House Arrest Read Free Page A

a volume of contemporary poetry, I glance up and see the woman. She is lying flat on a shelf, her skin pasty white, her dark hair perfectly coiffured, red lipstick, a sheet pulled up to her chin. Slamming the book down, I dash back into the darkness, my hand pressed to my mouth, because I am certain she is dead. Then I notice that the airport is full of these women, lying on pallets, wrapped in sheets, on the floor. They are workers on the graveyard shift, but they all look dead. At any moment I expect them all to rise up. Overhead Muzak plays “Guantanamera.” Innumerable fliesand mosquitoes buzz around my head; I swat blindly at the air, slapping myself in the face.
    As I stand here, I realize that it was in this room that I first saw Isabel. Or rather first noticed Isabel, because my sense was, even then, that I’d seen her before. But it was here in this departure lounge that I noticed her darting eyes, caught her furtive glance. I saw her the day I was departing on an excursion to Puente de Juventud, the Bridge of Youth, a beach resort twenty minutes’ flight away. Manuel was waiting with me in this same airport where I am being detained when I noticed the young woman, close to my age. She was hugging people who were leaving, greeting others who were arriving. Her laughter echoed through the lounge and everyone seemed to know her, even the guards and officials.
    The jeans she wore were too big and the navy blue sweater was too heavy for the season. It seemed as if she was wearing clothes borrowed from a man with whom she was intimate. But it was her black eyes that caught me as they skitted from person to person, from face to face. She gazed across doorways as if she was involved in contraband or some form of espionage. I’d seen things like this at airports before. But she seemed to be searching for someone she’d lost in the crowd.
    It was Manuel who told me who she was. Of course, the moment he told me, it was as if I had already known. Everyone who’d been to
la isla
knew who she was. And then he said, If you like, I’ll arrange for you to meet her. He was a distant relation, a cousin by marriage, but they were the same age and had grown up together. She likes to have visitors, he said. As you know, he told me, though I didn’t at the time, for years she has been trying to leave.
    My heart pounds in my chest. Once I captured a babyrabbit in the woods and its heart beat this way in my palm. My mother said it died of fright. Now I curl up on the bench in a little ball, teetering on the edge. A driving rain falls, hitting the picture window. Outside three jumbo jets sit idle, waiting to take people away.

Two
    T HE POLICE CAR speeds along the outskirts of Ciudad del Caballo. Though it is a Monday afternoon, the beige, nondescript car does not need its siren because the streets are empty, as if everyone is asleep, as if they have decided to stay home. Teenagers ride bicycles in the middle of the road, ignoring what little traffic there is. A whole family rides on a single bicycle like a circus act. Dodging potholes, they wave as we pass.
    We drive by shantytowns, tin-roofed shacks held together with plywood and cardboard. Small children race to the roadside, dirty faces staring at us. Shabby dogs and one-eyed cats stagger across the road. The sunlight is so intense that I have to shade my eyes. Major Lorenzo puts down the window and a blast of hot air blows into the backseat. Warmth seeps into my bones. “Perhaps that is too much wind?” he asks, but I tell him no, it feels good.
    He drapes his arm across the seat where his driver sits. His nails are manicured, buffed. He wears a gold watch—aRolex—that shows the time to be just after noon. He and his driver, who is hidden behind reflector shades, exchange glances. Both men wear short sleeves that reveal sturdy, tanned forearms. “Are you hungry?” Major Lorenzo asks me. “Have you had something to eat?”
    “I had breakfast,” I answer, thinking of the