In just three days' time, Gabe had endured a jarring interaction with a highway patrolman, the sobering meeting that ensued in the trailer with Eddie and Otero, and now Miguel, haphazardly bearing his soul after a year of silence. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised by it all, given the historical tendency of distressing events in his life to cluster.
The night his father died, for example, had followed the worst argument between his parents he had ever witnessed. As Gabe became acquainted with the family business, he was made aware of his mother's contempt for it, so silent that it was at times deafening. And occasionally, she was not silent. "You are like a black hole," she said to her husband with a sober and sharp tongue one night in the kitchen. "You draw everyone who is close to you closer still, into this evil industry. You capitalize on the destructive vices of so many strangers. And you also put yourself and those close to you in danger."
They probably had thought Gabe was out of earshot, behind the closed door of his bedroom, but instead he had been reading on the living room floor.
"Let it go," his father shot back. "That guy was way upstream, far from us. Besides, he got himself killed. He was mixed up in his own problems. He made his own enemies. I have none."
"Otero fed you that. They were after what he carried."
"Otero fed me nothing. I know the story myself, just like I knew the man. He brought it on himself, Bonnie. He got mixed up in some other stuff that has nothing to do with us. They took the goods he was carrying as an afterthought. They didn't even know what the hell it was until they opened the goddamned packages."
"Otero convinced you. You believe everything he tells you...but you will never see it that way, will you? And now our son is out there, alone at night, carrying all of that..."
"He is safe, Bonnie. He is protected. I promise you."
"He is your own son, Marco. Are you even listening to yourself speak? I was silent when you took Eddie. I didn't know the risks then. Eddie was twenty-two, Marco, remember? He was just a kid. And now, it's my baby, my Gabriel...and at seventeen..."
"The boy is old enough, and it's about time he goes to work."
"He is still a child." Her voice broke as she said the words.
Gabe had turned his head so that his ear was pressed against the wall separating him from the kitchen. The fight escalated from there. At its dramatic peak, Gabe's mother climbed onto the countertop, pulled a wood-framed clock from the wall and smashed it against the linoleum floor. A shard of glass ricocheted through the doorway and fell to rest on the rug, next to his knee.
Maybe something within his mother had, by that point, already begun to seize. Maybe a broader part of her consciousness had been swept up early into the building wave of tragedy that would soon crash over her, even as Marco stood before her then, steaming with frustration, a seeming vision of health. Looking back, it did not seem impossible to Gabe that the universe could operate in this way.
Late that night, the call came through. She was fully trampled then, the irony of the extraneous nature of his death completely lost on her. She lay prostrate at the foot of her white bedroom vanity, her wails bearing a blackened sear as the event she had long-feared finally came to pass.
On the day of the funeral, Eddie approached Gabe's mother as if they knew each other well, though to Gabe's knowledge they did not. He offered his condolences. Gabe stood close by as Eddie said something to her in Vietnamese, but he spoke quietly and the subject was nuanced, so Gabe had not comprehended it. After that day, his mother would fall silent over the idea of his entering the trade, and if she ever did caution him, it took the form of familiar, generic warnings about life's dangers—the warnings of any parent. Gabe would never find out what Eddie had said to his mother; maybe it was something extraordinary, or perhaps just a few healing words lifted from the cooling manger of her native tongue.
Eddie had come next to Gabe. Lydia came alongside him. She looked small and pretty but very pale at his side. He said, "My life will serve as a buffer for yours. I will protect you."
As Eddie's words clicked into place, Gabe's surroundings had sprung to focus; the dry cemetery grass crunched under the couple's shoes as they departed from him and wind came droning through the fronds of the palms lining the edge of the grounds (where he could have sworn some odd, tall and thin figure moved around earlier, but where was this person now?).
It became clear in that moment: The best way to honor his father would be to continue down the path laid before him. Even setting all of that aside, Gabe had been deeply compelled to begin making the deliveries on his own. The weeks that followed felt like the start of a life and days that finally mattered, even as they were drenched in the wrenching pain of loss.
;-;
A car's headlights stretched out laterally behind him before its joyriding driver darted over one lane to pass. The twin-kidney grille of a BMW flashed across his driver-side mirror, engine roaring behind its bars. The car leapt ahead. Its taillights became small and distant, and the night enveloped him again in its calming shroud.
Many buildings surrounded him now, tall glass obelisks reflecting the moonlit sky. He made out, in quick instances, a glowing living room or kitchen or bedroom which was level with the elevated freeway: hulking big-screen televisions, unfurling brass fixtures, sprawling black leather furniture...and sometimes the inhabitants themselves who were up all hours, even baring their naked bodies, categorically unconcerned with drive-by snoops such as Gabe.
Thank God, he thought, for all the distractions of the world.
In the early hours of the morning, the Orange Line resumed its lazy passes. As always, it had begun making its rounds by the time he parked the car in the gravel lot, walked slowly along its dusty lanes and came to arrive at the platform. A display listed the next train to arrive in twelve minutes, at 2:50 a.m. Sometimes he managed to catch the 2:30, but more often than not, it happened just like this.
Central Station was the largest in Las Sombras, buried in the middle of downtown, incorporating two malls and serving as a hub for eleven of the city's nineteen lines. It was one of just a few places left in the city that still captured Gabe's childhood sense of wonder. An incongruous and (to newcomers) inscrutable labyrinth of corridors, the station had amassed slowly over more than a century. Walls were a convoluted patchwork of materials, with many decades' worth of changing sensibilities reflected in wood and steel, glass and clay, velvet and porcelain, the transitions between them often jarring. While many in Las Sombras complained that it was ugly, or inefficient, or in need of upgrades, Gabe instead wondered: Who could not love such a beast?
He left toward a public restroom, delaying his departure from the terminus platform of the Emerald Line. It was a neglected, distant facility at the end of a long, dim hallway, paved in splintering yellow tiles. The shadowy tunnel had once carried passengers to and from the bustling Odin Line platform, now abandoned beyond a brick barricade. These days, it was on no one's way to anywhere. He rounded a corner and walked through a narrow gap between twenty or thirty food stalls. Only half the vendors were open at this hour, and many were idle, calling out to Gabe and a handful of others who passed. He walked quickly by them without turning his head.
He did not need to use the restroom in the conventional sense. It had become a frequent deviation for Gabe, just as—or perhaps, because—it had already for other boys and men. Many of them were young like him, and most not nearly as timid. He gave himself permission only as his run was technically over, and saw it as a release, in more than one way, of the tension amassed over a day in his life. As he neared the room's entrance, Gabe noticed more fluorescent tubes had given out overhead. Only a few remained lit, casting the corridor in confined segments of dim, quivering glow.
The restroom itself was filled with light. Usually, Gabe satisfied himself by watching the actions of others. Less often, he was watched by others, which also brought him a quick, soaring thrill. He rarely allowed himself meaningful physical contact with anyone, and even during those few, exceptional encounters, minimized the possibility of personal harm.
Usually, for the obscurity of location and hour, the restroom was tellingly busy. But at other times it was empty. Tonight it was neither: Only one person, a tall white boy, stood conspicuously at the far end. He looked young, maybe even younger than Gabe. He was thin and lanky, his face bright, attractive. He had freckles that reminded Gabe of the handsome patrolman. The boy had leaned against the wall, scribbling something in a small notepad, but when Gabe entered he put it away, freed himself. Gabe wavered for a second, then went toward him.
He exposed himself as the other boy had done and silently, expertly made clear his intentions for minimal contact. The boy was respectful of this, and after some time had passed in strict admiration, Gabe allowed the boy to take hold of him. It won't be long at all now, thought Gabe, and he submitted himself.
He left the restroom behind five minutes later, saddled with the queasiness of having one weight lifted, another applied. The novelty of this sensation had long faded. Gabe felt guilt for his behavior—a mysterious, particular sting of judgment cast toward him from someplace else. But it wasn't God...or a god, or anything like that. He had no romantic partner to whom he must remain faithful. Maybe it was his father, who was somehow, from some unworldly vantage, watching him in these moments, sorrowfully shaking his head. This possibility was an especially painful one for Gabe to consider.
Perhaps it wasn't his father at all. On darker nights than this one, Gabe had peered in the direction of the abandoned platform through gaps around the edges of the clumsy masonry, and the thing had stood right at its edge, taught, clear flesh pulled over bone. His back was always to Gabe. But once, he had twisted around in a flash—that awful, unalterable grin cutting straight through the brick. For an instant Gabe had wanted to run, but instead stood still, breathing in and out once before walking steadily back toward the clean light of a larger connecting hall.
;-;