by Jason Starr
She thought that was it, her papi would die, but then the locksmith told her she could copy the keys to the back door. This was okay, maybe even better, because it was darker in the back of the house and nobody would be watching.
Everything was looking good, but not for long. When she got back to the Blooms’ she remembered that Carlos still had the paper with the code on it. She’d been so busy talking to Carlos and thinking about the keys that she forgot to ask for the paper back.
When Mrs. Bloom went out to do something, Gabriela called Carlos and asked him to bring the paper to her apartment later on.
“Too late,” Carlos said. “Threw it out.”
“Why’d you do that?” Gabriela said. “I have to put it back in the drawer.”
Again Gabriela felt like the whole plan wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t be able to rob the house, and her papi would die.
“I thought the paper was yours,” Carlos said. “I thought you copied the shit down. I thought that’s why you gave it to me.”
Gabriela, starting to cry, said, “Why’d you have to throw it away, Carlos?
Why’d you have to do that?”
“I didn’t wanna be walking around with the code to the alarm of the house I’m gonna rob in my pocket. So I just memorized it, got it all up here now.”
He touched his head with his finger.
“Where’d you throw it out?” Gabriela said. “Maybe it’s still there.”
“I don’t remember,” he said, “near the subway or whatever. Garbage man probably picked it up already.”
“That’s it,” Gabriela said, crying. “We’re going to have to forget the whole thing now.”
Carlos laughed and said, “Damn, you gotta stop all your worrying ’bout everything and shit. Let me do all the worrying, all right, baby?”
“But if they see the paper is gone they’ll know I took it.”
“Why they gonna know that? Use your head, baby. You know how many people they probably got coming into their house? Big house like that, they probably got people coming and going all day.”
This was true, Gabriela thought. Men were painting the downstairs bathroom and were in the house all day long, and sometimes the plumber and the electrician were in the house, too, and what about all of Marissa Bloom’s friends? Why would the Blooms think she took the code when she’d been working for them for so many years and they had so much trust in her? Maybe not putting back the paper was even good because maybe they’d think for sure that some stranger must’ve taken it. She didn’t know if this really made sense or she just wanted it to make sense, but it made her feel better anyway.
That night she and Carlos talked about the rest of the plan. The Blooms were going to be leaving for Florida next Tuesday, all three of them, so it would be a good time to rob the house. Gabriela knew where the Blooms kept all their expensive things, their rings and jewelry. After Carlos stole everything he was going to sell it to somebody called a fence.
“Is the fence okay?” she asked.
“Hell yeah,” Carlos said. “My man Freddy’s cool, know him forever, gonna give us a good price, too. Third what the shit’s worth.”
“And then you’re gonna give me half the money, right?” “Nah, we’re gonna split it three ways,” Carlos said.
“Three?” Gabriela didn’t know what he was talking about. “How does it make three? Me and you’s two, not three.”
“You think I’m crazy?” Carlos said. “I ain’t gonna rob the place alone. That’s the way you get caught, wind up back upstate and shit. I ain’t goin’ in there without no backup.”
Gabriela didn’t like the way this sounded at all. She’d already been feeling very bad, stealing from the Blooms who’d been so good to her. But it seemed more okay when it was just her and Carlos because she knew Carlos, and even though he’d gotten her sick, she felt like she could trust him. But she didn’t like trusting some man she didn’t even know.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“You don’t gotta know,” he said. “If the cops come around, it’s gonna be better that way. Can’t talk about what you don’t know.”
She still didn’t like it, but she knew nothing she said was going to change Carlos’s mind.
“I don’t care what you do,” she said, “long as I get the money for my papi.”
On the day of the robbery, Gabriela had to go to work for the Seidlers, another family in Forest Hills. Carlos didn’t want her to call him all day, or even later on. He’d said, “Don’t do nothin’ stupid, just sit by the phone and wait for me to call. Cops track calls and shit. We don’t want them seein’ we been talking the day the house got robbed. Comprendes?”
Not talking seemed like the right thing to do, but it was hard, working all day long, keeping all the wondering and worrying in her head.
Later, she came home and had dinner with Manuela and called her parents at the hospital in Ecuador. Her mother said that papi wasn’t doing very good, and then she put Gabriela on the phone with him. Gabriela could hear it in his voice, how sick he was. He just didn’t sound like the papi she knew. She kept telling him to hold on, that she was gonna get the money for him real soon. He told her don’t worry, he was gonna be fine, but she heard the lying in his voice. That’s the way her papi was, always wanting to be strong.
Manuela spoke to him, too, and after, she was crying and said to Gabriela, “How come you told him you were gonna get the money soon? Where you gonna get it from?”
Gabriela hugged her daughter and said, “God is going to get us the money.
You’ll see.”
Around eleven Manuela was asleep and Gabriela was alone, waiting for Carlos to call, even though they weren’t supposed to rob the house till the middle of the night, like two in the morning. She didn’t know how long it was gonna take to rob a house, but she didn’t think it would take too long. Maybe by three they’d be all done, but then how long would it be before he called her? Knowing Carlos, he’d want to do drugs after. She wished she had some heroin right now; that stuff used to keep her very calm.
She tried to watch TV, but it was too hard, so she spent the whole night just walking back and forth in her living room. She’d never seen a clock move so slow. It seemed like it took forever till midnight came, and then one and two o’clock came even slower. But finally it was time—the house was being robbed, and soon, hopefully tomorrow, she’d have her money and her papi would be having his operation and everything would be okay.
The only problem was she had a horrible empty feeling in her stomach, like something was gonna go wrong. She kept telling herself, Don’t think about that. That’s stupid. Nothing’s gonna go wrong. They’re gonna get the ring and the necklace and all the jewelry and sell it, and soon you’re gonna have the money for papi. She kept telling herself this, but she didn’t believe it. The bad feeling was still there; it wouldn’t go away.
At three thirty, she knew it should be all over by now. They should be out of the house, back at Carlos’s or wherever. Then how come he wasn’t calling her? He’d said he’d go to a phone booth after the house was robbed and call her with a calling card so the police couldn’t find out. Maybe he didn’t have a chance to make the call yet. Maybe he was just making sure they were safe and everything was okay; then he’d call her.
But when four o’clock came, Gabriela didn’t believe that Carlos had forgotten about anything. He and his friend were ripping her off, that’s what was happening. They weren’t going to split the money three ways. That had just been more of Carlos’s lies. They were going to split it two ways, and one of the ways wasn’t going to be hers. She didn’t know how she’d been so stupid, trusting a man who’d already lied to her so badly, getting her so sick and ruining her whole life.
A few times, she was about to call him on his cell, but each time she stopped herself at the last second. She knew if he was going to steal from her, he wouldn’t answer his phone when she called, and she was still hoping she was wrong, that something happen
ed, like he didn’t have a chance to get to a phone yet to call her, and everything would turn out okay.
Then, at five in the morning, she was still in the living room, waiting for the phone to ring, when Manuela came out and said, “Mami, what’s wrong?”
“I just been worried about your abuelo,” Gabriela said. “I thought you said God was gonna save him?”
“I don’t know anymore, baby,” Gabriela said. “Maybe God’s too busy today.”
Gabriela made Manuela breakfast and lunch, then kissed her good-bye. She was so glad she had such a beautiful daughter, and she knew if it wasn’t for her daughter she probably would have killed herself a long time ago.
Manuela went back to sleep, and Gabriela turned on the TV, just to keep her mind busy. She watched Cada Día on Telemundo for a while and then switched to an English news channel, hoping to find out something about the robbery. She didn’t think there’d really be anything about it on TV, she thought she was just being crazy, so she couldn’t believe it when she saw the reporter standing in front of the Blooms’ house.
It was very hard to understand what was going on. Not because her English wasn’t good enough—she didn’t speak fluent but she could usually understand most of the news on the TV—but because she didn’t believe that a house getting robbed was such a big news story, on the TV news, it just didn’t make any sense. But then she heard what the lady was saying, how one of the men who’d broken into the house had been shot and killed by Adam Bloom. Mr. Bloom himself was on TV, talking about why he used his gun. Gabriela still couldn’t believe it—she thought she had to be asleep, having a bad dream. Then she heard the reporter saying, “Police are identifying the dead man as thirty-six-year-old Carlos Sanchez of Queens.”
Sitting on the couch, she stared at the TV for a long time—maybe for seconds or minutes or hours, she had no idea. Finally she was able to think. She couldn’t understand how this could have happened. The Blooms were supposed to go away; the house was supposed to be empty. And why did Mr. Bloom shoot Carlos? She knew he had a gun—she’d seen it in his bedroom closet when she was cleaning, and sometimes he even left it out on the little table near his bed— but she couldn’t imagine that kind man killing somebody even if his house was being robbed. It just didn’t make any sense.
Then it hit her, what this really meant, and she started crying like she was at a funeral, but she wasn’t crying for Carlos. She didn’t go to church very much lately, but she still believed in Jesus Christ and that even bad people like Carlos had some good in them somewhere. But she still couldn’t feel bad that Carlos was dead, not after all the bad things he had done to her. The one she was crying for was her papi. Carlos wasn’t the only man Mr. Bloom had killed with his gun, because now her papi was going to die, too.
Gabriela was still sitting on the couch crying when Beatrice called and said, “Did you hear what happened at the Blooms’ house last night?” Beatrice said she was in Forest Hills, at work in another house, and everybody was talking about it.
“Yes, I saw it on the news,” Gabriela said.
“The guy who was killed,” Beatrice said. “They said his name is Carlos, Carlos Sanchez. It’s not your old boyfriend Carlos, is it?”
“Don’t tell anybody you know that,” Gabriela said. “Please.” “Why?” Beatrice asked. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Gabriela said.“I just don’t want the police coming, asking me questions, when I’m so worried about Papi.”
“You okay?” Beatrice asked. “You don’t sound good. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Gabriela said, crying. “But please, please don’t say anything to the policía. I’m begging to you.”
Gabriela was scared, even more scared than she was when she found out she had HIV. At least there was medicine she could take for HIV, but she couldn’t think of any way to make this okay. So many people knew that Carlos was her ex-boyfriend. The Blooms and the other people she worked for didn’t know because she never wanted them to find out about the drugs and the HIV, but Beatrice and her whole family knew, and Manuela knew, and neighbors in Gabriela’s building knew. And what about all the times over the last couple of weeks that Gabriela had talked to Carlos on his cell phone? There was no way the policía wouldn’t find out.
Gabriela was thinking about killing herself again—she could jump off a bridge or take pills. Pills would be very easy. She had a new bottle of sleeping pills and could take all of them and be dead very quickly. If she was dead it would probably be better for Manuela, too. It wasn’t going to do her any good having a mother in jail. Beatrice could raise her good and give her a happy life.
At seven thirty, after Manuela left for school, Gabriela got the sleeping pills out of the cabinet. She was planning to text-message Beatrice, to tell her what she was going to do, so Beatrice could discover her body and not Manuela. She just hoped that she died before Beatrice arrived at her apartment. The worst thing would be if she woke up alive in some hospital bed.
She was about to type the text message when the doorbell rang. She looked through the peephole and saw a man with dark hair.
“Who’s there?” she asked, and the man said, “Police.”
She was surprised. She knew the police would come, but she didn’t think they would come this fast. She was going to lock the door and take the pills, but she was afraid the police would break the door down and call an ambulance and save her.
She opened the door, hoping she could convince him to go away so she could have a chance to kill herself.
“Yes?” she said.
“You Gabriela?” he asked.
He was in a leather jacket and was wearing dark sunglasses. He didn’t look like police.
“Yes,” she said. She couldn’t remember ever being so scared.
The man reached into his jacket for something. She thought she’d see a badge, but it was a gun. She looked into the dark hole and saw her poor papi’s face.
MARISSA GOT out of bed at around noon and headed down the main staircase. She was about halfway down when she suddenly stopped and couldn’t get herself to go any farther. Although it looked like the blood was all gone, she remembered what that guy had looked like, with that big piece of his jaw missing and all the blood, and got so grossed out she felt like she was going to throw up. She took the back stairs instead and went right into the kitchen. She was planning to ignore her father, give him the silent treatment after their argument last night. She didn’t see him downstairs, and her mother wasn’t around either.
“Ma!” she called.
No answer. Usually she loved it when she had the house all to herself, but after last night the idea of being alone kind of freaked her out.
“Mom! Dad!”
Her dad came out of the den, finishing a call on his BlackBerry. “Okay, Lauren, I’ll check back with you later on that. Bye-bye now.”
At first Marissa was kind of surprised that her dad was acting so normal, that he was able to get back to work so quickly after going through so much trauma, but then she decided it made perfect sense. After all, he wasn’t exactly in touch with his emotions. She remembered how he didn’t cry at all at his father’s funeral—even at the cemetery, when they lowered his father into the ground, he was stone-faced—and then a few months later he was a mess, snapping at everybody all the time, drinking too much. It would probably take him a few weeks before he realized how he actually felt about the shooting, and in the meantime he would take his anxiety out on her and her mom.
When her dad came into the kitchen Marissa was at the counter, pouring a cup of lukewarm coffee.
“Hey, good morning,” he said, sounding inappropriately upbeat. “How’d you sleep?”
She waited several seconds before mumbling, “Shitty.”
“Aw, that stinks,” he said. “Maybe you should take a nap later or something. Oh, and by the way, I’m really sorry about last night. I was just feeling exhausted and stressed and I shouldn’t’ve taken it out on y
ou.”
“Whatever,” she said, not ready to forgive him yet.
“No, not whatever,” he said, mimicking her. “I was wrong and I’m sorry.
Friends?”
He extended his arms, inviting her to hug him. “Friends,” she said grudgingly.
They hugged loosely; then she took a sip of the coffee. It tasted sour and murky.
“Hey, so I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe instead of going down to Florida I’ll just fly Grandma up here instead.”
“Can she travel?” Marissa asked.
“She said she’s been feeling a lot better lately and that she could handle the flight. She could just sleep downstairs on the pullout and use the downstairs bathroom so we don’t have to worry about her going up and down the stairs.”
“Sounds good to me,” Marissa said.
She was always up for getting out of a trip to Florida. She used to like going down there when she was a kid, mainly because she and her parents always stopped at Disney World on the way back, but for the last ten years or so going to her grandma Ann’s condo in North Miami had been torture. It was always nice to see her grandma, but at her condo Marissa was basically a prisoner, hanging around all day, playing Rummy Q, watching game shows, and waiting for the main activity: going to the early bird dinner at four o’clock.
“Yeah, I think I’m just gonna call her and suggest it,” her dad said. “Maybe next weekend or the weekend after.”
“So,” Marissa said, “is there any news?” “News about what?”
Was he serious?
“The shooting,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what news there would be since last night. I mean, they removed the body right after you went to bed, and I was up for maybe another hour or so. I’ve been getting a lot of calls and e-mails, of course. It’s amazing the way news spreads. Remember my old friend Stevie Lerner? Big guy, dark curly hair? Anyway, you met him when you were about eight years old, I think, and the last time I saw him was at a wedding maybe ten years ago. Anyway, he called to see if everything was okay.”