Half the Day Is Night (41 page)

It had a couch, a table and plastic shelves full of books. Rows and rows of paperback books. Like a student's place.

“These are my friends,” Henri said. “They are having some trouble and they are looking for documents so they can go to the States.”

The student answered Henri in Creole, although he didn't look Haitian. Mayla spoke no Creole but the man was clearly unhappy.

“It is time to do business,” Henri said, aggrieved. “Business comes when business comes, it knows no hour.”

“I can't help you,” the man said to Mayla and David.

“No,” Henri said. “Don't believe him, friends.” He said something to the man in Creole. They talked for a minute. Mayla tried to listen, but she was mostly aware of the smell in the room: of bedsheets slept in, the musky smell she had come to associate with Henri's braids, and another sour smell she could not identify. Politicals were often students, perpetual students. This man probably didn't worry about things like laundry.

“Okay,” the man said. “Tell me what you need.” His English was only faintly accented.

“We need documents to be able to get tickets for Miami,” Mayla said.

“They will just deport you when you get to the States,” the man said, tired. “They'll just send you back here.”

“I have family in the States, and Kim is not Caribbean,” she said.

“They are in love,” Henri said. “Isn't that nice?”

“That's nice,” the man agreed. “Why don't you just leave then?”

David cleared his throat. “There is my ex-wife,” he said.

The man rolled his eyes. He said something sharp to Henri.

“It is money,” Henri said soothingly, “money for your cause.”

“You will get your money,” the man said.

Henri spread his hands. “I help you, right? I bring you business. I like to help you.” He smiled, a big threatening smile.

“Can you get us documents?” Mayla asked.

The man nodded. “It will cost you, though. You have money?”

“How much,” David said.

“Five thousand apiece,” the man said.

It wouldn't leave her much, but she could do it.

“We did not bring money now,” David said, “we did not know we were coming here. We will have to make arrangements.”

“I have to get the documents together,” the man said. “First though, before I start, I want half. When can you get it?”

“Today,” Mayla said. “We can bring it today.”

“Good, we'll take the ims and get started when you bring the money.”

“I will bring them,” Henri said.

The student frowned but said nothing.

Mayla wished it was all over.

*   *   *

“You stay with me,” Henri said when they were out on the street.

“I have to go get the money,” Mayla said.

Henri shook his head. “Send your boyfriend, you stay with me. I make you a nice breakfast.”

“I can't,” she said. She covered her mouth with her hand. She couldn't stay with him, not without David there. She was afraid.

Henri reached out and took her wrist, pulling her hand away from her mouth. His palm was hot and dry, almost not like skin, and his fingers had an almost gritty feel although his hands didn't look dirty. She wanted to yank her hand away but she was afraid to make him angry.

“I cannot get the money,” David said, his voice bland. “It is under her ID.”

She nodded, too eager.

“I will go with you,” Henri said.

She didn't want him to go with her, but she didn't know what to say.

“You don't trust me,” Henri said, his voice mock-sad. “Haven't I been a friend to you? Didn't I help you? You are getting your documents.”

“We're g-grateful,” she said. She wanted him to stop touching her, she could feel his smell creeping into her skin. Like rancid perfume, the smell of Henri.

“You see,” Henri said, “I have spent all night with you, I get no business done. I am a nice guy, don't you think? I help you, I help my friend, and his cause, and I even help Henri a little bit. But now, you are not so happy, you are not so grateful, so I am wondering, maybe these people will go away and not come back. Maybe then I lose all my time. My good friend gets no money for his cause. You do not get the documents you need. No one gets what they need.”

Henri was going to make her stay or he was going to come with her. She could not imagine walking into a place on the third level with Henri. “You can't go there,” she said, but it came out a whisper.

“What?” Henri said.

“I can stay here,” David said.

“No, I think she should stay,” Henri said.

“But I cannot get the money,” David said.

“Then I should go with her,” Henri said.

“No,” David said. He crossed his arms and stood, one hip thrust out the way he did so his weight wasn't on his bad knee.

“You need me!” Henri shouted. “I am trying to help you and you are distrusting me!”

David shrugged. Mayla looked up and down the street.

“I will go with her!” Henri shouted.

David shrugged again. “We will not go get the money, there will be no deal. So if that is the way it is, then this is over and we will go away.”

“You cannot leave!” Henri shouted. He was enraged, the veins and ligaments in his neck stood clear, an anatomy lesson. He towered over David and she waited for him to lash out. The stocky man who had followed Henri looked anxious. He was armed, surely. “YOU CANNOT LEAVE! WE ARE MAKING THIS DEAL! I CAN HURT YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME?”

David said nothing, did not uncross his arms.

Henri swiped at him, palm open, and David ducked and threw his arm up and out so that Henri's palm only hit across David's shoulder.

“Stupide,”
David hissed and said something rapid in French. Henri stopped, startled by the language, so close to Creole. David continued talking, fast and low and angry, and Henri, astonished and then frowning to follow, listened.

Henri said something in Creole.

David shook his head. “No,” he said in English. “Listen to me,
écoutez,
if she does not go get money, there is no deal. If I am here she will come back.”

Henri was breathing heavy, like a winded runner. He did not say anything.

“So,” David said, “we all go get some breakfast, eh? And when it is time, she will go get the money. And we will finish the business.”

She wasn't even sure Henri was really listening, he seemed just to be watching David, just watching what he was doing. In a minute he would turn to the stocky man and say something and the stocky man would shoot them.

Instead he turned and started walking.

David beckoned to her to follow and they trailed him down the street, the stocky man behind them.

Henri walked fast, long legs making her have to half-skip every few steps to keep up. She had a stitch in her side, she couldn't even pay attention to where they were going.

Henri stopped. “This is a good place,” he said.

She jerked around, expecting to see the stocky man armed, and ready to kill them.

But they were standing in front of a restaurant, and Henri meant that this was a good place for breakfast.

*   *   *

It took her almost three hours to get to the third level by taptap. The psychedelic bus was the cheapest way to go and she had to ask bus fare from Henri. He was amused. He put the money in her palm, fingers sweeping her skin in a caress. He seemed to have completely forgotten the argument, talked all through breakfast while the three of them listened to him and ate and waited until it was late enough that the place where she was going to get the money would be open.

In the taptap she thought about going to her grandfather's. David had said that if he was with Henri then she would come back. She was afraid. She couldn't go to her grandfather's, either. She wanted to go home, to her house that was gone.

She got the money that they would need for the documents and a little extra, but no more. They could get it when they were leaving, it would be foolish to go back to Henri with extra money.

Nothing to do but hope it would soon be over.

When she got off the taptap, the stocky man was waiting for her.

She would have to trust David. David was getting them through this. David was thinking.

It was ten-thirty in the morning. She was so tired. Normally she would have been diving by now. She wondered what Luz was thinking. She hadn't even given notice. Luz would think she had been wrong, that Mayla was the kind of person who would leave without giving notice. When she was in the States, she would write a note to Luz, explain that it was a life-or-death matter. That she had to escape. Her stomach hurt, hurt and hurt from no sleep and the aching, disoriented feeling of being too tired.

Henri didn't look tired at all. His eyes were still red around the midnight-blue slips, but he was laughing and gesturing. David looked tired. Like her.

“Ah,” Henri said, “you have come home. You have your money?”

“The half,” she said.

He nodded, smiling, and she noticed for the first time that when he shook his head his braids didn't move. “Okay sister, let's go.”

Maybe his hair was a wig?

They walked again, but this time the streets were full of people. Children watched them when they knocked on the door of the man who made documents.

“Hello, Leo,” the man said tiredly to Henri. Henri didn't seem to care that the man had called him “Leo” and she wondered if that was his real name, or if they were all fake names.

The young man was dressed now. He had a sheet on the wall and he put David in front of it and took an im. Then he dropped the im into a reader. “My contact can't get a slip for the port reader until Saturday,” he said. “Stand there.”

Mayla stood in front of the sheet and had an im taken. She hoped it was better than the last one. As if it mattered, she would use this im once.

“What do you want the documents to say your names are?”

David said Kim Park. She tried to think of a name. “I don't know,” she said.

“I'll put something down,” the man said. “Do you have an ID I could work from?”

“Not with me,” David said.

“I have my workcard,” Mayla said. “It's a temporary though.” She carried it in a clear sleeve in the pocket of her tunic. She handed it to him. “Okay,” he said and glanced down at it. He frowned. “Mayla Ling?” he said.

“Yeah?” she said. She shouldn't have given it to him.

“Okay,” he said, still frowning at it.

It seemed to be all right. “Mayla” was an odd name. A lot of people had trouble with it.

“Put the money there,” he said, meaning the table.

She put it down. It was a lot of money, a lot of cash. He sat frowning at the reader and entering information. She waited for him to look up.

“Okay,” he said, “see you Saturday.”

“You want to count it?”

“If you gave me too little, then you get a document that won't get you out of the country,” he said, still not looking up.

“Okay,” she said.

On the street, Henri was waiting. She didn't want to deal with Henri.

But Henri looked right past them, as if they weren't there.

“We should find a place to stay,” David said.

They walked down the street, towards the main street where Henri's place was. “I know a place,” David said. “In Dedale. I've stayed there before.

“We'll be safe,” he said.

15

Hegira

At night, with Mayla asleep in the other bed, David thought about Meph. Somebody would be taking care of the kitten, maybe Santos. A lot of the fish jocks had kept an eye on Meph and fed him scraps. But he had let Meph down; Meph had depended on him, and once more he hadn't been responsible.

During the day, he and Mayla watched the vid and waited until Saturday. The only time they left the room was to get cheap take-out food.

They talked about the deal. “How do we know that the documents will work?” Mayla said.

David shrugged.

“Why should they even bother to make them work?” she said. “All they have to do is give us something that makes us happy, and we go to the port and get arrested. They have their money, we are out of their hair.”

It was something he didn't want to think about. Being at the port, handing over the documents and having blue and whites everywhere because the documents were just bits of plastic, pieces of paper, just nothing, without the information to fool the systems. He remembered the man in the casino, remembered him saying, “It's a mistake.” He didn't want to be the one saying that.

“What can we do?” David said.

Mayla chewed on her thumbnail. “Arrange that they don't get their money until we get out of the country.”

“How?” he said.

“Give the money to someone else. Then we call the person who has the money and they make the payment.”

“And who will make this payment?” he pointed out. “Santos? Patel? Lemile? Henri?”

“Tim Bennet,” she said.

“No,” he said. “That is crazy.”

“Yes,” she said. “We should get in touch with Henri. Tell him we have to renegotiate. If they refuse, we can tell if the documents were phony or not.”

“You are risking Tim Bennet,” David pointed out. “Besides, maybe he is not even in the country, maybe he has left.”

“Not Tim,” she said. “Tim won't leave until he has to. Tim doesn't act, he reacts.”

David shook his head. “You cannot do that to someone. You cannot get him in trouble.”

She wasn't listening.

“It is not responsible,” he said. Which sounded stupid. Besides, she had grown up exploiting people, her family had servants. She couldn't help it, she thought of people as hired.