Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

by Gonzalo Barr

  The consulate, I thought.

  Benny.

  I dressed and went out. All the security guards in the building were in the lobby. No one knew what had happened.

  I went outside and ran toward the consulate. There were fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars, their rotating red and blue lights skimming across the dark faces of the surrounding buildings. The blast had torn a hole, three stories high, through the building where the consulate used to be. The fountain was still working, its brass rods bent in anger, shooting jets of water over sheets of papers floating down to the street.

  I went back and banged on Iris’s door with the side of my fist. The judge appeared from around the corner wearing a robe over his pajamas. The lines in his face looked deeper.

  “That explosion,” I told him, excitedly. “It was the Venezuelan consulate.”

  The judge said nothing.

  “I think Benny had something to do with it.”

  “Didn’t you watch the evening news? Their president,” the judge said, jamming his thumb in the air, “resigned yesterday morning. There was a coup or something. You know the kind of tomfoolery that goes on in those countries.”

  “He blew it up,” I said. “He’s been planning it for weeks.”

  “Benny’s not here. He asked me to keep an eye on their place. On his wife too.” The judge fixed his eyes on me and moved closer. “Listen to me,” he said. “It’s none of my business, but you seem like a reasonable guy.”

  I started to talk, but he would have none of it.

  “No, you listen to me. I know you’ve been seeing that woman. Yup. We’ve seen and heard it all. Her sneaking over to your place in the middle of the night. Her husband waiting for you to get back. Maybe they’re hip. Maybe they’re swingers. You know that term? I don’t suppose you use it anymore. I don’t care. I do care about my peace and quiet. You know what I mean? I won’t hesitate to call the cops on you too, if I need to. Comprende?”

  The judge disappeared around the corner.

  I did not go back to sleep. Later that morning, I read that Châvez had resigned the presidency but was already back in power. Local stations carried stories about the explosion at the consulate. Some thought it was the work of the anti-Châvez people, others that the Chavistas themselves had done it. No one mentioned any suspects.

  Several times during the day, I walked out of my apartment and down the hall looking for any sign of Benny and Iris. I knocked on their door, hoping not to attract the judge’s attention. Just because I’d done nothing illegal didn’t mean he couldn’t call security and accuse me of disturbing the peace.

  In the evening, I tried their door again. This time Iris answered.

  “You’ve heard?”

  She nodded.

  “What about Benny?”

  “Benny is in the hospital, under observation.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you think he’s in the hospital for?”

  I imagined the judge, ear pressed against his door, listening to us, so I spoke softly. “What do you plan to do?” I said.

  “I will go to the hospital and see him later today. I will take care of him, do what I can to make sure he is not too uncomfortable. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

  “If there’s anything—?”

  “Thank you. I’ll tell him you came by.” She started to close the door. I held it with my hand.

  “Iris?”

  “Go home.”

  “What about us?”

  “What about us? You and I had sex. That’s all. Now my husband needs me.”

  “Benny told me about your understanding.”

  “Our what?”

  “Your understanding. He told me it was fine. You know, it’s OK if we—”

  “You should not believe everything Benny tells you,” she said. “It is bad for him. Now I would appreciate it if you left me and my husband alone.”

  Iris looked through me at the wall. I stepped back and let her close the door.

  3.

  I never saw them again. Waiting for the elevator one morning, the judge’s wife told me that Iris and Benny were back in Caracas, taking care of his father, who had suffered a heart attack when he was arrested during the coup, along with most of the opposition leaders. Soon after that, their condo was sold to a young couple with a baby.

  Benny’s father died the next summer. His picture appeared on the Web sites of both El Universal and El Nacional. One paper showed the family standing around the grave. Benny wore a dark suit and tie and was caught squinting at the sky. Iris stood next to him, holding his hand. She wore a black dress, a hat, and large sunglasses. The caption under the picture identified Benny as a son of the one-time presidential aspirant; Iris as his wife and a finalist for the title of Miss Venezuela 1992. I printed the picture and saved it in a drawer. Every so often, I take the picture out and look at it for a long time, much longer than I would have predicted.

  Faith

  1.

  Trip says, “Hey, Irv, know what this morning felt like?”

  “I know what it felt like for me,” Irv says. “And I have a good idea what it felt like for the station.”

  Miami television news anchor Trip Perez and his lawyer, Irv Heller, stand in an art gallery on Lincoln Road, inside a refrigerator the size of a large closet. In the center is a sculpture, six gallons of the artist’s bodily fluids frozen into the shape of a man in an upright anatomical pose, arms slightly out, palms facing forward.

  “It felt like high school all over again,” Trip says. “My buddies and I stayed out all night. It’s kind of embarrassing to talk about it, but I can tell you. Attorney-client privilege, right?”

  Irv holds a packet of gum, unwraps one, and bends it into his mouth. He balls up the wrapper and shoves it back into his pant pocket along with the rest.

  “Just don’t tell me you’re gonna kill someone on camera for the ratings.”

  “That hurt, Irv. Right here.” Trip taps his chest. His breath is visible in the freezing air.

  “That was what, twenty-five years ago?” Irv says.

  “Twenty. My mother was dead by then.”

  “Sorry to hear. What’d she die of?”

  “Cancer.”

  Trip tugs the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. He looks trim and fit in a blue suit. Irv holds his coat over his shoulder, like a politician. His shirt is wrinkled, the tails bunched into his pants. A dab of wasabi adorns a pant leg.

  “So whad you do that’s so embarrassing?” Irv says.

  “Broke into houses. People we knew were out of town. Spent the night drinking their liquor. Lived off the adrenaline.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Never did drugs. Never smoked.”

  Irv stuffs another stick of gum into his mouth. He offers one to Trip, who shakes his head. Trip says, “This morning, at the table, negotiating, felt something like that. Pure adrenaline.”

  “You made out like a bandit, Trip. Top-paid anchor in Miami. Control over the content of the show.”

  “I just have a say.”

  “A big say. And you’re what? Thirty-five? Keep it up for a year or two, and from here it’s on to the networks and seven figures.”

  Trip tightens his hands into fists.

  “What I want to know,” Irv says, “is what you see in this popsicle.” He points his last stick of gum at the sculpture, before stuffing it in his mouth.

  “Think of it as an investment,” Trip says. “You know how much Saatchi paid for the early Damien Hirsts? Know what they’re going for now?”

  “So long as you’re happy, I guess.”

  Trip walks around the sculpture. Crouches. He places the tips of his fingers on the cold floor.

  “I’m going to take it,” he says, standing.

  “Does this thing have a name, or don’t they do that anymore?”

  “It’s called Ecce homo, which means, my dear counselor, ‘Behold, man!“‘ Trip says, lifting an open hand in the direction of the
sculpture. He says, ”When I was a boy my father gave me a plastic model that looked like this. It was called the Human Man or the Human Body. He wanted me to be a doctor. Can you imagine me a doctor?”

  “You’re making more money than any doctor,” Irv says.

  “My brother’s a surgeon.”

  “Your father’s got to be proud of you.”

  Trip reaches out to touch the sculpture but stops short. “I think he wants to be. That counts. Doesn’t it?”

  It is the time of year when refugees from Haiti and Cuba wash up on the beaches of Miami. Nine months ago, Trip and his crew were the first to get helicopter footage of Haitians running down the causeway at rush hour, dodging cars and the police. They were also the first to report—and only station to show—a corpse decomposing on South Beach next to a powder blue wooden boat with the name Ange de Dieu crudely painted in white on the stern. When Trip exhausted that story, he interviewed local officials about the impact that finding a corpse on the beach would have on tourism. Then he flew with a cameraman to Europe and interviewed tour operators in Berlin, Milan, Madrid, and London. He showed each tour operator eight-by-ten color glossies of the corpse, the camera focused tight on their faces, 60 Minutes-style. But this year, with the coast guard on alert, the beaches and causeways are quiet.

  Like every weekday morning, Trip and his team meet in a long conference room at the station to discuss the stories they will work on that day.

  “What do we have?” Trip says.

  It is Tuesday morning. He sits at the head of a white formica table stained with coffee cup rings. Reporter Jennifer McCue sits next to him. At the other end is the news director, Tony Reggio. Walter the weatherman, Harry the sports reporter, and Kharma Dayes, the celebrity reporter, take the remaining seats. The sun reflects on the bay and creates an animated weave of light on the ceiling. Walter stands to close the mini-blinds. The weave disappears.

  Jennifer says, “Trip, we’ve got a woman who says she saw the Virgin Mary.”

  “Give me a break,” Harry says.

  Walter groans.

  Kharma smiles like she does in the ads for her talk show. The ads appear on billboards and bus benches. Real people. Real close, the ads read.

  Jennifer wonders if Kharma’s teeth are real. She says, “She’s from Honduras. Been here ten years. Hotel maid.”

  “Figures,” Walter says.

  “The meek shall inherit the earth, Walt. Go on, Jen,” says Trip.

  “Happened yesterday morning, ‘round rush hour. She was waiting for the 24 bus on Brickell and Tenth.”

  “Did she say anything about the ad for my new show?” Kharma says.

  “Said she saw the Virgin Mary on the side of an office building.”

  “Con-den-sa-tion,” Harry says.

  “Yup. Temperature, humidity. Conditions are perfect for that kind of phenomenon,” Walter says.

  “Yesterday’s a longtime ago,” Trip says. “How’d you find out about it?”

  “Ricardo from the mailroom. Heard it on Spanish-language radio.”

  “Now we’re being scooped by Rah-dee-yoe Cue-bahn-noe?” Walter says. “Anybody else seen this phenomenon?”

  “Yeah. And how do we know she’s not making this up just to get on television?” Harry says.

  “Because she was scared I was going to report her to the IRS,” Jennifer says.

  “You mean the INS,” Walt says.

  “She cried when she told me about it. She stopped talking, closed her eyes, and cried.”

  “What did you expect?” Harry says. “Most of these people are illiterate. The other day I was talking to my gardener—”

  “Find the woman,” Trip says. “Interview her, take her to that bus bench on Brickell or wherever this happened. Do whatever you need to do to protect her identity, if she’s afraid of being deported.”

  “Why does Jenny get to do everything?” Kharma says. “I can be sympathetic.”

  “Because you don’t speak any español, that’s why,” Walt says.

  “I’ve been to a Cuban restaurant,” she says. “I can read the menu.”

  “Get a shot of her pointing at the building,” Trip says. “Try to get a shot of whatever it was she saw. Call the archbishop or someone in his office. They’ve got to have an official position on this kind of thing. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

  “Yeah, like last year, when those people thought they saw the face of Jesus Christ in a big oil slick outside Dadeland Mall,” Harry says.

  “Let’s try to wrap this up for the five o’clock,” Trip says.

  “Now I’ve heard everything,” Walt says, tapping a pencil on the table.

  “Do you wanna stop that? It’s giving me a headache,” Kharma says, rubbing her temples. Walt stops.

  “You have something better, Walt?” Trip says. “What’s today’s forecast?”

  “Partly sunny. High in the mid-nineties. Thirty percent chance of late-afternoon showers,” Walter says, modulating his voice the way he does when he is on the air.

  “Same as yesterday. Same as the day before. My vote goes to the Honduran lady and her apparition. How about you, Tony, what do you think?”

  “It’s your show, Trip,” Reggio says, holding his hands up.

  It is night and Trip is home. A tiny black cordless phone is wedged between his shoulder and his ear. He is half listening to his father as he makes himself a drink.

  “Your brother called me today.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you know that he starts operating at five in the morning?”

  Trips lays the phone on the bar. He pours Scotch into a tumbler and takes a drink. He switches on the speakerphone. His father’s voice sounds small.

  “Might as well have taken holy orders.”

  “Who should have taken holy orders?”

  “I never said that. I said might as well have taken holy orders. Are you listening?”

  “Yeah, I’m listening.”

  “Remember last Saturday? I told you about our lives being interrupted by Castro, what we went through to leave Cuba, to start again in Miami? You seemed so skeptical. Yet when I told the same story to your brother today, he was still sympathetic, even though I’ve told him the story many times.”

  “How about that. And we’re both from the same mother and father.” Trip takes the tumbler and drinks the last of the Scotch. He pours some more.

  “The French call it déformation professionelle. Your brother is trained to assume that his patients are telling him the truth, so why would he not assume that I too was telling him the truth? But you, you are trained for the opposite. You assume everyone is lying to you, that everyone has an agenda. ¿Alo?”

  “Still here,” Trip says, leaning toward the phone.

  “Do you know that patients your brother has not seen for years still send him cards at Christmas?”

  Trip points a slim black remote control at a flat TV screen as big as the wall and plays the Haitian tapes.

  Outside, tree branches creak. He presses Pause. The image on the screen freezes cleanly. He gulps his drink and lays the remote control on the bar, next to the phone.

  He walks to the back of the house and listens to his father’s voice fade, until he cannot hear it anymore. He turns on the outside lights and slides open the glass doors. A screen roof covers the patio and the pool. He looks up and makes out the trees swaying in the wind. He turns on the pool light. He flips another switch. There’s the sound of gurgling followed by the swelling of a small mound of water bubbling in a corner of the pool before plunging down steps of coral rock, making the bottom go out of focus. He turns off the waterfall and the lights and goes back inside.

  Two days later, during the noon broadcast, Jennifer McCue reports on a second sighting. Behind her is the office building.

  JENNIFER : That’s right, Trip. We have a camera pointed at the side of the building where another person told us today that he saw the Virgin Mary.

  TRIP [ta
lking to the monitor]: Now we have a second eyewitness? JENNIFER : Bight. The first sighting occurred around eight-thirty, eight forty-five Monday morning. That was the Honduran woman we interviewed Tuesday. Yesterday’s sighting happened during rush hour at five-fifteen in the afternoon. We’ve been here since eleven this morning, but nothing’s materialized yet.

  TRIP: Well, it’s still early, Jen. Hang in there. [To the camera] If anything does happen, though, you’ll see it here first, live on NewsNow! Thanks, Jenny.

  JENNIFER: You betcha.

  TRIP: Curiouser and curiouser. Walt, I hope you’re not going to disappoint me with any rain materializing over the weekend.

  WALT: Things are quiet weatherwise. Trip. But we are watching a storm in the Caribbean. Right about here. At seven o’clock this morning Tropical Storm Fay, as it was designated earlier today, was at latitude 18.5 north and longitude 83.4 west, or roughly 144 miles southwest of Grand Cayman. Wind speeds of 35 knots. A tropical storm warning for the Cayman Islands went into effect at ten A.M. So far Fay is moving north-northeast. Very slowly. But that could change, so make sure you stay tuned to NewsNow! for the latest. Trip?

  TRIP [laughing]: Just make sure not to ruin the weekend, Walt.

  WALT [saluting and laughing along]: Yessir. OK. Now, for the rest of your weather forecast.

  …

  Later that afternoon, Reggio walks into Trip’s office.

  “It’s not good. Trip. Marty almost burst an artery when he heard that you sent Jenny and a cameraman to camp outside that building and wait for the Virgin Mary to appear. You know, the archbishop’s office called Marty.”

  “Jenny’s left no less than five messages asking for an interview with him.”

  “Marty says he’ll take care of it.”

  “No he won’t. Marty thinks he can run a news show in Miami just because he got a degree in communication from some prairie state university. To Marty we’re all hisspanicks.” Trip leans forward in his chair. He says, “Remember when he wanted me to do a piece on ponchos last year? Ponchos? I asked him. Yeah, Marty said. Hisspanick raincoats. No one’s ever worn a poncho in Miami, if you don’t count the time Dan Rather flew down to do a story. By the way, any reason Marty can’t pick up the phone and talk to me?”