The World in Half (15 page)

“Danilo’s room, my room, and the washroom,” Hernán says, pointing in succession to the doors lining the hallway.

Danilo is behind the two of us, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s really nice,” I say.

“Where you live is probably a mansion compared with this.”

“Not at all.”

Danilo snorts.

“What?” I ask, turning to face him, running my hand along my bag strap.

“You don’t have to be nice for our sake.”

“I’m not. This is a great house.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. I’m just saying . . .”

“Leave her alone, Danilo.” Hernán clears his throat, then advances past me and flips on more lights. “Of course,” he continues, “you can sleep in my room, and I will take the couch.” He doubles back toward my bag, eager to get me situated.

Danilo, still behind me, says, “She can take my room.”

Hernán stops. “You don’t even let me into your room.”

Danilo scoots past us into the kitchen. He drags a plastic pitcher of water out of the refrigerator and fills a glass almost to the brim.

“Okay,” Hernán says, shuttling my suitcase into Danilo’s room. When he comes back out, he joins Danilo in the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” he asks me.

“No, thank you,” I say. I feel stiff all of a sudden, unsure of what I’m doing here.

“You’re tired?” Hernán asks.

“Yes, I guess so. Yeah, I’m pretty tired.”

“Of course you are,” he says, though he looks vaguely disappointed at the idea of a premature end to the evening. “I’ll bring a fresh towel to your room for you to use in the morning. We don’t have hot water, but it gets warm enough and in this weather I doubt that you would want it hot anyway. I leave by eleven most days. Danilo makes us breakfast.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I hope I’m not going to be in your way too much.”

“We hope so, too,” Danilo says, and I gave him a sarcastically amused expression while Hernán swats his arm and scolds,
“Oye.”

“Come on,” Hernán says, ushering me into Danilo’s room.

It’s small and surprisingly neat. There’s a standing fan next to a closet cordoned off by a hanging bedsheet, a simple dresser with nothing but a bowl of change on top, a twin bed with the sheet tucked tidily under the mattress, and a flat pillow slouched against the wall. It reeks of mothballs.

“It looks like he was expecting company,” I say.

“He always keeps it like this,” Hernán says, brushing past me with my suitcase, which he lays on the floor next to the dresser. “This is okay?”

“The room? The room is great.”

“I know it doesn’t compare to the hotel—”

“It’s great. I promise. I really appreciate you letting me stay here.” I still feel strange about it, although I keep telling myself that I can stay just one night and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, I can always just go back to a hotel. A different one, probably, but there’s still that option.

Hernán appears pleased. Then he appears at a loss, standing uselessly in the middle of the room, his hands jammed in his pockets. He’s still wearing his hotel uniform, although he took his hat off as soon as he stepped out of the lobby, leaving a dent pressed into his dark, wavy hair. He sucks in a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, and gazes around once more. “You want to sleep.”

“Thank you again.”

He takes a step and, leaning forward awkwardly, kisses me quickly on the forehead, the way you would a puppy or a child. “Good night,” he says, and scuttles out as if in embarrassment, closing the door behind him.

I wonder sometimes
how my father envisions me. Assuming that he thinks of me at all, which I believe he does. At least once in a while. I always believed that. Even when I thought he was the sort of person who would cast off his child and his child’s mother, I never thought he had entirely left us behind. For some reason I assumed that he must have thought about me from time to time. I think I assumed that, no matter how horrible a person you might be, it would be impossible to have a child, to have a piece of yourself walking around in the world, and not think about that child at least a few times in the course of your life.

I wonder what my father thinks I look like, or what he imagines I do with my days. I wonder whether he assumes that I am in every way like my mother, or whether he lies in bed at night thinking about how much of himself might have blossomed in me.

It’s a strange sort of mathematics. I know the ways I’m similar to my mother: we are both humble, determined, serious, resourceful, reserved, and hardworking. I’ve always thought that if you subtract those traits from the whole of me, everything that’s left over must be the ways I’m like my father. Which means that he gave me loyalty, benevolence, patience, an anger that’s slow to ignite and that extinguishes quickly, and a heart that, even though I try very hard to hide it, is easily wounded.

I
wake early that first morning, before either Danilo or Hernán is up. The day feels swollen with possibility, and I’m restless, eager to get going, see them, get dressed, go out, do something. But I don’t want to go into the kitchen and make too much noise and disturb them, so I stay put in Danilo’s room for the time being. I turn the fan down to low and find my cell phone in my bag to call my mother.

“Mira?” she answers. “How are you?”

“I’m good. What are you doing?” I’m sitting cross-legged on Danilo’s bed, clutching the toes of one foot with my hand.

“Nothing. I just had breakfast. It’s snowing here, so I don’t think I’m leaving the house today. Are you having a good time in . . . shit.”

“Washington.”

“I’ve never been to Washington. But I hear it’s nice.”

“It seems nice so far.”

“The only school trip I can remember taking was to Niagara Falls one year. We stood up on the edge of a cliff and white water crashed down around us. I remember we were working on similes in language arts and my teacher, Mrs. Coe, would say things like, ‘The water sounds like . . .’ and ‘The water looks like . . .’ and she would wait for someone to raise their hand to fill in the blank. I said, ‘The water sounds like a roaring lion.’” She laughs softly to herself. “I can’t believe I remember that.”

“Nice simile.”

“I also remember that I sat with Sally Perris on the bus ride home. In the gift shop, she bought a box of these really fat pencils with the words “Niagara Falls” down the sides in blue. I asked her if she would give me one, but she wanted to keep them all for herself. She was always sort of vicious like that. You know, she came over to the house once.”

“Our house?”

“Before I left New York. She sat in the kitchen with me and had tea. I was drinking peppermint tea then. I started with it in the beginning of my pregnancy because people said that it helped curb the nausea. I don’t know about that.” She lapses into silence, as if she’s forgotten her place in the story.

“Sally Perris and you were drinking tea,” I say.

“What?”

“Sally Perris and you were drinking tea.”

“Yes, and she told me that she couldn’t associate with me any longer. She said that my father had gone to her and all the rest of my friends and told them that I had shamed him and my mother, and that unless they stopped associating with me, he would have their husbands dismissed from the military. He could have done it, too. He was very big in our town. He taught at the academy. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew that,” I say delicately. I did know that her father taught at West Point. I’m not certain whether she understands what else she’s telling me, but I want her to go on.

“He threatened them. And they caved. Every last one of them.” Then, “That’s enough about that. I’m going to have my breakfast now.”

By the time we hang up, there are noises coming from the kitchen. I walk out to the sight of Danilo making eggs. He’s standing in front of the oven in the same T-shirt he had on yesterday and mesh shorts that hang to his knees, his hair sticking out at the sides and flattened in the back.

“They’ll be ready soon,” he says when he sees me, and a minute later he delivers to the table a plate of eggs scrambled with cubes of ham and shredded cheese. I sit at the table and eat silently while he continues cooking, the sounds of sizzling cheese and popping grease filling the kitchen. I’m about to ask where Hernán is, when all of a sudden the sound of his singing floats down the hall. At first I think it’s coming from outside, but the longer I listen, I realize that the warbling voice is coming from the bathroom. I laugh.

“What?” Danilo asks.

“Is that Hernán?”

“Singing? Yeah. Dude loves to the sing in the shower.”

“Is he singing Shakira?”

“He fucking
loves
Shakira. He has videotapes of her concerts that he watches when he’s feeling depressed.” I laugh again, and after giving the eggs a quick turn in the pan, he says, “You think that’s funny?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh, it is. It’s funny as shit. A man his age sitting around watching Shakira. His eyes get all big and he leans forward on the couch. I hope you get to see it while you’re here.” He pushes the eggs around again and turns down the flame on the burner. “Although you probably won’t. He’s so happy you’re here that I don’t think he even needs Shakira.”

“I’m better than Shakira?”

“That little thing? Flicking her hips around? Any day, Miraflores. You’re better than her any day.”

His back is toward me, so I can’t read the expression on his face, but I have the sense that he means it.

Hernán goes on singing, and I go on listening, amused. Danilo opens the shuttered window in the kitchen and pours us both glasses of orange juice that tastes vaguely like Tang, before joining me at the table.

“These are good,” I tell him after several bites of the eggs.

He doesn’t respond.

“So what are you doing today?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

“I’m meeting up with Nardo later. He wants to get some new sneakers, so we’ll probably go to La Onda or somewhere to look for something cheap. This afternoon, I’ll be out with my flowers. And tonight we have a hot card game set up.” He picks at something in his teeth. “What are your plans?”

I don’t want to tell him that I was counting on him to provide me with plans. “I guess I’m going to try to find an Internet café so I can get on the computer and maybe find out something more about my father.”

“Those places are a rip-off.”

“What?”

“They’re too expensive.”

“It’s okay.”

“Why? You’re rich? You probably are, right? All Americans are rich.”

“Who says that?”

“Everyone. You’re all driving your Mercedes-Benzes and living in your big houses.”

I can’t tell whether he honestly believes that or whether he’s just baiting me. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I told you last night my mother and I don’t have a big house. And we definitely don’t drive a Mercedes. We have an old car that doesn’t want to start when it’s too cold outside.”

He looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Danilo, come on. You’re not that . . .” I don’t know the word for “naïve.” “You know better than that. It’s just like anywhere. There are people who don’t have much, people who have some, and people who have a lot.”

“But in the United States, there are way more people who have a lot than anywhere else.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m not one of them. I have enough. Definitely. More than enough. But I’m still not one of those people you’re thinking of.”

Hernán walks into the kitchen a few minutes later, dressed and freshly scrubbed and smelling of talcum powder. He plants himself opposite me at the table.

“Eggs, please!” he says, winking at me. Grudgingly, Danilo heaps some onto a plate. From a lower cabinet within reach, Hernán produces a book, then drops it with a thud onto the table. “Don’t mind me,” he says in a way that makes it obvious he wants nothing more than for us to pay attention to him.

Danilo snickers. “I’ve never seen you read.”

“Just because you have not seen it, doesn’t mean that it does not happen.”

“Okay, then,” Danilo says, playing along. “What are you reading?”

“If you must know, I’m reading
Don Quixote.
The Man of La Mancha. Besides the Bible, it is the only book worth reading.”

“You know, in order to say that, you would have had to read every book ever written.”

Hernán narrows his eyes. Danilo is ruining his performance. “You know, in order to say
that,
you would have to be a real smart-ass.”

“Oooh, such language!” Danilo teases.

Hernán makes a harrumphing sound and opens the book, the spine cracking as he turns to page one.

I stand and smile at him. “I’ve always wanted to read
Don Quixote
,” I say. “I’m studying Spanish in school, but I won’t take that class until my . . .” I hesitate. I don’t know how to say “junior.” “My third year. You’ll have to tell me how you like it.”