Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

listened to my own lungs take in the smoke. “Tell me what happened to Javier?”
    “We didn’t have your number. We didn’t know how to contact you.”
    “What happened?”
    “Thursday night—,” Sofia looked at Magda.
    Magda nodded at her.
    “They came.”
    “Who?”
    “Some men. They had rifles. Or maybe not rifles. Weapons. We heard them. It wasn’t dark yet. They were dragging Javier out into the street. They were rounding up all the men from the neighborhood. They must have been looking for someone in particular. So they took them all.”
    Magda lit a cigarette. “She wanted to stop them, but I didn’t let her out of the house.”
    I nodded and looked at Sofia. “You’re a lion. But they would have killed you.”
    “Maybe they haven’t killed anyone.”
    “You believe that?”
    Magda looked down at the floor. “They were looking for someone else. It was all a mistake.”
    “Do they let their mistakes live?”
    15.
    I drove to the U.S. Consulate. They were closed on weekends but there was always someone there. I managed to get the attention of one of the chauffeur’s who was sitting in a car inside the gate. “I’m a friend of Javier’s,” I yelled.
    He walked to the gate. I introduced myself. He gave me his name. Manuel. He shook my hand. “Javier reads your books,” he said.
    I nodded.
    I told him what Magda and Sofia had told me.
    He shook his head.
    He let me in. I sat alone in a waiting room. Manuel walked back into the room and asked me for my cell phone number. He walked out of the room. A few minutes later, I got a call from a man named Neil who worked at theconsulate. “Manuel told me what happened to Javier. Can you tell me the story again?” So I told him. “Oh no,” he said. I could tell he had some respect if not some affection for Javier. He told me they would do what they could to find out what happened to Javier. I don’t think he was lying. But they would find out nothing.
    The consulate never received any information regarding Javier’s disappearance. And if they did, they did not share it with me.
    For a week, all I did was search. I spoke to Javier’s neighbors. No one said anything. Everyone was afraid. Some of them had lost their own men in that raid. Their sons. Their fathers. One woman told me to go back to El Paso. Y no vuelvas. Nadie sabe nada. Y si saben no te van a decir. She was right. No one was going to tell me anything.
    I went to the police.
    The police told me that they’d received a phone call from the consulate and that they were looking for Javier. “He’s probably just running away from his wife and his responsibilities.” That’s what I was told. I didn’t bother to tell him that I was as close to a wife as Javier would ever have.
    I went to the newspapers.
    I talked to lawyers.
    I talked to human rights activists.
    I talked to my congressman.
    No one really wanted to talk to me. I began to understand what it feels like to be invisible.
    I thought of looking in the desert, but where in the desert would I look?
    He was gone. Javier. And I knew I would never see him again. I was angry at my own heart that refused to give up hope despite the fact that I begged it to give up. I began spending weekends in Javier’s small apartment. Magda andSofia told me that I was putting myself in danger. “I don’t care,” I said. “They can take me too.”
    I would call the consulate three or four times a week.
    I would visit the police station and ask questions.
    I kept talking to reporters.
    I would sleep in Javier’s bed and dream him back to life. The dreams were all the same. He was happy and reading a book. He was touching me. He was making love to me. We were walking down Avenida Juárez holding hands. I would wake to his books and to his plants. I always called his name and waited for him to answer.
    I never cried. There was nothing but the numbness of my angry heart.
    I stopped calling the consulate.
    I stopped calling the police.
    Months passed.