, telling me she likes to fuck. I’m true to Lola, like I discussed it with Maria, but that doesn’t mean I have to torture myself.

She leaned toward me, just to emphasize the problem. “What else you gonna do?” she asked me. “I’m tellin’ you the truth, Felicio. See? I’m even callin’ you Felicio.”

“Thank you.”

“You stay here,” she said, “you gonna die. For real. Where else you gonna go?”

I looked away from her, as an aid to thought. Where else would I go? Maybe it was true, I was going to have to hide out with Luz until I could figure out something else. Maybe get a message to Arturo, have him come pick me up, hide me somewhere safe. Safer.

I said, “You want me to go with you now?”

“Not now,” she said. “They all around, those guys, they see you in the car, they gonna come get you. Wait till tonight. After Carlos go to bed tonight, you come out. You know where he keep that big car?”

“Sure, across the street.”

“Next to it, on that side,” she said, and waved a breast as she pointed, “is just dirt. I’m there in my car, orange Honda Civic.”

“What time?”

“Whenever,” she said. An accommodating girl. “I come around ten, you come out after Carlos goes to bed. You don’ wanna have to tell him where you goin’.”

“You’re right about that,” I said.

She jumped to her feet, shrugged her breasts back into the blouse, and as I also stood she grabbed my hand in both of hers and said, “I’m really sorry. Felicio. I don’ want nobody gets hurt.”

“I feel that way too,” I assured her, and disengaged my hand.

She started away, then turned back and shook her head and other parts and said, “You know, Felicio, every time I think, Well, now I know how stupid men can be, I’m wrong. They always stupider.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“See you tonight,” she said, and bounced out of there, and I went the other way to jump headfirst into the pool, causing the water to steam.

Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.