American Dirt : A Novel (2020) Page 5

  Oh, the poem was terrible. It was both grave and frivolous, so bad that it made Lydia love him much, much more, because of how vulnerable he was in sharing it with her. When he finished reading and looked up for her reaction, his face was a twist of worry. But her eyes were bright and reassuring, and she genuinely meant the words she gave him in that moment.

  ‘How beautiful. How very beautiful.’

  The maturing friendship with Javier was surprising in its swiftness and intensity. The flirtation had mostly ceased, and in its place, she discovered an intimacy she’d seldom experienced outside of family. There was no feeling of romance on Lydia’s end, but their bond was refreshing. Javier reminded her, in the middle of her mothering years, that life was exciting, that there was always the possibility of something, or someone, previously undiscovered.

  On her birthday, a day Lydia did not recall revealing to him, Javier arrived with a silver parcel the size of a book. The ribbon said, jacques genin.

  ‘The principal chocolatier in Paris,’ Javier explained.

  Lydia demurred, but not convincingly. (She loved chocolate.) And she accidentally ate every last one of the tiny masterpieces before Sebastián and Luca arrived at her shop that evening to take her out for her birthday dinner.

  Because of an eruption of violence between rival cartels in Acapulco, Lydia and her family, indeed most families in the city, no longer frequented their favorite neighborhood cafés. The challenger to the establishment was a new cartel that called itself Los Jardineros, a name that failed, initially, to evoke the appropriate fear in the populace. That problem had been transitory. Shortly after their formation, everyone in the city knew that ‘The Gardeners’ used guns only when they didn’t have time to indulge their creativity. Their preferred tools were more intimate: spade, ax, sickle, hook, machete. The simple instruments of hacking and trenching. With these, Los Jardineros moved the earth; with these, they unseated and buried their rivals. A few of the dethroned survivors managed to join the ranks of their conquerors; most fled the city. The result was a recent decrease in bloodshed as the emergent winner flung a shroud of uneasy calm across the shoulders of Acapulco. Nearly four months of relative quiet followed, and the citizens of Acapulco cautiously returned to the streets, to the restaurants and shops. They were eager to repair the damage to their economy. They were ready for a cocktail. So, in the safest district, where tourist money had always encouraged some restraint, in a restaurant selected more for its security than for its menu, and surrounded by the shining faces of her family, Lydia blew out the candle on her thirty-second birthday cake.

  Later that night, after Luca went to bed, and Sebastián opened a bottle of wine on the couch, their conversation turned inevitably to the condition of life in Acapulco. Lydia stood at the open counter, leaning across it with a glass of wine at her elbow.

  ‘It was nice to be able to go out to dinner tonight,’ she said.

  ‘It felt almost normal, right?’ Sebastián was in the living room, his legs propped on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles.

  ‘There were a lot of people out.’

  It was the first time they’d taken Luca out for a meal since last summer.

  ‘Next we have to get the tourists back,’ Sebastián said.

  Lydia took a deep breath. Tourism had always been the lifeblood of Acapulco, and the violence had scared most of those tourists away. She didn’t know how long she’d be able to keep the shop afloat if they didn’t return. It was tempting to hope the recent peace signaled a sea change.

  ‘Do you think things might really get better now?’

  She asked because Sebastián’s knowledge of the cartels was exhaustive, which both impressed and discomfited her. He knew things. Most people were like Lydia; they didn’t want to know. They tried to insulate themselves from the ugliness of the narco violence because they couldn’t handle it. But Sebastián was ravenous for it. A free press was the last line of defense, he said, the only thing left standing between the people of Mexico and complete annihilation. It was his vocation, and when they were young, she’d admired that idealism. She’d imagined that any child of Sebastián’s would come out of her womb honorably, with a fully formed, unimpeachable morality. She wouldn’t even have to teach their babies right from wrong. But now the cartels murdered a Mexican journalist every few weeks, and Lydia recoiled from her husband’s integrity. It felt sanctimonious, selfish. She wanted Sebastián alive more than she wanted his strong principles. She wished he would quit, do something simpler, safer. She tried to be supportive, but sometimes it made her so angry that he chose this danger. When that anger flared up and intruded, they moved around it like a piece of furniture too big for the room it occupied.

  ‘It’s already better,’ Sebastián said thoughtfully, from behind his wineglass.

  ‘I mean, it’s quieter,’ Lydia said. ‘But is it really better?’

  ‘That depends on your criteria, I guess.’ He looked up at her. ‘If you like to go out to dinner, then yes, things are better.’

  Lydia frowned. She really did like to go out to dinner. Was she that superficial?

  ‘The new jefe is smart,’ Sebastián said. ‘He knows stability is the key, and he wants peace. So we’ll see, maybe things will get better under Los Jardineros than they were before.’

  ‘Better how? You think he can fix the economy? Bring back tourism?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe.’ Sebastián shrugged. ‘If he can really stanch the violence long-term. For now, at least it’s limited to other narcos. They’re not running around murdering innocents for fun.’

  ‘What about that kid on the beach last week?’

  ‘Collateral damage.’

  Lydia cringed and took a gulp of wine. Her husband wasn’t a callous man. She hated when he talked like this. Sebastián saw her flinch and stood up to reach across the counter. He squeezed her hands.

  ‘I know it’s awful,’ he said. ‘But that kid on the beach was an accident. He was caught in the crossfire, that’s all I meant. They weren’t gunning for him.’ He tugged lightly on her hand. ‘Come sit with me?’

  Lydia rounded the counter and joined him on the couch.

  ‘I know you don’t like to think of it like this, but at the end of the day, these guys are businessmen, and this one is smarter than most.’ He put his arm around her. ‘He’s not your typical narco. In a different life, he could’ve been Bill Gates or something. An entrepreneur.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, threading one arm across his midsection and resting her head on his chest. ‘Maybe he should run for mayor.’

  ‘I think he’s more of a chamber of commerce kinda guy.’ Sebastián laughed, but Lydia couldn’t. They were quiet for a moment, and then Sebastián said, ‘La Lechuza.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s his name.’ The Owl.

  Now she was able to laugh. ‘Are you serious?’ She sat up to look him in the face, to determine if he was messing with her. Sometimes he fed her nonsense just to test how gullible she was. This time, his face was innocent. ‘The Owl? That’s a terrible name!’ She laughed again. ‘Owls aren’t scary.’

  ‘What do you mean? Owls are terrifying,’ Sebastián said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Hoo,’ he said.

  ‘Oh my God, stop it.’

  He worked his fingers into her hair, and she felt content there, leaning against his chest. She could smell the sweet red wine on his breath.

  ‘I love you, Sebastián.’

  ‘Hoo,’ he said again.

  They both laughed. They kissed. They left their wine on the table.

  It wasn’t until much later that night, when Lydia sat trying to read in the circle of lamplight that illumined only her side of the bed, when Sebastián had long since fallen asleep, his head resting on the bare skin of his arm, his snore a soft veil of familiarity in the room, that Lyd
ia felt a dart of something worrisome pierce her consciousness. Something Sebastián had said. In a different life, he could’ve been Bill Gates. She folded her book closed and set it on her nightstand.

  In a different life. The words echoed uncomfortably through her mind.

  She pulled off the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Sebastián stirred but didn’t wake. Her baggy T-shirt barely covered her backside and her feet were cold against the moonlit tiles of the hallway. She padded toward the kitchen, to the table where the three of them often ate dinner together. His backpack was there, not entirely zipped shut. She pulled out his laptop and turned on the light over the stove. There were notebooks in the backpack, too, and several file folders stuffed with photos and documents.

  Lydia hoped she was wrong, but she knew, somehow, what she would find before she found it. Near the bottom of a stack of pictures in the second folder: there, sitting at a table on a veranda with several other men, the face that was now dear to her. The wide mustache, the recognizable glasses. There was no question who La Lechuza was. Behind the wine and the cake and the dinner, she could still taste his chocolates on her tongue.

  Chapter Five

  At home, Luca’s little room has a night-light in the shape of Noah’s ark. It’s not a very bright one, but it makes enough light that when he has a nightmare and shoves back the covers to run in to Papi, he’s able to see where his bare feet meet the tiled floor. So he’s disoriented when he wakes up in the darkened room at the Hotel Duquesa Imperial. He can’t make out a single shape in the blackness. He sits up in the unfamiliar bed, thrusting his legs over the edge.

  ‘Papi?’ It’s always Papi he calls for first. Papi whose side of the bed he approaches, Papi he taps on the shoulder, who tucks him into the fold of his arm, who doesn’t make him go back to his own room. Papi’s pillow smells faintly of the amber liquid he drinks at bedtime. Mami is great for the daytime things, but Papi is better, infinitely better, at tolerating disruptions to his sleep. ‘Papi,’ Luca calls a second time, and his voice sounds strange without the close walls to contain it.

  Luca clutches the edge of the puffy blanket. ‘Mami?’ he tries then. There’s breathing nearby, which ceases, then rearranges itself.

  ‘I’m here, mi amor. Come here.’

  Mami. Luca draws his legs back beneath the covers and leans against the wall of pillows behind him, and that’s when it returns, all at once. The memory of what happened. The truth of where they are. The breath squeezes out of Luca’s small body, and his knees curl up to his face. He covers his head with his arms and screams without intending to – the sound escapes from him. Mami sits up quickly on her knees and reaches for the lamp, groping for the switch. Now the room is illuminated, but Luca can sense that only through the clamped shutters of his eyelids. Mami pulls him close and folds him up, gets her legs beneath him so the knot of him is on her lap, and they stay like that for a long time. She doesn’t try to stop him from screaming or crying, she just hangs on and wraps herself around him as best she can. It’s as if they are riding out a hurricane. When the worst of it has passed, perhaps fifteen minutes later, Luca’s eyes feel like sandpaper and he still can’t find a way to loosen the joints of his body, but at least he’s breathing again. In and out, in and out. His face is swollen.

  Lydia gets out of bed, wearing one of the long T-shirts she bought at Walmart, and Luca writhes. There’s a physical pain to their minor separation. She grabs a bottle of water from the dresser and then darts back to him.

  ‘I’m right here,’ she says. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Luca lies on his side, curled up. She twists the cap off the bottle and takes a drink, then hands it to him. Her black hair is a wild tumble. He shakes his head, but she insists.

  ‘Sit up. Drink.’

  He drags his body upright, and she holds the bottle to his lips, tips it in for him like she did when he was a baby.

  ‘Someone once told me that the only good advice for grief is to stay hydrated. Because everything else is just chingaderas.’

  Mami cursed again! That’s the second time since yesterday. Luca closes his lips, forcing the bottle out, but she hands it to him.

  ‘Have some more,’ she says.

  Her face is splotchy but dry, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes. Her expression is one Luca has never seen before, and he fears it might be permanent. It’s as if seven fishermen have cast their hooks into her from different directions and they’re all pulling at once. One from the eyebrow, one from the lip, another at the nose, one from the cheek. Mami is contorted. She turns the alarm clock face so she can see it. When she leans over the nightstand, the weight of Papi’s wedding ring drags at the gold chain she wears around her neck, dwarfing the three little loops that have always lived there. She tucks it back inside the collar of her T-shirt.

  ‘Four forty-eight,’ she says. ‘No more sleep for us, right?’

  Luca doesn’t answer. He drinks from the water bottle. She gathers her tumultuous hair into a ponytail, stands up from the bed again, and turns on the television. She finds an English-language cartoon. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Practice,’ even though he doesn’t need practice. His English is excellent.

  She orders room service: eggs and toast and fruit. The thought of eating makes Luca’s stomach churn, so he stops thinking about it. He lets his eyes hook into the television, and his body soften. His head feels like a cinder block, his nose stuffed. He opens his mouth to breathe gently, but when Mami steps into the bathroom and turns the shower on, Luca gets up from the bed and pads across the room to join her. She’s sitting on the toilet, so he perches on the edge of the tub until she’s finished. Then he takes a turn. Not because he has to go, but because he doesn’t want to be alone in the other room. He sits there with his underwear around his ankles until he hears the handle squeak and the water stop. He stands and flushes just as she pulls back the curtain.

  ‘You should take a shower, too,’ she says, stepping out, wrapping herself in a towel. ‘It might be a few days before you have another chance.’

  Luca looks at her in the mirror and shakes his head once. It’s impossible for him to shower. To be alone there, wedged between the tiled walls with the sound of gunfire raking across Abuela’s back patio. He shakes his head again, and shuts his eyes tightly, but it’s no use. He’s reliving it again, his body frantic, his breath a whip of panic. The sound that comes out of him this time is something between a whimper and a screech. He tries to be louder than the gunfire in his head.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ Mami says, holding him. And even though Luca knows those words are not strictly true, he clings to them regardless.

  She washes him instead in the sink with sudsy water and a washcloth, like she used to do when he was a baby. Neck, ears, armpits, tummy, back, bottom, undercarriage, legs, and feet. She swabs off the grime, the spots of dried blood, the clinging flecks of vomit. She makes him clean and dry. She pats him down with a white towel, fluffy and warm against his skin.

  Even though they’re expecting the room service delivery, the knock at the door, when it comes, startles them both. They are jittery from grief, and there’s a thinness in the air that amplifies every sound. He doesn’t want to, but Luca waits in the bathroom with the door locked while his mother answers the delivery. He hums softly to himself as soon as he’s alone, but it’s not music. There’s no melody in it. Lydia hesitates between the two locked doors. Behind the bathroom one, she can hear the tuneless humming. Behind the other, a man’s voice repeats the announcement of their breakfast delivery. She is barefoot on the carpet, and her hands shake as she lugs the desk chair out of the way and reaches for the doorknob. She wants to stretch up on her bare toes and look out the peephole to make sure, but how can she? How can she, when all she can imagine is seeing the dark tunnel of a gun barrel on the other side and then immediately seeing nothing at all ever again? But if
that’s the fate that awaits her, she tells herself, then no, at least she won’t unlock the door and invite it in. She holds her breath as she reaches out silently and plants her hands on either side of the peephole. The young man outside pushes a cart laden with silver trays. He wears a uniform. His face is scarred with acne. His name tag says ikal. None of it means anything about their safety. She returns to the flats of her feet, pads over to the dresser, and removes her machete from the top drawer.

  ‘Be right there, just a second!’ she says.

  She’s wearing the thick bathrobe she found in the closet, and she slips the machete into its baggy pocket. She keeps her hand in there and grips the handle tightly. She says the word ‘okay’ out loud to herself. And then she opens the door.

  Ikal, it is immediately obvious, is not a sicario. He’s barely even a room service delivery boy. He ducks his head and clears his throat and seems embarrassed to be in a hotel room with a woman wearing a bathrobe. He averts his eyes as he steps past her and places their tray almost apologetically on the desk. Then he returns to his waiting cart in the doorway and hands her the billfold for her signature. Lydia feels confident enough to leave the machete in her pocket momentarily while she signs it. She thanks him and hands it back and then, just as the door is about to swing closed, he says, ‘Wait, I almost forgot,’ and Lydia’s hand darts back into her pocket. But he only hands her some cutlery wrapped in two cloth napkins.

  ‘And this,’ he says, producing a padded envelope from a lower shelf. ‘The front desk asked me to bring it up.’

  Lydia takes a small step back. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A delivery,’ he says. ‘Arrived for you last night.’

  Lydia shakes her head. No one knows we’re here, no one knows we’re here. A panic refrain.