The Other Side (18 page)

Subsequent articles describe slim chances of extradition: under a provision of the recently revised Venezuelan constitution The Suspect's dual citizenship with Venezuela and the United States protects him from extradition.
It's not clear
, the captain says,
when or whether The Suspect can be returned
. The authority of the United States government to extradite in this case depends on interpretations of citizenship based on the laws of Venezuela, matters that can easily end up in foreign courts.
It's a very difficult and complicated area of law
.

One article in the university student paper describes the process of sending the warrants to Venezuela: Interpol notifies the Venezuelan government that one of its citizens is wanted on felony charges in the United States, but officials there may or may not arrest him and transport him to the
US
embassy. Even though a treaty has existed between the United States and Venezuela since 1922, the article explains, the new constitution under Chávez makes things a little more complicated.

The article in the university student paper is written by a woman I will meet one night, after I have returned to my new apartment, after I have started taking medication, and
have found a job at the university press, and have started fucking the man who will become My First Husband. My Good Friend and I have gone out drinking. We're settling into a booth when she points to a woman across the bar. The friend of a friend of a friend. The woman sees us both, comes over to our table, sits down. Maybe she introduces herself as a journalist before putting her hand on my hand.
I've been writing about what happened to you
, she says in a near whisper, her tongue piercing clicking against the back of her teeth.
Don't worry—click—your story's safe with me
.

According to a resume he has posted on a website for freelance translators, in the years between 2000 and 2007 he works a variety of editing, translating, and interpreting jobs, sometimes for large, international corporations. He spends time as an interpreter for the Venezuelan lower courts. He translates a Motorola cell phone instruction manual and its product description from English into Spanish. He edits several titles on conflict management for the University for Peace.

During those same years I marry. I divorce. I marry again. I change addresses at least once every year. I give birth to a child. Less and less frequently I e-mail The Detective to ask about the case.
Any changes? Any news?

One Halloween, seven years after the kidnapping, an e-mail from him appears in my inbox. He has just been released from jail in Venezuela after a failed extradition attempt and wants me to finally and officially drop the charges in the United States.
I hope you'll consider my plea
, he writes.
And I would like to hear back from you even if it's just to say that you're sorry. Even if you decide not to respond to this message,
I wish you all the best
.

I close my laptop screen and draw the blinds. I lock all the doors and turn off the television. I pull my daughter out of bed and call her father in a cold sweat. We're hiding on the floor in the kitchen when he finally bursts through the front door, dressed as Clark Kent for a Halloween office party, his tie loosened and pulled to the side, his shirt half unbuttoned, the blue fabric of his Superman t-shirt visible underneath. I call The Detective, who now works as a lead investigator for the county's prosecuting attorney. He wants me to respond to the e-mail, to try to bait him, to lure him back to the United States one last time.

That night we trick-or-treat like regular people. In the photo, I'm dressed as a sheriff, looking like I've seen a ghost. Or I am a sheriff-ghost. We walk up and down the streets of our
suburban neighborhood. My daughter keeps pulling her hand from my hand. I am holding her too tight, picking her up too often, trying too hard to rush her back home. All the while I'm looking and looking and looking over my shoulder.

In the morning I write to The Detective to tell him I can't do it. I can't set the trap. I can't be the bait.
I have too much to lose
. I remove my profile from all the social networking sites. I call all of my former employers and ask them to pull my bio down from their websites. It's the only thing I can think to do.

But somehow he's the one who disappears. Maybe he's been murdered or has changed his name. I can see that his ex-wife and half brothers are “friends” on Facebook, a fact that makes me both worry and hope. Maybe one of them knows where he is, whether he is still living, but I can't bring myself to write to them.

Each morning I look in the backseat of the car before I pull out of my driveway. I search the rearview mirror while driving my children to school. I scan the parking lot before unbuckling them from their seats.

Back home, I sit at my desk and watch for him out my window. I do not leave the house after dark. I turn the lights off at bedtime and lie awake in fear that he will come into my house and kill me while I am sleeping.

If I sleep, he brings a gun into my dreams.

I used to have this wooden comb he bought for me on a beach in Mexico. A few yards up the beach, lobsters smoked over half-drum grills. The old woman came to our blanket, putting beautiful carved things in my hands: a horse, a bracelet, the comb. After I'd used it on my hair every night for years and years, the handle snapped off. And then I kept it in a drawer until I caught my daughter running it through her hair and finally threw it away.

I still have coins from Belgium and Hungary and Spain. I think I have a few Danish kroner tucked into a book somewhere. I kept the watercolor paintings we bought from a street artist in Prague—they hang in the only hallway of my house—and a stein I stole from a
Biergarten
in Germany. I never wear the beautiful silk shawl from Spain, though I've kept it. I kept no fewer than thirty postcards I never wrote on or sent.

I left behind the two skirts he bought for me in a market in Amsterdam. But I kept a strand of glass beads he bought from the same market, the same day, each orb an imperfect apology for the bruise on my face.
An accident
, he insisted. Or maybe he admitted he did not love me. Afterward, we slid into a series of low-slung booths to order hash from a menu and sink into a wordless haze, which sent us toward the narrow red-lit streets, toward those women who stand and kneel and bend to press against the glass. I envied them that glass,
the explicit transaction, the lock on the door.
What was the word there for silence? Something about an attic room. A flowering tree: how the blossoms open and are lost instantly.