Before his trip, Wari presented his letter and his fees and his paperwork. Statements of property, financials, university records, a list of exhibitions and gallery openings, certificates of birth and legal documents regarding a premature marriage and redemptive divorce. The entirety of his twenty-seven years, on paper. The centerpiece, of course, was Eric’s invitation on letterhead from his university. Eric had let him know that this wasn’t any old university. Wari gathered that he should say the name of the institution with reverence and all would know its reputation. Eric had assured him it would open doors.
Instead the woman said: We don’t give ninety-day visas anymore.
Through the plastic window, Wari tried pointing at the invitation, at its gold letters and elegant watermark, but she wasn’t interested. Come back in two weeks, she said.
He did. In his passport, Wari found a one-month tourist visa.
At the airport in Miami, Wari presented his paperwork once more, his passport and, separately, the invitation in its gilded envelope. To his surprise, the agent sent him straightaway to an interview room, without even glancing at the documents. Wari waited in the blank room, recalling how a friend had joked: “Remember to shave or they’ll think you’re Arab.” Wari’s friend had celebrated the remark by shattering a glass against the cement floor of the bar. Everyone had applauded. Wari could feel the sweat gathering in the pores on his face. He wondered how bad he looked, how tired and disheveled. How dangerous. The stale, recycled air from the plane compartment was heavy in his lungs. He could feel his skin darkening beneath the fluorescent lights.
An agent came in, shooting questions in English. Wari did his best. “An artist, eh?” the agent said, examining the paperwork.
Wari folded his fingers around an imaginary brush and painted circles in the air.
The agent waved Wari’s gesture away. He looked through the papers, his eyes settling finally on the bank statement. He frowned.
“You’re going to New York?” he asked. “For a month?”
“In Lima, they give to me one month,” Wari said carefully.
The agent shook his head. “You don’t have the money for that kind of stay.” He looked at the invitation and then pointed to the paltry figure at the bottom of the bank statement. He showed it to Wari, who muffled a nervous laugh. “Two weeks. And don’t get any ideas,” the agent said. “That’s generous. Get your ticket changed when you get to New York.”
He stamped Wari’s burgundy passport with a new visa and sent him on his way.
At baggage claim, Wari found his paintings in a stack next to an empty carousel. He made his way through customs, answering more questions before being let through. He waited patiently while they searched his suitcase, rifling through his clothes. His paintings were inspected with great care, and here the golden letter finally served a purpose. Customs let him through. Wari felt dizzy, the shuffling noise of the airport suddenly narcotic, sleep calling him to its protective embrace. Ninety days is a humane length of time, he thought. Enough time to come to a decision and find its cracks. To look for work and organize contingencies. To begin imagining the permanence of good-byes. It wasn’t as if Wari had nothing to lose. He had parents, a brother, good friends, a career just beginning in Lima, an ex-wife. If he left it behind? Even a month spent in meditation — ambling about a new city, working out the kinks of a foreign language — might be space enough to decide. But two weeks? Wari thought it cruel. He counted days on his fingers: twenty-four hours after his paintings came down, he would be illegal. Wari had imagined that the right decision would appear obvious to him, if not right away, then certainly before three months had passed. But there was no chance of clarity in fourteen days. Wari walked through the Miami airport as if he’d been punched in the face. His feet dragged. He made his flight to La Guardia just as the doors were closing, and was stopped again at the jetway, his shoes examined by a plastic-gloved woman who refused to return his weak smiles. On the plane, Wari slept with his face flush against the oval window. There was nothing to see anyway. It was an overcast day in South Florida, no horizon, no turquoise skies worthy of postcards, nothing except the gray expanse of a wing and its contrails, blooming at the end like slivers of smoke.
Leah woke him with apologies. “I have to work,” she said softly. “You couldn’t have slept through it anyway.” She smiled. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She smelled clean. Leah made jewelry, and his bedroom, which was actually the living room, was also her workshop.
“Is okay,” Wari said, sitting up on the couch, taking care to hide his morning erection.
Leah grinned as Wari fumbled awkwardly with the sheet. “I’ve seen plenty of that, trust me,” she said. “I wake up with Eric every morning.”
Wari felt his face turn red. “Is lucky,” he said.
She laughed.
“Where is? Eric?” he asked, cringing at his pronunciation.
“Studying. Work. He teaches undergrads. Young students,” she said, translating young, in gestures, as small.
Wari pictured Eric, with his wide, pale face and red hair, teaching miniature people, tiny humans who looked up to him for knowledge. He liked that Leah had tried. He understood much more than he could say, but how could she know that?
He watched her for a while, filing metal and twisting bands of silver into circles. He liked the precision of her work, and she didn’t seem to mind him. Leah burnished a piece, filed and sanded, bent metal with tools that seemed too brusque for her delicate hands. She held a hammer with authority, she was a woman with purpose. It was a powerful display. “I’m finishing up,” she said finally, “and then you can come with me. I know a Peruvian you can talk to.”
He showered and ate a bowl of cold cereal before they left for downtown. The Peruvian she knew was named Fredy. She didn’t know where he was from exactly, though she was sure he’d told her. Fredy worked a street fair on Canal. Leah had won him over with a smile a few years before, and now he let her sell her jewelry on consignment. Every couple of weeks, she went down with new stuff, listened as Fredy catalogued what had sold and what hadn’t, and to his opinionated take on why. He lived in New Jersey now, Leah said, and had married a Chinese woman. “They speak to each other in broken English. Isn’t that amazing?”
Wari agreed.
“It must say something about the nature of love, don’t you think?” Leah asked. “They have to trust each other so completely. That window of each other that they know in English is so small compared to everything they are in their own language.”
Wari wondered. The train rattled on its way downtown. But it’s always like that, he wanted to say, you can never know anyone completely. Instead he was silent.
“Do you understand me when I speak?” Leah asked. “If I speak slowly?”
“Of course,” Wari said, and he did, but felt helpless to say much more. He noted the descending numbered streets at every stop, and followed their subterranean progress on the map. A sticker covered the southern end of the island. They got off before they reached that veiled area. On Canal, only a few blocks was enough to remind Wari of Lima: that density, that noise, that circus. The air was swollen with foreign tongues. He felt comfortable in a way, but didn’t mind at all when Leah took his arm and led him swiftly through the crowds of people. He bumped shoulders with the city, like walking against a driving rain.
Fredy turned out to be Ecuadorian, and Leah couldn’t hide her embarrassment. She turned a rose color that reminded Wari of the dying light at dusk. Wari and Fredy both reassured her it was nothing.