Where Night Stops

by Douglas Light

  Higgles popped his eyes, trying to look stunned. “You think I roll with that kind of money?”

  “Yes.”

  His lips tightened like he’d swigged sour milk. “A demanding lad,” he said after a moment. Then pulled an envelope from his jacket, counted out five thousand euros. I pocketed the money.

  Pulling a key off his key ring, he handed it to me.

  “What’s this unlock?”

  “Your fortune,” he said. “When you meet your contact, just hand him this key—”

  “Whoa, hold up,” I said. “My contact?”

  “He has your money.”

  “You said you had the money.”

  “I do. In a sense. That key”—he pointed to the one I held—“gets you the money.”

  I dropped the key on the table. A bad situation, bullshit semantics. What little faith I had in Higgles had withered into a hard prune of distrust.

  Higgles lightly touched the key. “Your behavior saddens, but…” He shrugged, then launched into a discourse about wines of the Spain, the weather, the region. “The Spanish Civil War was fought here,” he said, pointing across the tavern like the entire ordeal had played out at one of the other tables.

  I asked what he thought about Orwell.

  A look of puzzlement peppered his face. “Orwell?”

  “Homage to Catalonia,” I said. “Book eight.”

  “Yes, right,” he said, pouring out the last of the wine. He flagged the waiter for yet more.

  “What’d you think about it?” I asked again.

  “It was interesting,” he said. “I liked the cover. The words in the book were very legible.” He went on to say traveling to a foreign country always seemed to cause him dandruff.

  We drank, talking about everything and nothing, mutually ignoring the topic of the key and the money. Talking like two friends who, after a nasty falling out years prior, had patched things up for the moment.

  An hour later, my gut drowned in wine, I said, “All right, give me the fucking key.”

  Exuberant, Higgles held his arms wide for a celebratory embrace. He wasn’t about to get one. “Wonderful,” he exclaimed, then told me when and where to get the money.

  I was drunk. “And you swear this is a quick snack,” I said, emboldened. “No white-tie sit-down meal or a meet-the-parents-type thing.”

  Higgles licked his wine-stained lips. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The money. The exchange,” I said. “It’s easy, yes?”

  “Right, yes. Like you said, it’s a snack. Just hand him the key and he’ll give you the cash. Simple.”

  The following night, I found my way to a gutted house at the edge of town. Bags of concrete, boards, and stacks of bricks lay around the worksite like rotting carcasses. Abandoned for lack of funds. Like most of Spain.

  The contact calmly smoked a cigarette on a half-finished stoop, waiting. A tiny man, barely over five foot. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. Eastern European, I’d guess.

  We made the cursory gestures of greeting. I handed him the key. He handed me a knapsack. I inspected it quickly. It was solid with cash.

  I nodded, turned to leave. Simple and quick. The gig was done.

  Or so I thought. The contact had a different idea. He stabbed me in the back. Literally. The first jab hammered me at my waistline, hitting my hipbone and, fortunately, not driving deep. The second, though, found the meat of my ass and stuck.

  I spun about, the pain pinwheeling through me, and caught my attacker in the temple with an elbow, staggering him back.

  Small as he was, the fucker could scrap. Fists and chops and kicks and bites. We went at it for what felt like an hour, grunting, slapping, punching, and kicking. Finally, I got a hold of a brick and swung savagely at his head.

  There was a crunch then the man folded like a broken lawn chair, dropping lifelessly to the dirty concrete.

  Had the Austin mess followed me halfway around the world or was this guy just a greedy asshole? I searched his pockets but found only the key. No wallet, no ID. A nameless, nonexistent man.

  I retrieved the knapsack, hobbled my way to the hotel, blood squishing in my shoe.

  It was only after I’d had safely locked myself in my room that I realized the knife still protruded from my ass. A souvenir.

  I labored through the papers the following day and the day after that, relying on my high school Spanish. No mention of a murder that I could find.

  For three weeks, I holed up in a moldy flat with a stellar view of the Santa Barbara Castle and drank liter after liter of Rioja, recovering. The money never got beyond my arm’s reach.

  ◉ ◉ ◉

  In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell tells of his time on the frontline fighting against the Communists during the Spanish Civil War. A muddle of confusion, propaganda, and a crippling need for supplies. Crouched down behind boulders on a hill, they’d fire random, wild shots across the valley, aiming at an unseen enemy defending the opposite hill. A lonely pop would sound, then a shot would be returned. The boredom of man.

  Then he took a bullet in the neck.

  No one thought he’d live. His companions thought he’d be dead before they could drag him off the battlefield, back to where an ambulance waited. When he got to the ambulance, the medics were positive he wouldn’t live to the hospital.

  But he lived.

  In the hospital, the doctors didn’t think he’d ever be able to speak again. He’d be forever a mute, his voice box scarred and mangled.

  But they were wrong. Orwell spoke again.

  Chapter 53

  A body at rest remains at rest. Unless acted upon. The knife wound laid me out for too long. My mind bubbled toxically, whipping up scenarios that weren’t real. I’d been cramped up too long while my wound healed. I was imagining things. I could swear I saw Ray-Ray from my hotel window, strolling the cobblestone streets of Alicante. How could that be? Why would he be here?

  I got back on my feet, packed the cash into a FedEx box, and shipped it to my PO Box in the Bronx. Then I switched out my passports, turned off my phone, and took a holiday.

  As long as I was in motion, was moving toward a destination, I felt safe. Like no one could find me. It was only once I reached my goal and terminated my travel that the worry blistered up in me.

  I flew down to Gibraltar and spent three days sitting on the hotel’s balcony watching a parade of tourists ignore the signs saying not to feed the monkeys and trying to befriend them with Snickers or organic energy bars. When the animals attacked, stealing cameras, purses, or sunglasses—or just serving up a violent slap—the people were stunned, perplexed. How could such a thing happen?

  I traveled on to North Africa.

  In Tangier, the idea of Morocco soured. The whole scene was rotten with patchouli-dipped backpackers arguing the genius of Paul Bowles. A dream decaying from the inside out.

  I moved on further, booked passage on a ferry to San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife.

  I should have flown.

  The season was tapering off and there were few other travelers, maybe twenty, rattling around on a boat built to hold more than two hundred. The Luxuri Freedom. It was devoid of comfort. The foam cushions had been removed, leaving only hard plastic benches to sit on. The men’s restroom was closed for repairs and the women’s had no toilet paper. And the bar, the place I’d hoped to seek refuge, served only Diet Lemon Pepsi, Cheez Puffs, and warm Jägermeister.

  Realizing I was American, a khaki-shorted woman from Alabama took to me like debt to a new credit card. The pale skin of her thighs glowed above her sunburnt cankles. She hated ferries, she said, leaning in toward me in confidence. “My husband thinks I’m afraid of those Somali pirates. But really, I’m just afraid of the boat flipping over and then the crocodiles eati
ng me.”

  I gazed out over the calm Atlantic, a breeze cooling my face. “Somalia is in East Africa. And crocodiles aren’t ocean animals.”

  She didn’t believe me on either count.

  I walked away, but she followed me as I strolled along the railing and peppered me with questions. Where was I from, was I married, did I have kids, what did I do for a living.

  “I work for ARD,” I said.

  “ARD?” Her face, Christmas-ribbon red from too much sun, shined greasily. “What’s ARD?”

  “Audits and Retribution Department. It’s a special division within the IRS.”

  “Retribution?”

  I nodded. “We go after unique cases, people who’ve been cheating the government for years.”

  She made a noise that passed for a laugh. “Well thank goodness my husband and I are law-abiding Americans.”

  I said nothing, just studied her inquisitively.

  “And anyway,” she said, “you probably only go after the big fish, the off-shore-bank, hedgefundy, Wall Street kinda guys, right?”

  “Everyone is equal in the eyes of the IRS. And you wouldn’t believe how even a little cheating adds up over time. Hey,” I said, turning on false warmth, “why don’t you write down your name and address for me?”

  She actually giggled, like I was asking her out on a date. “My name and address?”

  “Or just your social security number,” I said. “Then I can look up the rest.”

  I could see her mind churning, grasping for some foundation. “Why would you want to look me up?”

  “It’s a hobby I have, checking in on the people I meet on my travels.”

  She blanched under her sunburn. “You know, my husband is probably worried about me,” she murmured, cautiously retreating.

  At the bar, I ordered a shot of tepid Jägermeister and watched the blue waters of the Atlantic spread to the horizon. Africa was long forgotten. The island of Tenerife stood ahead. I ordered a bag of Cheez Puffs, a second shot, and a third for the bartender.

  “How much longer?” I asked him.

  My answer came in the reply from below decks. A bbbkkkAAAANNnngg tore the air as the engine coughed up an explosive old-man noise, then a second. The ferry’s engine died in a haze of oily smoke the color of egg yolk. The gritty cloud hovered tight to the water as our forward momentum slowed to a listing bob.

  There was a crackle and screech as the PA system came to life. The captain’s voice creaked over the speakers, his Spanish-African accent the stuff of B-movie villains. Help had been summoned, he said. Our rescue would arrive shortly.

  A half hour passed. Then an hour. No additional announcements, no updates. We dipped and rose in the waters until finally, three hours later, an ancient tugboat chugged into view. There was talk among the passengers of being evacuated, put on the tug and taken ashore, but the boat slid up behind us, nosed us toward a dollop of foamy volcanic archipelago. The island of La Gomera was now the port of call.

  Dusk spiced the sky as we finally docked. The PA hissed again and the captain made a one-word announcement. “Arrangements.”

  The others looked to one another for some understanding, for some answers.

  I disembarked from our watery limbo and strode toward the town’s cobblestone square, needing to distance myself from the group. They wanted to bond over the inconvenience and confusion. Hang together. Safety in groups. They wanted to share the experience. I wanted to be free of them and their forced community.

  La Gomera. Christopher Columbus’s last stop on his way back to Spain after discovering America. Rumor had it that a three-day resupplying had turned into a month when he saw the mayor’s wife. Spanish influence marked the bright houses, the large central square, and the food and drink.

  I found a room for rent, agreed on a price with the owner. The man spoke little English. I spoke broken Spanish. He showed me the room, then he showed me his daughter. She was fifteen, plump and pretty with acne scars high on her cheeks. “Yo!” she said, giving me a high-five.

  “Yo to you,” I said, returning the slap.

  The man and his daughter showed me the backyard, the tree that had been growing there for decades, the flagstone path that the man had laid himself, and the small garden that he and his wife tended. After half an hour of being shown everything down to the grass, the man said, “Come, dinner.”

  I sat with them. The wife piled my plate with a mound of ham and roast potatoes, a bread hard and dark. She spoke no English. She spoke to her daughter, who then spoke to me. I told them how I’d been in Spain, had traveled down to Morocco, and how the ferry had broken down. The wife said something, which the daughter refused to translate.

  “What did she ask?”

  The girl, grudgingly, muttered, “She wants to know if you need a wife.”

  “Is she offering herself?”

  The daughter laughed. “She had me in mind. She thinks you are rich and can take me with you to a big house in America.”

  “Ah, well, I have no house and I’m not rich. So stealing you away to America wouldn’t be fair to you or your family.”

  The girl told her mother, who made the sign of the cross and then took my hand and kissed the back of it. She looked me in the eye and said something. “‘Get rich,’” the daughter translated, “‘then come back for me,’ she says.”

  After dinner and coffee, we crowded into the living room and sat on plastic-wrapped furniture to watch satellite TV while the wife cleared the table. The man found a college football game, thinking I’d like it. Miami versus Nebraska. The Orange Bowl from some two decades prior, a rerun. “America,” he said, pointing at the TV.

  The daughter was talkative, intelligent. I liked her. She practiced her New Jersey accent while I practiced my basic Spanish.

  “What do you call that thing?” she asked, pointing to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln mascot.

  “It’s a cornhusker,” I said, trying to explain a cornhusker as best I could. “That’s what the team is called, the Cornhuskers.”

  “And this bird?” she asked of the Miami mascot.

  “It’s a ibis, I think.”

  “The Miami Ibises?” she said.

  “Hurricanes,” I corrected. “They’re called the Hurricanes.”

  She was confused.

  I explained a hurricane.

  That wasn’t what she was confused about. “Why do they call themselves one thing when they are really another?”

  I had no good answer.

  The mother brought in a tray of Cognac and treats, served us all, then squeezed onto the small couch beside her husband.

  Between bites of her cookie, the girl told me of La Gomera, about its history, about the rainforest I had to visit before I left, with its twisting trees and the lava fields of spiny, sharp pumice. She asked how long I planned to stay.

  “A day,” I said. “Maybe more. I don’t know.”

  She took my hand in hers. It was clammy. “You were lying before. You are rich, no?”

  I thought of the euros waiting for me at home, shook my head. “No, really, I’m not.”

  “That is okay. I like you even without money.” She let go of my hand, laughed. “I like you even if you do not marry me.” She suggested giving me a tour the next morning.

  The next morning, it turned out, meant 5:00 a.m.

  I woke to find her sitting on the edge of my bed. She touched her finger to my chin. “Ready?”

  I was ready.

  As we left the house, she grabbed two walking sticks by the door, handed one to me. The sticks were taller than I was, nearly eight foot. What was the point?

  “I’m going to pass,” I said, handing the stick back to her. “I like to have my hands free.”

  “No, you need it,” she replied. “Without it, you can’t come.”

&nbs
p; I awkwardly grasped it in the middle.

  The cool morning air smelled of vegetation, of ocean, of gaining heat. The salty sharpness of the day filled my lungs. Darkness slowly crept away as dawn approached.

  Strolling through town, she pointed out various houses as we passed. There, in the green house, was her high school teacher, who was jealous of her because of her nice hair. Over there was where the town council leader lived. He drank too much, but then what town council leader didn’t? To the right, the home of the butcher, who had only seven fingers and whose four daughters, all in their thirties, were still unmarried. Up ahead, the market owner’s house; he had a taste for exotic vinegars. The fisherman up the road never learned to swim. The hairstylist had rough hands. The seamstress tore more than she mended. The tavern owner who went through everyone’s garbage in search of spare tinfoil. “And there,” she said as we neared the town limits, “is my ex-boyfriend’s house.” They had been dating since they were five years old, she said, had only recently broken up.

  “How is it possible for a five-year-old to date?”

  She held up her free hand, open and empty. “All is possible if your parents say yes,” she said. “Ten years we dated. It would never work, though, he and I.”

  “No?”

  She paused, turned back to face the town. Tendrils of morning fog stretched over the land. “All these things I tell you, the people and stories, they make up the”—she pressed her lips together, finding the right word—“ribbon.”

  “The ribbon?”

  She nodded. “Yes, the ribbon that is my life.” She moved her hand in the air, smoothing its length. “I can see the whole thing. I see everything of my life. I know what is going to happen to me before it happens. I see my entire future.”

  I couldn’t even see tomorrow. “You’re fifteen,” I said. “How can you know your future?”

  “I know you will not marry me,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “I know in a few years I will leave La Gomera. I know my parents will die. I know I will die.” She shrugged. “It is very sad, life having no surprises.”

  We walked on, moving beyond the town’s outer edges. The land tore open before us, the rocky crag of country a reminder of the earth’s old tantrum. Pumice pikes swelled high then dropped sharp into jagged ravines. She vaulted over a black gully using her walking stick. Now I understood why they were so tall. “Come on,” she waved. I poled awkwardly across, stumbling when I landed.