Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  De la Vega led Luz to an elevator at the end of the hall. “This is the only access to the living quarters,” he said. When the door slid open, Raul pushed the button for the third floor followed by a four-digit code. Only then did the doors close and the elevator begin its ascent.

  The elevator opened onto a windowless corridor with six closed doors. Diffuse lighting illuminated deep-pile rose carpet and pale-blue walls. Small carved tables at intervals held fresh flowers. De la Vega knocked on the last door on the left. A bent man in musty black and wearing a priest’s collar opened the door and leaned heavily on the knob.

  “Father Espinosa, good day to you. I’ve brought the afternoon nanny to meet Cesar.”

  The priest enclosed Luz’s hand in his misshapen arthritic fingers. Behind him, a small boy with dark curly hair sat curled like a question mark, his head bent over a hard-bound book. He stood, skinny—all elbows and wrists and knees. Cesar Benavides.

  The boy nodded at the introductions, his face a mask, eyes not quite focusing on Luz, even when he shook her hand.

  Finally, de la Vega put one hand on Luz’s shoulder and the other on Cesar’s. He smiled like a proud father. “Well, that’s that. Back to work for me,” he said.

  Father Espinosa called Cesar to his desk to go over a reading assignment. Luz remained in the background, silent, gauging her reaction. Indifference mixed with relief. Cesar was simply a little boy. A lonely child—one look at the setup here, two minutes in his presence, made that clear. Indifference would make it easier for her. Luz would take care of him, but she’d keep her emotional distance. It wouldn’t do to actually care for him.

  When the door closed behind Father Espinosa, Cesar whirled to face Luz. “Are you my father’s new girlfriend?”

  The unexpected question made Luz laugh. “Of course not! Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Because the last one was, and the one before her, too. He didn’t tell me, but I’m almost nine, you know.” Shoulders hunched high and tight, lower lip curled, and hands squeezed into fists at his side—a bantam-belligerent pose she might’ve snickered at in other circumstances. “And besides, I’m not blind. He was always touching her when he thought I wasn’t looking. Once I was supposed to be in the bathtub, but I couldn’t get my shoelace undone. I came back in my bedroom, and they were kissing.” His voice cracked on the last word, and his valiant stance melted. Cesar wheeled away.

  “Asqueroso!” exclaimed Luz. Gross! The long-forgotten Spanish word came out of nowhere, surprising Luz at least as much as Cesar.

  That earned her a small smile and a step back. An unclenching of fists. “Are you sure you’re not?” asked the boy.

  “I’m not. Te lo juro. I’ve never even met your father.” Luz reflected on the incongruous reactions to her presence—the lascivious gaze of the gatekeeper, Alicia’s insolence, de la Vega’s bonhomie. If they all assumed she was Roberto Benavides’ girlfriend, that could make life really complicated—or else she could use it to her advantage. She needed time to think.

  “The others lied all the time.” Cesar shrugged as if to say the subject was closed. “I like football. Do you want to see some of my stuff?”

  The boy turned without waiting for her answer, so Luz followed the grandson of Martin Benavides into his bedroom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The latch clicked, and the gate squealed open. Luz pulled it closed behind her. It was the end of her first full day back in Guatemala. The end of her first workday, and the beginning of the end for Martin Benavides.

  Street noise diminished here in the compound. Crickets chirped; a night bird called. Luz stood on an asphalt pad, parking space for a panel truck, a small sedan, and several motor scooters. Beyond, two buildings faced each other, surrounded by masses of flowering bushes—hibiscus, bougainvillea, plumeria, heliconia, bird-of-paradise, and many Luz didn’t recognize. There were twelve apartments altogether, three up and three down in each building. In the semidarkness, Luz trudged along the cobbled path to apartment 3. Ground floor, left side. She unlocked the door and dropped her bag.

  Her apartment was tiny but not much smaller than the utilitarian cubicle where she’d spent her teenage years, the one Richard’s resettlement people had arranged for her and her mother in the U.S. Here, a living room extended along the left side of a rectangle. To the right of the front door was a miniature kitchen and, beyond it, a little bedroom and bath. Watercolors of local scenes hung on the walls. A colorful homespun spread covered the bed.

  Since she hadn’t had the energy to unpack more than essentials the night before, Luz lugged her suitcase into the bedroom and heaved it onto the bed. Zero floor space, although her apartment’s position at the end of the building allowed for a bedroom window. She walked toward it, bumping her shin on the corner of the low bureau. Beyond the cotton print curtain, the window—stoutly barred as befitted a ground-floor opening—overlooked a lush tangle of hibiscus bushes. It was raining again. Fat drops splattered onto the windowpane, a good night to be snug and dry at home. Home.

  She began to unpack. Her clothes didn’t come close to filling the dresser, nor her toiletries and medicines the bathroom cabinet. On the table by the living room couch, she placed her favorite photos— one of her impossibly young parents, long before they became her parents, smiling, not at the camera, but only for one another. In another picture, Luz was seven years old. Her father had grown a thick mustache, and her mother’s hair was tied back in a long braid. Although Luz now squeezed between them, so close all their cheeks squashed together, her parents still smiled over her head with their private look. They cherished her; Luz knew that. She also knew their love for her flowed seamlessly from their love for one another.

  Luz wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She stared into the empty space, suddenly ravenous but too tired to explore the neighborhood in hopes of finding an open store. Since there was nothing in the canisters on the counter except coffee and sugar—not what she needed at bedtime—Luz inspected the upper cabinets. In one, she found acceptable emergency rations: a stack of microwavable flavored noodle bricks, the kind with a sell-by date sometime in the twenty-fourth century and enough sodium to send you casket-shopping. Not that she was picky. Luz made a packet and devoured it curled up on the living room sofa.

  From the bedroom, there came a slight rattle, then a scratchy tap-tap and a squeal of metal. Luz eased around, wishing she were not sitting beside the one bright light in an otherwise shadowy apartment. There was a raspy clunk, like a bureau drawer opening. Someone was in her bedroom. Only inky black showed through the half-closed bedroom door. Luz crawled behind the sofa. Although she was out of sight from the bedroom, light still shone on her—and now she was exposed to the rear windows. Hiding in her kitchen wouldn’t offer any refuge. She’d have to chance running out the front door.

  Wait—there were iron bars on the bedroom window. Luz hadn’t made sure they were solid, but no one could’ve gotten past them without a lot more noise than she’d heard. Outside then. The tapping must be at the window, a burglar trying to get in. She should stand up, walk into the bedroom, and turn on the light. Show him the place was occupied. Simple enough in theory, but her clenched shoulder muscles knit even tighter at the thought of moving toward the unseen intruder.

  Elbows on the cold tile, Luz cradled her head in her hands. Here she was, planning to assassinate the former president of Guatemala, and she was crawling on the floor like a baby. She began to laugh. Since she wasn’t going to let a bomb worry her, she might as well get this over with.

  Luz rose and, keeping away from the pool of light cast by her table lamp, tiptoed across the room to her bedroom door. She peeked in. Ambient light filtering in from the living room confirmed the room was empty. The tapping appeared to come from the window. And what she’d identified as squealing metal was also outside. Crossing the room in four quick strides, she thrust aside the curtain. A squawk, a flurry of motion. A large black bird sheltering from the pa
ssing thunderstorms flapped its wings and disappeared into the night.

  Luz sank onto her mattress, laughing—a bit hysterically—as she shook with waves of released panic. When her breathing calmed, she clambered to her feet and cleared the bed of her remaining possessions. Finally, she placed the little black jar containing her mother’s ashes on the living room bookshelf. The prayer that came this time was not bargaining. Of course, it wasn’t really praying either. Luz rested her fingertips on the urn and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Her mother, so slight by then that she scarcely dented the mattress or pillow and too weak to rise, had motioned Luz nearer when she awakened that last morning. Luz got up from the chair where she’d passed the long night and lay beside her. Her mother’s cold hands had pressed hers, squeezing with all the force her ravaged body could muster. She whispered, “Take me home when I die.”

  “Almost home now, Mama,” Luz spoke out loud.

  Two envelopes Evan delivered to Luz had been sealed; however, he’d written a third item himself. Richard had phoned two days before Evan’s rendezvous with her on the bus. “I’ve got one more thing for you to do tomorrow,” he’d said.

  “No can do,” said Evan. “I have a meeting with a potential buyer here at the studio and then Margo’s bon-voyage party. Maybe later in the week.” It was worth a try. The stipend Richard paid him was not a princely sum to the United States government; it did, however, represent an exceedingly comfortable cushion that allowed Evan to paint full-time.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Not this time. Richard, Evan had long-ago decided, was good at what he did precisely because he channeled that military, can-do style. Translation: Do it when I say, the way I say. No buts. And don’t ask why. Whether it was executing a precise three-point turn on a busy city street or cooking paella, Richard always had an excellent reason for whatever it was.

  Without waiting for Evan to cave, Richard said, “Don’t worry. They won’t start the party without you.” Then he gave Evan two addresses in the city and told him to scout out the bus schedule from the first to the second. “And don’t just fucking Google the damn thing—I can do that myself from the States. Confirm the bus numbers, check their frequency. Then make the trip yourself, late morning. Figure out how long it takes. And write detailed instructions to include in the packet for the contact.”

  That micromanaging call had been the first crack in Richard’s normal equanimity, an even earlier indication of his concern than when he’d blurted out Luz’s name. In the years Evan had been doing this part-time courier gig in Guatemala, he could remember only a handful of times Richard had similarly insisted on Evan’s nailing down every conceivable detail. One night over bad Chinese food and one too many Mai Tais, Evan had worked up the courage to ask why—as in the handoff he’d just completed in the lobby of the Radisson in the Zona Viva—Richard didn’t trust him to do the job right.

  “Oh, it’s not you.” Richard had tossed back a last huge gulp of his drink and slammed his glass on the table. “It’s these fucking amateurs.”

  Now Richard was being nitpicky about Luz. Inference: She was an amateur. A young Guatemalan woman, she was probably someone who knew someone or could go somewhere or hide in plain sight in a way Richard’s usual cohort of middle-aged men could not.

  An amateur who was still somewhere in the city?

  Evan had filled reams of paper with her image. The sweep of her hair as it fell onto her shoulders, the slight space between her front teeth when she smiled, the small diamond-shaped birthmark on her chin. And her hands—clenched tight as she tugged her suitcase, lying quietly in her lap, fingers spread against the dusty bus window in a silent goodbye—he’d drawn them so often he imagined himself like one of those Northern Renaissance masters, Rembrandt or Dűrer, whose notebooks abounded with sketches of hands, cheeks, ears, eyebrows, breasts, lips.

  Evan hit the wall after two sleepless nights, two days of unproductive speculation. He couldn’t complete a decent painting with isolated images from those few minutes on the bus. There were too many gaps. He needed to see how the sun would fall on the planes of her cheekbones, the curve of her neck when it wasn’t covered by her hair. He needed to see her walking, see how her hips flared. He needed to see Luz again.

  From Richard’s call about the buses, Evan guessed Point A was where she was staying and her arrival at Point B must be time-sensitive. On the other hand, Richard had been cagey about the precise addresses; he’d given Evan only street-corner intersections.

  The next morning, Evan double-knotted his running shoes and, instead of taking his usual route, jogged to Point A, a corner in a quiet middle-class neighborhood not too far from his house. The day he’d done the buses, Evan hadn’t paid much attention.

  Now, he ran up and down the adjacent streets. It was more upscale than where he lived but lacked the loud camaraderie of his own block, the pushcart vendors selling helados—or balloons or fried chicken—or gatherings of the underemployed in their faded shirts and straw hats drinking midmorning beers while they played cards on their front steps.

  Here, there were only gates and trees and more gates. He passed a group of teenagers laden with backpacks, all in the matching navy blazers of Colegio San Bernardo.

  “Hola, muchachos,” he said on impulse. “I’m looking for a, um, friend who lives around here.”

  Beyond her first name, a thumbnail description, and the date she arrived, however, Evan had little information. So he pulled out his pocket notebook and sketched her. The boys whistled appreciatively. Evan assumed they were admiring his drafting skills, but then one spoke sotto voce to another, a comment that translated roughly as, “Boy, this guy’s got it bad!”

  Another, with patchy hair sprouting above his upper lip, said, “There’s no one like her around here, señor.” He turned to his companions. “Vámonos. We’ll be late.” They walked on, laughing and shoving each other. Evan replaced his sketchbook in his pocket.

  He made another circuit of the neighborhood. While a few people he asked about Luz, like the boys, thought him a forlorn lover, Evan soon realized that others considered him a stalker—and they wouldn’t admit seeing her even if she was here.

  Still, the following day, Evan developed an urge to visit a friend who, not coincidentally, lived a few miles from Point B. Evan kept a blue Ford Fairlane—one of the Made-in-Argentina Fairlanes that migrated into Central America during the ’80s, an old wreck his mechanic kept in working order with duct tape and baling wire.

  Luz’s destination was Guatemala City’s ritziest neighborhood—massive walled mansions, most with their own private security guards. Zero foot traffic. Mainly bulletproofed and chauffeur-driven SUVs. A few tradesmen’s vans. His beat-up Ford stood out, and wandering around was out of the question. Five minutes on the corner and guards were already pointing. Evan started his car and aimlessly circled a few blocks. Nothing to see here, either.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The morning after Luz’s interview, she took the jolting bus ride again. In the States, she’d thought nothing of traipsing all around town with her work ID dangling from a lanyard, but de la Vega had lectured her about rampant drug-fueled street crime—which Luz considered rich, since the Benavides were the likely source of the drugs in question. He warned Luz to leave the badge in her purse. Also, not to carry credit cards or her passport or more money than she needed for the day or wear jewelry or a fancy watch. He was as much of an old fussbudget as Richard had been when she took a job in Boston.

  That’s when Richard had bought Luz her first cellphone, programming it with his numbers—home, cell, work, emergency switchboard—AAA, and several for local law enforcement. Luz couldn’t help noticing his offhand but regular calls—like ten minutes after she walked in the door. No, nothing special, he’d say. I just wondered how your day was. And they’d chat, sometimes for half an hour or more, about nothing special while she puttered around the kitchen.

  Luz got off the bus. The prison-blank walls of the
Benavides compound loomed. Inside, her job: a single polite and toilet-trained charge, lunch and dinner served, no cleaning or playground duty. And his grandfather. Outside, a squadron of armed men and a security checkpoint.

  They’d had another day to investigate her. Although Luz doubted one more day of research would crack the cover Richard had so meticulously arranged, still she must pass through the gauntlet of guards. There was only one way to do it, thought Luz, and that was with aplomb—a word Richard had long-ago explained as “grace under pressure”—and then illustrated with one of her discarded princess dolls, consigned to a box in the bottom of her closet. He took the doll’s arm and rotated it into a decorous, sideways twist. The fact that the princess was naked and covered with crayon marks where Luz had once tried to draw on a ball gown made Richard’s demonstration unforgettable.

  So Luz sauntered up to the guardhouse, scanned her ID in the reader, and flourished her best princess-wave at the sentry. The gate clicked open.

  In a week’s time, play-acting had become unnecessary.

  Also, by then, when Luz opened Cesar’s door, she saw him, a cub shedding his baby fat, clumsy from a growth spurt that had lengthened his limbs. As soon as she arrived, Cesar would slam shut whatever book or paper he was supposed to be studying and run to Luz, eager to get her approval for their lunch order. It didn’t hurt that Luz—like Cesar—had a soft spot for hamburguesas y papas fritas and didn’t have the previous nanny’s problem of insisting on a green vegetable.

  Her attempts to familiarize herself with the layout of the mansion met with failure. She had codes for the staff door and for the floor where Cesar lived, but asking de la Vega for the other codes brought a peremptory throat-clearing and quick, negative headshake.

  Toward the end of her first week at the Benavides’, Luz spied Alicia Muñoz at the far end of the spartan downstairs hallway. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the woman’s snippiness at their first encounter, she slowed to give Alicia time to move on.