A Small Fortune (8 page)

Then I think of Benicio, the two of us on the bed. My heart squeezes as if wringing out all the rest. There’s no getting around the fact that if it’s difficult for me to elude these people, how difficult will it be for someone who’s grown up here? Someone whose handsome face is likely to be recognized by everyone in town?

I have to think of Oliver.

“I can’t leave here without seeing for myself that Oliver is not in the condo.”

“Celia. Of all the choices you have I wish you’d forget about that one.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t have any children.”

“I’ve seen things that have happened to children and their parents that you couldn’t even begin to imagine.”

That shuts me up. I’m out of my league. I know that. I have no idea what Benicio has lived through. And yet, I have to get to Oliver. There’s simply no question.

“Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you if they catch you a second time?” Benicio says. “I guarantee Oliver will never see you again.”

That does it. I throw myself down, taking the chair with me. I hit the floor with a sickening thud, my arm and shoulder bearing the brunt. Pain strikes my neck and back. I bite down hard and refuse to scream. I will my body not to break. I breathe like a bull through my nostrils.

“Celia,” Benicio says. It’s almost a cry.

I struggle to find momentum, jerking my bound feet forward, then my shoulders, then my feet.

“Celia.” His whisper is coarse from the blood in his throat. “Celia,” again as I kick my legs and inch my way toward the glass.

After what must be thirty minutes of scratching the triangle of glass against the plastic tie and cutting the meat of my palm in the process, my wrists finally pop free. By the time I release Benicio my body is so pumped with adrenaline, I feel as if I could lift him right out of his chair.

Rain has gathered on the sill, and I use it to wet the towel and gently wipe the crusty blood from Benicio’s face. He twitches in pain, his eyes black and purple, one swollen shut. He’s in no shape to run.

I walk him to the bed and prop pillows beneath his head. He gives me his best smile and squeezes my hand. His nose is enormous. It’s hard to tell just where it ends and the rest of his face begins.

I hold the towel through the bars on the window and dip it against the cool, wet leaves. I bring it back and lay it across Benicio’s nose.

He groans.

“Pretend it’s ice,” I say.

The sun is beginning to break. “Rest.” I cross the room for the shard of glass I used to cut us free.

I sit next to him, the glass closed in my hand like a lucky rabbit’s foot. I count inside my head. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. No need to worry about dozing off. I’ve never felt more awake in my life.

With every ten minutes, I mark the concrete with the glass; like nails on a chalkboard, every scratch sets my teeth on edge. I remain focused for hours, never allowing myself to veer from the task, every thin white line a step closer to saving us. Every hour brings me closer to Oliver.

Benicio sleeps with his mouth wide open, snoring, gurgling with every breath he pulls in, lets out.

I estimate it’s around seven o’clock when doors begin to open and close in the house. But Benny’s cries obscure the sounds I need for cues. We need to act fast.

“Wake up!” I whisper loudly in Benicio’s ear. “Hurry.”

I rush over and place my chair back where it stood.

Benicio struggles to sit. He moans. He brings his hand to his face.

“Get in your chair,” I say. “Quick.”

It probably hurts too much for him to speak.

“Come on,” I say, and help him into the chair.

I snatch up the old zip ties and cup them at his ankles to make them appear fastened.

Benicio places his arms behind the chair as if they’re bound.

I gather up more ties, slide onto my own chair, place the ties around my ankles, and wait.

When the locks begin releasing I throw my hands behind me.

Benicio murmurs something. A prayer, I guess, and wish I could think of one myself.

“Isabel!” Benicio is suddenly wide-awake, up to the task. He spouts off in Spanish.

Isabel appears confused at first, but it doesn’t take long to get her riled. She crosses toward him and screams something of her own.

Benicio’s forehead beads with sweat.

Isabel pulls out her gun. It’s hard to tell if anyone else is in the house. This is why Benicio is causing such a fuss, to see if someone will come running in. Benny’s unanswered cries are a good indication that we’re alone.

I scream. Isabel turns and Benicio leaps from the chair, grabbing her from behind. He ropes his arms down around both of hers and jerks her to the side to free the gun.

It’s all happening so fast. Isabel stumbles but holds the gun beneath Benicio’s grip.

I dive to the side just as the gun goes off. I land on my arm and scream in pain. I scream again in anger.

Benicio grasps Isabel’s wrist and the gun goes off again, shooting the seat of the chair I just sat in. The sound is deafening. Everyone’s screams are just as bad.

Isabel’s arm continues to flail. She’s trying to kill me.

Only seconds have passed from the time Benicio jumped from his chair to the gun going off once, twice, and now a third time.

A sting, and then a deep wrenching seizes the side of my calf.

Benny wails down the hall as if he’s the one who’s been shot.

Benicio flings Isabel against the wall, chopping her wrist so hard that the gun tumbles to the floor. Isabel screams. He snatches up the gun and points it at her face.

Her mouth fixes into an
O
. She’s crying now, holding the wrist he’s cut down.

“Celia?” Benicio says without taking his eyes off Isabel.

I’m still on the floor, the shots ringing in my ears. I’m afraid to look at my leg.

“Celia!” he yells.

I look. Blood streams down my calf. The sight of the hole intensifies the pain. I swipe at the blood, but it continues to flow.

Benny continues to wail.

Isabel shouts at Benicio.

Benicio screams for me. He moves to see my leg without taking his eyes off Isabel. “Shit, shit, shit,” he says and glares at his sister with a look of pure hatred.

“I’m fine,” I say. “It didn’t go in. I could use a stitch or two, but I’m fine.”

“Quick,” Benicio tells me. “The medicine cabinet in the bathroom beneath the sink. There should be some gauze.”

I catch my breath and hop to the bathroom, reminding myself of the pain of childbirth as I retrieve the gauze and a brown bottle of rubbing alcohol. I hop back with the pain shooting into my hip.

Benicio and Isabel remain in a standoff. Benny continues to cry.

I sit on the edge of the bed. I bite down and pour the alcohol on the wound like a soldier. Spit escapes through my clenched teeth. I tear a piece of gauze and tie it tightly around my calf. Then I hop across the room and get in Isabel’s face. I want more than anything to smash it the way Leon smashed Benicio’s. The shrill of Benny’s cries stop me short.

“Hurry.” Benicio motions for Isabel to move into the hallway in front of him.

The bedroom we enter smells faintly of urine but is clean and spacious with the same glossy terra cotta tiled floors. The furniture and décor are similar to the condo, warm, colorful, tropic. The double bed is neatly covered with a white down blanket. Above the crib a mosquito net hangs like a white spotlight cone around Benny.

He can’t be more than a year old, standing there in a diaper. He grips the bars of his crib and quiets when we walk in. His legs give a small bounce.

Isabel starts toward him.

“No!” Benicio says, and she freezes.

He lowers the gun but keeps it directed toward her. “
Hola
, baby,” Benicio says sweetly.

Benny bounces his legs again.

I limp around Isabel, my leg on fire. I open the net and see the boy’s face is red and soaked with tears. His hair is surprisingly light. He barely looks Mexican, though his lips are undeniably Isabel’s.

“Hurry!” Benicio urges her.

I lift the boy from his crib like we planned. Benny seems cautious at first, staring deeply into my face. He looks at Benicio and then me. He reaches out and feels my hair. And then he smiles, and that’s when I know.

Even if I hadn’t been shot my balance would have wavered beneath me. I turn to Benicio. “He’s not,” I stammer when Benicio looks away. “Oh my God. My God,” is all I can say.

“Put him down!” Isabel shouts.

Benny starts to whimper.

“Ssh.” I bounce Benny on the hip of my good leg, stifling tears from so many kinds of pain.

Then I turn to Isabel. “You don’t call the shots anymore,
chica
.”

I lift a satin baby blanket and a small floppy yellow bear from the crib. I smile at Benny and he smiles back, his father made over. For as much as Oliver resembles me, Benny resembles Jonathon.

He wraps his things into his arm and buries his face against the bear. I pat his cheeks dry with the blanket and instinctively kiss the top of his head.

“
Pasaporte
,” Benicio says to Isabel. “
Dónde está su pasaporte
?”

Isabel stares at Benny in my arms.

Benicio gets down in her face and growls something in Spanish. Isabel shrinks beneath his words. She walks over to a dresser and pulls out my passport and hands it to Benicio.

He snatches it from her and sticks it in his back pocket.

Then he orders her to do something else. Isabel opens another drawer and takes out a violet tank top and jeans. She tosses them to me.

“Come,” Benicio says and motions everyone into the next room. It isn’t nearly as well kept, the queen-size bed is unmade and curtains still closed. Isabel pulls a pair of men’s jeans and a black T-shirt from the drawer and hands them to Benicio.

I glance down at the gauze on my leg, already soaked red. The hot pain increases with every step.

Benicio orders Isabel farther down the hall, and I can hear the anger and determination in his voice.

Isabel crosses the room and takes a seat in the very chair she helped tie Benicio to. I’m so tempted to ask her how it feels to be the one trapped in here, but Isabel doesn’t take her eyes off Benny. She’s a mother concerned for her son, and in that moment I can only think of Oliver.

Benicio walks backward to the door.

“Here you go,” I say, and set Benny down with his blanket and bear on the floor in the place Isabel slid in the trays. I notice my sneakers for the first time at the end of the bed. I set the clothes down and slip on my shoes, wincing at the pain. I remember the broken glass and snatch up the bloody towel and use it to sweep away the shards. I scoop the pieces inside of it and then throw the whole thing out the window.

Isabel watches with a dazed expression.

Benicio pats Benny on the head, and the boy peers up at him and grins as if this is all part of some game.

I gather the clothes and the remaining gauze and rubbing alcohol. Benicio and I back out of the room and lock the door.

In the kitchen Benicio pulls a plastic grocery bag from a drawer and stuffs it with chips and bread and bottled water and salami from the fridge. He rummages through other drawers, collecting a knife, lighter, flashlight, and several more plastic bags. He rushes into the bathroom and comes out with insect repellant and an assortment of medications cradled in his arm.

I’ve grabbed another bag and thrown all the clothes inside. I search for car keys and cell phones but find neither. Then a sickening thought occurs to me. I hobble down the hall and meet Benicio rushing toward me. “Does Isabel have a cell phone?”

“Shit!” Benicio runs back to the room. I stumble behind. When we open the door Isabel looks up from her cell phone with a grin. She snaps it closed, already finished with her call.

Benicio rushes toward her with such violence that I scream for him not to hurt her. He grabs Isabel’s phone and throws it out the window. He screams some more, but I coax him out by shouting that we’re running out of time.

“They couldn’t have gotten very far by the time she got a hold of them,” I say, feeling the weight of the oversight that may have cost us our lives.

I lock the door behind us while Benicio rummages through drawers in the second bedroom. I meet up with him again just as he pulls out a pistol and a large wad of dollar bills.

“Here.” He hands me a black handgun. Jonathon is right. It does feel lighter than you expect. “You know how to use one of these?” Benicio drops open what I know from TV to be the magazine, and check for bullets. It’s full.

“I’m a quick study,” I say.

He clips it shut and tries to smile. His face is so distorted I can hardly make out what his features are supposed to look like. “Ready?” he asks.

“
Sí
,” I say with a grin.

The plan we’ve made will no longer work. It didn’t include Benicio’s broken nose and my getting shot in the leg. The speed we hoped to have by running downhill is now stalled. Someone is going to return any moment. Besides, Benicio has been right from the beginning. It’s all too risky. The condo. The consulate. The police. Going about things in a way these people would expect.

I keep telling myself that someday I will know Oliver as a man. I will know his children, my grandchildren. No one is going to take that away.

We can’t go near the road, not even down the hill through the trees. The only way to survive will be to go up the mountain, through the jungle, and come out the other side.

When I was twelve and on my way home from school one afternoon, a boy named Michael Mahon came riding down the sidewalk on his bike toward me. He stopped and skidded a black mark across the concrete. He turned and studied it, apparently impressed.

“There’s an ambulance at your house taking your dad away,” he said.

Michael was full of shit. He was always telling stories about how he and his mom were millionaires in hiding. How they pretended not to have money by living in that small, lopsided house so that Michael’s father wouldn’t come back from wherever he’d gone and take it all away. Michael claimed to be royalty, a black belt in karate, a keeper of secret codes, and when he went away in the summer he bragged it was to France. “
Merci beaucoup
,” he’d said to everything until another boy slugged him on the playground.

I walked out around him.

“I’m not joking,” he said.

“You’re a liar,” I said, and kept on.

“Am not.”

“My dad is at work right now, you idiot.”

I could hear him turning his bike around behind me and starting to follow. I was at least four blocks from home.

“I knew you were walking here. I saw you when I passed by earlier.”

“So.”

“So, I know where you live.”

I didn’t like the sound of this, even though everyone knew where everyone lived in those days. “And?”

“And I know what I saw at your house.”

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Or I’m going to scream rape.”

“Fine, Miss Freak. Have it your way. But it sure looked a lot like your dad on that stretcher.”

My stomach turned. I was now three blocks away but it felt much farther. My father had complained of feeling tired that morning. My mother had pointed out that he didn’t look well and suggested he stay home.

Either Michael was playing a sick trick on me or an ambulance was taking my father away. Either way was bad.

I made a run for it, grappling with my giant math text and two English books covered in Mylar from the library:
To Kill a Mockingbird
and
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. My hands sweated around the plastic. I had to stop three times when they tumbled to the ground.

I heard the commotion of voices before I rounded the corner, saw the flashing red lights reflecting in the neighbor’s cars. I reached my yard just as an ambulance was pulling away.

Neighbors had gathered around my mother in the street. Mrs. Barbery stroked her back. She saw me approaching, and turned my mother in my direction.

My mother held her fists against her chest, her cheeks wet with tears. Her hands shook when she fastened them onto my shoulders. “Get in the car. We need to meet Daddy at the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“I think he had a heart attack. Hurry now. I don’t want him wondering where we are.”

“But I thought he was at work,” I said, my mind trying to make sense of what was happening. My father had dropped me off on his way to work that morning, his briefcase tossed between us in the front seat as always. He had gone to work, and therefore, the man in the ambulance could not be my father.

“He came home sick at lunch,” Mrs. Barbery said, as if reading my mind.

If only I’d listened to Michael Mahon. If only I’d run home the second he mentioned the ambulance, I wouldn’t have missed the last chance I’d ever have to speak to my father. That morning he had yelled at me to hurry up. Yelling was not something he often did. He wasn’t feeling well. But I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care. I changed my shirt for the tenth time, making us both late.

I wanted to apologize. I wanted him to know how much I loved him. I wanted to hear him ask, “What’s my little raven-haired doll up to?”

His heart stopped for good before he even reached the hospital. For the first time, maybe the only time in Michael Mahon’s life, he had told the truth.

I think about this as I trudge uphill behind Benicio, through the trees and brush along a river gushing with rapids. I try thinking of anything other than Jonathon’s lies and the pain in my leg. My shins itch and sting from the million micro-scrapes in my skin. I’ve never finished either of those novels. To this day, I can’t even look at them without feeling a pang of loss. I’ve never been good at math, but after that day I couldn’t crack open a math book without thinking of how it’d kept me from my father by continuing to slip from my hands. I hate math. Hate its cousin, finance, too. It doesn’t help that my mother became interested in the stock market back then. I understood as I got older that she’d been forced to do something without my father’s income. But back then it left a funny feeling in my throat when I saw her hunched over the paper on Sunday mornings, excitedly checking the Dow.

Mosquitoes puncture my skin, heat and blood loss leave me lightheaded. Tropical caws, screeches, and barks shudder my nerves. Hot pain flares in my leg with every step, and in the midst of this I think of numbers, of money and finances and the power they have to make or break a person’s life, and I hate them even more.

I recall the times Jonathon sat at the kitchen table frowning at his laptop, and how quickly he turned on a smile when I walked past. Like hitting a switch. On again, off again. Had he been e-mailing Isabel? He’s probably already taken the money from my checking and savings accounts, the fund from my mother, which is so small I can only appreciate it for its sentimental value, something Jonathon would easily dismiss. But that fund is one of the few things I have left from my family. One of the few pieces of proof that I once had a place where I belonged.

Jonathon had lied to me about so many things and then had crawled into bed with me, made love to me, told me that he loved me, and made it seem as if all he ever wanted was my happiness and all I ever did was stand in my own way.

After an hour of pushing through the jungle, Benicio and I stop for water.

“You need to change that bandage,” he says. Earlier he gave me antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine, which has barely made a dent in the pain.

The gauze is blood-soaked. My whole calf, swollen.

“Have a seat,” Benicio says, his face even more hideous outdoors. What a sight we are. Gruesome creatures escaping through the jungle like half-eaten prey.

I remove the gun from the waist of my shorts and lower myself to the ground. Pain throbs deeper when I release the pressure.

“Watch out for snakes,” Benicio says. He elevates my foot on a log.

I think he’s joking but then realize that of course there are snakes, among many other things I have no idea about.

He unwraps the bandage to reveal a gouge the size of a grape on the outside of my calf.

“That bullet took a chunk out of your leg,” he says, absorbing the tiny pool of blood with the fresh ends of the gauze.

I bite my knuckle to keep from crying out. Even the slightest touch is unbearable.

“You could use some stitches,” he says.

“I could use a cork.”

“You’re funny,” he says.

“You’re the first person to think so.”

“Maybe it’s a side of you that only comes out in Mexico.”

“After kissing a comedian. Who can say? It’s all a first.”

“Right. Maybe it only comes out when your husband has you kidnapped.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, clearly trying to smile. Dried blood has settled into thin creases on his neck and begins to soften and drain from sweat. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

I lie my head on the ground and gaze into the canopy of trees, remembering the days of staring at the Japanese maple in my yard, convinced my life couldn’t get any worse.

Benicio takes out the fresh gauze and rubbing alcohol. I know what’s coming and turn my head and grit my teeth. Hot lava pours inside my leg. I cry out and pound my fists.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

I cover my eyes and take several deep breaths, my chest heaving with tears. I focus on our plan to reach the kiosk near the canopy tours by dark. I’m losing faith. Our only other choice is to hide out another full day until it closes again. It isn’t as if we can walk up and buy food and ice and not be noticed. We have to break in during the night. Maybe even get a few hours of sleep in the locked bathroom.

Benicio gently wraps my leg.

I open my eyes and think of Isabel and Benny. “Your sister was determined to kill me,” I say. Insects gather in the air around us. I reach for the bug spray in the bag. “I saw it in her face. She was aiming for my head.” I spray the air, my arms and neck, and then I spray some into my palms and rub it over my face.

Benicio doesn’t look up. He tears the end of the gauze down the middle like the tongue of a snake, and makes a tourniquet. He fastens it just above the wound.

“At least I understand now why she hates me.”

“She just wants the money.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What good could possibly come from telling you?”

“I would have known what I was dealing with.”

“What would you have done differently if you’d known?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should forget about my sister. She’s the least of our worries. At the rate we’re going I don’t think we’ll find the kiosk before sundown.” He stands and offers his hand.

I snatch up my gun and allow Benicio to pull me to my feet. “That boy is my son’s brother.”

“I’m sorry.” He places his hand on my cheek. “I’m just trying to keep us alive, and I’m afraid we’ve lost too much time.”

I turn away and shove the gun in my waistband. The pressure on my leg shoots pain into my back. It robs me of my breath, but I make every attempt not to show it.

“They most likely think we headed downhill,” Benicio says. “But I don’t want to underestimate them.”

“I can’t go any faster,” I say.

Benicio locks eyes with me. “It’s not your fault. Let’s see how your leg holds out. You’re still losing quite a bit of blood.”

We both stare at the gauze already dotted with red.

“Shit,” I say.

Benicio turns his head as if chasing some far-off thought.

“Come on. I can do this,” I say, lying.

“I’m not so sure.”

“What about your face?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we be doing something about that?”

“I need ice and a surgeon. Not a lot of those in the jungle.”

“It looks worse than you can imagine.”

“I’m sure it does.”

He digs a hole with his heel and drops in the bloody gauze from my leg. He kicks dirt over the top and takes my hand. “This isn’t a competition,” he says, and I think of how I cried against his chest, the heat of our kiss, his heart pounding against my back. He touches my cheek again. “For good or bad, we’re in this together.”