Miami Noir (32 page)

“The Avrils said they would find me work somewhere,” she told Jacques. “They would help me find a place too. They were able to transfer the rest of my money to Bahy’s cousin in the United States.”

“You don’t know anybody else here?”

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“We should stay together then,” Emania said. She looked at Jacques firmly, then pulled herself to him so that they held each other. Their faces were close enough that Jacques saw her white eyes through the darkness, saw how desperate she was for someone, anyone, to know and to know her. He saw hope in her eyes too; she could see the Unites States now, it wasn’t a myth, and she had a man by her side. He knew she thought the Lord was answering her, affirming she had been right to faithfully wait in solitude. He wanted to pull her close and press her head against his chest and tell her she was right. He wanted to give her a place and a life where she belonged, and could afford the dress. But he couldn’t give that. He had been enduring for a long time too, and now it was the only thing he knew how to do; instinct wouldn’t let him give, no matter how much he wanted to. He wasn’t there yet.

The Avrils were arguing when they drew closer. Bahy still claimed she could swim, but in their twenty years of marriage Paul had never seen her do so.

“It is dumb, Bahy, to drown just because you do not want to go back to Haiti,” Paul said.

“I can swim.”

“Then swim now. Let’s see you swim.”

“Where am I going to swim? If I swim, it’s going to be to the beach.” She sounded angry, but Jacques could see she was crying. Paul took Jacques aside and gave him the contact information card for Bahy’s cousin in Weston. It was wet, but still intact, and Jacques put it in his back pocket.

“Let him know we did not make it,” Paul said. “Please.”

Before the top of the sun could glimpse over the water, Jacques and Emania began the swim together, and to Jacques’s disillusion, were followed by the Avrils.

Once Paul and Bahy jumped into the depths from where they could stand, Bahy had begun swatting the water in hysteria while Paul treaded at her side, trying to calm her and keep her afloat in the current. They both became exhausted, and Paul used all of his remaining energy to hold her in his arms. Bahy responded by halting her frenzy to hold him. She held him so tight that it forced all his air out, but he didn’t let go. They sank until they were standing on the sand and coral, and in the darkness she gave him a quick peck on the lips while the surface heaved only four feet above. Their bodies were found still together two days later by a fisherman about a mile north, so bloated that they at first looked like the body of a single strange sea creature being carried in by the tide.

Jacques reached the beach first and ran to the shadows beside a hotel to wait for Emania, and to put on the tennis shoes he had wrapped around his neck for the swim. Five minutes passed and she didn’t show. He leaned his face as close to the shadow’s edge as he dared and squinted, but couldn’t see past the unlit beach to the water. The sound of squeaking wheels echoed off the wall, and he ducked behind a large shrub against the building in time to avoid a cleaning woman pushing her cart. The woman’s cell phone rang and she stopped the cart on the concrete path in front of him to spend valuable minutes scolding what must have been her child or husband.

After she moved on, Jacques came out from behind the shrub and saw Emania face down in the sand about thirty feet up the beach, toward the small building on stilts. He began to move in her direction through the knee-high grass along a low fence marking the upper border of the beach, then saw the headlight of the ATV turn on and heard the engine fire. Within seconds, the machine was roaring and bouncing at full speed toward her. Jacques stepped into the darker shadows, then leaned against the hotel building behind him. As he watched, he beat his palms against the concrete until his wrists hurt.

At last he decided there was nothing he could do. He cut through the hotel property and ran west as fast as he could—only stopping while crossing the deserted width of A1A to snatch off his sloshing tennis shoes and throw them into a cluster of shrubs beside a bank. He crossed a canal bridge and found cover in the semidarkness of a strip mall parking lot where the bridge reached the mainland, then keeled over and vomited.

After heaving a few minutes, he walked behind the strip mall and found a faucet on the building in the alley. He drank until he was full, and then washed his face to flush the sea salt taste that was migrating to his mouth from his face and hair. A light wind funneled through the alley and chilled his body under the wet clothes. Part of the sun appeared and poured through the hotels and across the canal. Jacques looked to the direction of the beach.

He tried to conjure the image Emania must have glimpsed as she struggled against the waves with her throbbing lungs and tight heart, choking on saltwater and tears: the silhouette of Jacques reaching land, then springing from all fours and running across the beach in panic. Then the hardness of the dry, dark beach after she had crawled from the waves and waited in exhaustion for Jacques to reappear and take her numb arm into his grip. She had told him she could make it, and she had. She had done her part, and now he was to come forth and carry her on his back, not like a boat then, but like a car or that ATV, all the way to Sonoma Valley. But she did not feel his grip, and not trusting her sense of touch, kept her eyes open slightly to see if she was being carried or dragged. And when she heard the ATV fire up, she must have realized he was truly gone, that he had already begun in America, perhaps had already made his fortune and was happily married. And again she was alone, and so this time gave up. Her face showed no indication, nor did she make a sound—she merely tucked her arms under her head like a pillow and fell asleep, oblivious to the dry sand pasted to the wet on her lips.

Jacques couldn’t know what happened after she was found; that she was given a bed in a clean hospital where she slept and was hydrated. That she was questioned days later and admitted to the officials that the middle-aged couple found drowned had been on the sandbar with her, but no one else. That she was transferred to Krome Detention Center outside Miami to be incarcerated for over a year and raped twice before being repatriated to Haiti, where she had never been and knew no one. He couldn’t have known all this, but still he dropped his gaze to the tangle of shadows on the concrete behind the strip mall, and began crying.

The ink had bled on the contact card Paul had given him, but the penmanship was still clear. He had seven American dollar bills, folded together and pasty. He washed his face one more time under the faucet, then shook the drops from his fingers and began to walk.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:

K
EVIN
A
LLEN
has been a newspaper reporter, and is currently completing his MFA degree at Florida International University, where he also teaches. He is the fiction editor of
Gulf Stream
magazine and has lived in Florida since 1982.

P
RESTON
A
LLEN
, recipient of the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, has authored the thriller
Hoochie Mama
, as well as the Sonja H. Stone Prize—winning collection
Churchboys and Other Sinners
. He teaches English and creative writing in Miami, where he is presently at work on the
Hoochie Mama
sequel,
While Infants Wailed.

L
YNNE
B
ARRETT
, recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, is the author of
The Secret Names of Women
and
The Land of Go.
Her stories have been anthologized in
A Dixie Christmas, Mondo Barbie,
and
Simply the Best Mysteries.
She is coeditor of the anthologies
Birth: A Literary Companion
and
The James M. Cain Cookbook, Guide to Home Singing, Physical Fitness and Animals (Especially Cats).

D
AVID
B
EATY
graduated from Columbia College and received his MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. His story “Ghosts” appeared in
The Best American Mystery Stories 2000.

J
OHN
B
OND
has written articles and books about poker, real estate, travel, and scuba, and is coauthor of 2005’s
Cooke’s Rules of Real Poker.
He is a freelance writer, attorney, scuba instructor, boat captain, adjunct professor, realtor, poker playe and raconteur, living in Dania Beach, Florida with his wife Jeannie and their two Shi Tzus.

T
OM
C
ORCORAN
is the author of five Alex Rutledge mysteries set in the Keys and South Florida. His most recent novel is
Air Dance Iguana.

J
OHN
D
UFRESNE
is the author of three novels, two story collections, and a book on writing fiction. His most recent collection is
Johnny Too Bad.

A
NTHONY
D
ALE
G
AGLIANO
is a personal trainer and part-time English teacher who lives on Miami Beach. He is the author of the novel
Straits of Fortune

C
AROLINA
G
ARCIA
-A
GUILERA
is the author of eight books, the first six of which are in a series featuring Lupe Solano, a Cuban-American private investigator who lives and works in Miami. Garcia-Aguilera, who is a private investigator herself, has been the recipient of many awards, including the Shamus and the Flamingo.

J
AMES
W. H
ALL
is the author of fourteen novels, including his most recent,
Magic City

V
ICKI
H
ENDRICKS
is the author of the noir novels
Miami Purity, Iguana Love, Voluntary Madness,
and
Sky Blues
, as well as many short stories. She lives in Hollywood, Florida, and teaches writing at Broward Community College. Her latest novel of murder and obsession is
Cruel Poetry