The World in Half (11 page)

When I grasp his hand, it’s damp from being cupped around the perspiring glass, but it’s also smooth and cool against my palm.

“I know,” I say. “I’m not.” I feel a little indignant at the suggestion.

Our hands are still locked when he says, “So what are you doing tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I could still help you, you know.”

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday. Do you have time?”

He smiles as he blinks drowsily and says, “Meet me here tomorrow morning,” then lets go of my hand.

I
f anyone had asked me what my father looked like, I would have described a man with thinning silver hair and a blunt silver mustache. I would have said that his skin was smooth and dark, that his eyes were piercing. I would have said that his build was diminutive—neither a wall of corded muscles nor a tower of flesh and blood—and that he walked confidently, with a certain swagger, in tasseled leather loafers. I would have said that he wore a watch on his left wrist and that he had always seemed to me the sort of man who wore a ring, maybe gold and onyx, on his right ring finger.

If anyone had asked me about his habits, I would have said that he had been smoking cigarettes for decades and that he carried a black plastic barber’s comb in his back pocket, smoothing it over his silver hair whenever he hoped to light a woman’s heart on fire. I would have said that he pulled the skin off fried chicken before he ate it and that he licked his fingers when he was finished. I would have said that he sat alone on the side of his bed every evening and polished his leather shoes to a dull shine using a kit that he kept in a cardboard box on the floor—polish, cotton briefs as rags, a buffing brush, and a nailbrush for the cracks in the soles—rubbing in small circles, his hand like a makeshift foot in the shoe, holding it at arm’s length every so often to examine his work. I would have said that he washed his face with soap and scraped the dirt from the undersides of his nails with a small Swiss Army knife that he kept behind the faucet; that he drank water without ice but with a squeeze of lime; that he flashed a brilliant smile at nearly everyone who passed him in a day; that he hummed in the shower; that he snored faintly in his sleep.

Because even though for twenty years I have been mostly okay about not knowing my father, even though for so long I have assumed that he’s the sort of person I would be better off without, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have real and sudden moments of wanting to meet him, little seizures of the heart.

Besides the few other details I gathered from my mother, this is the basic portrait I invented over the years. If anyone asked, that’s everything I might say. Or else I would say that I don’t know, because, of course, I don’t. I can only guess.

 

 

 

The next morning
, Danilo is waiting for me. He’s drinking a cup of coffee and eating scrambled eggs.

“You want coffee?” he asks when he sees me.

“Please.” I sit across from him at the table, as we were last night. It feels strange to see him in the daylight again, as if having seen him last night, in dimmer light, I learned something secret about him that makes him look different—and makes me feel more connected to him—now.

He points to the urn that again has been assembled on the bar top.

“Oh, I thought you were offering to get me a cup,” I joke.

“No, but you can get me a refill while you’re up,” he says.

I don’t know the word for “refill” in Spanish, but I gauge his meaning when he holds out his empty mug.

When I return to the table with two cups of coffee, the steam swirling off the tops, Danilo slides a tin can toward me. It’s wrapped in a paper label that says “Nestlé Ideal.” I pour some of it—a viscous, yellowy milk—onto my fingertip to taste it.

“What do you usually use?” Danilo asks.

“In my coffee?”

“Yes, in your coffee. Of course, in your coffee.” Playfully, he rolls his eyes.

“I usually use milk.”

“Cow’s milk?”

“Yes, cow’s milk, Danilo. Of course, cow’s milk.”

He grins. “This is better,” he says, pointing to the can. “It’s richer. A better flavor.”

“Everything here is better, according to you.”

“Of course. This is my country. If I were visiting you in your country, I would expect you to tell me that everything there is better. You have to be like that. You have to be proud, you know?”

I wipe my finger on a napkin before pouring the milk into my coffee.

“So what are we doing today?” Danilo asks. He’s wearing what I’ve determined by now is his unofficial uniform: an old T-shirt, baggy cargo pants, and a pair of Adidas shell-toes, the tongues lapping over the hem of his pants. Today’s T-shirt is white with a faded and cracked Esso gas decal on the front, the cotton on the shoulders so threadbare that the shade of his skin bleeds through.

“Where are your flowers?” I ask.

“Eh, I’m off duty today.”

“Why?”

“Because we have things to do, no?
Oye,
did you already try the library?”

I don’t want to admit that I haven’t. I did think about it at some point, but I got distracted by the failure of yesterday.

“Hey, did you hear me?”

“No. I haven’t tried the library.”

“Wow. You’re not exactly a natural-born detective, are you?” He shovels some of the eggs into his mouth. “You want to eat something before we go?”

“We’re going right now?”

“Of course right now. If you really want to find your father, then let’s find him. There isn’t time for waiting around, you know. He’s not going to just walk into this hotel and introduce himself. You have to look for him.”

“I know.”

“Yesterday was one thing, but now we have to keep the momentum going.”

“The what?”

“Momentum,” he says again, and though I still don’t know the word, I figure out the general idea when he rolls his hands one over the other. “You know, I don’t believe that you have any Panamanian blood in your veins. Where’s your fire, Miraflores? Panamanians have fire. I mean, how sure are you that this man is really your father? I’m not convinced.” He’s teasing now, although the intimation that perhaps I don’t act as a Panamanian would ignites a certain, grazing pain. I wanted to believe that I was doing a good job of fitting in here.

“He’s my father,” I assure him.

“Okay, then. I’ll say it again, if you really want to find him, you have to look for him.”

“How far is the library?”

Danilo lights up. “That’s what I’m talking about!” He grabs my coffee and gulps down what’s left. “Too hot.” He grimaces.

I laugh at him, but he ignores me.

“Come on,” he says, standing. “We’re going to the library.” Then he shakes his head. “It’s crazy that I’m actually excited about that.”

 

 

 

The library takes up
the second floor of a concrete office building with tinted floor-to-ceiling windows spaced as evenly as a checkerboard around the outside. It’s unassuming, with a narrow strip of parking along the front and palm trees brushing the front wall.

“What’s on the first floor?” I ask Danilo as we make our way to the stairwell, my orange bag knocking against my hip.

“A call center. I used to work there.”

“Really? Do you know English?”

“It was a Spanish call center. For Latin America. Not everything in the world is about people serving your country, you know.” He pushes open the stairwell door and starts up the steps.

“Oh, I know.” I’m chagrined that I was so presumptuous. “Our stupid president thinks it is, but most Americans know better.”

Danilo swings his head around and screws up his face. “But you elected him, no?”

“Not
me.
But yeah.”

“I don’t understand that. How can all the people think one thing and the president can go do something else? It’s a democracy. That’s what you have, right? Why doesn’t everyone protest to get rid of him, if they don’t agree with him? Here, if people don’t like something, they’re out on the streets about it. I swear SUNTRACS is out there like every other day.” He pauses on the landing, gesturing. “And I’m saying, you know, people are out on the streets here even though there’s a history of it being dangerous to do that shit. Like, the government used to have hit men to come and take you out if you were in their way. It’s worse in other countries, but Panamá has it going on, too, you know. The whole system here is so crooked. All of our politicians are corrupt. But even with all that, people were like, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to take a stand for what I believe in. I’m going to tell these mother- fuckers what’s what.’ You know? It’s not even a risk for you to speak up in your country! Nothing’s going to happen to you, right? I mean, not really. But you guys still don’t do it.” His voice, when he finishes, echoes into the stairwell like the last inch of a bow being pulled across a violin string. He runs a hand over his hair and sighs, then turns to mount the rest of the steps.

“And does it work?” I ask to his back. “When people here protest?”

“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. But it’s the only way.”

“The only way what?”

“The only way to live.”

When we step inside the library, a woman sitting at a school desk takes my passport and Danilo’s
cédula.
She makes photocopies of each before handing us purple stickers that say
“Visitante.”
I stick mine on my shirt. Danilo slaps his onto his thigh. There’s a small reading area, magazines with plastic binder covers scattered on a table, and two discrete sections of steel gray bookshelves. Except for the woman at the desk and us, there’s no one else in sight.

“We need a phone book,” Danilo says.

“I already tried that.”

“You have his phone number and you didn’t tell me? That would have made things a lot easier, you know.”

“I don’t have his phone number.”

“But you looked in the phone book?”

“Of course. I looked in the one at the hotel.”

“Which hotel? Hotel Centro?”

“What other hotel would I be talking about?”

“Those phone books are old as shit. I don’t think they’ve put new ones in the rooms for, like, ten years.”

A flush rises in my cheeks.

“Okay, come on,” Danilo says. We locate the reference materials, and he pulls the most recent phone book from the shelf. “What’s his name?”

“Gatún Gallardo.”

“You’re joking, right?”

My stomach flutters. “Why? Do you know him?”

“Gatún, like the locks? And your name is Miraflores, also like the locks? Or are you just making a joke?”

“No, that’s his name.”

“So you two were both named after the canal. That’s funny.”

I feel a little light-headed at the revelation, as if someone built an instantaneous bridge between my father and me and I can see him clearly on the opposite side from where I stand, gazing back at me. My mother must have done it on purpose. She must have wanted that bridge to exist. I knew about my name, of course. But how was it possible that I had gone my whole life without knowing that Gatún was the name of one of the locks? I wonder whether my mother assumed I knew.

Danilo turns to the G’s. I stand shoulder to shoulder with him, staring down at the listings. He’s holding the book open with the spine in his palms, the edges drooping like wilted leaves. I scan the names. Just as before, none is Gatún Gallardo, or even G. Gallardo. This time there are two, though, that say just Gallardo, without any first name or initial.

“Those two.” I point. “I want to write those down.”

I start digging through my bag for a pen and my memo pad. Danilo tears the page out of the book. He flips the rest of it closed with a twist of his wrist and a thud, and hands me the page.

“Here,” he says. “Do you have a phone? Mine’s dead.”

I take the phone book page from him and stare at it, my heart punching insistently at the inside of my chest.

“So?” he prods.

“I have a phone.”

“And?”

“I think I want to do this part by myself.”

In a corner of the library, I find a cluster of school desks and settle myself into one. It’s a challenge to keep my hand from shaking as I spread the torn page on the desktop. Even though the windows are heavily tinted, the sun outside trumpets through. I flip open my phone and dial the first Gallardo. After several rings, a man says,
“Aló.”

My heart is somewhere in the base of my throat, cutting off air. “Hello,” I peep, in Spanish. “Gatún Gallardo, please.”

“Who?”

“Gatún Gallardo.”

“There is no Gatún here. Gallardo yes, but no Gatún. Sorry.” He hangs up.

In a daze, I sit with my phone in my hand until the screen flashes off. I take several measured breaths—in, in, out, in, in, out, like I learned ages ago during swimming lessons at the Y—before trying the second number.

The sound of the rings is a solid tone, like a floating period. I squeeze the phone to my ear, mechanically counting them in my head. At twenty-five, just as I’m about to pull the phone away from my ear, I hear a woman’s voice.

“Hello? I’m trying to reach Gatún Gallardo,” I say. My hand is sweating. I am equal parts hope and hopelessness.

The woman is silent.

“Hello?” I say.

“Yes, who?”

“Gatún Gallardo.”

Still she says nothing.

“Is he there?”

“No.”

Something about the way she says it makes me ask, “Do you know where he is?”

“Who is this?” The woman’s voice is ripe and gravelly, though not unkind.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say.

“Well.”

“He’s not there? Gatún Gallardo?”

“No,” she says again, and this time her tone is definitive. He isn’t there. She doesn’t know where he is. She doesn’t know him.