Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Eva dropped me off at the Professor’s front yard.
His house was a small concrete block in desperate need of a paint job.
Plaster was flaking off in three-foot sections, highlighting the political slogans the Professor had let kids spray paint on the walls.
There were no bars on any of the windows, and the garden was an untended tropical mess.
The steps creaked under my weight as I peered through the open front door.
“Dee!” said the Professor, coming to the door.
“I couldn’t understand your text. My generation doesn’t use absurd abbreviations.
Are you okay?” I nodded, waved at Eva, and shut the door behind me.
I flopped down on a murky brown couch that was bleeding feathers.
Just being in the Professor’s house made me feel a little better, because somehow, it felt like home.
Rugs from Guatemala mixed with pottery from Nicaragua and carved wooden statues from Cuba.
On one faded red wall hung a full-length poster of Che, exactly like the one in his office.
“What’s going on?” he asked, pouring me a cup of coffee.
“Someone threw a Molotov cocktail into one of the warehouses at Las Nubes. No one was seriously hurt. Clara thinks someone at Justice Alliance tipped off Alegre.”
The Professor just stared at me, with the coffeepot at a diagonal angle to the mug. Coffee spilled over the sides. “Why would she think someone at Justice Alliance tipped them off?”
“Because no one else knows.”
The Professor put the coffee pot down. “Many people could know. We interviewed several people, and people talk.” My hands shook as I tried to pick up the mug.
“Don’t worry, Dee. Alegre is bluffing.” He picked up a dish towel and wiped the table.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone try to scare me off with an explosion.
But it’s all show. Think of the problems it would create for them if they actually killed someone. ”
“Yeah, but ‘accidents’ happen.”
He busied himself with cleaning so I couldn’t read his expression. But he knew better than I did that people can and do get hurt over these things. He’d been in danger. He’d lost friends. He just didn’t want me to be scared.
“We just need to get the decertification process started,” he said, brightly. “Did you speak to Suzanne?”
“She’s not going to help.”
“Wow. That woman really likes to play things safe. But Matías will?”
“No.”
The Professor dropped his teaspoon. “Of course he will.”
I felt phlegm collect in the back of my throat. “Suzanne got to him. He said it’s too risky for Justice Alliance. He said they have other priorities.”
“ Matías said that?”
I nodded. The Professor’s fist curled so tightly against the saucer he was holding that he dropped it. It shattered, little pieces of clay spreading out on the hardwood floor like dirty snowflakes. Cream dripped down the wall.
“I’m sorry, Dee.” He ran his hand across his forehead.
“It’s just that I’m close to Matías, and I thought I knew him better than that.
” The Professor put his great white head in his hands, and let his emotions pass through his face in private.
I looked beyond him to the small table behind the couch.
It was full of old pictures of a girl at different ages.
The pictures stopped abruptly when she looked sixteen.
His daughter . When the Professor looked up, his face was troubled.
“It’s hard being disappointed by people you care about.
But everyone doesn’t disappoint, Dee. I want you to know that. ”
The Professor looked at me quietly. And in the negative space of the words he didn’t say, I heard his meaning. He stood up and walked back into the kitchen, hiding his feelings in the cabinets.
“So, it’s you and me and Tomás,” he said from the kitchen doorway, his voice once again even.
“But we’re not going to be successful without organizational support.
” He came back into the living room with a dustpan and rag.
He gave the floor and wall a cursory cleaning, and then leaned back into his armchair.
“It’s too bad about Suzanne,” he said. “It confirms my belief that the vast majority of Americans are self-centered. I remember when I was in Paris during the Spring of ’68, coordinating actions between the students and the trade unionists.
There was an American organizer from Massachusetts that. ..”
My mind drifted. It seemed like an interesting story, but it was unrelated to our present problem.
I needed to figure out a way to get Justice Alliance behind us, despite Suzanne and Matías.
I was deep in thought when I noticed something very odd was occurring.
The Che poster was looking at me. Like, really looking at me.
“Strike while the iron is hot!” Che cried, ostensibly just in my mind. “Smite Suzanne now! She’s a bourgeois pig!”
What was in that tea Eva gave me? Did it interact with the sleeping pills?
“Kill her now, while conditions are favorable!” cried a meticulously groomed Lenin, from a poster hanging right next to Che.
“I’m not going to kill Suzanne,” I answered, also just in my mind. I hoped. “You two need to settle down.”
“Don’t think she wouldn’t kill you if she were in your position,” said Che.
“Okay, no one is killing anyone,” I said in my mind. “We work at a nonprofit. We fight with words and innuendo.”
“Naive, feckless American. If you want to be sovereign, you must exterminate all sources that limit your sovereignty,” said Lenin. “Justice is ruthless.”
Che and Lenin both glared at me. The Professor was still talking about Paris. Was I finally losing my mind?
“Your duty is obvious,” said Che, focusing his famously penetrating eyes on my own rather meek ones. “Don’t disappoint me.” And just like that, he was an inanimate poster again.
“Dennis, I believe his name was,” said the Professor. I looked at him with a start. “Dee?”
“Sorry.” I blinked my eyes. “I was just thinking about what to do.” And having a short break with reality. “We have to find a way to force Suzanne and Matías to help us.” Without killing them.
“Do you have anything on them?”
“No. But what if we told everyone at the summit tomorrow about the corruption at Café Alegre? The social pressure would be enormous. Justice Alliance would have to help us.”
“You’d humiliate the organization,” he said. “That would be counterproductive.”
“What if we presented the information as sponsored by Justice Alliance?”
“How would we do that?”
“I know.” I got up, suddenly energized, and headed to the door. The Professor followed me. So did Che and Lenin.
“Don’t forget what we said,” said Lenin. “Smash in her bourgeois skull!”
“Be a New Man!” said Che, swinging his machete above his head. “Smite the opponent of the people!”
“What are you looking at, Comefuego ?” asked the Professor, following my line of sight.
“Nothing.” Definitely not imaginary bloodthirsty revolutionary friends. “Let’s go.” I looked at Che and Lenin. “Not you two.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the Professor and I were sitting in his office at the university, trying to become proficient filmmakers.
I had remembered that Justice Alliance was going to show a promotional video for the Truth Trip tomorrow at the People’s Alternative World Economic Summit.
So the Professor and I were going to hijack the original and show our version to three hundred attendees, plus whomever was watching on the livestream.
This public airing of Café Alegre’s crimes would put Justice Alliance in a position where they had to help with the decertification of Alegre.
I wished we could out Alegre’s dirty deal with Café Bavaria, but this was the one piece we didn’t have solid evidence for.
It was humid and warm, so we had all the windows open. I looked at the outline of palm trees against the dark-blue sky, and the soft orange glow above San Pedro. It was strange to be in a school building right now; heat and night weren’t things I associated with academics.
“This is how you spend your evenings?” asked the Professor, as I downloaded all my footage onto his computer. “Don’t you have a boyfriend? Where is he?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend anymore. I was kind of cruel to him.”
“People have a way of forgiving cruel behavior when there’s infatuation involved,” said the Professor. “It helps you forget a lot of things.”
“That’s true.”
And then it hit me. What I had felt for Matías wasn’t true affection; it was infatuation. He was a fantasy I had concocted; a cipher, the perfect revolutionary knight.
But Adrián. He was real. And he had consistently been there for me. Joining me on political adventures he had no interest in—or even flat-out disagreed with. Pushing me to be brave, but also accepting me as I was. Maybe he didn’t fully understand me, but he valued me.
“Could you excuse me for a minute?” I asked the Professor.
The Professor graciously pretended our conversation and my request were unrelated. I went into the hallway to coax food out of the vending machine, then picked up my phone. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. I didn’t know exactly how things had changed for me. I only knew that they had.
“ Preciosa .” Relief flooded Adrián’s voice when he heard mine.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You wouldn’t answer your cell, so I kept calling the house.
Eva insisted she didn’t know where you were until I told her it was an emergency.
” Sweet Eva, doing her best to keep up with my complicated love life.
“She finally told me you were at the Professor’s, so I went there, but the house was dark. ”
“We’re at the university.”
“Can I come there?”
I closed my eyes, considering. The air was so heavy with consequences. “We’re in his office.”