“I do. I don’t want you dragged down in the wreckage of my sinking ship.”
“Jesus, look at you. You’re shaking,” he says, taking my hand.
“I’m all right.”
“Do you need a better coat?”
“No, this thing is really thick, there’s a layer of fleece and a layer of something else.”
“Let me come with you. You don’t know what you’re doing. I was with the guapo army in the jungle when I was eleven.”
“This isn’t like that. This requires finesse.”
He bites his lip and we sit there holding hands like children.
“I’m going to go,” I say, my voice barely above a croak.
He leans across the seat and kisses me. “You’ll need these,” he says, and gives me his Mexican cigarettes.
“Hey, and for sugar, this.”
An orange.
I get out of the Range Rover, shoulder my heavy backpack, and close the door. He turns on the engine and drives back down the mountain.
I wait until the Range Rover’s lights are gone before I pull on the ski mask.
I look at my hands. He was right. They are shaking.
And now I feel utterly alone.
Scared.
Maybe I could do it tomorrow.
No. Tomorrow I have to leave for Mexico and I have to be in Havana the day after that, otherwise Hector and Ricky and Mom will all get taken.
“Ok,” I whisper to myself.
I walk to the rusting metal box next to Youkilis’s gate.
I key in the code.
The gate swings open.
I step inside and stand there.
After half a minute the gate closes behind me.
I might as well go on. It’s like launching a raft into the Gulf Stream: once the current takes you there’s no going back.
Snow is still falling. Lighter now. Little diamonds on my jacket and padded black sweater.
I scope the place. No lights. No sound.
I walk over the gravel drive to the path.
Clouds drifting across the half-moon. The night holding her breath.
I fumble in my pocket and touch the key.
I look over the wall at Jack’s house. The house is dead but he might still be awake watching the tube in the master bedroom.
I wonder how his party went at the Cruises.
How will you take it if I have to kill your buddy?
I walk down the zinc-colored footpath, making footprints in the snow.
If it all goes to shit those footprints will be useful to the cops.
I reach the front door and take the maid’s key out of my pocket.
Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
I put the key in the lock, turn it, and push. The door opens.
I now have thirty seconds to put the correct code into the alarm box. I walk in, flip open the box, and key in 9999-the default. The red light flashes green.
Big breath.
I close the front door.
I take the backpack from my shoulders, unzip it, and remove the flashlight and the gun. Reshoulder it, walk upstairs. Nineteen steps on the curve. Second door on the left. This is the time for surprises. A houseguest. A new dog. A whore from Denver. An old girlfriend who’s driven up from Vail. Jack, feeling lonely, staying over.
I wait for something. Anything. The tension is bending my back like a coconut palm.
Nothing. Yet. Stand there at the top of the stairs.
The carpet I’ve cleaned and cleaned. An ancient Greek drinking vessel. A poster from the motorcycle show at the Guggenheim.
Autographed pictures. Friends of Jack, friends of Peter. Famous friends only. Clooney, Affleck, Pitt, and the neighbors, Cruise and Tambor.
The master bedroom.
The handle.
Bladder feels full. A noise. Look behind me-nothing.
Ski mask restricting my field of vision, making me claustrophobic, jumpy.
Pressure on the handle.
The door opens.
I go in.
The TV’s on, bathing the room in a zigzaggy blue light. Gun up. Flashlight off. Fumbling, I drop the flashlight and it crashes to the floor with a thud. Down on one knee, raise the gun. Wait… Nothing.
Stand again. Check the corners. Go in.
Youkilis lying there on top of the bed, naked, asleep. The TV playing images on his belly.
I walk to the bed. Look at him. Deep gone. Drug sleep. Scan the room. No one else.
Back to the TV. Perfect if he’d been watching child pornography or a snuff movie or something bourgeois and decadent, but it’s not, it’s just the Discovery Channel. A show about blue whales.
I turn it off.
He doesn’t stir. He’s sleeping, spread-eagled with a grin on his face. A ten-milligram tab of Ambien and a glass of hundred-year-old cognac must be the recipe for bliss. What if he’d taken the whole packet of sleeping pills? That would let me off the hook. Wouldn’t it, Dad? Wouldn’t it, Ricky?
I roll up my sleeve and look at my watch. 1:30.
Where did the time go?
I stand there with the gun pointed at him.
He’s not even snoring. And he’s happy.
On the nightstand next to him there’s an open drawer. I look in. A Ziploc bag filled with drugs and currency. I take it, sit on the bed.
“I really don’t want to do this,” I whisper to myself. Then don’t. Go. Walk back down the hill, get a good night’s sleep and the bus to El Paso. Go. Ricky won’t mind. Mom doesn’t care. Karen’s moved on. It’ll be better for everyone. Go, little birdie.
I stand but before I’m even on my feet the chemical messengers have done their work and my synapses have flashed back through one of the good times. Before the affairs, before the blowups, before Santiago. Dad laughing as Ricky and I steer the ferry on the first run of the day, the sun rising over the bay, seagulls on the deck, water sluicing through the gunwales.
Another time: Aunt Lilia’s wedding, Dad in a blue suit, Mom in a black dress, me holding his hand in a sepia photograph and dancing with him to a Yuma tune.
And one more: Ricky, Dad, and me watching Cuba win everything at the Pan American Games, me complaining of thirst and Dad from nowhere producing mangoes he had hidden for hours.
You took all of this, Youkilis. You ended it and now it belongs to you.
You own it and I want it back.
I walk around the bed.
I look at him and force myself to poke him in the ribs with the gun barrel.
“Ugh,” he says and doesn’t move.
I poke him again.
Another “Ugh.” But he still doesn’t wake.
Damn it. Now what?
Use it, Mercado.
Yeah. Use it. I roll him over. I put his hands on his back above his ass. He starts to snore. He’s way deep. Fathoms. Kilometers. I put the flashlight on the bed, take off my backpack, and remove the duct tape.
Five minutes later it’s done.
His wrists are duct-taped together and the Ambien-cognac combo has kept him out.
The next step?
The car.
I go back downstairs and through the kitchen to the garage. I need the keys he keeps on a hook by the door.
I turn on the flashlight and there they are, but even if they hadn’t been there it would have been ok. Every Cuban knows how to hotwire.
I pop the trunk and throw out a crate of seltzer, a pair of ski boots, and a lawn chair.
Nice and roomy.
Back upstairs.
Sleeping beauty sleeps still.
I rip off another line of duct tape and slather it over his mouth.
That’s what wakes him. He groans. Jolts upright. I flip the lights. Ski mask, gun, the twenty-first-century equivalent of the devil in the forest.
Screams behind the tape.
He scrambles away from me, falls off the bed, and bangs his head on the nightstand. I let him lie there for a minute to gather his wits. Then I point the gun at his heart. It’s in this moment I decide that I’m not going to speak. Not a word until he’s at the lake.
He looks at the gun and nods his head. He struggles to his feet.
I point at the door and sidle around the bed so that he’s ahead of me.
He turns and stares at me. He’s wondering if this is a nightmare.
Yeah, it is.
I point at the door and give him a little push and he walks ahead of me, slowly, onto the landing.