Russ had followed the squad into a building on Fulcrum Street. Outside, families were grilling meat and drinking Pacifico. Children ran through the sprinklers, shrieking in Spanish.
Ivan’s friends wore Walmart shoes with low-sagging shorts, tattoos crawling up their necks like skin disease. But Ivan himself was clean-shaven and straight-backed in a blue linen shirt. Marco, the only man Ivan was personally close to, had a tattoo scrawled beneath his chin that read “DAHLIA,” the name like an allcaps slit in his throat. Though Marco had never been formally involved with the drug ring, the squad still parked outside his house sometimes to keep watch.
In all his years as a police officer, Russ had arrested only a handful of people. He was always shocked and a bit disgusted by the satisfaction: a surging release as the metal pieces found their places. That clink. He’d memorized the Mirandas as a child, playing with a toy cop car on the back porch, his father watching from behind the sliding glass door. Russ had a lisp as a kid. You have the wight to wemain siwent.
After Ivan and his friends had been tackled and shoved violently into cars, the lieutenant sent Russ back into the house to collect the Junk. The house was dilapidated, the roof nearly caved in. Uncooked pasta spilled across the grimy kitchen counter. It smelled like rotting fruit.
There were two bedrooms. The first held only a mattress, half covered with stained navy sheets. The closets were empty. So were the vents. The second room didn’t have a bed, just a rocking chair by the window. It was missing three slats in the frame. And in the rocking chair: Ines.
She wore a pair of basketball shorts and a men’s tank top. Her hair was stuck to her cheeks; the room was stifling and covered in peeling wallpaper. An old, ailing floral print. She didn’t see Russ. Not at first. She had her elbows on the windowsill, chin cupped in her palm, watching, paralyzed, as they drove her brother away.
Ines looked up at the sound of Russ, her face round and greasy, a splotchy red with panic. And in her eyes, recognition: man from park. Márquez. The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.
Only later, when Ines had made her statement—she didn’t know anything about the drugs in that house, where she had been living only a few weeks, having just arrived to visit her brother, with a valid Border Crossing Card and B-2 tourist visa—when the social worker had given her a new shirt (a black T-shirt from the gas station, with Colorado’s flag emblazoned next to a proud American eagle, because Ines’s suitcase was being processed as evidence), after Russ had driven her to the station, just the two of them in the car, and as she watched Broomsville flick by in blurs of summer green, Ines had said, I didn’t know police could be nice, and Russ said, They usually aren’t, but it doesn’t matter; are you thirsty? He bought two cans of Coke at a 7-Eleven. When Ines unbraided her hair beneath the bright station-house lights and unleashed it in clumps that reeked of smoke—then, Ines looked beautiful. Like the girl he’d met in the park, sun-glazed, with a hint of flirt. They sipped their Cokes in the stifling car and Russ decided: he would invite her home. She wouldn’t have to go back to that house, covered in Junk. No funny business, he promised. Funny business. Ines would tease him, always.
Russ had stuck the page from Love in the Time of Cholera on his refrigerator, held down with a magnet that doubled as a beer opener, a souvenir from his sister’s vacation to Key West. That night, they drank whiskey in mugs at the kitchen table and Ines slept on Russ’s couch, which had never been professionally cleaned, but was comfortable enough.
When Russ told the guys on the force that Ines was staying over—he did not specify the couch—they slow-clapped and whistled. Russ assured them that Ivan had been coerced, paid for menial tasks, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Detective Williams slapped Russ’s back, sarcastic but proud. You finally did it, he said. Finally got yourself a girl. Better lock that one in, quick.
Those first months, Russ cooked for Ines every night. She loved the old carpet, how it squished between her toes. They cooked steak with brussels sprouts, or salmon and potatoes, and Russ bought bottles of Merlot, fourteen dollars each. They sipped from shiny new glasses on the couch and they talked. Ines was so pretty when she spoke, that lilting accent, lingering on the E. Her English was nearly perfect, though she often dropped the word “the” or added extra plurals. Can you please pass the chickens? She was from Guadalajara, a huge city of Gothic cathedrals, gray spindles stretching toward the sky. More than a million people, she said. She and her family had lived in Zapopan, a suburb of the city, six of them in the apartment above their father’s dental practice. She and her sisters cooked every night. Pozole—a stew with hominy and pork. Ines had gone to Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, and she had been teaching high-school English when Mamá had convinced her to follow Ivan to the States, because one of her father’s clients—a regular root-canal patient—worked at the consulate. Her sisters would come too, eventually. Russ never asked what she’d studied. How she’d gotten here. What she missed.
Once, Russ found Ines on the kitchen floor, covered in sourdough yeast, crying for her brother. Russ scooped Ines up and carried her to bed. She had gone slack, but not because Russ had comforted her. She was simply exhausted, and Russ was there. Still, he held her. Ines fell asleep, and Russ stroked the soft belly of her earlobe, rolling it across the surface of his thumb, that little patch of peach-fuzz flesh.
Some nights, when they’d gotten tipsy, Ines would ask about Ivan, who was adjusting slowly to life in prison. Is there anything you can do for him? she’d ask, too casual. And Russ wondered if Ines stayed not for him—though they laughed often and spoke kindly to one another—but for her brother.
Yes, he’d say. I’ll keep an eye on Ivan. I’ll make sure they don’t send him back home. A few months later, Ines’s tourist visa would run up, and Russ knew she would not go back to Guadalajara, not with Ivan locked in a cold cement cell.
Despite it all, they got along well.
On those Merlot nights, Ines would fall asleep in Russ’s lap, and he’d stroke her hair like he’d seen people do. So soft. She’d bought a new bottle of shampoo. She didn’t smell like smoke anymore. Now, eucalyptus.
They went to San Diego, because California seemed like the next-best thing to Mexico. Ines leaned against the passenger’s-side window and hummed along to the radio, while Russ adjusted the AC. They drove all sixteen hours in one day, stopping only four times for fast food and the bathroom. Ines listened intently to the radio ads, asking Russ about words she didn’t know. Liquidate? Neoprene? Indigestion?