by Paul Aertker
“Ms. Günerro will be with you shortly,” Magnus said. “Help yourself to the drinks.”
He left the room, and the refrigerator door closed behind him.
Lucas and the woman with long black hair sat on two stools and faced each other. Lucas dropped the birth file on the floor near his feet. Then he opened a Coke, took a sip, and set the can down.
A lifetime of questions burned inside of Lucas’s gut. Doubt and hope vied for the same spot in his heart. His eyes adjusted to the low light as he got straight to the point.
“Are you my mother?”
As she gathered her words, the woman with long black hair stared at Lucas. In the low light Lucas could finally see her eyes.
Instinctively he knew.
And he had a foolproof method for bringing out the truth.
WHEN YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW
It was like this.
If you lived in a hotel with kids who were from all over the world and who had no real history, no parents, no personal story about where they grew up, no favorite swimming spot, no grandma’s house, no sports club or park, then you were sure to meet a lot of kids who were in a constant state of lying. Fabricating the truth. Inventing a past.
Like anyone, Lucas wanted to know who he was. But without his own history to rely on, he had himself been guilty of lying about his childhood. He desperately wanted to know his past. Since there wasn’t one, he’d had to create one.
Lucas had been untruthful to himself forever—certainly about his birth mother. He knew she couldn’t be alive. He had done the math a million times. She would have contacted him before this. She knew the nuns in Tierra del Fuego, where she had dropped Lucas off with the birth chart. The nuns knew John Benes. It would have been a simple phone call. She could have sent a message. She could have used Morse code.
Somehow. Some way.
Sitting in this refrigerator all alone with this woman, Lucas came to a new and scary idea. The woman in front of him might be a spy.
For Ms. Günerro.
Lucas had three favorite ways to suss out a liar.
Number one: The best liars are creative. Think Siba Günerro. Tell a lie so big they have to believe it. Creative liars used the right side of the brain, so their eyes tended to veer left when they were making up a story.
Second on Lucas’s list was the fake smile. It was a sign of deep, uncomfortable lying. And third, giving too much unimportant information was the classic badge of a novice.
This woman did all three at once.
Her first words to Lucas were: “I remember the day I took you to the nuns.” Her eyes dropped hard to the left as her right brain began colorizing her obviously memorized story.
Lucas thought, Mothers always say, “I remember the day you were born.”
The woman picked some lint from her dress. “You had just been born and it was a beautiful sunny day and you were wearing this cute blue-and-red vinyl jumpsuit and it had little white buttons made of ivory on the front. The housekeepers at the Good Hotel Buenos Aires had given me these wonderful baby gifts ...”
Lucas stopped listening. He was born on the solstice, June 21. In the Southern Hemisphere. The first day of winter.
“ . . . and I walked you through a fields of fachine flowers and there were ...”
Lucas thought, There are no flowers in winter.
“ . . . and you were so sweet,” she continued.
Okay, he thought, that probably is true.
The woman scratched her nose, and Lucas was sure he saw a flash of guilt in her eyes. “I was heartbroken to do what I was doing. I hope you’ll forgive me, Lucas, but Ms. Günerro would have killed us both. It was safer for you—and for me, too. I hope you believe me. It was Madame Beach’s idea for me to take you to the nuns.”
Lucas nodded. Not to agree with what she was saying but to confirm what he already knew. The final and most convincing way to spot a liar was to ask the unexpected. What Alister said came back to Lucas. “Apparently your mother was some sort of math genius.”
“Do you know what pi is?”
“Pie?” she asked. “Of course. I love pies. Meat pies—empanadas—are my favorite.”
“I mean the number pi,” he said. “Three point one four and so on.”
“I don’t know the number pi.”
Lucas couldn’t imagine someone not knowing the number pi. He had memorized more than eleven hundred digits for his eleventh birthday.
Lucas kept up the inquisition. “Do you know what phi is?”
“It sounds Greek,” she said.
“It is.”
“Is it a number or something to eat?”
“It’s a number,” Lucas said. “One point six one and so on. It’s called the golden ratio.”
“I’m a cleaning lady,” she said. “Why would I know math like that?”
“Because my mother was a math genius,” Lucas said. “And you’re not my mother, are you?”
The woman with long black hair stammered as she started to defend herself. She gulped, swallowed, and lowered her head.
“I’m very sorry, Lucas,” she said. “Ms. Günerro killed my husband, and she and Magnus made me try to trick you. I knew you would know fachine flowers don’t grow in winter.”
“Did you know my mother?”
“I took her job at the Good Hotel in Buenos Aires,” the woman said. “I took the job after Ms. T took your mother out to the Drake Passage. And your mother never returned.”
Lucas could feel the lump in his throat growing.
It’s one thing to think about someone not being alive. But to feel it. To feel the forever. That hurt. It felt like his sports-induced asthma coming on again. But different this time.
His lip drooped and his esophagus tightened. His lungs shrank and his breath shortened. The lack of oxygen tightened his tear ducts. He could feel it coming. He knew he had been feeling this his whole life.
From the moment his birth mother saved his life by putting him with the nuns in Tierra del Fuego, he had felt the loss. A life without his mother. His whole life. And now he knew for sure. The hope he’d held until now withered and died.
Lucas’s body quivered as the reality of being without his mother set in. His shoulders rolled forward. The woman with long black hair opened her arms, and Lucas leaned in and dropped his arms to his sides. He fell into the woman’s hug and buried his head and sobbed.
She let Lucas cry for a few minutes, then said, “Lucas, your mother believed in you, and she was very brave to hide you away.”
“I should have known,” he said. “Ms. Günerro’s a liar and does everything backward.”
“You can’t always believe what people tell you.”
“I know,” Lucas said. “Even when you want it to be true.”
“I’m sorry, Lucas,” she said.
“Why didn’t anyone arrest Ms. Günerro or Ms. T?”
“There was no real proof. Everyone said that Ms. T and your mother were lost in international waters. But a few days later, Ms. T quietly returned, alone.”
Lucas nodded. “That explains it,” he said. “International waters begin twelve nautical miles offshore. Anything can happen.”
“I don’t know the law.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m sure it’s pretty hard to get the police to go into the waters around Antarctica, anyway.”
“I wish I could bring your mother back, but some people care more about money than they do people. I’m really sorry.”
“Me too,” he said, and then just as he was about to get mad, Lucas stepped back and folded his arms. “I need to know what she did with the money.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” she said. “But first I want to tell you a story.”
“About what?”
“About who you are.”
UNDER YOUR NOSE
The woman with long black hair sighed. She leaned forward and looked Lucas in the eyes.
“There’s something you need to know abou
t your family,” she said.
“What?”
“Your mother’s father—your grandfather,” she explained, “used to be a diamond merchant.”
Lucas wrinkled an eyebrow. He’d never heard mention of his grandfather.
“Many years ago, he and some friends owned a diamond mine in the Belgian Congo, in the heart of Africa.” She paused. “The mine was very profitable, and your grandfather shared with everyone there.”
“But...”
“But there was a unit in the Congolese army led by General Bunguu, Lu Bunguu’s father, who didn’t like foreigners. He took over the government in a coup, and in doing so he stripped your grandfather and his friends of everything they owned.”
Lucas sat wide-eyed.
“After that, your grandparents and your mother were forced to leave Africa. They moved to Argentina to work for the mines there.”
“Silver mines?” Lucas asked.
“Probably—Argentina does mean ‘land of silver.”
The woman with long black hair crossed her arms. “But soon after, the Bunguu family hired Dr. Günerro, who was Siba’s father, and was this crazy scientist from Antarctica. Together, the Bunguus and the Günerro family teamed up to create the Good Company.”
The light in Lucas’s mind clicked on. “So the Good Company was started with money that was stolen from my grandfather?”
“Yes.”
Lucas didn’t know what to say.
“After that, your grandfather died, and your mother had to start working when she was eleven. When she was a teenager, Madame Beach hired her to work at the Good Hotel as a housekeeper. From then on your mother kept a journal on everything the Good Company did illegally.”
Lucas didn’t blink.
“And then, one day this container showed up at the Good Hotel in Buenos Aires. Inside were files, old photographs of your grandfather when he owned the mine, cash, and diamonds—Kapriss diamonds from the mine in Africa. Plus some ivory tusks that Lu Bunguu had thrown in as a gift to Ms. Günerro.”
“So where’s the container now?”
“The story is that your mother knew a man in the Islas Malvinas.”
“The Falklands?”
“Yes, but in Argentina we call the islands by a different name,” she continued. “This man was an English or Scottish banker, I believe. I think he liked your mother, so he helped her hide the container by shipping it around the world.”
“But where?”
“The container travels to hotels all over the world,” the woman said. “When it arrives, the head of housekeeping signs the paperwork and sends it back out to the next hotel.”
“Why wouldn’t they just steal it?”
“Because when your mother was at the Good Conference in Paris she made a pact with hundreds of housekeepers worldwide. They knew that if Ms. Günerro was caught in business with Bunguu and stolen Kapriss diamonds, she would go to jail.”
“So are all housekeepers spies against the Good Company?”
“Most of us are,” she said.
“Which hotels does the container go to?”
“They’re all Good Hotels on the water.”
“You mean the money Ms. Günerro has been looking for has been right under her nose in her own company?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think your mother liked the irony.”
“So how do I find it?”
“The only way to find the container is to decipher the codes in your birth chart,” she said, pointing to the file on the floor.
“But...”
She winked. “I know those are not the real documents.”
As Lucas picked up the file, the corrugated tin wall behind them rattled and began to groan as it opened.
After a series of mechanical clangs, the wall rose up like a portcullis in a castle’s gate into the ceiling, revealing a large, elegant room. Lime-green couches and paintings of pink flowers filled the office.
Six Curukians greeted Lucas and the woman with long black hair. The boys wore khaki shorts and tan shirts and all had thin blond peach-fuzz mustaches. Clear plastic cords spiraled from their ears.
At the back of the room was a flight of stairs with a chrome banister. And next to it, behind an enormous titanium desk, sat none other than Siba Günerro.
THE WRITING IS ON THE DESK
The CEO of the Good Company wore what to Lucas looked like a mermaid dress. An all-white veil studded with diamonds melted into a gown so white and so bright that it made Lucas’s eyes wince.
Ms. Günerro clapped her hands three times like a schoolteacher getting the attention of a classroom. At the end of the third clap, two of the older Curukian boys approached Lucas and took the folder from him.
One of the boys set the file on Ms. Günerro’s desk. Lucas hoped she wouldn’t open it and discover Gini’s drawings.
Lucas inched forward. He was now close to Ms. Günerro. The desk legs were made of elephant tusks. Pure ivory. And the surface sparkled. It was inlaid with a mixture of gold and diamonds that swirled across the workspace in an endless spiral. Lucas immediately saw the math behind the design. The golden spiral appeared to form quarter-circles that were slightly angled. Her desktop was a math problem. A logarithm. Lucas committed the design to his map memory.
He needed to make sure she didn’t look in the file.
“That’s mine!” Lucas yelled as he lunged.
The two other Curukians sprang up and blocked his forward motion.
“When we were in Paris,” Ms. Günerro said, “we made a deal on the bus, as I recall.”
The woman with long black hair grabbed Lucas’s wrist, which felt odd. Lucas started to shake her hand away, but then the woman squeezed his arm.
Sometimes you just have to play along until you know the rules of the game.
“You saved my life, Lucas,” Ms. Günerro said. “I could have drowned on that bus. What you did was heroic. For me it was a rebirth, a renaissance, a baptism of sorts. Since I left Paris, my perspective on life has changed. I want everything to be good and right. You and your mother here belong together. All people should have what rightfully belongs to them.” She tapped the file folder with her fingernail. “This birth chart rightfully belongs to me because I own the Good Orphanage, and therefore I own all the documents that were created there.”
“But it’s about me,” Lucas argued.
Ms. Günerro shook her head. “I told you that I would trade you this birth chart for your mother,” she said. “And I have delivered my part of the deal. And you too have complied with your end of the bargain.”
“But...”
“Let’s drop everything and read,” she said strumming her fingers on the folder. “Shall we?”
She handed the file to one of the Curukians, and the boy opened the birth chart.
He bumbled the words. “If you ewe blaaa can dummmba.” The boy stopped reading. “It’s too blurry.”
“Give me that,” Ms. Günerro said, taking the file. She slapped it down on the desk. “All you need is this little number on the outside,” she said with a grin. “Two nine five one four one dash three. That’s the container we’re looking for.”
Ms. Günerro reached into the top right-hand drawer and snatched a handful of frozen green peas. A thin puff of dry-ice smoke swirled up and into the air.
Part of Lucas wanted to destroy Ms. Günerro for what she had done or what she had let happen to his mother, and his grandfather, too. But this was not the time to quarrel about things he couldn’t change. He needed someone to argue for him and with him, like Astrid. But he would have to do it on his own. He channeled his sister.
Lucas asked in the snippiest way possible, “Why do you always have dry ice with you?”
Ms. Günerro was calm. “It reminds me of home.”
“Home?” Lucas said. “I can’t imagine you having a home.”
“When my father was a scientist in Antarctica, my parents kept our home ice cold. They knew I would adapt,” Ms. Günerro s
aid. “Besides, my mother was from Siberia, which is why I am called Siba.”
Lucas blurted, “You’re named for a frozen tundra?”
“Frozen tundra, Freon, dry ice,” Ms. Günerro said. “It all keeps me cool so that I make the best decisions.”
Lucas pointed at the desk legs. “Decisions like . . . killing two elephants so you could have a dumb desk?”
“Elephants are fat,” Ms. Günerro said. “And they take up too much room.” She patted the birth file that was on the desktop. “And I will make more desks out of ivory when I get my shipment back.”
The woman with long black hair cut in. “Señora Günerro?”
“Yes?”
The woman now put her hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “Lucas and I are so happy to be together again. And I want to thank you, Señora Günerro, for making this happen. You’re too kind.”
“It’s the way most people see me,” Ms. Günerro said.
“But I have a request,” the woman said. “I was wondering if it’s possible for me to work here in Las Vegas so I can be close to Lucas.”
“You want a transfer?” Ms. Günerro said.
“Yes,” the woman said.
Ms. Günerro popped a frozen pea in her mouth. “Since I am nice and I have Lucas’s file, I’ll honor your request, provided Lucas lives here in the Good Hotel.”
Ms. Günerro stood and began walking up the flight of stairs behind her desk. “Let’s do it now,” she said. “Let’s go visit the head of housekeeping and get you started right away cleaning some toilets.”
The woman with long black hair said, “I thought our agreement was that I would be head of housekeeping for the Good Hotels in America.”
“In due time,” Ms. Günerro said. “In life, you have to work to get ahead.”
Lucas and the woman with long black hair followed Ms. Günerro, and the six Curukian boys followed them to the lobby.
LOCKSMITH
The entrance of the Good Hotel Las Vegas was an underwater dreamland.
A giant marble fountain dominated the center of the room. Jets of water shot up to the ceiling and flowed through waves of blown glass and down the walls. It was like being underneath a giant wave.