“Nonsense. Trust.” I repositioned the glass on her stomach, pressed my ear against it and closed my eyes to sharpen my hearing. My hand rested on her chest.

  “Do you hear anything?” Her voice floated like moon light.

  The ocean thrummed in my ear. Luz’s breathing, a soft breeze blowing tall grasses along the dunes. She stroked the back of my hand, fingertips tracing tributary veins. My body seeped into hers, cell by cell. The streetlight filtered through our curtains, casting the glow of a retiring sun.

  “Can you hear the heartbeat?” She reverberated, muted and infinite.

  “Not yet.”

  She took away the glass and laid my head on her stomach.

  “Keep listening.”

  “What if he’s trying to talk to me and I just can’t hear him?”

  She ran fingers through my hair, tucked it behind my ear.

  “What if he thinks I’m ignoring him?” I said.

  “Why would he think you’re ignoring him?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And how do you know it’s a him?”

  I shrugged. “Has to be.”

  She cocked her head, face shaded like a Picasso painting.

  “I can’t raise a girl. I’ll kill anyone who says anything to her, and I don’t think the universe would want our un-daughter to grow up with a father in jail.”

  She breathed, laughed, and patted my head. I took a marker from the milk crate she used as a night-table.

  “If you keep twitching, the lines won’t come out right.”

  “It tickles.”

  I told her to hold her breath, then. Without looking, I could feel her eyes, her slight, bemused smile. After a minute, I told her she could move again. She twisted her head side to side, as if she was at a gallery.

  “Why did you draw a sea monkey on my stomach?”

  “It’s not a sea monkey. It’s our baby.”

  She pressed a finger on her skin, her lips warm against my forehead. “Beto, I don’t want our fetus carrying a lightsaber while in my womb.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s blue marker. He has to be a Jedi. We could never raise a Sith.”

  She shook her head. “Keep trying.”

  “What if another fetus tries to fuck with him?” I bit my lip, raised an eyebrow. Laying my head back on her stomach, she told me to keep listening.

  The apartment hummed in silence, our breathing the metronome for the night. Outside the window, bats squeaked in the alleyway. Cats tiptoed across fences, mewling to the others. Someone in the city was dying at that moment, someone coming home for the first time. Someone was screaming in orgasm and someone was shooting tar into their arm. The earth spun around its axis, but my world existed only within these walls. Soon the rise and fall of Luz’s stomach became rhythmic and I knew snores would soon follow. I kept my head as close to my child as possible.

  She’d convinced me to go to a doctor soon after the wedding. It’d been almost fifteen years since I’d seen one. I’d been excessively tired, and she’d worry about one disease or another. During the physical, he asked about my scar, which led to X-rays, which led to consulting a fertility doctor because Chance’s fuckwit enforcer had shaky hands and nicked something important when he stabbed me. The doctor told me how lucky I was that there were no further complications, that rebar could be some nasty stuff. Luz squeezed my leg and I could only purse my lips and nod. The image of her in the doctor’s office flash-burned across the panorama of my skull alongside the broken fingers, the splintered ribs, the repercussions of Miller I could never outrun. Cue her post-coital workout routine and cyclical ovulation sex, and as the sun finally began to sear darkness from the sky, I couldn’t help but feel we were nestled inside of a miracle.

  One that I would protect with everything I had.

  I slipped out of bed without waking Luz and started coffee for us. My eyes burned from a lack of sleep. Her purse covered half of an envelope, the return address with our landlord, who was probably wondering where the money for this shithole apartment was. We had to squeeze our showers in between everyone else in the building because there wasn’t enough hot water to go around. Our toilet rocked in place and was about to fall through the floor. Half of the place should’ve been condemned or demolished. How can you bring a child into this mess? the silverfish in my skull whispered. How can you afford anything else?

  “I will not go back to them.” I repeated it aloud as a mantra. “I will protect my family.”

  The air outside had rows of metal teeth and my breath was visible. I hurried to the mailbox. A car door slammed. I was half-tempted to wrap Luz in blankets and huddle us on the next bus to Mexico, seek out her extended family. At least our money would’ve lasted longer. Rapid clicks to my side. My fists tightened, the way a dog’s mouth waters at the sight of meat. By instinct.

  “Beto.”

  “Why are you waiting outside my apartment?” I said. Chance squeezed my arm. “Even the hoppers aren’t out yet.”

  “Yeah, that’s great. You’re a riot.” He sipped from his Dunks cup. “Someone fucked up. Get changed. We need to go. Now.”

  “Chance, it’s seven in the morning. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “They ran into a problem with Customs in Philly and moved the drop-point down here. Shipment arrives in ninety minutes.”

  “Look.” I took a deep breath, nervous to speak and cursing myself for being nervous. What kind of father was scared to defend his child? “Luz is pregnant. I’m staying with her.”

  His face slackened, eyes turning slightly downward. I wondered if he was about to have a stroke when he wrapped his arms around me, repeating congratulations in my ear and thumping my back. He pulled away, held my arms and said how happy he was for us.

  “Okay,” he said.

  My body felt ready to melt into a tropic pool of relief. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll see you in twenty, then.”

  A torrent of whispered curses as my hands led me around the room, finding clothes without waking Luz. I saw a story once, about how mothers in dire circumstances tap into their unconscious abilities, lifting cars and other superhuman sorts of things. I wondered if this situation applied, at least maybe in my extraordinary ability to make the absolute worst decision to try to preserve what I had. Luz shifted in bed, letting go a long exhale I thought to be her unconscious objection to me leaving.

  I leaned down and kissed her stomach. Her lips bent into a slight smile, made a few sleepy noises.

  “I love you,” I said. “And I will be back. I promise. This ends today.”

  I kissed her hand, left a note explaining work had called early and went outside.

  The rising-sun light that had made Luz so beautiful as it fell across her faces gave Chance the complexion of a corpse.

  “This is stupid. This is so fucking stupid. I shouldn’t even be here,” I kept saying as I hoisted myself into the waiting passenger van. Delilah squeezed between the two of us on the bench seat like we were on some grotesque road trip. Tinted windows left the back in permanent midnight, the slight texture of carpet on the floor. No seats, no belts. In the movies, this van would be a pedophile’s pride and glory. The whole thing felt very conspicuous for only picking up a few bricks.

  Chance looked out the window. “If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you I would’ve shot you and your wife if you hadn’t come.”

  “What the fuck?”

  He reached over to me with Dunks in hand as if he was Clark Fucking Griswold. “Coffee?”

  We cut past the early-morning joggers tracing the perimeter of Patterson Park, people in suits and overcoats walking dogs, a few club kids stumbling home. The sky slowly turned the color of watery blood. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Chance headed down Eastern Avenue, turning right on a one-way street. It struck me as familiar, then disconcerting when I realized this was the same place I saw Del for the first time in seven years. That was two weeks ago, or it was five months. The concept of time did nothing for me anymore. Every minute with Chance was a moment lost with Luz and the baby. He pulled over and Del climbed across me and out of the van before it even stopped.

  I pointed at the house she ran into, said, “What’s this?”

  He grinned, and I could see where gum overtook teeth. “You haven’t been out of the game for that long, have you?”

  Normally, I would’ve advised them to have the house’s foundation repaired. Stress cracks from settling webbed the corners. The concrete around the edge of the porch pulled away from its base, leaving a quarter-inch of air between it and the formstone exterior the color of dirty sand. Walking up the stoop, I could see that the windows were single-pane and would triple the electric bill. That aside, though, it was a pretty typical Baltimore rowhome, and I hoped they’d be stricken with asbestos poisoning within months.

  The interior had been drawn from stills of a post-apocalyptic horror. Dust motes thick as napalm, with wooden crates for seats and industrial cable spools for tables. Some type of large rodent had gnawed a hole through the back rest of the recliner in the corner. Initially, I was shocked. Back in Boston, Chance would never have settled for a place like this. After considering it, though, he was as conniving as ever.

  I picked up a newspaper. The headline read Braves Clinch World Series. The date in the bottom corner disintegrated with my touch.

  “This is cozy,” I said. “Can I go home now?”

  Chance settled himself onto a box, nodded behind me. “Now we get dressed.”

  I turned around. Delilah held a pile of black in her arms that looked like an exotic bug. Parts were shiny, others dull with the texture of fabric. Hard angles and flowing lines. She kneeled next to the cable spool. The objects fell with a clatter, spilled across the dirty floor.

  Shotgun. Pistol. Black vest. Hunting knife and sheath. A circle of something like garrote wire. Glimmering pieces of metal. Two bullets hit the wood, the ting reverberating like a church bell across a graveyard.

  “You’ve got to be fucking joking.”

  Delilah held up two vests, weighing them with her hands. “If I gave you this one—” it looked like a child’s life jacket, “—then I’d be joking.”

  Chance grunted his approval.

  Hundreds of thousands of silverfish poured from the recesses of my skull in a cascading stream of pinchers and chitinous exoskeletons. They filled my body and I couldn’t look at my arm for fear I would see my skin molt and slough away like old paper.

  “Chance,” I said. He whistled as he tightened Delilah’s vest. “Chance,” I said, louder, my voice wobbling.

  She let go a quick gasp, said too tight.

  “Chance!”

  “What?” He spun and faced me, jaw moving, teeth grinding.

  I measured my breaths, fought to keep my voice from cracking. “I’m not doing this.”

  He patted my shoulder. “Sure, you are.”

  “No, Chance. No, I have a wife. And child. I can’t do this.” I dropped the vest and it crushed my toe.

  He only shrugged. “That’s why you’re doing it, brother. For your family.”

  “I won’t abandon them.”

  Delilah snickered as she wrapped her hair into a bun, slid a gun into her belt.

  He cupped my chin with his hand, face two inches from mine, staring into my eyes as if trying to consume my soul. “You’re doing it with family, Beto. I know you won’t abandon us.”

  “Not you, you asshole. You know what I’m—”

  My last words choked into the air. His hand against my throat, my back against the wall. I felt a body-shaped indentation behind me. Bitter coffee on his ragged breath. His face contorted and blister-red. Something in his cheeks, by the corner of his eyes. His nose nearly brushed against mine. I imagined I heard subcutaneous tears pooling. Maybe it was just oxygen deprivation.

  After seconds that stretched forever, he dropped me and turned away. I crouched against the wall, trying to appear unfazed.

  I shook my head, at first slowly then more and more violently as thoughts settled in. Everything I could lose. Everyone I could hurt by doing this. “This isn’t worth it, Chance. Go ahead and tell Luz. We’ll figure it out but I’m not doing this.”

  “You’re doing it for them,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. I’m out.” I moved the vest away with my foot.

  He whirled around and before I could move there was the barrel of a revolver three inches from my right eye. The hollow click of the hammer cocking.

  “We’re way past backing out,” he whispered. “You back out now, your family dies.”

  “You touch my family, I’ll murder you myself.” I swallowed, and it shattered my eardrums. “And when you bring guns to pick up, we all die.”

  The hammer uncocked. He smiled, licked his teeth. “Drugs are old news, brother. Get with the times.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Delilah sauntered over, picked up my vest and held it out to me like a crocheted blanket. Whispered, “Might want to wear this.”

  “Chance?”

  “Beto, hey,” he said. “The easiest way to get busted is to move drugs.”

  “Then what the fuck is this?” As soon as the words left my mouth, as soon as they were tangible and in the open, I knew that his answer would be one I didn’t want to hear.

  “People are our business now, Beto.” Flak jacket zipped, revolver in waistband, skinning knife lashed to his thigh, Dunkin Donuts cup in hand, he nodded and said, “We deal in people now.”

  Chapter 8

  “Doughnut?” he said. Melting chocolate pooled in his palm.

  “Fuck off and die.”

  “I’m just offering. Now’s not the time to get the munchies.”

  “Chance, he said he didn’t want one. Or were you just being difficult, Beto?”

  “Both of you can suck my dick.” I stuck my hand inside my pocket to keep it from shaking, sucked on a cigarette like it was life-support. The sun beat down on us with unseen fists. “Let’s just get this shit done with so I can go home and never see you two again.”

  Delilah stuck out her lip. “Come now, you don’t really mean that.”

  Chance held her forearm, said it was time to move. When she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, I repressed the urge to crush the cigarette in her eye. They entered the building while I banged the back of my skull against the cinderblock wall, whispering stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

  We’d pulled the van into some shipyard junk depository in a neighborhood I’d never seen. Rusting shipping containers ringed the perimeter. Propellers, rolls of fencing, several salvaged cars, and an anchor lay strewn around the yard. I half-expected to see some inbred yokel in overalls hobbling out to give us all what-for while his dog slobbered and gnashed teeth at us. Which would’ve been fine—preferable even—given what we really encountered.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The stunning silence of a forsaken lot repurposed for trafficking humans. One cinderblock bunker situated in the middle of all this debris, a post-industrial neighborhood full of nothing, only the green shimmer of water visible in the space between the container fence. Not a soul breathing, hiding, scurrying, or dying. Just the three of us.

  He’d parked alongside the bunker, rear doors facing the water. They sorted out their gun situation, then told me to stand at the front door and laid a shotgun in my hand like it was a Fabergé egg.

  On the other side of the door I heard the dull murmur of voices. Some I could understand; others were foreign. They all sounded jovial, or as jovial as Russian could be. Delilah’s laugh cut through the guttural noise. A truck drove past the front gate. I held the gun behind my back.

  The sun crawled over us. I wished it would scorch us to cinder. I wondered what Luz was doing. If she was debating which cereal would be healthier for the baby. If she was standing in front of the mirror, cheeks puffed, and shirt bunched below her bra, looking for any change in the slope of her belly. If she was on the phone with Amada, one of the women from the center, discussing baby yoga, all while I stood in front of a reinforced door holding a shotgun as two old ghosts I thought I’d severed from my life discussed the transaction terms of human lives. The sun crawled over me. It should have scorched me to cinder.

  Then a loud crack inside, like when a book falls from the table and lands perfectly flat. Harsh tones, yelling, arguing. Cadenced Russian that sounded defusing. The bitter tang of fear in the back of my throat. I looked at the watch I wasn’t wearing to see how long they’d been in there, how long I’d been daydreaming. The shadows had contracted, and I ventured that I’d lost at least twenty-five minutes inside my skull.

  More yelling, and it wasn’t until Delilah’s voice rang out that I felt the metal claws of anxiety in the back of my thighs. Crashing noises, like a tabletop swiped clean in anger. Voices straining to stay calm while others snarled. I reached behind me and cocked the shotgun, then immediately tried to uncock it but found I had no idea how. Why the fuck did we bring guns? Chance’s voice tearing at another man’s, his words alien and ferocious but somehow enchanting.

  And then two bangs.

  Two inimitable bangs followed by Delilah screaming. Before the synapses could connect and tell me that rushing into this situation would be detrimental for not only myself but also my family, I reached for the doorknob, gun raised. Old habits. The door burst open from the inside, knocking me backward.

  “Start the fucking van,” she yelled.

  I stood still, leaning on the shotgun as if it was a crutch. Chance’s arm was an albino snake wrapped around her neck. Her face flecked with blood.

  The ground shattered before my feet. She cocked her gun again. “I said start the fucking van.” Her voice cracked.

  Chance’s leg, shredded above the knee. His calf dangled by a rope of muscle. When she pulled them along, it swung like a pendulum. Church bells rang out somewhere, announcing it was eleven o’clock in the morning.

  I ripped open the back doors then started the van. Del hadn’t yet shut the door when the other men appeared at the hood. I stomped the pedal like it was their skull, Del screaming at me, asking what the fuck I was doing. She fired a few shots as they grew smaller in the rearview, and the whole scene became cold, non-existent. We were in their basement, twenty years ago. Chance and I were playing video games while Delilah yelled shoot ’em shoot ’em shoot ’em. I had no sensation on my skin. The air was heavy, embalming.

 

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