“That was your suggestion.”
“Then where do you want to go?” he asks.
“I don’t care.”
“Valentina.”
“What? Don’t pretend what I want even matters.”
He sighs. “Of course you matter.”
“I do, but what I want doesn’t? How is that possible?” I’m pouting like a child, but I don’t care. I’m tired of waiting, of being alone.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds determined, and I’m not so sure he knows what he’s supposed to be sorry for anyway. This conversation should have gone differently. “I’ll call you soon,” he says, “when it’s time to leave.”
I don’t say anything.
“Valentina. You know I love you.”
Do I? I swallow and try to remember his touch. When he was here and I could feel him, then yes, I knew it. “I love you, too.”
I wait for him to hang up first. After he does, I realize I didn’t tell him to be careful. Now it’s too late.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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TWENTY-THREE
“What are you doing here?” Jacques asks.
I follow his skeptical eye from my mandolin case to my skirt to my lip gloss and blown-out hair.
“It’s busy,” I say, ignoring his question. I’ve never seen Soupe au Chocolat peopled before, but now I understand what it’s supposed to be like. Lively. Pulsing. I’ve only known its empty skeleton, but the people are the blood. They crowd around the bubble-like tables, break up the layers of brown, fill the air with color and warmth and smells other than chocolate. “Is it always this busy?”
Jacques shrugs. “Typical afternoon crowd.”
“Oh.”
“So you’re here to eat?”
“What? No. I thought I’d stop by and ask about maybe picking up some extra work.” I clutch the mandolin case with both hands so he can’t see my fingers trembling. It’s taken me three days to work up the guts to do this. I’m not backing out now.
“You can’t clean while we’re open,” he says, avoiding eye contact. “And I already have too many on servers.”
“Actually, I was wondering if I could play my mandolin. You know. For tips.” Desperation climbs up my throat and colors my cheeks. Blushing is harder to hide than shaky hands.
Jacques stares at the mandolin case, scratches his arm, glances uneasily around at the crowd.
“I’m not bad,” I say. I hope that’s true. I’m not terrible, but I’m not exactly great, either. “I made pretty good money busking outside the Metro before it got cold.”
Another worried look at his tables.
“And I really need the money.”
He sighs and points. “Back corner. And not too loud.”
“It’s a quiet instrument,” I say over my shoulder as I follow the direction of his finger. Hope fizzes up inside of me as I get the mandolin out of the case. I’m doing this. It may take a while, maybe even a few weeks, but if Jacques doesn’t mind and his customers aren’t too stingy and I don’t waste a cent of it, I’ll eventually have enough money for a plane ticket home.
I play without looking up. I watch my fingers, pretending the people away. Still, I can feel their judging eyes and hear the occasional clink of coins in my glass tip jar—even the rare rustle of a bill being stuffed in.
When I run out of music and do look up, the people are different. The earlier diners have been replaced by another round of customers, so I cycle through my repertoire again. And again. I don’t know how many times I do it, because I get lost in the melodies, happy for the first time in I don’t know how long. I’m going home. I’m not waiting to be rescued, and when Emilio sees me, he’ll be relieved I didn’t listen to him because we’ll be together and we can sort through this mess if we’re together.
Jacques’s barrel torso enters my peripheral vision, and I break off awkwardly midphrase.
“Time to pack up,” he says.
I stop, eye the half-full tip jar.
“Wednesday night is poetry reading.”
“Night?” I glance out the shop window and realize what I somehow missed. The light has changed, afternoon melting into dusk. “Poetry?”
Jacques shrugs. “Not my thing, but the customers like it.”
“Can I come again tomorrow?” I ask as I lay the mandolin back in its case.
He looks thoughtfully at the tip jar. “I guess.”
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t say you’re welcome, but he hands me a coffee to go and a brown paper bag with a croissant in it.
“Thank you.”
I don’t count my money in the café. If he’d wanted me to stay and take up a precious table, he wouldn’t have given me the food to go, so I stuff the jar in my purse and sip my coffee as I walk back to the apartment. The wind is biting, but I’m warm with hope and caffeine. That croissant is going to taste like heaven. Anticipation floats me all the way home.
Safe in my closet, I kick off my shoes, sit on my bed, and take the tiniest bites possible. It might be lighter and richer than anything I’ve ever tasted. Once I’ve swallowed the last mouthful and licked the pastry flakes from my fingers, I pull the jar out of my purse. I dump its contents on the bed. Coins. Bills. More coins than bills. I separate them, lick the butter on my lips and count. Then I count again. And again. Eighteen dollars and ten cents. I played for four hours and made eighteen dollars and four cents. That’s less than five dollars an hour. That’s nothing.
The hope trickles out of me penny by penny. Eighteen dollars. A plane ticket to Miami will cost at least five hundred. That’s . . . The math hurts. That’s too much. I’m not going home. At that rate, I’m not making enough for food.
I lie down, empty. The hope and caffeine have been used up. I’ve still got butter on my lips, but the rest of the croissant seems to have settled into a ball of grease and gluten right below my ribs. I could wait for Emilio. Or I could steal from Nanette, or maybe even from Jacques, and then send them the money once I got back to Miami. Or I could call my father. I can’t decide which option makes me want to throw up the most.
I pull my phone out of my bag before I can think too hard about what I’m doing and dial.
“Jane.” It’s just a syllable, but I can tell Marcel is smiling. “Or am I supposed to call you Valentina?”
“You’d better stick with Jane.”
“Why Jane, by the way?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just curious.”
“Because it’s nondescript,” I say.
“As in plain Jane.”
“I didn’t want to be noticed.”
“And how’d that work for you?”
“Not so well.”
He laughs. “Should I come get you?”
“What?”
“To swim. That’s why you’re calling, right?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
The pool is cleansing. I feel strong, carving a path through the water with my hands, propelling my body forward with each kick. Marcel beats me by a larger margin than last time, but it doesn’t matter. Or it matters less. I spend the entire swim going through what to say, how to ask so it doesn’t sound like begging. By the end, though, I’m too tired and too ready to have it over with to say any of the things I planned.
I pull myself up out of the water, panting. Marcel is sitting with his legs dangling in the pool, no longer breathing heavy at all. If he ever was.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod and blurt out, “Can I borrow some money?”
“Of course.”
I’m not sure what I expected. A smirk at the very least.
“I need kind of a lot, though.”
He shrugs.
“No,” I say, “like six hundred dollars.”
“Okay.”
“Seriously? That’s
all?”
He hands me a towel, and I realize I’m shivering. “Did you think I’d say no?”
“Um, no? I don’t know. I thought you’d want to know why.” I don’t add that I thought he might make me beg.
“Do you want to tell me why?”
I shouldn’t. I thought I’d have to, but if he’s willing to give me the money no questions asked, there’s no reason to. Unless he’s my friend. Unless I care that he might miss me when I disappear. “A plane ticket to Miami.”
“I thought you were waiting for Emilio.”
“I was. But something is wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, but I need to go back.”
“Oh. So why don’t you call your father?”
“I don’t want him to know. I’m not going home home.”
Marcel snorts. “Sorry. It’s just . . . seriously?”
“What’s so funny?”
“Your father is Victor Cruz. He’ll definitely know if you’re in Miami.”
“How?” I ask. I wring the water from my braids, watching the water trickle over my thighs. “Lucien isn’t reporting back anymore.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he had someone else watching you. And he probably has someone at customs on his payroll. I’m guessing the minute your passport gets scanned, he gets a phone call.”
“Oh.” Of course. That must be how he found me here.
“And once you get to Miami, don’t you think people will recognize you? Where are you going to stay?”
My teeth are chattering now. The towel is drenched. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
He doesn’t need to say anything else. I realize now how naive the plan was, if I can even call it a plan. It was a fantasy: fly to Miami, break into my house, take enough untraceable jewelry for Emilio and me to live off, and convince Emilio to come with me. I might as well have had us riding off on a unicorn at the end.
“Never mind,” I say. My throat thickens, and tears blur my vision. Marcel’s staring at me. I need to go change before I lose control completely.
I start to stand, but he puts his hand on my leg. “Wait.”
I sit back down, blink the tears away, and try not to look at his hand or feel anything at all. He’s staring through the water into the artificial blue of the pool floor, his mind elsewhere. He could be gripping a sandwich for all he knows.
“The Burlington crossing can be a pain,” he mutters. “Alburgh is pretty quiet, though. At night, especially. I’ve only had my car searched once.”
“What are you talking about? Why did you have your car searched?”
“Everybody has their car searched at some point. It’s a statistical probability when you’re crossing the border regularly.”
“Oh.” I can’t ignore it any longer. I look down at his hand.
He pulls it away. “You wouldn’t be any harder to hide than a suitcase full of guns.”
“You’ve smuggled guns across the border?”
“Of course not. But people do, and they get away with it.”
“What are you suggesting?” I ask.
“I’m suggesting we road trip.”
We draw up plans in Marcel’s room.
It’s the first time I’ve been into the main house, but Marcel doesn’t give me a tour. He barely turns on enough lights for us to make it through the first floor and up the two flights of stairs. I don’t need it illuminated to get the drift, though. It’s cavernous and immaculate, with anemic watercolor landscapes covering the walls. It’s my home in Miami drained of blood. No wonder Lucien was so desperate to escape. No wonder Marcel is still trying.
“Is this really going to work?” I ask, staring at the bookshelves that line two walls of his room. Not what I was expecting of a high school dropout. Aside from the books, there isn’t much personality in the room, but I get the sense that any gratuitous personality is wiped clean by the daily maid.
“Maybe.” He’s hunched over his laptop, pulling up maps of the various routes from Montreal to Miami. “Maybe not. You still want to try?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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TWENTY-FOUR
Six minutes.
I’m leaving. It’s hard to believe, but if that clock is still actually functioning, Marcel should be here soon.
Parting with my junk hurt. Surprisingly, it was more painful than pawning my tennis bracelet and earrings to get here, which doesn’t make any sense. At least a dozen times over the past couple of months I’ve pictured myself gleefully chucking the synthetic blanket into the Dumpster out back, hurling the scuffed shoes and threadbare sweaters into the icy Saint Lawrence River, but I couldn’t do it today. I thought I hated them, but at least they were mine.
Instead, after Marcel dropped me off, I gathered the few items I’m taking with me—two changes of clothes, a few pairs of underwear, basic toiletries—and put them into a grocery bag. The rest I reluctantly lugged to the Salvation Army donation box.
I realized too late that I should’ve kept the blanket, that I was still hours from midnight and Marcel’s warm car. I’ve spent the entire evening freezing on the cot without it. It’s been bearable only because it’s the last time. By this time tomorrow I’ll be somewhere warmer—not Miami yet, but somewhere warmer.
Five minutes.
My grocery bag of clothes, the mandolin, and me. That’s all that’s left. I’m huddled on the cot, staring at the clock on the floor because I used the crate to lug everything else to the Salvation Army.
I’m lucky Nanette isn’t home. She’s the only one who occasionally pokes her head in here, and if she did today, my leaving would be obvious. Marcel and I both agreed not to tell anyone. He insisted nobody would miss him, or at least not for a week, which seems both unbelievable and totally possible. Almost as unbelievable and totally possible: he’s driving me to Miami. 1,639 miles. Twenty-nine hours. That’s not a reasonable favor to do for someone, not even a friend, but I couldn’t make myself try to talk him out of it. He said that he needed a break from winter anyway, and that he’s always loved South Beach. He said he had friends there to stay with. So I guess I’m letting him.
Four minutes.
But Nanette. I owe her something. I owe her lots of little things, actually—detergent, peanut butter, ChapStick, crackers, not to mention wear and tear on her bathing suit, and heels that I’ve bled into. A thank-you. I owe her a thank-you. When this is all over, I’ll send her something, anonymously if I have to.
Of course, Emilio’s going to be pissed off at first. I can fantasize all I want about how happy he’ll be to find me on his doorstep, but I can’t forget what he said. Don’t come back. Promise me you won’t come back. And the way he said it—those words sank like stones.
He was scared when he said that, though. Terse out of fear. After the shock wears off, after he understands that I’m not in danger because nobody knows I’m in Miami, he’ll come around. I’ll make him. I’ll show up at his apartment in Brickell, and he’ll be mad, but he’ll let me in, and he’ll have missed me. We’ll walk down through Bayside Marketplace to the docks, dip our toes in warm water, and be in this together. I’ll melt his anger. I’ll make him forget.
Three minutes.
If I can.
Marcel said midnight is the best time to leave because it puts us at the border by two, and by that time border patrol agents don’t care about anything except going back to sleep.
Guilt creeps up my spine, one notch at a time. I’m using Marcel. But if he knows it—and he does—is it really so bad? He wants to take me to Miami. He was the one who suggested it, so it’s not like I put the idea in his head.
I still don’t want Marcel to see this apartment. Not the lobby, not the busted elevator, definitely not the musty common room or this fetid closet. How is it possible I’m still so
vain? I don’t know, but it’s bad enough that he’s seen the outside of this derelict embarrassment. I’ll wait outside.
I pick up the plastic grocery bag and the mandolin case and give the closet one final glance. The water stain on the ceiling looks like it’s grown again, the edges pushing outward, getting ready to swallow everything. The room is empty, except for the cot and the clock.
I unplug the clock, but I don’t take it with me. It’s not mine. And besides, I’m done waiting.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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TWENTY-FIVE
Marcel is late.
Icy fog wraps around me, and I shiver. The grocery bag and mandolin weight me to the sidewalk like anchors while I take turns entertaining the best- and worst-case scenarios. The best: he’s just late. The worst: he’s changed his mind. In a moment of typical old-Marcel flakiness, he offered to do this, then realized that a few days of ogling uninhibited South Beachers isn’t worth the risk of getting arrested for human trafficking.
No. That’s not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is he’s lying to me and has been for as long as we’ve been friends, which I guess is what we are now. He’s working for my father, or for one of my father’s enemies.
I’m crazy. Paranoid. Since that night in Emilio’s closet, there’s an endless thread of doubt winding its way through my thoughts, and it’s tangled in everything now, twisting every interaction. Anybody could be a liar, a murderer, an enforcer, an informant.
I pull out my phone to check the time. It’s 12:33. No wonder I’m so cold—I’ve been out here for a half hour. I watch my frozen thumbs press the buttons to dial Marcel’s number, but before I can finish, Lucien’s Range Rover careens around the corner. Even though I can see Marcel’s distinctly squarer jaw, a fleeting panic washes over me at the thought of Lucien behind that wheel, followed by an irrational tide of betrayal. I shouldn’t be mad at a dead man, even if he did lie to me. As quickly as the anger surged, it ebbs, and I’m left with cold, cold guilt.
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