Dragonfish: A Novel (10 page)

I put on my jacket and stuffed its pockets with the cell phone, the surveillance photo, and my badge, which now felt unfamiliar and useless.

In the hallway, I knocked on 1215 and waited five seconds before moving on.

The hotel was lined with mirrors: along the hallway, in the elevators, across the walls of the casino floor, which appeared much bigger and deeper than it really was. I saw myself everywhere I walked. I saw every person multiplied, refracted like a kaleidoscope of faces and bodies, a constant illusion of life so that this place never felt empty, even when it was.

I wandered through the throng of afternoon gamblers, hunched over table games amid a cigarette haze, the air alive with their chatter and the melodic jangling of slot machines. Nearly
every dealer I passed was Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese—just as Junior had said. I wondered how many of them had actually come from somewhere far away, and how many were right at home.

The poker room stood in a lonely corner of the casino—an open space sectioned off by a wooden rail. A few onlookers were leaning on the rail and watching the action. Only half of the eight tables were occupied at the moment, populated by college-age dudes in baseball caps and sunglasses, their white-haired elders in plaid and khakis, and the solitary middle-aged woman with her purse in her lap. The place was like some sad foodless cafeteria, fluorescent lights shining down on worn green felt and flimsy chairs, on pale faces staring hungrily at one another behind their towers of poker chips. Sonny must have spent hours on end at these tables, drinking coffee and cheap booze, stepping outside the rail every half hour for a smoke break. Hardly the high roller I had imagined.

I took a seat at the bar nearby and ordered myself a beer and lit a cigarette. For the first time since pulling up to my apartment the previous night, I felt at ease. Neither Sonny nor his son could touch me here. At least not yet. What gave me pause was that Suzy had apparently chosen this place with the same thing in mind. She must have had a very good reason for not wanting to be found, for holing up every week in the one place in town that could protect her.

The bartender served me my beer. “Got the good juice tonight, brother?” He had slicked grayish hair and a sincere Latin accent. He wore his maroon vest and bow tie as proudly as a soldier.

“Don’t gamble.”

“Smart man then.”

“Not smart. Just unlucky.”

“Everybody think they unlucky. Even lucky people say they unlucky.”

“We all complain, don’t we?”

“Not me, brother. Vegas been good to me.”

I nodded for him and his stubbornly winning smile. “Anything exciting ever happen over there?”

“The poker room? What you mean,
exciting
?”

“I don’t know—people getting into fights. Getting thrown out.”

He looked over at the room and shrugged, rummaging through his Rolodex of memories with his hands on the bar. “Nah, I don’t remember nothing like that. People lose and yell at each other, yeah. Sometime they come over here and yell at me too.”

“No one ever gets caught cheating or anything?”

“Nah. Other gamblers, sure, but not poker players. I been working at casinos in Cali and Reno too. Poker players are honest, brother. They wanna win your money, not steal it. They too smart and proud for that, know what I mean?”

“I guess I’ve watched too many Westerns.”

He chuckled. “I from Columbia. People bring guns to go gamble. Here in Vegas—people cheat you, but they cheat you honestly.” He let that sink in, then patted the bar genially as he walked off to see to another customer. He was a service provider indeed. How often did desperation trudge up to his bar and beg for a drink and a dose of his ready optimism?

A tapping noise made me turn my head. Nearby, an obese guy in an oversize T-shirt sat between two slot machines, a plastic bucket of coins in his lap and a hand on each machine, tapping them like tribal drums. Every now and then, he stopped to wipe his face with a towel. I wondered if he knew it was daylight outside.

Around me, the air felt artificial. Time was artificial here too. No windows or clocks. No sense of progression outside of what
you gain and what you lose. That thought made me anxious, like hours had passed without me knowing it.

I finished my drink and left a tip for the bartender and pulled out another cigarette for the long walk to the elevator.

Back in my room, I turned on the TV and stretched out on the bed with my shoes on. It was a little past two. I realized I hadn’t eaten since the highway stop at McDonald’s the night before. I muted the TV, perused the room-service menu, and reached for the phone. A woman’s voice greeted me. But I hung up on her.

A door had opened in the next room.

I grabbed an empty glass off the nightstand and rushed to put it against the adjoining door. Nothing but silence for a long time. Then a door clicked shut. Was someone arriving or leaving? I stepped out into the empty hallway. I went to put my ear against 1215.

My first knock was gentle. The knock a maid would make. After some moments, I knocked again, louder this time but still polite. I could feel her standing behind the other side of the door.

“Suzy?” I said, leaning in. “It’s me. It’s Robert. Please open the door.”

I took a step back so that I could stand in full view of the peep hole. I would have stood there for hours if I had to. But then the knob turned.

The door opened halfway, revealing the face of a young woman who stood partly behind it, staring out at me, cautious but unafraid. She was Vietnamese, in her early twenties, and wore faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a tight brown leather jacket zipped all the way up like she’d just come in from the cold. No jewelry and no makeup, though she needed neither.

Her boyishly cropped hair muted the resemblance at first, but it was impossible not to recognize the cheekbones and the dark
glaring eyes, the shade of familiar stubbornness there. She even had the same long, proud neck, that way of holding up her chin like she was ready to stand her ground against anything. I felt a childish urge to blink and see if she’d disappear, wave my hand in front of her so that something might change.

But my eyes did not lie. Suzy stood there before me, twenty years younger, both something found and something I had lost.

“Who’re you?” she said. “And who is Suzy?”

part
two

On our second night at sea, you disappeared. I awoke and found your shorts by my side and had to keep from screaming your name. Where could you have gone with all the sleeping bodies around us? I’d seen a few mothers tie string from their wrists to their child’s wrists, and I cursed myself for my laziness.

Then I saw you, and it was like seeing a ghost. You were outside the boat looking in, calmly holding on to the gunwale as though you were ready to let go, as though you were levitating. I grabbed your arms and hauled you back inside. You were naked from the waist down. I looked over the gunwale and realized that you had been squatting over the sea, balanced on some wooden trim along the side of the boat, all to avoid the boat’s latrine, which apparently frightened you more than falling into the sea.

You flinched when I touched your cheek. I must have been glaring at you as if I was ready to spank you. But my heart was pounding. If you had fallen overboard, no one could have known. The night would have swallowed you whole. Your presence now seemed such a miracle that I was overcome with shame at having ever wished you away. I loved you more in that moment than at any other moment in your life. I cradled your head, smoothed your brow, and won
dered what had possessed me those last few days. Don’t ever do that again, I told you, but I was saying it to myself. I held you fast until you slept and did not close my eyes until images of your death faded into the night.

There are things that people do poorly for lack of talent, and things they do poorly for lack of desire. Then there are those things that all the desire and talent in the world cannot make possible, cannot make fit, no matter how often you pray and how hard you pretend.

On the day you were born, I lost my voice. Words came out like gasps, and during labor my pain had no sound. The nurse held my hand.

Your father had been gone for five months, vanished without a word, and no one knew if he had fled the country or been imprisoned or if he was even alive.

You must have sensed it. A baby’s cries at birth are full of vigor, but yours were weak and willful, a stubborn crying, as though you were already disappointed in me and mourning him.

When I held you for the first time, you refused to nurse. You struggled in my arms and kept crying softly. Even when my voice came back, I found I had nothing to say. I remember a deep, instant love for you that felt like a locked room inside me. It’s only now as I write this, as I say these words to myself, that I begin to understand it.

I wonder what you remember of our fifth night, when that strange tragedy began. It was a moonless night, the darkest so far of our trip. A woman began wailing and awoke the entire boat. Where is my son? she shrieked. My son is gone!

The engine stopped and lanterns were lit. People were already
looking overboard. Although a few men stood ready to jump into the sea, we all knew there was no sense in it. We had only just stopped the boat, and the calm black waters around us showed no sign of anything. If the boy had fallen in, it was already too late.

People were consoling the mother, restraining her. Like me, she had no one else on the boat but her child.

I remember him. He spent most of the first day retching into a plastic bag as she stroked his hair and patted his back. The yellow stains on his T-shirt were still visible the last time I saw him. He was your age, your height, thin and sickly, and his disappearance cruelly echoed what might have happened to you three nights before. What I had miraculously avoided, this woman was now suffering.

People searched every corner of the boat. There was no trace of the boy. The captain finally restarted the engine, which got the woman screaming again. No! No! You can’t leave him behind! I must find him first!

Somehow you had remained asleep through all of this. But now you were wide awake and clutching my shirt. Why is she screaming? you asked me. I had no idea what to say and could only turn you away and cover your ears, but you peeled off my hands and repeated your question until I finally snapped at you. Even as the shadows obscured her, you kept staring.

She wept for hours. We could hear her over the boat’s engine, moaning in the darkness. No one could comfort her, and no one could sleep, not even you. As her fits turned hysterical, my pity for her was replaced with something like hatred. At one point I even considered quieting her by force, but at dawn she suddenly stopped, exhausted apparently, and people at last were able to fall asleep.

It rained late that morning. Everyone’s mood improved. We collected rainwater in as many containers as we could find, and the storm was cool and soothing after days of scorching weather.

I watched you sit nearby with two older kids. It surprised me, since you rarely played with other children, or with anyone for that matter. But then you went still as you faced the stern of the boat. I figured you had grown bored, as you often did in the company of others. You were drenched in the rain, your hair matted on your forehead, your eyes salty.

Someone screamed. By the time I turned around, I caught only a flash of the woman’s head and arms disappearing overboard in the haze of rain. You must have seen everything, her climbing onto the gunwale and standing there for a heartbeat, for one final breath, before leaping into the sea.

Two men dove in after her. The boat again was stopped. The storm had gotten worse and it took some effort just to get the two men back on board. Neither had seen or laid a finger on anything.

The boat was quiet for hours save the sound of the engine and the old women reciting their rosaries. I prayed alongside them, but only for the boy.