I was really nervous,” Emanuel said, tucking his hands under his armpits. There was a smell resembling a mixture of ammonia and vinegar in the small office, and I wondered if it was coming from him. “I was pacing back and forth in the living room. It was hot and still. I tried to stay cool, ya know? I dunno, maybe it would work out. We’d go to the beach, maybe stop at a restaurant on the way home. I could get out and make the call, pick up the stuff and be back before they realized I was gone. It was the last time, I swear.”
“Go on.” His eyes bore in to mine. Every breath he took appeared labored.
“Mariangelie was already packing her beach toys. She was so excited. I told Marisol I had business that I didn’t want to mix with pleasure.” He looked away. “No real Puerto Rican goes to the beach in any month with an ‘r’ in it, but Mariangelie kept pestering me. Begging to go to the beach. Then Marisol got in on it. I didn’t want to bring them but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
He began to drum his fingers on the oak grain surface of my desk. “He called my cell phone and asked me if I was ready. He said not to screw it up. My heart almost jumped out of my chest.”
“Who called your cell phone?” I scribbled a couple of notes in his chart. The drumming had begun to annoy me but I hesitated to say anything.
“That bastard, del Toro.” His eyes flashed. There was something dark and tormented behind them. “I drove down to the beach at Boqueron with Marisol and our little girl. The heat and the smell reminded me of being down by the docks when I was a kid. Mari was tired and fell asleep in the car sucking her thumb. Marisol asked how far it was to Cabo Rojo and it pissed me off. The highway winds through the mountains like a corkscrew and it was hard driving.”
I had been to Puerto Rico. The image of skinny, flea-bitten dogs lying in the shade of coconut palms at the beach barged into my mind as he spoke. Matt and I had gone when Dane was a baby. Matt’s parents had watched the kids. Now I’m glad we had a second honeymoon. Besides the unwanted and abandoned animals I’d cried over, it was a perfect trip. With a start, I realized Emanuel had been talking while I’d been lost in the memories of moonlit walks and making love during the hot tropical nights.
“ … I told her it was another hour and drove faster. Then she asked what we were really doing there. I didn’t want to talk about it. I never wanted her and Mari to come that day. It was something I had to do and then I was gonna be through.” He stared into the distance. “The road continued to the coast, where it ended on this sandy road at a desalinization plant. I was supposed to be at the plant at eight. I had a bad feeling and wished we hadn’t come. Then I turned left and headed toward Boqueron Beach.”
I closed my eyes and visualized the scene. “What happened when you got to the beach?” The tension in my office rose quickly as Emanuel described that day.
“Boqueron Beach stretched for miles. We found a spot under a palm and Mari jumped up and down, grabbing my hand, wanting me to take her to the water. Marisol smeared sunscreen on her and I held out my hand. Mari wrapped her fingers around my pinky.” Emanuel paused to wipe his eyes. “I kept looking at my watch and Marisol asked me again what I was so uptight about. She told me to relax. It was a gorgeous day. She just wanted to have some fun, ya know?”
I remembered Caleigh at that age and the trips to the lake Matt and I had taken with her when she was a small girl. It was hard to hear Emanuel’s story, knowing its tragic end.
“I raced Mariangelie and held her hand while she dipped her toes in the water.” His eyes softened and he laughed a small self-conscious chuckle. “The water came up to her shoulders and she shrieked each time a wave lapped her. She grabbed my hand, and yelled to Marisol to look at her.”
“What else do you remember?” Although it was late and I was scheduled to see another patient, I pressed on, wanting Emanuel to keep going.
His eyes clouded. “I wanted to leave them at a restaurant to wait for me but they wouldn’t stay behind. Mariangelie was worn out and fell asleep in the back seat. Salt-water lagoons and lime cliffs with a two hundred foot drop into the ocean surrounded the lighthouse. It got dark as we got closer. Again, Marisol asked me what we were doing there. I yelled at her to shut up and told her to just stay low and keep quiet. I told her I was meeting someone and we couldn’t leave. I was picking up something for del Toro. She said she didn’t trust him.” He put his head in his hands. “Ay, Dios mio, I wish I had listened to her.”
The room grew silent. It was that critical moment in therapy where the patient confronted his deepest fear and darkest memory. I cleared my throat and said, “Sometimes the scariest moment is just before you say it. After that, things can only get better.”
“Huh?” Emanuel shook his head, looking everywhere but at me. “I parked the car, killed the engine. Opened the window. We heard the sound of waves crashing against the rocky coast. Mariangelie stirred in the back and headlights rounded the bend, coming toward us. Marisol told her to go back to sleep. I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a voice at the window asking me, ‘Manny, you ready man?’ He was wearing a black tee shirt and jeans and came up to the driver’s side. I didn’t know him. He said, ‘Let’s go, man. I want to get out of here.’ Then, I followed him.”
Emanuel’s eyes were glassy. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His breath came in gasps. “I told Marisol I’d be right back and to stay in the car. I got what I needed and ran back to the car, popped open the trunk, got in the driver’s seat and started the engine.”
My office was the size of a walk-in closet in some of Rochester’s new subdivisions. It was so still that the fluttering of a wilted leaf falling from the ivy plant on my windowsill drew both our attention.
“She kept bugging me about what I was doing and I yelled at her to shut up. The other guy ran across the road and got into his car. His tires peeled as he turned his car around, one hundred and eighty degrees. I turned around on the narrow road and followed. There was a roadblock ahead of us. The guy had been pulled over to the side, and the fuckin’ D.E.A. agents surrounded his car. I don’t know how they knew. I pressed on the gas and plowed through the roadblock. Marisol screamed when they fired at us. Cabrones.” He slammed his hand on my desk. “When I get outta here, I’m gonna kill that guy.”
“Who would you kill?” I sat on the edge of my seat and held my breath. It was still disconcerting to be in such a small space with someone who had just said ‘I’m gonna kill somebody’ in his previous breath.
“Anybody who gets in my way.” He knew enough not to threaten the FBI agent by name. “They’re gonna pay.”
He stared out the window and I had the sensation he was so tightly wound, he could have sprung forth at any moment. My autonomic nervous system kicked in, flooding my body with adrenaline. My face and hands flushed a prickly red. The radiator wheezed, making the room uncomfortably warm. “You know I have to report that you have made a threat against someone’s life,” I said in measured tones. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.” I’d asked the nursing staff to keep a close eye on him for the remainder of the day.
“I haven’t heard a thing from Marisol.” He wrung his hands as if he hadn’t heard me. As if he hadn’t just mentioned murder. “Even though I’ve written her every day.”
I took a moment, framing my thoughts before I asked, “What were you expecting to hear?”
“Anything. I just want to know they’re okay. I want to know she still loves me.”
I wasn’t sure this was the time to tell him what happened or even if he knew what had happened. Afraid he would lapse into another catatonic state, I said I wanted to increase his medication and he nodded as tears rolled down his cheeks. I winced at his unwavering despair. The first stanza of “Invictus,” a poem I loved, came to mind:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
It had been a bad morning. I was exhausted by the depth of his emotion and still disturbed by Finn’s sad story and Bud’s simmering anger. And about the way he had groped me at the party. Several scalding showers later I still couldn’t get rid of the feeling of his hands on my body. I noted Emanuel’s homicidal ideation in his chart and called the warden.