Killing Sarai

  I feel my fingers digging into my palms down at my sides now, but shame eclipses my anger. What she says is only halfway true, but right now isn’t the time to defend myself. Nothing that I say will matter. Not to the American and certainly not to her. I only care what the American thinks because I need him to help me. If he thinks of me as a whore, he’ll surely be less inclined later on. If I can ever convince him to help, that is, which is doubtful.

  Showing absolutely no interest in Izel’s obvious attempt to mar my character, the American points to his bag on the table by the window and says to me, “Left zipper, inside pocket you’ll find a rope.”

  I walk across the room carefully, my heart pounding violently against my ribs when I go between the two, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end as I pass them. I halfway expected Izel to use the opportunity to reach out and grab me, but am relieved when she doesn’t dare move. Making my way through more bodies and debris scattered about the small area, this time I’m too afraid of the two still alive in the room to let myself notice the dead eyes staring up at me from the floor. I smell the blood. At least, I’m pretty sure that faint metallic stench is blood. There’s so much of it all around me. The curtain on the broken window blows inward as a small gust of warm wind pushes through. I reach inside the American’s black bag and shuffle around looking for the rope. I’m too nervous to look inside the bag. There’s no telling what he carries in this thing.

  With the wad of rope in my hand, I briefly wonder why he didn’t use this tougher stuff on me instead of strips of fabric from the bed sheet. I turn around and look only at the American waiting for whatever he might tell me to do next, trying to make as little eye contact with Izel as possible. It never takes her much to intimidate me.

  The American nods toward Izel.

  “Tie her hands behind the chair at her wrists,” he instructs.

  My heart leaps. Still trying my best to keep from looking at her, the attempt is thrown out the window with his words and look at her is exactly what I do. She’ll surely grab me if I’m standing that close.

  The conflict in my eyes tells the American everything that the words I can’t get out, can’t.

  He moves the gun in his hand subtly at Izel, his wrist still propped on his leg. “She will not touch you,” he says, looking only at me. “If she so much as flinches in a manner that I feel is threatening, I’ll kill her and she knows it.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see Izel’s nostrils flare and her mouth twist in anger.

  The American nods toward her again to indicate that I should proceed.

  Fumbling the rope in my fingers, I step over the bodies again and slowly make my way toward Izel, finding it impossible not to look at her the closer I get. Her smile spreads. My hands are shaking so conspicuously she takes notice; her brown eyes skirt them briefly without moving her head.

  “You really did it this time,” she taunts. “How did you get out of the fence? Did Lydia help you?”

  I’m almost behind her when she says Lydia’s name and I stop dead in my tracks. Izel notices my reaction exactly for what it is: worry. And she runs with it.

  An even more sadistic grin tugs the corners of her lips. “Ah, I see,” she says. “So she did help you.” She clicks her tongue. “Unfortunate for poor Lydia, she will be punished. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Sarai?”

  “Lydia had nothing to do with it!” I yell in Spanish, as if I’m still back at the compound.

  I know she’s trying to get to me, but I also know that what she’s saying about Lydia being punished is true and already I’m regretting my reaction. Because it’s exactly what she wanted to see. This entire situation just changed in the worst way. It’s not just about me anymore. I should’ve known this before I crawled out that window. Javier and Izel knew how close Lydia and I became in her short time there.

  A large part of me wants to give up and go back, but now with the American controlling the situation, that’s no longer in the cards.

  “Stop talking and tie her hands behind her,” the American says from behind.

  “Fine. Go ahead. Do what you want with her,” I say to Izel as I walk around behind her chair. “I got out. She didn’t. It’s sad, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going back to that place, not even for her.” I hope she believes me, that I don’t care what happens to Lydia, so maybe they won’t use her against me.

  “I said stop talking.”

  The unnatural frustration in the American’s tone, though restrained, is enough to get both of our attention. Izel and I look over at him at the same time.

  I do exactly as he says, fearing he might just shoot me in the leg next, and I crouch behind Izel and start tying her wrists together. The American watches Izel seemingly without blinking, waiting for her to slip up and give him more reason to shoot her. I bind her wrists good, wrapping the semi-stretchy rope three times, tying it into a knot each round. Once the rope pinches her skin, Izel tosses her head to the side in an attempt to see me, her teeth gritting in anger. “Watch it,” she snaps and her long black hair falls to one side around her face. I tie the last knot even tighter, just because I can. If looks could kill, I’d be dead ten times over.

  “Now step away from her,” the American instructs.

  He stands from the bed and slides his elongated suitcase out from underneath it.

  I step away and with the backward tilt of his head I continue to follow his instructions and make my way over next to him. He takes my wrist in one hand and his suitcase in the other and walks me toward the door. He only lets go of my wrist long enough to pick his bag up from the table and shoulder it.

  He leaves his long black coat. Surely he sees it, but I get the feeling he’s leaving it draped over the back of the chair on purpose.

  “I’ll kill you if you leave me here like this,” Izel growls through gritted teeth, but her threat comes out thickly with desperation. She begins to struggle in the chair, trying to work her hands free. “Don’t leave me like this! How can I tell Javier what you want if I’m stuck in this room?”

  Sunlight fills the room when the American opens the door with two fingers from the hand holding the suitcase.

  “You’ll get yourself free in time,” he says and steps out the door with me at his side. “Inform Javier that I will be in touch and not to lose or discard the cell phone number that I last called him on.” He pulls the door shut with the same two fingers and I hear Izel’s livid voice screaming curses at us from inside as we leave her there.

  He guides me around to the front passenger’s seat and closes the door behind me once I’m inside. The trunk pops open and he hides his suitcase and black duffle bag away inside of it.

  I hear four muffled shots outside the car as he takes out two tires on each of the trucks parked out front.

  He shuts the driver’s side door and looks over at me.

  “Put on your seatbelt,” he says and looks away from my eyes, turning the key in the ignition.

  The car hums to life as I click my seatbelt in place quickly.

  “You shoot women,” I say quietly.

  He backs out of the dirt-covered space in front of the odd roadside motel, which really looks more like a five-room shack.

  The American presses his foot on the brake and looks over at me again. “Flesh wounds,” he says and shifts the car into Drive. “She’ll live. And that one was hardly a woman.” He pulls away, the sleek black car stirring up a cloud of dirt behind us.

  He’s right in that aspect. Izel is a woman, but she doesn’t deserve to be treated like one and it’s her own fault.

  As we’re speeding down the dusty highway and away from the motel, the American reaches into the console between us and retrieves a small black cell phone. Running his finger over the screen, the speakerphone comes on and suddenly Izel’s voice fills the car. I’m confused by it at first but soon understand that, if I’m right, there was a reason he left his long coat in the room, after all.
br />   I listen to Izel’s voice stream through the tiny speaker:

  “He’s gone! Get up and untie me! Hurry!”

  A rustling sound muffles her voice and then other strange, unidentifiable noises.

  “Get me out of these ropes!”

  One of the men was left alive?

  I glance over at the American whose eyes remain fixed on the road out ahead, but his ears are fully open to the voices in his hand. He knew. He knew all along that one of them lay there pretending to be dead. I shudder to think I walked over his body, or around it, so close he could’ve grabbed me by the ankle and took me down with him.

  More shuffling and cracking noises funnel through the speakerphone. I hear Izel tell the man to give her a phone and seconds later she’s speaking to Javier:

  “Sí, Javier. He took her. He killed them. No.”

  She becomes quiet as Javier, I know without having to hear him, threatens her on the other end of the phone.

  “Sí,” she says gravelly as if forcing herself to agree though it takes everything in her to do so.

  Then I hear a loud shot and shortly after a thump! and I can only assume that she just killed the man who helped her, likely out of anger for whatever Javier said.

  Everything becomes quiet now. Maybe Izel left the room. Several seconds pass and still nothing, only the low static hum of the speakerphone itself. The American, although not famous for facial expressions, seems disappointed. He hangs the phone up, rolls the window down beside him and tosses it onto the highway. Then he makes a sharp U-turn and drives in the opposite direction.

  “I take it you didn’t hear what you wanted to?” I ask carefully.

  His right hand drops from the steering wheel and rests along the top of his leg.

  “No,” he answers.

  “You still doubt what I told you,” I say.

  In my peripheral vision, I see him turn his head slightly to look at me. I’m not comfortable enough with him to meet his eyes when he instigates it. I never will be.

  But he doesn’t answer.

  A minute later, I say, “I’m not a whore. She was only trying to get to you in case you have any pity for me.”

  Maybe I’m insulting his intelligence, just like Izel had at one point, but this is my way of defending myself from her accusation. I want him to know. And I don’t want him to think that way of me.

  I go on, finally looking at him now that his eyes are back on the road again.

  “But you never had any pity for me to begin with.”

  Again, my attempt to engage him in conversation seems to go unnoticed and I give up and lay my head against the car window.

  “I know you’re not a whore,” he says.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It’s been on rare occasion that I saw much of any other part of Mexico during the day, other than the compound. Javier wasn’t big on sight-seeing, or an early Sunday morning drive. I spent much of my life cooped up behind those fences, only leaving when Lydia and I were relocated with the other girls before other dangerous drug lords came to meet with Javier. It was Javier’s way of keeping us ‘safe’ in case a deal went bad. But we always traveled at night, so despite the predicament I’m in now, I find myself in mild awe as I look out the car window while the bright Mexican landscape flies by.

  We’ve been driving for two hours.

  “I’m hungry,” I say.

  A few quiet seconds pass before he answers.

  “I have nothing to eat in this car.”

  “Well, can’t we stop somewhere?”

  “No.”

  If I could at least get him to stop answering my questions like that, I’d almost be satisfied.

  “If you’re worried about me trying to run off,” I say, turning sideways to better see him, “then go to a drive-thru. I haven’t had anything to eat since early morning yesterday. Please....”

  “There are no drive-thru’s here.”

  “Where is here, anyway?” Suddenly, my hunger has taken the backseat. “At least tell me where I’ve spent the last nine years of my life.”

  I saw one road sign several minutes back, but I didn’t recognize the name from anything I’ve seen on the maps I’ve poured over time and time again, mostly the maps in an American high school textbook from 1997.

  “We are now five miles south of Nacozari de García.”

  I sigh, frustrated with myself for not having any idea where that is, either.

  “You’re less than two hours from the United States border,” he says and stuns me.

  I whip around, turning fully on the seat, my back pressing against the car door.

  “But you said I was—you made it sound like I was days from the border.”

  “No. I simply stated the distance was farther than I wanted you as my company.”

  I cross my arms angrily over my chest. I’ve no idea where I even get off being angry at all with someone like him and even remotely showing it. Reminding myself quickly of where I am and who I’m with, I put on my timid face again.

  “Is that where we’re going?” I ask. “Is this man you’re supposed to kill for Javier in the United States?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  I burst into tears. They come out of nowhere, burning behind my eyes and through my sinuses. But I’m not crying because I’m so close to home, I’m crying because his strange, stoic personality and one-word answers are enough to make me want to figuratively shoot myself. I sob into the palms of my hands, letting my fear and frustration of the American out, along with everything else buried inside: relief that I’ve finally gotten away, fear of being sent back there again, worried about how badly Izel will beat Lydia, the mere fact that I’m in a situation far from anything easy to solve, the hunger in my stomach, the dryness of my throat, not having had a bath in two days now, the fact that I could die at any moment. The only good thing I can account for is that I am, in fact, still alive and not as far away from home as I thought I was.

  I feel the car veer off to the right as he pulls onto another highway.

  I look over at him, sniffling back the rest of my tears. I reach up and wipe my cheeks with my palms. He never says anything, he doesn’t try to console me or ask questions. He doesn’t seem to care and I don’t care much, either, that he doesn’t. I never expected him to.

  Another thirty minutes or so and we’re pulling up to the front of an old roadside convenience store. Only one truck is parked out front, a white Ford with rust along the doors.

  “If you want food,” the American says, turning off the engine, “come inside and eat.”

  I’m surprised that we’ve stopped at all, much less to feed me. He walks around to my side of the car and opens the door, likely just to make sure he stays by my side at all times rather than to be gentlemanly. He stands there waiting patiently for me to get out. Finally, I do, just after slipping my bare feet down into my flip-flops in the floorboard.

  This place can’t be called a roadside diner; I think it would need a few more tables for that, but there is a place to sit and eat, off in a dark corner near a single black door. I have a microwaved chicken sandwich from the freezer; the American, nothing but black coffee. The two of us look out-of-place here. Both of us obviously with no Spanish genes, in a place that is clearly not a tourist town, him dressed in expensive black slacks and shoes, which were probably shiny at one time but are now covered in a fine layer of dirt. I know I must smell pretty bad. I don’t remember the last time I wore deodorant.

  I scarf down half of the chicken sandwich and gulp the bottled water until it’s nearly empty. I learned a long time ago never to drink the water in these parts, that if it isn’t from an unopened bottle, it’ll probably make me sick.

  The American sips his coffee gradually, reading the contents of a local newspaper of sorts. If I didn’t know better, we could almost pass for an unconventional married couple having breakfast in any typical American town. Unconventional because I’m only twenty-three, and the American,
he’s older than me. Middle to late thirties, maybe. If I didn’t know what he was and I just saw him sitting here one day, like he is now with both feet on the floor and his dress-shirt-covered elbows on the table, I’d find him attractive for an older man. He’s clean cut, though with stubble in a pattern along his face. He has sharp cheekbones and piercing blue-green eyes that seem to contain everything but reveal nothing. And he’s very tall, lean and frightening. I find it notable how he scares me more than Javier ever did, yet without having to say a word. At the same time, I feel like I’m better off with the American than I ever was with the likes of Javier.

  At least, for now. That’ll change, I’m sure, when he tries to hand me back over to him.

  But I’ll die before I let that happen.

  “Are you ever going to tell me your name?” I ask.

  He raises his eyes from the newspaper without moving his head.

  I can sense immediately that he doesn’t care to tell me, to get that personal with his ‘hostage’, but finally he throws me a bone.

  “Victor.”

  I’m so stunned he even told me that it takes me a second to think of what to say next.

  I sip my water.

  “Where are you from?” I ask.

  It’s worth a try.

  “Why don’t you finish your food,” he suggests and peers back down into the paper.

  “You know my name. You know where I’m from. Why don’t you humor me, Victor?” The bitterness in my tone wasn’t an accident.

  I figure that if he was going to kill me, I’d be dead already, so I’m not really as afraid of him as my conscience is telling me I should be.

  He sighs with annoyance and shakes his head subtly.

  “I was born in Boston,” he says. “I have a sister. A year younger than me. My mother is somewhere in Budapest. My father, he’s dead. He was my first kill.”