It was impossible for me to evade Joe Martin and Chino’s vigilance. They were in charge of spying on me and were very conscientious about it. Chino, a furtive weasel, never spoke to me or looked straight at me, while Joe Martin made his intentions obvious. “Lend me the chick for a blow job, boss,” I heard him say to Brandon Leeman once. “If I didn’t know you were joking, I’d shoot you right here for insolence,” he calmly replied. I deduced that as long as Leeman was in command, that pair of a*sholes wouldn’t dare touch me.
There was no mystery about what this gang did, but I didn’t consider Brandon Leeman a criminal, like Joe Martin and Chino, who according to Freddy had several deaths on their hands. Of course, it was quite likely that Leeman was a murderer too, but he didn’t look like one. In any case, it was better not to know, just as he preferred not to know anything about me. For the boss, Laura Barron had no past or future, and her feelings were irrelevant; the only thing that mattered was that she did what she was told. He confided various things about his business, which he was afraid of forgetting and it would have been imprudent to put in writing, so I would memorize them: how much he was owed and by whom, where to pick up a package, how much to pass to the cops, the day’s orders for the gang.
The boss was very frugal, living like a monk, but he was generous with me. He hadn’t assigned me a fixed salary or commission, but he gave me money from his inexhaustible roll of bills without counting, like tips, and he paid for my club membership and anything I bought. If I wanted more, he’d give it to me without a second thought, but I soon stopped asking, because there was nothing I needed, and besides, anything of value would disappear from the apartment anyway. We slept on either side of a narrow hallway, which he never showed the slightest intention of crossing. He’d forbidden me from having relations with other men as a matter of security. He said tongues got loosened in bed.
At sixteen, I’d had, as well as the disaster with Rick Laredo, some experiences with guys that had left me frustrated and resentful. Internet porn, which everyone at Berkeley High had access to, didn’t teach anything to the boys, who were grotesquely clumsy; they celebrated promiscuity as if they’d invented it—the fashionable term was “friends with benefits”—but it was very clear to me that the benefits were just for them. At the academy in Oregon, where the atmosphere was saturated with youthful hormones—we used to say the walls were dripping with testosterone—we were subject to close quarters and enforced chastity. That explosive combination gave the therapists inexhaustible material for the group sessions. The “agreement” with respect to sex was no hardship for me, though for others it was worse than abstaining from drugs, because apart from Steve, the psychologist, who didn’t get involved in seduction attempts, the male element was deplorable. In Las Vegas I didn’t rebel against the restriction imposed by Leeman; the disastrous night with Fedgewick was still too fresh in my mind. I didn’t want anyone to touch me.
Brandon Leeman assured his clients that he could satisfy their every whim, anything from a young child for a pervert to an automatic rifle for an extremist, but it was more boasting than reality. At least, I never saw any of that, just drug dealing and selling stolen property, small-scale businesses compared to others that went on with impunity in the city. Various sorts of prostitutes came to the apartment in search of drugs, some very high-priced, judging from their appearance, others in the last stages of misery; some paid cash, others were given credit, and sometimes, if the boss wasn’t around, Joe Martin or Chino would take payment in services rendered. Brandon Leeman supplemented his income with cars stolen by a gang of underage crack addicts. He modified them in a clandestine garage, changing their license plates and selling them in other states, which also allowed him to change his ride every two or three weeks, and thus avoid being identified. It all contributed to fattening his magical wad of bills.
“With your hen that lays golden eggs you could have a penthouse instead of this pigsty, a plane, a yacht, whatever you want,” I reproached him when the pipes burst with a gush of fetid water and we had to use the bathrooms at the gym.
“You want a yacht in Nevada?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“No! All I’m asking for is a decent bathroom! Why don’t we move to a different building?”
“This one’s convenient.”
“Then call in a plumber, for the love of God. And you could hire someone to do the cleaning while you’re at it.”
He started laughing his head off. The idea of an illegal immigrant keeping house for a band of delinquents and addicts struck him as hilarious. Actually, Freddy was supposed to do the cleaning—that was the pretext for his getting to stay there—but the kid just took out the garbage and got rid of evidence by burning it in a gasoline drum out back. Even though I completely lack any vocation when it comes to housework, sometimes I had to put on rubber gloves and break out the detergent—it was the only option if I was going to keep living there—but it was impossible to combat the deterioration and dirt, which invaded everything like an inexorable pestilence. It only mattered to me; the rest of them didn’t notice. For Brandon Leeman those apartments were a temporary arrangement; he was going to change his life as soon as some mysterious business he was fine-tuning with his brother came off.
My boss, as he liked to be called, owed a lot to his brother, Adam, as he explained to me. His family was from Georgia. His mother had abandoned them when they were little; his father died in prison, possibly murdered, although the official version was suicide, and his older brother took care of Brandon. Adam had never held down an honest job, but he’d never had any run-ins with the law either, unlike his younger brother, who by the age of thirteen had a juvenile record. “We had to separate so I wouldn’t damage Adam’s reputation with my problems,” Brandon confessed. By mutual agreement they decided Nevada was the ideal place for him, with more than 180 casinos open day and night, cash passing from hand to hand at dizzying speeds, and a handy number of corrupt cops.
Adam gave his brother a bundle of identity cards and passports with different names, which could be very useful to him, and money to start operations. Neither of them used credit cards. In a rare moment of relaxed conversation, Brandon Leeman told me that he’d never married; his brother was his only friend, and his nephew, Adam’s son, was his only emotional weakness. He showed me a family photo of his brother, a strapping, good-looking guy, very different from him, his plump sister-in-law, and his nephew, a little angel called Hank. Several times I went with him to buy very expensive electronic toys, not very appropriate for a two-year-old, to send to the boy.
Drugs were just a bit of fun for the tourists who came to Las Vegas for a weekend to escape the tedium and try their luck in the casinos, but they were the sole comfort of the prostitutes, vagrants, panhandlers, pickpockets, gangbangers, and other unhappy types who hung out in Leeman’s building, ready to sell the last vestiges of their humanity for a hit. Sometimes they arrived without a cent and begged until he gave them something out of charity, or just to keep them hooked. Others were already at death’s door, and it wasn’t worth the trouble of helping them; they’d be vomiting blood, having convulsions, and passing out. Leeman had those ones tossed out onto the street. Some were unforgettable, like a young guy from Indiana who survived an explosion in Afghanistan and ended up in Las Vegas, unable to remember his own name—“Lose your legs and they give you a medal, lose your mind and they give you nothing,” he repeated like a prayer in between drags of crack—or Margaret, a girl about my age, but with her body used up, who stole one of my designer handbags. Freddy saw her, and we got it back off her before she could sell it, because Brandon Leeman would have made her pay very dearly for that. On one occasion Margaret came up to the apartment, hallucinating, and not finding anyone who might help her, cut her veins open with a piece of glass. Freddy found her in the hallway in a pool of blood and managed to take her outside, leave her a block away, and phone for help. When the ambulance picked her up, she was still alive, but we never heard what happened to her or saw her again.
And how could I forget Freddy? I owe him my life. I developed a sisterly affection for that quiet, short, skinny boy, who couldn’t keep still, with glassy eyes and a runny nose, hard on the outside and sweet inside, who could still laugh and snuggle up beside me to watch television. I used to give him vitamins and calcium so he’d grow, and I bought two pots and a recipe book to inaugurate the kitchen, but my dishes went straight into the garbage almost whole; Freddy would swallow two mouthfuls and lose his appetite. Sometimes he got really sick and couldn’t move from his mattress; other times he’d disappear for several days with no explanation. Brandon Leeman supplied him with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, whatever he asked for. “Don’t you see that you’re killing him?” I rebuked him. “I’m already dead, Laura. Don’t worry about it,” Freddy interrupted cheerfully. He consumed every toxic substance in existence. I don’t know how he could swallow, smoke, sniff, and inject so much filth! He really was half dead, but he had music in his blood and he could get rhythm out of a beer can or improvise novels in rhyming rap; his dream was to be discovered and to become a star, like Michael Jackson. “We’ll go to California together, Freddy. You can start a new life there. Mike O’Kelly will help you—he’s rehabilitated hundreds of kids, some of them way more f*cked up than you, but if you saw them now, you’d never believe it. My grandma will help you too. She’s good at that sort of thing. You can live with us. What do you think?”
One night, in one of Caesar’s Palace’s garish salons, with its statues and Roman fountains, where I was waiting for a client, I ran into Officer Arana. I tried to slip away, but he’d seen me and came over smiling, with his hand out, and asked me how my uncle was. “My uncle?” I repeated, disconcerted, and then I remembered that the first time we met, in McDonald’s, Brandon Leeman had introduced me as his niece from Arizona. Anxiously, because I had the merchandise in my bag, I started to blurt out explanations that he hadn’t asked me for.
“I’m just here for the summer. I’m going to start college soon.”
“Which one?” Arana asked, sitting down beside me.
“I don’t know yet. . . .”
“You seem like a serious girl. Your uncle must be proud of you. Sorry, I don’t remember your name—”
“Laura. Laura Barron.”
“I’m happy to hear you’re going to college, Laura. In my line of work I see some tragic cases of young people with lots of potential who get completely lost. Would you like to have a drink?” And before I could manage to say no, he’d ordered a fruit cocktail from a waitress in a Roman tunic. “I’m sorry I can’t join you and have a beer, as I’d like. I’m on duty.”
“In this hotel?”
“It’s part of my beat.”
He told me that Caesar’s Palace has five towers, 3,348 rooms, some of almost a thousand square feet, nine high-class restaurants, a mall with the most refined shops in the world, a theater that looked just like the Colosseum in Rome, with 4,296 seats, where celebrities performed. Had I seen the Cirque du Soleil? No? I should ask my uncle to take me—the best thing in Las Vegas were the shows. Soon the fake Roman vestal arrived with a greenish liquid in a glass crowned with pineapple. I was counting the minutes; outside Joe Martin and Chino, eyes on the clock, were waiting for me, and inside my customer would be strolling among columns and mirrors, little suspecting his contact was the girl having a friendly chat with a uniformed police officer. What might Arana know of Brandon Leeman’s activities?
I drank the fruit juice, which was too sweet, and said good-bye in such a hurry that it must have seemed suspicious to him. I liked the officer. He looked me in the eye with a kind expression, shook hands firmly, and his attitude was relaxed. After a closer look, he was quite attractive, though he could stand to lose a few pounds; his white teeth contrasted with his tanned skin, and when he smiled, his eyes closed like little slits.
The closest person to Manuel is Blanca Schnake—not that this means very much, as he doesn’t need anybody, not even Blanca, and could spend the rest of his life without speaking. All the effort of keeping the friendship going comes from her. She’s the one who invites him over for meals or arrives out of the blue with a stew and a bottle of wine. She’s the one who forces him to go to Castro to see her father, the Millalobo, who gets offended if he doesn’t get regular visits. She’s the one who worries about Manuel’s clothes, health, and domestic well-being, like a housekeeper. I’m an intruder who has come to ruin their privacy; before my arrival they could be alone, but now they’ve always got me stuck in the middle. They’re tolerant, these Chileans; neither of them have shown any signs of resenting my presence.
A few days ago we had dinner at Blanca’s house, as we often do, because it’s much cozier than ours. Blanca had set the table with her best tablecloth, starched linen napkins, candles, and a basket of rosemary bread that I’d brought; a simple and refined table, like everything of hers. Manuel is incapable of appreciating such details, which leave me awestruck; before meeting this woman, I thought interior decoration was only for hotels and magazines. My grandparents’ house resembled a flea market, overstuffed with furniture and horrendous objects piled up with no other criteria than utility or laziness about throwing them away. With Blanca, who can create a work of art with three blue stems of hydrangea in a glass jar full of lemons, my taste is becoming more polished. While they were cooking a seafood soup, I went out to the garden to pick some lettuce and basil, while there was still light, as it’s starting to get dark earlier now. In a few square yards, Blanca has planted fruit trees and a variety of vegetables, which she looks after herself; she’s always working in her garden in a straw hat and gloves. When spring comes, I’m going to ask her to help me plant some things on Manuel’s land, where there’s nothing but weeds and stones.
Over dessert we talked about magic—Manuel’s book has got me obsessed—and supernatural phenomena, on which I’d be an authority if I’d paid more attention to my grandmother. I told them I’d grown up with my grandpa, an agnostic and rationalist astronomer, and my grandma, an enthusiast for tarot cards, an aspiring astrologer, aura and energy reader, interpreter of dreams, amulet, crystal and sacred stone collector, not to mention friend of the spirits that surround her.
“My Nini never gets bored—she keeps busy protesting against the government and talking to her dead,” I told them.
“What dead?” Manuel asked me.
“My Popo and some other ones, like Anthony of Padua, a saint who finds lost things and boyfriends for old maids.”
“Sounds like your grandma needs a boyfriend,” he said.
“What a thing to say, man! She’s almost as old as you are.”
“Didn’t you tell me I need a love affair? If you think I’m the right age to fall in love, then Nidia definitely is, since she’s several years younger than me.”
“You’re interested in my Nini!” I exclaimed, thinking the three of us could live together; for an instant I forgot that his ideal girlfriend would be Blanca.
“That’s a hasty conclusion, Maya.”
“You’d have to win her away from Mike O’Kelly,” I informed him. “He’s an invalid and Irish, but quite good-looking and famous.”
“Then he has more to offer her than I do.” And he laughed.
“And you, Auntie Blanca, do you believe in things like that?” I asked.
“I’m very practical, Maya. If I need a wart cured, I’ll go to the dermatologist and also, just in case, tie a hair around my baby finger and pee behind an oak.”
“Manuel told me you’re a witch.”
“True. I get together with other witches on the nights of the full moon. Do you want to come? We’ll be meeting next Wednesday. We could go to Castro together to spend a couple of days with my dad, and I’ll take you to our coven.”
“A coven? I don’t have a broom,” I said.
“If I were you, I’d accept, Maya,” Manuel interrupted. “An opportunity like that won’t come twice. Blanca’s never invited me.”
“It’s a feminine circle, Manuel. You’d drown in estrogen.”
“You’re both pulling my leg,” I said.
“I’m serious, gringuita. But it’s not what you might imagine, nothing like the witchcraft in Manuel’s book, no vests made of corpses’ skin or any invunches either. Our group is very closed, as it must be so we can feel completely confident. We don’t accept guests, but we could make an exception for you.”
“Why?”
“I think you’re quite lonely and you could use some friends.”
A few days later I went to Castro with Blanca. We arrived at the Millalobo’s house at teatime, a sacred ritual, which the Chileans copied from the English. Blanca and her father have an invariable routine, a scene from a comedy. First they greet each other effusively, as if they haven’t just seen each other the previous week and haven’t spoken on the phone every day since. Then she immediately starts scolding him because he’s “getting fatter every day and how long do you plan to keep smoking and drinking, Dad, you’re going to kick the bucket any moment now.” He comes back with comments about women who don’t cover up their gray hairs and walk around dressed like Rumanian peasants. Then they bring each other up to date with the gossip and rumors going around. She then asks him for another loan, and he screams blue murder, that he’s being ruined, that he’s going to end up losing his shirt and having to declare bankruptcy, which gives way to five minutes of negotiations, and finally they seal an agreement with more kisses. By then I’ll be on my fourth cup of tea.
At dusk, the Millalobo lent us his car, and Blanca took me to the meeting. We drove past the cathedral, with its two steeples covered in metal tiles, and the plaza, with all its benches occupied by couples, left behind the old part of the city and then the new part, with its ugly concrete houses, and turned up a curvy solitary track. A short while later Blanca stopped in a yard where other cars were already parked, and we walked toward the house along a barely visible path, making our way with her flashlight. Inside there was a group of ten young women, dressed in the new-age hippie style like my Nini—tunics, long skirts or wide-legged cotton slacks, and ponchos, because it was cold. They were expecting me and welcomed me with spontaneous Chilean affection, which initially, when I first arrived in this country, shocked me and I’ve now come to expect. The house was furnished unpretentiously. There was an old dog lying on the sofa and toys strewn across the floor. The hostess explained that when there was a full moon her children went to sleep over at their grandmother’s house, and her husband took the opportunity to play poker with his friends.
We went outside through the kitchen into a big backyard, lit with paraffin lamps, where there was a garden with vegetables planted in crates, a chicken run, two swings, a big tent, and something that at first glance looked like a mound of earth covered with a tarp, but a thin column of smoke was coming out of the center. “This is the ruca,” the owner of the house told me. It was round like an igloo or a kiva, and only the roof stuck up above the surface; the rest of it was underground. It had been built by the husbands and boyfriends of these women, who sometimes participated in the meetings, but on those occasions they met in the tent, because the ruca was a feminine sanctuary. Following their lead, I took off my clothes; some were completely naked, others left their underwear on. Blanca lit a handful of sage leaves to “cleanse us” with the fragrant smoke as we crawled through a narrow tunnel on hands and knees.
Inside, the ruca was a round dome about twelve feet across and five and a half feet high at its tallest part. At the center a wood fire burned in a stone circle; the smoke was drawn up and out through the only aperture in the roof, above the bonfire, and all around the wall was a little platform covered with woolen blankets, where we sat in a circle. The heat was intense, but bearable, the air smelled of something organic—mushrooms or yeast—and what little light there was came from the fire. There was a bit of dried fruit—apricots, almonds, figs—and two jugs of iced tea.
That group of women was a vision from The Thousand and One Nights, a harem of odalisques. In the half-light of the ruca they looked beautiful, like Renaissance Madonnas with their thick hair, comfortable in their bodies, languid, unself-conscious. In Chile people are divided by social class, like the caste system in India or race in the United States, and I don’t have a trained eye to distinguish them, but these European-looking women must be from a different class from the Chilotas I’ve met, who in general are heavyset, short, with indigenous features, worn down by work and worry. One of these is seven or eight months pregnant, to judge by the size of her belly, and another had given birth not long ago; she had swollen breasts and purple aureoles around her nipples. Blanca had undone her bun, and her hair, curly and unruly like foam, reached her shoulders. She showed her mature body off with the naturalness of someone who’s always been beautiful, even though she didn’t have breasts and a pirate’s scar ran across her chest.
Blanca rang a little bell; there were a couple of minutes of silence to focus our concentration, and then one of them invoked Pachamama, Mother Earth, in whose womb we were gathered. The next four hours went by without my noticing, slowly, passing the big conch shell from hand to hand to take turns speaking, drinking tea, nibbling on fruit, telling each other what was happening at that moment in our lives and the sorrows carried over from the past, listening with respect, without questioning or offering opinions. The majority came from other cities in Chile, some for their work, others accompanying their husbands. Two of the women were “healers,” dedicated to curing through different methods—herbs, aromatic essences, reflexology, magnets, light, homeopathy, movement of energy, and other forms of alternative medicine—that are very popular in Chile. Here people only resort to drugstore remedies when everything else fails. They shared their stories without embarrassment: one was shattered, because she’d walked in on her husband and her best friend; another couldn’t bring herself to leave an abusive man who mistreated her emotionally and physically. They talked of their dreams, illnesses, fears, and hopes; they laughed, some cried, and all applauded Blanca, because her recent test results confirmed that her cancer was still in remission. A young woman, whose mother had just died, asked if they could sing for her soul, and another, with a silvery voice, began a song, with everyone else joining in for the chorus.
Just after midnight, Blanca suggested we conclude the meeting by honoring our ancestors, then each of us named someone—the recently deceased mother, a grandmother, a godmother—and described the legacy that person had left them. For one it was artistic talent, for another a natural medicine recipe book, for the third a love of science, and around it went until everyone told theirs. I was the last and when my turn came, I named my Popo, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate to tell these women who he was. Afterward there was a silent meditation, with eyes closed, to think about the ancestor we’d invoked, thank them for their gifts, and say good-bye. That’s what we were doing when I remembered the phrase my Popo had repeated to me for years: “Promise me that you’ll always love yourself as much as I love you.” The message was as clear as if he’d said it to me out loud. I began to cry and kept crying, the ocean of tears that hadn’t flowed when he died.
At the end they circulated a wooden bowl, and each of them had the opportunity to place a small stone inside. Blanca counted them, and there were as many stones as women in the ruca; it was a vote and I had been approved unanimously, the only way to belong to the group. They congratulated me, and we drank a toast with tea.
I returned to our island proudly to inform Manuel Arias that from now on he should not count on my presence on nights when the moon is full.
The night with the good witches in Castro made me think of my experiences over the past year. My life is very different from those women’s, and I don’t know whether or not in the intimacy of the ruca I might be able to tell them one day about all that has happened to me, tell them of the rage that used to consume me, of how it felt to have an urgent need for alcohol and drugs, of how I couldn’t stay still and quiet. In the academy in Oregon I was diagnosed with “attention deficit disorder,” one of those classifications that seem like a perpetual prison sentence, but that condition was never manifest while my Popo was alive, and I don’t have it now either. I can describe the symptoms of addiction, but I can’t evoke their brutal intensity. Where was my soul then? In Las Vegas there were trees, sunshine, parks, the laughter of Freddy the king of rap, ice cream, comedy shows on TV, bronzed young men and lemonade by the pool at the gym, music and lights on the eternal night of the Strip. There were good times, including a wedding of some friends of Leeman’s and a birthday cake for Freddy, but I only remember the ephemeral happiness of shooting up and the long hell of looking for the next hit. The world back then is beginning to turn into a blot on my memory, although only a few months have gone by.
The ceremony of women in the womb of Pachamama connected me definitively with this fantastical Chiloé and, in some strange way, with my own body. Last year I led an undermined existence, thinking my life was over and my body irremediably stained. Now I’m whole, and I feel a respect for my body that I never had before, when I used to spend my time examining myself in the mirror to count up all my defects. I like myself as I am and don’t want to change anything. On this blessed island nothing feeds my bad memories, but I make an effort to write them down in this notebook so I won’t have to go through what happens to Manuel. He keeps his memories buried in a cave, and if he’s not careful, they attack him at night like rabid dogs.
Today I put five flowers—last of the season—from Blanca Schnake’s garden on Manuel’s desk, which he won’t appreciate, but it’s given me a tranquil happiness. It’s natural to be entranced by color when one emerges from grayness. Last year was a gray year for me. This tiny bouquet is perfect: a glass, five flowers, an insect, the light from the window. Nothing more. Naturally it’s hard for me to remember the darkness that came before. My adolescence was so long! A voyage to the underworld.
My appearance was an important part of Brandon Leeman’s business. I should seem innocent, straightforward, and fresh-faced, like the magnificent-looking girls working in the casinos. That way I’d inspire confidence and blend in with the atmosphere. He liked my hair white and very short, which gave me an almost masculine air. He had me wear an elegant man’s watch with a wide leather strap to cover the tattoo on my wrist, which I refused to have removed by laser, as he intended. In the shops he asked me to model the clothes he chose and was amused by my exaggerated poses. I hadn’t gained any weight, despite the junk food, which was my only nourishment, and the lack of exercise; I didn’t run anymore, as I always had, now that I had Joe Martin or Chino stuck to my heels.
On a couple of occasions Brandon Leeman took me to a suite in a hotel on the Strip, ordered champagne, and then wanted me to slowly undress, while he floated with his white lady and his glass of bourbon, without touching me. I did it shyly at first, but soon I realized it was like getting undressed alone in front of a mirror, because for the boss eroticism was limited to the needle and the glass. He told me many times that I was very lucky to be with him; other girls were exploited and beaten in massage parlors and brothels, never seeing the light of day. Did I know how many hundreds of thousands of sex slaves there were in the United States? Some came from Asia and the Balkans, but lots were American girls grabbed off the street, in subway stations, and at airports, or teenage runaways. They were kept doped and locked up, having to service thirty or more men a day, and if they refused they were given electric shocks; those poor things were invisible, disposable, worthless. There were places that specialized in sadism, where the clients could torture the girls however they wanted, whip them, rape them, even kill them, if they paid enough. Prostitution was very profitable for organized crime rings, but a meat grinder for the women, who didn’t last long and always ended badly. “That’s for soulless bastards, Laura, and I’m a softhearted guy,” he’d tell me. “Behave yourself, don’t let me down. I’d be sorry to see you end up in that kind of thing.”
Later, when I began to connect apparently unrelated events, I became intrigued by that aspect of Brandon Leeman’s business. I didn’t see him mixed up in prostitution, except selling drugs to women who solicited, but he had mysterious dealings with pimps, which coincided with the disappearance of certain girls among his clientele. On several occasions I saw him with very young girls, recent addicts, lured to the building by his gentle manners and given free samples from the best of his personal reserves; he supplied them on credit for a couple of weeks, and then they wouldn’t come back, just vanished into thin air. Freddy confirmed my suspicions that they ended up being sold to the mafia; thus Brandon Leeman earned a cut without getting his hands too dirty.
The boss’s rules were simple, and as long as I fulfilled my part of the deal, he fulfilled his. His first condition was that I avoid all contact with my family or anyone from my previous life, which was easy for me; I only missed my grandma, and since I planned to return to California soon, I could wait. I wasn’t allowed to make new friends either, because the slightest indiscretion could jeopardize the fragile structure of his business, as he put it. On one occasion Chino told him he’d seen me talking to a woman by the gym door. Leeman grabbed me by the throat, forced me to my knees with unexpected strength, because I was taller and in better shape than he was. “Idiot! You stupid bitch!” he said, and slapped me twice across the face, red with rage. That should have set off alarm bells, but I didn’t manage to process what had happened; it was one of those increasingly frequent days when I couldn’t stitch my thoughts together.
After a little while he sent me to get dressed up because we were going to have dinner at a new Italian restaurant; I imagined it was his way of apologizing. I put on my little black dress and gold sandals, but I didn’t try to disguise my split lip or the marks on my cheeks with makeup. The restaurant turned out to be more agreeable than I’d expected: very modern, black glass, steel, and mirrors, no checked tablecloths or waiters disguised as gondoliers. We left our food almost untouched, but drank two bottles of Quintessa 2005, which cost an arm and a leg and helped to smooth things over. Leeman explained that he was under a lot of pressure; he’d been offered an opportunity in a fantastic but dangerous business. I assumed it was something to do with a two-day trip he’d recently taken, without saying where or taking along his associates.
“Now more than ever, a security breach could be fatal, Laura,” he told me.
“I spoke to that woman at the gym for less than five minutes about our yoga class. I don’t even know her name, I swear, Brandon.”
“Don’t do it again. This time I’m going to forget it, but don’t you dare forget, understand? I need to trust my people, Laura. I get along well with you. You’ve got class—I like that—and you learn fast. We could do a lot of things together.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll tell you when the right moment arrives. You still need to prove yourself.”
That much-heralded moment arrived in September. From June to August I was still wandering around in a fog. No water came out of the pipes in the apartment, and the fridge was empty, but there were always more than enough drugs. I didn’t even notice how high I was all the time; taking two or three pills with vodka or lighting up a joint turned into automatic gestures that my brain didn’t even register. My level of consumption was tiny, compared to the rest of the people around me. I was doing it for fun and could give it up any time I wanted. I wasn’t an addict—that’s what I believed.
I got used to the sensation of floating, to the fog muddling my mind, to the impossibility of finishing a thought or expressing an idea, to seeing the words of the vast vocabulary I’d learned from my Nini vanish like smoke. In my rare glimmers of lucidity I remembered my plan to return to California, but told myself there’d be plenty of time for that. Time. Where did the hours hide away? They slipped through my fingers like salt. I was living in a holding pattern, but there was nothing to wait for, just another day exactly like the previous one, stretched out lethargically in front of the TV with Freddy. My only daytime chore was to weigh out powders and crystals, count pills and seal plastic bags. That’s how August went.
At dusk I’d liven myself up with a couple of lines of coke and head over to the gym for a dip in the pool. I’d examine myself critically in the rows of mirrors in the changing room, searching for signs of the low life I was leading, but I didn’t see any; nobody would have suspected the perils of my past or the risks of my present. I looked like a student, just as Brandon Leeman wanted me to. Another line of cocaine, a couple of pills, a cup of very black coffee, and I was ready for my night shift. Maybe Brandon Leeman had other distributors in the daytime, but I never saw them. Sometimes he came with me, but as soon as I learned the routine and he knew he could trust me, he sent me out alone with his associates.
I was attracted by the noise, the lights, the colors, and the extravagance of the hotels and casinos, the tension of the gamblers playing the slot machines and at the card tables, the click-clack of the chips, the glasses crowned with orchids and paper parasols. My clients, very different from those in the street, had the brazenness of those who can count on impunity. The traffickers had nothing to fear either, as if there were a tacit accord in that city that they could break the law without facing the consequences. Leeman had arrangements with several police officers, who received their cut and left him in peace. I didn’t know them, and Leeman never told me their names, but I knew how much and when they had to be paid. “They’re a bunch of nasty, insatiable, damned pigs. You’ve really got to be careful with them—they’re capable of anything. They plant evidence to implicate innocent people, steal jewelry and money on raids, keep half the drugs and weapons they confiscate, and protect each other. They’re corrupt, racist psychopaths. They’re the ones who should be behind bars,” the boss told me. The unhappy wretches who came to the building looking for drugs were prisoners of their addiction, in absolute poverty and irremediable loneliness; they barely survived, were persecuted, beaten, hidden in their underground holes like moles, exposed to the cruel blows of the law. For them there was no impunity, just suffering.
I had more than enough money, alcohol, and pills, all for the asking, but I didn’t have anything else: no family, friendship, or love, not even any sunshine in my life; we lived at night, like rats.
One day Freddy disappeared from Brandon Leeman’s apartment, and we didn’t know anything about him until Friday, when we happened to run into Officer Arana, who I’d seen only a very few times, though on each occasion he always had some kind words for me. Freddy came up in the conversation, and the officer told us in passing that he’d been found seriously injured. The king of rap had ventured into enemy territory, and a gang beat him up and threw him in a Dumpster, thinking he was dead. Arana added for my information that the city was divided up in zones controlled by different gangs, and a Latino like Freddy, even though he was half black, couldn’t go picking fights with black kids. “The boy’s got a bunch of arrest warrants pending, but jail would be fatal for him. Freddy needs help,” Arana told us as he left.
It wasn’t advisable for Brandon Leeman to go near Freddy, since the police already had their eye on him, but he went with me to visit him in the hospital. We went up to the fifth floor and wandered down corridors lit with fluorescent lights looking for his room, without anyone noticing us; we were just two more people in the constant coming and going of medical personnel, patients, and relatives, but Leeman crept along the walls, looking over his shoulder, and kept his hand in his pocket, where he carried his pistol. Freddy was in a ward with four beds, all occupied, strapped down and connected to various tubes; his face was swollen, his ribs broken, and one hand so crushed that they’d had to amputate two of his fingers. The kicks had burst one of his kidneys, and his urine in a bag hanging from the side of the bed was the color of rust.
The boss gave me permission to stay with the kid for as many hours a day as I wanted, as long as I carried out my work at night. At first they kept Freddy doped up on morphine and later they started giving him methadone, because in the state he was in he’d never have been able to withstand the withdrawal symptoms, but methadone wasn’t enough. He was desperate, like a trapped animal struggling against the straps on the bedrails. When none of the staff was looking I managed to inject heroin into the tube of his IV, as Brandon Leeman had instructed. “If you don’t do it, he’ll die. What they’re giving him here is like water for Freddy,” he told me.
In the hospital I got to know a black nurse, fifty-some years old, voluminous, with a loud, guttural voice that contrasted with the sweetness of her character and her magnificent name: Olympia Pettiford. She’d been on duty when they brought Freddy up from the operating room. “It pains me to see him so skinny and helpless—this child could be my grandson,” she said to me. I hadn’t made friends with anybody since I arrived in Las Vegas, with the exception of Freddy, who at this moment had one foot in the grave, and for once I disobeyed Brandon Leeman’s orders; I needed to talk to someone, and this woman was irresistible. Olympia asked me how I was related to the patient. To keep things simple, I told her I was his sister, and she didn’t seem surprised that a white girl with bleached blond hair, wearing expensive clothes, would be related to a dark-skinned, possibly juvenile delinquent drug addict.
The nurse took advantage of any spare moment to sit beside the boy and pray. “Freddy must accept Jesus in his heart. Jesus will save him,” she assured me. She had her own church on the west side of the city, and she invited me to evening services, but I explained that I worked nights and my boss was very strict. “Then you’ll have to come on Sunday, girl. After the service we Widows for Jesus offer the best breakfast in Nevada.” Widows for Jesus was a tiny but very active group, the backbone of her church. Being widowed was not considered an indispensable prerequisite for belonging, it was enough to have lost a love in the past. “I, for example, am married at present, but I had two men walk out on me and a third who died, so technically I have been widowed,” Olympia told me.
The social worker assigned to Freddy by Child Protective Services was an underpaid older woman, with more cases on her desk than she could possibly attend to. She was fed up and counting the days until she could retire. Children passed through the services briefly. She placed them in a temporary home, and a short time later they came back, once again beaten up or raped. She came to see Freddy a couple of times and stayed to chat with Olympia, which is how I found out about my friend’s past.
Freddy was fourteen years old, not twelve, as I’d thought, or sixteen, as he claimed. He’d been born in a Latino neighborhood in New York, of a Dominican mother and unknown father. His mother brought him to Nevada in a dilapidated vehicle belonging to her lover, a Paiute Indian, and an alcoholic like her. They camped here and there, moving if they had gasoline, accumulating traffic tickets and leaving a trail of debts in their wake. They both soon disappeared from Nevada, but someone found seven-month-old Freddy, abandoned in a gas station, malnourished and covered in bruises. He grew up in state homes, passed from hand to hand, never lasting in a foster home, with behavioral and personality problems, but he went to school and was a good student. At the age of nine he was arrested for armed robbery, spent several months in a reformatory, and then dropped off the radar of both the police and Child Protective Services.
The social worker was supposed to find out how and where Freddy had been living for the last five years, but he pretended to be asleep or refused to answer her questions. He was afraid they’d put him in a rehabilitation program. “I wouldn’t survive a single day, Laura, you can’t imagine what it’s like. No rehabilitation, just punishment.” Brandon Leeman agreed and got ready to prevent it.
When they removed the kid’s IV and catheter, and he could eat solid food and stand up, we helped him to get dressed, took him to the elevator, mingling with all the people on the fifth floor during visiting hours, and from there at a snail’s pace to the front door of the hospital, where Joe Martin was waiting for us with the motor running. I could have sworn that Olympia Pettiford was in the corridor, but the saintly woman pretended not to have seen us.
A doctor who supplied Brandon Leeman with prescription drugs for the black market came to the apartment to see Freddy and taught me how to change the dressings on his hand, so it wouldn’t get infected. I thought of taking advantage of having the boy in my power to get him off the drugs, but I wasn’t strong enough to watch him suffer so horrendously. Freddy recovered quickly, to the surprise of the doctor, who’d expected him to be laid up for a couple of months, and was soon dancing like Michael Jackson with his arm in a sling, but there was still blood in his urine.
Joe Martin and Chino took charge of revenge against the rival gang; they felt they couldn’t let an insult that serious go by unanswered.
The beating Freddy got in the black neighborhood affected me very deeply. In Brandon Leeman’s fragmentary universe, people came and went without leaving any memories. Some left, others ended up in prison or dead, but Freddy wasn’t one of those anonymous shadows; he was my friend. Seeing him in the hospital breathing with difficulty, in great pain, unconscious at times, tears flooded my eyes. I suppose I was also crying for myself. I felt trapped, and I could no longer keep kidding myself about addiction; I depended on alcohol, pills, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs to get through the day. When I woke up in the morning with a ferocious hangover from the previous night, I’d make a firm plan to clean myself up, but before half an hour had passed, I’d given in to the temptation of a drink. Just a shot of vodka to get rid of the headache, I promised myself. The headache persisted, and the bottle was within reach.
I couldn’t kid myself about being on vacation, marking time before going to college: I was among criminals. One careless mistake, and I could end up dead or, like Freddy, plugged into half a dozen tubes and machines in a hospital. I was very scared, although I refused to acknowledge my fear, that feline crouching in the pit of my stomach. An insistent voice kept reminding me of the danger. How couldn’t I see it? Why didn’t I flee before it was too late? What was I waiting for to call my family? But another resentful voice answered that my fate didn’t matter to anyone; if my Popo were alive, he would have moved heaven and earth to find me, but my father couldn’t be bothered. “You didn’t call me because you still hadn’t suffered enough, Maya,” my Nini told me when we saw each other again.
The worst of the Nevada summer came with temperatures in the hundreds, but since I lived with air conditioning and only went out at night, I didn’t suffer too much. My habits did not vary, the work going on as ever. I was never alone; the gym was the only place where Brandon Leeman’s associates left me in peace, because although they didn’t come into the hotels and casinos, they waited for me outside, counting the minutes.
The boss had a persistent bronchial cough in those days, which he claimed was an allergy, and I noticed that he’d lost weight. In the short time I’d known him he had grown weaker. The skin hung off his arms like wrinkled cloth, and his tattoos had lost their original design; you could count his ribs and vertebrae; he was gaunt, haggard, and looked very tired. Joe Martin noticed before anyone else and started to put on airs and question Leeman’s orders, while the secretive Chino said nothing, but seconded his partner in dealing behind the boss’s back and fiddling the accounts. They did it so openly that Freddy and I commented on it. “Don’t open your mouth, Laura, because they’ll make you pay—those guys don’t forgive,” the kid warned me.
The gorillas were careless in front of Freddy, who they considered a harmless clown, a junkie with his brain already fried; however, his brain worked better than either of theirs, no doubt about that. I tried to convince the kid that he could rehabilitate himself, go to school, do something with his future, but he answered me with the cliché that school had nothing to teach him, he was learning in the university of life. He repeated Leeman’s lapidary phrase: “It’s too late for me.”
At the beginning of October Leeman flew to Utah and drove back in a brand-new blue Mustang convertible with a silver stripe and black interior. He informed me that he’d bought it for his brother, who for some complicated reason was unable to purchase it himself. Adam, who lived a twelve-hour drive away, would send someone to pick it up in a couple of days. A vehicle like that could not stay for a single minute on the streets of this neighborhood without disappearing or being disemboweled, so Leeman immediately put it away in one of the two garages of the building that had secure doors, the rest being caverns full of waste, hovels for passing addicts and spontaneous fornicators. Some destitute people lived for years in those caves, defending their square yard of space against other strays and the rats.
The next day Brandon Leeman sent his associates to pick up a package in Fort Ruby, one of Nevada’s six hundred ghost towns that he used as meeting points with his Mexican supplier, and after they’d left, he invited me to go for a drive in the Mustang. The powerful engine, the smell of new leather, the wind in my hair, sun on my skin, the immense landscape sliced by the knife of the highway, the mountains against the pale cloudless sky, all contributed to getting me drunk with freedom. The feeling of freedom contrasted starkly with the fact that we passed near several federal prisons. It was a hot day, and although the worst of the summer was already past, the panorama soon turned incandescent and we had to put the top up and turn on the air conditioning.
“You know that Joe Martin and Chino are robbing me, don’t you?” he asked me.
I preferred to keep quiet. That was not a subject he’d bring up for no reason; denying it would imply I had my head in the clouds, and an affirmative reply would be admitting betrayal by not having told him.
“It had to happen sooner or later,” Brandon Leeman added. “I can’t count on anyone’s loyalty.”
“You can count on me,” I murmured, with the feeling of slipping on oil.
“I hope so. Joe and Chino are a couple of imbeciles. They won’t be better off with anyone else. I’ve been very generous with them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Replace them, before they replace me.”
We were silent for several miles, but when I was starting to think the confidences had run out, he returned to the charge.
“One of the cops wants more money. If I give it to him, he’ll just want more. What do you think, Laura?”
“I don’t know anything about that. . . .”
We drove for another few miles without speaking. Brandon Leeman, who was starting to get anxious, left the road in search of a private spot, but we found ourselves in a patch of dry earth, rocks, spiny shrubs, and stunted grass. We got out of the car in plain view of the traffic and crouched down behind the open door, and I held the lighter while he heated up the mixture. In less than a second he shot up. Then we shared a pipe of weed to celebrate our daring; if we got pulled over by the highway patrol they’d find an unregistered illegal firearm, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, Demerol, and a few other pills loose in a bag. “Those pigs would find something else that we wouldn’t be able to explain away either,” Brandon Leeman added enigmatically, laughing his head off. He was so high that I had to drive, even though my experience behind the wheel was minimal and the bong had clouded my vision.
We drove into the town of Beatty, which appeared uninhabited at that hour of the day, and stopped for lunch at a Mexican place, its sign decorated with cowboys with hats and lariats, that inside turned out to be a smoky casino. In the restaurant Leeman ordered a couple of tequila slammers, two random dishes, and the most expensive bottle of red wine on the menu. I made an effort to eat, while he moved the contents of his plate around with his fork, drawing little tracks in his mashed potatoes.
“Do you know what I’ll do with Joe and Chino? Since I’ll have to give that cop what he wants anyway, I’m going to ask him to pay me back by doing me a little favor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If he wants an increase in his commission, he’ll have to get rid of those two men without involving me in any way.”
I grasped his meaning and remembered the girls that Leeman had employed before me and had “gotten rid of.” I saw with terrifying clarity the abyss open at my feet and once more thought of fleeing, but was again paralyzed by the sensation of sinking in thick molasses, inert, with no will of my own. I can’t think, my brain feels like it’s full of sawdust, too many pills, too much weed, vodka, I don’t even know what I’ve taken today, I have to get clean, I muttered silently to myself, while I knocked back a second glass of wine, after finishing the tequila.
Brandon Leeman was leaning back in his chair, with his head on the backrest and his eyes closed. The light was hitting him from one side, accentuating his prominent cheekbones, hollow face, and the green circles under his eyes. He looked like his own skull. “Let’s go back,” I proposed with a spasm of nausea. “I’ve got something to do in this goddamn town first. Order me a coffee,” he replied.
As always, Leeman paid in cash. We walked out of the air-conditioned restaurant into the merciless heat of Beatty, which according to him was a dump for radioactive waste and only existed because of tourism to Death Valley, ten minutes’ drive away. He drove in a zigzag to a place where they rented storage spaces, low cement structures with a string of turquoise-painted metal doors. He’d been there before; he walked straight up to one of the doors with no hesitation. He ordered me to stay in the car while he clumsily manipulated the heavy industrial combination locks, swearing; he was having trouble focusing his eyes, and his hands had been trembling a lot for quite a while. When he opened the door, he motioned me to come over.
The sun lit up a small room in which there was nothing but two big wooden crates. From the trunk of the Mustang he took out a black plastic sports bag marked “El Paso TX,” and we went inside the deposit, which was boiling hot. I couldn’t help but think in terror that Leeman might leave me buried alive inside that storage locker. He grabbed my arm firmly and stared straight at me.
“Remember when I told you that we’d do great things together?”
“Yes . . .”
“The moment has arrived. I hope you won’t let me down.”
I nodded, frightened by his threatening tone and at finding myself alone with him in that oven without another living soul around. Leeman crouched down, opened the bag, and showed me the contents. It took me a moment to realize that those green packages were bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
“It’s not stolen money, and nobody’s looking for it,” he said. “This is just a sample, soon there’ll be a lot more. You realize I’m giving you a tremendous display of trust, no? You’re the only decent person I know, apart from my brother. Now you and I are associates.”
“What do I have to do?” I murmured.
“Nothing, for the moment, but if I give you the word or something happens to me, you should immediately call Adam and tell him where his El Paso TX bag is, got that? Repeat what I just told you.”
“I should call your brother and tell him where his bag is.”
“His El Paso TX bag, don’t forget that. Have you got any questions?”
“How will your brother open the locks?”
“That’s none of your f*cking business!” barked Brandon Leeman with such violence that I shrank back, expecting a blow, but he calmed down, closed the bag, put it on top of one of the crates, and we left.
Events sped up from the moment I went with Brandon Leeman to drop off the bag in the storage depot in Beatty, and afterward I couldn’t get them straight in my head; some of them happened simultaneously, and others I didn’t witness in person, but found out about later. Two days later, Brandon Leeman ordered me to follow him in a recently recycled Acura from the clandestine garage, while he drove the Mustang he’d bought in Utah for his brother. I followed him on Route 95, three-quarters of an hour in extreme heat through a landscape of shimmering mirages, as far as Boulder City, which was not on Brandon Leeman’s mental map, because it’s one of the only two cities in Nevada where gambling is illegal. We stopped at a gas station and settled down to wait out of reach of the sun’s rays.
Twenty minutes later a car pulled up with two men in it. Brandon Leeman handed them the keys to the Mustang, received a medium-size travel bag, and got into the Acura beside me. The Mustang and the other car drove off toward the south, and we took the highway back the way we came. However, we didn’t go through Las Vegas, but directly to the storage depot in Beatty, where Brandon Leeman repeated the routine of opening the locks without letting me see the combination. He put the bag beside the other one and closed the door.
“Half a million dollars, Laura!” And he rubbed his hands together happily.
“I don’t like this . . . ,” I murmured, backing away.
“What is it you don’t like, bitch?”
He went pale and shook me by the arms, but I shoved him away, whimpering. That sick weakling, who I could crush under my heels, terrified me; he was capable of anything.
“Leave me alone!”
“Think about it, woman,” said Leeman, in a conciliating tone. “Do you want to carry on leading this f*cked-up life? My brother and I have it all arranged. We’re leaving this damned country, and you’re coming with us.”
“Where to?”
“Brazil. In a couple of weeks we’ll be on a beach with coconut palms. Wouldn’t you like to have a yacht?”
“A yacht? What do you mean, a yacht? I just want to go back to California!”
“So the f*cking slut wants to go back to California!” he mocked threateningly.
“Please, Brandon. I won’t tell anybody, I promise. You and your family can go to Brazil, no worries.”
He walked back and forth, taking huge steps, kicking the concrete ground angrily, while I waited beside the car, dripping with sweat, trying to understand the mistakes I’d made that had led me to this dusty hell and these bags of green bills.
“I was wrong about you, Laura. You’re stupider than I thought,” he finally said. “You can go to hell, if that’s what you want, but for the next two weeks you’re going to have to help me. Can I count on you?”
“Of course, Brandon, whatever you say.”
“For the moment, don’t do anything, apart from keeping your mouth shut. When I tell you, call Adam. Remember the instructions I gave you?”
“Yes, I’ll call him and tell him where the two bags are.”
“No! You tell him where the El Paso TX bags are. That and nothing else. Got it?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll tell him the El Paso TX bags are here. Don’t worry.”
“You have to be very discreet, Laura. If you let one word of this slip, you’ll be sorry. Do you want to know exactly what would happen to you? I can give you the details.”
“I swear, Brandon, I won’t tell anyone.”
We returned to Las Vegas in silence, but I was hearing Brandon Leeman’s thoughts in my head, ringing like bells: he was going to “get rid” of me. I had a physical reaction of nausea and felt faint, just as I’d felt when Fedgewick handcuffed me to the bed in that sordid motel. I could see the green glow of the clock. I could sense the pain, the smell, the terror. I have to think, I have to think, I need a plan. . . . But how was I going to think, when I was intoxicated by alcohol and whatever pills I’d taken? I couldn’t even remember how many, what kind, or when. We got back to the city at four in the afternoon, tired and thirsty, our clothes drenched in perspiration and dust. Leeman dropped me off at the gym so I could freshen up before my rounds that night, and he went to the apartment. When he said good-bye, he squeezed my hand and told me not to worry, that he had everything under control. That was the last time I saw him.
The gym didn’t have the extravagant luxuries of the hotels on the Strip, with their swanky milk baths in marble tubs and their blind masseuses from Shanghai, but it was the biggest and best-outfitted in the city, had several workout rooms, various instruments of torture to inflate muscles and stretch tendons, a spa with an à la carte menu of health and beauty treatments, a hair salon for people and another one for dogs, and a covered pool big enough to hold a whale. I considered it my headquarters. I had endless credit and could go to the spa, swim, or do yoga whenever I was in the mood, which was less and less often. Most of the time I was stretched out on a reclining easy chair, my mind blank. I kept my valuables in the lockers, as they would have disappeared from the apartment into the hands of unhappy souls like Margaret or even Freddy, if he was in need.
When I got back from Beatty, I washed away the fatigue of the journey in the shower and sweated out the fright in the sauna. My situation seemed less distressing to me, now that I was clean and calm. I had two whole weeks, more than enough time to make up my mind about my fate. Any imprudent action on my part would precipitate consequences that could be fatal, I thought. I should keep Brandon Leeman happy until I found a way of freeing myself of him. The idea of a Brazilian beach with palm trees in the company of his family gave me the shivers; I had to go home.
When I arrived in Chiloé I complained that nothing happens here, but I have to retract my words, because something has happened that deserves to be written in gold ink and capital letters: I’M IN LOVE! Maybe it’s a bit premature to be talking about this, because it only happened five days ago, but time means nothing in this case, I’m totally sure of my feelings. How am I supposed to keep quiet when I’m floating on air? That’s how capricious love is, as it says in a stupid song that Blanca and Manuel keep crooning at me. They’ve been making fun of me ever since Daniel appeared on the horizon. What am I going to do with so much happiness, with this explosion in my heart?
I’d better start at the beginning. I went to the Isla Grande with Manuel and Blanca to see the tiradura de una casa, or “house-pulling,” without dreaming that there, all of a sudden, by chance, something magical was going to happen: I was going to meet the man of my destiny, Daniel Goodrich. A tiradura is something unique in the world, I’m sure. It consists of moving a house by sailing it on the sea, pulled by a couple of boats, and then dragging it across land with six teams of oxen to station it in a new spot. If a Chilote goes to live on another island, or his well runs dry and he needs to go a few miles to get water, he takes his house with him, like a snail. Because of the humidity, homes in Chiloé are made of wood, without cement foundations, which allows them to be tugged and moved floating on top of logs. The task is done by a minga in which neighbors, relatives, and friends address themselves to the undertaking; some bring their boats, others their oxen, and the owner of the house supplies food and drink, but in this case the minga was a fake one for tourists, because the same little house goes back and forth across land and sea for months, until it falls to pieces. This would be the last tiradura until next summer, when there would be another migrating house. The idea is to show the world how crazy Chilotes are and give pleasure to the innocents who come over in the tourism agencies’ buses. Among those tourists was Daniel.
We’d had several dry and warm days, unusual at this time of year, which is always rainy. The landscape was different—I’d never seen the sky so blue, the sea so silvered, so many hares in the pastures, I’d never heard such cheerful uproar of birds in the trees. I like the rain—it inspires seclusion and friendship—but in bright sunshine the beauty of these islands and channels is better appreciated. In good weather I can swim without freezing my bones in the icy water and get a bit of a tan, although very carefully, because the ozone layer is so thin here that lambs are sometimes born blind and toads deformed. That’s what they say, anyhow; I haven’t seen any yet.
On the beach all the preparations for the tiradura were ready: oxen, ropes, horses, twenty men for the heavy work and several women with baskets of empanadas, lots of children, dogs, tourists, locals who didn’t like to miss a shindig, two carabineros to frighten away the pickpockets, and a church fiscal to pronounce a blessing. In the 1700s, when traveling was very difficult and there weren’t enough priests to cover the extensive and disconnected territory of Chiloé, the Jesuits established the post of fiscal, like an elder or a sacristan, which is held by a person with an honorable reputation. The fiscal looks after the church, convenes the congregation, presides at funerals, delivers communion and blessings, and, in cases of real emergency, can even baptize and marry people.
With the tide high, the house advanced rolling on the waves like an ancient caravel, towed by two boats and submerged up to the windows. On the roof waved a Chilean flag tied to a stick, and two boys rode astride the main beam, without any lifejackets. As it approached the beach, the caravel was received with a well-deserved round of applause and the men proceeded to anchor it until the tide went out. They’d calculated carefully, so the wait wouldn’t be too long. The time flew by in a carnival of empanadas, alcohol, guitars, ball games, and an improvised singing contest, the participants defying each other with double entendres in increasingly risqué rhyming verses, as far as I could tell. Humor is the last thing you master in another language, and I’ve still got a long way to go. When the time came they slid some tree trunks under the house, lined up the teams of oxen, harnessed them to the posts of the house with ropes and chains, and began the monumental task, encouraged by shouts and applause from the onlookers and the carabineros’ whistles.
The oxen bent their heads low, tensed every muscle of their magnificent bodies, and, at an order from the men, advanced, bellowing. The first tug was faltering, but by the second the animals had coordinated their strength and began walking much faster than I’d imagined, surrounded by the crowd, some running ahead to clear the way, others at the sides urging them on, others pushing the house from the back. What a riot! So much shared exertion and so much fun! I was running around with the kids, shrieking with pleasure, with Fahkeen in pursuit between the oxen’s legs. Every hundred feet or so the pulling would stop, to get the animals lined up again, circulate bottles of wine among the men, and pose for the cameras.
It was a circus minga prepared for tourists, but that doesn’t take anything away from the human boldness or the determined spirit of the oxen. Finally, when the house was in its place, facing the sea, the fiscal threw holy water over it and the spectators began to disperse.
When the outsiders climbed back onto their buses and the Chilotes took their oxen away, I sat down on the grass to think back over what I’d seen, regretting not having my notebook with me to write down the details. As I was doing that, I felt watched and looked up into the eyes of Daniel Goodrich, big, round, mahogany-color eyes, the eyes of a colt. I felt a spasm of fear in my stomach, as if a fictional character had just materialized, someone I’d known in another reality, in an opera or a Renaissance painting, like the ones I’d seen in Europe with my grandparents. Anyone would think I’m demented: a stranger stands in front of me and my head fills up with hummingbirds; anyone other than my Nini, that is. She would understand, because that’s how it was when she met my Popo in Canada.
His eyes were the first thing I saw, eyes with dreamy lids, feminine lashes, and thick brows. It took me almost a whole minute to appreciate the rest: tall, strong, long limbed, sensual face, full lips, caramel-colored skin. He was wearing hiking boots, and carrying a video camera and a big dusty backpack with a rolled-up sleeping bag tied on top. He said hello in good Spanish, eased his backpack onto the ground, sat down beside me, and started fanning himself with his hat; he had short black hair, in tight curls. He held out his dark hand, his long fingers, and told me his name. I offered him the rest of my bottle of water, which he drank down in three gulps, not worrying about my germs.
We started talking about the tiradura, which he’d filmed from various angles, and I explained that it was a fake one for tourists, but that didn’t deflate his enthusiasm. He was from Seattle and had been traveling around South America without any plans or goals, like a vagabond. That’s what he called himself, a vagabond. He wanted to see as much as possible and practice the Spanish he’d learned from classes and books, so different from the spoken language. His first days in the country he couldn’t understand anything, just as had happened to me, because Chileans use lots of diminutives, speak in a singsong rhythm and at full speed, swallow the last syllable of every word, and inhale their S’s. “It’s better not to understand most of the nonsense people talk,” Auntie Blanca says.
Daniel is traveling around Chile, and before he got to Chiloé he was in the Atacama Desert, with its lunar landscapes of salt and its columns of boiling water, in Santiago and other cities, which didn’t interest him much, in the forest region, with its smoldering volcanoes and emerald-color lakes, and he’s planning to carry on down to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, to see the fjords and glaciers.
Manuel and Blanca, who’d gone shopping in town, came back far too soon and interrupted us, but Daniel made a good impression on them, and to my delight, Blanca invited him to stay at her house for a few days. I told him nobody can pass through Chiloé without tasting a real curanto, and on Thursday we’d be having one on our island, the last of the tourist season, the best in Chiloé, and he couldn’t miss it. Daniel didn’t wait for us to beg—he’d had time to get used to Chileans’ impulsive hospitality, always ready to open their doors to any bewildered stranger who chances to cross their path. I think he accepted only because of me, but Manuel told me not to be so vain, Daniel would have to be an idiot to turn down free food and lodging.
We left in the Cahuilla, crossing the calm sea with a nice stern breeze, and arrived in good time to see the black-necked swans that float in the channel, slender and elegant like Venetian gondolas. “Steadily pass the swans,” said Blanca, who talks like a Chilota. In the evening light the landscape looked more beautiful than ever; I felt proud to be living in this paradise and to be able to show it to Daniel. I made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the entire horizon. “Welcome to the island of Maya Vidal, my friend,” said Manuel with a wink I managed to catch. He can tease me all he likes in private, but if he thinks he can get away with it in front of Daniel, he’s going to be sorry. I let him know that as soon as we were alone.
We went up to Blanca’s house, where she and Manuel immediately started cooking. Daniel asked if he could take a shower, which he badly needed, and wash a few clothes, while I jogged to our house to get a couple of bottles of good wine, which the Millalobo had given Manuel. I got there in eleven minutes, a world record, having wings on my heels. I had a quick wash, made up my eyes, put on my only dress for the first time ever, and ran back in my sandals with the bottles in a bag, followed by Fahkeen with his tongue hanging out and dragging his bad leg. I was gone for a total of forty minutes, and in that time Manuel and Blanca had improvised a salad and a pasta dish with seafood, which in California is called tutti mare and here noodles with leftovers. Manuel greeted me with a whistle of admiration; he’d only ever seen me in pants and must have thought I have no style. I bought the dress in a secondhand clothing store in Castro, but it’s almost new and not too out of date.
Daniel came out of the shower freshly shaven, his skin shining like polished wood, so handsome that I had to force myself not to stare too much. We put on ponchos to eat on the porch, because it’s already getting chilly. Daniel was very grateful for the hospitality. He said he’d been traveling for months with a minimal budget and he’d slept in the most uncomfortable places or out in the open. He appreciated the table, the good food, the Chilean wine, and the landscape of water, sky, and swans. The slow dance of swans was so elegant against the violet color of the sea that we sat in silence admiring it. Another flock of swans arrived from the west, darkening the last orange shimmerings of the sky with their huge wings, and kept going. These birds, so dignified in appearance and so fierce in their hearts, are designed for sailing—on land they look like fat ducks—but they never look so splendid as when they’re in flight.
They polished off the Millalobo’s two bottles, and I drank lemonade. I didn’t need any wine; I was half drunk on the company. After dessert—baked apples with dulce de leche—Daniel asked naturally if we wanted to smoke a joint. It sent a shiver down my spine—this proposition wasn’t going to go over well with the old folks—but they accepted, and to my surprise, Blanca went to look for a pipe. “You won’t mention any of this at school, gringuita,” she said to me with a conspiratorial air, and added that she sometimes smoked with Manuel. It turns out that on this island there are several families that grow first-class marijuana; the best is great-great-grandmother Doña Lucinda’s, who’s been exporting it to other parts of Chiloé for decades. “Doña Lucinda sings to her plants—she says you have to romance them, like the potatoes, so they give us their best, and it must be true, because nobody can compete with her grass,” Blanca told us. I’m not very observant; I’ve been in Doña Lucinda’s yard a hundred times, helping her dye her wool, without ever noticing the plants. In any case, seeing Blanca and Manuel, that pair of old fogies, passing the water pipe was hard to believe. I smoked too—I know I can without it turning into a need—but I don’t dare try alcohol. Not yet, maybe never again.
Manuel and Blanca didn’t need me to confess the impact Daniel made on me; they guessed as soon as they saw me in a dress and makeup, accustomed as they are to my refugee look. Blanca, a romantic by vocation, is going to make things easy for us, since we don’t have a lot of time. Manuel, on the other hand, insists on being an old stick-in-the-mud.
“Before you die of love, Maya, you might want to find out if this young man is suffering as acutely from the same malady, or if he’s planning to carry on his journey and leave you in the lurch,” he advised me.
“With caution like that, nobody would ever fall in love, Manuel. You’re not jealous, are you?”
“Quite the contrary, Maya, I’m hopeful. Maybe Daniel will take you to Seattle; it’s the perfect city to hide from the FBI and the Mafia.”
“You’re kicking me out!”
“No, girl, how could I kick you out, when you’re the light of my sad old age?” he said in the sarcastic tone that makes me furious. “I’m just worried you’re going to fall flat on your face in this love business. Has Daniel given you any hint about his feelings?”
“Not yet, but he will.”
“You seem very sure.”
“Love at first sight like this one can’t be unilateral, Manuel.”
“No, of course, it’s an encounter of two souls . . .”
“Exactly, but it’s never happened to you, that’s why you mock it.”
“Don’t offer opinions on things you don’t know anything about, Maya.”
“You’re the one who’s giving your opinion on something you know nothing about!”
Daniel is the first American of my age I’ve seen since I arrived in Chiloé and the only interesting one I remember; the snotty-nosed kids at high school, the neurotics in Oregon, and the addicts in Las Vegas don’t count. We’re not the same age—I’m eight years younger—but I’ve lived a century more and could give him classes in maturity and life experience. I felt comfortable with him from the start. We have similar tastes in books, movies, and music, and we laugh at the same things. Between the two of us we know more than a hundred crazy jokes: half of them he heard at college, and the other half I learned at the academy. In everything else we’re very different.
Daniel was adopted a week after he was born by a well-off, well-educated liberal white couple, the kind of people sheltered under the big umbrella of normality. He’d been a passable student and a good athlete, led an orderly existence, and been able to plan his future with the irrational confidence of someone who hasn’t really suffered. He’s a healthy guy, sure of himself, friendly, and relaxed; it would be annoying if not for his inquisitive spirit. He’s traveled with an open mind, which keeps him from being just another tourist. He decided to follow in the footsteps of his adoptive father and study medicine, finishing his psychiatric residency in the middle of last year, and when he gets back to Seattle, he’ll have a job waiting for him in his father’s rehabilitation clinic. How ironic: I could have been one of his patients.
Daniel’s natural, understated happiness, like the happiness of cats, makes me envious. In his wanderings around Latin America he’s lived with the most diverse kinds of people: filthy rich in Acapulco, Caribbean fishermen, Amazonian woodcutters, coca growers in Bolivia, indigenous Peruvians, and also gang members, pimps, drug smugglers, criminals, cops, and corrupt soldiers. He’s floated from one adventure to another with his innocence intact. I, however, have been scarred, scraped, and bruised by all that I’ve lived through. He’s a lucky man, and I hope that won’t be a problem between us. He spent the first night in Auntie Blanca’s house, where he slept on linen sheets under a down-filled comforter, that’s how refined she is, but then he came over to ours because she found some pretext to go to Castro and leave the guest in my hands. Daniel unrolled his sleeping bag in a corner of the living room and slept there with the cats. We have a late dinner every night, soak in the Jacuzzi, talk and talk. He tells me about his life and his trip. I show him the constellations of the southern hemisphere, tell him about Berkeley and my grandparents, also about the academy in Oregon, but for the moment I’ve kept quiet about Las Vegas. I can’t tell him about that before we have complete confidence in each other. I don’t want to scare him off. It seems to me that last year I descended headlong into a dismal world. While I was underground, like a seed or a tuber, another Maya Vidal struggled to emerge; slender filaments seeking moisture arose, then roots like fingers seeking nourishment, and finally a tenacious stem and leaves seeking light. Now I must be flowering; that’s how I can recognize love. Here, in the south of the world, the rain makes everything lush and fertile.
Auntie Blanca returned to the island, but in spite of her linen sheets, Daniel has not suggested returning to her place and remains with us. A good sign. We’ve been together full-time, because I’m not working; Blanca and Manuel have freed me of responsibilities while Daniel is here. We’ve talked of many things, but he still hasn’t given me cause to confide in him. He’s much more cautious than I am. He asked me why I’m in Chiloé, and I answered that I’m helping Manuel with his work and getting to know the country, because part of my family is from Chile, which is an incomplete truth. I’ve shown him around town, where he filmed the cemetery, the houses on stilts, our pathetic and dusty museum, with its four bits of junk and portraits in oils of forgotten worthies, Doña Lucinda, who at 109 still sells wool and harvests potatoes and marijuana, the truco poets in the Tavern of the Dead, Aurelio Ñancupel and his stories of pirates and Mormons.
Manuel Arias is delighted; he has an attentive guest who listens to him admiringly and doesn’t criticize like I do. While they talk, I count the minutes lost in legends of brujos and monsters; minutes that Daniel could be putting to better use alone with me. He has to finish his trip in a few weeks, and he still hasn’t been to the far south of the continent and Brazil. It’s a shame he’s wasting his precious time on Manuel. We’ve had a few occasions of privacy, but very few, it seems to me, and he’s only held my hand to help me jump over a rock. We’re rarely alone, because the town gossips spy on us, and Juanito Corrales, Pedro Pelanchugay, and Fahkeen follow us around everywhere. The grandmothers have all guessed my feelings for Daniel, and I think they heaved a collective sigh of relief, because there were some absurd rumors going around about Manuel and me. People seem suspicious about us living together, even though there’s more than half a century’s age difference. Eduvigis Corrales and other women have been conspiring and trying to play matchmaker, but they should be more furtive about it, or they’ll chase away the young man from Seattle. Manuel and Blanca are also conspiring.
Yesterday we had the curanto that Blanca had announced, and Daniel was able to film the whole thing. The townsfolk are cordial to tourists, because they buy handicrafts and the agencies pay for the curanto, but when they leave there is a general feeling of relief. Those hordes of strangers make them uncomfortable, snooping around their houses and taking photos as if they were the exotic ones. It’s different with Daniel, since he’s Manuel’s guest; that opens doors for him, and they see him with me as well, so they’ve let him film whatever he wants, even inside their homes.
On this occasion most of them were third-age tourists, white-haired retirees who came from Santiago, all very cheerful, in spite of the difficulty of walking across the sand. They brought a guitar and sang while the curanto was cooking, and they knocked back gallons of pisco sours; that contributed to the general relaxation. Daniel took over the guitar and charmed us with Mexican boleros and Peruvian waltzes that he’d picked up along the way; his voice isn’t great, but he sings in tune, and his Bedouin look seduced the visitors.
After wolfing down the seafood, we drank the curanto juices in the little clay pots, which are the first thing set out on the hot stones to receive that nectar. It’s impossible to describe the flavor of that concentrated broth of the delicacies of land and sea, nothing can compare to the rapture it produces; it courses through the veins like a hot river and leaves the heart leaping. A lot of jokes were made about its power as an aphrodisiac; the old guys from Santiago who were visiting compared it to Viagra, doubling over with laughter. It must be true, because for the first time in my life I feel an overwhelming and singular desire to make love with someone very specific, with Daniel.
I’ve been able to observe him closely and explore what he believes is friendship, which I know has another name. He’s just passing through, soon he’ll go, he doesn’t want to be tied down, maybe I won’t see him again, but this idea is so unbearable that I’ve discarded it. It is possible to die of love. Manuel says it in jest, but it’s true. I’ve got an ominous pressure accumulating in my chest, and if I don’t get some relief soon, I’m going to explode. Blanca counsels me to take the initiative, advice that she doesn’t heed herself with Manuel, but I don’t dare. This is ridiculous—at my age and with my past, I could easily withstand a rejection. Could I? If Daniel rejected me, I’d dive headfirst into a school of carnivorous salmon. I’m not completely ugly, so they say. Why doesn’t Daniel kiss me?
The proximity of this man I barely know is intoxicating, a term I use guardedly—I know its meaning only too well—but I can’t find another to describe this exaltation of the senses, this dependency so similar to addiction. Now I understand why lovers in opera and literature, faced with separation, commit suicide or die of grief. There is greatness and dignity in tragedy, that’s why it’s a source of inspiration, but I don’t want tragedy, no matter how immortal, I want a quiet, private, very discreet happiness, not to provoke the jealousy of the gods, always so vengeful. What nonsense I’m talking! There is no basis for these fantasies. Daniel treats me with the same kindness he treats Blanca, who could be his mother. Maybe I’m not his type. Or might he be gay?
I told Daniel that Blanca was a beauty queen in the 1970s, and there are those who believe she inspired one of Pablo Neruda’s twenty love poems, although in 1924, when they were published, she hadn’t been born yet. People talk too much! Blanca rarely refers to her cancer, but I think she came to this island to be cured of her illness and the disappointment of her divorce. The most common topic of conversation here is illness, but I was lucky enough to get the only two stoic Chileans who don’t mention theirs, Blanca Schnake and Manuel Arias, for whom life is difficult and complaining makes it worse. They’ve been great friends for many years, they have everything in common, except the secrets he keeps and her ambivalence with respect to the dictatorship. They have fun together, lend each other books, cook together. I sometimes find them sitting side by side at the window watching the swans sail past, in silence.
“Blanca looks at Manuel with desire in her eyes,” Daniel said to me. So it seems I’m not the only one who’s noticed. That night, after putting a few logs in the stove and closing the shutters, we went to bed, he in his sleeping bag in the living room, me in my room. It was very late. Curled up in my bed, wide awake, under three blankets, with my bile-green hat on for fear of the bats, who get caught in your hair, according to Eduvigis, I could hear the sighing of the house’s planks, the crackling of the firewood as it burned, the screech of the owl in the tree outside my window, the nearby breathing of Manuel, who falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, and Fahkeen’s gentle snoring. I was thinking that in all my twenty years, Daniel was the only person I’d ever looked at with desire.
Blanca insisted that Daniel stay another week in Chiloé, to go to remote villages, hike the trails through the woods, and see the volcanoes. Then he could travel to Patagonia in the private plane of a friend of her father’s, a multimillionaire who bought a third of the territory of Chiloé and is thinking of running for president in the December elections. But I want Daniel to stay with me—he’s already roamed enough. There’s no need for him to go to Patagonia or Brazil; he can just go straight back to Seattle in June.
No one can stay on this island more than a few days without being noticed, and now everyone knows who Daniel Goodrich is. The townsfolk have been especially affectionate to him; they find him very exotic, appreciate him speaking Spanish, and suppose that he’s in love with me (if only he were!). They were also impressed by his participation in the Azucena Corrales incident.
We’d gone in the kayak to La Pincoya’s cave, all bundled up because it’s getting close to the end of May, little suspecting what would be waiting for us when we came back. The sky was clear, the sea calm, and the air very cold. To get to the cave I use a different route than the tourists, more dangerous because of the rocks, but I prefer it because it lets me get close to the sea lions. It’s my spiritual practice—there’s no other term to describe the mystical ecstasy I get from the stiff whiskers of La Pincoya, as I’ve baptized my water-loving friend, a female sea lion. On the rocks there’s a threatening male, who I have to avoid, and eight or ten mothers with their cubs, sunning themselves or playing in the water among the sea otters. The first time I came here I floated in my kayak without approaching, staying still, to see the otters up close, and after a short time one of the sea lions began to court me. These animals are clumsy on land, but very graceful and quick in the water. She was diving under my kayak like a torpedo and surfacing on the other side, with her pirate’s whiskers and her big, round, black eyes, full of curiosity. With her nose she nudged my fragile craft, as if she knew that with a single puff she could hurl me to the bottom of the sea, but her attitude was entirely playful. We got to know each other gradually. I began to visit her frequently, and very soon she’d swim out to meet me as soon as she caught a glimpse of the kayak. La Pincoya likes to brush her whiskers against my bare arm.
Those moments with the sea lion are sacred. I feel affection for her as vast as an encyclopedia. I get a demented urge to dive into the water and frolic with her. There was no greater proof of love I could give Daniel than to take him to the cave. La Pincoya was sunning herself, and as soon as she saw me, she dove into the water to come and say hello, but she kept a certain distance, studying Daniel, and finally returned to the rocks, offended because I’d brought a stranger. It’s going to take a long time to recover her esteem.
When we got back to town, around one o’clock, Juanito and Pedro were waiting for us anxiously on the dock with the news that Azucena had suffered a hemorrhage at Manuel’s house, where she’d gone to do the cleaning. Manuel found her in a pool of blood and called the carabineros on his cell phone, and they went to pick her up in the jeep. Juanito said that the girl was at the police post right then, waiting for the ambulance boat.
The carabineros had put Azucena on the cot in the ladies’ cell, and Humilde Garay was pressing damp cloths to her forehead, for lack of any more effective remedy, while Laurencio Cárcamo was talking on the phone to headquarters in Dalcahue, requesting instructions. Daniel Goodrich told them he was a doctor, sent us out of the cell, and proceeded to examine Azucena. Ten minutes later he came back out to tell us that the girl was five months pregnant. “But she’s only thirteen!” I exclaimed. I don’t understand how no one realized, not Eduvigis, not Blanca, not even the nurse; Azucena simply looked fat.
Then the ambulance boat arrived, and the carabineros allowed Daniel and me to accompany Azucena, who was crying in fear. We went into the emergency ward of the Castro hospital with her, and I waited in the corridor, but Daniel made use of his title and followed the stretcher to the wing. That same night they operated on Azucena to remove the baby, which was dead. There will be an investigation to find out if the abortion was induced; that’s the legal procedure in a case like this, and apparently more important than finding out the circumstances in which a thirteen-year-old girl became pregnant, as Blanca Schnake complains furiously, and rightly so.
Azucena Corrales refuses to say who got her pregnant, and the rumor’s already going around the island that it was El Trauco, a mythical three-foot-tall dwarf, armed with an ax, who lives in the hollows of trees and protects the forests. He can twist a man’s spinal column with his gaze and pursues young virgins to impregnate them. It must have been El Trauco, they say, because they saw yellow excrement near the Corraleses’ house.
Eduvigis has reacted strangely, refusing to see her daughter or hear the details of what happened. Alcoholism, domestic violence, and incest are the curses of Chiloé, especially in the most isolated communities, and according to Manuel the myth of El Trauco originated to cover up the pregnancies of girls raped by their fathers or brothers. I’ve just discovered that Juanito is not only Carmelo Corrales’s grandson, but also his son. Juanito’s mother, who lives in Quellón, was raped by Carmelo, her father, and had the boy when she was fifteen. Eduvigis raised him as if he were hers, but in town they know the truth. I wonder how a prostrate invalid could have abused Azucena, but it must have been before they amputated his leg.
Yesterday Daniel left! May 29, 2009, will remain engraved in my memory as the second saddest day of my life, the saddest being when my Popo died. I’m going to tattoo 2009 on my other wrist, so I’ll never forget. I’ve been crying for two days straight. Manuel says I’m going to dehydrate, that he’s never seen so many tears, and that no man is worth so much suffering, especially if he’s only gone to Seattle and not away to war. What does he know! Separations are very dangerous. In Seattle there must be a million girls much prettier and much less complicated than me. Why did I tell him the details of my past? Now he’ll have time to analyze them, and might even discuss them with his father. Who knows what conclusions that pair of psychiatrists might reach! They’ll brand me an addict and a neurotic. Far away from me, Daniel’s enthusiasm will grow cold, and he might decide it’s not advisable to get hooked on a chick like me. Why didn’t I go with him? Well, the truth is he didn’t ask me. . . .