“Take pictures,” I told the police. “Take fucking pictures.”
The attorney Tom had referred me to was good as gold. As it turned out, Danny had an aunt, his mother’s sister. She lived in Boulder, Colorado. She was more than happy to take him in. “I’ve tried to call him so many times, but his father would never let me see him.” She wept on the phone, but the tears weren’t sad ones, and I knew she was a good woman and that Danny would be safe with her and that was all that mattered. Maybe Tom was wrong. Maybe not everyone in the world was fucked up.
A week after Danny had called me, I took him to the airport. His aunt Margaret paid for the ticket. He looked at me with his sad pale eyes as we said goodbye. He leaned into my shoulder and sobbed quietly. “I love you, Mr. Steadman.” I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know a goddamned thing about me, that I was just this man who was ordinary in every way, who struggled with things that were not important, a guy who had a hard time getting close to people. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t worth admiring. So I just took him by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Danny, people shouldn’t get extra credit for doing what they’re supposed to do. No one should get extra credit for doing their job.”
He smiled. God, I hadn’t seen that boy smile like that, not ever. “Mr. Steadman, I’m on to you.” He hugged me, then walked toward the escalators.
He turned around and waved.
I waved back, then slowly made my way to the parking lot.
I don’t normally read the paper. I’m a get-the-job-done kind of guy, no wasting time. But that day, I got up and discovered I was out of coffee. So I stopped off at Starbucks on my way to work. Never did the drive-in thing. I liked walking in and ordering my coffee from a human being instead of a voice that came out of a speaker. As I stood in line, there he was—Tom!—on the cover of the El Paso Times. ATTORNEY FAKES HIS OWN DEATH. I took the newspaper and all of a sudden, I started laughing. I couldn’t stop fucking laughing. I don’t remember ever having laughed like that. I had to sit down, and when I finally calmed down, I had to wipe away my tears. Tom, Tom, Tom, what have you done?
I read a little piece of the story. He’d been hiding out in Juárez and had bribed some cop to place his passport in the pocket of a dead body. I laughed at his quote: “I got tired of being dead, so I just decided to raise myself back to life.”
They arrested him at the border.
He was sitting in the county jail.
All this time, I’d imagined his last moments, a gun pointed at him from some assassin hired by the drug lords he’d gotten in with. I’d even had dreams about it, had dreamed his frightened eyes.
There was no answer when I called his office. I called his legal secretary’s number on my phone. I heard her voice. “Kathy?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Michael.”
“Michael! Oh, Michael! Did you read the paper?”
“Yes. I haven’t read all the fine print.”
“God, Michael.”
“He’s alive, Kathy, that’s all that matters.”
She started to cry.
“Shhh, it’s okay, honey. It’s gonna be okay.”
“He’s going to have to do some time, Michael.”
“Doesn’t matter. Listen, can you get me in to see him?”
“Sure,” she whispered. “I think I can manage that.”
“Good,” I said.
I hung up the phone. I called in sick. I took a walk in the desert. At around three in the afternoon, I walked into the Camino Real Hotel and went into the Dome Bar. I stared at the Tiffany dome. I ordered a bourbon on the rocks. A double. I smiled as I took a sip. God, I was so happy. I lifted my glass up to the light. Just then my cell phone rang. It was Kathy. “You can see him this afternoon. You have to be at the county jail at four. I’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“He loves you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’ve always known that.”
I looked at my watch. It was three-fifteen.
I sipped on my drink and thought of how Tom had laughed at me the first time we had a drink together, What are you, a girl? Drinking white wine? So I’m sitting here, drinking bourbon, thinking of him, my Tom. I’m thinking, God, he’s not dead. And I’m smiling. God, I’m smiling like I’ve never smiled before. I can almost hear his voice as he tells me about his dream, You were sitting at the bar of the Kentucky Club and you looked like a fucking angel. I’m imagining me sitting there and I do, I do feel like a fucking angel, and I’m waiting for him, and then I picture him walking in, and he says to me, “See, babe, it’s true, everything begins and ends at the Kentucky Club.”
I look at him and say, “No, not everything, just your dreams.”
OTHER BOOKS BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ
NOVELS
Carry Me Like Water (Hyperion)
The House of Forgetting (HarperCollins)
In Perfect Light (HarperCollins)
En el tiempo de la Luz (Rayo/HarperCollins)
Names on a Map (Harper Perennial)
SHORT STORIES COLLECTIONS
Flowers for the Broken (Broken Moon Press)
POETRY
Calendar of Dust (Broken Moon Press)
Dark and Perfect Angels (Cinco Puntos Press)
Elegies in Blue (Cinco Puntos Press)
Dreaming the End of War (Copper Canyon Press)
The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press)
YOUNG ADULT
Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood (Cinco Puntos Press)
He Forgot to Say Goodbye (Simon & Schuster)
Last Night I Sang to the Monster (Cinco Puntos Press)
Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Simon & Schuster)
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
A Gift from Papa Diego (Cinco Puntos Press)
Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas (Cinco Puntos Press)
A Perfect Season for Dreaming (Cinco Puntos Press)
The Dog Who Loved Tortillas (Cinco Puntos Press)
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club
(Series: # )
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