The World in Half

by Cristina Henriquez

  I ride a bus back to the hotel.

  As soon as I step off, Hernán advances toward me, waving his arms. “What happened to the taxi?” He looks concerned.

  “The bus was fine,” I say. Danilo had made taking the bus sound like a challenge, and I thought that if I could do it, I would have accomplished at least something today. I really needed to feel like I accomplished something.

  Danilo’s painter’s bucket is on the sidewalk by the wall.

  When Hernán sees me looking at it, he says, “I don’t know where he is. I didn’t even see him until this afternoon. He was probably sleeping until then. He is not so good with responsibility.” He eyes me pointedly.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I cannot believe you took the bus!” Hernán tuts. “You aren’t worried about getting lost?”

  I’m wearing my new straw hat. The brim ripples gently in the breeze. In my life, I tend to worry a lot about getting lost. I like maps because they make it seem possible for every pathway to be laid out, every direction to be marked. But as I stand on a street in the middle of a place I don’t know, it occurs to me that this whole trip was about wanting to get lost, about wanting to lose myself.

  Loose pouches hang under Hernán’s eyes, and sweat glistens where his hat meets his forehead, as he stares at me, waiting for an answer.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not worried.”

  I can’t sleep that night. Shortly after midnight, I prop up the spongy hotel pillow and crawl to the foot of the bed, leaning out across the chasm between it and the dresser to turn on the television. The only thing on any channel is what appears to be a Panamanian version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. A woman trips and falls facefirst into her wedding cake. A parakeet plucks the toupee off a man’s head. A toddler buries his face in half a coconut, then stumbles around with it suctioned to him before he runs into a wall.

  I grab my phone. When Beth answers, she’s shouting. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “It’s Mira. Where are you?”

  “Mira! Hi! It’s Beth.”

  “I know. I called you.”

  “We’re at Jimmy’s.” Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap is a local Hyde Park dive, filled with smoke and beer advertisements on the wall and a live jazz band on Sunday nights. It’s depressing to think of her there without me. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay. Actually, I’m having kind of a crappy day.”

  “What’s that?” she yells.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Is the connection bad again?”

  “I don’t know. You’re shouting and I can hear the music in the background. Do you want to just call me later?”

  “What? Hold on.” Outside my window, the sky is a deep plum color. “Are you still there? I want to talk to you but I can’t hear anything. Actually, do you want me to go outside?”

  “It’s okay. Just call me later.”

  As soon as I fold the phone and put it on the nightstand, the room feels quieter than before I called her. I wait for it to pass, for the air to recalibrate, but the silence only deepens until I feel as if I’m drowning in it.

  I see Danilo right away, in one corner of the hotel bar. Two wiry men sit in the opposite corner smoking cigars and laughing, the air around them a fog. Danilo is playing cards with someone.

  “Hey,” I say, walking toward him with all the nerve I can muster.

  He smiles and scoots back one of the empty chairs at the table with his foot.

  “Have a seat,” he says. “This is Nardo.”

  Nardo, wearing a crisp blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, doesn’t take his eyes off his cards, which he guards in a tight fan held close to his face, the tops of them nearly brushing his nose.

  Danilo kicks him under the table. “Oye, be polite, man. You could look at the girl at least.”

  Nardo casts his eyes sidelong, stealing one quick look at me, before focusing again on his cards.

  “It’s late. What are you doing down here?” Danilo asks. There’s a glint in his eyes, as if he wants me to admit that I came down to find him.

  “I just wanted to get out of my room. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What are you drinking?”

  In front of him is some sort of mixed drink, the glass nearly full, the ice melted into thin wafers that float on the surface like lily pads.

  “Seco and Fresca.”

  “What’s seco?”

  “What’s seco? Nardo! Did you hear that? What’s seco?” Nardo huffs, but keeps his eyes on his cards. “It’s authentic Panamanian shit, Miraflores,” Danilo goes on. “Best liquor available anywhere on earth. For sure better than anything you can get in your country.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Sugarcane alcohol.” He raises the drink to his mouth and takes a sip, the lily pads swarming in toward his lips as he tilts the glass. When he puts it down, he has a goofy look on his face like he’s a little drunk. He yells across the room to the bartender. “Give me two more of these!” Then he picks up his cards, sliding them into view one by one with his thumb. “Nardo, are you going to put something down or what?”

  Nardo squints at his cards and after several seconds lays one on the table, letting it snap past his fingertips.

  Danilo cackles. “That’s the best you can do? Jesus Christ. I don’t know why I keep playing with you. I need someone who’s a real challenge, you know.” He shakes his head and lays down two cards. “Sorry, my man.”

  Nardo throws his hand down in disgust, the slick cards sliding on the tabletop like brittle leaves skating across a plate of ice. “Fuck.” He stands, knocking over his chair as he does, and walks to the bar without bothering to right it. Danilo collects the cards with a smug expression on his face.

  “What were you playing?” I ask.

  “Rummy. You know how to play it?”

  “I know pinochle. And Go Fish. And War.”

  “Someday I’ll teach you this.”

  The bartender delivers my drink and I sip it, feeling the cool liquid run and burn down my throat.

  “You like it?” Danilo asks, shuffling the cards.

  If I drink at home, it’s usually something more like a hard lemonade, even though Juliette always makes fun of me for drinking something so wimpy. “It’s good,” I say.

  He nods, and for a second it seems we’ve run out of things to talk about. I take some more sips in silence and then, sensing that it might be best to retreat to my room, ask him how much I owe for the drink.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Why? You’re buying?”

  “One time only. Enjoy it while you can.”

  “Thanks.” I scratch my neck and scoot back from the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my room.”

  “Where you don’t want to be anymore?”

  “I just needed a break from it for a few minutes.”

  “You missed a nice day today. I mean the weather. If you had gone out, you might have thought it was too hot, but for me, it was very nice. The kind of weather that makes people want to buy flowers. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea why.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t go out today?”

  “Did you?” He smiles teasingly.

  “Yes.” I drag the chair and myself back up to the table. Nardo is smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer at the bar. He’s standing sideways against it, his elbow on the counter, two fingers circling the neck of the beer bottle. I can smell the smoke mingling with the scent of cigars from the men in the corner.

  “And where did you go?”

  “I went to Avenida Central and to the address I had.”

  “The address?” Danilo lets his head go wobbly for a moment, as if it’s too heavy for his neck, before regaining his composure. “Your father’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “No!
”

  “Yes!”

  “And?”

  “It isn’t his house. There was only an old woman who didn’t know him.”

  “He doesn’t live there anymore?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But you went there?”

  “I did.”

  “To Santa Ana?”

  “Yep.”

  “I hope you didn’t wander into Chorrillo, though.”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  “You would know.”

  He looks impressed. There’s a strange satisfaction in knowing that I’ve surprised him just now and, even more, that I have the ability to.

  “So why are you here so late?” I ask.

  “Nardo, come on,” Danilo yells toward the bar. “Another game. I didn’t mean it, man. I love beating your ass.”

  Nardo holds his hand over his shoulder and gives Danilo the finger.

  “What did you say?” Danilo asks, turning back to me before shuffling the deck, the cards spraying like a fountain.

  “Why are you here so late?”

  “Eh, waiting for Hernán to get off his shift. He doesn’t like to walk home alone, so I usually wait for him even on his late nights. He thinks someone is going to rob him. For what, I don’t know. He doesn’t have anything worth taking. But that’s what he thinks. What time is it, anyway?”

  I check my watch. “Almost one.”

  Danilo takes a gulp of his drink before pushing it to the center of the table. He shoves the deck of cards into his back pants pocket. “Old man should be done by now,” he says, standing. Then he extends his hand. “I’m glad you went out today,” he says. “You can’t be scared of your own life, you know. That might be the worst thing.”

  When I grasp his hand, it’s damp from being cupped around the perspiring glass, but it’s also smooth and cool against my palm.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m not.” I feel a little indignant at the suggestion.

  Our hands are still locked when he says, “So what are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “I could still help you, you know.”

  “Tomorrow’s Wednesday. Do you have time?”

  He smiles as he blinks drowsily and says, “Meet me here tomorrow morning,” then lets go of my hand.

  Five

  Infiltration

  If anyone had asked me what my father looked like, I would have described a man with thinning silver hair and a blunt silver mustache. I would have said that his skin was smooth and dark, that his eyes were piercing. I would have said that his build was diminutive—neither a wall of corded muscles nor a tower of flesh and blood—and that he walked confidently, with a certain swagger, in tasseled leather loafers. I would have said that he wore a watch on his left wrist and that he had always seemed to me the sort of man who wore a ring, maybe gold and onyx, on his right ring finger.

  If anyone had asked me about his habits, I would have said that he had been smoking cigarettes for decades and that he carried a black plastic barber’s comb in his back pocket, smoothing it over his silver hair whenever he hoped to light a woman’s heart on fire. I would have said that he pulled the skin off fried chicken before he ate it and that he licked his fingers when he was finished. I would have said that he sat alone on the side of his bed every evening and polished his leather shoes to a dull shine using a kit that he kept in a cardboard box on the floor—polish, cotton briefs as rags, a buffing brush, and a nailbrush for the cracks in the soles—rubbing in small circles, his hand like a makeshift foot in the shoe, holding it at arm’s length every so often to examine his work. I would have said that he washed his face with soap and scraped the dirt from the undersides of his nails with a small Swiss Army knife that he kept behind the faucet; that he drank water without ice but with a squeeze of lime; that he flashed a brilliant smile at nearly everyone who passed him in a day; that he hummed in the shower; that he snored faintly in his sleep.

  Because even though for twenty years I have been mostly okay about not knowing my father, even though for so long I have assumed that he’s the sort of person I would be better off without, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have real and sudden moments of wanting to meet him, little seizures of the heart.

  Besides the few other details I gathered from my mother, this is the basic portrait I invented over the years. If anyone asked, that’s everything I might say. Or else I would say that I don’t know, because, of course, I don’t. I can only guess.

  The next morning, Danilo is waiting for me. He’s drinking a cup of coffee and eating scrambled eggs.

  “You want coffee?” he asks when he sees me.

  “Please.” I sit across from him at the table, as we were last night. It feels strange to see him in the daylight again, as if having seen him last night, in dimmer light, I learned something secret about him that makes him look different—and makes me feel more connected to him—now.

  He points to the urn that again has been assembled on the bar top.

  “Oh, I thought you were offering to get me a cup,” I joke.

  “No, but you can get me a refill while you’re up,” he says.

  I don’t know the word for “refill” in Spanish, but I gauge his meaning when he holds out his empty mug.

  When I return to the table with two cups of coffee, the steam swirling off the tops, Danilo slides a tin can toward me. It’s wrapped in a paper label that says “Nestlé Ideal.” I pour some of it—a viscous, yellowy milk—onto my fingertip to taste it.

  “What do you usually use?” Danilo asks.

  “In my coffee?”

  “Yes, in your coffee. Of course, in your coffee.” Playfully, he rolls his eyes.

  “I usually use milk.”

  “Cow’s milk?”

  “Yes, cow’s milk, Danilo. Of course, cow’s milk.”

  He grins. “This is better,” he says, pointing to the can. “It’s richer. A better flavor.”

  “Everything here is better, according to you.”

  “Of course. This is my country. If I were visiting you in your country, I would expect you to tell me that everything there is better. You have to be like that. You have to be proud, you know?”

  I wipe my finger on a napkin before pouring the milk into my coffee.

  “So what are we doing today?” Danilo asks. He’s wearing what I’ve determined by now is his unofficial uniform: an old T-shirt, baggy cargo pants, and a pair of Adidas shell-toes, the tongues lapping over the hem of his pants. Today’s T-shirt is white with a faded and cracked Esso gas decal on the front, the cotton on the shoulders so threadbare that the shade of his skin bleeds through.

  “Where are your flowers?” I ask.

  “Eh, I’m off duty today.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have things to do, no? Oye, did you already try the library?”

  I don’t want to admit that I haven’t. I did think about it at some point, but I got distracted by the failure of yesterday.

  “Hey, did you hear me?”

  “No. I haven’t tried the library.”

  “Wow. You’re not exactly a natural-born detective, are you?” He shovels some of the eggs into his mouth. “You want to eat something before we go?”

  “We’re going right now?”

  “Of course right now. If you really want to find your father, then let’s find him. There isn’t time for waiting around, you know. He’s not going to just walk into this hotel and introduce himself. You have to look for him.”

  “I know.”

  “Yesterday was one thing, but now we have to keep the momentum going.”

  “The what?”

  “Momentum,” he says again, and though I still don’t know the word, I figure out the general idea when he rolls his hands one over the other. “You know, I don’t believe that you have any Panamanian blood in your veins. Where’s your fire, Miraflores? Panamanians have fire. I mean, how sure are you that this man is really your fa
ther? I’m not convinced.” He’s teasing now, although the intimation that perhaps I don’t act as a Panamanian would ignites a certain, grazing pain. I wanted to believe that I was doing a good job of fitting in here.

  “He’s my father,” I assure him.

  “Okay, then. I’ll say it again, if you really want to find him, you have to look for him.”

  “How far is the library?”

  Danilo lights up. “That’s what I’m talking about!” He grabs my coffee and gulps down what’s left. “Too hot.” He grimaces.

  I laugh at him, but he ignores me.

  “Come on,” he says, standing. “We’re going to the library.” Then he shakes his head. “It’s crazy that I’m actually excited about that.”

  The library takes up the second floor of a concrete office building with tinted floor-to-ceiling windows spaced as evenly as a checkerboard around the outside. It’s unassuming, with a narrow strip of parking along the front and palm trees brushing the front wall.

  “What’s on the first floor?” I ask Danilo as we make our way to the stairwell, my orange bag knocking against my hip.

  “A call center. I used to work there.”

  “Really? Do you know English?”

  “It was a Spanish call center. For Latin America. Not everything in the world is about people serving your country, you know.” He pushes open the stairwell door and starts up the steps.

  “Oh, I know.” I’m chagrined that I was so presumptuous. “Our stupid president thinks it is, but most Americans know better.”

  Danilo swings his head around and screws up his face. “But you elected him, no?”

  “Not me. But yeah.”

  “I don’t understand that. How can all the people think one thing and the president can go do something else? It’s a democracy. That’s what you have, right? Why doesn’t everyone protest to get rid of him, if they don’t agree with him? Here, if people don’t like something, they’re out on the streets about it. I swear SUNTRACS is out there like every other day.” He pauses on the landing, gesturing. “And I’m saying, you know, people are out on the streets here even though there’s a history of it being dangerous to do that shit. Like, the government used to have hit men to come and take you out if you were in their way. It’s worse in other countries, but Panamá has it going on, too, you know. The whole system here is so crooked. All of our politicians are corrupt. But even with all that, people were like, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to take a stand for what I believe in. I’m going to tell these mother- fuckers what’s what.’ You know? It’s not even a risk for you to speak up in your country! Nothing’s going to happen to you, right? I mean, not really. But you guys still don’t do it.” His voice, when he finishes, echoes into the stairwell like the last inch of a bow being pulled across a violin string. He runs a hand over his hair and sighs, then turns to mount the rest of the steps.