“He wants me to come visit him. He said he can help us get the visa.”
“Us?” I asked.
“Me and Mayra.”
I felt myself nod and was aware that my daughter’s tiny feet lay across my lap. I had the impulse to hold her, to turn her so that her cheek rested against my chest.
“Are you going to go?”
“He’s paying for the tickets.”
“Are you going to stay?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
The cab moved swiftly along the dimly lit streets. Along Tacna, thickets of people waited for buses that would carry them home, crowds thronged around the entrances to underground clubs. Techno music attacked our silence. We were almost there, to the New Lima. I’d told her already about my run-in with the law, self-consciously omitting details until the whole episode sounded like fragments of surrealist poetry. I’d spoken of my impending financial ruin and again felt the humiliating rush of blood to my face. We’d lapsed into silence. She knew all of my secrets and now I knew hers. She was leaving me for Los Uniteds, for its mighty economy, its fertile ground where dollars grow wild. He wouldn’t be taking her to Nueva Jersey, I assumed, but somewhere with verdant lawns and dustless houses, a place where newness hung in the air like perfume. Why wouldn’t she go? And if she left, why would she return?
“Do you love him?” I asked.
She nodded. “You can love more than one person at a time,” she said.
We were silent until the hostel. There we put Mayra to bed, the sweet smallness of her, innocent of our machinations and our troubles. At what age would she begin to understand? How many years did I have left before she would recognize me for the failure I was? How many more before she forgot me?
Sonia and I drifted back into the drab front lobby. Above the counter was the starred review in a cheap wooden frame. I tapped the glass with my knuckle, wanting to shatter it. “Is this it?” I asked.
The three couches were set at right angles to one another. She collapsed into the one by the far wall. There was a high window above it and a wan yellow light fell into the lobby. She didn’t answer me.
I felt fidgety. I couldn’t sit or stand. I paced in front of the counter. I had scarcely eaten all day and felt suddenly light-headed. “What’s his name?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Where does he live?”
“Nowhere.”
“Is he rich?”
“He isn’t rich.”
“Do you miss him? Is he blond? Do you speak English with him? Does he e-mail you, call you, send you pictures?”
“Stop,” she said.
I was drunk with questions, walking tight circles in front of her.
Sonia let out a sigh. “This isn’t exactly how I imagined my life.”
In this city, there is nothing more useless than imagining a life. Tomorrow is as unknowable as next year, and there is nothing solid to grab hold of. There is no work. There is nothing I could have promised her in that moment that wouldn’t have been built on imagination. Or worse, on luck.
“What do you expect me to do?” she asked, watching me through the long seconds of my silence. “What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said finally.
“You’d do what’s best for her.”
I slumped in the sofa to her right and closed my eyes tightly. My ears were ringing. “So it’s just for her,” I said through gritted teeth. “And poor little you has to leave and move to Gringoland.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Just say what’s on your mind.”
She sucked her teeth. “You remind me of every mistake I’ve ever made.”
“That’s funny. Because you remind me of our daughter.”
“Not her,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about her.”
“Of course you weren’t. I get it. You want new mistakes.”
“Why not?” She stood up, suddenly angry. There was heat in her voice. “Let me guess,” she said. “You have the ring in your pocket. You want to get down on one knee and read me a love poem and you want me to cry and you want me to want you. But I’ll say no because I’m the only one who thinks between the two of us, and so you’ll disappear for a month to lick your wounds and I’ll have to hear from Mayra that her daddy picked her up from kindergarten, that he brought her a present.”
I was sweating. “What about us?” I asked.
She stared at me for a moment, disbelieving. I thought so many things between us had been forgiven. “Why didn’t you fight for me?” she said.
I started to answer — that I was, that I had been for five years — but she cut me off. “Not now — then.”
It felt terrible to have nothing to say.
“I never wanted to have to get married. I wanted to want to get married.”
“Do you want to marry this guy?”
“He hasn’t asked me yet,” she said. “But he will.”
It was nearly midnight. The soft sounds of traffic drifted in through the window. I needed to think. I pulled out my fifteen soles and asked her for a room on the empty fourth floor with a view and a balcony. Sonia looked at me perplexed.
“This is a hostel, isn’t it?” I said. “Are Peruvians not allowed to stay here?”
In the pale light I could see her glaring at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Fifteen’s not enough.”
“I’m good for it.”
Sonia stood and walked around the counter. She ran her finger along the keys, pulling one off its hook and handing it to me. “You know the way up.”
I asked her to wait.
I went to the back room and fumbled in the dark until my eyes adjusted. Mayra was sleeping. I picked her up, careful not to wake her. She molded her sleep to my embrace with barely a murmur. I stepped out into the light and saw Sonia sitting on the counter, her legs swinging against the wood. She looked so young.
“I love you, Miguel,” she said. “But marrying you would be like giving up.”
She handed me the key and kissed me good night.
I watched Mayra breathe for a while and dozed off. I awoke to Sonia moving through the shadows of the room and into bed. Our daughter slept between us, the only honest person in her family.
I drifted into sleep again and dreamed, this time for real, such saturated, overblown dreams that when I woke up just after dawn the whole of the previous day seemed perversely dreamlike too. Were they leaving? Were they already gone?
Sonia was asleep on her side, facing me, with an arm over Mayra.
After a while I got out of bed and pulled back the curtains to find that daybreak had exploded over Lima again. I was filled with inexplicable energy, though I hadn’t slept much, and an optimism that bordered on delusion. The emptiness in my stomach was gone. They wouldn’t leave, I thought. They couldn’t.
Sonia groaned and covered her eyes. Mayra grumbled and turned over. “Papi!” she complained.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” I said grandly, with a sweep of my arms. “The sunrise!”
Sonia rolled over into her pillow, muffling a tiny laugh, and then popped up. She smiled weakly at me, then fell into a deep full-body yawn, catlike, that ended with her outstretched toes poking out from beneath the sheet. “Wake up, honey,” she said to Mayra. Then to me, “Good morning.”
I let the sun pour in through the window, lighting her smile. Then Mayra was awake and sitting up in bed. “Daddy,” she called out, pointing at my belly. “You’re fat!”
“Mayra!” Sonia said. “Don’t be rude!”
But it seemed so funny to me. I laughed. I’m not fat; it’s just that I’m not young anymore. I grabbed my belly and pretended for a moment my navel was a bullet hole, that I was mortally wounded. I crumpled to the ground, “Oh, Mayra,” I called out.