Bajo Control

  It remains to be seen, now that everything has gone to hell, if you can escape the past that easily.

It is there, lurking just out of sight, just beyond immediate recall, ready to strike when you least expect it to. Your escape at seven from the hovel where your father beat you even when he was not drunk while your mother, unable to offer protection, cowered in a corner, escape in a manner of speaking because then came the first rape by a bearded tourist in that Bogotá callejón, the years surviving on the streets until you were swept up yet again in a police raid and this time dragged to the reform school and that warden and his yellow eyes and bad breath and the next rape, and then the next getaway many months later, and the job picking flowers in the fields outside the city, and no more rapes until you set out for the dream country to the far North, though on that journey it was only that once, only after the money had been stolen outside a bar in Ayutla in Guatemala, no more selling your body after that, only the desert and the miracle of a friendly coyote who hid you for six days in a cave and the crossing and—but you have told the world about this already, this and so much more, that is how you got rid of the past, by telling it, over and over, in a language you were not born into but made your own, English as a way of distancing the trauma you had lived in Spanish. Writing, not to remember, as most people do, but in order to forget, in order to erase the ghosts.

And rewarded generously, by contracts from editors and praise from critics and sales from readers and prizes far and wide, till it became an addiction: writing, you had declared, was akin to breathing, but did not add that without it you would not know how to defeat the void that threatened to devour you now that you had managed to overcome violations and wild streets, betrayals and wardens, narcos and bandidos and border guards. And you tell yourself that all would be well—oh, you keep on being caught up in illusions—if you had not foolishly answered an inquisitive journalist’s query—she was a Latina, of course—about your next work, whether readers could expect that you would distill into it the recent, hazardous weeks of working as a volunteer interpreter with the migrants detained by the Border Patrol despite the Biden administration’s promise to change Trump’s policy, perhaps, she inquired, a novel loosely inspired by your report in the New York Times magazine on the blight of their internment and the torn families that still could not be reunited, those poignant stories, the father looking for the son, the son despairing of finding the father, the three year old toddler girl who didn’t even know the name of her mother, only that she was called mamá, so how to trace that missing parent if all records had been deliberately and cruelly and systematically destroyed, could that not be woven into fiction, which often forced the public to take notice and take action and take heart more than a documentary approach?

You should have simply skirted the issue, muttered something about just doing your duty, you had been in Arizona for a few days to help and decided that you could not, in good conscience, remain in New York in the safe confinement of your swanky apartment with your wife Cindy while those homeless men and women and children were in such need of support and comfort, you knew what it was like to be a stranger in a strange land with not a welcoming smile or a friendly person to translate your plight, you were all too aware of how forcible separation from parents twisted and poisoned a boy’s existence. Or you could have explained that at times it took many years for an experience to leak into literature, or simply let her query pass, but no, you had to impress that sparkling youngish brunette with something that would serve as a headline, something catchy, algo espectacular, so you plunged into the thicket of the interview, brushed aside the idea that such a subject could be immediately fictionalized, told her reality was harsh and interesting enough, no, you responded, my next novel is heading into absolutely unknown territory, it would be—and here your voice became whispery and conspiratorial, full of shared hilarity and secrets—a comic epic, a picaresque masterpiece, you boasted, something uplifting rather than depressing. And when she wondered why, with such a unique talent to recount the stories of suffering that were neglected and misremembered by almost everybody and more so after the virus had revealed even more the inequities that had always been there, why would you choose to waste your time with anything that was not serious and grave and memorable, when she suggested that she and others were expecting some narrative labor that served our community, she had used that word, our, repeating it in Spanish, nuestra, but you had ignored what was implicit and complicit in both languages, you had retreated into the platitude that serving the truth of your art was a way of serving the community and we were more in need of comedy when our nation, nuestra nación, emphasizing our and nuestra, had just climbed out from under the curse of the pandemic and the further curse of Trump trying to hold onto power as if he were some sort of Latin American dictator out of one of Gabo’s novels, not revealing that you had been tempted to write It Did Happen Here, a dystopian fable where the States is a failed country north of the border but no, let Trump stew in his endless exile of Mar-A-Lago before being jailed for his attempt to subvert the Constitution, we need some relief, we need to let go, some nightmares are dispelled by not naming them.

Better not to let the journalist know that, after the assault on the Capitol, you had spent a whole year scribbling potential scenes from that dystopian novel, sketching out an alternative history of the United States if that insurrection had succeeded. An experimental work, to be narrated from the point of view of a series of objects: the central storyline told by a pair of shoes worn by Estrella, a fifteen year old refugee girl, probably Guatemalan, carrying the child of her rapist, on the run, that adolescent, her feet wearing out the soles and the rubber as she is pursued by the migration police and traffickers and bounty hunters. Interspersed with this chronicle of a repression foretold were other voices. A long piece of wire that had been born with the innocent dream of being used by children to create figurines in the wondrous playground of a glorious city and, instead, finds itself turned into barbed wire in a concentration camp where undocumented Latinos await deportation along with Americans who have been termed traitors and await expulsion, if not something worse. And the voice of a forlorn toy duck—it once belonged to Estrella—sinking into the sea to join millions of other venomous, plastic objects. And a vaccine eviscerated, suffocated in rubbish, aware that it contains the cure to the plague that rampages through the land, as the AVC, the Anti Vax Police patrols pharmacies and hospitals and clinics and churches and mortuaries and private medicine cabinets to be rid of every last vestige of science, back to the Dark Ages. And the bitter words of a hose trying to extinguish a blazing forest fire as it berates the T shirt of the man who wields it, Firefighters for Trump, both objects to be consumed by the flames, hose and T-shirt, as water dries up, not only for them but for the planet. Fire was, indeed, the hidden protagonist of the projected novel: it burns books, explodes inside a clandestine abortion clinic, spews from guns all across the land, travels abroad in bombs that reduce to ashes foreign cities and families. And, of course, encroaching on Estrella until her sneakers no longer speak, devoured by forces she cannot control.

But no, no, no, you had sequestered those pages away, you would not let yourself—or your readers—be haunted by that gloomy vision, no, no, no, it was time to celebrate the new America that had rejected precisely the sort of hallucinatory future he had been envisioning, he insisted to the journalist that he wanted to celebrate liberation and joy and not dwell forever in caverns of terror. The future? Cakes and ale, you said to the journalist, quoting your favorite Shakespeare comedy. And, after the interview was over, off you headed, very satisfied with yourself, straight back home to start the new novel that, it is true, you had been devising since you had put away It Did Happen Here, and even so, already sweating, not because of the exercise or from the heat shimmering from the pavement on that Manhattan summer afternoon, but because you were not that sure that you could pull this off, what you, foolish showoff, had just publicly committed to producing, a masterpiece, and picaresque para colmo. Already concerned that there would be a follow-up email many months from now from that same Nuyorican reporter whose interview had been quoted ad nauseam on social media, and, in effect, there she was, here she was just yesterday, asking—it was only natural, you had given her the initial scoop—how is the new novel coming along?, do you have any idea when your eager fans might enjoy it?, and you did not answer at all, not even with some new cliché about not wanting to talk about a novel because it drained away the creativity, impossible to admit that the book is on the verge of foundering, that silence threatens to drown you…

But it won’t, that’s what you concentrate on at this moment, not the past. What worries you is the bizarre phone conversation you’re about to have this rainy April day with your friend and best cumpa, Jeremy Bronfman, the favor you need from him to salvage the novel and your reputation, that is all that concerns you, how to save it and save yourself, even if this sounds overwrought and melodramatic.

It’s not strange, then, that you’re nervous as you dial Jeremy’s number, you will have to be careful not to divulge immediately the actual reason for the call, feel your way to the moment when you let slip what you want from him and then he’ll—what? Accuse you of hiding things from him all these months, hang up indignantly? You calm down by reminding yourself that Cindy has insisted that all will be well, but it’s not her novel, not her sanity that’s at stake, is it?

Jeremy assuages your apprehension. Attentive and tactful as ever, alerted by the awkward, uncharacteristic stutter with which you’ve greeted him over the phone, he offers you an opening. As if he’s guessed you want his help and can’t bring yourself to ask for it, you’re so used to being in control, so jealous of your autonomy, nobody succeeds by showing weakness or self-doubt, the mask of life has taught you that much. It’s particularly kind of Jeremy, therefore, to say that he hopes you’re calling to tell him the novel’s advancing, not that he wants to be nosy.

“I appreciate you asking, Jeremías,”—you always unconsciously call him Jeremías when you want to make him feel he’s special—“things couldn’t be better, thanks to you the novel’s finally hit its stride. I was just waiting for the right character to come along.”

“Great news, Arcadio, tell me more, tell me more, thanks to me, you said, not that I want to intrude, but—hey, congratulations!” “Hold the congratulations until you—This character, maybe I should tell you his name.” A long pause. Long enough for both of you to hear the drumbeat of rain pouring down on Amsterdam Avenue. Then: “Jeremy Bronfman, that’s his name.”

“Jeremy Bronfman? My name? You’re giving a character my name? For how long has this been going on?”

Jeremy does not seem to welcome the disclosure that you’ve inserted him in your novel without warning or consultation. But you suspect that he’ll come around, he’s always been eager to gallop to the rescue of people in trouble. It had been like that from the beginning, ever since you had first met him a bit after you arrived in New York thirty years ago, in your late adolescence and without a penny or papers to your name and certainly no permission to remain in this country, Jeremy was the first one to listen to the stories you were bursting to tell the world about your besieged life and how it was in danger back in your native Colombia, the stories with which you bewitched him when he sat down in front of you in that immigrant detention center and said, I’m here to represent you, free of charge, get you asylum, I know I’m young but I’ll do my best, in clumsy Spanish till you surprised him with your excellent command of English, his eyes glinting with the recognition that the nineteen year old in front of him was not any ordinary refugee. Jeremy, more than a lawyer almost right away, the friend who became your first captive audience, confirming by his admiration that you had a unique talent—yes, he was the first one to use those words—for turning the trauma of your existence and the grief of a whole continent into terrifyingly beautiful tales, proof that your gift for gab would let you talk your way out of any predicament.Just like now.

“Unless you object, compadre,” you say, and a slight inflection of Spanish nestles into your voice. Again, this is not something you do on purpose, it’s just a tic that automatically appears whenever you happen to be asking for a favor, as if to remind any gringo like Jeremy of where you come from, as if to imply, come on, man, you have second thoughts about lending me a hand after all that I’ve been through? When you realize how you are subtly manipulating those close by with this strategy each time you want help, you suppress such linguistic maneuvering, are ashamed to stoop to these tactics, someone who has thrived as you have, with three best-selling novels and a raw memoir turned into a Netflix miniseries, the illegal immigrant who rose from poverty and abandonment to make it to the very top of the literary heap, with a Pulitzer and the insinuation from a trusted source that during a second Biden term you would be a Kennedy Center honoree, not to linger on the recent Doctor Honoris Causa from Harvard, no less. In that commencement speech, in fact, you resolutely counseled the graduating students to never see themselves as victims, never engage in emotional blackmail to gain an advantage no matter what terrible things happened to them, always keep in mind how privileged we are, you and me and everybody here today, you urged them in impeccable accentless English to remember that Americans like us have absolute mobility, passports stashed away so we can travel freely, credit cards so we can cross frontiers as if they barely exist, which is why I will never feel pity for myself, you vowed to the audience, or demand special status because of the misfortunes I may have endured, but choose, rather, to focus on the migrants in peril all over the world, anonymous, unacknowledged, eclipsed, with no documents to their name except the naked document of their skin, each of them a potential Arcadio Bernales, think of them as future authors of their own destiny if they were only afforded the chance, oh what stories they could tell.

Someday perhaps you will have to reckon with the contrast between that eloquent statement and the way in which, when you are in distress, you inadvertently and oh so effectively play the victim card, the hardships-of-the-past card, the past you otherwise avoid referring to or remembering lately, the past you are determined to keep out of your new novel, turn a new leaf, a decision you reached during the long purgatory of interpreting for the detained migrants, the father yearning for his son, the daughter pining for her mother, watching your own past return to bite you in the mirror that their despair was holding up, enough, you said to yourself, basta, I need to write something that has the lift and lilt of comedy in it, something that will make people chuckle at human folly rather than lamenting our sadness. As if, yes, you really could escape who you had been, who those undocumented displaced compaňeros revealed you still somehow were. But this is not the moment for such an accounting, to question your own contradictions would dilute your ability to meet the challenge that Jeremy poses, the need to soothe and assure him, as you do now with all sincerity: “If it makes you feel uncomfortable, just say so and I’ll shred the chapters with your name in them, the whole damn book.” Really meaning it. And yet, and yet…

“Well, that depends, doesn’t it? What you’re making me do.”

“Not you, the character.”

“But it’s my name. People will think it’s me. They know I’m your best buddy. They’ll think I’m the one who—listen, Arcadio, wouldyou mind telling me what the Devil this character with my name has beenup to in the novel?”

“You know I never tell anyone but Cindy and my editor what I’m working on—golden rule—, still, I can reveal this much: my fictional Jeremy, like you, he’s an upright lawyer, a thoroughly moral kind of guy. The kind of guy my readers would be ready to trust with their lives. Just like me, I’m putting my life—well, at least my novel, which is like my child, really, given that Cindy and me, well, you know…—putting life and novel, as I said, in your hands, using you because—There’s just nobody I know that comes even close to embodying what I need: innocent but also smart, the typical good American, un gringo bueno, we used to call people like you back home, back then. The reason why I have faith in this sinful land, people like you. Is it my fault if you have such a great name?”

Jeremy gives a little grunt—a sign that he’s pleased, but that doesn’t mean—oh, you can read him like a book, poor Jeremy, he’s so transparent—, that doesn’t mean that you’ve got his consent, far from a done deal, and even if he agrees that you can employ his name, well, worse is still to come, he has no inkling of the obnoxious adventure you’re planning for him, he hasn’t got a clue.

“I don’t get it. What if you use some other name, think of me as you write but call him, whatever, Bentham Pérez or—”

You barely suppress a snicker. He’s gracioso, your pal Jeremy, you smile because that’s the sort of lame joke that the character based on him would have made, not even grasping it was a joke, asking everyone why they were tittering as he looks around the room with blinking, uncomprehending eyes, but joining in anyway, not wanting to be left out. Bentham Pérez! Nobody is called Bentham Pérez. And certainly not someone who acts like Jeremy Bronfman and eats and argues like Jeremy Bronfman and pisses and waddles like him. Totally inimitable.

“Unless you’re a writer of fiction, it’s hard to—listen, characters, once you baptize them, once they’ve been born a certain way, you can’t just pretend they’re someone else. Calling this benevolent, kind man anything other than Jeremy Bronfman, I’d sooner give up this novel and start another one.”

“Well, seeing as you’re not willing to share exactly what this Jeremy Bronfman does, maybe, you’ll just have to start another one, Arcadio.”

This hardening of tone, this, you had not expected. Why wasn’t Jeremy like his counterpart in the novel, obediently acquiescing to the role conferred upon him?

At this point your wife tiptoes into the room. Her last client must have just departed, in unmitigated, angelic bliss, suffusing Cindy herself with the joy of having healed some supposedly incorrigible sinew or soreness or sorrow. And now she has come to your rescue, yet again, yet again—though maybe she is not aware of what is going on, as she glances at you, perplexed. She silently mouths the word “Who?”, as though she hadn’t been the one to cajole you into this call, not that you want your friend to know it was her idea, so you mumble into the receiver, “Espérate, Jeremy, Cindy just walked in.” Covering the phone, you say to her: “He doesn’t seem to like the idea much, is resisting it, is what.”

“You’ve told him what you want him to do?”

“Not yet. If he doesn’t even like that I’ve been using his name, how can I…? And he demands to know the plot.”

“Oh,” she says.

“So now what?”

“Here, let me speak to him, give it a whack.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m the one who suggested the whole scheme in the first place, right? I might as well try. And he trusts me, right?”

Everybody trusts Cindy.

You certainly had, a scant few seconds after her slender, miraculous fingers had touched your body for the first time. Nothing sexual about that initial contact—though later, oh later, that early exploration of his aching muscles remain as something foundational, reverberating through the years and beds and sighs and rumpled sheets. Utterly professional, Cindy was, just as Jeremy had promised when he had steered you towards her, every Thursday this massage therapist works, free of charge, with victims of abuse, domestic and international, in the Healing Center for the Disregarded—that was what it was called, incredibly, making you even more wary. Such a pretentious, paternalistic title.

But it wasn’t the name that really fed your misgivings.

Nobody had touched your body in the last three years, not a man and definitely not a woman, understandable, Jeremy had said when coaxing that intimate information out of you, understandable for someone still suffering from the aftereffects of a trauma yet to be acknowledged, and the first step, the easier one, before going on to the mind and the heart and the memories, was to recover the body as a vessel of health rather than a bundle of nerves and pain that had betrayed him, that still induced paralyzing panic attacks. And Jeremy knew the right person for the job.

That inaugural encounter, between Cindy’s artful hands and your aching muscles, her wisdom and your needs, the way in which she immediately guessed where it hurt most, digging ever deeper, where no one had ever ventured, not even, and especially, yourself—and nevertheless, sin embargo, so respectful of what your hidden distressed cells had witnessed and been forced to ingest and accept in order to survive.

You always claimed that you were the one who first fell in love, love at first touch, you confessed to her when both of you eventually met in a different position, not you face down on a cot each blissful Thursday afternoon when she kneaded your shoulders to relieve them of the burden of too many wrong turns and treacheries, but once she had found herself a month later, on that Saturday night of their first love-making, beneath your gentle weight and discovering an appendage she had not, till that moment, handled or even seen, had not regarded, what was entering her as she had entered you before with her hands, after that nighttime excursion of yours into her depths, after that apparent reversal of roles, she had told you that most male patients, and many female ones, made similar romantic and incantatory assertions but that only in his case had she reciprocated, she was the one who had begun to make love to him with her hands from the very start, this man who had trusted the soft lightening of her fingers, the promise that she would never hurt or deceive or betray you, a temporary refuge she created on that first occasion and that would grow until it encompassed a home that you both could share. And, thanks to her advice on how to deal with those recurring panic attacks, you had learnt to control them, let them know who’s the boss, you’re in command of your body and your existence, until they had simply ceased, it had been years since even a hint of that hyperventilation, dizziness, dread had dared to make an appearance.

More the reason for you to hold back now that she demands the phone to speak to Jeremy. It’s not fear, of course not, but you don’t want to admit that you’ve failed miserably, admit to any vulnerability, lack of what she calls command, though it doesn’t take long for you to acquiesce as you almost always do. Because she answers your hesitation with a snap of her delightful therapeutic fingers, and it’s a good, clean, nice snap, nothing aggressive behind that gesture, just the way she expresses herself when she doesn’t have the time to explain anything at length to her stubbornly obtuse husband. You allow her to dislodge the phone from your hand. You’re sorry that it is so clammy with sweat but she doesn’t seem to mind, she’s an expert in sweat and sweet flesh.

“Jeremy?” she says. “It’s me, Cindy.”

They’re on speaker phone but even so, you draw closer, afraid that the April rain that is beating against the window panes will make you miss the nuances of Jeremy’s response. “Oh. Hi, Cindy.”

“I just wanted you to know that you have, without being aware of it, done a great service to Arcadio.”

“How? If it’s because he’s used my name without -”

“Do you remember when I sent you down to Arizona to retrieve him, enough was enough, he’d done his bit and it was time to come home…?”

“Only fair as I was the one who got him to publicize the plight of those kids still separated from their families, so –”

“Well, nobody else could have convinced him, so we’re already in your debt, but what I wanted to get at was that on the plane back youtold him a story that—do you remember, Jeremy?”

“Of course I do,” Jeremy answers.

You had sketched out for him what would be your Times Magazine report on those kids ripped from their families at the border and Jeremy had been enthusiastic, adding, however, that there was a far less visible and yet more urgent question, a theme worthy of a novel, what about the unaccompanied minors with no families at all who were still entering the States without documents. Despite the efforts of Vice-President Kamala Harris, some of those kids continued to be unaccounted for, being delivered, it was rumored, to fraudulent, non-existent foster homes… You were chilled by the idea: kids disappearing without even God knowing what’s happened to them, probably being abused somewhere, maybe victims of a pornography ring, maybe even being tortured for some sick pervert’s delight. And you said to Jeremy: “For those kids,” you said, “I’d do anything, anything and everything, except put them in my novel, it’s supposed to be a fucking COMEDY, Jeremy, for Christ’s sake. I’m tired of darkness and narcos and dysfunctional families. Enough tragedy already. I’ve got as much right as anyone in this country to reinvent myself, where else than in America can you begin all over again, as if from zero, which is what I damn well am going to do. And not you, not Cindy, not anyone else, is going to stop me—it’s going to be an epic comic picaresque masterpiece, like I’ll tell the first journalist who asks me, you’ll all see, I’ll surprise you and all my readers with something different and unexpected, no fierce backlands of Latin America, no magic fucking realism, no violence as a way of life, I’ll write something that makes people double up with laughter instead of crying, something jubilant, you’ll see, wait and see.

And you added, you really did, the idiotic phrase was already buzzing in your head, what you’d lob at that Nuyorican journalist, that it would be “an epic masterpiece, my best book ever.”

But then Jeremy had mentioned that a source of his at Homeland Security—couldn’t reveal the name, confidentiality, and all that—said that reports were circulating about a Homeland Security agent who was gaming the system, he and his wife, so the story went, had hidden away a large group of kids in their home, given them false identities as a way of protecting them from predators, or from being deported. No real evidence that he and his wife even exist, Jeremy observed glumly, an urban legend. You had not responded—or rather, responded by growing quiet, eerily so after your long, earnest diatribe of mere minutes ago.

Because the wheels of your imagination were churning like mad on that plane, the main threads of the novel were already weaving themselves into place, and by the time you arrived at your Amsterdam Avenue apartment you told Cindy in a non-stop dance of words the skeleton of a plot, though not quite uninterrupted, as your wife intervened from time to time, encouraged you, goaded you on, but mainly it was a one- person bravura performance. Two hours, that’s all it took for the story to be mapped out.

You turned that mythical, probably made-up Homeland Security agent that Jeremy had briefly mentioned, into Charlie, a widower with vaguely Latino origins, who brings one of the lost kids home with him on a visit, just to give the little tyke some relief, play baseball or whatever, but this childless, lonely man is so enchanted with the lovable scamp that he can’t bear to part with him. And now, Charlie is hooked. If one, why not two? Why not another one? Why not more? Until he ends up with a house full of mischievous brats, like waifs in Dickens—or John Irving, Cindy had enthusiastically intervened—, former street kids—like you, like you, Arcadio, she said, and you had agreed, yes, yes, like the ones I met and left behind, imagining they made the trek north like I did. And like me and my mates, experts at conning people, playing tricks, looking innocent but dedicated to extricating money from adults, conning them, but this time directed by Charlie, that good-hearted Fagin. Using the funds they scurry back to him to bribe agents so they’ll look the other way, these ever more elaborate scams allow Charlie to accept still more kids and feed and clothe them, cheaper by the dozen, madcap mayhem. Oh, you were happy, laughing like a little lad, as you designed each incident, as happy as Charlie himself, who was brought up in a foster home and never knew his parents and is now taking care of kids as desperate as he once was. Each niño, you informed Cindy—you were still pacing up and down—each niño from a different nation in the hemisphere. Where else than in the United States could representatives of so many Latin American republics gather under a single roof? Orphans, you exclaimed, making a journey like mine so long ago, fleeing from poverty and violence, as resourceful as I used to be. As hesitantly open to what was jubilant and raucous about the land of jazz and opportunity that was adopting them, even if the adoption was fragile and accomplished by a sham parent. Don’t Latinos have a right to something other than misfortune and sob stories and catastrophes?

And over the next seven months you wrote chapter after chapter of your roguish, picaresque novel, full of fun and pratfalls, until the day when you read those first hundred pages to Cindy and you realized, by how she reacted, you realized by how your voice was faltering, you both realized that there was a problem.

Not only that such antics risked becoming monotonous and repetitive, but that these playful adventures entailed no consequences. What was lacking in the novel was some sort of peril, Cindy noted, and agreed with you that it shouldn’t be too dark and dire, but the suspense had to be ratcheted up as to whether Charlie and his brood would be caught and exposed. Someone in the shadows has a scheme to destroy this wonderful family. Or maybe, Cindy suggests, fascists take over the U.S. government and start mass deportations, and you shook your head, that couldn’t happen here, the Democrats might not be perfect on immigration but they would never do anything like that, and as to Republicans, they were toast, Trump could not survive all the court cases and investigations and lawsuits, no, there was a reason why he had abandoned the novel, It Did Happen Here, the threat has to be credible, breathe some verisimilitude. Okay, okay, Cindy conceded, nothing drastic, simply a moment when Charlie and the niños are in danger, then the question arises: who can they turn to?

And as you and Cindy mulled who the perfect sidekick could be, a friend who’d defend the family through thick and through thin, en las duras y las maduras, she came up with a name, someone who fit the role, and that is what she is now trying to explain to Jeremy over the phone, how that had allowed Arcadio to keep writing, it was indeed a masterpiece, well on its way. “There is only one possible mystery man,” she whispers throatily to him now, waggling the receiver, “who can save Charlie, the kids, the novel, save my husband.”

And then zany Cindy starts singing, “It had to be you” over the phone.

You conjure up Jeremy at the other end of the line, smiling at the screwball situation, his misgivings melting away, his buckeye teeth protruding as he grins, and then trying to suppress that grin because he is so overly conscious and shy about his appearance, about his jutting front teeth. Oh, he was just born to play the role Cindy has saddled him with—and yes, in effect, he’s now joining in from his side of reality. It had to be me, nothing but me, getting the lyrics all garbled, the tune a bit askew, oh yes, with all his faults you loved him still/ and always will, that’s what the character would have done as well—sing how he had wandered around/, had finally found/ somebody who could make me be true/ and no longer blue,/ it had to be you,/ nobody, nobody else would do. One of the oldies you had listened to as a kid on the radio in reform school back in Colombia, that made you dream of emigrating to the States, stirred you to learn English later from an elderly gringa evangelical missionary who took a fancy to your charms, study it like a maniac night after night, determined to become an American before even setting foot on American soil, already planning to write in the language of the country you were bound for, where you would be recibido like a younger brother by someone like Jeremy, a fledgling lawyer who would offer you shelter when all the odds were against you, manage to get you asylum and then a green card and, eventually, citizenship. Suddenly, hearing him warble along with your wife, you are so grateful for Jeremy’s clumsy existence that you grab the phone from Cindy and say:

“Gracias, gracias, gracias. I really can’t thank you enough, Jerónimo.”

“Wait, wait, wait! I didn’t –”

“It had to be you, it had to be me, it was meant to be, you and me, a marriage made in heaven.”

Your euphoria is contagious and he says yes, yes, of course, he accepts that he’s the godfather of this novel and responsible for its future and well-being, he agrees, it had to be me, even if he has no idea that this is merely the first step, nothing compared to the trap you are setting for him.

And that’s when you get cold feet again,

Relieved as you may be that he’s agreed to allow his name, his every trace and tic and quaintness, to be flaunted for the public to gape at in a comical romp of a novel over which he has no control, you’re painfully aware that this was the easy part of this ordeal and that you have still not figured out how to present that other service you require from him, that crazy idea, and here you are, tongue-tied, still unable to articulate the words that will persuade him, and here he is, saying good-bye, the opportunity is slipping away, and you look at Cindy in dismay and she realizes that you’re not going to add anything, you’re not going in for the kill, and she grabs the phone and says:

“Hey, Jeremy, Cindy again. Janet’s away, right?”

“Yeah, won’t be back till Sunday. The Clean Energy Conference is—”

“What say you come over for dinner and we celebrate that you’re such a good sport.”

“Oh, Cindy, there’s really no need to thank me for—really, I’m just glad to help you guys out, you know that.”

“Tomorrow. How about tomorrow night? You’re alone and Arcadio was going to cook anyway, and it’s one of your favorites. What about it?”

And he says yes, your gluttonous friend says yes, without suspecting—Jeremy is so naïve—that it’s not just his name you need from him, he has not a notion of what your hidden agenda might be, that you’re about to ask him for yet one more sacrifice—a big one—on the altar of friendship.

You spend the next day preparing the meal, cooking him an ajiaco, a dish that you had told him, somewhat stretching the truth, was based on a recipe your abuela had sent you and Cindy before she died, more than stretching the truth as you never met that grandmother, barely care to remember the faces of your parents whom you never returned to once you’d fled into the ambiguous freedom and pain of the streets of Bogotá at the age of seven. But better that Jeremy assume that there’s something enchanted and legendary about that savory stew he loves so much, soften him up for the moment when you’ll pop the question.

You wait for the dessert—a special, clandestine treat now that Janet has him on such a strict diet, he had been pigging out as soon as the long self-isolation imposed by the virus was over—before you gather enough courage to broach the real reason for this invitation Cindy has concocted. “There’s something,” you say, so softly it is almost as if someone else is speaking these words, “I didn’t tell you about yesterday. Something I’d like you to do. For me. Really, for us.” Jeremey doesn’t blink at all in his usual way, just keeps savoring a chunk of the torta de mil hojas you had acquired, fresh, with caramel bursting from the sides, at La Querencia bakery on Broadway though you told him you had made that delicacy yourself, layer by layer.

“Sure,” Jeremy murmurs, not wanting to interrupt the feast, as if he might suddenly wake up and find out he’d been dreaming.

“Good man.”

He finishes swallowing. “Anything to be of assistance.” “Well, you’ve already contributed so much that I hesitate to… First that anecdote on the plane and then allowing me to use your name and -.”

Jeremy beams. “Glad to be of service,” he says. Adding, as he reaches for another slice of mil hojas: “Hope you don’t mind.”

Again, he’s paving the way for you, helping you to inch towards the revelation that—

“Remember the threat Cindy told you about last night, in the novel, I mean?” you ask. “Promise you won’t tell anybody about this, right, not even Janet?”

“My lips are sealed,” Jeremy answers, though they are not really sealed at all, crumbs are dribbling from his mouth.

“Well, there’s this villain—name’s Moreno—who’s hunting down Charlie and his family. It seems he’s running a corrupt network inside Homeland Security, has his own plans for migrant youngsters, not to reunite them with their families or place them with good folks but to traffic with them. Very noir-ish, a man in the shadows. And now…”

“And now?”

“He’s found him, he’s cornered Charlie, has enough evidence to put him behind bars, abduct the children, unless…”

“And that’s where I come in,” Jeremy says, his eyes shining with the elation of fighting evil, “the character with my name, I mean.”

“Yes, you end up being the real hero of the novel. This Moreno dude seems angry that Charlie is siphoning kids out of the system, but the one he really hates is Jeremy Bronfman.”

“What did I, the fictitious Jeremy, do to him?”

“It’s not only what he did. It’s what Jeremy is. The opposite of Moreno in every way. But now that this nasty piece of work has Charlie as a hostage, under his thumb so to speak, he can get to Jeremy.”

“What? Like, kill him?”

“Probably not. This is a comic epic, not a tragedy. But at this point in the novel, all Moreno wants is to exercise power over Jeremy, play with him.” You lower your voice intensely, as if the characters could hear you. “There are some twisted people out there, with a perverse sense of humor, who enjoy putting someone like you, pure, innocent, loyal, putting this guy Jeremy in a difficult position, push the limits, you know. A sort of sick revenge against the gringos, against the most gringo of the gringos. Moreno sets up an experiment, a test to see how far you-”

“The character, you mean.”

“How far Jeremy Bronfman is ready to go in his devotion to his friend.”

“So what do you need him—need me—to do?”

You take a deep breath and then: “Go into a bar and pick up a woman there and take her home with you.”

There! You’ve spat it out! Finally!

Jeremy sputters, he literally goes red, hard to tell whether because he’s choking on your demand or on that third slice of Mil Hojas. You make a mental note to use his reaction for your next chapter, but that doesn’t stop you from simultaneously pressing your case.

“Trial by fire, man. Is this squeaky clean American—known for being super tímido—is he ready to hit on a stranger in a bar—she has to be a Latina, that’s the only condition—, buy the woman a drink, convince her to leave with him, out of sheer friendship?”

“Not going to happen. I don’t go to bars. I don’t even drink. And ever since my mother told me to never speak to strangers—”

“Okay, okay, if it’s so traumatic, if you’re invoking your santa madre, no need to go all the way through with it. Once you’ve approached her, you tell this woman you pick up, sorry, you’re married, you—I don’t know what you’d say, if I knew I wouldn’t be begging you to—the mere attempt is enough, enough for you to start a conversation, no matter how awkward. I can observe the experience-”

“You’re going to be there, lurking nearby?”

“Yeah, soaking up your words, your body language, you know, when you’re forced to do something so contrary to your nature. God, it has to be realistic, right, no false notes.”

“You must be really desperate. Cindy, is he, is Arcadio that desperate?”

She has been quiet up till now, but now she nods, earnestly. “Arcadio is screwed, Jeremy. That’s the truth. He has no idea how to write the next scene. He’s been staring at his screen for hours, days on end. Not a word coming out. Everything sounds—well, phony. No matter how much he tries to imagine someone like you seducing—”

“He can’t because I can’t. Something else, anything else, let’s figure out what I might, he might– something outrageous but that—”

“Like sneaking into a Border Patrol facility,” Cindy says, “and stealing some dossier or whatever, because —”

“No! Hell no!”

“Because that, now that would really get our friend Moreno salivating,” Cindy continues, warming to her subject. “Get you to do something totally illegal, so he could blackmail you in the future, have you in his pocket.”

“Well, he’s going to have to find something else to salivate over. Because not you, not Arcadio, certainly not this Charlie character, are going to convince me to become a criminal. I mean, I’ve been approached— hush, hush, nobody knows it—for a major post in human rights in the Biden administration, the next one, you can’t ask me to jeopardize that, my whole career, reputation.”

“Hey, count your blessings,” you chime in, “nobody’s asking you to steal anything. But a bar, a girl, oye, hombre, what’s so hard about that?”

“I wouldn’t know what to say, that’s what. And Janet would kill me.”

“Janet? You’re worried about Janet? When I spoke to her she—”

“You spoke to her?”

“Before she left for Frisco, and she thought it was hilarious, didn’t she, Cindy?”

“A real lark,” Cindy interjects, “that’s what she said. As long as Arcadio is at the bar too, nearby, to make sure my man doesn’t get into too much trouble—she even wondered whether we couldn’t wait until she returns so she can also watch.”

“She wants me to do it?”

You look at Cindy, shake your head, warning her not to push too hard, Jeremy is a delicate sort of guy, always lamenting that he lacks the overwhelming self-confidence of his younger friend Arcadio. He’s probably not too pleased that you and your wife have gone behind his back and talked to Janet—and Cindy could be making it worse by telling him everything his wife had said: that the very idea of Jeremy being unfaithful turned her on, the idea that he could become somebody else, that inside him there prowled a would-be Don Juan, a Latin lover, Cindy insinuates that Janet thought it would spice up their life a bit, as long as he didn’t follow through with the lady at the bar, which Janet knew he wouldn’t, just as you did, nobody called Jeremy Bronfman, esquire, would do anything like that to his wife.

Jeremy is flabbergasted, though also, you sense, slightly gratified. “And she thought I could do it, I’d agree without a second thought?”

“Not without a second thought. I mean, your name is Jeremy Bronfman. With a name like that, you give everything a second thought and a third and a millionth thought. You think each coming event over so thoroughly that by the time the event has come, it’s gone, you have always anticipated the future minutely, exactingly, you would never do anything like this without infinite, perpetual consideration.” Not strange that these words flow to you so effortlessly. They come straight from a description you wrote in the novel itself.

“But,” Cindy adds, “you’d do it, ultimately, just like the character in the novel, the good gringo, will end up doing it, no matter the risk.”

“Though how you’d do it,” you can hear yourself speculate out loud, “now that’s an enigma because I’ve never seen you backed up against the wall like this, not even when you were, you know, engaging in, skirting, you know, irregularities when you got me asylum here and I was in real danger of being kicked out, sent back home where -”

“Enough about the past,” Cindy says, firmly. “This new novel is precisely a way in which Arcadio wants to stop dwelling in the past, leave it behind once and for all. His ultimate therapy. And the point is, for that, he needs you now. If you can pull off the bar scene, it will be a moment of high comedy, just what the novel is crying for.”

“High comedy? Me?”

“Comic relief.” You can feel him relenting and press on. “Just when the novel, towards the end, cries out for it, when the atmosphere is getting heavy with dread, so thick you could cut it with a knife. The knife they’ll use to slit Charlie’s throat if—”

“Hold it, hold it, I thought Charlie was going to jail, but no violence, you emphasized the word comic, remember?”

“The only way to avoid violence is for your character to cooperate with los malos. Otherwise, I can’t vouch for what Moreno and his thugs will do. Unless Charlie’s best friend comes through.”

“Me.”

“Who else can I turn to?”

One week later you witness the transformation of Jeremy Bronfman. He is brilliant at that bar. His pick-up line! That he recognized the sultry brown-skinned brunette morosely sipping a martini, recognized her as an extra in a movie, and when she said no, curtly, you’re not my type, much too overweight, never been in any movie, never want to be, a rejection delivered with just a hint of a husky Dominican accent, Jeremy had come back with a suave retort: that she deserved to be, that he was a pixel artist, inserting people’s faces into films, something like a digital casting agent. The girl perked up, like a wilted flower responding to finally being watered, began to warm to him, accepted his offer to pay for the next round.

And Jeremy nods, hits the ground running, not blushing even once, creating a whole new unblinking persona for himself, creating it for your exclusive use, a revelation, the very unvarnished scene straight from reality that you needed. More than a scene. A spectacle. The performance of his life. Because once the lady is hooked and ready to abscond with him anywhere, ready to be immortalized on some nonexistent screen back in a nonexistent studio, that’s when Jeremy accuses her of being an impostor, he turns in your direction, you’ve been smirking at the end of the bar, like the villain in your novel, enjoying the sheer absurd theatricality of it all, Jeremy signals with a fat finger for you to approach and you’re ready to play along, get close to the action, and then Jeremy says, this is my buddy Arcadio and I bet he’s paid you to play this role, come on, admit it—and he grins with his protruding teeth, enjoys your astonished answer, hey, I don’t know this guy, he must be drunk, and the girl looks at him and then at you, and slaps him—not hard, more like a pat, a good-bye pat, and heads to the door and waves from it. “You’re a bit old, but sweet, más dulce que la guayaba,” she says, in that husky voice from la isla, “sorry that I don’t do threesomes.” And vanishes into the night, a cliché, but one that is literally true and will play well when you write the scene, even if the next scene has your character rushing out after the girl and convincing her to visit his studio, you don’t need Jeremy anymore to imagine how that could happen.

“So how did I do? Did you like how I managed to interest her and then make sure I wouldn’t have to follow through?” You tell him he was flawless, a candidate for central casting, words you will retain when reporting back to his wife and Cindy. And that you’re beyond proud of him, so proud you’ve decided to call the novel Amistad: The Proof of Friendship as a way of thanking him, thisencounter was just what the novel was hungry for. “So you don’t need any more help?” Jeremy asks.

You tell him you aren’t sure about the next steps, whether this Moreno is nursing the idea of forcing the Jeremy character to undergo other trials, another sort of sacrifice. “Only thing sure,” you say, “is that in the novel Jeremy is so intrigued by the furtive Latina, that he ends up in bed with her, which will bring other complications.”

“What complications?” There is genuine alarm in his voice, verging on panic, he seems to have forgotten the pride of just a few minutes ago, preening about how he had aced the scene. And that flustering look in his eyes makes you feel… What? Shame at having used him in this way? Or is it something else, more disturbing, that you should be wary of how much you have relished watching him sweat and suffer, a cruel streak in yourself that you dislike?

You reach out and touch his arm, then draw even closer and give him one of your infamous Latino bear hugs.

“I’m not gonna ask you for anything else, Jerónimo. That’s a promise. Let me work with what you’ve given me so far, see what my editor thinks, here’s hoping that bastard Echols feels that I’ve hit the target. But this collaborative process, for the good of us both, is over.”

Two weeks later, your editor offers his verdict: he loves the scene in the bar and where it led, sex and blackmail and such, but feels that the stakes should be raised a bit higher, this Jeremy Bronfman –what a mentsch!—hadn’t been hassled enough. His legendary Echols eyeglasses glint in the murk of his Knopf office and you decide that you’d give Moreno a pair of glasses just like those, reflecting the last light of day as if they could kill it, that light and all light.

“I don’t know about that. My character’s beginning to crack under the pressure. If things end badly…”

“No tangos, no boleros, no whining,” Harry Echols smirks, just like you had at the bar, just as Moreno would have. “That was our agreement when I read your stupid interview with that stupid reporter, announcing that you were going to do something comic, funny, riotous, a masterpiece no less. You had a niche, Arcadio, readers who buy your books because they want more of the same. But no, you didn’t want your fans to think of you as a magical refugee from mayhem in Latin America, you were bent on remaking yourself. After the hell you went through before coming here, the hell you went through when you arrived, throw your brand away just like that. What did I say back then? You want to blow it, didn’t I say that, it’s your funeral, don’t come asking for mercy, didn’t I? Anyway, suffering is good for artists.”

“But not for my friend, he’s the one who’s in turmoil. I mean, I really love this guy. And you should never betray the people you love.”

It comes out sounding so melodramatic, so embarrassingly latino, that you blush. Maybe Echols perceived how theatrical your words sounded, maybe not—why the hell did he not brighten up his office more?

“Love is also enhanced by suffering, Arcadio, that’s how it gets taken to a different level.” He leans in towards you. He has onions on his breath, not that you mind. Where you come from, everybody is born reeking of onions and garlic, straight from the womb, and no amount of Americanization is going to change that. “Remember: whatever degree of anguish you’re feeling it’s nothing compared to the stress the real migrant kids in the real world are going through, what migrants everywhere keep enduring—and they’re still out there, fucked up. And nothing you can do about it. So the more you swelter, the more you pay your dues—and the bigger the creative payoff. Raise the stakes, now that the novel is coming to an end, that’s what I’m telling you.”

You feel like giving him a good coscorrón, see if he liked that, if that sort of suffering made him feel more love. And what the hell did he know about stress and anguish, life-threatening affliction? Instead, you simply say: “This is my novel and I’m in control. So it’s up to me to find a way to finish it on my own, no more help from anybody. Jeremy’s done too much already. Enough is enough. I’m not asking him for one more thing.”

You didn’t need to. When you arrive home, Cindy has just hung up the phone. “That was Jeremy. He says to meet you down at the Starbucks on Worth Street, the one near Federal Plaza, Arcadio. Says he’s got something to show you.”

Jeremy is so excited that he doesn’t even greet you, almost spills his Diet Frappuccino, stands up from the table making wild flourishes like a maddened Houdini.

“Guess what’s under that napkin?” It isn’t a napkin on the table. It’s Jeremy’s sweater, but if he wants to pretend it’s a napkin…—and you’re curious as to what he might be hiding, something bulky, so you just shrug, no idea. “Guess, just guess, please, man, give it a try.”

Before you can indulge his latest whim, he withdraws the sweater, twirls it in the air, revealing a thick manila folder bursting with papers, some of which peek coyly out, and again, he pleads with you to guess, what do you think is in the folder?

He’d never been this manic before, Jeremy isn’t letting you breathe a word, stops you peremptorily with the other uplifted hand like a demented traffic cop. He insists you seat yourself and then, still standing, intones, as if he were in a court room: “Your honor, I present as evidence of friendship…. Your file, Arcadio. The one that contains all the details of your case, when they were going to deport you.”

“My file?”

“I stole it, Arcadio.”

“You what?”

“I stole it. For you. For the novel. Remember what Cindy said and I answered hell no, that I’d never, well I did, I did, I went into the ICE facility, right here, next door, at Federal Plaza, and I managed to nab it, not that difficult after all.”

You are so astonished, with so many questions tumbling through your brain that you can’t begin to choose which one to pose first. For me? For me? He committed this crime for me? Risked screwing up an appointment at the Justice Department? This was preposterous. How had he pulled it off? Did he realize the consequences? Was he out of his mind? What would Janet say? Hell, what should I say?

Not that you have a chance to say any of this. He is too excited, eager for you to understand that this was not an act of insanity. He had ended up falling in love, he soberly declares, with this character out of your novel, Arcadio, the one based on him, had drawn inspiration and courage from him—had got to thinking that maybe the bar scene had not been enough to make sure the villain would leave the protagonist alone, that something more drastic was required. And that’s when he recalled Cindy’s remark about stealing a legal file and had decided that this sort of devotion would provide an impeccable finale to the book, his character is prosecuted, maybe they implicate this upright lawyer with the criminal and his mafia, this fictional Jeremy’s reputation is ruined, but nothing of that matters if it allows him to, yes, prove his friendship, his amistad and, of course, bring down Moreno with him, unmask the son of a bitch. It also felt good, really good, Jeremy as a sort of Robin Hood of immigration lawyers, he says, stealing from Homeland Security to offer safety to a rogue agent like Charlie who defends the kids instead of imprisoning them, Jeremy doesn’t repent of what he did, stealing the file. Breaking the law he had sworn to uphold made him feel… alive.

“You have to return it, Jeremy, right away. They’ll catch you and—”

“It was so easy. Of course, I needed Janet to be my scout while —”

“Janet’s in on this? Have you all gone stark raving mad?” Jeremy looks crestfallen. “I thought you’d be delighted, that it would inspire you. Isn’t it a great plot twist? Isn’t this what you wanted—to push me to the limit, see how I would react?”

It is only later, when you get home, once you had convinced him to return the file—no, you said, I don’t want to even look at it, I don’t want my fingerprints on the damn thing, it was only after you had acted as his lookout down the hall from the office housing the archives in the Federal building, only after you had seen him emerge without the folder but with a buckteeth grin lighting up his face, that’s how pleased he was with himself, with the new Jeremy that had emerged like a monster from your novel, it was only once you have wandered in a daze back to your apartment do you realize that, just as he had foretold, you are indeed stimulated by his act of grand lunatic larceny, that it was pointing the way to a resolution that had been eluding you, in spite of all your assurances that you had everything under control. Not that this Jeremy Bronfman character would get indicted, but that rather his decision to sacrifice himself for his friend could conceivably be the key to a redemptive ending, that’s what you talked over with Cindy that evening after reporting what Jeremy had done. Maybe Moreno, Cindy suggests, was secretly the long lost father of Charlie, and not really the dreadful scoundrel in the shadows that the novel had suggested he was for purposes of suspense, something like the convict character in Great Expectations. Better still, Moreno could be a father who got separated from his son at the border many years ago, thought he was dead, and now, all these decades later, this Moreno, now a multimillionaire, has tracked Charlie down, what if all these attacks were tests to make sure that he and his friend Jeremy could be trusted to head a major financial operation that would help orphans all over Latin America, keep them from emigrating– sounds so sentimental and clichéd and Hollywood, but it was the sort of ending that would tug at the hearts of your readers, would startle them by its simplicity and drama, the whole reunited- reconstituted family sprinting forth to buy Christmas presents and stuff themselves with hamburgers and fries and ketchup galore, a last minute reversal of fortune, that a country called friendship –the last words in your text—still exists in this miserable world. The only country we have left in these dire times when patriotism has become a dirty word and hatred and walls of all sorts divide us. Your fans would forgive the fact that you had changed what Harry Echols called your brand, and as for Harry himself and his editorial advice, he’d been hinting for ages that your work tilted too far to the dark side, so he wouldn’t complain either, hadn’t he crowed that inserting Jeremy Bronfman into the novel was an act of sheer comic genius, terrific how this friend of yours, he tells you when he has read the complete manuscript, has taken over the book with his enormous heart and innocence, he’s like Huck to your Jim, an American classic with a Latino twist, Saul Bellow in the barrio. You listen to his praise and can already smell the way he’ll promote the book. Though you are apprehensive when Echols adds: “A few small changes, though, Arcadio, if you don’t mind.”

Before you can bristle and answer that maybe yes, maybe no, he goes on: “There’s sure to be some son of a bitch, and more than one, who will yelp that you’re exploiting the plight of undocumented kids for your own benefit, they’re living hell while you’re milking their plight for laughs and plushily collecting royalties, so we need to nip that sort of reproach in the bud. Maybe if you offer to donate ten per cent of your royalties to some cause, Lawyers For Sanctuary, for instance. And we’ll match your donation. That should shut them up.”

You almost tell him no, you don’t want to do anything that would suggest that you are somehow guilty of turning your back on your community, why should you offer even the hint of an apology for having created this epic comedy, is anybody demanding that authors from Alabama and Mississippi contribute part of their royalties to anti-lynching memorials, why should you—someone who’s adamantly refused to ask for special treatment because of his past, someone who’s written incessantly about the tragedies that beset the Latino inhabitants of the Americas and proven that he cares by those weeks as an interpreter in the most extreme circumstances—why should I be singled out? Even so, you say yes to Echols, because you have to concede that he’s got a point. It’s best to avoid trouble, not be forced to engage in a protracted debate in this noxious environment about art and responsibility and identity politics, sidestep anything that could damage the novel whose birth has already been much too arduous