The Between (26 page)

“You tell me.”

Hilton squirmed, uncomfortable under Raul’s desperate eyes. “It’s a lot of horseshit. One thing sounds familiar, something a blind man at Miami New Day told me about dreams being journeys. Give me a break. I was under hypnosis.”

“Hilton,” Raul said, leaning closer to his face, “being under hypnosis wouldn’t make you say such things. Hypnosis is the road to the unconscious mind. What you were saying about ‘the others, the between,’ that’s coming from you. Do you understand? I don’t plant what grows there, I merely harvest it.”

“Play that again,” Hilton said, and they listened to the exchange in silence. By the time the tape finished the second time, Hilton’s heart was pounding and his palms were damp. Was he really crazy, after all?

Raul’s voice had never been so firm: “Tell me the truth, Hilton. Are you taking large amounts of cocaine?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Hilton snapped.

Raul sighed, wiping perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’ll tell you why I ask. You’re my friend, Hilton, and therefore I have to be honest with you,” he said, as though it were difficult to speak. “I’m very concerned about what I’ve just heard. It’s paranoid and delusional. Sometimes that’s the effect of too much cocaine, or amphetamines. You’ve constructed an entire fantasy world in your mind, and I suspect that sometimes it has spilled into your consciousness. That would explain some of your erratic behavior, the episode with Jamil. We need to give this closer attention.”

The others. The between. What the hell could it mean?

“I’m not going to a hospital,” Hilton said, his mouth dry.

“You have a severe sleeping disorder. That much is clear,” Raul said. Again, he rubbed his forehead nervously. “But I think there’s something else that may or may not be related, something more serious. And we can control it with treatment. Medication.”

“What?”

Raul paused a long time before speaking. “Schizophrenia.”

Hilton didn’t answer. His eyes felt glassy. He could barely grasp Raul’s words as he began to explain what schizophrenia was, how it altered the sufferer’s perception and reality, is thought processes. If the schizophrenia was latent, Raul said, it might have been triggered by his stress since the death threats began. Or, he said, it may be genetic.

As Raul spoke, Hilton recalled the string of strange occurrences plaguing him for months. Danitra. The dead man at Miami New Day. Reliving the moment with Jamil at the birdcage.

“Hilton, have you seriously considered suicide recently?”

Hilton looked at his lap. He could only nod. When he looked back at Raul, his friend was frozen with his finger thoughtfully poised beneath his nose. He looked as lost as Hilton felt, with nowhere to go.

“Schizophrenia does not mean you’ll be committed. You’re very lucid right now. It’s an illness, that’s all. Don’t think your life will necessarily be significantly changed forever.” His voice was hollow.

“Then why do you look like you just buried your best friend?”

Raul smiled and nodded, deftly wiping the corner of his eye. “Because, Hilton, I blame myself for not seeing it. Now you understand why I don’t like to befriend my patients. A good friend is not necessarily a good therapist. I have failed you. You never see what’s closest to you. I tell my clients that all the time.”

“So I remember,” Hilton said, and cleared his throat. Schizophrenia. Hilton wondered if the genetic predispositions Raul had mentioned might explain some of Nana’s oddities, the way she’d forgotten things and talked about things that never happened. Hilton remembered, with a pang, that he’d never known the psychological histories of his parents. He’d never known them at all. “Say you’re right about this. Can it . . . can it be cured?”

“Many cases, properly treated, are entirely controlled.”

“And how many end up total nutcases?”

Raul shrugged, uneasy. “Hilton . . .”

“Tell me, Raul.”

“A very small percentage remain severely impaired. You should focus on healing, Hilton, not fear. I realize you must be—”

Hilton was shaking his head furiously. “No. I don’t believe it. I know it makes sense to you, but not to me. It’s something else. A whole lot of tests and treatments aren’t going to change what’s happening to me. The answer is in my dreams, probably even on that tape. I know it, Raul. I know it.”

Raul ignored him, scribbling notes on his pad. “We’re going to begin regular appointments so I can assess you, including a CAT scan. I’m going to bring in an M.D. I work with.”

Hilton was breathing more rapidly, exasperated. There were no answers for him in Raul’s world of science and logic. He needed someone who could help him see his dreams, or to understand them. “Raul, you mentioned another girl who had dreams like mine. A Haitian girl. Where is she?”

“I don’t know, Hilton. My brother spoke to her last, at the university.” He sounded distracted, still taking notes.

“Is he still there?”

Raul nodded wearily. “I wish you wouldn’t torture yourself with this useless exercise. My brother would only confuse you. He has very strange beliefs.”

“What’s his name, Raul?”

Raul met Hilton’s eyes, looking at him as though he’d never seen such a pitiable case. “If I tell you, do you promise to come back to begin your treatments?”

“If my way doesn’t work, I’ll try it your way.”

Raul ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and began to write in block letters. “He’s a graduate psych student at UM, but he spends most of his time on Miami Beach. His name is Andres.”

“Andres Puerta . . .”

“Don’t be shocked by him.”

“Shocked how?”

“We’re very different, the two of us. I’ll leave it at that.” Hilton took the paper with Andres Puerta’s name and telephone number as though he were grasping the key to the fortress of his nightmares. He stood up, buoyed by a new energy.

“I hope you won’t be disappointed, Hilton.”

Hilton grinned, memorizing the seven digits. “I won’t be.”

When he opens his eyes, he sees her sitting at the foot of his bed watching a game show. She is wearing the dress he remembers from the day he found her on the floor, a thin housedress with a pattern of linked daisies. Her straight white hair is tied behind her in a braid that winds down her back. They are in his hotel room, but the room is bigger than it was before, and all four walls box them in with door after door. Closed doors, all around.

“I knew you’d never leave me, Nana,” he says.

She doesn’t turn around to look at him, shaking her head. “You’ve done swum out too far. It pains me to watch. All over again. Again and again.”

“Thank you for the night at the pool,” he says, stroking the braid. “My savior. Again.”

She makes a sound, a half laugh. “I’ve done got attached to them now. To her.”

“Who?” Hilton asks.

“My great-grands. The girl. If you’d gone, they would have followed you. He’d have seen to that. And just when I was starting to see things. Things to come, just maybe. If only
—”

“Look at me, Nana.”

She shakes her head, more firmly. “You don’t want to see me like this, child.”

“Yes I do. Look at me.”

Slowly, she shifts on the bed until she has turned her body to face him. What remains of her brittle flesh is cleaved to her skull, with nothing but holes where her eyes and nose should
be. Her lips are gone, exposing her teeth in a wide, maniacal death grin. He is afraid, but he forces himself to remain still. He extends his trembling hand to touch her flesh, which feels like dust. It is dust, he discovers; black particles remain on his fingers when he pulls them away.

“Help me save them, Nana,” Hilton says.

“You know they have no time that belongs to them. They came to be from what you stole. Breaks my heart to say it, but. . . ”

Hilton hangs his head, the world’s sorrows weighing against his chest so he can hardly breathe. “I have nowhere left to go. I know that. I just want to fix it like you did for me, Nana. I want to fix it so they’re all right. All of them. You know what love is, Nana. You know what it can do.”

Nana sighs, expelling the irresistible smell from inside her, the scent that nearly compels him to close his eyes and sleep. He shakes his head to clear the smell away. “I didn’t really fix it, child,” she says. “I tried to. I only thought I did.”

“But you did. You fixed it. Show me how.”

Nana stands, extending the grubby bones of her fingers for him to hold. He takes her hand, clinging to the frailness, and she surveys the room until she faces a door that stands where his room’s window used to be. “Here,” she says. “Ill show you.”

When they walk through, they are standing on the curving sidewalk in front of his yard. It is late afternoon, and the shadowed street is deserted. Charlie is in the backyard barking, standing against the fence on his hind legs. Charlie knows something is wrong. Charlie smells something he is trained to detect in the air all around them, tormenting his keen senses.

“This is the day,” Hilton says, shattered, knowing.

“Yes. This is the day.”

He searches the familiar surroundings hungrily for clues. The driveway is empty. There is a light on in the living room. Some sort of banner is strung across the picture window inside, but Hilton can’t make out the letters from where he stands with Nana. Charlie’s barking is frenzied.

“Will it be soon?” Hilton asks.

Nana nods, her revolting grin rocking up and down.

“Show me what to do, Nana,” he begs. “You fought and stayed not only for me, but for them too. You know you did.”

Nana does not answer, but Hilton follows her gaze to the aluminum garbage can standing in the grass by the curb, just outside of the coral wall. It is covered tightly. Yes, the answer is here, he realizes. This is what’s meant to be. He releases Nana’s hand and steps toward the can.

“Once you open it, there’s no more doorways,” Nana says. “Can’t be no more. No more running, Hilton.”

Hilton gazes at the garbage can and studies the ridges running up and down the light-colored metal. He takes a deep breath and grasps the cold handle. “Thank you, Nana,” he says, and lifts it.

For two days, Hilton’s calls to Andres Puerta were unanswered. He called him virtually every two hours, from early morning until after eleven, always finding the same answering machine with a message against strange, synthesized music: “This is Andres. If it’s fate, we’ll catch up to each other. Leave a message.” When he called Raul to ask him why his brother never called back, Raul said it was unusual. Maybe he was out of town or staying at a friend’s. I don’t keep up with Andres’s friends, Raul said.

While he waited, Hilton kept his mind occupied with routine.

Bit by bit, his cramped economy room on the ground floor of the Holiday Inn was taking on aspects of the home he’d left behind. Each night just before midnight, he parked his Corolla beneath the dangling brown aerial roots of the huge weeping fig tree across the street from his house, just out of Charlie’s eyesight. From there, he simply watched and waited. He saw the glow of the television set that stayed on late in the living room, where presumably Dede was up by herself watching CNN. Occasionally, he saw the light in Kaya’s room on as she finished her homework. Usually, the house was dark except for the security lights. Although Curt had personally impounded his shotgun, and Hilton knew he wasn’t much use at his post except as an extra pair of eyes, at least he felt more in control being there. Just in case.

At daybreak, after Dede turned off the floodlights, Hilton drove his car around the corner to get his breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts. When he returned after eight, Dede’s Audi was gone and he knew the house was empty. That was when he went inside, day by day, and retrieved the things he needed; clothes, his shaving kit, shoes, books. One day, he brought a big stuffed pink elephant for Kaya and an NBA All-Star basketball for Jamil and left the gifts on their beds. “Ill see you soon. I love you. Daddy.” He fought not to call them after school each day. He wasn’t ready. He needed his answers first, and only then could he be a father and husband to his family again.

Each afternoon, Hilton returned to the hotel room to watch TV or read for a few hours, waiting in vain for his telephone to ring, then he headed up to North Dade by five o’clock.

That was when Charles Ray came home from work.

Hilton spotted Goode’s FBI tail right away; a navy blue Dodge Aries K car that sidled up soon after Goode arrived in his white Jeep each day. Hilton didn’t recognize the agent, a dark-haired man who couldn’t be more stereotypical in his white dress shirt and sunglasses. Hilton discovered that he could park on a strip of grass outside of the trailer park’s gate and still watch Goode through the fence. The agent, not hiding his presence, usually parked just inside the gate in the visitor’s parking lot. Goode apparently did part-time work as the park’s maintenance man, because he often emerged bare-chested with a shovel or a hammer.

Every other day at five-thirty, Goode crossed the street to buy Marlboros from the Circle K, walking within feet of the agent’s car. If Goode ever noticed either of them, he didn’t show it. He strolled as casually as he had the day Hilton met him, hands in his pockets, his eyes looking nowhere in particular.

Hilton wasn’t sure why he wanted to watch Goode. He did enjoy the knowledge that as long as Goode was in his sight, he couldn’t be prowling near his house after his family, but a part of him also believed he might learn something from him. He watched Goode’s trailer until about eleven, then drove back toward his house to begin his surveillance there.

The third day after his visit to Raul, the front desk told Hilton he finally had a message. His heart danced until he glanced at the number, which he didn’t recognize. The name on the paper was simply Stan. Must be a mistake, he thought, but he dialed anyway. Stan might have some news about Andres Puerta.