“Mommy? Greg?”
Nothing.
“Mommy? Greg?”
No one responded.
Today, my dead are dead, María Paz thought.
For days she had been meticulously studying the dossier Pro Bono had given her, all the instructions of what to say and what to keep quiet. Everything she had to say was memorized, but the words weren’t hers, nothing of what she was going to say in that courtroom room was what she really thought. Pro Bono had warned her that the outcome of that day would depend in large part on her, by her ability to radiate a bright light, her ability to seem transparent and reliable. That will be hard, she thought, very hard to radiate a bright light in this fucking bleak mood. Because deep down she knew they were going to break her. What kind of verdict can you expect from people who don’t know her, who don’t like her, who don’t care about her? And why would someone like her expect justice? She, who had experienced firsthand the arbitrariness of it all? She had to be optimistic, as Pro Bono had advised and I had insisted. Me, Cleve Rose, known to her as Mr. Rose. But all she felt was fatigue, a tremendous fatigue that had no cure.
“It has been so long since I make any decisions for myself,” she had complained to her friend Juanita. “Everyone making decisions for me. Life has pushed me where it wants without consulting me, giving me little choice.”
Today, her fate would be decided by a flip of the coin, she knew that whether it’d be head or tails, the world would go on as it always did. In the end, what did this trial have to do with her, when she knew she would be nothing more than a spectator there? It would be others who decided, and she would have to attack. For the moment, she continued crossing the plaza toward the main entrance. Once inside, she would have to pass through the metal detector, submit to a pat down, show her appointment citation, and cross the huge lobby to find her courtroom. But before she got there, she had the impression that she was being watched from above. It was nothing but a slight disturbance, a vague intuition, someone’s eyes fixed on her, something like a silent scream from above that made her look up.
Above she saw Pro Bono leaning over a railing in the gallery. She was about to wave to him, but something held her back. She had never seen such an expression on the lawyer’s face, a stony and urgent look, as if he had been trying to get her attention forever. Why hadn’t he just called her name? All it would have taken was one little shout. But Pro Bono could only stare, Jesus Christ how he stared, a frightening gaze. When he finally got her attention, he made a tiny gesture that took but a second, and her veins grew cold. A secret gesture meant only for her among the crowd of people in the main lobby: he slid the tip of his index finger across his throat, as if he were slitting it. The message was loud and clear to María Paz: you’re fucked, he was saying, and there was nothing he could do. Pro Bono then shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but clearly signaling for her not to come any closer, now with a small shooing gesture, telling her to get out, to leave before it was too late. And then he repeated the first sign, as if to leave no room for misinterpretation, the index finger slicing across his throat. Everything was clear. Pro Bono was telling her, go, flee before it’s too late. While up in the gallery, Pro Bono adjusted the knot on his tie as if that was what he had meant to do when he brought his hand to his throat, down in the great lobby María Paz felt like she was going to barf, as if all the breakfast that Juanita had made for her was coming back up, the Rice Krispies, orange juice, and toast with a poached egg. Her head began to get hot, her heart thumped in her throat, her pupils dilated, and her legs grew wobbly. She was going to have to turn around and head out the way she had come, and do so unnoticed in that place watched over by a hive of undercover cops, secret agents, whistleblowers, security guards, and cops. She slowed down but avoided stopping altogether, which would have given her away, so she got hold of herself, straightened her posture, took a deep breath, put on a blank expression, and forced herself to take a few more steps forward. She got into the act that had been scripted on the spot: she was late, and with a dramatic gesture of a smack on her forehead with the palm of her hand, she realized that she had forgotten something. She pretended to look frantically for that something inside her bag and then murmured a reprimand to herself for being such an idiot.
How could I have left that in the car? Now she had to dash back to get it, she simply had to. Her confidence grew and she even managed an embarrassed smile—I know, I know. I’m such a nincompoop; I didn’t bring the most important thing. She realized that her nostrils were flaring, a sign that she was beginning to hyperventilate, something that had first happened to her in Manninpox, and that now occurred every time she became too anxious. She made a concerted effort to breathe evenly, turned 180 degrees to head back, and exited the building, remaining very cognizant as she moved away that one false move meant her doom. Above all, she must not look back. She commanded herself: Do not turn around or your fate is ten times worse than a pillar of salt. To her surprise, she was suddenly very enlivened by an odd current of new energy rushing through her insides. No, she murmured, now everything is entirely up to me. She would no longer have to play as the visiting team, she could finally rely on her own strengths, and those at least she could trust. She sensed that a door had opened to a new world, and she was suddenly thirsty for life and desperate for the freedom she had not experienced in so long. Let’s see, you bastards, she challenged the world. Let’s see who comes up on top this time. Stand back, motherfuckers. You’re not going to snatch me this time. Serenity and control, those were the crucial twin elements in the moments that she left the plaza behind and headed toward the parking lot. She lengthened her stride a bit but did not shift into a run, emulating the brisk pace of top models on the runway instead. She was just someone who had forgotten an important document in her car and was in a hurry to get it. She made it to the parking lot, meaning she had gotten through the worst of it, had left the minefields behind her. And at that moment, she was overcome with a weird urge to return home. She missed the Nava sisters and yearned for Bolivia. She needed Mandra X and wanted to hug Violeta, pet Hero, find a coin to call Corina. Or to be holding the large, safe hand of her husband, Greg. Or her father’s hand, whomever it was that hand may have belonged to; even that bastard Peruvian seaman who was probably her father came out well in this hypnotizing script she was writing on the spot. If she could only close her eyes and return home. She was inundated with a sudden wave of nostalgia, an unforgiving depletion of adrenaline that left her exhausted. Where a few minutes before there was determination, there now followed a schmaltzy indifference that was no help at all. But the worst of it only lasted a few minutes because the revelation suddenly struck like lightning. Home? What home? What goddamned home have you ever had? How can you return to something that never existed? This lightning strike did not bring her down. On the contrary, it burned away the gauzy, drooly nostalgia that was hypnotizing her and debilitating her. She remembered a Juanes music video that had been playing a lot recently, Juanes in an orange jumpsuit whispering in a gringo prisoner’s ear, “No one left to account to, no one left to judge me.” And damn it, he was right. That’s how I feel, baby, with nothing to explain and no one to explain it to. I’m coming after you, Juanes, and God save those who try to judge me. I feel sorry for them waiting for me with the verdict that they can stick where the sun don’t shine, because it’s me, and I account to no one. There’s no love that will stop me or hate that will hinder me; even if I waltz straight to hell, I still win. Heads or tails, I win. She had all her powers under her control and was finally going to get ahead, two steps forward and one step forward, like her mother used to say, the Colombian Wonder Woman, fucking them all and blasting them into little pieces. She took out the useless keys to her apartment and made them obviously visible and jingled them, the keys of the car door she was about to open. The rows of cars before her became obstacles that she needed to overcome, that she was already overcoming. She walked past the first row, the second, the third. Someone approached her from behind, a man apparently from the heavy steps. He was getting closer and closer, almost directly behind her. María Paz chose a cherry-red car, a color that inspired confidence, and pretended it was hers. She placed her bag on the roof, pulled out her sunglasses and put them on, and turned to face the intruder.