Burn (Story of CI #3) (33 page)

Visions of long corduroy skirts and kneeling to pray frantically on the pea green carpet skittered across Cail’s brain.

Happily, Cail was not going to be sleeping here tonight.

“Oh. Thanks.” Cail smiled a little lopsided. “We’re only here for the day, though. This time. We’re staying at the Super Eight.”

The bridge of Cail’s mother’s nose started to turn a rosy pink.

“With him?” Pastor Henry frowned.

Cail was so used to spending time with people from the whole world. She lived traveling, worked in CI with people from so many countries. For a little while, she’d forgotten Pastor Henry’s views on illegal immigrants and Hispanics in general. Lalo wasn’t illegal but that was kind of beside the point. Pastor Henry thought the “Mexican” guy was sleeping with his daughter.

Cail frowned at her dad. Did her best to keep frowning and not blush. “No…I mean…”

“In the same room?” Brenda said incredulously.

Oh crap. “Not any of your business,” Cail tried to say smoothly, “but yes. In the same room. To save money. And that’s the only reason why.”

She and Lalo had been sending a lot of their CI salary to help the kids who’d been burned in Mali, along with their families. Plus, the plane tickets last minute to Nebraska hadn’t been cheap. The Super Eight wasn’t spendy, but she and Lalo liked to save money however they could.

Everyone at the table was horrified. Even Cail was horrified.

She was not sleeping with Lalo, but no one was gonna believe her.

Cail felt herself grinding her teeth together. It wasn’t fair. Just because she wore pants and didn’t have hair all the way down her back didn’t mean she had no morals.

Well, the lecture started there:

I hope you were listening to the Proverb we read today, honey. God hates fornication. We just want what’s best for you.

It pains my heart, Cail, to see how you’ve thrown away the calling God has for you. He chose you. And you’re throwing it all away to try everything the world has to offer. Tattoos. Worldly clothes. Boyish hair. Oh, and let’s not forget fornication.

Somehow, for a few minutes, Cail totally forgot about the man beside her, calmly stuffing the last bites of warm apple pie into his mouth.

“Cail, you know we love you,” her mom was saying. “But if you continue down this path, God will have no choice but to hand you over to the devil. Everywhere you look there will be only destruction.”

That was it. Cail leaped up out of her chair, set to grab Lalo by the arm and storm towards the front door and anywhere but here. She only made it into a crouch because a warm hand gripped her shoulder and pushed her back down into the chair.

It was Lalo. He scraped his chair loudly across the wooden boards until it touched Cail’s and slung his arm around her shoulder. Lalo was still wearing the wool coat, and the warm fabric against her neck helped Cail to take a deep breath. Cail felt her skin steaming, her insides quivering.

“Excuse me. Ma’am.” Lalo raised a finger to interrupt everyone at the table. Pastor Henry squished up his face at Lalo as if Lalo were a naughty child that just stripped to his diaper at the supper table. “We’ve already suffered,” Lalo said. “The destruction you’re talking about? We’ve already been through hell, and it wasn’t our fault. If there is a God, he’s for us. He’s not the one who brings death and destruction. That would be Satan. And us, the human race, the things we do to each other.”

Everyone just stared. Cail grabbed Lalo’s free hand under the table and squeezed it til she thought she might break a couple knuckles, but Lalo didn’t even wince.

He was used to the pain.

She wasn’t. After so much suffering in her head and in her heart, being here still hurt. It was an ache she could barely stand.

What Lalo had been through had made him strong enough to be there for her.

She had never cared for him more.

Cail’s mom started to cry, and Pastor Henry looked like he was thinking. He kept thinking while he had some more pie. The sisters scurried off to do the dishes, probably scared that someday, somehow, this could happen to them. They could rebel against God himself and end up with short spiky hair, sleeping with a scary-looking Hispanic guy in a cheap hotel room.

But Cail started to laugh. Lalo looked kind of surprised. “Mom,” Cail said through the giggles, “thank you for having us over for lunch. I think that’s about enough for today, though. Don’t you? We’d better be going.”

She had to bite her tongue to not add something funny about the sleazy hotel room waiting for her and Lalo. Actually, when they left here they’d probably go cruise the mall, then share a five dollar Little Caesar’s pizza, tuck themselves into their separate queen size beds and drop off to sleep under the stiff cotton comforters.

It had been a long, long flight from Morocco yesterday.

But Cail’s mom was scrubbing away tears with a fat white Kleenex and waving one arm Cail and Lalo’s way. “No,” she gasped, then cleared her throat and tried to smile at the two of them with puffy red eyes. “No, please don’t go yet. Please. We could make popcorn. And watch a movie. We haven’t seen you in so long!”

Cail felt something in her heart soften. Lalo’s face totally said “It’s up to you,” and Cail really did not want to leave this place for five more years without giving it another try.

“Little House on the Prairie?” she asked.

Pastor Henry grinned. “You always loved Little House on the Prairie.”

That was because it was the only thing the Lamontagne kids were allowed to watch, but Cail decided to just not go there.

“Girls, leave the dishes.” Cail’s mom turned towards the sisters. “Get out the big cast iron pot and get some popcorn going. Melt some of that butter we made last Saturday. Oh Cail, the butter turned out so good!”

Cail grinned.

“I’m still hungry,” Lalo said lazily. His arm was still tucked around Cail’s shoulder. Until she was ready and shrugged it off, he wasn’t going anywhere. “I could totally do popcorn.”

“Did you ever see Little House on the Prairie?” Cail leaned into Lalo’s side.

“Nope, can’t say I have.”

Slow moving show with sweet characters and violin music…it sounded right up Lalo’s alley.

“Homemade butter and Laura Ingalls Wilder,” Cail told him. “You are in for a treat.”

IT WAS DARK DOWN HERE, AND LALO was sitting all alone. The couch in the basement TV room at CI headquarters was boxy and plaid. In the darkness it looked like a florescent landing strip crisscrossed with jagged gashing lines.

Next to Lalo on the coffee table was a frosty glass bottle. He scooped it up and took a sip, then almost gagged. “Bubbly green tea with mint flavor” the label said. Ice cold, carbonated green tea was not nearly as good as it sounded. But it was calming his stomach down, and right now that was a good thing.

The shadows in the room around him hissed and whispered his name.

Lalo really wanted to turn on the lights.

But ever since he had used his gift to find Cail, he’d dreamed about his father and the freaky eye of fire too many times. It was getting better, and it had been two nights now since Lalo had that evil dream. Lalo had been fighting it, focusing on good, refusing to believe the lies that evil had to win.

He was not going to let the darkness win.

Lalo was gonna sit here with the lights off and just. Plain. Not. Think about it.

He could think about Romina now, though. He wasn’t that afraid of the fiery visions anymore, and the cold truth had already sunk in, finally, after all these years: she was gone. Now Lalo could just remember her, the good times. There were some good memories from Colombia and Russia, and all of them shone with her.

Someone was coming down the stairs, footsteps creaking on the old wood. Lalo really hoped it was Rupert or Cail, not something from the darkness.

“Lalo?” The light blazed on and Lalo craned his neck to squint at Cail, standing there in hot pink yoga pants and a huge gray hoodie. She grinned at him.

“Want some freaking awful ice tea?” he grinned back.

Cail walked over and leaned around him to see the bubbly iced tea on the table. “Eww. I hate that stuff. I don’t know why Rupert buys it.” She plopped down on the couch, just as heavier footsteps sounded on the staircase. Rupert came into view, shuffling around in lamb’s wool slippers and a fuzzy plaid robe. He was balder than ever, maybe from stress during everything that happened over in Mali.

Rupert peered at Cail and Lalo over his glasses. “I’m just getting something from the spare office,” he told them. “Then I’m going to bed.”

“We’re gonna play some Xbox,” Cail announced. “I’m about to beat Lalo at something. Car racing, maybe.” Lalo glanced over at her and lifted an eyebrow.

He didn’t think so.

Cail’s fiery green eyes threw a challenge at him and she got up and went over to tinker with the Xbox controls. Rupert called goodnight as he climbed back up the stairs to finally get some sleep. Lalo punched the on button for the TV and blinked at a giant Facebook screen with a picture of Cail riding a camel at the top corner.

“Crap!” Cail said. “I forgot to log out! I was using the internet down here earlier cause my tablet was updating!”

She grinned at Lalo, then they both stared at a big picture of Jonah from Ancient Texts, dapper and happy in a black tuxedo and silky turquoise bowtie. The nerdy scientist guy was planting a large smooch right on the cheek of his new wife, who wore a poufy white dress with sleeves that looked like icicles.

“Yeah, they tagged me in, like, all the pictures from the wedding,” Cail rolled her eyes. “Lucky me.” It had been two weeks since she and Lalo went to Nebraska and saw Cail’s family, the same day Jonah got married.

“They look happy. Thanks to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saved his life. I don’t want his eternal gratitude, though. I already got what I wanted. Forgiveness.” Cail looked down at the faded carpet and logged out of her account. “And here we are. California Racing. Ready to lose?”

It seemed like they played forever. All the tracks blurred into one, tunnels of waving palm trees and sparkly waterfalls and yellow checked flags that said You’ve Won.

It was awesome, being here with Cail.

Lalo thought about Wara, and wondered what she was doing these days. She wouldn’t talk to anyone since they’d left Mali. Lalo heard she had gone to her parents’ house for a while, but no one really knew where she was.

He wanted to talk with her, because it sucked how she must be destroying herself over what happened. The situation Wara ended up in, where she was supposed to watch a guy she used to care about die…it was too much. There was only so much the human psyche could take, and sometimes people snapped. It happened.

Everyone’s human, and everyone makes bad choices.

What Wara decided to do when she saved Lázaro Marquez…it tore Alejo up inside. When Lalo saw him last week, before Alejo left headquarters, he still hadn’t been the same.

He had to be missing Wara. And he had to be feeling awful.

Rupert fired them both, Alejo and Wara.

Wara because she had done the unthinkable and helped out the enemy. It put everyone in danger.

Alejo had to leave CI because Rupert knew he didn’t have what it takes to do this anymore.

Alejo was tired of the violence, and he was done.

Wara hadn’t seen the violence long, and she found out she did not want to face it any longer.

Lalo hoped they could somehow find reconciliation, because in the end, they wanted the same thing. Peace.

And maybe each other.

At some point of California Racing, all the stuff he was thinking about his friends turned into a dream and Lalo passed out on the couch. He woke up in the morning under a wool blanket, with toasty rays of sunlight piercing the blinds. There had been no fire, no burned skin or evil eye.

For three whole days in a row, Lalo hadn’t had a nightmare.

He had dreamed about Cail, and it was good.

Cochabamba, Bolivia

Four months later

“IF YOU WANT ME TO CRUNCH UP those pistachios,” Bashir said to Alejo, “you’d better help me out by watching the onions.” The muscled Pakistani guy waved a spoon at Alejo and then whirled back to the counter, showing off the back of a black tee with a big jeweled bulldog. Bashir’s black tattoos blurred into one as the guy started chopping nuts. “You know the curry doesn’t turn out the same if the onions get browned too fast,” he warned. “There’s an art to this.”

Alejo grinned and started stirring onions. They had chopped forty of them, getting ready for the Saturday night dinner rush later on at the Pakistani restaurant he was running with Bashir. Alejo knew Bashir before, when he lived in Bolivia. Nothing to do with the Prism, which was no longer working in Bolivia at all.

The past four months since Timbuktu had flown. Rupert fired him; Alejo’s boss could tell that he was just done.

Rupert fired Wara, too, because of what she did.

Then Rupert offered Alejo a job: a safe house in Cochabamba, Bolivia that CI sometimes used but did not run. The safe house in Alejo’s home city had recently been left without anyone to manage it. The house came with a space for running a business on the first floor, whatever the person in charge wanted to set up.

“The safe house is not for high-risk cases,” Rupert had explained. “Nothing exciting ever happens there.”

Well, so far, it hadn’t.

Alejo never would have foreseen this, but he was finding it fun to have a restaurant. And he totally loved Pakistani food. As soon as he got to Cochabamba, Alejo met up with Bashir for a beer and soon their restaurant was born. The place was on a quiet little alcove close to the Recoleta, a hot spot in the city for trendy restaurants and cafes. Alejo’s restaurant was tiny, but the place was looking awesome with domed lamps in ruby and jade glass, mosaics of Islamabad skylines, and the smell of curry and chai always in the air.

Cooking was pretty relaxing. Alejo just stood there, stirring a giant wok full of caramelizing onions, listening to oil spark and the fan hum overhead.

He remembered it again, just like a thousand times before: the last time he saw her in Morocco. They’d evacuated Timbuktu and spent a few days at headquarters. Alejo had spent his last night out under the dark pine trees, trying to talk with her, trying to find something, anything to keep his heart from dying.

“I’m sorry!” Wara had cried again, wrapping her arms around herself in that orange and gray hoodie, rocking back and forth in flip flops on the cold grass.

Alejo shot his eyes up to the stars, leaned against the rough bark of a tree to steady himself. Then he looked back at her, two feet and a million miles away. “You’re still in love with him? Is that what you didn’t want to tell me? Is that why you saved him?”

“No!” Wara snapped. “I…I just thought that all the bad decisions before meant I was linked to him, that I had no choice, that all this was my fault! I couldn’t let it go, be someone else.”

Alejo swallowed hard and it hurt. “And what about now?”

“Of course I don’t want…that. Him. Look, I don’t know what to think about Lázaro. He had some horrible stuff done to him, some of it by me. But the fact is, he’s gone. And I don’t want to think about him. Ever. Again. I love
you.”

That night Alejo packed up his stuff and left headquarters at first light. The new job in Bolivia was waiting.

And here he was, back in the land where he was born, after a long, long journey.

It wasn’t the same, without her. Nothing was.

When he left Wara in Morocco, Alejo had thought there was no choice. He’d lost her, and it was over. The only thing left was to try to understand. And find some way to live while feeling like piranhas were constantly ripping his heart out.

But what Lalo said to him that day back in Amadou’s living room just wouldn’t go away.

“Are you just gonna let her go?”
Lalo had said.
“People hurt each other. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.”

“Don’t let her go because you can’t forgive her,”
Lalo said.
“Just let her go if you don’t love her anymore.”

Wara said she did love him. That night when they talked about getting married and Alejo held her in his arms and painted her with henna.

She told him she loved him again the night under the pines, the last night Alejo saw her.

And so, for the past four months, Alejo chose not to give up.

He knew she was working at a coffee shop in Bozeman, and he’d been sending her little brown packages with air mail stamps from the ancient post office downtown: braided necklaces with seeds he bought from hippies in the plaza, Bolivian chocolate with quinoa, a letter he handwrote one day on paper made from papyrus.

He didn’t really know what to say, but all he could do was not let her go. And he’d told her he wanted her here, still did not want to be without her. Because he loved her.

And…Alejo had heard nothing back. Not a text, not a phone call, not even a rumor she wasn’t dumping the stuff he sent in the trash.

So, all in all, there was a hole in his life here at the safe house. He wasn’t gonna lie. But there was peace. Working at the restaurant was healing. The pace was slow. And he did not have to carry a weapon.

“Dude!” Bashir was narrowing his eyes at Alejo from across the tiny kitchen. “Leave the onions. I think I hear someone at the counter.”

How Bashir could hear any customers over the drone of the fan Alejo would never know. “Ok, I got it.”

He shook off memories of Wara and pulled the apron off over his head. Today Alejo was wearing a tight black t-shirt and jeans with a couple holes. When he’d first started cooking Pakistani food, he’d thought aprons were stupid, and ruined an entire stack of clothes with crime-scene-sized splotches of spicy oil and red pepper. Since Alejo thought shopping sucked, he’d rather wear the apron.

Alejo left the kitchen and passed the huge mirror in the hallway that led to the restaurant. His hair was military short, and he was still getting used to the black hoop earring and the black Celtic tattoo on his right bicep.

He kind of liked the look.

Alejo ducked into the dining area with its soft Pakistani music, smoking incense holder, and six totally empty tables.

Bashir was right, though. It was barely five, and people in Cochabamba usually wouldn’t show up to eat until at least seven. But there was a girl leaning against the counter, back to Alejo, checking out the menu.

A really hot girl.

Alejo, who totally never knew what to do around attractive women, stared at her as he rounded one of the tables at the wall open to the street. He pretended to fiddle with the placemats, hoping to look useful and intelligent and maybe cute before he asked the gorgeous customer if she needed anything.

Her legs were the color of caramelized vanilla, and he could see a lot of them thanks to a short denim skirt with a flare of red flower fabric around the edges. She had on these awesome leather gladiator sandals with ties that ran almost up to her knees. Then there was the tight black tank top and hair braided into a hundred braids and dangling shell earrings that brushed her bare shoulder. She had a very nice butt.

“Hey,” she said, half-turning with a twist of her waist and flashing her eyes to meet his.

Yep. She was hot.

“Uh, hey,” Alejo grinned back, took a step to walk over towards the counter…and missed the floor. His foot hit the step that went down to the street, and Alejo went down. Right into the glass and wood partition that divided he and Bashir’s restaurant from the street.

Alejo and the entire partition hit the pavement with the sound of a thousand shards of shattering glass. One of the chairs came down after him and thumped into his chest. He tried to leap up, untangle himself from the chair and the twisted wood partition frame, get out of the sea of glass shards splattered all over the sidewalk in front of his restaurant.

The people from the neighboring shops were outside and gawking. Alejo felt his ears burn as he stood up, waved to let them know he didn’t seem to be cut into shreds.

Yup, nothing but his pride.

He might have a little piece of glass sticking out of his butt, but he would take care of that in a sec.

He looked into the restaurant, and there was the girl, eyes huge, staring down at him on the street.

It was Wara.

And she was grinning.

At him.

Alejo did a double take, then felt himself start to grin. He stood there on the street with Wara smiling at him, and even though Bashir was running out of the kitchen swearing up a storm, all Alejo could do was grin.

There was a huge mess out there in the world, and a big one right here on the sidewalk.

But it didn’t matter. In this second, everything stood still and none of it mattered.

Alejo had everything he ever wanted.