A Small Fortune (7 page)

“You got deported?”

“Live. On the six o’clock news.”

Countless newsreels flash in my head of immigrants in handcuffs marching past a chain-link fence, the wide-open doors of a paddy wagon waiting to swallow them up. I now know what it is to be locked inside a small, confined space, waiting to be handed one’s fate.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was my own fault. I made a name for myself by poking fun at the stereotypes. The tattooed gang stuff, migrant worker, taco maker, guy in cuffs getting deported.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. And someone found out that I was busted in a raid, and there it was, the six o’clock satire. Life imitating art. The last laugh on me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Actually, I’d say
this
is the last laugh. Caught in a prescription drug ring.” He shakes his head as if to say how ridiculous it all is.

We both give a gentle laugh. I drop my hand on his knee without thinking. The mood shifts. There’s a moment when I know I should take it back, withdraw it quickly as if I haven’t done it at all, but I allow the moment pass.

He stares down at my hand, and after a moment he places his own on top of it.

Clouds roll in and obscure the evening sun. A dull pressure fills the air. A thick breeze carries the far-off smell of rain.

Our eyes remain glued to our hands, one on top of the other, a tacky wedding photo pose.

“It’s hard for me to think of them as bad people,” Benicio finally says. “Leon has been like a big brother to me. And Isabel. My baby sister.” He stops.

“Does the little boy belong to her?”

He glances up and swallows, and I see the hurt in his eyes. It’s followed by something else. Something that seems to me more complicated, thorny. “Benny,” he says. “She named him after me. There’s no father. Another cliché for the books. But you have to understand. We didn’t grow up with any of this. Poor, yes, but not this.”

“What happened?”

“Long story made short. My parents were killed when a bus they were traveling in was forced off the road into a ravine. They had debts we didn’t know about. I snuck into the States to help pay them and got a job in a frozen food factory in L.A. I sent every dollar home that I didn’t need to survive. I’d always been the class clown, and one night at a comedy club I started this banter with a comedian on stage, and it turned out I was funnier than he was. One thing led to another and I became part of the comedy scene. I even had a couple of small parts in movies you’ve probably never heard of.”

“Try me,” I say.

“
Austin’s Willing Execution
.”

“A comedy?”

“Hilarious.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Told you. The other was
In the Company of Harold’s Daughter
.”

“You were in that? My God. Oliver has that. He’s watched it a hundred times.”

“And you?”

“No.”

“I rest my case. Anyway,” he continues with a smile, “I sent even more money home, and after a while I figured the debts had been paid. What I didn’t know was that Leon had taken some of the money and started a business on the side. You get my drift. He hired my sister. I got deported, and the rest you already know.”

I flip my hand over and squeeze his fingers. We both glance at my scabby wrist. “What happened to the woman you were engaged to?”

This seems to catch him off guard. “Emily. Yes, well, Emily went on to marry a guy I did shows with. I always thought he was one who called the INS.”

“My God.”

“Yes. But I also think the joke’s on him. It doesn’t pay to be a rebounder.”

The word
rebounder
sticks in my head. I try to imagine myself rebounding. There’d be issues. Serious issues. How could I ever get close to someone again? How could I ever trust anyone after this?

“Emily doesn’t really care about him,” Benicio says. “At least that’s what she says in her e-mails.”

In the quiet his expression changes to something raw and achy, his eyes narrowing as if in the dark.

“Anyway,” he says. “What about you? What do you do back home?”

The thought of home causes me to pull my hand away, retreat into the place where I don’t want to be touched. “I’m a copyeditor. Very exciting stuff. It’s my business to leave behind clean, perfectly understood worlds.” I stop short of telling him what kind of worlds. “Clearly that’s only on paper.”

“Clearly.” He smiles.

“These days, between creative writing workshops and spell-check, manuscripts come to me so polished I spend most of my time looking for words that spell-check doesn’t catch. Like homophones.”

“What’s that?” he asks as if he truly wants to know.

“Words that have the same sound but different meanings and spelling.”

“Ah, like beach on the shore, and Chico said that woman is a
beech
?”

I roll my eyes. “The resident comedian, ladies and gentlemen.”

He smiles again, and it suddenly feels like we’re on a first date, our voices low and close, the palpable awkwardness of being examined for a possible future.

“Wait,” he says. “Like a beech tree instead.”

“Exactly.” Even I didn’t think of that one.

“Tell me some good ones.”

It’s getting late. The room will soon be completely dark. Any moment there’ll be rain.

“Let’s see,” I say. “She hadn’t noticed the claws until he held the paper to her face.”

Benicio appears confused.

“Clause. It’s part of a contract. And bear claws.” I curl my fingers in the air.

It doesn’t seem to register.

“Never mind,” I say. “How about, her ring was made of three carrots?” I munch an imaginary carrot.

Benicio laughs. “Nice.”

“Could he be the cereal killer? As in corn flakes.”

Benicio laughs again. “Good one. But I can’t get past the size of that ring. He must have used baby carrots.”

“Yeah. Hard to bend, though,” I say.

How can we be joking at a time like this? It’s as if nothing is real. Not my past, not the kidnapping, not whatever is waiting on the other side the door.

Benicio holds my gaze a few seconds too long, and I expect him to say something about laughter being the best medicine, but what he says is, “I love the sound of your voice.”

I press my hand into my chest to stop it from pulling so tight.

“Has anyone ever told you that?” he asks.

I can almost feel Oliver’s tiny fingers threading my own. “Yes.”

“Well. It’s true. Whoever told you that was telling you the truth.”

I take a deep breath. “It wasn’t my husband,” I say. “Naturally.”

We lock eyes and laugh. It grows stronger until it feels if we’ve pulled a cork on all the agony. We can’t stop ourselves. He rolls one way and I roll the other. Our lungs empty of dread, then refill with air so fresh and blue it’s intoxicating. My stomach, which has endured crunches for months, begins to feel sore. I venture into hysterics, my ears filling with the cadence of Benicio’s infectious laugh, causing me to stagger over the line between laughter and tears.

I finally resign myself to the offer of his hand. When he pulls me up to sit, a thin tear spills down my cheek, and a heaviness descends back on the room.

He wipes away the teardrop with his thumb and leans close. Is he going to kiss me?

It seems he is.

I wasn’t prepared for the rush of desire that flooded throughout my body the first time Seth leaned over the counter and pressed his mouth into mine. I wasn’t prepared for my inability to resist. We’d just been discussing the latest Phillip Roth novel, which I didn’t like and he did, when I looked up from Roth’s book and met Seth’s eyes. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how full of need I had been. How lonesome my marriage to Jonathon had been, how much of a mistake. All along my secret yearnings for Seth had trickled inside me, one by one, though until that moment I’d thought them nothing more than a series of harmless daydreams. But that day at the counter I realized those yearnings had unknowingly built up in my system like a poison with a concentration that becomes critical over time.

The rush from Seth’s kiss overwhelmed me. There was no other word for it. I pulled away, stunned. Phillip Roth fell to my feet and tore a page.

“So many pages,” Seth said, his lips no more than an inch from mine. “He could lose a few and still tell the same story.”

My chest rose for air. “So you agree with me then?”

“No doubt I agree with you, love,” he said. And then he leaned away and called out to Noah, the forgotten young employee stocking books in another room. “I have an errand to run!” Seth pulled me out through the jangling front door, past the rows of potted bamboo, the red dahlias in full bloom, out around the south side of the house, and up the cedar back stairs.

When the heat from Benicio’s mouth presses into my lips, that first time with Seth comes flooding back. But there have been no months of buildup. No hours lost inside daydreams. This is a truck barreling through a red light, crashing into me without warning.

The stroke of our tongues gives me a jolt, and my need for him swells. Every move is tender and earnest. He releases the tie from my hair and cradles the back of my head. He pulls away and gently kisses my cheek, forehead, temple, the side of my neck. When he slips his tongue back into to my mouth the ache between my legs intensifies. He caresses my breast through my thin blouse.

Then he pauses and meets my eyes.

“This can’t possibly be a good idea,” I say, which even to me sounds like complete nonsense. I’m about to burst. It’s a great idea. The best idea I’ve had in years.

He sits back without taking his eyes off me. His chest rises and falls in heavy waves.

These could very well be the last moments of my life. A brutal reality I need to face. I’ve made so many bad decisions. Is this just another in the series? Or is denying Benicio the real mistake?

I take his hand and lead him to the bed. He removes his shirt, and the air between us fills with the scent of sun and sweat and skin. Beneath my fingers his body feels smooth, his muscles hard, defined, dipping into the valley of his spine. Everywhere his hand comes to touch me—shoulder, breast, cupped around my mouth—a soft, slow, heat rises to meet it.

When he slides his hand to the waist of my shorts, I gasp. Is fear the force that’s driving us? Is my sense of reason completely distorted? What the hell are we doing?

The need for him claws from deep within me. Animal. Carnal. Primal. This strikes me as funny, so very Dee Dee Dawson. Laughter reaches the base of my throat and works its way into my mouth.

Benicio stops and draws back, panting. “What is it?” His smile slowly mirrors mine.

My mind tunnels back to when I first saw him at the pool, how the blood charged through me. What I feel now began the moment I laid eyes on him. What I feel has nothing to do with shock or fear or not being able to think clearly. It’s him. It’s the two of us, together. “Nothing,” I whisper. My laughter burns off and disappears, and along with it, my resolve to continue what we’ve started.

“I’m sorry,” I say, rolling away.

After a moment he pulls my back into his chest and spoons me tightly. I can feel his heavy breath on my neck, his heart pounding against my spine. The first drops of rain fall past the window, and a minute later Benicio’s heart eases its way to normal.

Rain lashes down. Lightning flashes through the room, then a crack of thunder, loud and jolting as a gunshot.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Benicio says.

My back is still against his chest, his arms still holding me close in the hot, clammy air. My heart beats into his hands.

“The storm?” I ask.

“Yes. But not the one outside.” He squeezes me.

“What were you not expecting? For me to stop what we were doing?”

Benicio kisses my temple, his lips warm and dry. “No. I didn’t expect it to feel like that.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“I think you know.”

I let go a small, nearly imperceptible sigh.

Rain drums against the wide leaves and palms. The riverbed fills and rushes downhill. I close my eyes and begin to drift, thinking how I’ve been living like a paper cutout, a flat, one-dimensional image of a wife and mother. No change in perspective under different lighting. No lovely hue along the edge. No shadows thrown from the depth. In fact, there is no depth. And I have no one to blame but myself.

I can feel layers forming inside me, trenches being dug for me to climb into and fight. Jonathon isn’t the only enemy here. I’ve been well armed in the fight against myself. I’ve carried around a pool of simmering hostility for years. It’s eaten my insides like acid, and yet I refused to put it down. What’s happened these last few months to finally blow the lid off? Why have I suddenly begun to fill with rage?

The answer hits me like a cuff to the back of the head. Oliver. It has to do with Oliver, though not in the way I once thought. His normal teenage angst, something I should have seen for what it is and let it be, has instead triggered my own feelings of anger and distress. Day after day, fight after fight, I see myself in Oliver. I can no longer escape who I am. He’s become my mirror. The angrier he turns, the more my fury reflects back, and on we go, mirroring one another so many times that my whole life has become distorted, a superimposed reflection, a thing so unrecognizable it’s hideous.

My lids fly open at Benicio’s scream.

Isabel and Leon burst in yelling something I don’t understand.

I sit up and jump to the end of the bed. Isabel catches me by the hair. She pulls me over to the chair and makes me sit.

“What?” I shout. “What’s happening?”

Isabel slaps me again. This time, gun or no gun, I’m about to hit her back, but Benicio jumps up and grabs Isabel from behind. He jerks her away so hard she crashes against the edge of the bed and lands on the floor.

A look flashes between them. Some kind of knowledge I can’t put my finger on. Do they suddenly see themselves as brother and sister instead of enemies?

Leon draws back a fist and hits Benicio, hard, in the face. An audible crack fills the room. Benicio screams in a way that tears my chest. He grabs his nose as blood streams through his fingers.

I try to get to him, but Isabel pushes me back into the chair with a pistol in my face. This time I feel the implication. This time I’m right there, present for my own execution.

With her free hand Isabel pulls a set of zip ties from her pocket. She steps behind me and fastens my ankles to the chair legs even tighter than the first time.

“Please,” I cry. “There’s no need for this.”

“It’s your fault!” Isabel says.

“What is? What did I do? I haven’t done anything! He’s lying. Jonathon is lying to all of you!”

Isabel jerks my arms with exaggerated force. Hatred radiates off her skin. It’s unmistakable. This woman despises me. She finishes fastening the ties and pokes the top of my head with the side of her gun.

I tell myself to stay calm. As much as I want to kill her with my bare hands, I know fighting her will only lead to something worse.

Dark blood glistens down Benicio’s face and hands. He chokes and spits a mouth full of red to the floor.

I’m going to be sick.

Leon shouts at Isabel. She leaves the room and comes back with a towel. He snatches it from her and hands it to Benicio, who tilts his head and covers his face with the towel. Blood coats his neck.

Leon backs him into the chair. He seems to be soothing him in Spanish, his voice suddenly soft. He clasps Benicio’s ankles to the chair and then allows him to get his nose under control before he takes the towel away and ties Benicio’s hands.

Benicio turns to me, his right eye badly swollen.

“I apologize if that comes out crooked,” Leon says in English.

Benicio moans.

Leon shakes his head. “
Deberias haberme escuchado
. You should have listened to me,” he repeats in English, apparently for my sake. Then he waves Isabel out of the room and locks the door behind himself.

I can’t control my panicked breath.

“It’s all right,” Benicio says.

“It is
not
all right.”

“It will be.” His head sounds stuffed with cotton.

“Why are they doing this?”

Benicio seems to be searching for air. “I think I know how we can escape,” he says. “What day do you think it is?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Just tell me.”

“Why are they doing this?”

“Please!” he says.

“Christ. Your eyes are turning black.”

“Please!”

“I don’t know! Sunday or Monday. Who knows how long we were out in the beginning.”

“I’m not sure either. But we don’t want to get it wrong.”

“Why?”

He spits another mouthful of blood to the floor. He pants as he speaks, clearly struggling to breathe through his nose. “Tuesday is Leon’s morning to help his parents check in a group of tourists at the condo. Paulo, one of the goons outside, has to help him with the luggage. His brother, Roberto”—he stops and spits more blood to the floor—“goon number two who messed up my face the first time, has to run the
agua
truck for his father so he can take his mother for her cancer treatments.”

“What are you saying?”

“Tuesday morning is the only time Isabel is left alone.”

“For how long?”

“An hour, maybe two. And we don’t have a watch.”

“What do you plan to do, talk her into letting us go?”

Benicio appears to stifle a laugh. The swollen space between his eyes makes him look like a lion. “Isabel has very big plans.” He coughs up blood, spits it away from me. “She’s not going to let us go without a fight.”

“What plans?”

“The kind only money can buy.”

“Isabel is insane.”

Benicio tilts his head back and breathes heavily through his mouth.

“You need a doctor, Benicio. Badly.”

“I think I know how we can get past her.”

I try to picture how all of this is going to play out. All I can see is a gun going off in my face. The idea that Oliver is going to grow up without a mother begins to fully sink in. I can’t bear it. My thoughts race away and for some reason land on Benny. “What will happen to Isabel if we escape on her watch?” I ask.

Benicio moans.

“I don’t know why I asked. She held a gun to your face. You may be her brother, but I can’t imagine she’d get too broken up if something happened to you.”

I think of the look that passed between them. It meant something. I follow my instinct, even as it tells me what I don’t want to hear. Benicio knows more than he’s letting on, and he’s made a conscious decision not to tell me.

He turns toward the storm. The air is filled with the pleasant midsummer smell of wet soil from the warm rain. For a moment I’m thrown by the incongruity of it all.

“How do you plan to get us out of here?” I ask. “How do you plan to get us out of these chairs?”

“The broken glass.”

“What about it?”

“You need to fall over and scoot toward it. Wedge a piece in your hands and use it to cut the plastic.”

“Really. That’s your plan?”

“I’d do it myself if I weren’t afraid of hitting my face and knocking myself out.”

“You need a doctor.”

“That’s what you said.”

I imagine myself on the run, dodging bullets, getting hit, getting caught, raped, decapitated. A shiver runs through me.

“I don’t know if it’s worth it,” Benicio says. “I don’t know if I want to take the chance that we’ll be killed trying.”

“And if we do nothing?” I ask. “What do you think our chances are?”

“I think something has gone wrong somewhere. And the longer they have to wait, the madder they’re going to get.”

“Let’s say we do escape. Where do we go? The police?”

Benicio tries to laugh. “I have a whole routine about how corrupt the Mexican police force is. You want to hear it?”

“Not particularly.”

“And don’t forget Leon has your passport.”

“Shit.”

“I think there’s only one thing for us to do.”

“And that is?”

“Make our way back to the border and sneak in.”

“What?” I pull up a map of Mexico in my mind. “We’re hundreds of miles away from the border. How the hell are we going to cross half of Mexico and then sneak into the States without getting caught?”

“It’s not as if I haven’t done it before.”

Nights in the desert, hours locked in the back of a semi, crawling beneath barbed wire. There are people to be paid. “What are we supposed to do for money?”

“I don’t know. I have about three hundred pesos in my pocket to get us started.”

Three hundred pesos will buy us each a sandwich. I have several thousand dollars in my checking account. I think I might have tens of thousands in an investment fund. But now I’m not so sure.

“This is ridiculous,” I say. “I’m an American. I’ll just go to the consulate and explain everything. They’ll help me. I know they will. Or do you also have a routine about corrupt U.S. consulates in Mexico?”

Benicio doesn’t answer. Lightning flashes and thunder roars behind it. It takes a moment before the truth of what I’ve said dawns on me. Of course they will help me. But what about Benicio?

“There’s a small consulate in Nuevo Vallarta about five miles from town,” he says.

“What about you?”

Again he’s quiet.

“And Oliver,” I say. “Shouldn’t I go back for him?”

“I have a feeling Oliver isn’t waiting for you at the condo.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. But he wouldn’t be there. That would be stupid of them. He’s probably wherever your husband is. Or maybe he sent him home.”

Home? Who would be there to take him in? Maggie’s family? I’ve managed to completely isolate myself over the years. There are acquaintances, a couple of neighbors, but no one I can imagine Jonathon asking for such a favor. We’ve become the family written about in the papers after the fact. They seemed very nice but always kept to themselves. Jonathon has talked about people from the bank, but the only time I ever see him with them is at the annual picnics and obligatory holiday parties, their awkward body language a clear indication of the lines drawn between them.

How is Jonathon explaining my absence to Oliver? Does he tell him I’ve been kidnapped? If so, won’t Oliver wonder why Jonathon isn’t he going to the police? And what about Switzerland? How is he explaining that? I grit my teeth, and my entire body fills with a dark and savage hatred.

“I have no idea who or how many people are connected to this,” Benicio says. It appears to be getting more difficult for him to speak. “I would hate for you to get out of here, only to be trapped by someone else.”

How likely is that? I can’t help but wonder if he’s concerned for me or just concerned about being left behind.

The rain is softer now, the storm moving past, the pleasant smell of wet soil drifting away.

“I’m pretty sure that tomorrow is Tuesday,” he says. “We’ll have to stay awake until the sun comes up.” He spits more blood to the side, markedly less than before. “That will be close to five thirty in the morning. Once it’s up we’ll have to estimate the time. Count the seconds into hours until it feels close to eight. We’ll listen for the sound of movement in the house. The cars leaving.” His breathing is clearly labored. “I’m not sure how else to do it.”

“Stop talking,” I say. “Put your head back and take the pressure off your nose.”

He does what I ask.

I imagine counting, one Mississippi, two Mississippi for hours. It’ll be like counting sheep, impossible to stay awake for so long. “We’ll have to take turns counting. One rests while the other counts and then we switch off.”

He gives a moan I take for a yes.

Moments pass in quiet.

“How are we going to get past Isabel?” I finally ask.

Benicio lowers his head. The bleeding appears to have stopped. “First we need to decide where we’re going,” he says. “We can’t just run out of here without a plan. That’s suicide. They’ll find us if we’re not smart.”

I imagine myself on the streets of Puerto Vallarta, making my way to the consulate. Won’t that be the first place they look for me? I don’t speak the language, don’t know my way around, and can’t trust a single person. Then again, what are my chances of getting within a few miles to safety, compared to the hundreds it’ll take to reach the border?

“I think your best bet is to take a chance on the consulate.” He seems to be reading my mind. “Make your way back into the city and hail a cab. After that you’ll be there within half an hour.”

“What if they’re corrupt, like you said? What if they know who I am?”

“Make a scene. Scream your name. Attract as many witnesses as you can. Most people on the street will at least be able to understand you. There are Americans all around there. I think you’ll be all right.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know.” He sounds worse than ever. “I may have no choice but to get back over the border and do whatever I have to to survive.”

And where will I go when I’m free? Make my way home, sleep in my own bed, carry on a life with Oliver, the two of us thick as thieves after all of this? And Jonathon? Where is he? In jail? Dead? Or just lying low until the next time he offers me up for another of his mistakes? I might never be able to go home at all. These people know where I live. Their reaches go far beyond this house, this country. I feel tangled in a worldwide net.