The Paper Swan

by Leylah Attar

  Wherever Damian went, the Lucky Strike tin went with him. It was there when he scouted remote islands and atolls, looking for a place he and Rafael could lay low. It was there when the dust settled over the deaths of El Charro and Emilio Zamora, and everyone had forgotten two insignificant boys who had been there that day. It was there when they relocated to a fishing port, where Damian bought his first trawler, El Caballero, a name he took on as part of his new identity. It was there when he saw Rafael off to a prestigious boarding school, and again when he attended Rafael’s graduation from college. It was there when Damian was big enough and wealthy enough to apply for a U.S. green card as an investor, and then years later, his citizenship. And it was there now, in his inner coat pocket, as he had dinner with Rafael, in Warren’s Polynesian themed flagship resort: The Sedgewick, San Diego.

  When Warren had started out, he was still under the cartel’s thumb. He had managed to get out of Mexico, but only because it suited their purposes. They needed ways to turn the dirty cash from drug sales and other illegal activities into clean, usable currency, and Warren was one of the cogs in their money-laundering machine. Damian understood his role well. Warren would buy a prime piece of U.S. real estate. He would build a five star resort, fill it with the finest linen, cutlery, china, the best furniture. From there, he would report his hotel at maximum occupancy, except it was never completely full. Every day, a security van would roll up and collect all the cash taken in from the rooms, nightclubs, casinos, bars and restaurants—dirty cash mixed in with legitimate income. Warren got a cut of the action. The rest made its way to offshore accounts that belonged to El Charro, who then dispersed it to his top men.

  El Charro’s death freed Warren from the clutches of the cartel. The direct link had been severed. That arm of the Sinaloa cartel no longer existed. Warren wrapped up his illegal dealings and continued to expand his chain of hotels with his own money. After a couple of years, he went public. Sedgewick Hotels became a hot commodity, traded on the stock exchange. Warren thought he was in the clear. He never, for one second, conceived of what was coming for him, who was coming for him.

  When Warren walked into the restaurant that night, Rafael turned to Damian. “There he is, just like clockwork. Every Tuesday night, eight o’clock sharp.”

  Damian felt his hackles rise. He ignored the urge to turn around and bit into his burger. He had been buying Sedgewick stock for years via shell companies that Rafael set up for him. Warren didn’t know it, but Damian Caballero now held enough shares to control the future of Sedgwick Hotels and here, on the eve of a reckoning that had taken him over a decade to stage, Damian wanted to have one last look at the man responsible for destroying MaMaLu. Tomorrow, he would be a different man, a broken man.

  “Everything is set?” he asked Rafael.

  “Say the word and it’s done.”

  Damian pushed his plate away. “I need a drink. I’m heading to the bar.” From where he could watch Warren, and savor the last bittersweet dregs of the venom that had fueled him for so long.

  Rafael nodded. He knew Damian well enough to understand when he needed time alone. “Take your time. I’ll be right here.”

  Damian sat at the far end of the sleek, reflective counter, away from the crowd, where the lights were dim and the music was muted. He took a tall sip of beer before his eyes sought Warren out. He was sitting in a private booth. The wait staff obviously knew who he was and what he liked. They brought him a drink without asking, and some kind of appetizer on a long rectangular plate.

  Damian had seen pictures of Warren, but nothing had prepared him for seeing him in the flesh fifteen years later—fifteen years after he had chased Warren’s silver Peugeot down a dusty road. Warren looked smaller, shorter, not as all-pervading as he was in Damian’s head. He was in his fifties now, but looked older, with a chunky mustache that was almost all silver. How could he sit there, eating and drinking, so pleasant and alive, when MaMaLu was cold bones and desiccated earth? How could anyone go on so indifferent, so unaffected, knowing they had destroyed worlds and dreams and lullabies? Warren was El Charro, except worse. Whereas El Charro had made no pretense about being a monster, Warren had built himself a facade of decency.

  If Damian had left then, at that precise moment, he would have stuck to his original plan—to take over Warren’s company, strip it, devalue it, dismantle it and rob him of the power and prestige he had traded his humanity in for. But just as he was finishing the last of his beer, Damian stopped mid-swig. A young lady slid into the booth with Warren. She didn’t sit across from him; she sat next to him and engulfed him in the biggest, tightest hug. Damian couldn’t see her face, but it was clear Warren had been expecting her. His whole face transformed. He glowed with something indefinable, something true but intangible, something Damian had only seen before in MaMaLu’s eyes—when he picked flowers for her hair, when he made her a seashell necklace, when he was sick, when he was hurt, when he made her laugh and sometimes, when he made her cry. That look, that look which Damian would have given anything for, was the way Warren was looking at his dinner companion—with the whole Goddamned world in his eyes.

  Damian sucked in his breath.

  Look away, look away.

  But he couldn’t. And in that moment, Skye Sedgewick flipped her long, golden hair to the side and kissed her father on the cheek.

  Fuck.

  Damian felt like he had been punched in the gut. The memories he had locked up behind iron gates swelled against their chains.

  “One more.” Damian slammed his beer on the counter. The bartender jumped. When she poured him another, he grabbed it and gulped it down in one long guzzle, drowning out everything that threatened to break free—echoes of kites and cakes and trees with bright, yellow flowers.

  When he looked at Skye again, fortified and controlled now, she was gushing over something her father had given her. She tore through the logo-emblazoned packaging and held out a bag.

  “Hermes!” she squealed.

  Gone was the endearing gap between her teeth, sealed and veneered, just like her heart. She was the girl who hadn’t stopped when Damian had gone running after her car. She was the girl who hadn’t bothered saying goodbye. She was the girl who had trampled on his heart and his paper animals, and on MaMaLu’s love and songs and stories. She was, every inch, Warren’s daughter—callous and uncaring and materialistic and fake. A fake friend, a fake confidante, a fake childhood memory. She was a counterfeit, wrapped up in genuine designer packaging. But most of all . . . most of all . . . she was everything to Warren. The way Warren looked at his daughter left Damian with no doubt about that. Nothing was more precious to Warren than his daughter—not his mansion, not his cars, not his company. If Damian wanted to make Warren suffer, really suffer, he had to take her away from him. Forever.

  “A woman for a woman,” said Damian when he returned to the table.

  “A what?” asked Rafael.

  “A woman for a woman. He kills my mother, I kill his daughter.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “See that over there?” Damian pointed to Warren’s booth. “That’s a father who adores his daughter. There is no greater pain in this world than losing a child, Rafael. And I’m going to make sure Warren feels it, for as long as he lives.”

  Rafael’s eyes darted from Skye to Damian. “Violence? Do you really want to go there? We’ve spent our lives running from it.”

  “Not violence, Rafael. Justice. Skye Sedgewick for MaMaLu. Una mujer por una mujer.”

  “I thought you were going after his company.”

  Damian pulled out the Lucky Strike box from his coat. “I changed my mind.” He traced the worn, gold letters and thought of the newspaper article inside, of the lies, lies, lies Warren had spewed about his mother. “I’m going after Skye Sedgewick.”

  “AND THAT’S HOW ESTEBAN BECAME Damian,” said Rafael. “When you prayed for him and MaMaLu, you threw him off. He couldn’t bring himself to kill you
, but he could make your father think you were dead. And now,” Rafael raised the gun, “your time really is up, princess.”

  It was almost dark. I could hear the waves crashing on the beach, the squeaks and flutters of night insects stirring around us, the piercing cry of an island bird—like some kind of nature CD: Sounds of the Jungle.

  Close your eyes. Relax. Don’t fight it. Let Rafael shoot you in the head.

  I was dead already. The truth doesn’t always set you free. The truth can kill you, slice open your innards and turn everything inside out. Everything I believed, everything I thought was real had been turned upside down. My father wasn’t the man I thought he was, Damian wasn’t the man I thought he was, and MaMaLu wasn’t living in a white-walled house with a backyard full of flowers.

  “You’re lying,” I said. “MaMaLu isn’t dead. Damian was taking me to see her.”

  “He was taking you to her grave, so you could see what your father did. It was important to him that you understood why he did what he did. He goes every year. This year he thought he was finally going to keep his promise and complete her tombstone. He was finally going to find his peace, but you . . . you turned out to be the chink in his armor. I knew he was cracking. The more time he spent with you, the harder he found it to distance himself. I could hear it in his voice. So fucking torn. I should have intercepted him sooner, but I’m here now, and it’s time to end this.”

  Rafael’s hands were unsteady as he took aim. I turned my face away. I wanted to go back to that late afternoon, to the dusty road, to Casa Paloma receding in the background. I wanted to part the haze, to make out my best friend’s form, to stop the car and run to him.

  Esteban. I wish the rains had come.

  “Let her go,” said Damian.

  I opened my eyes and saw him, a dark, staggering form standing before us. He could barely stand, but he was holding his ground.

  “We both know you won’t shoot. You can’t,” he said to Rafael.

  “I will.” Rafael kept his gun trained on me, clamping one hand over the other. “For you, I will. I’ll get over my fucking fear of guns and shoot her brains out. It’s either you or her, Damian. She called her father. Check the log on your phone. You know what that means, right? They’re coming for you. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “I said let her go.” Damian drew a gun and pointed it at Rafael. He swayed unsteadily on his feet.

  We were immobilized in a tense triangle: me on my knees between the two men, Rafael pointing a gun at me, Damian pointing a gun at him. Their bond was apparent to me now. The guns were props. They were working out something much deeper, each trying to keep the other from making a wrong move. Rafael was ready to eliminate anything that compromised Damian, and Damian knew that taking a life would haunt Rafael forever. When Damian looked at Rafael, he saw the one thing that he had done right. He saw a sliver of redemption. And Damian had shielded Rafael for far too long to let him get blood on his hands now.

  But there was another factor at play. Me. Damian had swung me out of the way on the boat and taken the blow himself. I knew he was also doing this to protect me. I knew why I had instinctively turned to him when I thought I was surrounded by sharks. Some part of me had recognized that soul-deep part of him, the part that was still alive but buried under layers of hurt and rage.

  “We both know you won’t shoot me,” Rafael said to Damian, his finger on the trigger, eyes on me.

  “Try me,” said Damian. “I told you before. You get in my way, I’ll take you out.”

  Rafael didn’t look the least bit convinced. “You’re hurt, Damian. Delirious. You don’t know what you’re doing. As long as she’s alive, you’re in danger. They won’t stop until they find her. We have to cut the trail off right here.”

  “I decide,” growled Damian. “I decide what to do and when to do it. This has nothing to do with you, so back the fuck off. Get on your boat, get off this island, and don’t look back. My life, my fight, my rules.”

  Rafael didn’t move. Damian didn’t move. They both stood there, guns raised, too stubborn to admit that each was looking out for the other.

  “I got the stuff you asked for, Rafael.” It was Manuel, back from his trip. “Your face is all over the news, Damian. The mainland was crawling with cops and private security guys hired by Warren Sedgewick.” He looked from Rafael to Damian, suddenly aware he’d tripped over a live wire. “Hey, man, what’s going on?”

  Rafael and Damian didn’t respond. Manuel’s news had just added fuel to the fire. They continued warring without words, locked in a duel that stretched out into a thin, taut silence. Then Rafael broke contact.

  “This is bullshit, Damian, and you know it,” he said. “If you’re determined to go down, don’t expect me to hang around and watch.” He took the case from Manuel and shoved it into Damian’s arms. “Medical supplies,” he said. “But seeing as you don’t give a fuck about your life, you probably won’t use them.” He was angry, so angry that he wouldn’t look Damian in the eye. “You’re not invincible, you know that? You’re a bull-headed prick who can barely stand. You need to get back inside and stay put. At least until the heat is off. I’ll look after the business end of things and get Manuel to plant your phone in Caboras. Let them go chasing for you there,” he said. “And next time I see you, you better be damn sure your stubborn ass is still standing.”

  Damian stayed on his feet until Rafael and Manuel were out of sight. His legs didn’t buckle until he heard the boat taking off. Then he dropped like a sack of potatoes. I ran to him, feeling the weight of all the things I now knew about him. I brushed the hair back from his brow. He was burning up—his breath was hot, his skin clammy. Not only had he lost a lot of blood, but it seemed like an infection had set in from his wound.

  Yesterday, I would have given anything to be free of him.

  Die, Dah-me-yahn, DIE!

  Today I was rummaging through the supplies Manuel had brought. I needed antibiotics to fight the infection. I needed something to bring his fever down. I needed him to open his eyes, to look at me, to say something, anything.

  Live, Dah-me-yahn, LIVE!

  Damian dangled between life and death, slipping in and out of consciousness all night. His pulse was erratic, sometimes hard and fast, sometimes barely detectable. I hovered over him, monitoring his fever, wringing out a towel and laying it on his forehead, like I remembered MaMaLu doing when we were sick. When the cold compresses turned lukewarm, I changed the water. Again and again and again.

  By morning, I wasn’t running to the kitchen as often. Damian seemed to have made it through the worst of it. I stretched out beside him, emotionally and physically exhausted. I had managed to get him back to the villa and into bed, supporting his weight, dragging him step by excruciating step.

  We were lying under gauzy, white netting. The house was rough, but charming. With no glass in the windows, it was open to the outside, letting the ocean air sweep through. The netting kept the mosquitoes and bugs away, but it also closed off the rest of the world. I could finally look at Damian—really look at him.

  If you close your eyes and think about someone you love, what comes back is not a precise list of hair color, eye color, or the things that go on their driver’s license. Rather, it’s the bits and pieces that seep through your consciousness, the things about them that you never realized you were storing away. Like the shape of Damian’s ears and the way his lids had a slight sheen. Everything else had changed—his Adam’s apple, so pronounced, the stubble on his jaw, the way his mouth never seemed to relax—but I still knew his ear lobes, from all the times we lay next to each other on the grass. Every time the trees swayed in the wind, yellow flowers dropped on our faces.

  I uncurled Damian’s palm and traced the lines. It was a man’s hand now, big and strong and rough. I felt a crushing tenderness for it. It was the same hand that had rocked me to sleep in the hammock, the same hand that had created paper worlds, the same hand that had showed me how to make a
proper fist—not a girly fist, but a proper, Gidiot-busting fist.

  I lay my cheek on Damian’s palm and let myself imagine, just for a minute, that we were kids again.

  “I missed you so much,” I said to his crooked thumb. “I wrote to you and MaMaLu every day. I didn’t know why you never replied. My heart broke in so many places. I never saw you running after the car, the day we left Casa Paloma. I never knew the hell you were going through. I’m sorry, Estebandido.” I kissed the center of his palm. “So sorry.” My tears trickled onto his hand.

  When I woke up a few hours later, Damian’s eyes were open, his hand was still pillowing my face.

  “Is it true?” he asked. “What you said?”

  Damian speaking softly. I had never heard him use that tone with me. His voice. God, his voice. I tried to reply, but he was looking at me in such a way that I couldn’t find the words. He was looking at me. Skye. Not Warren Sedgewick’s daughter. Not a means to an end. For the first time, Damian was seeing me.

  I let him look at me, because I knew he needed that, just like I had needed it. I let him see the girl who had worshiped him, the girl who had smuggled strawberries in a stained dress for him, the girl who had wanted to impress him so badly, she’d asked him to let go of her bike before she was ready.

  “Why are you looking after me? Why are you being nice to me?” he asked.

  “Why did you push me out of the way on the boat? Why did you stand up to Rafael? ” I reached out to touch his wound, but he flinched and held my hand away. His eyes fell on my bandaged finger and a look of such agony passed over his face that I wanted to wrap my arms around him. But right before my eyes, Damian snapped out of it. He went blank, expressionless, like a chalkboard wiped clean. I stared at his back as he turned away.