We Know

Chapter 41

Induma opened her door, wearing a sheer nightgown, and the breeze lifted the hem, folding it back against her dark brown thigh.

I said, "He killed her. Thirteen days old. Had her dumped in a dirt lot with the body of her mother."

Induma didn't ask a single question. She just opened her arms, and I went to her, bowing my head and breathing in the scent of Kai lotion on her neck. Warm air behind her, the cold curling around us, tightening the skin of her arms, raising goose bumps. I felt her heart beating against the pit of my stomach. The strength of it, but also its fragility. I didn't want to let go of her, but finally I did.

She closed the door behind us, and I locked it and threw the dead bolt. We went to the living room, and I sat cross-legged on the couch while she listened patiently. When I finished, there was a hum of silence, and then she said, "What do you need?"

I said, "Cartoons."

We found him in short order, white chest puffed out, carrot at the ready. " 'Of course, you know, dis means war."' Animated shenanigans flickered across my numb face. Cunning rabbits, French skunks, elastic mice, with their speech impediments and well-drawn plans. They were a comfort, not an amusement. They never made you consider the fragility of their hearts beating against your stomach.

How clear it all was in the land of Merrie Melodies. Pull-string cannons. Red TNT cylinders with sparkler fuses. Throw on a hat and an accent and you're a whole new rabbit. Or just put your head down and burrow until you wind up in a bullring or the South Pole or Ketchikan, Alaska. Only problem is, when you do that, you lose track of where you're going and wind up lost. Or worse, right where you started.

The credits rushed by in a syndicated flurry, and then Induma clicked a button on one of four remotes surfing the cushions and the channel blinked and we were back in the real world. In anticipation of Thursday's debate, C-SPAN was reairing the one from Harlem that I'd watched the night the Service kicked down me and my door.

Induma looked across at me, gauging my temperature, but I didn't mind watching. I wanted to see Bilton in all his banality-of-evil glory. I wanted to see Caruthers dismember him verbally and sweep the dais with his parts.

Jim Lehrer hunched over the moderator's podium, his doll eyes impartial and unblinking. "Senator, I have a two-part question for you. Early in your career, you were for the death penalty, and now you're opposed to it. My first question is this: If June Caruthers were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

"Ah," Caruthers said, "the old Dukakis chestnut."

"Please let me finish, Senator. And the second part is, why the change in your position?"

Caruthers's green eyes gleamed. "If my wife were raped and murdered, I'd want to hunt down her killer and gut him. But in civilized countries we don't let the victim's relatives choose the punishment. Imagine if we did. To answer your second question, before we even get to a discussion about the morality of the death penalty, we're hamstrung by the unavoidable fact that it is ineffective, biased, and incredibly expensive. This has become increasingly apparent to me. I have had some shifts in opinion over the course of my long career. And thank God for that. How many of you want a politician who refuses to learn on the job?" A wicked pause. "Well, I suppose forty-six percent of you."

A rumble of laughter, punctuated by a few hisses. The cutaway showed Bilton, the picture of mature restraint, jotting a note on the lectern.

Caruthers offered a collegial tilt of the head. "My opponent would like to exploit a reasonable evolution of thinking to paint me as wishy-washy. Or as a waffler. Or whatever deprecation has currency this go-round. But I hope that I will never hold consistency above conscience. And I will never claim not to have made mistakes. In fact, I just may have made enough mistakes in the past to avoid some in the future."

Bilton leaned toward the black bud of his slender microphone. "Senator, most of the time it seems like you've made too many to keep track of."

His constituency, bolstered by relief, applauded overenthusiastically.

Induma hit mute. "If smugness could be fitted for a suit…"

Bilton's lips moved as he continued his retort.

What did it take to order the killing of the mother of your child? His own flesh and blood, suffocated and dumped on a dirt lot?

I said, "I can't believe that bastard might win."

"This is about politics?" Induma asked.

"No," I said, "this isn't about politics at all."

I bolted awake, scrambled up in the sheets on the couch, 2:18 glowing from the darkness beneath the TV. I carried out of sleep the image of Frank's foot ticking back and forth, metering the drainage from the gut wound. As I tried to untangle my breathing, the bank of windows rocked into view, the stretch of lawn, the fence of the boxwood, and the murky canal. Induma's living room. I was in Induma's living room.

I rubbed my eyes, felt the pinch of sleep. The rucksack was at my feet. The top was loose, and I could see the red jewelry box inside. I reached in, pulled out those earrings with the sapphire chips. Held them up to the faint light and pictured them against Induma's skin.

I thought about Frank and his thousand small decisions.

The stairs creaked a little on my way up. I paused outside her door. Opened it gently.

She was sleeping on her stomach, having slid down off her pillow, her hair a neat half circle against her cheek. The image of peacefulness. And then her eyes were open, and she wiped her mouth and rustled up. She tilted her head for me to come in, and I crossed on unsteady legs and stood a few feet from the bed, the jewelry box hard in my sweating hand and low by my side, hidden. She was leaning back, resting her elbows on the clutch of pillows behind her, her eyes dark and serious, her shiny hair spilled forward on her shoulders, the strokes of her collarbone pronounced beneath that velvet skin.

I said, "There's no part of you I don't find magical."

I wanted to get it all out, because I knew if I stopped, I wouldn't be able to pick up again. "I know I blew it before. With us. But everything that's happened has cracked my life open. And I got to see it for what it was. And what it isn't. I'd do anything to be with you again, and I'm ready for it to be different."

The sound of her shifting, and then she was sitting upright. She said, "Nick," and I heard it in her tone and felt my insides crumble. My mouth was dry, and I thought I might need to sit down, but I couldn't, so I stood there on the cold floorboards to take what was coming next.

She said, "I'll always love you, Nick, but I'm not where I was. Life doesn't wait. You don't just get to pick up where you left off."

Far away, in one of the neighboring houses, I could hear canned laughter from a too-loud TV. My voice was hoarse. "No, but maybe sometimes you get a second chance."

"Look, I know you're raw right now, and that you believe everything you're saying, but how do I know this is where you'll stay? How do you know? You've got so much to put back together, Nick."

I half turned, pushed that jewelry box into my pocket. Breathed. "How do I do that? Put it back together?"

"You show up," she said. "Day after day."

My face felt heavy, tugging my gaze to the floor. "I want you to know," I said. "You were worth it. You were worth everything. I just couldn't figure out how to do it right."

Emotion flickered across her face-sadness, but something else there, too, something she'd been waiting to feel.

I took a moment to soak in the bedroom I'd once felt at home in. The three-wick candle, taller than the nightstand. The facing bathroom's burnt-caramel walls, matching the towels thrown over the lip of the claw-foot tub we used to dip into before succumbing to an exhausted, entangled slumber.

And then I turned and walked out, my steps heavy down the stairs. In the bathroom off the entry, I shoveled cold water over my face, tried to catch my breath.

Through the wall I heard the creak of the front door.

Quietly I unbuckled my belt and slid it free, wrapping either end around my fists.

Muted footsteps. Approaching.

I put my back to the wall behind the bathroom door. The handle dipped, and the door opened. I was about to lunge when I saw Alejandro's reflection in the mirror.

I stepped out, lowering my hands. "What are you doing here?"

"Shouldn't I ask you that?" He paused to acknowledge my makeshift garrote, then started digging through the medicine cabinet. "Nice advice you give me. On the date. It's a joke to you, but now we fighting."

"Handro, listen. You can't-you shouldn't have seen me. You can't tell anyone that I was here. It could be really dangerous."

"You Ethan Hunt now, eh?" He started humming the theme from Mission Impossible.

I said, "I'm not fucking around. This could wind up getting us killed."

His smile vanished, replaced by something like a scowl, and I was surprised by the steel in his dark gaze. "Nick, I grew up in Boyaca. When I was a kid, Colombia had the highest murder rate in the world. Cartel, DEA-it was ugly time. People point the fingers. People disappear. You heard about the necktie, no?" He made a cutting gesture beneath his chin and mimed pulling his tongue through the slit. "Usually they don't bother with this. They just machete off the head."

"Okay," I said. "I get it."

"On my way to school, I pass trucks and workers. I keep my eyes straight ahead. I careful not to see anything." He was looking through the drawers under the sink, a bit anxiously, not finding whatever he was searching for. "I got to school every day. Some of my friends didn't. Some nights I have to help look for them. Sometime we find a body. Sometime we find a head." He finished with the last drawer and stood, exasperated.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"My pills."

I reached for the towel I'd just used to dry my face. There was an orange bottle beneath it. I made out the pharmacy lettering-IN E VENT OF PANIC ATTACK-just before Alejandro grabbed the bottle and jammed it into a pocket. Again I saw something in his face I'd never seen before, and I thought about his happy-go-lucky demeanor and wondered how hard he'd had to fight to get comfortable in the world.

Alejandro shoved his lank hair from his eyes, grabbed the edge of the door. "I been through this mierda Third World-style. So don't you question how / stand by a friend just because you don't know how to act like one."

His footsteps padded out, and then the front door opened and closed quietly.

I stared at myself in the mirror, didn't much like what I saw.

I made sure Alejandro had locked the front door behind him, then returned to the couch. Resting my feet on the coffee table, I watched the windows. They had lever locks, simple throw-and-clicks with a catch that made them immune to jimmying. Good locks.

Seized by an impulse, I sprang up and threw those levers, one after the other, elbowing each window open on a slight tilt. Back on the couch, I listened to my heart thudding its disapproval. But I didn't get up.

I stared at those locks, breathing the fresh breeze, for what must have been hours. It's amazing what you can hear through a screen at night. I could sense the canal. Dragonflies buzzing, cicadas singing, the mossy reek of standing water. I could see the fluttering shadows of the Tibetan prayer flags nailed to the eaves.

With great effort I averted my gaze from the windows, slid down on the couch, closed my eyes. The locks called to me, jealous for my attention, but I ignored them. The pleas rose to demands, a great, angry clamoring in my head, but still I didn't answer.

Security matters. But maybe comfort matters, too.

A thousand small decisions.

Sometime around morning I fell asleep.