Luz sat up and held out her palms like twin stop signs. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—it’s still—can we please talk about something else? I’d rather hear more about how you got started painting.”
Evan eased himself to seated, keeping a barrier of grassy space between them. Possibly, the change of subject came as a welcome relief to him, too, for he began speaking quickly. What an idiot she was to get lulled into such ridiculous vulnerability. No matter how good-looking or how artlessly sincere he seemed, she should not have allowed him behind her defenses.
When she tuned back in, Evan was saying “and once I began to lighten the dark shadows, my palette became clearer and cleaner. My paintings began to sell, too. The light, that’s what it’s all about.”
“You’re a funny man,” said Luz, seizing the new topic. “So this morning, when you were kissing the Luz in bed with you, you were thinking about la luz, the light, instead.”
“But, no, you misunderstand,” said Evan. He turned to look directly at her and ran his thumb along her jawline, tilting her head so she appeared to be nodding no and then yes, then no again. “You are ‘la luz’ for me—inspiration, model, guide.”
Deep inside, Luz experienced a sensation of unraveling. Teardrops scalded her eyelids, not the angry and alone and sorrowful tears that had devoured her the previous nights. These tears welled up from the spring of hope. An insubstantial, wispy wraith released from imprisonment as though by some magic incantation, reached from her center, hands outstretched, supplicating: Save me.
“In that case, when are you going to show me what you’re working on?”
Oh. A little too late, Evan tuned into the flow of Luz’s parries: get too close, and she’d fend you off with one of those non sequitors she’d peppered him with all morning.
“It’s complicated,” he said finally.
“You don’t want me to see? What, you think I’ll look at your paintings and decide you stink?”
Best to let Luz think that was the reason, since she’d thought of it herself. His home was off limits.
Luz didn’t want Evan anywhere near the Benavides’, so most nights she met him at a funky neighborhood bar near her bus stop. The bar was open to the street—a rough plank railing, chest-high, formed the outer limit and payment was strictly in advance. Evan would rest his beer on the railing, one eye on the local toughs playing pool, but Luz could tell he was really watching for her. He’d drain his beer and join her as she walked by. They’d rush to her house and shed their clothes.
Martin Benavides had only visited Cesar twice. His first visit, when they sang songs, had been bad enough, but then he came back the next afternoon and joined them outdoors to watch Cesar play soccer. Luz—the only other player, of course—had been made to run the field while he looked on, genial and shouting hearty encouragement.
Running up and down, until she was panting.
Running.
Running for her life in the dark, shouts and screams all around. Running holding her mother’s hand, both their hands slick with blood that dried before the U.S. soldiers loaded them into the helicopter, so their hands remained glued together as their old life receded and then shrank to a cartoon pinhole of nothingness in the space of a few seconds.
If Evan hadn’t called again that night, she would have gone crazy.
But Martin’s disruptions had not been repeated. More nights—and mornings—of wildly inventive sex had cleared the cobwebs from her head. The tremor in her left hand diminished. Her legs carried her effortlessly. It was only sex, but as an antidote to the stresses of her days, nights with Evan were just what the doctor ordered.
Evening, night, breakfast, market, paint. Repeat.
At first, evenings were simple. As they hurried to Luz’s, they talked about their day—at least, he did. Luz shared nothing about the Benavides except the occasional cute-kid Cesar story. One evening, Evan was telling her about an artist friend who’d invited him to work on a mural in Cuatro Grados Norte.
“What’s that?” Luz asked.
“You don’t know?”
“C’mon, Evan. You know I’ve never lived in the city before.”
“I keep forgetting.” He stretched his arm alongside hers, pale against chocolate. “It’s too weird that I’m the old Guatemala hand.”
Luz pulled her arm back and rolled her eyes the way she did when he teased her.
Evan grabbed her hand. “No, listen—it’s a cool place, the Brooklyn of Guatemala City, lots of street art, shops, cafés, galleries. Let’s go.”
“Now?” But Luz looked more intrigued about the excursion than scandalized he’d suggest an outing when her bed was so close.
“Sure, it’s the late-night place to be.” Evan tugged Luz so they were walking in the opposite direction. “C’mon.”
At first, Evan played tour guide. They strolled through the well-lit pedestrian area in the heart of Zona Cuatro, in and out of galleries. Then, an eerie flute melody rising above a syncopated marimba beat caught their attention.
Luz pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she said. “That’s … that’s …” She stretched out her other hand as though she would grasp the fragment of mislaid memory. Then, giving her head a decisive toss, she took Evan’s arm and unerringly followed the music to an out-of-the-way corner where they found a family of Kaqchikel Maya street musicians. Evan thought he could’ve disappeared for all Luz, swaying to the beat, noticed him. After a long while, she sidled up behind him and dug her hands deep into his pants pockets—tantalizingly—but only to retrieve coins to toss into the straw hat set out for tips.
Another evening, they took a cab downtown and mingled with the elegantly dressed high-rollers as they descended from their limos and sauntered into the nightclubs and casinos. When Luz tired of the glitz, they walked along the wide median parkway of the Avenida La Reforma, and made out under the Torre del Reformador, a small copy of the Eiffel Tower.
They spent Luz’s day off in a crowd of local families wandering around La Aurora Zoo, Luz mugging for silly photos with the lions and tigers and bears. Later, they lingered over sushi, playing footsie while they sat shoeless on low cushions at a Japanese place across from the park.
Mornings were for the market. Luz seldom needed to buy much. It seemed she went as much to socialize as to buy food. Although she occasionally brushed him off, Evan became adept at inventing errands of his own—he needed bread, light bulbs, a new pair of sneakers—so he could tag along.
And the painting was exhilarating.
Guate, as Evan called it, was a much more varied and interesting city than Luz imagined. Her neighborhood could be any place in the world where people had locked gates instead of front lawns, and the Benavides’ compound could be on the freaking moon for all it had to do with Guatemala. For weeks, she’d done nothing but shuttle between the two.
The city itself, however, sprawled like a drunkard taking a siesta. Exploring with Evan whetted her appetite, but Luz needed to experience it on her own, as a Guatemalan, rather than on the arm of a skinny Anglo. She began leaving for work early and taking buses to other parts of the city. The Zona Viva with its upscale malls. La Linea, the red-light district, with train tracks running between tiny houses. The University campus.
She also returned alone to Cuatro Grados Norte. Evan had compared it to Brooklyn, a place she’d never been, but to Luz it seemed like an edgier, more boisterous Portsmouth. Daytime brought out jugglers on stilts weaving through the pedestrians and an eclectic variety of street performers. One exhilarating morning, Luz joined a group dancing an impromptu samba line around a six-piece jazz band, just like she belonged here. Energized, she gave up her seat on the bus to a bent old woman carrying a mammoth sack of exquisite embroidery. She greeted the guards at the Benavides’ mansion with a mock salute and a cheerful buenos tardes.
Her buoyancy lasted until she arrived at Cesar’s room. He sat cross-legged on his sitting-room rug in a damp puddle of dejection. “My father got home last
night.”
Okay. Bobby was back. He’d sent word, once, twice, that he was “tied up in meetings” and would stop by later. If he had time. And then he was gone again. Cesar had brandished an expensive new remote-control race car and the subdued expression of a crestfallen child.
“So why the long face?” asked Luz.
“He isn’t up yet.”
“And?”
“And he doesn’t answer the door when I knock. And Delores won’t use her key to let me in.”
Luz looked around. Delores had gotten an early start. She stood, bucket and mop in hand, in the door to Cesar’s bedroom shaking her head no, mouthing no, shifting her elbows and hips side to side in a whole-body no, no, no.
Luz got the idea. “You’d better let him sleep this morning. He’s been traveling. I bet he’s tired.”
“But I want to see him. Why can’t we go now?”
Why indeed? There was no good answer, only prurient speculation, so Luz went for distraction. “While we wait for your father to get up, how about starting today with football practice—unless you want to finish your lessons first.”
Cesar jumped up. “Could we practice throw-ins again?”
Luz pretended to consider. “Sure, but you have to change into shorts and a T-shirt.”
“What’s going on?” Luz asked, the second the two women were alone.
“Whew.” Delores wiped mock perspiration from her brow. “That was close. Cesar wouldn’t let it go. I don’t know how he knew Señor Roberto had returned. He’s been pestering me ever since I arrived, and when I bent over to scrub the bathtub, he grabbed my key ring. It’s a miracle he didn’t get it today like he sometimes does.”
Luz lost her remaining bounce and crashed to earth as she drilled Cesar on the correct form for inbounding the ball. Sex. Blue skies. Even her clear head and dancing feet. It was only a reprieve, the calm before the storm. Bobby was back. The briefcase was back. Delores’ keys were vulnerable. Cesar occasionally stole them and snooped. And—miracle of miracles—as Martin Benavides had said adíos the afternoon he’d watched their football practice, he himself had given Luz a marvelous idea that should get her into his lair. She’d been too upset to jump on it then, but she’d begun making casual suggestions. The bomb would go off on time.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The mattress shifted. Luz muttered in Spanish, something Evan didn’t quite catch. He stroked her smooth back while she sat on the side of the bed, invisible in the moonless night. “You okay?” he whispered.
Luz moaned and arched her back. Then she stood quickly, and her feet slapped on tile as she ran into the bathroom, retching. The noises stopped, but when the bathroom door finally opened, she padded out into the living room and turned on the small table lamp. Her elongated shadow writhed on the walls.
Evan followed Luz into the living room. She sat slumped sideways on the sofa, forehead resting on a fat cushion, arms wrapped around the swell of her breasts. “What’s wrong?” he asked. While she had occasional bouts of what appeared to be vertigo, Luz had never vomited before.
Instead of answering, Luz rushed past him, back to the bathroom. This time, she returned to bed instead of joining Evan on the sofa.
When he entered the bedroom, she said, “Go away. It’s my stomach—everything’s going to come up, and I don’t want you to watch me puking.”
Montezuma’s Revenge, thought Evan. Delhi Belly. “It must’ve been those chuchitos we bought last night,” he said. “You had more of them than I did. It’s almost funny—you, the native, getting sick on the local bacteria.”
Luz rolled over and glowered. “Yeah, well, as everyone keeps reminding me, I’ve been gone for a long time. And it is not funny.” She turned away from him and buried herself under the covers.
Luz had seen the sign dozens of times by now. In ornate gilt letters on the second floor of the building across the street from her bus stop: Dr. Hector Guzman, Internist. Her stomach, completely empty, roiled at the sickly-sweet smell of ripe pineapples at the fruit stand on the corner. All her high spirits, all the energy from the best weeks she’d had in months, gone.
After the sky had lightened, Luz showered and dressed. With Bobby back and with her plan to get Martin to invite her into his space, she had to go to work. She couldn’t decide if she should take her pills. Nothing was staying down. And while what she’d told Evan probably was correct—she’d eaten something that violently disagreed with her—it could be more serious, perhaps a reaction to her meds. She thought about calling her doctor in New Hampshire, but he couldn’t diagnose her long-distance. Luz curled up on the sofa and bargained with God again. Perhaps it was a real prayer. Ay, Dios, what can I do? I have to go to work.
And perhaps God answered, for only then did Luz remember Dr. Guzman’s sign. A revolving door led into the lobby. Huge wooden ceiling fans rotating high overhead illuminated dust motes pulsing to the rhythm of the blades. The elevator, an open metal cage, had an “out of order” sign taped across the door, the paper yellow and fly-specked with age. Luz almost reconsidered. In fact, she walked back onto the street, right next to the fruit vendor. Her stomach gave another nasty lurch, and she retreated into the building.
Wide stone steps curved around a central atrium. On the next level, old-fashioned heavy doors with pebbled glass insets: Abogado, Contador, Dentista, and there on the left was Dr. Guzman’s office. A woman with gray hair pulled into a knot on the top of her head and stuck through with a pencil said, “Can I help you?”
“Is it possible to see Dr. Guzman without an appointment? I’ve got …” Luz couldn’t remember the Spanish word for what ailed her so she settled for “I’m vomiting and have diarrhea.”
“Certainly. One moment, please.”
Luz sank into one of the heavy dark armchairs. Wooden bookcases with glass fronts held pottery shards and loose-leaf notebooks. There’d been a few attempts to modernize—magazines scattered on a coffee table, a water bubbler in the corner, a leggy dieffenbachia thriving in the window. And they either had radio piped in or a tape mix playing. “Tequila Sunrise” was followed by Elton John’s “Your Song.” And like so many other times in the past few months, Luz became suspended on a thread between the present and past. In New Hampshire, her mother had developed a secret crush on the flamboyant singer.
So many times, she’d walked into their apartment to music abruptly silenced—“Circle of Life,” “Daniel,” “Tiny Dancer.” And “Candle in the Wind,” the one that put her mother into a tailspin. Luz never asked her mother about it, and she doubted there’d be a time later when she’d get the chance to ask. Luz figured death meant oblivion. No more wondering about things for which there was no answer, like why her once-revolutionary mother now found so much pleasure in saccharine pop music or what Evan thought about when he looked at her, the way he narrowed his eyes and seemed to see right into her, as he had the morning he delivered the newspaper on the bus, and like that Sunday afternoon they’d gone to the Botanical Garden when he’d waltzed right through the barricades she once thought inviolable. Luz had been much more careful about divulging information since then.
A man with a halo of fine white hair opened the inner door. “Señorita, come in.”
The massive desk occupied a parallelogram of sunlight. Boxes, books, more books. Three leather club chairs around a low table. Dr. Guzman took Luz’s elbow and ushered her to one of the chairs.
“This way, please, where it’s less messy. I’m closing my practice at the end of the year, and I’ve sent most of my patients to other physicians. So.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “What can I do for you today?”
“I’ve been throwing up since about two this morning. Even a sip of water comes right up again, yellow and bitter. My stomach is empty now, but I still feel queasy.”
“Diarrhea?”
Luz nodded.
“Did you eat anything unusual yesterday?” he asked.
“I bought chuchitos on my way home from work.”
“Oh, no, but at the time they smelled too heavenly to pass up. I’ve been living in the U.S.,” added Luz.
“Ah, los Estados Unidos. Our son is living in Iowa.” The old man pronounced it as though the letters were Spanish—Ee-oh-gua. After rolling out the syllables with a flourish, he continued proudly, “In a small town where he has a general practice much like mine. My wife and I will be traveling there next month for an extended stay. Anticipating that visit is the only thing keeping me from despair while I dismantle my life’s work.” He sketched a wide arc with his arms. “For now, however, let’s concentrate on getting you well again.”
“Something you should know before prescribing anything,” Luz began, opening her purse. “I brought the medicines I’m taking.” She rattled each pill bottle as she pulled it out of her bag. “Riluzole. Baclofen. Gabapentin.”
Dr. Guzman slumped lower in his chair when Luz brought out her stash of pills, as though the gravity of her situation weighed him down.
“I see you understand what the problem is,” murmured Luz.
He leaned closer and patted her knee. “Oh, my dear girl.”
Dr. Guzman prescribed ciprofloxacin, which got Luz through the afternoon, shaky and pale, and not up for playing games.
“Should I take my other medicines?” Luz had asked the doctor.
“The riluzole will upset your stomach, and I worry about its potential side effects while you’re recuperating. Stay off it for now. The others, too—unless you begin to have problems with muscle spasms. Let’s make an appointment for you to see me again in a week, next Wednesday. Any questions in the interim, call me. Also, I prescribe chicken soup tonight. If you buy soup at the market, make sure to boil it for at least ten minutes when you get home, but,” he added with his brilliant smile, “it would be ever so much nicer if you have a friend who can cook for you.”
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