be lonely and desperate for something to justify the hassle of getting through the day. You think I don’t see what Tia Lucha and Tio Faustino and you and everybody else your age goes through, that I don’t get it, I don’t care.
“I can give you back your hope.”
She looked chastened. Then: “No, you can’t.”
“I can make you happy.”
“You do make me happy. You infuriate me and, I’m sorry, bore me sometimes, but yes, I’m mostly happy when we’re together. But-here again, the age factor comes in-happiness isn’t as important as I once thought. It’s a pretty slim commodity, actually.”
“You’d rather be unhappy?”
“Happiness comes and goes, is what I’m saying. A little sunlight on a gray day, poof, my spirits lift. A melody in my head. On the street, a dog wags its tail-”
“That’s not happiness,” he said. In fact, what it sounded like was boredom.
“Yes, it is. That’s the sneaky truth about happiness. It’s pretty ho-hum stuff. As for hope, it’s just a way to trick yourself into thinking the future can’t go wrong.”
“What I mean by happiness is how we feel when we’re together.”
“That will change.”
“Yeah. It’ll get better.”
“You can’t know that. Trust me.”
“If you really believe that, why live?”
Her eyes met his. “The question I ask myself several times a day.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“‘Death is like the falling of a petal from a rose. No more. No less.’” She turned her cup in its saucer, as though it were a sort of compass. “In case you’re interested in the Zen view.”
“You’re not seriously-”
“I know, how thoroughly
“Stop joking about it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not contemplating suicide. But do I think about death more and more? Why yes I do. And you shouldn’t. It would be wrong and selfish and cowardly of me to inflict all that on you. Besides, there are worse things than loneliness. I let myself forget that.”
“You’d rather be alone than with me.”
“You make me want to drink, Roque. You make me want to drink and fuck and laugh and forget.”
“And that’s so terrible?”
“It’s cowardice. It’s unfair. To us both.” She said this with a sort of guilty kindness, fiddling with her cup. “You mentioned that something had come up, right? And you needed to talk about it.”
“Yeah. My uncle. The one they arrested yesterday.”
“He’s not really your uncle, though, if I remember.”
“Close enough. I owe him. Big-time. His son, Happy, he’s come back. He got deported, couple years ago. Showed up out of the blue. I met with him this morning.”
She looked at him askance. “What are you saying?”
“Tia Lucha has to stay here to earn enough to look after Godo. Godo’s too messed up to travel anywhere, that’s not gonna change. Happy’s not supposed to be here in the first place, no way he can just come and go.”
“Go where?”
“El Salvador.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Why-”
“I have to go down and make sure the money we send gets into the right hands, make sure Tio Faustino doesn’t get screwed by the
“The who?”
“Gang members. They’re the ones who can get him through Guatemala and Mexico. The borders have tightened up down there. It’s not as easy as it used to be to come north. Money’s not enough, you’ll just get ripped off. Or worse. And Tio Faustino’s no spring chicken.”
“And you’ll be doing what in all this?”
“We get close to the border, the
“That’s insane. How can you trust these people?”
“Like we’ve got a choice? The drug cartels took over the smuggling routes. You can’t just go it alone, too easy to get killed or betrayed. Happy already has some angle worked, he hooked up with these people when he came across this last time. All we need’s the money.”
“I can’t believe you’re even thinking-”
“I can’t let the family down.”
“Your family shouldn’t ask you to do something so stupid.”
“Please, don’t talk about my family like that.”
“You’ve got too much promise.”
“It’s not about me.”
“You’re just trying to prove yourself. To this cousin.”
His hand ventured across the table, searching for hers. “It’s nice, by the way, to hear you say I’ve got promise.”
“I’ve always said that. When does all this happen?”
“Happy’s got a line on a job for me, some moving company, guys he knows.” He drew back the neglected hand. “Like I said, we need money, more so now. It’ll take anywhere from six weeks to six months for them to deport Tio Faustino. They’ve got laws on the books, from the civil war, making it harder to send Salvadorans back home. It creates a lot of red tape. But he’s got no case, no lawyer can help him, he’s screwed. So it’s just a matter of time.”
She rose from the table, walked to the sink, staring out past the muslin curtains. “I’m not going to save you from yourself, Roque, if that’s what you came here for.”
He felt stunned. “That’s what you think?”
She opened the spigot, ending finally the thudding drip, and rinsed her cup. “I care about you. What you’re thinking of doing, I wish I could stop you, talk you out of it. But I also get the feeling that’s precisely what you want me to do. It feels manipulative. It feels wrong.”
“It is wrong. Everything you just said.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” He glanced again at the bodhisattva Jizo, guardian of travelers. What she meant was goodbye, she’d been saying it all along. Maybe it was time he listened.
Part II
Nine
“HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY THAT I HATE THIS?”
Roque sat slumped back in his seat, watch cap and work gloves in his lap, as he studied the images in the
