Somewhere

Once the officers left, she started to pack. Clothes, a brush, shampoo. Small jewelry. Keepsakes from her cousins in San Juan. Her savings from the flower shop in her coat pocket. Toothbrush. What else? Would we stay at a hotel? He told her about an aunt of his who lived up north at Morningside Heights, but if that plan fell through, they would have to stay at a hotel.

She’d write to Papá, of course. (Pen and paper! Yes, those, too). Once she and her man were settled…once they were safe, they would confess their love, confess it all. Tell their families they were safe.

A door slammed below. Footsteps, echoing laughter. Her hand had flown to her chest before she exhaled, feeling foolish. It was just her neighbors, no doubt out for a party. Her friends. Carmen, Susanita. Isabel. How she’d miss them. Her man would be leaving his friends too, Val and the rest. But even if we were free to tell them, they wouldn’t understand. Their world was a couple of blocks on the West Side. They could always visit. Of course they would. But it’d have to be in secret—the police were still after her man. He was wanted, and so was she.

She looked out her small square bedroom window. There were no police as far as she could tell, and only a few passersby illuminated by streetlights. Angélica hadn’t returned yet from the store—had she been held up? No matter, she could go to him now.

She closed the suitcase and pushed it out the open window onto the grill iron steps. She descended the fire escape helix into the back alley.

It was a warm summer evening with no breeze. The streets had a curiously bare look to them. There were older people going to the store, people going to their night shifts, but none of the usual loiterers. No one young. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end; she shivered, and crossed herself. She was getting paranoid in her presentiment.

When she reached the store, it was not only closed, but completely dark. She let go of the door handle, confused and at a loss. Where was Angélica? She was supposed to tell him she had been held up by the police for questioning. If the store was closed, then where had she gone? Could he have been…?

Then she heard a voice cry out, a little distant, but as familiar as her own.

“Come get me!”

It was him. She ran, faster than she had ever had before, cursing the weight of her case (why didn’t she pack lighter, why). His voice echoed in the streets, almost unearthly.

She found him on 10th Avenue, past the yellow-taped bar where they found the bodies. The recreation center, through the metal fence. He stood in the middle of the basketball court, his pale face illuminated in the tawny light. He was breathing hard, as if he, too, had run a long distance.

She called out. He whirled around, their eyes met, and for a moment her aching arm, the oppressive heat of the evening, vanished. It was just him and her, and they were free, they were miles away, and even amid this strange night she felt completely safe.

She let her case fall and sprinted. He was off, too, they were going to meet in the middle, as natural as breathing, and she knew her face reflected his, flushed and giddy with relief that the nightmare would soon be over. He was a foot away—their hands brushed against each other—

The air rent.

Thunder burst in her ears, brief but echoing, lingering in the air like audible smoke. They froze where they were in instinct.

At first he just stood there, with that same expression of love and relief. A dark stain had bloomed on his windbreaker; an irrational thought came to her, that it resembled a rose buttonhole.

Then reality caught up. He crumbled, and so did she, even more swiftly and easily, her arms too weak to break his fall.

In the distance she heard a heartrending scream, and only when her throat ached did she realize that voice was her own.

***

Someday. Somewhere.

They had whispered it to each other between desperate caresses, beneath covers in the night rent by sirens, as if the mere act of saying it would realize some measure of its promise. A poor substitute for an I love you—but in this hateful world, even the name of love had to lurk in the shadows like a criminal. Merely saying the phrase aloud felt like inviting a curse. And dios/dio knew they were cursed enough already.

Now she repeated the prayer to him like metaphorical CPR, infusing him artificially with hope rather than air. She should save her breath. What happened to him didn't matter anymore, if it ever did. His life was always a thin conceit, easily cast off and disposable. A name logged on a police booking amid hundreds, and that record eventually stored in some dank closet. Another dumb thug street wog dead in Manhattan. News at 4.

All that didn’t matter. She did, though. Her life was the most precious thing he could think of, bright as a rose amid the rolling chaos of his world.

His life for hers. An acceptable bargain. More than acceptable, truth be told.

Don’t you dare. His girl shook him more urgently, reading his mind easily. She always could. No te rindes…mi amor…

Not renunciation. Just acknowledgement. His mistakes reckoned, quicker than a bank accountant: Failing to get Rick out of the gang life. Agreeing to go to the dance at the gym at his insistence. (No, not a mistake. That was a rare bit of magic, even if it did lead to trouble.) Trying to stop the fistfight. Killing Fernando, his knife going through him with the horrifying ease of butter. Rick and the rest had been on borrowed time just as surely as he was.

At least he would see his friend again. Birth to worm. Fernando avenged at last. Sorry, fratello.

And if they had left it all behind from the get-go? Turned their backs on their crabbed families with their crabbed lives? Ability always bested desire. Also, it was easier said than done. His gang of misfits and discontents, all hoping for a better life. His folks working tirelessly to the bone. His girl with her Papá and grieving friend.

So why hope in the first place? In a way, it was a reflex, the way one breathed and ate and drank even in the face of total catastrophe. You cannot live off the burnt edges of hate without suffering severe malnutrition. Without becoming what you eat. Was it so bad, so irredeemable, to want that rare luxury, peace? Yet millions of people lived that way, even now. They could have learned it in time, too.

She stopped shaking him; she had finally understood. Her rosebud mouth split like a knife wound, but no sound came out. No sound he could hear, anyway. She was beautifully close; even past the ever-thickening mist, he could appreciate it. The pearly sheen of her skin, the brightness of it, glowing against her lurid dress. Liquid black eyes shining with tears. She stroked his cheek gently, as if he would dissolve like paper in water were she to do it any stronger.

This cold, unyielding ground against his back, lying in that discomfiting warm pool the same dark color as her dress. This small but extravagant mercy, dying in her arms. It was all worth it. Almost.

Someday. Somewhere.

But almost is never enough.