Chapter 7 #3
“But you said you can’t help me.” It’s said through the smallest yawn, as she wipes a straggling tear from the corner of her eye.
“Doesn’t mean I won't try.”
When she leaves, I don’t return to any of the plans I originally had for the night, instead I flip the page on the yellow legal and hit dial on my phone.
Lucas answers on the second ring, of course he does.
His voice is thick with sleep but not bothered, it’s a quality of friendship I don’t acknowledge my gratitude for enough but am constantly aware of.
“Hud, what’s on fire?”
“I need a favor.” I am already pacing, across the living room, through the dining room, around the kitchen island, the circuit I do when I am thinking hard and moving is the thing that helps it. “An immigration attorney, someone with success on overstays.”
The silence on the other end is long. I doubt it’s because he’s fallen back to sleep. From somewhere behind him I hear it. A sleepy laugh of his wife, Paola. “Is that your girlfriend? Tell her not to call so late.” He responds with a laugh and soft affectionate whispers of his own.
“Go back to sleep, my love, I have some business to take care of.” They have the easy affection of two people who have been choosing each other long enough that it has become the constant state of their lives rather than something they have to think about doing.
I’m the guy who has to think about it, and still falls short.
“You there?” he asks, tone a bit louder than before, meaning he relocated to his home office to give his sleeping beauty the respite. Or save himself the mocking. The quality of his voice adjusts to the seriousness of the call.
“Yep,” I say quickly. As I keep adding thoughts to my list.
“Okay,” he says, and I imagine him like me, with a notepad ready to write out every critical detail. “What’s going on?”
“I have a friend, a British national. Overstayed derivative status after aging out. Sixty days post-deadline, preliminary notice received. Likely a formal termination letter in the same stack of mail.” Giving him all the same information I have. “I’ve just emailed you a photo of the notice.”
“Sixty days?” he asks, confirming what I think he knows well enough.
“Sixty days,” I reply.
“Okay, so here’s the deal, Hud. That’s not a hurdle, it’s a brick wall.
” I run my hands through my hair, closing my eyes to listen more closely to what he’s saying.
As if by closing my eyes, I’ll be able to hear something different, with more clarity, more of a solution.
“I did work on a case like this years ago, when an executive’s visa was revoked after unauthorized travel.
I can give you the name of someone who can take a look, he’ll handle a messy one.
But I’m gonna be honest, he’s going to charge you out the nose to tell you exactly what I’m about to. ”
“Which is…”
“The options are essentially nonexistent for an overstay. They are cracking down on things like this. One, she can leave voluntarily. She’ll have to accept a multi-year bar on reentry.
Maybe this can be negotiated, but it’s not hopeful.
Two, she ignores it and stays, gets caught, ends up with a ten-year bar.
Three, she finds an employer to sponsor her, but given what you’ve shared, she sounds too freelance for that to be an option, so that’s not promising. ”
“There has to be something else, man.” I’m beginning to feel as defeated as Louisa looked.
There are so few things in my life I haven’t been able to lawyer my way out of.
Hell, most of the time, it wasn’t even my law degree that solved the problem.
It was just the fact that when I set my sights on something, I made sure that something came to fruition.
“You know as well as I do there is one more option,” Lucas says, and I stop moving.
“Adjustment of status through an immediate relative. Marriage to a US citizen. It’s the only mechanism that automatically waives an overstay and clears unlawful presence in a single instrument.
Everything else is appeals and negotiations and hoping someone gives you a window that’s already mostly closed.
” Another pause. “It's a silver bullet. But she’d need to already be engaged, or pretty close to it.”
My pacing feet walked me right to my bedroom, staring at the wall.
The wall that separates my apartment from hers.
The wall that has been, for months, the border of our particular war.
She is on the other side of it right now.
Lucas has inadvertently set me up with one solution to many problems, not just hers.
Mrs. Saraceno thinks I’m just looking for a bachelor pad?
What better way to show her that’s not true, than a wife.
Having Louisa as my on-paper spouse isn’t a bad idea for either of us. And I bet Lucas knows it.
“Did I say friend?” I say, “I meant fiancée.” The silence on the other line is a man who knows me well, and is proving it by not saying the obvious thing out loud.
“I thought you did.”