In Between Days (19 page)

“You haven’t even been convicted yet,” she reminded him.

“No,” he said, “but I will be.” And then he reminded her of what the charges would be if Tyler Beckwith didn’t recover, if he died. It was the unspoken word that had never passed between them, the word they never uttered. “I’m just dealing with reality here,” he said. “I mean, that’s the fucking reality.”

She looked at him and felt suddenly sick.

“I think you should go back,” she’d said finally.

He looked at her. “I can’t,” he said.

“Of course you can.”

“I’m not going back.”

“Why not?”

But he told her it wasn’t an option anymore. Not now. He’d played his cards, he said. He’d made a decision, and yes, it was an impulsive decision, and yes, he regretted it, but what else could he do? What other
alternatives did he have? He looked at her for a long time after he said this, and she realized then that he was serious, that he’d made up his mind, and that there was no way that she was going to change it.

“I mean, do you know of anyone,” he said after a moment, staring at her, “anyone at all who might be able to get me out of the country?”

She looked at him for a very long time and then finally shook her head. No, she said, she didn’t.

Of course, had she had an answer to this question then, she would have given it to him, but she hadn’t. It wasn’t until the next day, when she was going through her wallet and came across that small white card from Dupree, a small white card with a beeper number on it, that a thought even occurred to her, though even now, as she sits across from Raja in a small corner booth of the Alabama Ice House waiting for Dupree to return from the bathroom, she wonders if this solution is really a solution at all.

She had called up Dupree the previous day using Brandon’s cell phone, had entered Brandon’s number into his beeper, then had waited there for almost an hour for Dupree to call back. When he did, he seemed happy to hear from her and not at all surprised that she’d called. She’d told him a little bit about their dilemma, though nothing specific, and then Dupree had suggested meeting up at the Alabama Ice House the following day to discuss their situation in more detail. It would be better that way, he’d said.

When she got off the phone, she told Raja about it, and though he’d been skeptical at first, he’d eventually come around to the idea. She explained how she’d run into Dupree a few days earlier at Simone’s store, how he seemed like a trustworthy guy, how he seemed to have a lot of connections, and so forth, and though she didn’t know how deep his connections ran, she figured it was at least worth a shot. Raja had smiled at her and nodded. Maybe it was divine intervention, he’d said. Fate. Or maybe, she thought, this is what desperate circumstances could do to a person: cloud their judgment to the point where even the seediest of characters could seem like a savior.

And, of course, since they’ve been here, Dupree has told them very little, only that he has spoken to a guy who he thinks can help them out. He had arrived almost an hour late, his hair still wet from the shower,
and then he had sat down at the table and proceeded to talk for the next twenty minutes. He told them that he didn’t want to know anything specific about their situation. He didn’t want to know what they had done, or who they were running from, or even where they were eventually planning to go. It would be better that way for all of them, he’d said. What he could do for them, he said, was put them in contact with someone who could help them out. Then he’d looked down at his beeper and excused himself to the bathroom, which is where he’s been for the past twenty minutes.

After he’d left, she looked at Raja, who shrugged as if to say,
Let’s just wait and see
, and then kissed her. Now, however, he’s looking more and more concerned, and it suddenly occurs to her that they’re putting a lot of faith into a boy they barely know.

On the other side of the Alabama Ice House, the bartender is pulling sweating bottles of Corona out of an ice chest and placing them down in front of the only other patrons at the bar, three elderly men in Mexican cowboy hats who laugh uproariously at almost everything the bartender says. Chloe watches the bartender as he slices the lime wedges for their beers, sprinkles salt on their bottles. The bar itself is very dark and otherwise empty. Country-western music bleeds from an old Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner, a slow, wistful ballad that Raja seems to enjoy. She reaches across the table and grabs his hand, and a moment later, she sees Dupree, returning from the bathroom with the phone in his hand.

When he sits down, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and slides it across the table to her. The paper contains only a street address, nothing else.

“You show up here Tuesday night at midnight, and he’ll take you down to Laredo. Get you across the border. After that, you can catch a bus to anywhere you wanna go.”

Chloe looks at the paper. “You sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“I don’t think I even know where this is,” she says, staring at the address.

“Downtown,” he says. “Warehouse district.”

Chloe nods. “How will we know what he looks like?”

“I’ll be there, too,” Dupree says. “To make the introductions, you know. After that, though, I’m out of there. I can’t be involved with this shit.”

Chloe looks at him and nods. “Sure,” she says. “Of course.”

Dupree pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “To be honest, I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m strictly small time, you know. Recreational narcotics. But you two seem like good people, you know, and you’re friends with Simone, so I figured what the hell, I’ll do what I can.”

“We appreciate it,” Chloe says. “Really.”

Dupree shrugs and picks up his beer.

“So how much is this going to cost us?” Raja asks after a moment, looking around the bar cautiously.

“Yeah,” Dupree says. “I was just gonna get to that.” He sips on his beer. “Just talked to my friend last night and apparently it’s gonna be four grand total. For the both of you.”

Raja stares at him, his face suddenly filled with concern. “And what about for just one of us?”

“For just one of you,” he says, “I guess that would probably be half. So what would that be—two grand?”

“Two grand?” Raja says, shaking his head. “And that’s not negotiable?”

“Negotiable?” Dupree laughs. “Dude, this guy doesn’t negotiate. And besides, he’s already giving you a discount, you know, because I know him, because we’ve done business before. Normally, it would probably be twice that. Shit, maybe three times.”

Raja looks at her then, and she can see the disappointment in his face. She knows that he’s spent almost everything he has already, just to get down here, that there’s no way he can get his hands on that type of cash.

“We don’t have two grand,” he says finally. “I mean, we don’t even have one grand.”

Dupree looks at him and shrugs. “Dude, I don’t know what to tell you then. I mean, this type of thing isn’t cheap.”

Chloe puts her hand on Raja’s, then looks at Dupree. “We’ll get it,” she says.

“What are you talking about?” Raja says.

“We’ll get it,” she says to Raja. “Don’t worry about it.”

Raja stares at her, then looks away.

“You sure?” Dupree says.

“Positive.”

“ ’Cause I can’t be flaking out on this dude.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Honestly. We’ll be there, and we’ll have the money.”

Dupree nods, then looks again at Raja, who is looking down at his lap.

“All right then,” he says and stands up. “So, I’ll see you guys Tuesday night then.”

“Tuesday night,” Chloe says.

Dupree looks at her then and smiles.

“You know,” he says, “I don’t know what type of shit you’re in. And, like I said, I don’t really wanna know. But I hope it all works out for you two. I really do.”

“Thanks,” Chloe says and smiles.

Then Dupree turns to Raja and shakes his hand. “
Adios, mi compadre
,” he says, and then he turns around and disappears out the door just as suddenly as he arrived.

As soon as he’s gone, Chloe turns to Raja and pats his hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

“How are we going to raise that type of money?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Then why did you tell him we’d have it?”

“I’ll figure something out,” she says. “Trust me.”

He stares at her.

“I have a thousand or so in my savings,” she says, “and I can get the rest from my parents.”

“You can’t ask your parents.”

“Okay,” she says, “then I’ll get it from Richard.”

He sips his beer. “You think he has that type of money?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I know he’ll give me whatever he has.”

He looks at the bartender, then shakes his head.

“We have three days,” she says. “We can get four grand in three days. I mean, it’s not going to be easy, but we can do it.”

“Two,” he says.

“Huh?”

“Two grand.”

“No,” she says, touching his arm. “Four.”

ELSON HAD BEEN WORKING
on the e-mail all morning, trying to put his situation in the best possible light, trying to explain to his boss, Ted Sullivan, something that he could barely explain to himself. That his daughter had gone missing, that he didn’t know where she was, that he now needed to take a leave of absence to find her. After he’d sent the e-mail off, he’d sat at his desk for a long time, staring out the window. The rest of the office was empty today, most of his colleagues off on-site, and for a moment he had felt strangely calm. Now, however, as he stares at the computer screen in front of him, he feels that sense of anxiety coming back. In the bottom left-hand corner of the screen is the layout for one of his two current projects, a Mediterranean-style residence on the outskirts of Houston. He had followed his clients’ specifications to a T, but there was still something missing. A lack of cohesion in the layout, a lack of warmth in the overall concept. A house was supposed to have a central living area, after all, and this house was simply an elaborate labyrinth of narrow corridors and hallways, sectioned off by bedrooms and studies. There was no common living space, no place for the family to come together as a unit. There was, he realized now, no soul to what he’d designed. Leaning back in his chair, he considers this, then closes the window and shuts down his computer.

As a grad student, Elson had once attended a lecture in which a famous contemporary architect had spent almost an hour discussing the intricacies of his own home, showing slides of every room, explaining how he had taken great care to see the project through from early sketches to final details, how he had overseen every aspect of the house’s construction and design. He then explained that this house had been his greatest accomplishment as an architect, not because it was his most
ambitious but because it was his most personal.
When you build your own house
, the architect had explained,
you’re putting your soul out there on display for the whole world to see. It’s the most terrifying thing an architect can do
, he’d added,
but also the most gratifying
.

At the time, this lecture had had a very profound impact on Elson, and even today he still thought about it, regretting the fact that he had never built a house for Cadence and himself. On several occasions he had actually drawn up some rough sketches, even looked into some properties outside of Sugar Land, but somehow he had never had the time or the money or the energy to actually see these plans through, especially after the children were born. Instead, he had fallen into line at Sullivan & Gordon, taking on whatever projects they gave him, never complaining about the hours or the workload or the neediness of the clients, allowing his own visions of simplicity and order, of form before function, to be superseded by the homogenous designs of his peers.

Of course, in the beginning, it hadn’t always been this way. In the beginning, when he’d first joined the firm, it had been the height of the oil boom, the late seventies and early eighties, and as a young architect, Elson and the rest of the firm had enjoyed a period of unprecedented growth and prosperity. While the world-class visionaries, like I. M. Pei and Philip Johnson, were putting up skyscrapers downtown, Sullivan & Gordon were building three-story mansions for oil executives in River Oaks. Almost every single week, it seemed, the partners were bringing in new commissions, and Elson, who was only a few years out of grad school, who still hadn’t passed all of his architecture exams, who still wasn’t officially licensed, Elson, the rising star of the company, was being asked to oversee and manage three or four projects at once. At the time, he couldn’t have imagined a better place in the country for a young architect to cut his teeth. He couldn’t have imagined another firm in the country that would have allowed someone his age to have the type of responsibility and creative freedom he was given at Sullivan & Gordon. Within a few years of his arrival, in fact, he was already promoted officially to project manager and, a few years after that, to associate architect. One evening, while he was down at Ted Sullivan’s beach house in Galveston, Ted had pulled him aside, and as they stood on his deck overlooking the ocean, sipping on margaritas, Ted had told him that if he kept producing the types of buildings he was producing, he could see him making partner in a couple of years. It’s possible Ted was drunk, of course, but Elson
had held on to these words, had held on to them for almost two decades, repeating them in his head like a mantra, wanting to believe that they might come true, even when all evidence seemed to point to the contrary.

It was this that he’d been thinking about earlier that morning as he sat at his desk, putting the finishing touches on the e-mail he’d been planning to send to Ted, an e-mail that he’d condensed from three lengthy paragraphs to three short lines: